Note 21 — Chapter XI · Otis and the War

On the other hand, Major Wm. H. Bishop, of the 20th Kansas, was credited in a soldier’s letter written home, which first came to light in this country, with killing unarmed prisoners during the advance on Caloocan. The charges originated with a private of that regiment. Major Bishop denied the charges.21 An investigation followed, in the course of which somebody made an innuendo, or charge—it is not important which—that other officers used their influence to prevent a full ventilation of the matter, specifically, General Funston, then Colonel of the 20th Kansas, and Major Metcalf, of the same regiment. These last two also made a most vigorous general denial, and nothing whatever was established against them. The whole matter was finally disposed of by being forwarded to the War Department at Washington by General Otis on July 13, 1899, some six months after the occurrences alleged, with the remark that he (General Otis) “doubted the wisdom of a court-martial” of the soldier who had made the charge against Major Bishop, “as it would give the insurgent authorities a knowledge of what was taking place, and they would assert positively that our troops practised inhumanities, whether the charges could be proven or not” and that they would use the incident “as an excuse to defend their own barbarities.”22 The last endorsement on the papers preceding General Otis’s final endorsement was one by Colonel Crowder, now (1912) Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, in which he said: “I am not convinced from a careful reading of this report, that Private Brenner has made a false charge against Captain Bishop”; adding that “considerations of public policy, sufficiently grave to silence every other demand, require that no further action be taken in this case.”23 The “considerations of public policy” were of course those indicated in General Otis’s final endorsement on the papers, already quoted. They were compellingly controlling, in my judgment, independently of the merits. Washing one’s soiled linen in public is never advisable, and placing a weapon in your enemy’s hand in time of war is at least equally unwise. Some shreds of this once much mooted matter doubtless still linger in the public memory. It has been thus briefly ventilated here solely to trace the genesis of the bitterness of that war, and of numerous later barbarities avenged in kind. The bitterness thus early begun grew as the war went on, until every time a hapless Filipino peasant soldier speaking only two or three words of Spanish would falsely explain, when captured, that he was a non-combatant, an amigo (friend), it usually at once filled the captor with vivid recollections of slain comrades, and of rumored or sometimes proven mutilation of their bodies after death, and these reflections would at once fill him with a yearning desire to blow the top of the amigo’s head off, whether he yielded to the desire or not. Of no instance where he did so yield am I aware. But I do know that the invariable statement of all Filipinos unarmed and un-uniformed when captured, to the effect that they were amigos, became to the American soldier not remotely dissimilar to the waving of a red rag at a bull. Of course this was also due, largely, to the guerrilla practice of hiding guns when hard-pressed and actually plunging at once into some make-believe agricultural pursuit. As for Major Bishop, it is inconceivable to me that he gave any order to kill unarmed prisoners. Even admitting for the sake of the argument that he is a fiend, he is not a fool. As a matter of fact, he was a brave soldier, as all the reports show, and is a reputable lawyer, having many warm friends whose opinion of any man would command respect anywhere. The truth of the whole matter probably is that just before going into battle, when our troops were in an ugly temper by reason of the rumors of barbarities alleged to have been perpetrated by the enemy, or contemplated by him, the word was passed along the line to “Take no more prisoners than we have to,” and that that thought originated with some irresponsible private soldier of the line inflamed by stories of mutilation of our dead or of maltreatment of our wounded. Such a “word,” so passed from man to man, can, in the heat of conflict, very soon evolve into something having for practical purposes all the force and effect of an order.