The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912. James H. Blount
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and ever shortening rations, and American troops were on the way to join him, and the shorter the food supply grew in Manila the readier the garrison would be to surrender when they did arrive, and the fewer American soldiers’ lives would have to be sacrificed in the final capture of the town. Every day of Aguinaldo’s service under the Dewey-Pratt arrangement was worth an American life, perhaps many. It was too valuable to repudiate, just yet. July 20th, the State Department wrote Mr. Pratt a letter acknowledging receipt of his of June 9th “enclosing printed copies of a report from the Straits Times of the same day, entitled ‘Mr. Spencer Pratt’s Serenade,’ with a view to its communication to the press,” and not only not felicitating him on his serenade, but making him sorry he had ever had a serenade. It said, among other things:
“The extract now communicated by you from the Straits Times of the 9th of June has occasioned a feeling of disquietude and a doubt as to whether some of your acts may not have borne a significance and produced an impression which this government would feel compelled to regret.”9 Hapless Pratt! “Feel compelled to regret” is State Department for “You are liable to be fired.”
The letter of reprimand proceeds:
“The address * * * discloses an understanding on their part that * * * the ultimate object of our action is * * * the independence of the Philippines * * *. Your address does not repel this implication * * *”.
The letter then scores Pratt for having called Aguinaldo “the man for the occasion,” and for having said that the “arrangement” between Aguinaldo and Dewey had “resulted so happily,” and after a few further animadversions, concludes with this great blow to the reading public of Alabama:
“For these reasons the Department has not caused the article to be given to the press lest it might seem thereby to lend a sanction to views the expression of which it had not authorized.”
“The Department” was very scrupulous about even the appearance, at the American end of the line, of “lending a sanction” to Pratt’s arrangement with Aguinaldo, while all the time it was knowingly permitting the latter to daily risk his own life and the lives of his countrymen on the faith of that very “arrangement,” and it was so permitting this to be done because the “arrangement” was daily operating to reduce the number of American lives which it would be necessary to sacrifice in the final taking of Manila. The day the letter of reprimand was written our troop-ships were on the ocean, speeding toward the Philippines. And Aguinaldo and his people were fighting the Spaniards with the pent-up feeling of centuries impelling their little steel-jacketed messengers of death, thinking of “Cuba Libre,” and dreaming of a Star of Philippine Independence risen in the Far East.
Such are the circumstances from which the Filipino people derived their first impressions concerning the faith and honor of a strange people they had never theretofore seen, who succeeded the Spaniards as their overlords. Mr. Pratt was subsequently quietly separated from the consular service, and doubtless lived to regret that he had ever unloosed the fountains of his Alabama French on the Filipino colony of Singapore.
1 Congressional Record, December 6, 1897, p. 3.
2 Split Rock.
3 Senate Document 62, p. 381.
4 See pages 341 et seq., Senate Document 62, part 1, 55th Cong., 3d Sess., 1898–9.
5 Senate Document 62, p. 346.
6 Ib., 349.
7 The natives in and about Singapore are Mohammedans, forbidden by their religion to use alcoholic beverages.
8 Senate Document 62, p. 354.
9 Senate Document 62, p. 356.
Chapter II
Dewey and Aguinaldo
Armaments that thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake
And monarchs tremble in their capitals.
Childe Harold.
The battle of Manila Bay was fought May 1, 1898. Until the thunder of Dewey’s guns reverberated around the world, there was perhaps no part of it the American people knew less about than the Philippine Islands.
We have all heard much of what happened after the battle, but comparatively few, probably, have ever had a glimpse at our great sailor while he was there in Hong Kong harbor, getting ready to go to sea to destroy the Spanish armada. Such a glimpse is modestly afforded by the Admiral in his testimony before the Senate Committee in 1902.1
Asked by the Committee when he first heard from Aguinaldo and his people in 1898, Admiral Dewey said2:
I should think about a month before leaving Hong Kong, that is, about the first of April, when it became pretty certain that there was to be war with Spain, I heard that there were a number of Filipinos in the city of Hong Kong who were anxious to accompany the squadron to Manila in case we went over. I saw these men two or three times myself. They seemed to be all very young earnest boys. I did not attach much importance to what they said or to themselves. Finally, before we left Hong Kong for Mirs Bay3 I received a telegram from Consul-General Pratt at Singapore saying that Aguinaldo was there and anxious to see me. I said to him “All right; tell him to come on,” but I attached so little importance to Aguinaldo that I did not wait for him. He did not arrive, and we sailed from Mirs Bay without any Filipinos.
From his testimony before the Committee it is clear that Admiral Dewey’s first impressions of the Filipinos, like those of most Americans after him, were not very favorable, that is to say, he did not in the outset take them very seriously. It will be interesting to consider these impressions, and then to compare them with those he gathered on better acquaintance from observing their early struggles for independence. The more intimate acquaintance, as has been the case with all his fellow countrymen since, caused him to revise his first verdict. Answering a question put by Senator Carmack concerning what transpired between him and the Philippine Revolutionists at Hong Kong before he sailed in search of the Spanish fleet, the Admiral said4:
They were bothering me. I was getting my squadron ready for battle, and these little men were coming on board my ship at Hong Kong and taking a good deal of my time, and I did not attach the slightest importance to anything they could do, and they did nothing; that is, none of them went with me when I went to Mirs Bay. There had been a good deal of talk, but when the time came they did not go. One of