The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
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$20,000,000.
This alluring offer was accompanied with the stern announcement that
Upon the acceptance * * * of the proposals herein made * * * but not otherwise, it will be possible * * * to proceed to the consideration * * * of other matters.
Also, our Commissioners wired Washington:
If the Spanish Commissioners refuse our proposition * * * nothing remains except to close the negotiations.
This was very American and very final. Washington answered: “Your proposed action approved.”
November 29th, Mr. Day wired Mr. Hay:
Spanish Commissioners at to-day’s conference presented a definite and final acceptance of our last proposition.
And that is how that twenty millions found its way into the treaty—not forgetting the prayers and other contemporaneous activities of Archbishop Chapelle.
After the tremendous eight weeks’ tension had relaxed, and before the final reduction to writing of all the details, we see this dear little telegram, from Secretary of State Hay, himself a writer of note, come bravely paddling into port, where it was cordially received by both sides, taken in out of the wet, and put under the shelter of the treaty:
Mr. Hay to Mr. Day: In renewing conventional arrangements do not lose sight of copyright agreement.
And here is the last act of the drama:
Mr. Day to Mr. Hay, Paris, December 10, 1898: Treaty signed at 8.50 this evening.
1 Senate Document 62, pt. 1, 55th Cong., 3d Sess., 1898–9, p. 283.
2 Hon. Frank A. Vanderlip, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, now (1912) President of the National City Bank, New York, in the Century Magazine, August, 1898.
3 S. D. 148, p. 15.
4 Navy Department Report for 1898, Appendix, p. 122.
5 Senate Document 148, p. 19.
6 Chairman of the Spanish Commission.
7 Meaning evidently payment of some of Spain’s debts with money she could probably get from us for the asking, as a matter of sympathy for the fellow who is “down and out.”
8 Mr. McKinley had before that sent word significantly that he was not unmindful of the distressing financial embarrassments of Spain.
Chapter VIII
The Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation
Prometheus stole the heavenly fire from the altar of Jupiter to benefit mankind, and Jupiter thereupon punished both Prometheus and the rest of mankind by creating and giving to them the woman Pandora, a supposed blessing but a real curse. Pandora brought along a box of blessings, and when she opened it, everything flew out and away but Hope.
Tales from Æschylus.
The ever-memorable Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, the Pandora box of Philippine woes, was signed December 21, 1898, and its contents were let loose in the Philippines on January 1, 1899.
Let us consider for a moment the total misapprehension of conditions in the islands under which Mr. McKinley drafted and signed that famous document—a misapprehension due to General Otis’s curious blindness to the great vital fact of the situation, viz., that the Filipinos were bent on independence from the first, and preparing to fight for it to the last. Take the following Otis utterance, for example, concerning a date when practically everybody in the Eighth Army Corps, and every newspaper correspondent in the Philippines, recognized that war would be certain in the event the Paris Peace negotiations should result, as common rumor then said they would result, in our taking over the islands:
My own confidence at this time in a satisfactory solution of the difficulties which confronted us may be gathered from a despatch sent to Washington on December 7th, wherein I stated that conditions were improving, and that there were signs of revolutionary disintegration.1
There can be no doubt that, at the date of that despatch, General Otis had been given to understand that under the Treaty of Paris we were going to keep the islands if the treaty should be ratified, and also that the if might give the Administration trouble, should trouble arise with the Filipinos before the if was disposed of at home. As heretofore intimated, in addition to his preference for legal and administrative work to the work of his profession, in the Philippines General Otis constituted himself from the beginning a political henchman. Ample evidence will be introduced later on to show beyond all doubt that all through the early difficulties, when the American people should have been frankly dealt with and given the facts, General Otis would, in the exercise of his military powers as press censor, always say to the war correspondents, “I will let nothing go that will hurt the Administration.”
Let us see what the real facts of the Philippine situation were at the date of the Treaty of Paris, December 10th, or, which is the same thing, when General Otis sent his despatch of December 7th. When the Treaty of Paris was signed, General Otis was in possession of Manila and Cavite, with less than 20,000 men under his command, and Aguinaldo was in possession of practically all the rest of the archipelago, with between 35,000 and 40,000 men under his command, armed with guns, and the whole Filipino population were in sympathy with the army of their country. We have already seen the conditions in the various provinces at that time and also the inauguration of the native central government. Let us now examine the military figures.
Ten thousand American soldiers were on hand when Manila was captured, August 13th, and 5000 more had arrived under command of Major-General Elwell S. Otis a week or so after the fall of the city.2 They had 13,000 Spanish soldiers to guard. In addition to this, by the terms of the capitulation, the city (population say 300,000), its inhabitants, its churches and educational establishments, and its private property of all descriptions had been placed “under the special safeguard of the faith and honor of the American army.”3 Some 4500 to 5000 more troops began to swarm out of San Francisco bound for Manila in the latter part of October, 1898, the last of them reaching Manila December 11th, the day after the Treaty of Paris was signed. After that there were no further additions to General Otis’s command prior to the outbreak of war with the Filipinos, February 4, 1899.3 Of these (approximately) 20,000 men, only 1500 to 2000 were regulars, having the Krag-Jorgensen smokeless gun. The rest were State volunteers, armed with the antiquated Springfield rifles, the same the 71st New York and the 2d Massachusetts had been permitted to carry into the Santiago campaign the summer before. Aguinaldo’s people were equipped entirely with Mausers captured from the Spaniards, and other rifles, bought in Hong Kong mostly, using smokeless ammunition. Major (now Major-General) J. F. Bell, who is, in the judgment of many,