Note 31 — Chapter XI · Otis and the War

Luzon is practically bisected, east and west, by the Pasig River and a lake out of which it flows almost due west into Manila Bay, Manila being at the mouth of the river. Under the Spaniards, all Luzon north of the Pasig had been one military district and all Luzon south of the Pasig another. The Eighth Army Corps always spoke of northern Luzon as “the north line,” and of southern Luzon as “the south line.” The lake above mentioned is called the Laguna de Bay. It is nearly as big as Manila Bay, which last is called twenty odd miles wide by thirty long. On the map, the Laguna de Bay roughly resembles a half-moon, the man in which looks north, the western horn being near Manila, and the eastern near the Pacific coast of Luzon. General Otis had learned that at a place called Santa Cruz, toward the eastern end of the Laguna de Bay, there were a lot of steam launches and a Spanish gun-boat, which, if captured, would prove invaluable for river fighting and transportation of supplies along the Rio Grande de Pampanga and the other streams that watered the great central plain through which the railroad ran and which would have to be occupied later. So as soon as possible after General Lawton arrived and the necessary men could be spared, he was sent with 1500 troops to seize and bring back the boats in question. Of course the country he should overrun would have to be overrun again, because there were not troops enough to spare to garrison and hold it. But for the present, the launches would help. This expedition was successful, leaving the head of the lake nearest Manila on April 9th, and returning April 17th. It met with some good hard fighting on the way, sweeping everything before it of course, inflicting considerable loss, and suffering some. General Lawton’s report mentions, among other officers whose conspicuous gallantry and efficiency in action attracted his attention, Colonel Clarence R. Edwards, now Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department, of whose conduct in the capture of Santa Cruz on the morning of April 10th, he says: “No line of battle could have been more courageously or intelligently led.”31 The resistance was pretty real to Colonel Edwards then, i.e., the Benevolent Assimilation was quite strenuous, and it continued to be so until his great commander was shot through the breast in the forefront of battle in the hour of victory in December thereafter, and the colonel came home with the general’s body. Since then the colonel has soldiered no more, but has remained on duty at Washington, the birthplace of the original theory that the Filipinos welcomed our rule, charged with the duty of yearning over the erring Filipino who thinks he can govern himself but is mistaken, and also with the still more difficult task of trying to live up to the original theory as far as circumstances will permit. As a matter of fact, the Filipinos would probably have gotten along much better than the Cubans if we had let General Lawton do there what he and General Wood were set to work doing in Cuba shortly after Santiago fell. Public opinion is a very dangerous thing to trifle with, and when, in September, 1899, there was a story going the rounds of the American newspapers that Lawton, the hero of El Caney, the man who had reflected more glory on American arms in striking the shackles of Spain from Cuba than any other one soldier in the army, had called the war in the Philippines “this accursed war,” the War Department got busy over the cable to General Otis and obtained from him a denial that General Lawton had made such a remark. But the public knew its Lawton and what he had done in Cuba, and had a suspicion there might be some truth in the rumor. So the War Department cabled out saying “Newspapers say Lawton’s denial insufficient,” and then repeating the words attributed to him. So General Otis sent another denial that filled the bill.32 Of course General Lawton made no such remark. He was too good a soldier. It would have demoralized his whole command. But I served under him in both hemispheres, and I will always believe that he had a certain amount of regret at having to fight the Filipinos to keep them from having independence, when they were a so much likelier lot, take it all in all, than the Cubans we saw about Santiago. Moreover, I believe that had it not been then too late to ask him, he would have subscribed to the opinion Admiral Dewey had cabled home the previous summer: “These people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races.”