The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912 by James H. Blount

Author:James H. Blount [Blount, James H. (James Henderson)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

The time has come, however, when they [the Filipino people] find their advance along this path [the path of their aspirations] impeded by an irresistible force. * * * Enough of blood, enough of tears and desolation.

He concludes by announcing his final unconditional submission to American sovereignty and advises others to do likewise. 53

Soon after this General Tiño surrendered in General Young’s district, and in another part of northern Luzon, General Mascardo, commanding the insurgent forces in the provinces of Bataan and Zambales, heretofore described as “the west wing of the great central plain,” also surrendered. In the latter part of June, General Cailles, with whom we have already had occasion to become acquainted, in connection with Judge Taft’s “Mafia on a large scale,” also surrendered in Laguna Province. After that, there was never any more trouble in northern Luzon. But during the spring of 1901, the Commission had been very busy organizing the provinces of southern Luzon under civil government, thus cutting short the process of licking it into submission and substituting a process of loving it into that state through good salaries and otherwise—a policy which postponed the final permanent pacification of that ill-fated region for several years, as hereinafter more fully set forth.

The unconditional absoluteness with which Judge Taft acted from the beginning on the assumption that the Filipinos would make a distinction between civil and military rule, and that their objection to us was because we had first sent soldiers to rule them and not civilians, and that these objections would vanish before the benignant sunlight of a government by civilians, is one of the great tragedies of all history, considering the countless lives it eventually cost. As a matter of fact, the Filipino objection had little or no relation to the kind of clothes we wore, whether they were white duck or khaki. Their objection was to us, i.e., to an alien yoke. However, to heal the bleeding wounds of war, the Filipinos were benevolently told to forget it, and a civil government was set up on July 4, 1901, pursuant to the amiable delusion indicated. That it has never yet proved a panacea, and why, will be developed in the next and subsequent chapters, but only in-so-far as such development throws light on the present situation—which it is the whole object of this book to do.

And now a few words by way of concluding the present chapter, as preliminary to the inauguration of a civil government, cannot be misconstrued, though they come from one who held office under it. I have certainly made clear that Judge Taft and his colleagues were as honest in their delusion about how popular they were with the Filipinos as many other public men who have been known to have hobbies, and my remarks must be understood as based on the comprehensive bird’s-eye view which we have had of the whole situation from the outbreak of the war with Spain in 1898 to the end of June, 1901, as a summation of that situation.

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