Note 50 — Chapter XIV · The Taft Commission

Ever since Aguinaldo had escaped through our lines in November, 1899, his capture had been the one great consummation most devoutly wished. It has already been shown how busy with the war the army was all the time Judge Taft was gayly jogging away astride of his peace hobby about the insurrection being really quite regretted and over. However, in the favorite remark with which he used to wave the insurrection into thin air, to the effect that it was now merely “a Mafia on a large scale,” there was one element of truth. The general feeling of the people, both educated and uneducated, was such as to countenance the attitude of the leaders that pro-American tendencies were treason. Any leader who surrendered of course was thereafter an object of at least some suspicion to his fellow-countrymen, however assiduous his subsequent double-dealing. As long as Aguinaldo remained out, this state of affairs was sure to continue indefinitely, possibly for years to come. If captured, he would probably himself give up the struggle, and use his influence with the rest to do likewise. Therefore, in the spring of 1901, each and every one of General MacArthur’s 70,000 men was, and had been since 1899, on the qui vive to make his own personal fortunes secure for life, and gain lasting military distinction, by taking any sort of chances to capture Aguinaldo. On February 8, 1901, an officer of General Funston’s district, the Fourth, in central Luzon, intercepted a messenger bearing despatches from Aguinaldo to one of his generals of that region, directing the general (Lacuna) to send some reinforcements to him, Aguinaldo. General Funston’s headquarters were then at San Fernando, in the province of Pampanga—organized as a “civil” government province by act of the Taft Commission just five days later.50 Through these despatches and their bearer, General Funston ascertained the hiding-place of the insurgent chieftain to be at a place called Palanan, in the mountains of Isabela Province, in northeastern Luzon, near the Pacific Coast. Early in the war we had availed ourselves of a certain tribe, or clan, known as the Maccabebes, who look nowise different from all other Filipinos, but who had, under the Spanish government, by reason of long-standing feuds with their more rebellious neighbors, come to be absolutely loyal to the Spanish authorities. When we came they had transferred that loyalty to us, and had now become a recognized and valuable part of our military force. So it occurred to General Funston; “Why not personate the reinforcements called for, the American officers to command the expedition assuming the rôle of captured American prisoners?” The plan was submitted to General MacArthur and adopted. A picked company of Maccabebes was selected, consisting of about eighty men, and General Funston decided to go himself, taking with him on the perilous expedition four young officers of proven mettle: Captain Harry W. Newton, 34th Infantry, U. S. Volunteers, now a captain of the Coast Artillery; Captain R. T. Hazzard, 11th Volunteer Cavalry; Lieutenant O. P. M. Hazzard, his brother, of the same regiment, the latter now an officer of the regular army, and Lieutenant Mitchell, “my efficient aid.”51 March 6, 1901, the U.S.S. Vicksburg slipped quietly out of Manila Bay, bearing the participants in the desperate enterprise—as desperate an undertaking as the heart and brain of a soldier ever carried to a successful conclusion. General Thomas H. Barry wrote Secretary of War Root, after they left, telling of their departure, and stating that he did not much expect ever to see them again. The chances were ten to one that the eighty men would meet five or ten times their number, and, as they were to masquerade as troops of the enemy, they could not complain, under the recognized laws of war as to spies, at being summarily shot if captured alive. And the whole Filipino people were a secret service ready to warn Aguinaldo, should the carefully concocted ruse be discovered anywhere along the journey. They went down to the southern end of Luzon, and through the San Bernardino Straits into the Pacific Ocean, and thence up the east coast of Luzon to Casiguran Bay, about 100 miles south of Palanan, landing at Casiguran Bay, March 14th. The “little Macks,” as General Funston calls the Maccabebes, were made to discard their dapper American uniforms after they got aboard the ship, and don instead a lot of nondescript clothing gathered by the military authorities at Manila before the Vicksburg sailed, so as to resemble the average insurgent command. Not a man of them had been told of the nature of the expedition before sailing. This was not for fear of treachery, but lest some one of the faithful “Macks” should get his tongue loosed by hospitality before departing. Also, their Krag-Jorgensen regulation rifles were taken from them, and a miscellaneous assortment of old Springfields, Mausers, etc., given them instead, to complete the deception. An ex-insurgent officer, well known to Aguinaldo, but now in General Funston’s employ, was to play the rôle of commanding officer of the “reinforcements.” To read General Funston’s account of this expedition is a more convincing rebuttal of the contemporaneous Taft denials of Filipino hostility and of the unanimity of the feeling of the people against us, than a thousand quotations from official documents could ever be. It was necessary to land more than 100 miles south of Aguinaldo’s hiding-place, lest the smoke of the approaching vessel should be sighted from a distance, and some peasant or lookout give the alarm. Accordingly, they landed at Casiguran Bay by night, with the ship’s lights screened, the Vicksburg at once departing out of sight of land, and agreeing to meet them off Palanan, their destination, on March 25th, eleven days later. From the beginning they vigilantly and consummately played the rôle planned, the “Macks” having been drilled on the way up, each and all, in the story they were to tell at the first village near Casiguran Bay, and everywhere thereafter, to the effect that they had come across country, and en route had met ten American soldiers out map-making, and had killed two, wounded three, and captured five. They were to point to General Funston and the four other Americans in corroboration of their story. Speaking of himself and his four fellow “prisoners,” General Funston says, “We were a pretty scrubby looking lot of privates.” The villagers received the patriot forces, thus flushed with triumph, in an appropriate manner, and supplied them with rations and guides for the rest of their 100-mile journey to the headquarters of the “dictator.” General Funston is even at pains to say for the village officials that they were very humane and courteous to himself and the other four American “prisoners.” They reached Palanan Bay, eight miles from Palanan, on March 22d. Here Hilario Tal Placido, the ex-insurgent officer whose rôle in the present thrilling drama was that of “commanding officer” of the expedition, sent a note to Aguinaldo, stating that he had halted his command for a rest at the beach preparatory to marching inland and reporting to the Honorable Presidente, that they were very much exhausted, and much in need of food, and please to send him some. Of course that was the natural card to play to put Aguinaldo off his guard. The food came, and the bearers returned and casually reported to the Honorable Presidente that his honorable reinforcements would soon be along, much to the honorable joy—to make the thing a little Japanesque—of the president of the honorable republic. This incident has been since made the occasion of some criticism—that it was contrary to decency to accept Aguinaldo’s food and then attack him afterwards. General Funston very properly replies in effect that the case would have been very different had he thrown himself on Aguinaldo’s mercy, taken his food, and used treachery afterwards, but that his conduct was entirely correct, under the code of war, for the reason that should he and his command be captured while personating enemy’s forces, Aguinaldo would have had a perfect right, under the rules of the game, to shoot them all as spies. He adds rather savagely, concerning “certain ladylike persons in the United States” who have censured his course in the matter, that he “would be very much interested in seeing the results of a surgical operation performed on the skull of a man who cannot readily see the radical difference between the two propositions,” and that he doubts if a good quality of calf brains would be revealed by the operation.