Chapter XIX · Governor Wright—1905

My heart is heavy with the fate of that unhappy people.

When I finally left Samar and came to Manila, in November, 1904, I was not prepared to figure out how or how soon, the blunder we made by the purchase of the Philippine archipelago could be corrected. But my mental attitude toward the whole Philippine problem had undergone a complete change. In 1901 Governor Wright, then Vice-Governor, had written me: “You younger men out here, who have cast your fortunes with this country, are to be, in all likelihood, in the natural course of events, its future rulers.” Up to 1903 I had clung to that idea with the devotion of what was really high and earnest purpose, untroubled with misgivings of any kind. In November, 1903, in Albay, Judge Carson and myself had talked over the long struggle of the civil government to walk without leaning on the military, and, with the readiness of one vested with authority to believe such authority wisely vested, and the readiness of a civilian lawyer to jealously guard the American home idea that the military should be subordinate to the civil authority, I had cordially agreed with a sentiment one day expressed by Judge Carson concerning Governor Taft about “the splendid moral fibre of the man,” meaning in keeping the military from prancing out of the traces. After Governor Taft left the Islands to be Secretary of War (December 23, 1903), and while I was still in Albay, I had learned of the 120 men who had died in the Albay jail while awaiting trial, and thereafter something of the magnitude of the Ola insurrection there, and that had given me pause as to the practical benevolence of the operation of “a benign civil government.” Then the Samar massacres of 1904, and the gory panorama I had there witnessed, had finally convinced me that a republic like ours is wholly unfitted to govern people against their consent. But I did not tell anybody in Manila all these things. I simply pondered them. Grover Cleveland was the only man in the world I would have liked to talk to just then freely and fully. And he was not about. “My heart was heavy with the fate of that unhappy people” as Senator Bacon had said in the Senate in 1902, after visiting the Islands in 1901. I did not condemn Governor Wright. I quite realized that I was “up against” about the largest ethical problem of world politics, one on which the nations are much divided, and that I was not infallible. I did not say to the Governor: “Governor, let’s resign and go home and tell our people that this whole business is a mistake.” Nor did I ever lose faith in Governor Wright personally. If I had, I might just as well have said: “After this, the deluge.” I would simply have lost faith in human nature. I had not then, nor have I since, known a man of higher personal character. I had simply lost faith in Benevolent Assimilation, and begun to take the Filipino people seriously as a potential nation, probably better able to handle their own domestic problems than we will ever be able to handle them for them.

The day after I resigned, Mr. Justice Carson, of the Supreme Court, and Mr. Wilfley, the Attorney-General, came to call on me. My friends knew I was very much troubled over the Samar business. I was doing some grumbling, but without specifying, because to specify would mean that we all of us ought to give up the life careers we had planned for ourselves in the Islands. I knew the old familiar answer a grumbler was sure to get in the Philippines, viz., “Old man, you’ve been out here too long. You better go home.” But I did a little more grumbling to my friends Judge Carson and Mr. Wilfley, during the course of their visit. They could both pretty well guess what was the matter. But Judge Carson and I had come out in 1899, and had served through the war together. He knew all about the Albay business, and somewhat of the Samar business. Wilfley had not come out until the civil government was founded in 1901. Mr. Wilfley said cheerily: “Oh, Blount, you are too conscientious.” I shall never forget what happened then. Judge Carson said, with a ring of something like anger in his tone: “No, Wilfley, I’ll be d—d if he is.” Is it any wonder that ever since I have worn that man, as Hamlet would say, “in my heart’s core”? Here was as brave and true an Irishman as ever gained distinction on battlefield or bench. And he understood. He did not say—which was the implication of Wilfley’s tone—“Old man, you’ve been out here too long, and illness has made you peevish.” He knew what was the matter. He knew that as trial judges he and I had not been small editions of Lord Jeffries, as some of our American critics had implied, BUT HE ALSO KNEW THAT THERE WAS NO METHOD OF DRAWING AN INDICTMENT AGAINST A WHOLE PEOPLE.

Possibly the intensity of my feelings on this great subject, then and ever since, hampers the power of clear expression. Therefore, a word more in attempt at elucidation. In 1898, Judge Carson and I, with many thousands of other young Americans, had trooped down to Cuba, in the wake of the impetuous Roosevelt, to free the inhabitants of that ill-fated island from Spanish rule, drive the Spaniards from the Western Hemisphere, and put a stop to Spain’s pious efforts “to spare the great island from the dangers of premature independence,” as she always expressed her attitude toward Cuba. We had many of us been fired by the catchy Roosevelt utterance which did so much to bring on the Spanish War, viz., “The steps of the White House are slippery with the blood of the Cuban reconcentrados.” Then in 1899, we had gone to the Philippines, and had ever since been engaged there in “sparing the Islands from the danger of premature independence,” and the Samar massacres of 1904 were, to me, the apotheosis of the work. So that after November 8, 1904, I felt “The steps of the White House are slippery with the blood of the people of my district.” It had all been done under the pious pretence that the Filipinos welcomed our rule—a pretence which had taken the form for six years of systematic asseveration that they did so welcome it. Yet it was not true that they, or any appreciable fraction of them, had ever welcomed our rule. And it never will be true. Surely no man can see in this book any scolding or unkindness. It is an attempt merely to bring home to my countrymen a strategic fact, a fact which it is folly to ignore. But to return to the thread of our story.

The Americans give out and write in their papers that the Philippine Islands are completely pacified, and that the Filipinos love Americans and their rule. This, doubtless with good motives, is complete and utter humbug, for the country is honeycombed with insurrection and plots; the fighting has never ceased; and the natives loathe the Americans and their theories, saying so openly in their native press and showing their dislike in every possible fashion. Their one idea is to be rid of the U. S. A. * * * and to be free of a burden of taxation which is heavier than any the Spaniards laid on them.

Also an Englishman who was in Samar in 1904–5, a Mr. Hyatt, who, with his brother, served with the American troops there in the bloody Pulajan uprising, afterwards wrote a book called the Little Brown Brother, wherein he fully corroborates Mrs. Dauncey’s appreciation of the situation during that period.

Nowhere in the civil government reports do you find the slightest recognition that these disorders had any relation to each other, or to the fundamental problem of public order, or any political significance whatsoever, each being treated as a purely local issue, the idea that the circumstance of Samar’s having been thrown into pandemonium by the successes of the enemies of the American Government might have encouraged its enemies in the neighboring islands, never seeming to occur to the authors of the said reports. General Carter’s report goes on to state that within five months after the Samar outbreak of July, 1904, seven hundred native troops had been put in the field in that turbulent island. In December, 1904, troops began to be poured into Samar, so that it was not long before the seven hundred native troops had become seventeen hundred or eighteen hundred, and, says General Carter, “in order to free them from garrison work in the towns, sixteen companies of the 12th and 14th Infantry were distributed about the disaffected coasts to enable the people who so desired to come from their hiding places”—whither they had gone because the American flag afforded them no protection—“and undertake the rebuilding of their burned homes.” General Carter avoids touching on the civil government’s (to him well-known) obsession about its popularity, a state of mind which could see no “political” significance in outbreaks of any kind. But he does use this very straightforward language about Samar:

Whatever may have been the original cause of the outbreak, it was soon lost sight of when success had drawn a large proportion of the people away from their homes and fields. * * * Except in the largest towns it became simply a question of joining the Pulajans or being harried by them. In the absence of proper protection thousands joined in the movement.

When the insurrection was over a number of these leaders remained out and refused to surrender. Included among them were Felizardo and Montalon. The system of voluntary contributions, carried on during the insurrecto period, was continued after establishment of civil government.

Again Governor Shanks says, with more of frankness than diplomacy, considering that he was a provincial governor under the civil government:

The establishment of civil government of this province was premature and ill-advised. Records show the capture or surrender since establishment of civil government of nearly 600 hostile firearms.

One of the causes contributory to the Cavite-Batangas-Laguna insurrection is stated in the report of the Governor-General for 1905 thus:

Another of the contributory causes is thus stated:

There was at the time [the fall of 1904] also considerable activity among the small group of irreconcilables in Manila, who began agitating for immediate independence, doubtless because of the supposed effect it would have on the presidential election in the United States, in which the Philippines was a large topic of discussion. Evidently this was regarded as a favorable time for a demonstration by Felizardo, Montalon, De Vega, Oruga, Sakay [etc]. All these men had been officers of the Filipino army during the insurrection.

The conclusion set forth in the said resolution and the said executive order, as to the fact that there existed in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas open insurrection against the constituted authorities, was a conclusion entirely within the discretion of the legislative and executive branches of the Government, after an investigation of the facts.

Yet two years later the same “constituted authorities” certified to the President of the United States, in effect, as we shall see, that no open insurrection against the constituted authorities had occurred during the preceding two years. They do not in their certificate ignore Cavite and Batangas. They mention them by name, with a lot of whereases, explaining that after all they really believe that the majority of the people in the provinces aforesaid were not in sympathy with the uprising. However, after they get through with their whereases they face the music squarely, and certify to “the condition of general and complete peace.” Of the “nigger in the woodpile” more anon.

Governor Wright was not a party to the certificate of 1907. He left the Islands on leave November 4, 1905. A speech made by him prior to his departure, as published in a Manila paper, indicates an expectation to return. He never did. In 1906 he was demoted to be Ambassador to Japan, a place of far less dignity, and far less salary, which he resigned after a year or so. Vice-Governor Ide acted as Governor-General until April 2, 1906, on which date he was formally inaugurated as Governor-General.

I have always thought that the reason Governor Wright did not go back to the Philippines as Governor after 1905 was that he did not continue to “jolly” the Filipinos, and abstain from ruthlessly crushing their hopes of seeing independence during their lifetime, as Mr. Taft did continuously during his stay out there. The inevitable tendency of the Wright frank talk was from the beginning to discredit the Taft pleasing and evasive nothings. Also, it was followed, as we have seen, by quite a crop of serious disturbances of public order, and somebody had to be “the goat.”