

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



539 



ized territory of the islands, comprising the parts Orders were sent from Washington for the military 

 that are commercially and politically important, *~' * ri "" a:*K o^ n f ,; r-i _: _ . 



while military rule remained necessary only for 

 the Mohammedan tribes of the southern islands, 

 where Spain never obtained a firm foothold. 



In the very last days of the insurrection the 

 American public was led to believe from revela- 

 tions of mistakes and misdeeds of the military in 

 the Philippines that the rebellion had become 

 chronic and the relations between the natives and 

 the Americans more incurably bad than ever ex- 

 isted between the natives and their Spanish mas- 

 ters. Major L. W. T. Waller, who lost a part of 

 his detachment from starvation and nearly per- 

 ished himself in a march across Samar, was tried 

 by court-martial on a charge of murder for order- 

 " tig inhabitants of that island to be shot without 

 trial. He pleaded that his acts were a just re- 

 taliation against the inhabitants of that island 

 who had "committed unspeakable atrocities on 

 American soldiers, and, moreover, that he was fol- 

 lowing out the orders of Gen. Jacob H. Smith, 

 which were to kill and burn and make Samar a 

 howling wilderness, treating every male over ten 

 years of age who had not obeyed the proclamation 

 of concentration as an active insurgent. Major 

 Waller was acquitted, and Lieut. J. H. A. Day, 

 of the marines, was acquitted. Gen. Chaffee dis- 

 approved the findings as contrary to the evidence. 

 Major Cornelius Gardener, Civil Governor of 

 Tayabas province, whose reputation was high both 

 as a military officer and a civil administrator, 

 made a report after a more vigorous military pol- 

 icy was adopted, expressing his opinion that the 

 good sentiment and loyalty that formerly existed 

 among the people of his province to the United 

 States Government was being fast destroyed and 

 a deep hatred engendered owing to the conduct of 

 the troops, such as extensive burning of barrios 

 in trying to lay waste the country so that the in- 

 surgents could not occupy it, the torturing of na- 

 tives by the so-called water-cure, and other meth- 



1s in order to obtain information, and the failure 

 af inexperienced lieutenants to distinguish be- 

 tween friendly and unfriendly natives. The 

 troops called all natives " niggers," and treated 

 ill alike harshly. When this report reached 



Washington the Secretary of War called upon 



lajor Gardener for specifications and evidence 

 and directed Gen. Chaffee to have his charges 

 against the army investigated. A committee of 

 the Senate was inquiring into the administration 

 of x the Philippines. The attention of the commit- 

 tee was irregularly brought to the Gardener re- 



trial of Gen. Smith and of Major Glen, Major Re- 

 gan, Lieut. Conger, and Surgeon Lyon. Gen. Ja- 

 cob H. Smith's advocate admitted to the full the 

 orders in which Major Waller justified his con- 

 duct in having 11 natives executed without trial. 

 Major Waller and Lieut. Day were acquitted on 

 the ground that they were obeying orders. Gen. 

 Smith's counsel justified the orders that he issued 

 on the ground that they were covered by General 

 Order 100, approved by President Lincoln in -18<>3. 

 He had reduced to submission the treacherous and 

 implacable inhabitants of Samar, a result that 

 Spain had never been able to achieve, and yet had 

 not transgressed the limits of retaliation for in- 

 human practises and breaches of the laws of war 

 that are recognized in international law. The 

 court found Gen. Smith guilty of the charge of 

 conduct prejudicial to discipline and good order 

 and sentenced him to be admonished by the re- 

 viewing authority. Sec. Root could find nothing 

 in Gen. Smith's orders authorizing the illegal exe- 

 cution of natives over ten years old, yet the lan- 

 guage of his orders was reprehensible; therefore 

 President Roosevelt retired him from active serv- 

 ice with a reprimand. The Senate censured the 

 measures of Gen. Bell in Luzon, especially the con- 

 centration camps and the selection by lot of an 

 insurgent officer or prominent citizen to be shot 

 for every American soldier or friendly Filipino 

 who was assassinated. Gen. Lloyd Wheaton ac- 

 cepted full responsibility for the plan of campaign 

 carried out in obedience to his orders, as Gen. Mc- 

 Arthur did for the ruse of war by which Gen. 

 Funston captured Aguinaldo. Gen. Wheaton 

 approved a report of Col. Wagner affirming the 

 effectiveness of the concentration in protecting 

 the natives of Laguna, Batangas, and parts of 

 Cavite and Tayabas from guerrilla bands. After 

 more than two years of occupation it had been 

 found impossible to exterminate these bands or 

 capture their leaders owing to the reign of terror 

 which they exercised over the inhabitants. Their 

 systematic assassination, sometimes by burying 

 alive, of natives who refused to contribute to the 

 support of the insurrection, enabled them to wring 

 a steady war revenue from people presumably en- 

 joying the privileges of free government and the 

 protection of the United States. The War De- 

 partment approved the policy that had, within 

 a few weeks, brought to a termination the guerril- 

 la warfare with its accompaniments of long-con- 

 tinued suffering, destruction, and assassination. 

 The provincial secretary of Batangas, a loyal na- 



port, which was held in the War Department for tive, reported that during the wars the population 



investigation, through Gen. Miles, who criticized 

 the campaign in the Philippines for its marked 

 severity. The committee, which questioned Gov.- 

 Gen. Taft closely on all Philippine affairs, sent 

 for two discharged soldiers, who said they had 

 seen the water-cure applied, and from them heard 



of that province had been reduced, largely by dis- 

 ease, from 300,000 to 200,000, and that distress was 

 general and famine imminent. The authorities 

 at Washington upheld Gen. Chaffee in his policy 

 that had proved effective and humane, and Gen. 

 Bell and Gen. Smith in the measures of relalia- 



a story of the torture being administered to the tion they adopted, holding that these came with- 

 president of a municipality under the direction of in the laws of war as codified in General Order 100 

 Lieut. Conger and the medical oversight of Sur- and were calculated to end fighting that was deci- 

 geon Lyon by order of Capt. Glen. The President mating the garrisons by the resort on the part of 

 gave directions that every violation of law and 

 every act of cruelty and barbarity be investiga- 

 ted in the fullest and most circumstantial man- 

 ner and the offenders be brought to justice. It 

 was believed at Washington that violations of 

 humanity would prove to be few and occasional, 

 and not to characterize the army in general. For 

 the very reason that the President intended to 

 back up the army in the heartiest fashion in every 

 lawful and legitimate method of doing its work, 

 he also intended to see that rigorous care was ex- 

 ercised to detect and prevent cruelty or brutality. 



the natives to practises intolerable among civil- 

 ized nations. Major Edwin F. Glen and his subor- 

 dinates, accused of inflicting the water-cure to ob- 

 tain information of natives who had roasted and 

 otherwise tortured a soldier of their regiment, were 

 tried later in the year. Capt. Cornelius Brownell 

 admitted that Father Augustine, a Filipino priest 

 at Banate, had died after the third application of 

 the water-cure, the only death reported from this 

 cause. 



The concentration camps established by Brig.- 

 Gen. J. Franklin Bell in Laguna and Batangas 



