Note 40 — Chapter XV · Governor Taft—1901–2

It was intimated above that Senator Bacon’s army friend’s “clouds of vampire bats softly swirling” over the corpses of reconcentrados, were doing said swirling not over Batangas at all, but over Samar. Any man familiar with the lay of the land in the two provinces can see from the letter that it was written from Samar. Moreover, Colonel Wagner afterwards testified before the Senate Committee of 190240 that if there had been any great mortality in the reconcentration camps in Batangas, he would have known of it. He inspected practically all those Batangas camps. Nobody who was in the islands at the time doubts but what such conditions may have obtained in some places under General Smith in Samar, or believes for a moment that any such conditions would have been tolerated under General Bell. General Bell has that aversion to either causing or witnessing needless suffering, which you almost invariably find in men who are both constitutionally brave and temperamentally generous and considerate of others. But the moral sought to be pointed here is not that the Bell reconcentration in Batangas was as merciful as the Smith performances in Samar were hellish, but that, in all matters concerning the Philippines, the army, as in the case of Senator Bacon’s friend, is gagged by operation of law, and its enforced silence is peculiarly an asset in the hands of the party in power seeking to continue in power, in a distant colonial enterprise. Senator Bacon withheld his friend’s name, because for an army officer to tell the truth about the Philippines would be likely to get him into trouble with the President of the United States. The President, be it remembered, is also the leader of the political party to which he belongs. That is why the country has never been able to get any light from those who know the most about the Philippines and the wisdom or unwisdom of keeping them, viz., the army. In 1898 this republic was beguiled into abandonment of the faiths of the founders and started after a gold brick, thinking it was a Klondyke. Then and ever since, the most important and material witnesses concerning the wisdom or unwisdom of keeping the brick, viz., the army,—which best of all knows the rank folly of it—have been gagged by operation of law. All republics that have heretofore become monarchies, have become so through manipulation of the army by men in power seeking to continue in power. We should either resign our expensive kingship over the Philippines or get a king for the whole business, and be done with it. We have some ready-made coronet initials in T. R.41