"Sat ^f 1 V_/l^ JL 3^ IPPINE NDEPENDENCE FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON 3-1822016063414 r LlfefcARY 1 L UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA SANOteao WRSHVOFCAMFORN^SA, DIEGO -, 31822016063414 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due AU6 1 2000 Cl 39 (5/97) UCSD Lib. The Old Corner Book Store, Inc. THE CORNER-STONE OF PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE A NARRATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON Governor-General of Philippine Islands, October, 1913 February, 1921 THE CORNER-STONE OF PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE A NARRATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS BY FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, OCTOBER, 1913 FEBBUAHY, 1921 ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1922 Copyright, 1922, by THE CENTUEY Co. Printed in U. S. A. To THE HON. MANUEL L. QUEZON FILIPINO PATRIOT AND LOYAL FRIEND PREFACE IS the United States Government imperialistic? The American people, upon the whole, are not, but under our system of government a state of war may be forced upon the people and, as a result, foreign territories annexed without any clear understanding of the issue on the part of the voters. It is not the peculiar privilege of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to pro- fess one principle and practise another, but, unfortu- nately, the other nations of the world already look with distrust upon our designs. Certainly our neigh- bors to the south and across the Pacific have their doubts as to our intentions. To them the acquisition of the Philippines and Porto Rico, Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands ; our virtual protectorate over Cuba and Panama; our military expedition to Siberia, and the invasion by our marines of Hayti and the Central American States in recent years seem to justify suspicion. The average American citizen is usually not consulted in these matters; if he is, it is always our " honor" which is involved, or we are said to be acting in an unselfish desire to benefit the people whose country we invade. These, also, are the argu- ments used by the statesmen of the frankly imperial- istic governments of Europe for their annexations of territory. If the United States is really embarked upon a course of empire, our people are entitled to know the truth and to express an opinion upon the policy. The cost in armaments is already prodigious ; the ill- will toward us of the other nations of the world is growing. The price we may have to pay in foreign wars in the future may prove our ruin. Let us at least rii viii PREFACE consider, before it is too late, where the path will lead upon which our Government has taken the first steps. The Philippines may well be the test case in this problem. We have thus far acted with unparalleled generosity toward the Filipinos, in giving them self- government and promising them their independence. They believe in us and in our promises ; they were ab- solutely loyal to us during the war; they have made astonishing progress in self-government; they desire independence. The time is close at hand when we must redeem our promise, or else forfeit their con- fidence and good-will, and break our given word. The following pages have been written in the hope of conveying to those at home who may read them an idea of what the Filipinos have done with the self- government we granted them in 1916. The purpose of the book is to portray their ideals and ambitions, their trials and problems, their accomplishments and de- velopment, rather than to describe the achievements of our fellow-countrymen in the islands. The writer is convinced that the Filipinos are now ready for inde- pendence, that they have already set up the stable government required of them by the Jones Act as a prerequisite, and that, in the words of President Wil- son in 1920, in his last annual message to Congress, "It is now our liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of those islands by granting them the independence which they so honorably covet. ' ' FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON. Caithnes shire, Scotland, September 10, 1921 CONSENTS CHAPTER PAflB I INTRODUCTION 3 II THE FILIPINO KACE 10 III EARLIER YEARS OP AMERICAN OCCUPATION 31 IV THE NEW ERA 50 V FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OP THE LEGISLATURE 60 VI FILIPINIZATION 75 VII THE MOROS 92- VIII CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOROLAND 105 IX THE HILL TRIBES OP LUZON 123 X THE AMERICAN GARRISON IN THE PHILIPPINES .... 143 XI INCIDENTS OF WAR TIMES 169 XII FILIPINO LOYALTY DURING THE WAR - . . 182 XIII THE JONES ACT 192 XIV THE NEW FILIPINO GOVERNMENT 202 XV THE FILIPINO LAWMAKERS 216 XVI IN THE PROVINCES 231 XVII NEW VENTURES IN COMMERCE AND FINANCE .... 250 XVIII THE FILIPINO ATTITUDE TOWARD FOREIGNERS .... 269 XIX THE INDEPENDENCE OP THE PHILIPPINES 285 XX THE JAPANESE "MENACE" 306 XXI EFFECT OP THE AMERICAN POLICY IN THE PHILIPPINES UPON THE EUROPEAN MASTERS OP ASIA . 320 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Francis Burton Harrison Frontispiece FACING PAGE Part of the famous Zig-Zag, Benguet Road 32 Pagsanhan Falls, Laguna Province 33 Naguilian Road to Baguio 48 Pasig River Front, Manila 49 A bird's-eye view of the Luneta, Manila 96 The Sultan of Jolo and other prominent Moros 97 Government pier, Jolo 112 Moro "Datos" or District Officials 113 An old masonry bridge 128 Typical modern concrete bridge 129 Gilbert Bridge, Laoag, Ilocos Norte 160 After a tropical rain 161 A typical busy market-place 176 Primary school pupils of the public schools of the Philippine Islands 177 Hon. Manuel L. Quezon 208 Hon. Sergio Osmena 208 Old Council of State of Philippine Islands, July, 1920 .... 209 New Council of State of Philippine Islands, July, 1920 .... 209 Cocoanut rafts, Pagsanhan River, Laguna 224 Gathering nipa sap 225 Marienda at home of Mauro Prieto in Mariquina 272 Transplanting rice 273 William Jennings Bryan and Francis Burton Harrison .... 288 Columbian Association, Manila, February, 1921 289 THE CORNER-STONE OF PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE A NARRATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS THE CORNER-STONE OF PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE A NARRATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION WHY shouldn't you be governor-general, your- self?" asked Manuel L. Quezon, delegate to Congress from the Philippines. This was on August 18, 1913, at the end of a long conversation in his office in the House of Representatives in Washington. I had been trying to persuade Mr. Quezon to support the candidacy of a friend whom I thought eminently qualified for the position. It appeared, however, that the President did not look with favor upon his can- didacy. The idea of my own appointment struck me with amazement, as I was then engaged in an entirely different kind of work, in the House of Representatives during the revision of the tariff. Mr. Quezon at once enlisted the support of Mr. Wil- liam A. Jones, the veteran Representative from Vir- ginia and Chairman of the Committee on Insular Affairs, who in turn interested Mr. Bryan, Secretary of State, and four days later President Wilson sent my name to the Senate, which body, out of courtesy to a member of Congress, suspended the rules and at once confirmed the nomination. So in less than a week 3 4 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES after the first suggestion was made I found myself destined to immediate departure from all my cus- tomary surroundings and occupations and to an en- tirely novel service as the chief executive of the Philip- pines, twelve thousand miles away. At a meeting of Members of Congress, a few eve- nings later, at the Washington home of Eepresentative Kent of California, I was presented, through the genial offices of the Speaker, Champ Clark, with a souvenir from the House of Representatives as a token of good- will. Speeches were made by leaders of the different political factions, including the Republican minority leader, James A. Mann, and Eepresentative Victor Murdock from Kansas, for the Progressives. I then made the acquaintance of General Frank Mc- Intyre, Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, a stanch and true friend in many an hour of subsequent political trial, and of Major-General Wood, who was cordiality itself. A few days later I met my immediate chief, Mr. Garrison, the Secretary of War, who had been absent on a tour of the army posts of the West at the time of my appointment. On the tenth of Sep- tember my party sailed from San Francisco on the Pacific Mail liner Manchuria, westward bound. These personal incidents are introduced to show the atmosphere of kindly good-will in official circles which surrounded my venture into this new line of public service, an atmosphere from which political partizanship was entirely lacking, and which left me utterly unprepared for the political hornets' nest into which I stepped upon arrival in Manila. The distant horizon seemed very bright. To be sure, I was con- scious of the possibilities of international troubles to INTRODUCTION 5 come, for I remember my farewell to my lifelong friend James W. Gerard, just appointed Ambassador to Germany, when I told him that he and I were going to the two places in the world where something was likely to happen. It happened to him ! My experiences in the Philippines, while of an un- expected nature, were only such as any man should be prepared to face if charged with putting into effect in a remote station a policy which runs counter to the wishes or ambitions of his fellow-countrymen on the spot. All through my service I received generous support from the President and in Congress, where there was no disposition to play politics with Philip- pine administration. When, later on, the Republicans gained control of Congress, nothing was ever done by them to embarrass or interfere with the Philippine situation. From Americans in the islands I received very little support. President Wilson, with his fine inspiration for political liberties, and in accordance with the succes- sive pronouncements of Democratic platforms, was determined to bring self-government to the Filipinos and hasten the day of their independence. He would not appoint any American resident of the Philippines to the Philippine Commission. In a long conversa- tion, the Sunday morning before I left Washington, he gave me in general terms his instructions as to Philip- pine self-government. I found him wonderfully well informed as to Philippine conditions, as I had pre- viously found him a master of the intricacies of tariff revision. He was then, as always, when I have been privileged to meet him, of the most charming courtesy. In after years, thinking over this conversation with 6 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES him, I could find only one point upon which he seemed to me to have been misinformed. He told me that the Filipinos were so afraid of the Moros that one Fili- pino regiment had thrown down its arms and refused to go into action against them. I was never able to trace that story to its source, and all my own observa- tion leads me to believe that the Filipino, equally well armed and reasonably well led, is the match for the Moro in any circumstances. Upon leaving the White House, I met at the Metro- politan Club the Hon. Charles E. Magoon, formerly Governor of the Canal Zone and of Cuba. He told me of his ' ' instructions ' ' upon his last appointment. Pass- ing through Washington, he was invited to the White House to dinner. As he greeted Mr. Eoosevelt, the President put his finger on Magoon 's shirt stud and said: "You to Cuba." "What instructions do you give me, Mr. President? ' ' Mr. Roosevelt replied : " Go see Boot." Next morning Governor Magoon reported to Secretary Boot for instructions, and the secretary said, "Oh, well, I have no instructions; just go gov- ern." This was as laconic as President Grant's ad- vice to the Japanese, when, during his trip around the world, they asked him how they could learn the art of self-government. "Govern yourselves!" was the reply. Few judges elected to executive office make success- ful administrators; their inclination is to spend all their time weighing the pros and cons of every ques- tion, when what is needed are decision and despatch. Few legislators find their previous experience partic- ularly useful in executive office; their training is all toward talk, and then more talk, and divided responsi- INTRODUCTION 7 bility ; they have, however, one characteristic of prime advantage in a democratic as opposed to an autocratic system: they have a proper appreciation of that pe- culiar psychology known as the legislative mind, and an earnest disposition to learn public opinion. The great danger to an executive, after all, is that he shall come to rely more and more exclusively on his own opinion, and lose touch with the public. In my farewell call upon Secretary Bryan I expressed the hope that with the great powers given by law to the Governor- General of the Philippines I should not become auto- cratic. That hope and my desire to bring all the lib- erties possible to the Filipino people were my qualifi- cations for the office with which President Wilson and the Senate had entrusted me. There is no room in the United States Constitution for colonies ; officially speaking, we have none. Alaska and Hawaii are territories; Porto Rico and the Phil- ippines dependencies, or insular possessions. Guam, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, the Canal Zone all are naval or military stations. There are few traditions of colonial service in the United States. Perhaps that very freedom from fixed ideas and red-tape has enabled our Government to make a swifter development of policy than is possible in the European colonial offices. There is no great body of " elder statesmen" returning home after a lifetime of colonial service with hidebound opinions as to how things should be done, determined to resist any and all changes in their ideas of colonial management. The arguments in favor of a permanent Colonial Civil Service are, after all, similar to those in behalf of a permanent body of diplomatic officers ; the drawbacks are the same. Such permanent officials 8 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES imbibe, in the one case, a rigid caste attitude toward the "subject races," and in the other they are affected by the atmosphere of ceremonial court intrigue and do not keep up with the progress of thought in the home land. The British, an intensely practical race, select for viceroy of their greatest possession, India, not a member of the Indian Civil Service, but some man fresh from active public life at home. Up to 1913, the only traditions of Philippine service known in the United States were those of the "Taft dynasty," as it became known, which began with Mr. Taft 's inauguration as civil governor in 1901 and con- tinued in unbroken succession through his terms as Secretary of War and President. The generous sym- pathies and wise liberalism of his earlier management of the Philippine problem, which won over many Fil- ipinos to support American policies, seem to have dwindled and vanished as he grew older and as he fell out of personal touch with the Philippines. Later a bureaucracy was built up around his policy, assum- ing toward the subject race all the hard and patroniz- ing superiority typical of European colonial adminis- trators of modern times. Distrust of the Filipino and a determination to see him kept as a dependent as long as possible were the new features of the policy. The governors-general who succeeded Mr. Taft were as able and conscientious a set of administrators as our country could wish for, but the Filipinos were becom- ing yearly more restless and dissatisfied, and the Chief of Constabulary, General Harry H. Bandholtz, had predicted in his report for 1912 the probability of dis- turoances in the provinces. Growing distrust and ill- feeling between the two races were more evident each INTRODUCTION 9 year. The Taft dynasty, which had done so much for the Filipinos, and made such a contribution to the prob- lem of colonial government, seemed to have reached the end of its rope. Its representatives could not go backward, and were unwilling to move forward; they had started a national movement in the Philippines, and then wished to arrest it in mid-career; they had found that such principles as liberty and self-govern- ment cannot be turned on and off like water from a tap, however benevolent the hand in control. An explosion was to be expected soon. CHAPTER n THE FILIPINO RACE WHAT are the Philippines, and where are they? These were the questions asked by the average American when news came that the United States had acquired title to these strange and far-away lands, by the Treaty of Paris in December, 1898. It was ex- plained that they are a group of about three thousand islands, half-way around the world from us ; that they had been held by our recent foes, the Spanish, for more than three and a half centuries; and, above all, that Manila Bay was the scene of the naval victory which brought undying fame to Admiral Dewey. They looked very small upon the map of the Eastern Hemi- sphere, and it was difficult to believe that their land surface was as large as New York, New Jersey, Penn- sylvania, and Delaware combined; as large as Great Britain and slightly smaller than Japan. The islands were known to contain a population larger than about twenty of the modern states of the world. Concerning the inhabitants of these scattered islands virtually nothing was then known in the United States. It is true that Dewey had reported that the Filipinos were more fit for self-government than the Cubans, but oth- ers described them as ferocious head-hunting savages. The best-known expression of Filipino sentiment was the farewell hymn of patriotism written by Dr. Jose Rizal the night before his execution by the Spanish in 10 THE FILIPINO RACE 11 1896, which had caused a stir of sympathy around the world. But the chief source of our knowledge were Spanish writers who were evidently anxious to justify their administration of the islands, and, so far as the native inhabitants were concerned, their chronicles of later centuries were mainly the type of literary effort which a jailer might be expected to produce concerning prisoners behind the bars. The writings of Eizal and of European scientists and travelers such as La Gir- oniere, Jagor, and Blumentritt, were virtually un- known in America. It is not my purpose, of course, to write a history of the Philippines; others far better qualified than I are producing, year by year, "histories" of the past. But it is fair to enquire, What is history? Is it any- thing more than the deduction a certain man makes from certain (or uncertain) facts? Do not most his- torians start with a concrete thesis, and then develop it to suit themselves ? Were we not all brought up to worship at the shrine of Napoleon, Alexander, and Caesar? And now comes H. G. Wells and outlines all three as unmitigated curses to the human race; the third Napoleon, he says, was a much abler and more astute man than the first; Alexander was a vain and drunken adventurer. Ferrero tells us that the his- toric romance of Antony and Cleopatra was merely a political alliance to dominate the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Even statistics, as every legislator knows, can often be used to prove opposite arguments upon the same point. The people of each great nation are convinced that their own culture is superior to that of all others and their own flag the only real symbol of justice and honor. 12 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES In attempting a very brief review of the history of the Philippines, I wish to admit my own bias, which has been acquired not by deliberate intent but through nearly eight years of effort to understand the Filipino people, and from many travels in other lands : it is that possession of national characteristics by acci- dent of birth is a fallacy; that pride of race is justly based only upon the training and collective circum- stances of existing racial life, not upon inherited race instinct; that men are all, by nature, very much the same, with similar mental processes, wants, and ambi- tions, given a similar training and environment; that the brotherhood of man is a fact, and that a profound philosophical truth is embodied in the statement that "all men are created equal." Nothing arouses so much fury and resentment among a certain class of writers as the phrase just quoted from our Declaration of Independence. The inequality of men comes from their training and education, not from their physical birth. Our fetters, mental and political, are imposed upon us by our fellow-man; our failures to attain a moderate level of civilization are due to lack of oppor- tunity, or to the selfishness, rapacity, egotism, bigotry, or superstition of others. Most of the travelers' tales of the great age of modern exploration, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are replete with purely superficial observa- tions upon the different races of man. The ordinary modern of European descent regards any difference from his own type as not only a mark of inferiority but an absolute offense. He cites differences of the sort as arguments why such people as exhibit them should THE FILIPINO RACE 13 be either exterminated or else subjected and made to work for his benefit. Least of all is he willing to admit that these peoples are capable of adopting or assim- ilating his own standard of civilization. Finally, he is usually ignorant concerning the facts of the immediate past of his own nation, and is not told how very recent is anything like general education among the peoples of the Western world. There is a fascinating and as yet almost unexplored field of theory and conjecture as to the striking resemblances of custom and adornment of ancient mankind, in all widely different portions of the world. Historically speaking, the marked differ- ences in the races of modern man are acquired, not inherent. As James Bryce says in his recent great work on ' ' Modern Democracies " : " All fairly normal men have like passions and desires. They are stirred by like motives, they think upon similar lines." The Filipinos are of Malay descent. In the dim ages of the past, their ancestors came from the nest of the human races in central Asia. A stream of Mongoloid emigration poured down in successive waves from behind the mountains of eastern Tibet, and over what is now southern China, Siam, Burma, the Malay Pen- insula, and the Dutch East Indies. The Filipino of to-day is first cousin to the natives of Java and Su- matra, and second cousin to the Siamese. These pre- historic emigrants were quick to take up the life of the water, since, in the impenetrable jungles along their route, the rivers and tidal shores offered the easiest means of travel. They became hunters and fishermen, perforce abandoning the pastoral life of their ances- tors, and bold sailors, slipping from land to land across 14 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES the eastern seas. Their type of village was not unlike that of the ancient lake-dwellers in Switzerland, the houses built on tall piles, out over the water, for pur- poses of protection as well as sanitation. A perfect type of these ancient villages survives to-day in Brunei, a British protectorate in west Borneo, but the city is fast dwindling and will soon be gone forever. The government of these people was purely patri- archal, like that of their far-away forebears in central Asia. Their villages were largely self-governing com- munities, presided over by a chief whose office had become hereditary. At different times these villages combined in confederacies, or were conquered and bound into a kingdom. The village communities were self-sustaining, and travel was impelled chiefly by de- sire for conquest or because of over-population. Com- merce was brought to them by the Chinese or the Arabs, and agriculture by the natives of India. The free and adventurous spirit of the hunter and the rov- ing fisherman developed a brave and reckless type which in later ages came to be known for a guerilla warfare by sea that stamped them as pirates. Those who so called them had, themselves, possibly as good a title to the name. The Philippine Islands were settled by adventurous voyagers who made their way thither in small boats, from the islands of Java and Sumatra. We can picture them in their long, slender vintas with bamboo outriggers, the paddles beating in unison, the warriors chanting, with sword and spear ready at hand; we can see their eager faces as they leap ashore from the sparkling waters of Manila Bay THE FILIPINO RACE 15 to found the nucleus of a nation which now, long ages after, is growing to manhood. So the invading Danes, Angles, and Saxons, a little later on in history, must have appeared to the terrified inhabitants of early Britain. Early Chinese and Arabic chronicles refer to large settled communities in what are now the islands of Jolo, Mindoro, and Luzon as long ago as the fourth century. Through the Middle Ages infusions of Chinese and Japanese blood from the north and of Hindu from the south were marked, and many evidences of such ancestral strains are visi- ble to-day. Nor, when these Malay wanderers first reached the islands, were they uninhabited. The orig- inal native type known to-day as the Negrito, a very small black man with woolly hair, had already been forced to take to a nomadic life, in the dense forests of the higher mountains, by the Indonesians, who were bolder, better armed, and better organized. They in turn were the ancestors of the peoples known to-day as the Igorots and Ifugaos, and were later on driven into the mountains by the successive waves of Malay immi- gration. There are to-day in the Philippines about 70,000 Negritos * of more or less pure blood, and about 400,000 other mountaineers of non-Malay types, in whom, however, there is a strong infusion of Malay or Polynesian blood. Most of the remaining population of the islands, totaling 10,300,000 in the census of 1918, 1 Professor H. Otley Beyer, in "Population of the Philippine Islands in 1916," gives the following figures: Unclassified Pagan Peoples (mostly aboriginal primitive types) : 1. Distinct Negrito and Negroid types 35,926 2. Non-Negroid or Semi-Negroid types 46,015 Total 81,941 16 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES are of a fairly uniform Malay type. 1 They are of me- dium stature, with brown complexion and straight black hair and virtually no beard or mustache ; their eyes are black or dark brown, set rather slanting under an in- telligent brow ; their muscular development is excellent, with broad shoulders, slender waists, and small hands and feet. They are brave, active, graceful, and inured to a hardy outdoor life, and still devoted to the chase and fond of living on or near the water. An indica- tion that the race, before entering the tropics, was originally much lighter in color may be found in the fact that the new-born infants are generally paler of complexion than their parents. It is the custom to deny to the Malay people the traditions of great organized government. The indi- vidualism of isolated village life is an obstacle to cen- tralized power. But many times in recorded history empires vast in territory but sparse in population have been founded by Malay chieftains, formed from shift- ing groups of lesser kingdoms. Many of their royal families to-day, shorn of their powers, still claim de- scent from such heroes of antiquity as Alexander and Mohammed. The greatest of all their efforts at em- pire was that of Madjapahit of Java, for the history of which in relation to the Philippines I am indebted to Professor H. Otley Beyer of the University of the Philippines. 1 In the Philippine Census of 1920 the population of the islands is estimated as follows: Christian population 9,463,731 Mohammedan 394,964 Pagans 437,622 Other religions 54,413 Total 10,350,730 THE FILIPINO RACE 17 In a quarrel between princes of the leading house in Java in 1292, Raden Widjaya appealed to the Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan for aid; the Great Khan sent two of his ablest generals, with a large fleet and twenty thousand troops. With their assistance, Raden Wid- jaya established himself upon the throne and then turned upon his Chinese allies, driving them out of Java with a loss of more than three thousand men. From them he had learned the use of firearms, which explains his subsequent success in founding a large empire and subjugating all his neighbors. The great- est of the line of rulers of Madjapahit was the fourth, named Hayam Wuruk, and it was during his reign of fifty years in the fourteenth century that the empire attained its greatest dimensions, including the whole Malay Archipelago, Borneo, Celebes, and the Phil- ippines, as well as Java and Sumatra. The kin- dred races in Siam and Cambodia were rendered trib- utary. Indian- Javanese culture spread rapidly through the empire, and many evidences of it survive to-day. In the Philippines the chief centers of the imperial power, as mentioned in their records, were on Manila Bay, near Lake Lanao in Mindanao, and in Sulu. There and in many other places traces of their culture survive ; even among such primitive peoples as the pagan Mangyans of Mindoro, the inhabitants to- day communicate with one another in the old Indian syllabic writing. The imperial federation was finally overthrown by the Mohammedan incursions from the west. To them and to the first Spanish priests is due the destruction of the ancient culture of the people of the Philippines. In considering the Philippines, the importance of 18 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES this long membership in the empire of Madjapahit, lasting nearly two centuries, is not often appreciated. This was the time of greatest civilization in ancient Java. The reforms of Buddha, revived in India by the great King Asoka, and soon stifled there by the priest- craft, had flourished in Java for many centuries. The best ideas of early Hindu culture, the traditions of prehistoric Aryan ideas, and many words of Aryan origin, were thus disseminated through the islands of the East Indies. The Philippines received their share, and to-day many of the personal traits or manners of simple village life there, especially the very things which strike Americans as peculiar, are also to be noted by the most casual observer in India. It is not too much to state that the long-cherished traditions of Hindu culture as apart from religion, surviving almost without effort or intention through the ages, are to-day the key to Filipino character. "The very name of the most numerous division of the Filipinos Visayans is the Vishaya, or merchant and landowning class of the Aryan Eig-Vedas. Fortunately for the Filipinos, the grotesque religious customs of the modern Brahmin priests seem never to have reached them; their instruction was received from the purer, more spiritual, and infinitely more decent priesthood of the reformed Buddhistic schools in Java. Then came the great wave of Mohammedan con- quest. It was carried to Mindanao and Sulu by the petty kings of Sumatra, the Malay Straits, and Borneo. By the fifteenth century, Mohammedanism was firmly established in Sulu and Mindanao. Proselyting with fire and sword was being carried forward zealously, from island to island. Then came the Portuguese and THE FILIPINO RACE 19 the Spaniards, and under the latter the Cross and Crescent met in combat in the southern islands of the Philippines, and continued in fierce conflict at inter- vals down to the very days of American occupation. Like the Christian invaders of a later day, the Moham- medans brought monotheism to the Philippines, but they also taught abhorrence of idolatry, and estab- lished, among all true believers, a rough form of social democracy. The year 1521 is one of the great dates of Philippine history, in fact, the first authentic date of European records. Then it was that Fernando Magellan, the Por- tuguese navigator in the employ of the King of Spain, landed at Cebu, and thus ended his immortal voyage of adventure, and, incidentally, lost his life. The peoples of Malaysia were not without a rough kind of armor, indeed, not without cannon. But the Spanish arms and equipment were superior. Cautious negotiations with the King of Cebii led to a few conversions to Chris- tianity. To strengthen the impression already made, Magellan offered to attack and subdue the petty rival of the King of Cebu across the narrow straits, on Mac- tan Island; he boastfully insisted that he could do it with only a handful of his own men. He promptly met his death, overwhelmed by numbers. When his one surviving ship completed the voyage around the world, the King of Spain remarked that it was lucky for Magellan that he had lost his life when he did, adding that he would have received worse than death if he had returned home, because of his conduct in the newly ''discovered" lands. It was not until the arrival of Legaspi in 1565 that Spain really tried to colonize her new possessions in 20 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES the East Indies. This really great man extended the sway of his sovereign through most of the Visayas and Luzon by peaceful and sympathetic negotiations, and his work was ably carried on by his grandson, Juan Salcedo. From that day until the surrender of Manila to the American forces, Spain held the Philippines under her dominion, except for a brief interval in 1792 when England occupied the islands. Many volumes have been written concerning the three hundred and fifty years of Spanish rule in the Philippines, but comparatively little about the Fil- ipinos of those days. In other words, the Filipinos are generally referred to scornfully as "Indies" (In- dians), while pages are devoted to glorification of Spanish exploits and achievements. The best that can be said of Spain in the islands is that she christianized them, and thus set up the only Christian country in the Orient, with much of Christianity's modern out- look upon life. To the women, particularly, Christian- ity brought dignity and freedom from Hindu and Mo- hammedan degradations. While the Spanish conquistadores of the vast em- pire in America held the sword in the right hand and the cross in the left, their chief interest was economic. Millions of unhappy Indians perished around the shores of the Caribbean to satisfy the Spanish adven- turers' lust for wealth, as the good Father las Casas testifies. The Spanish Viceroy Toledo, in Peru, esti- mated that in the seventeenth century there were eight million Incas living; in two hundred years these had been reduced to eight hundred thousand. Fate was kinder to the inhabitants of the Philippines. Here were little gold and no silver, no precious stones, ex- THE FILIPINO RACE 21 cept pearls, no mines to be worked. To be sure, the Spanish arms and military organization in the early days in the Philippines destroyed much of the existing culture; forced labor was pitilessly imposed in the shipyards and in construction of the monumental churches which still exist; conscript service in the army for purposes of further conquest broke up thou- sands of homes; the priests in zealous rage against paganism destroyed all existing records, all writings and works of art, as they did in Mexico, in the belief that all that was not Christian must be anti-Christian. One Spanish priest boasted of having destroyed more than three hundred scrolls written in the native char- acters. Early Spanish writers admit that literacy was fairly wide-spread when they took the Philippines, more than could be said of the Spain of, that day; certainly the literacy of the "Indios" was greater than that of the contemporary Incas of Peru or the Aztecs. Few pre-Spanish records survive to-day. However much we may lament this destruction of a culture, we must admit that in its place the Spanish gave, to a limited number of Filipinos at least, access to the splendid tongue of old Castile, and through that to all the glories and traditions of European civilization. Those interested in the pre-Spanish cul- ture of the islands may find much of interest in the publications of Professor Austin Craig of the Uni- versity of the Philippines. S'panish administration of tne Philippines, measured by modern standards, was a failure. The colony was poor and far from the source of government. Seldom could the Spanish Crown induce the best men to go to Manila; many of those who went, it is to be feared, 22 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES were induced by the hope of clearing up a great for- tune outside their official salaries. Governmental pol- icies, on the economic side especially, were monopo- listic, narrow, and foolish in the extreme. Once a year a galleon sailed from Acapulco, Mexico, to Manila, and then sailed back with the change in the monsoon. For- eign traders were jealously excluded. China regularly drained the Philippines of the Mexican currency brought over by the galleons ; very little progress was made in developing the islands, or in educating and elevating the people. To sum it all up, it might almost be said that the Philippines sank into a deep sleep, to be awakened at last by Dewey's guns. It was, however, as a field for missionary endeavor that the Philippines were chiefly valued through these centuries by His Most Catholic Majesty. The govern- ment soon became theocratic in substance, if not in form. The Archbishop of Manila was nearly always the real power. A governor-general who did not sub- mit to the archbishop and the religious orders was soon recalled to Spain. Governor-General Bustamante, in- deed, in 1719, tried to reform the religious orders, and was killed on the steps of his own palace by agents of the priests. In the provinces, each village was under the actual rule of a priest. So absolute was the con- trol of the priesthood that no large army was needed to keep the people in subjection. It is easy enough to point out instances of malfea- sance on the part of these ecclesiastical authorities. Religious rule in civil affairs will hardly ever with- stand the searching tests of modern criticism; too much is done by favor, and too little with justice; character is stifled, and dogma is substituted for intel- 23 ligence. Progress is difficult and independence of thought savagely stamped out. Nevertheless, accord- ing to their lights and measured by the standard of their day and generation, most of these priests did the best they could for their flocks. Many of them were, indeed, men of integrity and piety; many, moreover, gave their people new forms of agriculture and indus- try. For two hundred and fifty years we hear of few attempts at general revolt. There are few black deeds to record such as stain the pages of other colonial histories. Nevertheless, these long years of priestly domination are musty with the dust of a stationary civilization. The priests imposed their religion upon the people, but in turn imbibed some of their supersti- tions and gave them back others. The present Archbishop of Manila, Monsignor O'Doherty, a man of learning and piety, agrees with me, unqualifiedly, upon the advantages of the present separation of Church and State. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the Spanish sovereignty in the Philippines showed unmis- takable evidences of decay and weakness. How differ- ent Philippine history might have been if the present popular and enlightened King Alfonso XIII had then been on the throne ! Exercise of autocratic power by the governors, both civil and ecclesiastical, had led to gross abuses of power. In the decades from 1850 onward greed and arrogance marked the religious orders, which had absorbed most of the riches and the best lands. The meager recognition of the people, on the part of the Government, grew less and less. The formation of secret societies among the people was discovered and led to savage reprisals. The last Span- 24 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES ish archbishop, Nozaleda, was the most bloodthirsty of the ecclesiastics. The Filipino poet Eizal was exe- cuted for his supposed responsibility for revolutionary movements, though his books, which were then not allowed to be circulated, show that his main protests were against the excesses of the priests, and his chief demand was that the people should be educated. The insurrection of 1896 broke out under Andres Bonifacio and the Spanish authorities were unable to suppress it. Aguinaldo soon became the military leader of his peo- ple. A compromise followed, which left matters in a state of suspended animation until the war with the United States burst upon unhappy Spain soon after- ward. In wealth, in education, in political rights, the mass of the Filipinos had advanced but little in the three and a half centuries of Spanish rule. In each locality, it is true, the sons of the leading men were selected for education at Santo Tomas University (founded in 1611) and the other church colleges in Manila. The more ambitious were sent later by their parents to complete their education in Spain, France, and Ger- many. Groups of these young men took part in the various liberal movements of nineteenth-century Europe. They wrote and spoke in behalf of liberal institutions for their countrymen at home, in terms which would have cost them their lives in the Philip- pines; Eizal was put to death upon his return to his native land. In Spain several of these young Filipinos rose to eminence in the public service, a right which was de- nied them at home except in a few cases in the minor judiciary. In the eighties and nineties a brilliant THE FILIPINO RACE 25 group of young men of which Rizal, the painter Juan Luna, M. H. del Pilar, Lopez Jaena, and Dr. Pardo de Tavera were the leading spirits made a deep impres- sion in the literary and artistic circles of Madrid, Paris, and Berlin. A newspaper was founded by them in Madrid to further their political views. Although proscribed in the Philippines, their books and articles were circulated sub rosa in the islands and helped to consolidate the growing unrest. The secret society "Katipunan" added thousands to its rolls. The Ma- sonic Order was particularly hated and suspected by the Government. At the time of the revolution of 1896 against Spain, scores of prominent Masons were as- rested on the instigation of the church authorities and imprisoned in Fort Santiago ; many of them were led before the firing-squad on the old Bagumbayan, now the Luneta, in Manila. Twenty years later, I had the pleasure of entertain- ing about eight hundred Masons in Malacanan Palace, the very spot from which the execution of so many members of the order had been decreed. In Tondo, the poorer quarter of Manila, there stands a monu- ment to these Masonic martyrs, in charge of one of the survivors of those days, Timoteo Paez. I asked him recently whether those whose lives had been given in the days of revolution would be satisfied if they were alive to-day, and he answered simply: "En este dia, estabamos 'Indies'; hoy dia, somos Filipinos. [In that day we were 'Indians'; now, we are Filipinos.]" In Spain itself the attitude of the court and people was not unfriendly to the Filipinos. The Spaniard at home has little of what the Anglo-Saxon races know as race prejudice. At one time delegates from the 26 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES Philippines were admitted to the Spanish Cortes, but subsequently this privilege was withdrawn. Promises of liberal reforms were made from time to time, and then promptly forgotten. Liberal governors-general were sent out occasionally, only to fall before the reactionary stand of the Church in the islands, backed, as it probably was, by the united body of Spanish resi- dents. Such liberals were succeeded by conservatives of the strictest kind, such as General Weyler, known to us as " Butcher Weyler" from his government in Cuba just before the Spanish-American War. At the behest of the friars Weyler terminated a dispute be- tween tenants and landlords of the friar lands in Calamba by sending out the artillery and shooting down the tenants. The pitiful decline in the ability of Spanish govern- ment in the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries, so dra- matically portrayed by Buckle in his History of Civil- ization, had, of course, its reflex action in the Philip- pines. Vanished was the class of zealous, inspired priests and bold military adventurers who had been sent to the Philippines in an earlier age. Priests were too often drawn from the most ignorant type of peas- ant family, except, of course, those of the Jesuit Order, of whom there were always very few in the islands. Governors, too, were often needy noblemen, sent out to recoup their fortunes; lesser government officials too frequently favorites or parientes of persons influ- ential at court, without any qualifications for colonial service, indeed, sometimes entirely illiterate. With men of these types a haughty and arrogant suppres- sion of the Filipinos was due not, perhaps, to race prejudice, but to a secret determination to assert for THE FILIPINO RACE 27 the Spanish race a superiority which, in their own hearts, they knew they did not individually possess. At any rate, social equality was rarely accorded even to the educated Filipino, and to the governors talk of political equality was, of course, rank treason. When the storm burst, all classes of Filipinos, from the high- est to the lowest, joined in the insurrection, and the fight was of the fiercest nature. One of the leaders of those days, General Juan Cailles of Laguna, known later to the American Army as a gallant and courtly opponent, told me recently of the violent hatred of the Spaniards with which the Filipinos went into battle. His forces would fire four or five rounds from the fifty odd rifles they possessed and then his five thousand men would close in at a rush with the bolo, absolutely irresistible except to well- placed artillery. No wonder the feeble and inefficient Spanish Government was unable to suppress the insur- rection. And what of the great mass of Filipinos during these centuries? The novels of Jose Eizal, sympathetically translated into English as "The Social Cancer" and "The Reign of Greed," give a profoundly touching picture of the wrongs and oppressions of his fellow- countrymen, at least, of those upon the vast friar estates. He paid with his life for these books, but if he foresaw coming events he must have felt that the sacrifice was well worth while. It would be idle, however, to assert that all the gov- erning class throughout the islands were of the type portrayed by Eizal, or that this excess of greed and arrogance on their part had been of very long stand- ing; no people would have long endured it, least of 28 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES all the proud and self -respecting Filipinos ; indeed, the insurrection was their answer to it. The greater part of the Filipino people during these centuries, espe- cially in the less settled regions, were performing their daily round of agricultural toil under more or less the same conditions as had their ancestors for gen- erations in the past, a few hectares of rice land, or coffee-bushes, a cool and pleasant bamboo house in a grove of glorious mango-trees, the patient carabao to do the plowing and take the grain to market, here and there roads and bridges to connect the little farm with the outer world, and monumental churches for hours of religion, art, and social life. Patriarchal or feudal life in the remote districts was still the order of the day. Authority, always of powerful influence in Malay history, was elevated to the rank of a religion. In the villages a modified form of self-government was permitted, though the local priest was always the power behind the throne and the court of last resort. Schools were maintained by the padres, and instruction given in the native tongue, in rare instances in Span- ish. These schools were, however, skilfully used by the Spanish to accentuate and develop the differences in local dialects. Theirs was the principle " Divide and rule." Originally all speaking the Malay tongue, the Filipinos were encouraged through these centuries to enlarge and enrich the local differences of pronun- ciation, until to-day the Ilocano, the Tagalog, and the Visayan can hardly converse with one another except through English or Spanish. The grammars written by the priests accomplished their purpose. Writing was discouraged by them except upon the religious themes prescribed by the priest himself. Dr. Niewen- 29 haus, the head of the youthful but rapidly growing Educational Department of Java, upon his second visit of inspection to the Philippines recently, told me that in Java, in twenty years, the people had broken down the differences between their five dialects and fused them all again into one Malay tongue ; it was his opin- ion that we could, with our much larger public-school system in the Philippines, amalgamate the large num- ber of local dialects into one tongue within five years of teaching in the primary grades. Finally, the rule of Spain came to an abrupt end through a joint assault by American and Filipino arms. More than three centuries of human life had been passed in a dream of religious government. The civitas dei which animated the noblest souls of medi- eval Europe reached a qualified reality in the Philip- pines. The final abuses of power and departure from the earlier and higher standards naturally brought their own punishment. Her Oriental empire is for- ever lost to Spain, and to-day comparatively little of Spanish influence and Spanish culture remains to test- ify to her long domination of the Philippines. With the older generation this in turn will pass away before the practical directness of the American school system. Only in the Church, invigorated and reformed, will the Spanish heritage long endure. It is the custom among many Americans to refer carelessly to the Filipinos as Spanish- Americans. They have never been truly Spanish, and are not Amer- ican by race. They might have, in a truer sense, pos- sessed the Spanish culture of the past, had their mas- ters educated them in the beautiful idiom of Castile, but this the Spaniards refused to do. Many Filipino 30 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES intellectuals to-day still prefer and admire the Latin culture, but this was always denied to the common people. A few traces of the Spanish social system still prevail in customs, in manners of expression, and in ceremonies. Far stronger and more enduring, how- ever, is the Filipinos ' own culture ; and the simple and dignified customs of village life to-day do not, in all probability, vary substantially from those handed down to these people by tradition from the remote past. Nothing is so quick to destroy memory and family tradition as wide-spread education. I remem- ber attending the pagan religious ceremonies of the rice harvest in an Ifugao village in the mountains of Luzon ; the head of the house was chanting the names of his ancestors, of whom he could enumerate thirty- five, a modern imitation of the Book of Genesis! There were five old men in that village who could re- peat without differing from one another the whole saga of the Ifugaos, though the poem took three days to recite. When these remote mountaineers have learned to read and write, these marvelous feats of memory will have disappeared, together with the neces- sity for them. The great mass of Christian Filipinos were left uninspired and untaught during all the gen- erations of sleepy Spanish rule. Into this land of dreams America burst with astonishing energy; in twenty years American ideas have worked a social revolution. CHAPTER HI EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION OUR occupation of the Philippines was the most unexpected result of our war with Spain ; it was purely fortuitous in the beginning, and simply the logical result of Dewey's brilliant victory in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. No doubt, the final disposition of the Philippine Islands was the subject of much dip- lomatic intrigue and international jealousy. Germany had, to her ultimate complete undoing, recently aban- doned Bismarck's precepts concerning colonization and had shared in the division by other European powers of vast African territories. She had purchased from Spain the Caroline and the Ladrone Islands a few months before the Spanish-American War began, and is believed to have been negotiating for the Phil- ippines. When war was declared, the United States had but one friend among the European powers, Great Britain. Immediately after Dewey's annihila- tion of the Spanish fleet at Cavite, a German warship drew alongside Commodore Dewey's ship in a pro- voking and arrogant manner; Dewey's firm stand, and the openly expressed friendship of the British commander, Captain Chichester, who promptly placed his own ship facing the German, probably averted aggressive action on the part of the kaiser. Indeed, it seems entirely probable that Admiral von Diedrichs came to Manila Bay as the result of some 31 32 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES negotiations then pending with Spain, and it seems equally probable that some one high in authority in the United States Government had previously, in a pos- sibly unauthorized exercise of power, expressed to Germany our acquiescence in her ambitions. Our country thrilled with pride in Dewey 's victory ; our people, naturally enough, were carried on a wave of patriotic imperialism by our easy successes in arms. I have but little doubt that the British Government urged our own to keep the Philippines, so 'that the islands should not fall into the hands of her rivals. American armies arrived a few weeks later and Manila was taken after the firing of a few shots by the Span- ish commander to save his honor, and under ^previous arrangement with the American general. The rest of the Spanish forces throughout the islands promptly surrendered, wherever possible, to our flag. But a new and embarrassing element had entered into the situation. Aguinaldo, the military leader of the recent insurrection against Spain, had been recalled by Dewey from his pro-forma exile in Singapore. To him the American commodore gave the stand of thirty thousand rifles captured in the Naval Arsenal at Ca- vite. Aguinaldo states that the commodore promised him the independence of the Philippines; this Dewey subsequently denied. It is incontrovertible that the Filipino Army, which quickly gathered under the old insurrecto leaders, thought they were invited to take over the sovereignty of the islands from Spain. The small outposts of the Spanish Army resisted the Filipinos as best they could ; in the village of Baler, on the remote east coast of Luzon, the handful of Spaniards fortified them- PART OF THE FAMOUS ZIGZAG, BENGUET ROAD PAGSANHAN FALLS, LAGUNA PROVINCE EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 33 selves in the old church and put up a gallant defense for many months. Many Spanish priests were cap- tured by the Filipinos, and while a few were severely abused in reprisal for the wrongs committed by their class, the greater part were kindly and considerately treated as prisoners. The Filipinos took part in the assault on Manila in August, 1898, but were kept outside the city by agreement of our general with the surrendered Span- iards. For five months the Americans within the city and the Filipinos drawn up in a semicircle around it, with forces on both sides rapidly increasing, lay face to face. The Filipinos gradually became convinced that our army would never give over the country to them; relations became more and more strained, and in January, 1899, the inevitable conflict burst forth. For a year the war progressed with more and more decisive victories for our arms; the Filipinos were gradually pushed northward from Manila, and finally scattered, and their general, Aguinaldo, fled to the re- mote mountains of the east coast where he was finally captured by General Funston through a daring and dramatic ruse. At no time did the Filipinos have more than forty thousand rifles, and they had virtually no artillery. They were divided in their own councils be- cause of the jealousy of Aguinaldo, who finally put to death his best soldier, General Luna, through treach- ery. We had at one time 85,000 troops engaged in the campaign, and the showing they made was excellent, considering the difficult nature of the country. Their achievement is better appreciated when we remember that the British Army employed to subdue the Boers 34 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES reached a total of 300,000, the same figure reached by their expeditionary force in German East Africa, where they failed to subdue Von Lettow's force of 15,000 in a five-years ' campaign. It is only a pity that we were obliged finally to resort to "reconcentration" to subdue provinces near Manila, the very system we had so energetically denounced when it was used by Spain in Cuba. Aguinaldo's short-lived republic soon collapsed under the pressure of our military forces. His government had been rather generally accepted in theory by the Filipinos throughout the archipelago, but it never had a chance to demonstrate its ability except in the fortunes, or misfortunes, of war against a superior foe. Much time is spent, by those seeking an excuse to criticize the Filipino people, in denouncing Aguinaldo's government. The truth is that the insurrectionists had adopted a liberal, democratic form of constitution which never had any opportunity of going into effect. I have known a number of the men, both military and civil, who surrounded Aguinaldo as his advisers at that critical time, and esteem them as intelligent, well- educated, and conservative men of affairs ; even in the arena of an adverse war Aguinaldo would have pros- pered better with his government had it not been for defects in his own character. He was unwilling to take advice from the very men he had selected for that purpose, and the practical existence of martial law all through these months enabled him to do as he pleased. After his surrender, the war collapsed, and a period of the customary guerilla warfare continued until the partizan leaders still under arms were persuaded, largely by their own countrymen, to surrender to the inevitable. The war had been fought on their side with spirit and determination, but without hatred and bitterness against us such as had inspired them against the Spaniards. Reconciliation was not so dif- ficult in the circumstances, and gradually came to pass under the wise liberalism of American policy. Agui- naldo retired to private life on his farm in Cavite, where he has ever since maintained a dignified and conciliatory attitude toward the American Govern- ment ; he has been loyally faithful to his oath of allegi- ance to the United States in every sense of the term. Meanwhile, in the United States the Philippine ques- tion had caused the most profound anxiety and search- ing of conscience. Anti-imperialism was the chief issue of Mr. Bryan in his campaign of 1900, and upon that issue he was defeated. Nevertheless, -the Anti- imperialist League contained in its membership many of the most independent and respected citizens, espe- cially in New England, and the public conscience was uneasy. How were we to reconcile the holding of the Philippines with our Constitution? what had become of our fundamental requirement of the " consent of the governed " ? I have no doubt that President McKinley and his cabinet were seriously concerned over this, but saw no other way out of the embarrassing situation thus presented than to hold tightly to the newly ac- quired Oriental domain, and do the best they could for its inhabitants. To be sure, the first Philippine Com- mission sent out by President McKinley was presided over by President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell, who reported in favor of Philippine independence, and even went so far as to argue that the worst government of Filipinos by Filipinos was better than the best gov- 36 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES eminent of them by Americans. But there was the perplexing international situation to consider, and when reports began to come in from our army in the Philippines, the verdict of the American officers was to the effect that the Filipinos were not fit to govern themselves. Military men are seldom inclined to be- lieve that any people can govern themselves: their whole training is a negation of the principle of self- government. So the government in Washington de- cided to hold on, and to make the best of it. The Philippine policy of President McKinley as expressed in his pronouncement, supposed to have been drafted by Secretary Boot, is a model of wise statesmanship. He expressed the hope in January, 1899, that the com- missioners would be received as bearers of the richest blessings of a liberating rather than a conquering nation "and that the Philippines are ours, not to exploit but to develop, to civilize, to educate, to train in the science of self-government. This is the path of duty which we must follow or be recreant to a mighty trust committed to us." This fairly represented the real and honest intentions of all classes of Americans at that time, once it had been decided to hold the Philippines; it is the basis on which developments of policy have since been built. Nevertheless, the fact remained that we had by force of arms overthrown self-government in the Philippines and established there an autocratic government of our own. This has always been a matter of deep concern to conscientious and liberal-minded people in our country, and was always the cause of the insertion in Democratic na- tional platforms of a plank in favor of Philippine independence. It was made clear that the exercise of EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 37 imperial autocracy in those far-away islands was not only inconsistent with our own Constitution, but a danger of corruption to our own ideals and principles ; in the words of Abraham Lincoln: "This nation can- not exist half slave and half free." The president of the second Philippine Commission, and first civil governor, was the Hon. William H. Taft. He arrived on June 3, 1900, when the islands were still under military rule. General Otis had already given the Philippines a fairly liberal code of laws, and the war was virtually over. A few months later the gov- ernment was turned over to Mr. Taft and the civil commission, an executive board entrusted also with legislative powers. The commission set to work to restore law and order, to liberalize still further exist- ing laws, to settle outstanding questions with the Span- ish, and to make friends with the Filipinos. But the situation was greatly complicated by the virtual re- fusal of the American military officers to recognize the new civil government. Many clashes between civil and military officials occurred which would have been ludicrous had they not been so embarrassing to Mr. Taft and the new commission. This was in the ' ' days of the Empire," when every white man, especially in the military service, was a sort of petty king; the islands were full of adventurous and rough-and-ready young Americans who had stayed on after the war, enchanted with the easy life of the tropics, or looking for a new means of livelihood. Some of the discharged soldiers of that day, who had saved up perhaps six months' pay, started in businesses which have since made them rich men ; others, falling under the spell of the unaccustomed languor of the tropics and of the 38 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES native gin, sank down to the level of beachcombers, living upon the poorer class of native women, until rounded up and deported by the authorities as va- grants. Life in Manila was gay and irresponsible ; the streets were full of uniforms. The reaction from the hard- ships of campaigns in the field was natural. The Americans had beaten the Filipino, and meant that never for one second should he forget it. Many topical songs and verses have come down from those boister- ous days, and many an elderly man still sighs for the ' ' days of the Empire. ' ' Into this paradise of military power and prestige came Mr. Taft and his colleagues, talking of the rights of the Filipinos in a community which was interested only in the rights of Americans. "He may be a brother of William H. Taft, but he ain't no brother of mine," they sang. Resistance to Mr. Taft's efforts to conciliate the Filipino and extend greater civil rights to him was encountered not only from military officials, but from virtually all the white population. Finally the governor lost his temper, and in a speech in Iloilo told the Americans that they were neurotic and that if they did not like the government they could take the first boat home. The sting of this remark is still smarting in the hearts of the survivors of the days of the Empire in the Philippines, there is no such thing as a statute of limitations upon hatred ! Mr. Taft's efforts met with immediate response from the Filipinos ; he associated with himself as mem- bers of the Philippine Commission Messrs. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Benito Legarda, and Jose E. Lu- zuriaga, and traveled throughout the islands speaking EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 39 to excited and enthusiastic crowds of Filipinos. His theme was "The Philippines for the Filipinos." The new government was soon generally accepted and set- tled down to the works of peace. One of the first acts was the importation from America of a boat-load of one thousand school-teachers and schoolmarms, the beginning of a public-school extension which is to-day justly considered one of America's greatest achieve- ments in the islands. Many of these devoted teachers ventured forth into lonely and remote regions, not yet entirely pacified, and several paid with their lives for the noble ideals which inspired them. One of Mr. Taft's problems was the settlement of the dangerous agrarian question concerning the friar lands. It has already been shown that the friars as landlords had been largely responsible for the insur- rection against Spain. They held title to enormous tracts of the best lands, and the question as to the disposition of these lands was acute. Mr. Taft went to Rome as unofficial ambassador for Mr. Roosevelt in an effort to settle this question, and arranged on behalf of the Philippine Government to purchase these lands for $7,000,000, for which amount the "Friar Land Bonds" of the Philippines were issued. To the success of his mission was attributed much of the strong support given to Mr. Roosevelt's candidacy in 1904 and to Mr. Taft's in 1908 by the Roman Catholic voters in America. The friar lands have been gradu- ally sold by the Government upon easy instalments to the tenants; the pity is that all the friars' holdings were not bought at that time. Large tracts still re- main in their hands, and are to-day a source of much discontent and occasionally a menace to public order. 40 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES Mr. Taft not only was discharging a wise public duty, but was clever enough to recognize what some of the people of the islands do not seem to realize, even to- day, the great influence and practical value to the Government of the support of a friendly church in the Philippines. Mr. Taft and his colleagues also adopted for the Philippines such parts of the public law of the United States as they thought applicable, and combined them with existing Spanish law to form the admirable sys- tem of jurisprudence existing there to-day. One mem- ber, inspired by the beauty of the municipal code of his native town in New England, tried to introduce it in toto in Manila, even including the ordinance for the prompt removal of snow from the sidewalks ! The outstanding controversy in regard to the legal system in the Philippines, among American observers and vis- itors, concerns the absence of the jury system ; in that respect the commissioners left unchanged the Spanish system, which, indeed, exists in all the Latin countries of Europe, where the Judge of First Instance decides both the facts and the law. While obvious injustices occasionally occur, it is not clear that they are so fre- quent as under the jury system in the United States. As a former law clerk in the office of Mr. Joseph H. Choate, then the acknowledged leader of the American Bar, I remember his sarcastic denunciation of the jury system; and he later made one of his annual addresses to the American Bar Association upon that thesis. The worst that can be said against the Phil- ippine Code in that respect is that the errors in judg- ment for which a sole judge is responsible are more likely to be made to the disadvantage of the prisoner EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 41 at the bar, while in America the gross injustices of the jury are generally in his favor. It is my belief that the jury system will soon be introduced in the Philip- pines, although the Bench and Bar at present are in- clined to oppose such a proposition. In 1904, Mr. Taft was made Secretary of War in Mr. Roosevelt's cabinet, in which position he was by law still charged with supervision over Philippine policies. He continued his active interest in the progress of the Philippine policy, and in 1907 went to Manila with a large party of officials, to install the Philippine As- sembly, an elective lower house of the Legislature newly created by authority of Congress. Upon that occasion he placed his hand upon the shoulder of Sergio Osmena, the first Speaker of the Assembly, and said that hereafter he would be the second man in the islands. This ranked the Speaker officially over the commanding general, the admiral, and the (sub- sequently created) vice-governor, and has been gen- erally observed ever since, until the creation of the Philippine Senate. President Quezon of the Senate still accords social precedence to the Speaker, but the Senate is jealous of any assertion of official priority on the part of the House of Representatives. Politically, Mr. Taft was not so fortunate as he was both administratively and in his legislative character as president of the commission. He strongly believed that the Filipinos could be won over to complete ac- quiescence in American domination; that they would be so well satisfied with the liberal and generous treat- ment he accorded them that all national longings would gradually disappear. This was an entire misconcep- tion of the feelings of conquered races toward the 42 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES invader. In Porto Eico, for example, where we have granted to the inhabitants the gift of American citizen- ship with the logical implication that the island will one day be a State in our Union instead of grasping eagerly the great advantages this confers upon them, the people are now clamoring for independence. In the Philippines Mr. Taft founded a "Federalista" political party for closer political relations with the United States; a number of their leading men were induced to join, and were appointed to high office, to their own great subsequent discomfiture. Meanwhile, as soon as it was clearly perceived by the Filipinos that the right of assembly and of free speech was guar- anteed to them, the "Nacionalista" party was openly organized with great vigor. The chief, if not the only real aim of the Nacionalistas from that day to this has been and is the independence of the Philip- pines, and they have gradually drawn into the party most of the brains and talent as well as most of the voters of the archipelago. This evidently surprised and disconcerted Mr. Taft and his associates, who had hoped to perfect a permanent settlement of the Philip- pine question without independence. From that time on, as Secretary of War and as President, he grew colder in his attitude toward the Filipinos. No doubt he thought them ungrateful after all that he had done for them; as if the surrender of human liberty were a matter of gratitude! At all events, he entered the lists of controversy against Philippine independence, and in arguing against the feasibility of it he was drawn into a more and more critical and unfriendly position regarding the Filipinos themselves. His popularity in the Philippines gradu- EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 43 ally vanished. Absence from the islands and acces- sibility to the whispered advice of that numerically small but influential section of our citizens who desire to hold the Philippines indefinitely for the financial advantage of the United States doubtless influenced his mind. Was he not described when President as a large body entirely surrounded by men who knew exactly what they wanted? Then, too, as Secretary of War, he soon forgot his desperate struggle to take over civil control of the islands from the military rulers of earlier days, and in the agreeable atmosphere of the War Department he was only to hear contemp- tuous criticisms of, and remarks derogatory to, the Filipinos. The continuity of policy of the military, the cohesiveness of army sentiment, is a very real power, especially in the retired corridors of a government department. Some military officers are still longing for the "days of the Empire"; many of them still refer to the Philippine Government as the ' ' Civil Gov- ernment," as if there still existed out there, also, a "military government" which had temporarily stepped aside, but was ready at any moment to resume its' rightful place. At all events, Mr. Taft, who had re- stored civil rights to the Filipinos, appointed several of them to high office, encouraged their national senti- ments and self-respect by his maxim, ' l The Philippines for the Filipinos," given them the first stage of self- government by the creation of the Assembly, soon became known as the most prominent opponent of Philippine independence. He must have thought that in the islands he had raised up a Frankenstein against himself. When confronted with the moral issue as to whether the United States could justly hold the Fil- 44 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES ipino people in subjection against their will, he ex- pressed the vague idea that they might be fit for in- dependence ''in some generations." The Filipino people had for thirteen years been accustomed to look to Mr. Taft as the source of all authority on Philippine questions, and as an overwhelming majority of them were actively engaged in formulating the demand for independence, it was plain to all that a very compli- cated and disagreeable situation was rapidly coming to a head. One of the most serious causes of complaint was the failure to carry out President McKinley's instructions and repeated subsequent promises of American repre- sentatives that, wherever possible, the government offices should be filled by Filipinos. As the attractions of Philippine life grew upon the American officials, so grew their willingness to believe in the incapacity of the Filipinos for office. In 1913 only one Chief of Bureau, Manuel Tinio, was a Filipino, and he was in charge of the smallest and least important bureau, Labor. In fact, it seemed to all that a determined attempt was being made to build up a permanent colonial civil service on the model of that in India. But in 1913 the Americans in the Philippine Civil Service numbered 2600, with half as many more in the un- classified or temporary lists. When it is realized that the British Indian Civil Service which directly or indirectly governs 319,000,000 people, consists of only about 1200 officials from England, the situation seems extraordinary. Many Americans were em- ployed in merely clerical positions, and many others in offices for which they had little training or aptitude. They were encouraged to invest in the Philippines EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 45 what money they had, that they might take a per- manent interest there, and American party politics was rife among the American employees at times of national elections at home. It seems quite cer- tain that the colonial policy of Lord Curzon and Lord Cromer was the model upon which they were building. The American official did not, it is true, assume the air of haughty superiority toward the "native" which marks the British "raj" (rajah, i.e. king) as the ordinary Briton is known in India ; such a manner does not come easy to an American. In their attitude toward the Filipino most of them were cour- teous and considerate enough in official life, but there was virtually no social intercourse between the two races. At official receptions, of course, the Filipinos attended in force, but the governor-general who went further and included Filipinos in his private entertain- ments was discreetly but pointedly chaffed by his in- timates. Around the American supper-table the matter went much farther; every possible story, real or fabricated, which stirred up hatred of or heaped ridicule upon the Filipino people was told there with gusto, and all were probably carried forth and re- peated by the patient-looking and apparently uncom- prehending Filipino muchachos (servants) who waited upon table. The exhibition of the Filipino flag, under which they had fought their war against us, was made by statute a criminal offense. Patriotism was never en- couraged in the schools, nor ideas which tended to arouse their own national consciousness. Everything which might help to make the pupils understand their own race or think about the future of the country was 46 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES carefully censored and eliminated. Nevertheless, the good sound stock of American ideas which they re- ceived instructed them inevitably in our own demo- cratic ideals, and in our pride in our own liberties. Their teachers could not well be surprised that they thought of freedom themselves. It was fashionable among Americans to explain that the demand for independence came only from a few agitators or hotheads or demagogues working for their own advantage. Those who are familiar with any struggle for human rights, the world over, will recog- nize the terms. One of the commonest stories of those days was of the American official's question to a simple farmer in the country, "Well, you want independence. What are you going to do with it?" When the farmer could not give a concise and satisfactory answer, the story went round that the Filipinos think independence is some sort of toy that will be given them in a box. The United States Government was succumbing rapidly to the accepted standards of European colonial administrators, of which the incapacity of the "na- tive" was the principal article of faith, and the invin- cible superiority of the white man in every human affair a religious tenet to be maintained at any cost and in any way. The Filipinos soon saw that they had helped to oust the Spanish merely to fasten other masters upon their necks. They freely admitted the advantages in many ways of this change of masters, but they wanted to be their own masters, certainly no ignoble ambition, and one with which every Amer- ican should sympathize. One of the greatest safety-valves of those days was EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 47 the presence in Washington, as one of the two dele- gates from the Philippines in the House of Represen- tatives, of the Hon. Manuel L. Quezon. These dele- gates have no vote, but they are given a voice in the House, and the voice of Mr. Quezon was worth many votes. His attractive personality and personal good looks, his popularity with the membership of the House, his remarkable command of English, acquired since his arrival in Washington, gained him an immediate hearing. His brilliant speeches made an impression upon Congress, and every American Representative who heard him felt sympathy for this young man so ably pleading for the independence of his race. His most famous speech was that in which he thanked the United States for what she had done for his people, but declared the unwillingness of the Filipino to re- main as ' ' a bird in a gilded cage. ' ' Mr. Quezon's activities in behalf of independence provoked the wrath of Mr. Taft's adherents; the then Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs called him in, one day, and told him that he was stirring up too much trouble, and they were going to get rid of him. Mr. Quezon replied that he was only representing the Fili- pino people, who had, through their Legislature, sent him to Washington, and that he would continue his campaign for independence. Mr. Taft himself, speak- ing at the same banquet as Mr. Quezon, lost his temper completely. Mr. Taft's four immediate successors as governor- general were constantly in direct communication with him as their superior executive officer, either in the War Department or the White House. They exhibited the same energy and good- will he had shown in working 48 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES for the welfare and development of the islands ; they were men of the highest caliber, and of the best Ameri- can traditions. Each of them was personally liked and respected by the people they were sent to govern. The school system rapidly extended until six hundred thousand children were enrolled ; a splendid road and bridge system was initiated and two thousand miles of first-class road constructed. A breakwater was built off the city of Manila, and the old moat of Fort San- tiago was filled and turned into a park and playground. There is no evidence that any of my predecessors differed in any respect from Mr. Taft in their views on the Philippine question ; only, he had assigned them, in the circumstances, an almost impossible task: you cannot create a national sentiment and then arrest it half-way. In 1911 and 1912, quarrels developed be- tween the American-dominated commission (upper house) and the all-Filipino Assembly, resulting in a dead-lock and the failure to pass the appropriation bill (budget). The governor-general, in default of funds with which to run the government, decreed the renewal of the appropriations for the year before, a power given by Act of Congress about five years later. Irritations, political and social, began to appear above the surface. Had it not been for the conservative and responsible Filipino leaders, particularly the Hon. Sergio Osmeiia, president of the Nacionalista party and Speaker of the Assembly, affairs would have rapid- ly gone from bad to worse. Thus superficially I have stated the forces on two sides contesting the Philippine question at the time when Woodrow Wilson was elected President. From his speeches and from the party platform upon which EARLIER YEARS OF AMERICAN OCCUPATION 49 he stood, the people of the Philippines expected a sub- stantial change in their fortunes. Fifty thousand Fili- pinos paraded the streets of Manila in a drenching rain-storm the day the news of the election of Mr. Wilson was received. CHAPTER IV THE NEW ERA ON October 6, 1913, our steamer passed the fortress of Corregidor Island and crossed the waters of Manila Bay. The navy had provided an escort of four destroyers, and the army a military escort at the pier. We were met by a small group of government officials, who conducted us through immense crowds to the Luneta, where a stand had been prepared for the speeches. I delivered there a message from President Wilson to the people of the Philippines, which reads as follows: "We regard ourselves as trustees acting not for the advantage of the United States, but for the benefit of the people of the Philippine Islands. Every step we take will be taken with a view to the ultimate independence of the Islands and as a preparation for that independence. And we hope to move towards that end as rapidly as the safety and the permanent interests of the Islands will permit. After each step taken experience will guide us to the next. The administration will take one step at once and will give to the native citizens of the Islands a majority in the Appointive Commission, and thus in the Upper as well as in the Lower House of the Legislature a majority representation will be secured to them. We do this in the confident hope and expectation that im- mediate proof will be given in the action of the Commission under the new arrangement of the political capacity of those native citizens who have already come forward to represent and to lead their people in affairs. 50 THE NEW ERA 51 The significance of this promise from the President was at once apparent, and was received with enthu- siasm by the people. The Philippine Commission was the upper house of the Philippine Legislature, and was appointed by the President with the consent of the United States Senate. It then consisted of five Americans (three with portfolios) and four Filipinos (one with portfolio). Serious legislation had become impossible because of the dead-lock between these five Americans and the Assembly, or lower house, com- posed entirely of elected Filipinos. It is probable that the impartial historian will decide that in all the points at issue the reasonable side had been taken by the As- sembly, but the struggle was deeper than the mere questions of appropriations : it was a fight for absolute control of the purse-strings of the Government. The dead-lock was now to be broken, and the Filipinos to be given control of their own Legislature. The announcement of this fact confirmed the worst fears of the American official organization : the Ameri- cans were no longer to run the Philippines as they pleased, but the Filipinos were to have a voice. Sus- picions as to some such radical change had preceded me upon my journey across the Pacific, although I had carefully refrained from making any statement what- ever about Philippine policies or politics until that moment on the Luneta. Before leaving Washington I had been frankly told by a former editor of a Manila newspaper, now employed by one of the greatest bank- ing firms in Wall Street, that if I did not govern to suit the American financial interests in the Philip- pines, matters would go hard with me. I told him that 52 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES I had become accustomed to threats like that, during the tariff revision. The campaign began before I left America; it was well organized and well managed, and apparently con- ducted without any scruples ; it would be "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" to recount here all of its fea- tures. No misrepresentation was too gross and no rumor too wild for transmission to those in the United States who knew how to make use of them effectively upon the platform and in the press. I was constantly on the defensive, replying by cable to requests for ex- planations from the Secretary of War, Mr. Garrison, as to what was going on in the Philippines, especially during my first year of office. The * ' organization ' ' had determined that I must go, the sooner the better, but they counted without the indomitable will of President Wilson, who then and always, during my nearly eight years of service in the islands, permitted nothing to deflect his generous and loyal support of me as gover- nor-general. The attacks and exaggerations during those first few months became so extreme that finally the War Depart- ment grew chary of listening to the complaints of "in- dignant business men." The chief effect of the cam- paign, which, as the years passed, gradually dwindled down to the activities of a few recalcitrants, was to discredit the Philippines as a field for American in- vestment, and to discourage commerce with the islands. Capital is naturally timid, and it had never to any considerable extent sought the field in the Philippines, from the beginning of American occupation. The noisy campaign of 1913-15 made capital stand aghast. The nationals of European countries in Oriental ports were THE NEW ERA 53 delighted with the chance to ridicule American at- tempts at colonial government. Even the steamship lines on the Pacific joined in, and emphatically advised travelers not to go to the Philippines, although the islands are a perfect wonder-world of natural beauty for the tourist. "Old Manila residents" spread the bad tidings to all the quarters of the wind. An active lobby was maintained in the Manila Hotel which seized on each traveler upon his arrival and filled him full of race prejudice and gloom; strangers were told that the Democratic administration was turning over the islands to a mob of irresponsible, dishonest Filipino politicians who were headed toward chaos and dis- order. The after-effects of that campaign are still holding back the islands to-day. Upon his visit to Manila in 1919, I asked Dr. George Vincent, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, why his institution did not undertake some of its excellent work for the improve- ment of health conditions in the Philippines ; he hesi- tated and then explained that "conditions are so un- settled here"! The Foundation is putting its money instead into such "settled" countries as China and Nicaragua. Above all, I was generally charged by the "organization" with ruining American prestige in the East. Well might Mr. Montagu, Secretary of State for India in the British Government, say of the word "prestige": Oh, India, how much happier would have been your history if that word had been left out of the English vocabulary! But there you have Conservative Imperialism at its worst. . . . We do not hold India by invoking this well-mouthed word ; we must hold it by just institutions, and more and more, as time goes on, by the consent of the governed. 54 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES It is of little profit to recount all this to-day, the fight was the kind which any public man must face if he undertakes to place human rights above the claims of big business ; or if he values the man above the dol- lar. One of the most frequent charges I heard was that Woodrow Wilson was not a 1 1 real American Presi- dent" and that I was "anti-American." It somewhat lessened the blow to learn that some of the most active in charging this were German and Austrian Jews doing business in Manila! My constant effort during all these years was not to " answer back" in similar terms, not to engage in personal controversy with my opponents. Indeed, I have always hesitated to participate in newspaper con- troversies, and never wrote a magazine article so long as I was in office. My purpose now is not to revive the memory of those days of acrimony, but to present to those who may have the patience to read this book, the difficulties with which the Filipino people must contend to get their case before the generous American public. If any reactionary policy as to the Philippines is ever determined upon by an administration in Washington, the American public has little chance of knowing the real facts. The Filipino people will be virtually help- less before the campaign of misrepresentation which will be launched against them. Having, myself, a slight personal acquaintance with Mr. Melville A. Stone, head of the Associated Press, I obtained through the Secretary of War the removal of the Associated Press Manila representative, an Englishman, for gross misrepresentation of the situation as to Filipinos in the auditor's office. Through it all I never failed to understand the rea- THE NEW ERA 55 son for the attitude of those conducting this campaign, although I seldom agreed with their judgment as to the results. The existing American political organiza- tion in the islands had come to believe that the Philip- pines were theirs to have and to hold ; they must treat the Filipinos gently and with justice, but must never forget that they were only "little brown children"; American prestige was built up, for them, by the as- sertion of the strong arm, which was backed by an army always at hand. These are sentiments natural to men of European descent, and are accepted as gospel truth by the greater part of the white race, which derives its opinions from propaganda in eulogy of the colonial administrations of Lord Cromer, Lord Curzon, Lord Kitchener, and Lord Milner, a noble band of which Kipling is the poet laureate. To them democracy is an odious neces- sity for the white races, but must never be applied to the "inferior" natives of the tropics. A paternal jus- tice, tempered with kindness, must be administered with condescension to these unhappy wards, who do not know what they want, themselves, and must be firmly told what to want, by those who are better qualified to think for them. Cavour said that any one can govern by martial law, and he might have added that that way also lie honors, preferment, promotion, and the plaudits of the crowd; the results are an- nounced to cheering audiences, flattered by the asser- tion of the physical domination of their sovereignty. That splendid body of officials the English in the Indian Civil Service, have just experienced a revolu- tion in all their accepted ideas and standards through the introduction of reforms of self-government in Brit- 56 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES ish India at the instance of the British Government. Members of the civil service were all, apparently, op- posed to the new idea; some of them bitterly so, but they seem to be determined to carry out generously the policy of the home government, now that the change has been instituted. To Americans it is always a source of great surprise and admiration to find the British scattered throughout the world standing so solidly in support of the home government, and so loyally expressing a common opinion upon foreign and colonial policies, once those matters have been settled at home. Our system is infinitely more individualistic : the American sticks to his own opinions through thick and thin ; he does not consider it necessary, even before outsiders, to support his President if he happens to disagree with him ; he is violent in his denunciation of the current of home affairs, even in mixed groups of foreigners all through the treaty ports of the Orient. Is it not. possible that so much washing of dirty linen in public is incomprehensible to the rest of the world? It was not until August 29, 1916, when Congress passed the Jones Act by almost unanimous vote, that the new Philippine policy, thus confirmed and extended, was generally accepted by American residents in the far East. Up to that time, for nearly three years, they seemed to consider President Wilson's Philippine policy as the vagary of an irresponsible and theoret- ical visionary, put into execution by a governor- general who was, to say the least of it, without sense of responsibility and ignorant, and bound to be over- whelmed sooner or later by the results of his folly. I cannot, however, conclude this disquisition without expressing my deep gratitude to those few Americans THE NEW ERA 57 in the Philippines who supported me through all the years of storm and stress ; to those American officials, of whom there were many, who did try their best, pos- sibly despite their own opinions, to put the new policy into efect, and to those personal friends who did so much to make happy the leisure hours of a political era of high feeling. It was frequently stated that I was filling up the offices with Democratic politicians from the United States. I brought six appointees over from America in all my years of office, four of whom might perhaps be called political, in the sense that they were recom- mended by party leaders ; the other two were selected not for party reasons, but because of special fitness for the positions they occupied: Dr. Bernard Herstein, who had won the high esteem of the Ways and Means Committee in Washington for his work as a tariff specialist, I appointed Collector of Customs; and Stephen Bonsai, the well-known author, I chose as my secretary. Five of my six appointees from home were soon driven from the Philippines and out of the service by the hostility and bitterness of their fellow-Ameri- cans in Manila. Even at the very end of my service a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the Hon. Percy M. Moir, who for many years previous to my arrival had been in the islands as a judge, and was honored by the general public, resigned with the state- ment to me that he could no longer stand the hatred and abuse of his fellow-Americans, whose animosity was caused by the fact that he was a Democrat. Race prejudice is one of the most poisonous growths of modern times. It was unknown in the Eoman Em- pire, when citizenship was conferred upon all annexed 58 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES populations ; an African of negro descent, indeed, once ascended the imperial throne at Rome. Throughout the middle ages there are few evidences of race preju- dice. Educated men generally spoke Latin in those days and a man of position was at home in any country. With the rise of the principle of nationality, the domi- nant note of the last two hundred years, has come also a tendency on the part of each nation to distrust if not dislike the citizens of all others. Even to-day race prejudice drawn upon the color line is not aggressive in those countries of Europe which once formed the backbone of the Roman Empire. Outside the Anglo- Saxon races, it is hardly known in other portions of the world. Among our people it is probably based upon our experiences with negro slavery, an institution which was the curse of the United States until 1865, and has left behind the heritage of hatred and passion. The Filipinos are in no single respect, as far as I can observe, like the negro race. Yet the American living in the Philippines and among other large Oriental populations shows that prejudice against color is the most deep-seated of his racial instincts. It is a matter concerning which no argument can be sustained and no calm judgment exercised. It is there, as a part of American racial inheritance, and it raises a question as to our qualifications for government or control of vast colored populations. Many Americans in the Philippines in fact most of them really like the Fili- pinos individually, since the latter are courteous, self- restrained, and refined in their social deportment ; they are intelligent, modest, and agreeable personally. Sexual crimes are extremely rare between the races and, fortunately, intermarriage has not been of suffi- THE NEW ERA 59 cient frequence to complicate the situation. Both races, Americans and Filipinos, disapprove of inter- marriage, and interracial unions are not likely to be happy ones, with the pressure of both communities in opposition. In fact, among the Filipinos there have been fewer marriages with Americans than with any of the European peoples. The Filipinos contend that the Germans have made the best husbands of any of the white races, more faithful and more considerate. But let no one approach a discussion of the Philippine prob- lem without considering this delicate matter, the race question, which is apt at any moment, and in the most unexpected manner, to crop up and baffle the plans and policies of all those who are in good faith wrestling with public issues. CHAPTER V FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE IT is not my intention to write here a history of the Philippine Government during the past eight years. As a participant in the work of that administration I could not, in all probability, write impartially of it. The records are all there, and it is too soon to pro- nounce final judgment. Those of us who have been connected with the administration have many times given public expression to our purposes and public record to our explanations. Most of it is already embalmed in the mortuary of government reports on file in Washington and Manila. Some Filipino his- torian in the years to come will probably, from the angle of vision afforded those who come after us, go through the musty records of the past, and give to this period a few chapters in a history of the Philippines. My hope is that in this volume I may contribute something of interest to the world-wide discussion concerning the capacity of the tropical races for self- government, as observed by one who has been engaged in giving to the Filipinos the fullest possible oppor- tunity to demonstrate such capacity. If for this pur- pose government records and statistics are quoted, it will be in the endeavor to show to what an extent the Philippines have developed politically, economi- cally, and otherwise materially, under their own government. 60 FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 61 It is impossible, however, to avoid frequent refer- ence to the governor-general and his relation to the general situation ; his position is by tradition the very nerve-center of Philippine administration, and he is given by law very full powers of supervision and con- trol. It was one of my purposes to assign gradually to the proper functionaries the responsibilities which should be theirs. The Governor-General of the Philippines receives a salary of $18,000 a year from the Insular Treasury, and the residence known as Malacanan Palace in Manila is set aside for his use. The salary had been $21,000, but was reduced, at my insistence and against the wishes of members of the Legislature, during my first weeks of office, when for reasons of vitally neces- sary economy other salaries were being -cut. The salaries of the Governor of Hong-Kong and the Gover- nor-General of Java are about three times as high ; of the Governor-General of British India about four or five times as much. It costs the Governor-General of the Philippines from twice to four times his salary to live in Malacanan, according to his disposition in the matters of entertaining and general style of living. No motor-car is furnished him, and no servants, but he has free light and water and a cottage allowed him in the mountains in Baguio, known as the Mansion House. Free music is provided for entertainments in Manila, furnished by the Constabulary Band. Before leaving I was instrumental in arranging that the appropriation bill should provide for the "entertainment of dis- tinguished guests" out of the $100,000 appropriated in the General Purpose funds, when "approved by the Council of State." This should lighten the financial 62 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES burden of my successor. It was made use of once in my last few months of office to the amount of about $3000, to pay for the extraordinary expenditures neces- sary for entertainment at Malacanan of the visitors who were members of the Congressional party. Malacanan Palace is one of the most comfortable and delightful homes in the tropics. The Spaniards were the best of all the European races as builders in the hot countries, perhaps because they learned how to build in their own. The English make themselves miserable in the tropics by reproducing in every re- spect possible the houses and methods of life of their own cold climate. Malacanan was originally purchased by the Spanish Government about a century ago as a casita or country house, and has been added to from time to time until it has now a huge floor space of old hand-hewn hardwood, and is admirably fitted for large entertainments. The balcony projects over the swiftly flowing Pasig River, and there is generally a pleasant breeze there, even during the hottest weather. The thermometer in my room generally stood at 83, and seldom went below 76 or above 89. The gardens along the river are noted for the fairy-land illumina- tion displayed at evening entertainments. Malacanan has been greatly enlarged and modernized in the last few years, and a beautiful new executive office build- ing in the garden has just been completed. In the disastrous earthquake of 1865 the big stone palace of the governor-general, on what is now Plaza McKinley, was totally destroyed, and the governor- general moved temporarily into Malacanan; like so much else that the Spanish intended as temporary, it has become his permanent residence. When I settled FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 63 in Malacanan I was the ninety-fifth governor-general, and served in that position for seven and a half years, or longer than any one of the forty-four who had directly preceded me, dating back to the eighteenth century. The governor-general has an office in Mala- canan, but when he was also President of the Philip- pine Commission, which sat daily during the Legis- lative sessions, it was customary for him to go to the Ayuntamiento, or City Hall, every day for his office work. It was frequently charged that in my first months of office I would not consult with "the Americans"; so far as I am aware, I saw all Americans who wished to advise with me, indeed, gave hours to that service, day after day, year after year. The reai difficulty was that I did not always take the advice, not of "the Americans," but of certain Americans who had com- posed what had been popularly known as the "kitchen cabinet," or "polo cabinet" of recent years. Few of them held official positions, and many of them seemed to me to be inspired by private financial interests rather than the public interest. Any one who has ever held public executive office will know how very great a part of his time is occupied in seeing people and re- ceiving advice. This is particularly so in the Philip- pines, where for ages a paternal government had been conducted, with the governor-general, whether by law or custom, the head and center of it all. Week after week my time was occupied with receiving complaints, advice, or requests, often from the same people again and again. Finally I came to feel that my office was not unlike that of a medical man : persons came to me only when in trouble, and for consultation and relief. 64 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES At the very beginning I made of record the fact that I had come to govern the islands in consultation also with the Filipinos. I was thus brought into im- mediate and daily contact with Mr. Sergio Osmena, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, president of the Nacionalista party and the leading representative of the Filipino people. This remarkable man had already been Speaker for five years, and still holds that office. I found him extremely well informed, not only about Philippine affairs, but about American his- tory and Constitutional law. Wise, astute, and cau- tious, of an impressive personality, he was also pos- sessed of most remarkably courteous good manners, which never failed him. For the past thirteen years he and Mr. Quezon have been the dominant personal- ities in Philippine politics. I have never heard either of them speak a word of criticism or ill-will against the United States or the American people, and only very rarely against an individual American. They have always had a faith in our country and an appreciation of what our country has done for their people far above the petty level of political and racial feelings in Manila. Our first duty was to select for recommendation to the President the names of the new Filipino majority in the commission which was promised by his message. Mr. Osmena furnished a list of a dozen names, and we proposed to submit them for approval to the Philip- pine Assembly, so that all the elected representatives of the people might have a share in the selection, but this plan was vetoed by the Secretary of War. I then consulted Chief Justice Arellano, Resident Commis- sioners Quezon and Earnshaw, and Colonel Harbord, FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 65 Chief of Constabulary. The five names agreed upon were cabled to the Secretary of War, and the com- missioners were shortly nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, as follows: Victorino Mapa of Iloilo as Secretary of Finance and Justice; Rafael Palma of Manila, for several years already a member of the commission, for reappointment ; Vi- cente Ilustre of Batangas ; Jaime de Veyra of Leyte ; and Vicente Singson-Encarnacion of Ilocos Sur. Palma and De Veyra were members of the Nacion- alista party, Mapa sympathetically inclined to that party, Ilustre an independent, and Singson the leader of the Progresista party in the House of Representa- tives. For nearly three years, until the change of government under the Jones Act, we worked. together through seasons of political excitement and turmoil with perfect harmony and mutual good-will. It may serve to illustrate the types of older Filipino leaders to describe these commissioners here. Secretary Mapa, who sat for twelve years upon the Philippine Supreme Court bench, is short of stature and dignified in demeanor. He served in Spanish days as Alcalde (or Mayor) of the City of Iloilo. His cour- tesy and modesty are so great that none but his intimate friends know his rare sense of humor and fund of anecdotes and proverbs. Some of his best stories are of playing tresillo (cards) with Governor-General Weyler, who was a short man like himself, with a ter- rific military reputation and menacing gestures; Mr. Mapa incidentally points out that General Weyler in all his long life had never once been under fire himself. As a member of the commission, Mr. Mapa's services were invaluable; nobody in the islands has a better 66 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES legal mind, and he was constantly appealed to by his colleagues for his opinion on all legal points, never offering his advice in general discussions until it was asked. He was generous and kindly always, but in a parliamentary fight, once he had made up his mind, he was absolutely fearless, a veritable little Lion of Justice. His face is like an engraving of a French statesman of the seventeenth century, and his sense of honor and fair play are above all party or political considerations. He was recently made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to succeed the late Chief Justice Cavetona Arellano, but had to resign his position be- fore a year of incumbency, on account of ill-health. Rafael Palma is generally considered the third man in Filipino politics. His somewhat severe and melan- choly face frequently lights up with an unexpected and sunny smile, as his sense of humor is pronounced. He has a good legal mind, rare literary ability, and a talent for public speaking ; and he speaks in the choic- est Spanish. He is modest and industrious, and a loyal party man, upon whom a large part of the burden of party management was placed by Speaker Osmena. His service in the House of Representatives, the com- mission, the Philippine Senate, and on the Board of Regents of the University of the Philippines has been marked by absolute integrity and by a devotion to the cause of public instruction. As Secretary of the In- terior he handled successfully many of the most deli- cate problems of the Government. Just and fair, he is popular with Americans and Filipinos alike. Being a very poor man, he has recently retired from the cabinet to enter business, as he has, in the Filipino fashion, a large and growing family. FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 67 Jaime de Veyra was governor of the great province of Leyte during the troublesome days of the uprising of the pulajans, or outlaws, about fifteen years ago. His literary ability is marked, and illuminates his re- ports and papers, as he served an apprenticeship as a newspaper editor. He has held office in the House of Representatives and the commission and as Secretary of Commerce and Police, and then as Executive Secre- tary of the Government. His charming wife is a great asset to him, with her facility for making and keeping friends among the American Congressional ladies, since Don Jaime is now one of the two Representatives in Congress from the Philippines. He is of a thick-set figure, somewhat darker than his colleagues, and of a very serious turn of mind, rarely smiling or talking except when he has something to say, when he develops a rather unexpected eloquence. He is extremely tender- hearted and inclined to sentiment. Vicente Hustre has dark and handsome features, and is possessed of much dignity and grace of manner. He served as a member of the Revolutionary Junta in Hong-Kong during the insurrection, and since then has practised law and watched over his sugar plantations in Batangas. He came from private life to the commis- sion, where he did arduous and valuable work in draft- ing the laws for the reformation of the Justice of the Peace service, and also the new code for the govern- ment of the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, in 1914. He, like Mr. Mapa and Mr. Singson, has consid- erable wealth, and lives in a luxurious home surrounded with all comforts and with works of art. Mr. Ilustre was always something of an insurrecto in politics, and though he gained a seat for the short term in the Sen- 68 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES ate, in 1916, lie was ousted by his opponent in 1918 and has since practised law. He is rather more suspicious of the intentions of the United States than are his col- leagues, and is aggressively in favor of the immediate independence of his country. His education was com- pleted in Madrid in the later days of Spanish domina- tion, and he has imbibed there some of the old-world cynicism as to the promises and agreements of nations. Vicente Singson is a tall, slow-moving figure of the mestizo type. He is an able public speaker, and has served in the House of Representatives, the com- mission, and the Senate. He is a Conservative and his interests are largely those of business and finance. Humor seldom disturbs his dignity, but his manners are affability and courtesy personified. His talents are those of the world of commerce, rather than of legisla- tive halls, but he is ready and able to advance his views and defend his opinions on all occasions. His presence strengthened the business side of the com- mission. Like Mr. Palma, he has been to the United States twice, and seems to like American customs and ideas. I find on reading over these descriptive sketches of my first Filipino colleagues that I have stressed the dignity of them all ; they are all of the older type and generation, and of them only Mr. Palma speaks Eng- lish readily ; none have had an American public-school education. Dignity of demeanor is essentially an Oriental characteristic, dignity with ian impassive tinge. In the expression of most of the older Filipinos there is a trace of melancholy, as there is in all the Fili- pino music of older days, the mark of centuries of service as a subject race. Men of the younger genera- FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 69 tion, already coming upon the stage in business and public affairs, look full of hope, ambition, and Ameri- can hustle. Upon first acquaintance, Americans are not aware of the sense of fun of the Filipinos; their solemnity is an affair of manner rather than of mind. I remember several meetings of the all-Filipino Coun- cil of State in which the bursts of laughter must have disconcerted the officials on the other side of the swing- doors. Loyal friends, good companions, dependable advisers I regret leaving them all. In public affairs I found them ever conscientious and patriotic, with a fine sense of the respect owed the United States Government, and a due consciousness of obligation to their own people. Never was an anti- American measure introduced intentionally. They realized that the Filipinos were on trial, and that they themselves were the representatives of their fellow- countrymen before the world. Hardly a possible prob- lem of government but came before the commission or the Council of State during these years. I found them in debate, and in the care with which they cast their votes, as full of responsibility and of intelligent under- standing as any legislators I have known anywhere. Those departments of government which they had never possessed before, and which were therefore new to them, were studied with the utmost care and delib- eration. In later chapters I shall discuss the develop- ment of Filipino governmental abilities. Within a few months the membership of the Philip- pine Commission was completed by President Wilson, and there arrived from the United States the new American members, Vice-Governor Henderson S. Martin, a progressive Democrat from Kansas, genial 70 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES and sunny-tempered, with a decided leaning toward all liberal and democratic ideas; Winfred T. Denison, Secretary of the Interior, sensitive and high-minded, one of the Progressive Bepublicans from New York, loyally devoted to the principle of Filipino self-gov- ernment; and Clinton L. Biggs of Baltimore, Secre- tary of Commerce and Police, a Democrat of the most conservative type, whose bias in favor of the generally accepted standards of colonial government soon earned for him among the resident Americans the nickname of "the White Hope." General Biggs was a most charming social com- panion, and a most difficult colleague in government. He was, from the very beginning, out of sympathy with the new policy in the Philippines, and, I think, came out with the idea of replacing me when my removal was accomplished by the campaign then under way. He was closely in the confidence of the Secretary of War, who also was greatly disturbed at the reports coming from the Philippines ; and although Secretary Garrison subsequently became disgusted with the mis- information about the Philippines which was being dis- seminated through the United States, and in a spirit of generous indignation entered into a sharp contro- versy with Mr. Taft in the public press in defense of my administration, I am sure he would, himself, say that he never really sympathized with our radical plans in the Philippines; indeed, it will be remembered that his resignation as Secretary of War was based partly upon his dissatisfaction with the speedy prepa- rations for Philippine independence. General Biggs stood firmly upon his interpretation of the law which gave the governor-general only "supervision" of the FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 71 other department secretaries ; he told me that l l super- vision" gave only an advisory power, and no right of interference in his department, which included the Philippine Constabulary, of which by law the governor- general was commander-in-chief. The Jones Act of 1916 cleared up this controversy by giving the gover- nor-general "supervision and control" over all depart- ments of government. During the eighteen months of our controversy, General Riggs and I, after the fashion of Anglo-Saxons, managed to remain, personally and socially, good friends. He went home ill in the summer of 1915, and his resignation was accepted by the Presi- dent in December of that year. Poor Denison was the official who suffered most from the troublesome political storms of those early days; his was a spontaneous, frank, and sincere nature, and he was genuinely inspired with a desire to bring self- government to the Filipinos. He was not of the stern stuff necessary to face public criticism and abuse. Within his first few months he made a speech at the City Club in Manila in which he advocated giving the Filipinos their rights, or, as he phrased it, "give them what they want. ' ' He at once became the target for a veritable bombardment of ridicule and abuse from the "organization," and his spirit was completely shat- tered. He left the Philippines a year later, in a most melancholy frame of mind, absolutely broken on the wheel of the "organization's" criticism. Vice-Governor Martin, of a serene and well-balanced disposition, rode the waves successfully and rendered excellent service in the commission. His chief work was in the public schools, in founding the Rural Credit Association system, and in drafting and forcing 72 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES through, the charter of the Philippine National Bank. He resigned in the autumn of 1916, and I think has since regretted that he did not remain to carry on the work he liked so well. He was a valuable and much valued pillar of support in our Philippine policy. He was succeeded in June, 1917, by Vice-Governor Charles E. Yeater of Missouri, at the present writing acting Governor-General of the Philippines. To the Filipinos, the majority upon the commission meant that the dead-lock as to appropriations and other important measures would be broken instantane- ously, and that in the selection of their higher officials, such as bureau chiefs, and judges of the First In- stance, they were to have the controlling vote in the commission, to which, by existing law, such nomina- tions were sent for confirmation. Long-standing grievances which they wished to remove were now in their hands for settlement. Above all, the new policy was a recognition of their political rights and race dignity, for which they showed immediate gratitude. The morning after the announcement of the new step forward, "La Vanguardia," the leading Filipino paper, theretofore a very resolute opponent of Amer- ican policies in the islands, expressed in Spanish the general sentiment editorially under the heading "Dawn of the New Era" as follows: MAGICAL EFFECT OF PRESIDENT'S GRAVE AND DIGNIFIED MESSAGE . . . COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALL HITHERTO EXISTING PREJUDICES AND A GREAT IMPROVEMENT IN POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE. Much has already been said and written in regard to the necessity of a better understanding, of harmony and coopera- tion, but, hitherto, results have been always negative and all FILIPINOS IN CONTROL OF LEGISLATURE 73 efforts seemed fruitless. Matters went from bad to worse. Now, however, it has been sufficient for the chosen represen- tative of President Wilson to make a simple and frank state- ment of policy, and the situation as a result is completely changed. These statements have been sufficient to revive in a most admirable and complete manner the faith of Filipinos in the justice of the American people, and all prejudices and misunderstandings that have grown up in the past have been immediately wiped away. As a result, it can be said that since the decided views of the Democratic Administration have been announced never before in our mutual history have respect and consideration of American sovereignty been as firmly rooted in these islands as it is now. The editor of the * * Vanguardia, " Mr. Alejandro Roces, the most influential and independent daily pub- lisher in the islands, maintained the same attitude un- swervingly during my whole administration. His un- selfish patriotism and determined freedom from any official connections lent weight to his opinions. Upon the day after the delivery of the first message to the Legislature October 16, 1913 the Philippine Assembly gave official expression to similar views in a resolution, reciting the firm stand of the Filipino people for immediate independence from the day of the insur- rection against Spain in 1896, through all trials and vicissitudes, and their patient confidence that ultimate- ly the United States Government would redress ''all errors and injustices." The resolution concluded as follows : We believe that, happily, the experiments of imperialism have come to an end, and that colonial exploitation has passed into history. The epoch of mistrust has been closed. ... A few days have sufficed to bring about a good understanding between Americans and Filipinos, which it had been impos- sible to establish during the thirteen years past. We are convinced that every onward step, while relieving the Amer- 74 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES lean Government of its responsibilities in the Islands, will, as in the past, fully demonstrate the present capacity of the Filipino people to establish a government of its own and guarantee in a permanent manner the safety under such government of the life, property and liberty of the residents of the Islands, national as well as foreign. We do not wish to say by this that there will not be difficulties and embarrass- ments. Nor do we even expect that the campaign, open or concealed, of the enemies of the Filipino cause will cease soon, but we feel sure that through a conservative use of the powers entrusted to us, the Filipino people will, with God's favor and the help of America, emerge triumphantly from the test, however difficult it may be. A few days later, when the Filipino majority was appointed to the commission, the new commissioners cabled their thanks to the President, accepting the offices in order to ' ' aid the work of laying down a basis for a stable, free Filipino Government." A joint meeting of the Legislature on October 31, 1913, resolved "that the principle of immediate action has taken the place of the announcement of promises." These quo- tations have been given not only to show the response of the Filipino mind to the new policy, but for the light they cast upon past history in the islands. For a cen- tury at least the home government, first of Spain and then of the United States, had, in moments of liberal impulse, promised reforms and made political profes- sions, and then turned to other matters and left the field to the forces of reaction and inaction. CHAPTER VI FlLIPINIZATION A Filipino majority on the commission was re- garded by the Americans in the service as a weapon aimed straight at them. At one stroke they had lost their power of complete domination. They still held control, however, of the executive branches of the Government. To be sure, of the nine thousand members of the Classified Civil Service in 1913, only twenty-six hundred were Americans, but the latter held all but half a dozen of the higher offices. This was one of the chief sources of resentment on the part of the Filipino people. How were they to prove their capac- ity if they were not given a responsible share in the administration? There were in 1913 actually more Americans in the Civil Service than in 1907 or 1908. The resentment of the Filipinos over this state of af- fairs has a respectable precedent in our own history. The Declaration of Independence says of George the Third : "He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Some bureaus, such as the Customs, were full of Americans in merely clerical positions. What, asked the Filipinos, had become of the instructions of Presi- dent McKinley thirteen years before? He had laid down the rule to the second Philippine Commission ' ' that in all cases the municipal officers, who administer 75 76 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES the local affairs of the people, are to be selected by the people, and that wherever officers of more ex- tended jurisdiction are to be selected in any way, natives of the islands are to be preferred, and if they can be found competent and willing to per- form the duties, they are to receive the offices in prefer- ence to any others." What, moreover, had been done in the enforcement of Section 6 of the existing Civil Service Act, which required the appointing officer to select, "where other qualifications were equal, first, Filipinos ; secondly, honorably discharged persons from the American military or naval service; thirdly, citi- zens of the United States? This had been one of the long-standing issues between the Filipinos and the then administration, this and the high salaries paid to the more important officials, a subject which was accen- tuated by the dangerous financial position of the Gov- ernment. I heard it recently stated in the British House of Commons that the insurrection of 1920 in Mesopotamia was directly caused by the policy of em- ploying too many British officials in that new state. In these circumstances it was highly desirable to gain the confidence of the Filipino people by some move to show them the sincerity of the new administra- tion. They were tired of oft-repeated promises, so slow in fulfilment. There was an undercurrent of feel- ing among them that the existing organization would be too strong for us ; while local American sentiment on the matter was that I should not dare to take any further steps, and should soon be relieved of office in any event. The Filipinos in responsible positions, such as Messrs. Osmena and Quezon, were in a difficult sit- uation. They were pledged to the policy of Filipiniza- FILIPINIZATION 77 tion, and yet were fearful of the opposition which would be aroused in the United States with all the existing danger of having the true state of affairs misunder- stood and misrepresented there. Nevertheless, we de- cided to cut the Gordian knot, though we understood perfectly that this was the most difficult and perplexing task before us. The administration for the past dec- ade had been carried on by an organization of some fifty chiefs and assistant chiefs of bureaus and offices, who were not in the Classified Civil Service, being ap- pointed by the governor-general and confirmed by the commission. The bureau chiefs were the active agents who carried out the policies of the administration Their power had increased to such an extent in certain instances that they had assumed an attitude of rivalry and antagonism toward one another, if not toward the Government itself, like the feudal barons of old ; their " prestige" was all-important, and they were generally inspired with a disbelief in the ability of the Filipinos to carry on any important work of government. They stood together upon that issue, like the Old Guard at Waterloo, ready to die, but never to surrender. If not in accord with the policy of the department heads and of the Legislature, they could block to a very large extent the working out of any reform. The new policy would be impossible if bureau chiefs were to perform political sabotage with the official machinery. Only two of the chiefs or assistant chiefs of bureaus were then Filipinos. The problem of Filipinization of the bureaus was, therefore, one of the first magnitude, and bound to cause strife. The first step taken was to give a majority of Fili- pinos upon the Municipal Board of the City of Manila, 78 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES then chiefly appointive; the mayor is nominated by the governor-general, so this reform was but following in the footsteps of the Washington administration in the appointment of the new Philippine Commission. In the bureaus of the Insular Government, it was de- cided to retain Americans as chiefs, for the most part, and appoint Filipinos as assistant chiefs whenever vacancies occurred, for a period of probation ; this was done in the bureaus of Internal Revenue, Prisons, Agri- culture, and Health, during the first year. Among the half-dozen resignations I asked in the directorships or assistant-directorships of bureaus, only one was asked for political reasons, that is, in the sense of American politics. The Republican Na- tional Committeeman was chief of an important bu- reau, and I believed it would be difficult to carry out the new policy with him in that influential position. The resignation of th,e Director of the Bureau of Lands was requested because he had been sponsor for the sale of large tracts of public lands to corporations in contra- vention of the wishes of the Filipino people and the views of my party in Washington. In his place I ap- pointed Manuel Tinio, a capable Filipino, then Di- rector of Labor. The Assistant Director of the Bureau of Lands, an American, at once resigned, stating that he would not serve under a Filipino. Insubordination immediately developed in the Bu- reau of Printing, through the director and assistant director. They had read in the local papers a state- ment that salaries were to be cut, and wired to Wash- ington and to the Typographical Union in the United States. Had they come to me I could have assured them that the Legislature had under consideration only FILIPINIZATION 79 the reduction of salaries above $3000, and that their employees would not be affected. Instead, they secret- ly attempted to array the great power of one of the most important American labor unions against the ad- ministration. I therefore accepted their resignations immediately, and appointed a subordinate in their office, E. E. Gessler, one of the strongest union men in the service, as Director of Printing. The Director of Printing thus relieved, John S. Leech, had while in Washington caused much trouble to President Roose- velt, and since his transfer to the Philippines had fre- quently proved a storm-center in Manila. The resignation of the Chief of Police of Manila and of the prosecuting attorney of the city were re- quested for purely administrative reasons; the As- sistant Chief of Police, an American, was promoted, and Filipinos appointed as prosecuting attorney and city attorney ; two of the bureau chiefs, F. W. Taylor, Director of Agriculture, and Mortimer L. Stewart, Director of Prisons, soon voluntarily resigned, much against my wishes, the former to return to the United States and the latter to become editor of a local news- paper. Judge Crossfield voluntarily resigned from the Court of First Instance, to my great regret, in or- der to enter private practice. Other changes were chiefly promotions in the service. Solicitor-General George E. Harvey was appointed to the bench, and Eafael Corpus, a Filipino, made Solicitor-General. A vacancy occurring in the position of Executive Secre- tary of the Government, Attorney-General Ignacio Villamor, a Filipino, was appointed to that important position, virtually the head of the bureau chiefs, and Judge Ramon Avancena of the Court of First Instance 80 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES was made Attorney-General. The Deputy Collector of Internal Eevenue, an American, whose usefulness was somewhat impaired by superannuation, was displaced by the appointment of General Venancio Concepcion, a Filipino. These, then, were the principal steps in Filipiniza- tion in the early months of the administration. In only five cases in the insular service and four cases in the service of the City of Manila were resignations forced upon officers of the Government. Not a very radical move, one might think, but sufficient to arouse a whirl- wind of criticism on the part of the local American political junta. The papers in the United States were filled with charges that I was destroying the Govern- ment in the Philippines, and even that I was giving all official positions to " deserving Democrats," a charge which was soon dropped, however, for entire lack of foundation, and this despite the enormous mass of requests for appointments from my many personal acquaintances in Congress. Disorganization of the Civil Service and ''wholesale removals" therefrom were alleged. In answer I quote from a statement of November 13, 1913, by Dr. Bolivar L. Falconer, who soon thereafter left the post of Philippine Director of Civil Service for serious reasons of health, and is now Secretary of the United States Civil Service Commis- sion for New England. He reported: "You have not removed any American from the classified Civil Serv- ice. Unquestionably the letter and spirit of the Civil Service Act and Rules have been strictly observed during the period October 6, 1913, to date. ' ' There had, in the past, been little permanency in the American personnel of the Philippine Civil Service; FILIPINIZATION 81 in the ten preceding years an average of 646 Ameri- cans had each year left the Classified Civil Service, for voluntary or involuntary reasons, some 22 per cent, of the total. For the period of a year from the date of my arrival, the number was 716, but their places were filled by Filipinos, not by Americans brought over for the purpose. Comparatively few of the Americans, from the very beginning, had been trained for the service. Many of them were ex-officers or soldiers of the volun- teer army of invasion of the Philippines ; many others, young men lured to the tropics by the hope of adven- ture or of making a career there. Many of them had developed into useful and unselfish public servants; some of them were men of truly remarkable ability; others had merely ''hung on" in clerical positions. The truth is that the Americans in the Philippine service have always been a shifting body of restless, ambitious, and adventurous young men. The rapid progress of Filipinization, however, led to genuine alarm among American officials and em- ployees. To some of them it really seemed as if the immediate end of the official life of them all was at hand, especially upon reading President Wilson's ref- erence to the Philippine situation in his Message to Congress of December 2, 1913, in which he said, refer- ring to his creation of a Filipino majority on the com- mission: I believe that in this way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and their sense of responsibility in the exercise of political power, and that the success of this step will be sure to clear our view for the steps which are to follow. Step by step we should extend and perfect the system of self- 82 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES government in the Islands, making test of them and modifying them as experience discloses their successes and their failures ; that we should more and more put under the control of the native citizens of the Archipelago the essential instruments of their life, their local instrumentalities of government, their schools, all the common interests of the communities, and so by counsel and experience set up a government which all the word will see to be suitable to a people whose affairs are under their own control at last. I hope and believe that we are beginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples. By their counsel and experience rather than by our own we shall learn how best to serve them and how soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw our supervision. Let us once find the path and set out with firm and confident tread upon it and we shall not wander from it or linger upon it. The nervousness of Americans in the service in- creased from week to week for the first few months ; the excitement among them was continually fed by the skilful efforts of opponents of the new policy, in the press and on the platform. Secretary Garrison, on July 22, 1914, felt it necessary to answer one of the many statements put forth by the imperialists. He said : In some papers statements were made that as many as 500 Spanish-American War veterans had been discharged by the new administration in the Philippines. This whole statement is so wide of the truth that I desire to state the facts. He then pointed out that during the first four months of the new administration, instead of five hundred, there had been dropped, of ex-soldiers or ex-sailors, ... a total of 22, not half of whom were Spanish War vet- erans. Of this number, four have been transferred to the United States Civil Service in the Islands, and six were trans- ferred to the United States Civil Service at home. This total FILIPINIZATION 83 of ten who were transferred to the civil service included every man on the list who applied for transfer. Other rumors which were widely circulated by the press at this time were as far removed from the facts as the foregoing. Eeports of business depression and of the abandonment of the annual Manila carnival were spread broadcast, but the carnival that year was a rec- ord-breaker ; and as the Philippines soon entered upon a period of unprecedented prosperity, another weapon had to be discarded. Next, rumors of destitution among Americans as a result of the policy of Filipinization began to appear in the press. Upon investigation, it was reported by the Chief of Police, Colonel George Seaver, that there were fewer destitute Americans in Manila than at any previous time in American occupation, and that no American was in want. Americans "out of a job" were mostly discharged employees of the Quartermas- ter's Department of the United States Army, and not of the Insular Government. Although a number of Americans during these months left the service to enter private business, it was for the most part greatly to their own ultimate pecuniary advantage. Those who failed did so principally because they were unfitted for a life of work in the tropics. An example of this was the fate of the Agricultural Colony at Momungan in Mindanao, founded in 1914 by government subsidy as a method of employment for deserving cases of the humbler class of Americans out of work, mostly those with Filipino wives and families. The location selected was excellent, the soil was good, access to markets was provided, and the altitude of eleven hundred feet in- 84 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES sured a reasonably good climate for outdoor labor. At the end of three years all the Americans had left and Filipinos were settled in their places. One reason for the exodus of Americans from gov- ernment service into private business was the prosper- ity in commercial circles during the years 1915-19 ; an- other, no doubt, was the new regulation put into effect in December, 1913, absolutely prohibiting government officials and employees from engaging in private busi- ness enterprises. This well-established rule of the British colonial service had not been in effect in the Philippines, and in several instances its omission had led to scandal. In many others private interests had at the very least distracted the attention of the official from his public duties. When faced with a choice a number of the office-holders elected to keep their busi- ness and retire from the public service. They have in general made a genuine success in business, and are now thankful for the step then taken. All Americans who left the insular service with a good record were entitled to certain payments by way of accrued leave or otherwise. In February of 1916 the civil retirement act known as the Osmena Law was adopted, by the terms of which those who applied be- fore a certain date (since extended from year to year) became entitled to a bonus of one year's salary for ten years of service, in addition to their accrued leave; those who had served less than ten years but more than six years were entitled to a proportionate amount. During the five years from 1916 to 1920 (inclusive), 913 Americans availed themselves of this privilege, receiving Pesos 3,474,923 in gratuities, and 212 Fili- pinos receiving Pesos 261,010. FILIPINIZATION 85 The echoes of the vigorous local fight against Fili- pinization resounded down through the succeeding seven years, and have colored much of the ''informa- tion" given the American public during this period. The policy was not accepted by the local Americans generally until the passage by almost unanimous vote of Congress of the Jones Act of August 29, 1916, con- firming the state of progress in Filipinization and ad- vancing it a step further. Even after this many "old- timers" in Manila kept up the fight, more or less sub rosa, though the American business houses generally adopted this policy in their own office forces. After the first few months, the process of trans- ferring the offices to the Filipinos was accomplished without any convulsive effort, effected naturally by the simple means of filling the offices as they became vacant through natural routine causes, by nomination, gen- erally by promotion, of Filipinos. This process was greatly accelerated when the United States entered the war and a large proportion of the splendid Ameri- cans then left in the service hastened to join the United States Army. During these five years the Govern- ment was gradually transformed from one of Ameri- cans aided by Filipinos, to one of Filipinos assisted by Americans. The act of transfer was sealed, signed, and delivered by the passage by the United States Con- gress of the Jones Law. To the hundreds of Americans who accepted the changes and stayed in the government service, promo- tion was rapid, and was made without any reference whatever to their home political affiliations; in fact, far more Eepublicans than Democrats held office and were promoted to higher posts under my administra- 86 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES tion, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the overwhelm- ing majority of Americans in the Philippines, both in and out of the public service, are members of the Re- publican party. By 1921, with the exception of the bureaus of Edu- cation, the Mint, Prisons, Forestry, Science, Weather, the Quarantine service, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Metropolitan Water District, the other thirty bureaus and offices of the Government had Filipinos either regularly appointed as chiefs or acting as such, and in virtually all cases Filipinos were assistant chiefs, in training for future greater responsibilities. No disposition was shown at any time by the Filipinos to desire offices of a technical nature, such as those enumerated above, for which they had no men of suffi- cient experience or training. It seems probable that in the event of independence they will make an effort to secure the services of American advisers or di- rectors for bureaus of a scientific or technical nature, after the manner of Japan during the first thirty years of her entry into modern forms of government. In the University of the Philippines, for example, after Don Ignacio Villamor was appointed from the presidency to the Supreme Court bench, a great effort was made to secure a capable American to succeed him; Jacob Gould Schurman and Professor John Dewey of Columbia were among those approached for the purpose ; finally, Dr. Guy Benton was selected. In the Philippine National Bank, the first two presidents were Americans, the next a Filipino, and now an Amer- ican is again in charge. In tfye Bureau of Science, no Filipino has as yet endeavored to secure appointment as assistant chief, and in the Weather Bureau a Span- FILIPINIZATION 87 iard remains as chief and another has just been ap- pointed assistant. As will be noted presently, Ameri- cans were appointed managers of the two largest government-ownership enterprises, the Manila Bail- road Company and the National Coal Company. Regarding the policy of Filipinization announced by our Presidents from McKinley to "Wilson, and of the specific provisions of the Jones Act, it will be seen that while Filipinos have by now come to occupy most of the posts of tactical or administrative power, they have shown prudence in approaching the scientific or tech- nical branches of office-holding, and they manifest a genuine appreciation of the services of those Ameri- cans who have continued to work for their welfare and the development of their country. It was customary for enthusiastic Americans under prior regimes to claim for the United States all the credit for the achievements of earlier years ; no men- tion was made of the eagerness in cooperation of the great numbers of Filipinos in subordinate positions and in the provincial and municipal service. So, in the later years of trial under the new form of government granted by the Jones Act, it has been the custom for patriotic Filipinos to claim for their own people all the substantial accomplishments of the new adminis- tration. This was natural enough in view of the situa- tion ; they had been by American policies deliberately put on trial as to their capacity. The fact is, how- ever, that part of the credit was due to Americans who so wisely and devotedly served the new government. If mistakes have been made, and mistakes there have been, here as elsewhere, criticism therefore should be impartially distributed. 88 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES It is customary to attribute to Filipinization an im- pairment of efficiency of administration; it would be only just to say that in many respects efficiency had been gained, in that the new government had the sup- port and cooperation of the people to a marked degree, thus making much easier the task of administration. The distribution of executive power and the exercise of more genuine authority by many officials, the grad- ual withdrawal of the central Government from minute inspection and direction of minor functions in other words, the extension of self-government and the spread of democracy may in themselves have im- paired somewhat the efficiency of administration. If so, that disadvantage is more than offset by the gain in contentment of the people, the growth of respect and friendship for the United States, and the valuable lessons in self-government secured by the Filipinos. In a later chapter, more extended reference will be made to the American policy of Filipinization, and the profound effect it has had upon the relations of the Filipinos to our country, as well as upon the colonial policy of various European governments. At the present time, with the change of administra- tion in the United States, and consequently in the Philippines, a great discussion is under way as to whether the Filipinos have succeeded in their new responsibilities; it is difficult for. political partizans upon either side to state the case impartially; to pass a fair judgment upon the situation requires freedom from political bias and from race prejudice. With that freedom, an impartial observer will, it is certain, be struck with the real success attained by many if not FILIPINIZATION 89 most of the Filipino officials charged with heavy re- sponsibility in an age of world-wide disturbance. It is not unusual, in our own country, for a certain type of campaign orators to claim for the party in power all credit for the sunshine and the rains, for the good crops and the prosperity of the people. It would be difficult for a scientific observer to state in any given case how much the well-being of the people of any country is to be attributed to the activities and policies of government, and how much to the people themselves and to extraneous influences. It would perhaps be invidious to claim for the Filipinos the credit for the unprecedented prosperity of the islands during the years 1917-19; it would be equally unjust to blame them for the recession of prosperity in 1920- 21. It can, however, be positively stated that Ihe wave of general satisfaction with their government and with the United States made it much easier for the Filipinos to meet and sustain the changes of prosperity and depression. Of the great material advantage to the United States of having during the war a loyal and contented population in the Philippines, there can be no doubt. As to what concrete achievements are to be credited to the Filipino officials, both in the Legislature and in administrative branches, during these past eight years, in which they have increasingly taken charge of the government, more detailed analysis will presently be made. This chapter might best be concluded with a brief statement of the progress in certain lines from 1913 to 1921. It matters less what particular official, American or Filipino, is to be credited with a specific accomplishment than it does to note the spirit of the 90 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES whole governmental body, admittedly under Filipino control, both as to appropriations and as to policies during this period. Within these eight years the mile- age of first-class roads more than doubled, increasing from 2233 kilometers to 4698 kilometers; 1620 per- manent (concrete or steel) bridges were constructed; 725 permanent government buildings were built, in- cluding schools, public markets, hospitals, provincial capitols, and large and beautiful edifices for the uni- versity and the Insular Government ; a nework of wire- less stations was erected throughout the provinces; a vast program of improvements in port works was launched, and a bond issue of ten million pesos was sold in the United States for harbor improvement in Manila alone ; irrigation works estimated to cost about ten million pesos, and designed to benefit 150,000 acres of land in sixteen different localities, were in- itiated; 949 artesian wells in the different provinces, an average of one to each municipality, were drilled at a total cost of nearly two and one half million pesos, and 55 new waterworks systems were installed with 36 more under active construction, to cost more than three million pesos. The artesian wells and new waterworks are providing excellent water for approxi- mately one and one half million persons who had always previously been supplied with more or less contaminated surface water. The progress in agriculture, of which fuller men- tion will presently be made, was remarkable; the point of interest here is that the placing of Filipinos in control of the agricultural departments greatly en- larged the power of the Government to influence the people to increased production. Of rice alone 625,000 FILIPINIZATION 91 acres more were planted during these eight years ; 528 rural-credit societies were established, and cooperation in agriculture, a new spirit among the farmers, en- couraged and explained. In education the program was enlarged by appropriations which were increased from Pesos 7,600,000 in 1913 to Pesos 18,000,000 in 1920, thus allowing 300,000 more children to enter the public schools ; taxation was revised and increased, and the government revenue, which in 1913 had been only Pesos 22,000,000, rose to Pesos 80,000,000 in 1919; there are twelve banking institution in the islands now, instead of only six, and the money in circulation has risen from Pesos 50,000,000 in 1914 to three times that figure. To conclude this list, last but not least must be mentioned the legislation and administration during these years which established friendship and mutual understanding between the Christian Filipinos and their non-Christian kinsmen, a movement carried out with the same spirit of altruism as that which had guided their American predecessors. This brief and partial summary constitutes a record of which no peo- ple need be ashamed. CHAPTER VH THE MOBOS WITHIN recent years in the United States, the Moros have monopolized ninety-five per cent, of the discussion of the Philippine problem, although constituting but four per cent, of the population of the Philippines. At the census of 1918 there were 358,968 Mohammedans (Moros) in the islands, while in the same Department of the Philippines there lived 159,- 132 Christians and 205,555 pagans. About nine mil- lion Christians inhabited the islands to the north. I was obliged to make an important decision in the Moro problem in the first two months after my arrival in Manila. The fame of the Moros was wide-spread through the American army officers, who had fought them in many a tight corner and had effected the conquest over them which Spain had for three centuries sought in vain. An amusing picture of Moro life was given to the American public at home by George Ade 's operetta "The Sultan of Sum." The personality of the Moro is picturesque ; his history is stained with blood. The Moro is of the same racial stock as the Christian Filipino, of a later migration, perhaps, but a blood brother, all the same. The chief difference is that he is a Mohammedan, while ninety-two per cent, of the Filipinos are Christians. The Moro Province, as con- stituted in 1913, contained most of the great islands 92 THE MOROS 93 of Mindanao, nearly as large as Luzon, and the Suhi Archipelago, stretching right across to the shores of Borneo. This region, potentially the richest part of the Philippine Islands, is very sparsely settled, and almost undeveloped, owing to the intractable nature of the Moros, and their peculiar history. At intervals during nearly three hundred years the Spanish had sent expeditions against the Moros, and succeeded only in maintaining a few garrisons on the coast. The old walled city of Jolo (Sulu) looks like a scene from an opera, but death awaited the luckless outsider who ventured beyond its walls, until Wood and Pershing broke the power of the Sulu Moros. Instead of overcoming the Moros, the Spaniards, who gave them that name in remembrance of the Mo- hammedan Moors with whom they had for centuries contended in the home peninsula, only made a bad situ- ation worse. For their own purposes and protection, they had completely disarmed the Christian Filipinos, and left them defenseless against the sea-pirates of the southern islands. Again and again the Moros sal- lied forth in small, swift-sailing vessels, in bands of two or three hundred well-armed warriors, and raided the coast villages to the north for plunder and for slaves. The Spaniards were utterly unable to cope with them. Their raids were to a great extent stopped by Dutch and English gunboats in the nineteenth cen- tury, and finally the United States, in the twentieth century, broke their military power. As late as 1870 Moro raids were suffered in the Straits of San Ber- nardino, at the southern end of Luzon. All along the shores of the Philippines stood little stone watch- towers and the cry "Hay Moros en la costal" caused 94 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES a panic in the near-by towns and a hurried flight to the mountains. Constant intermarriage with the women raided from the northern islands kept alive the kinship with the Filipinos. The "treacherous Malay" of the novels is the type we know as the Moro. The first really authentic de- scription we have of him is in the story of the voyage of Captain William Dampier at the end of the seventeenth century. He spent nearly a year with the Sultan of Maguindanao, and was treated by the Moros with the same mixture of urbanity and rapacious treachery for which they were known to the Spanish and earlier Americans. The history of their scattered strongholds in Mindanao and Sulu is one long weary tale of blood- shed and intrigue. Settlement of the lands harried by them was impossible except under arms and with constant vigilance. The story is not unlike that of our own two hundred years of struggle with the Indians of the Atlantic coast. The population was kept down by incessant warfare, and vast areas of the richest lands in that part of the world lay uncultivated. Even to- day there are only about a half-million people in Mindanao, while in the island of Java to the south, of about an equal area, there are about thirty-four million inhabitants. As Norman Angell has said of the red Indians of our own country, "A hundred thou- sand ' ' of them ' ' starved in a country where a hundred million modern Americans ' ' have abundance. To-day, the Sultan of Maguindanao has surrendered all pretensions to leadership and lives quietly in a vil- lage near Zamboanga. The Sultan of Sulu has kept alive the traditions of petty royalty, but has now made friends with the Filipinos as well as with the Amer- THE MOROS 95 leans, and when he dies, there will die with him a dynasty of six hundred years of power. The Moro Province is now fundamentally and essentially a part of the body politic of the Philippines, and it is to be hoped that we may never hear again the suggestion, current twenty years ago, that the Moro Archipelago be separated from the Philippine Islands ; this sugges- tion aroused the cupidity of various European powers, and was even advanced by anti-imperialistic Americans in an attempt to solve the Philippine question, upon the supposition that the Filipinos could never control the Moros if they were given their independence. Every year now makes it more probable that this polit- ical question at least has been fairly settled. The Fil- ipinos are determined that fractional minority of their eleven millions of inhabitants shall not be used as an excuse to deprive them of one of the richest parts of their heritage. The story of how this adjustment of the apparently insoluble Moro problem came about is worth the telling in some detail. The military command of the Moro Province was, up to 1914, one of the great prizes of the army admin- istration. It brought with it the governorship of the province under the Insular Government, and offered a life of excitement and achievement. The position had been held by such distinguished officers as General Leonard Wood and General Bliss, and the governor when I arrived was the famous John J. Pershing. Both Generals Wood and Pershing had fought sanguinary battles with the Moros in Jolo (Sulu) in which thou- sands of Moros had been killed. Minor skirmishes by the score had necessitated that our scattered detach- ments always keep their "powder dry" and their bayo- 96 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES nets bright. Finally General Pershing had virtually accomplished the disarmament of the Moros and the foundations of civil government were fairly laid. He had gradually relieved many of the military officers from administrative posts under him and filled those positions with civilians, especially officers of the con- stabulary. Soon after my arrival in Manila, I received word from General Pershing that he wished to be relieved after four years of service as Governor of the Moro Province. I earnestly requested him to remain, but the condition of his health absolutely forbade that. So, in November, 1913, accompanied by the commanding gen- eral, the late Major-General J. Franklin Bell, Major (later Brigadier-General) Herman Hall, and Dr. N. M. Saleeby, an American physician at Manila, who was a recognized expert on Moro dialects, and had dur- ing his previous residence in Syria learned Arabic, a language which the Moro leaders generally understood, I joined General Pershing at Zamboanga for a tour of inspection. Zamboanga, the capital of the southern islands, is the most attractive of the coast towns of the Philip- pines, and is a port of call for a few Australian and Singapore steamers. Indeed, as in culture and tradi- tions the southern islands are closely connected with the parent stem of the Malay world, the commerce and associations of the petty rulers of those islands had for generations been chiefly with Singapore. As public order gradually became more assured in Mindanao, Zamboanga became the point of debarkation for an increasing number of immigrant Visayans from Cebu and Bohol, and there was also a mixture of descendants 1 * 3 x & H 02 H THE MOKOS 97 of Tagalogs from Luzon, four hundred miles to the north, whence their grandfathers had been deported by the Spaniards, chiefly for so-called political offenses. Even Eizal was for some time a political prisoner, hav- ing been deported to Dapitan on the north coast of Mindanao. From year to year the trade and political relations of the great islands of Mindanao had drawn more and more closely to those of the North. Although only four degrees above the equator, Zamboanga is blessed with cooling breezes from three points of the compass, and, owing to an equable rainfall and freedom from typhoons, it is one of the garden spots of the archipelago. There General Pershing had his head- quarters as Governor of the Moro Province. The near- by Moros were friendly and their chief or dato, Mandi, was loyal to the Government up to the day of his death. In physical characteristics the Moros are very much like other Filipinos. In dress they are infinitely gayer and more picturesque. Their petty sultans lived in much style in past generations, and when their power was broken a great number of small chieftains set up their claims to local leadership over more or less sav- age followers. Their dignity of bearing is notable, as is their personal vanity. Decked in bright colors and with pearls from the near-by Sulu Sea, they imitate in a feeble way the magnificence of the Indian rajahs. The only gold coins in circulation in the Philippines were gradually collected by the Moros to make buttons for their gay silk jackets. Gaudy head-dresses and skin-tight trousers complete their costume, while a murderous-looking kris, or wavy-bladed short sword, and a dagger with handle of carved ivory and gold 98 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES adorn the dato. The greater the dato, the larger, of course, his following of personal attendants, the more important his umbrella of state or decorated walking- stick. A servant behind him carries his buyo box, made by some Moro artisan, of finely chased silver and inlay work, and containing lime, betel-nut, and leaves for chewing. The Moro are men of great personal valor, as they showed in many a hand-to-hand combat with cold steel over the ramparts of their little forts ; a rush of these warriors armed with the kris was almost irresistible by a party of men advancing single-file through the high cogon grass. The three or four hundred thou- sand Moros scattered over this great territory have made as much trouble in the past as ten times their numbers of more peaceful and tractable people could have made. Their sheer courage made them popular with our military men. There is something in Mohammedanism, especially of Arab tradition, which renders the followers of the Prophet difficult to deal with. Their religious train- ing, which consists merely in committing to memory the verses of the Arabic version of the Koran, inclines them to live in an atmosphere of tribal hostility and restless intrigue, like their cultural ancestors in the days of Mohammed. How much of the present-day spirit of hatred, revenge, and jealousy even among the nations of Europe is due to the direct teachings of the Old Testament? The Moros are difficult to in- fluence with modern ideas, but the American school system is now operating vigorously to leaven the mass. The Moros have plenty of panglimas, or priests, but no hierarchy through which the Government might THE MOROS 99 reach and control them ; there are many hadjis, men and women who have performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, but they are, perhaps, the most ardent up- holders of the old system. The Moro is a poor Mo- hammedan, after all, and practises chiefly the super- stitions of a faith of which he is intensely proud with- out having a true understanding of its spiritual en- lightenment. As Governor Carpenter has said, " . . . he is still a pagan with a veneer of Moham- medanism. ' ' His religion is not of the militant type, he does not make any effort to impose his faith on others, and is entirely tolerant of other beliefs. He apparently values Islam as a superior caste to which he is proud to belong. The chief settlements of the Moros are in Jolo and Siasi, in Zamboanga, in Cotabato, in Lanab, and in southern Palawan. All of these places were visited on our first trip of inspection. Public meetings were held in each locality, and the native speeches (duly inter- preted for our benefit) were often picturesque with Oriental imagery and enlivened with brief conventional outbursts of real or simulated passion. The Moro is a great boaster, but, like many more primitive races, he is an accurate and shrewd reader of character. His tendency is to tell the vistor just what he thinks the person addressed will like. Military men are generally treated to many references to the bloodthirsty valor of the Moros, and are told these brave warriors would as soon cut off the head of a Filipino as eat breakfast. Filipino officials, on the contrary, are addressed with much sentimental talk of friendship and brotherhood. The Arab merchants of earlier days, and the modern wandering Arab priests are their teachers. The un- 100 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES reliability of the Arab is proverbial; only the other day, in the British House of Commons, I heard a frank statement, made by a recognized expert on Arabian politics, of how completely Sir Percy Sykes was "taken in" by the Arab chiefs in Damascus in 1920. At every meeting the most important question raised by the Moros was whether or not the Govern- ment intended to interfere with their religious cus- toms. We always assured them, to the contrary, that the United States Government did not interfere in matters of religion. Eeligious interference was the historic cause of the failure of Spain with the Moros : the aim of the Spanish Government was conversion to Christianity, and every Moro was willing to fight to the death for his religion. The disheartening failure of our own American colonists to deal peaceably, or even honorably, with the Indians (except in Pennsyl- vania for seventy years under Quaker rule) was due to the land hunger of our race. The Spaniards had no success in dealing with the Moro because they insisted upon religious conversion. Under American rule, once the religious question was out of the way, the path was cleared for a policy of conciliation and attraction. There is always the possibility of confusion in the mind of the Moros between religion and custom, their sultans being the religious heads of a people over whom too often rule meant the right to steal cattle and en- slave women. Lord Cromer, in his first meeting with the beaten chieftains of the Soudan and after his promise to respect their religion, was confronted with English public opinion at home. Did that mean to permit slavery? The main source of trouble with the Moros now is the question of polygamy. While that THE MOROS 101 is not, strictly speaking, a religious tenet of the Mo- hammedans, and is not enjoined by the Koran, it is universally permitted by their religion. When the Jones Bill came before Congress, I wrote Secretary Garrison that a law already existed in the Philippines against polygamy, but if the Government wanted some- body to enforce that statute among the Moros, it would have to find another governor-general, since the Moros were reduced to order for the first time in history, and I knew of no issue upon which I was sure that all of them could unite except that of polygamy. As an ex- ample of the petty war which might result, I cited to him the forty years of fighting just terminated in North Sumatra between the Dutch and the Achinese. As I then stated, the only way successfully to stamp out polygamy among the Moros is to educate them in the public schools, especially the girls. The process of education is now going on, though meeting with some resistance on the part of the older datos, as was evi- denced by the affray at Pata, near Jolo, in December, 1920, when the constabulary killed thirty-three Moros in a fight growing out of local resistance to the attend- ance at school of some Mohammedan girls. It seems certain that when they are educated, the women them- selves will oppose the practice of polygamy. Many of the younger men, too, would probably welcome a change. There are not enough women to go around, now that piratical raiding of near-by communities has been stopped. The peculiar Malay practice of running amuck, or going juramentado (oath-taken), in which the individual dedicates himself to death in a mad frenzy of killing right and left all whom he meets, is often due to rage on the part of the young men because 102 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES the young women are brought up for the harems of the chiefs. Our visit to Jolo gave us an opportunity of meeting the sultan, Hadji Mohammed Jamalul Kiram, and his 1 ' prime minister," Hadji Butu, later on appointed senator in the Philippine Legislature. The sultan is a small man, of less impressive personality than others of his caste whom I have met in Borneo and Java. He had a gay time on Broadway, on his visit to New York several years ago, and was famous on the "Great White Way" for his pearls. He is well disposed toward Americans, for the Moro is an intensely prac- tical man when it comes to a final recognition of over- whelming force; he has of late years made friends with the Filipinos. Had he been a stronger man, he would have been of great use to the Government, but his rule had always been disputed even in Jolo, where two or more factions have generally existed through the generations. Generals Bell, Pershing, and Hall accompanied me on a motor trip across the island of Jolo, past the little mountain of Bagsak, where five months before Pershing had broken the Moro power in a pitched bat- tle in which thousands of fighting Mohammedans, men and women, were killed. Some years later, I met a young lady who was one of the few survivors of that Moro camp ; she was then teaching school at a little vil- lage on the other side of the island. General Pershing had been much criticized by good people at home for the killing of women in this battle, but, as he explained to me, the women fought in the front ranks with the men, and one could not tell men and women apart be- hind the trenches. It is a curious fact that the Moro THE MOROS 103 men and women are often indistinguishable ; the men have no beards nor mustaches, and both sexes wear the hair long. Many of their fiercest warriors are slender men with a feline or feminine countenance. On this same inspection trip, on the road to Lanao, General Hall stopped an individual who was passing and asked if it were a man or woman ; the person addressed re- plied with a smile that he was a man and a fighter ! His smile and his sense of humor are the most pleasing of the Moro's characteristics. Our motor trip across the island of Jolo was intended to prove the pacification of that much-vexed region. Until recently, no visitor had ever ventured outside the walls of the city of Jolo without an armed escort. A few months before, that splendid young American, Governor Vernon I. Whitney of Jolo, a former foot- ball star from Iowa then just recovering from a wound received in storming a cota, or fort was walk- ing outside the walls of Jolo when he was suddenly at- tacked by two Moros armed with bolos. He managed to "tackle" one of them, emptied his small revolver into the other, then took the bolo from the man he held and literally cut him in two. In all engagements against the Moros, even when entrenched, Filipinos have fought under our officers with great zeal and valor alongside the American sol- diers, generally taking the positions by storm. The last pitched engagement against the Moros was the reduction of the Bayan Cota, the remaining fort on the south shore of Lake Lanao, in 1917. About fifteen hundred Moros, in revolt against the Government be- cause of opposition to the schools and to the land sur- vey, had gathered there and refused to give up their 104 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES guns. That time the constabulary borrowed from the army a battery of mountain machine-guns, or "mule guns," an officer, and forty Scout soldiers, and posi- tive orders were given to restrain the Filipino constab- ulary forces from storming the cota. Instead of suf- fering the usual severe casualties, the government forces sustained the loss of only one Filipino officer and one soldier wounded, and the machine-guns utterly broke up the resistance and drove the Moros from the cota. The peace we found upon our visit to Jolo in 1913 was that of subjugation, for few persons were visible, and little cultivation was to be seen on the surrounding hills. Just three years later, on the same spot, with a small party of government officials and friends, I had a delightful two days in camp with about seven hun- dred armed Moros, when we went deer-hunting with spears on horseback. Our party was unarmed and without escort. This second trip across the island was through fields of grain and banana plantations. But for the work of General Pershing, civil govern- ment could not have been instituted in Jolo; and but for civil government, Jolo would still be unsafe for the visitor. CHAPTER VIH CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOROLAND THE impending departure of General Pershing for home necessitated an immediate decision on the appointment of his successor, which involved the ques- tion of installing at once a civil government in Moro- land. The War Department had already proposed to me the name of a well-known general as Pershing's successor, but my predecessor as governor-general had, I understood, intended that the next governor of the Moro Province should be a civilian, and that was my own earnest desire. A long-continued government of military men is in itself an invitation to war. Men who had just come through many a hard-fought skir- mish with and surprise attack from the Moros could hardly be expected to believe them fit for civil govern- ment. Such regarded them as untamable wild animals, and the custom, along the Lanao Military road at least, was to take a pot-shot at any Moro seen on the hill- sides. The military manner in administration, more- over, leads to all sorts of irritation and sometimes to reprisals. The recent rebellion of Dato Ali and his men was an illustration in point. In 1905, at the head- waters of the Cotabato Eiver, a region never brought under effective government control until about 1917, lived several thousand Moros who had taken to the mountains in defiance of established order. Their chief was Ali, who claimed he had never submitted to 105 106 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES any man. One day, Dato All came slipping alone up to the military headquarters at Cotabato, to present some grievance to the Government. The American sergeant-in-charge had some dispute with him and end- ed by kicking him down the stairs. A very picturesque little war resulted, lasting several months, and costing a number of lives and much money. Dato Ali and many of his followers were killed in battle. Both General Bell and General Pershing recom- mended to me the appointment of a civilian as gov- ernor; and General Bell stated that he wished to re- move all white American troops from the province. Both policies were agreed upon, and promptly carried out. We canvassed names for the office of Governor of the Moro Province, and the two generals could agree on only one man, Frank W. Carpenter, the then Chief of the Executive Bureau, in Manila. The wisdom of their judgment was proved by the event. I cabled to the Secretary of War the result of these conferences and that ''Peace is established throughout the province and is liable to be permanent if properly managed." This opinion was entirely justified by the outcome, but largely because of the tact, courage, and skill of one man, the new Governor of the Moro Province, who was for seven years to preside over the destinies of its much discussed and restless population. Mr. Carpenter was at first somewhat reluctant to abandon the forum of his fifteen years of activity in the seat of government in Manila, but on December 15th he became the governor, "believing with me," as I cabled home, * ' that now the time has come to inaugu- rate a policy among the Moros which will thereby greatly increase peace and prosperity in these re- CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOROLAND 107 gions." On December 20, 1913, the name of the Moro Province was changed to " Department of Mindanao and Sulu," and the special-government provinces in Mindanao, such as Agusan and Butuan, which under the Secretary of the Interior had been the source of endless administrative friction, were included in the new department, of which the land area was now 36,500 square miles, about one third of that of the entire Philippine Islands. Three months later I again inspected these same regions; Governor Carpenter was in full control of matters, and his extraordinary ability and incessant activity were already producing results. Meanwhile, Commanding-General Bell had withdrawn all the white soldiers from the department and had left garrisons of Philippine Scouts (Filipinos) at Overton and Keith- ley in Lanao, at Ludlow Barracks in Cotabato, and at the barracks in the towns of Zamboanga and Jolo. The strength of the constabulary in the department had been increased to sixty officers (partly American) and nine hundred and seventy- two men, all Filipinos, under Colonel Peter E. Traub of the United States Army. Colonel Traub during three years (1914-1917) con- tinued the policy of General Pershing as to disarma- ment, and confiscated one thousand firearms without serious resistance from their possessors, often being helped by the Moros themselves, who were tired of being harried and robbed by their own outlaw des- perados. Later on, when our country entered the World War in 1917, even the Scout garrisons were withdrawn from the department, except one battalion at Pettit Barracks, Zamboanga. On March 26, 1914, 1 was able to cable to the Secre- 108 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES tary of War: "Just returned from an inspection trip Department of Mindanao and Sulu. Conditions gen- erally excellent. Agriculture extending materially Lanao and Jolo. Peace conditions improving there and particularly in mountains head Cotabato Valley." And again on May 21, 1914 : ' ' Report peaceful surren^ der yesterday Cotabato famous Moro outlaw Alamada with more than 3000 men. Alamada outlaw chieftain since Spanish days." The next winter Alamada ac- companied Governor Carpenter, with other datos, to the Manila carnival. He seemed to me like a wild bird, poised for instant flight, and supremely uncomfortable among the large crowd of officials at Malacanan Pal- ace; his hand was cold from suppressed nervousness and embarrassment. He had agreed to come to Manila upon the assurance that he could carry his kris at all times, and that he would not be obliged to wear "Christian" clothing. Before the end of his first day in Manila he had discarded his kris and surreptitiously procured an American suit of clothes. Upon his return to Cotabato, he became insistent in his demands for schools. There were many similar cases in the records of these years. All of Governor Carpenter's reports are to be found printed in full, in the Bureau of Insular Affairs in Washington. No extended analysis of his great work is intended here. He kept on terms of friendship with all the varied elements of an uneasy and perplexing population. His daily conferences were with Moro datos, American navy and army officers, investors or speculators of a dozen different nationalities, bishops and missionaries of the Christian churches, Arab priests, Filipino and American officials, tourists and CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOROLAND 109 visitors, Japanese hemp-planters and merchants, Chinese traders and smugglers, newspaper men and emissaries from the near-by ports of Borneo and Cele- bes, and shy, pagan men from the forest-clad moun- tains of Mindanao. That he was able to reconcile all those diverse and potentially antagonistic elements speaks for itself; he did more: he brought them into some sort of cohesion and cooperation to work for the development of that vast territory and for the estab- lishment of public order. He was particularly kind and patient in his dealings with the suspicious and " jumpy" Moro datos. He received much assistance from the ladies of the family of the Sultan of Sulu, who, as is so often the case among the Mohammedans (as for example in Afghanistan to-day), were the real managers of the sultan's affairs. He exercised the utmost care in encouraging in the Moro chieftains a sense of social ease and conventionality, even teaching hands accustomed only to the sword and spear how to use the complicated machinery of the modern tea-table, against the day when they should visit Manila. Above all, he was firm, as firm as any military commander could be, when military operations were necessary; but his firmness was finely tempered with tact and understanding of human nature. The history of his negotiations with the Sultan of Sulu gave him an opportunity for the display of his diplomatic talents. The House of Sulu had indeed come upon unprofitable days. Their genealogy of six hundred years now served them to no greater purpose than their claim to descent from Alexander the Great. To be sure, the sultan was treated as a monarch when he visited Singapore or that portion of Borneo which 110 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES he had leased to the British North Borneo Company. There, at least, he flew his own flag and received a sa- lute of twenty-one guns. But in the Philippines his position was anomalous. Under Spain he had exer- cised de-jure and de-facto sovereignty in the Sulu Archipelago, except in the ports of Jolo, Siasi, and Bongao. He was then a "protected" sovereign. He never opposed the United States in arms, and never surrendered to our army. He had executed a treaty in 1899 with General Bates which failed of adoption by the United States Senate because it recognized polyg- amy. This "treaty" was abrogated by President Eoosevelt on March 2, 1904, because the sultan had failed to keep order in Sulu, according to his agree- ment. He replied that the Americans had insisted upon the disbanding of his army, and he had never surrendered his claim to sovereignty. To say the least, the legal position of the sultan and of the lands in the Sulu Archipelago was unsettled. Governor Carpenter undertook to straighten out the tangle. On March 11, 1915, after eleven days and nights of negotiation, with which I was kept in touch by cable, he signed an agreement with the sultan by which the latter, for himself and his heirs, renounced temporal sovereignty over the Sulu Islands, including the "right" to collect taxes, the right to decide law- suits, and the reversionary right to all the lands. In exchange, he was recognized by the Government as head of the Mohammedan Church in the Philippines, his pension of Pesos 12,000 was continued for life, and he was given a grant of land in Jolo. He was wise enough to accept the substance, however small, for the shadow, however great. So ends the Sultanate of Sulu. CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOEOLAND 111 One clause of the agreement states that "The Sultan of Sulu and his adherents and people of the Moham- medan faith shall have the same religous freedom had by the adherents of all other religious creeds, the prac- tice of which is not in violation of the basic principles of the laws of the United States." This bars polygamy. If Governor Carpenter had been a citizen of one of the European colonizing powers, he would have been loaded with honors by the home government ; as it is, his name is unknown to one per cent, of the American public. He has been given a substantial pecuniary grant by the Philippine Legislature, and is still active in the service in Manila. His chief agents in Mindanao and Sulu were, first, the constabulary as patrols and, later, when the hinter- land was gradually brought under control as perma- nent posts ; next, medical men or Filipino practicantes who set up their little dispensaries in the most remote regions ; and finally the public-school teachers, also, for the most part, Filipinos. The shyest tribesman quickly gave his confidence to the medical man. In the course of a few years the leading Moros were clamoring for public schools in widely separated districts. In fact, the demand for schools, in view of these people's oc- casional antagonism later on to compulsory school attendance, is hard to understand. Certainly, nothing has been done by the school-teachers to offend their prejudices. Perhaps it is, as Governor Guingona ex- plained in his report for 1920, because the older Moros believed that the schools "were good only if those who were educated in the same could be immediately em- ployed in the public service." Perhaps, however, the 112 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES parents were zealous enough in theory for the educa- tion of their children, but in practice were made un- comfortable by the new ideas brought home by the younger generation. Very little had been done for non-sectarian education prior to 1914. In that year the Insular Legislature made its first contribution for that purpose to the department funds, Pesos 204,523. Later on, Pesos 1,000,000 was voted for primary schools among the non-Christians. By the end of 1919 there were 30 American and 785 Filipino teachers in the Department of Mindanao and Sulu, and 32,438 pupils in the public schools, of whom nearly one half were girls. The church missionaries, American, Dutch, and Spanish, helped on the good work with their own schools. Bishop Brent had both schools and hospitals. My own relations with Governor Carpenter were, of course, those of utmost confidence in his adminis- tration. At a distance of four hundred miles across the Sulu and Visayan seas, I recognized the impossi- bility of constant interference with his work. I tried to give him the same freedom of judgment and action as was accorded me by Washington. If the Secretary of War felt at times uneasy over the rapid progress I made in Filipinization, I had the same sentiment of doubt about the Filipinization of Mindanao and Sulu by Governor Carpenter. It had been a frequent boast of the Moros that they would kill any Filipino officials sent to govern them. I was truly apprehensive of the effect of any disaster of that nature. While it is true that they had killed the Filipino village officials who took charge of Cotabato during the early days of Amer- ican occupation of the Philippines, their killing seemed to be indiscriminate ; they had also killed Spanish and CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN MOROLAND 113 Americans whenever possible. When I was at Lanao in 1915, my aide-de-camp, Major George S. Holmes, who had served there before in the years of " excur- sions and alarums," met an old Moro friend who said: " You see how well we treat the Filipinos now? Why, a Filipino could lie right down to sleep beside us and we wouldn't kill him!" A reassuring state of progress; was it not? The Philippine Commission had the exclusive power of legislating for the non-Christian population of the islands down to the time of the passage of the Jones Law in August, 1916, when general legislative powers as to all parts of the archipelago were given to the Legislature. Up to October, 1914, the commission, as we have seen, was controlled by an American major- ity. Thus the Filipinos had not yet been entrusted with the control of the non-Christian minorities. The idea seemed to be that they would exploit them or neg- lect them for their own selfish advantage. When the change was made to Filipino control on the commission in 1914, and later in the whole Legislature, I never observed a single act of discrimination or lack of gen- erosity on the part of the Filipino officials toward their less advanced kinsmen. On the contrary, they seemed anxious to prove their qualification for guard- ianship over the welfare of the non-Christians. A great deal of care and energy was expended by them in these matters, and they showed the greatest concern in the progress and development of the Mohammedans and pagans, and a determination to assimilate them as rapidly as possible into the general body of citizens. Few cases of oppression or lack of justice in dealing with the inferior populations came to my attention 114 MY SEVEN YEARS IN THE PHILIPPINES during these years; on the whole, this is one of the brightest pages in the history of the decade, and one of the most substantial accomplishments of American ideals and example. The commission had entrusted the Hon. Vicente Ilustre as a sub-committee with the work of drafting a new code of laws for the Department of Mindanao and Sulu. This was worked over with the greatest care and circumspection, and passed in the summer of 1914, effective September 1st of that year. Although it is never easy to legislate in general terms for a popula- tion composed of varying strata of civilization, this new code was a substantial accomplishment. The main idea was to break