Note 30 — Chapter XIV · The Taft Commission

Later on, when we came to understand the Filipinos better, this summary method of dealing with the faint-hearted lost much of its initial horrifying force, and the failure of such to appeal to us for protection lost much of its strangeness. In the first place, nobody loves a traitor. Even those to whom he claims to have betrayed his countrymen do not trust him implicitly. Again, Latin countries never assume that before a man is punished for alleged crime he has been confronted with the witnesses against him. Such testimony is, under their jurisprudence, frequently received in his absence. The legal department of General MacArthur’s office once got hold of a captured insurgent paper subscribed with the autograph of Juan Cailles, one of their best generals. It directed that a named Filipino residing in a certain town garrisoned by American troops be executed—we of course, would call it “assassinated”—at a certain hour on a certain day in a public street of the town, and that the soldier or soldiers performing the “execution” should declare to the bystanders, if any, in so doing, that it was done because the man was a traitor, a friend of the Americans. We kept this paper, intending to hang Juan whenever he should be captured. He held out a long time, and finally surrendered unconditionally—but he proved such an elegant fellow, game as a pebble, courteous as Chesterfield, and immensely popular with his people, that it was decided he could be of more service as a live governor of a province than he could as a dead general,30 so he was appointed a provincial governor by Governor Taft, and made a splendid official.