Note 27 — Chapter III · Anderson and Aguinaldo

That cablegram of July 22d, above quoted, in which the commanding general of our forces in the Philippines advises the Washington government, “The people expect independence,” is the hardest thing in the published archives of our government covering that momentous period for those who love the memory of Mr. McKinley to get around.27 After the war with the Filipinos broke out Mr. McKinley said repeatedly in public speeches, “I never dreamed they would turn against us.” You do not find the Anderson cablegram of July 22d in the published report of the War Department covering the period under consideration. General Anderson addressed it to the Secretary of War and signed it, and, probably for lack of army cable facilities, got Admiral Dewey to send it to the Secretary of the Navy for transmission to the Secretary of War.28 Certain it must be that at some Cabinet meeting on or after July 22, 1898, either the Secretary of the Navy or the Secretary of War read in the hearing of the President and the rest of his advisers that message from General Anderson, “The people expect independence.” The object here is not to inveigh against Mr. McKinley. It is to show that, as Gibbon told us long ago, in speaking of the discontent of far distant possessions and the lack of hold of the possessor on the affections of the inhabitants thereof, “the cry of remote distress is ever faintly heard.” The average American to-day, if told the Filipinos want independence, will give the statement about the same consideration Mr. McKinley did then, and if told that the desire among them for a government of their people by their people for their people has not been diminished since the late war by tariff taxation without representation, and the steady development of race prejudice between the dominant alien race and the subject one, he will begin to realize by personal experience how faintly the uttered longings of a whole people may fall on distant ears.