and murdered would now be those Americans who failed to escape seasonably. I do not mean to say that such a state of affairs would come about immediately, but it would certainly arise within a comparatively short time. Sooner yet "the united Filipino people" would split up on old tribal lines, and fly at each other's throats.

ment they could run if permitted now or at any time in the future." - BLOUNT, p. 73.

VOL. I-3

CHAPTER VIII

DID WE DESTROY A REPUBLIC?

THE claim has frequently been made that the United States government destroyed a republic in the Philippine Islands,1 but some of the critics seem to entertain peculiar ideas as to what a republic is. Blount states that Aguinaldo declined to hear our declaration of independence read "because we would not recognize his right to assert the same truths," and then apparently forgetting the Insurgent chief's alleged adherence to the principles of this document, he lets the cat out of the bag by saying that "the war satisfied us all that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition of Porfirio Diaz," and would himself have been "The Republic." 3

He would doubtless have set up just this sort of a government, if not assassinated too soon, but it would

1 Blount refers to

"The death-warrant of the Philippine republic signed by Mr. McKinley on September 16th." BLOUNT, p. 99.

Speaking of Mr. Roosevelt's opinion of the practicability of granting independence to the Filipinos, he says:

"Yet it represented then one of the many current misapprehensions about the Filipinos which moved this great nation to destroy a young republic set up in a spirit of intelligent and generous emulation of our own." BLOUNT, p. 230.

2 "Here was a man claiming to be President of a newly established republic based on the principles set forth in our Declaration of Independence, which republic had just issued a like Declaration, and he was invited to come and hear our declaration read, and declined because we would not recognize his right to assert the same truths." - BLOUNT, p. 59.

3 "The war satisfied us all that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition of Porfirio Diaz, and that the Filipino republic-that-might-havebeen would have been, very decidedly, a going concern,' although Aguinaldo probably would have been able to say with a degree of accuracy, as Diaz might have said in Mexico for so many years, 'The Republic? I am the Republic."" BLOUNT, p. 292.

hardly have accorded with the principles of the declaration of independence, nor would it have been exactly a government of the people, by the people, for the people.'

Blount truly says that the educated Filipinos, admittedly very few in number, absolutely control the masses. He adds that presidentes of pueblos are as absolute bosses as is Murphy in Tammany Hall, and that the towns taken collectively constitute the provinces. The first statement is true, and the second, which is tantamount to a declaration that the presidentes control every square foot of the provinces and every man in them, is not so far from the truth as it might be. I have been old-fashioned enough to retain the idea that a republic is "a state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them."

Blount labored under no delusion as to the fitness of the common people to govern.3

"The war demonstrated to the army, to a Q. E. D., that the Filipinos are 'capable of self-government,' unless the kind which happens to suit the genius of the American people is the only kind of government on earth that is respectable, and the one panacea for all the ills of government among men without regard to their temperament or historical antecedents. The educated patriotic Filipinos can control the masses of the people in their several districts as completely as a captain ever controlled a company." BLOUNT, p. 292.

2 "Even to-day the presidente of a pueblo is as absolute boss of his town as Charles F. Murphy is in Tammany Hall. And a town or pueblo in the Philippines is more than an area covered by more or less contiguous buildings and grounds. It is more like a township in Massachusetts, so that when you account governmentally for the pueblos of a given province, you account for every square foot of that province and for every man in it."

"In there reviewing the Samar and other insurrections of 1905 in the Philippines, you find him (i.e. Roosevelt) dealing with the real root of the evil with perfect honesty, though adopting the view that the Filipino people were to blame therefor, because we had placed too much power in the hands of an ignorant electorate, which had elected rascally officials." BLOUNT, p. 297.

Also:

"But we proceeded to ram down their throats a preconceived theory that the only road to self-government was for an alien people to step in and make the ignorant masses the sine qua non.” BLOUNT, p. 546.

Not only did the Filipinos themselves understand perfectly well that they had no republic, but there were many of them who were fully aware of the fact that they could establish none. Fernando Acevedo, in writing to General Pío del Pilar on August 8, 1898, said:1—

"There could be no republic here, even though the Americans should consent, because, according to the treaties, the Filipinos are not in condition for a republic. Besides this, all Europe will oppose it, and if it should be that they divide our country as though it were a round cake, what would become of us and what would belong to us?"

I will now trace the evolution of the government which Aguinaldo did set up. In doing so I follow Taylor's argument very closely, drawing on his unpublished Ms., not only for ideas, but in some instances for the words in which they are clothed. I change his words in many cases, and do not mean to unload on him any responsibility for my statements, but do wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to him and at the same time to avoid the necessity for the continual use of quotation marks.

Aguinaldo's methods in establishing his republic are shown by his order 2 that "any person who fights for his country has absolute power to kill any one not friendly to our cause" and the further order prescribing that twelve lashes should be given to a soldier who lost even a single cartridge; while if he continued to waste ammunition he should be severely punished. In March, 1899, workmen who had abandoned their work in the arsenal at Malolos were arrested, returned, given twenty-five lashes each and then ordered to work.4

Also:

"Of course the ignorant electorate we perpetrated on Samar as an 'expression of our theoretical views' proved that we had gone too fast' in conferring self-government, or to quote Mr. Roosevelt, had been 'reposing too much confidence in the self-governing power of a people,' if to begin with the rankest material for constructing a government that there was at hand was to offer a fair test of capacity for self-government." BLOUNT, p. 546. 1 P. I. R., 499. 1 Ex. 134. 1 Ibid., 204. 6.

2 Ibid., 206. 1.

3 Ibid., 1124. 2.

The news that an American expedition was about to sail for the Philippines made him realize that he had not much more than a month in which to place himself in a position in which he would have to be consulted and assisted, and this he tried to do. The arms he received from Hongkong on May 23 enabled him to begin an insurrection, not as an ally of the United States, but on his own account. From May 21 to May 24 he issued orders for the uprising against Spain. On May 24 he declared himself Dictator of the Philippines in a proclamation in which he promised to resign his power into the hands of a president and cabinet, to be appointed when a constitutional assembly was convened, which would be as soon as the islands had passed into his control. He further announced that the North American nation had given its disinterested protection in order that the liberty of the Philippines should be gained. On May 25, 1898, the first American troops sailed from San Francisco for the Philippines.

Aguinaldo still had a month in which to seize enough Spanish territory to erect thereon what would appear to the Americans on their arrival to be a government of Luzón, of which he was the head. The Hongkong junta and Aguinaldo himself intended to ask for the recognition of their government, but they had first to create it. To obtain recognition it was necessary that the American commander on land should be able to report that wherever he or his troops had gone the country was ruled by Aguinaldo according to laws which showed that the people were capable of governing themselves.

As the United States is a republic it was natural that the directing group of insurgent leaders should decide upon a republican form of government. That form would appeal to the people of the United States; the first "Christian Asiatic Republic" was a description which would inevitably awaken sympathy in that mother of

1 P. I. R., 206. 6.