The conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898-1925

The arguments of those, who would retain the Islands purely for so-called benevolent motives, today consist mostly in prophecies of disaster. These men claim to see the downfall of all that is good in the Philippines in the event of American withdrawal. Suppose we view the record which the Filipinos have made within the last quarter of a century. We need not do this in detail, as that would demand too much time and space, but we can view the work as the American critics themselves have seen it.

An examination, therefore, would show that the record of the Filipinos has been like that of every other nation in the world for a similar period of time. There has been unwise legislation and excellent legislation. There have been ill-advised appointments as there are in every country on earth, but there have also been admirable choices for administrative and judicial positions. The people have regularly held their elections with earnestness but with fairness, and with orderly conduct. Said Governor General Wood to the Philippine Legislature in 1922:

I congratulate you and through you the Filipino people, on the orderly and lawful conduct of the recent elections which, notwithstanding the keenness of the struggle and the appearance of a strong new party in the field, were conducted with due regard to the rights of the candidates and with the absence of fraud and irregularity which would be a credit to any people.

Of course, the Filipinos have made mistakes. There have been errors in the conduct of their affairs, and these, sad to relate, have been meticulously picked out, enlarged, colored and blazoned before the American public by the retentionists who would fain base their campaign for indefinite control on the ground that the natives are incapable of governing themselves. But on the whole, what does the record show? The Wood-Forbes mission after spending six months in the Islands making the most exhaustive investigation for a report to a Republican President said, “no people under the friendly tutelage of another, have made so great a progress in so short a time”⁠[1]. The Filipino progress in the estimation of the late President Harding “is without parallel anywhere in the world”⁠[2]. Are these testimonials not convincing enough? Must there be absolute perfection? Must there be a Utopia in the Islands?

But there are those who would say that this progress has been due entirely to the “constant support and supervision at every step by Americans.” This is a great assumption. That is what every teacher is apt to think of a pupil’s achievement, but the pupils seldom agree and they generally have a right to think differently. The good schools, the good roads, the good water, the improved sanitary conditions—how were they achieved? At the outset the Americans contributed advice and direction—the Filipinos contributed the money and the labor. Now practically all four elements are contributed by the Filipinos themselves. If more American advice is needed in the future along these lines, this advice can be secured by paying for it as has been done in the past, but it will then be cheaper because there will be none of the heavy expenses attending American administration. This is what Asiatic nations like Siam have done, and they have achieved success and prosperity and have also maintained their honor as well.

It was Mr. Taft who at one time said that to confer independence upon the Filipinos would be “to subject the great mass of their people to the dominance of an oligarchical and probably exploiting minority.” Where have the Filipinos been all these years? For a long time they were under the domination of five oligarchs, the American Commissioners, and with the passing of years that number was reduced to one—the American Governor General under no responsibility to the people over whom he rules. This kind of oligarchy has been a stubborn fact—the Filipino “oligarchical minority” is a pure fancy.

That there will be leaders among the Filipinos is undoubtedly true, just as there are leaders and “bosses” in the political circles of the United States, and these leaders, like all leaders, will be a minority of the people, but they will at least be men of the same blood, the same aspirations, and the same traditions as their followers. These leaders will at least understand their constituents and have respect for them and sympathize with them, which is a very different thing from the government of millions of people by a few foreigners who look down upon the governed as members of an inferior race, and upon that assumption rest their right to govern. Well did Mr. Curry of New Mexico, who served eight years in the Philippines as governor of three provinces, finally say:

The government which the Filipinos will establish may not be approved by the ordinary American citizen, but it will suit the Filipinos themselves.

And that is the final test. The best government for any people is the government which they like.

Let us examine even more closely, however, the prophecy that if given entire independence the Filipinos would “fall a prey to the strongest of the sectional aggregations.” What does that statement mean? It means only that the strongest party will carry the elections, and the defeated party like all defeated parties here and elsewhere will bewail the fact that the country has become a “prey” to the officers in power. These prophecies are the familiar weapons of political contests. They do not frighten the Filipinos and they should not frighten Americans.

There is also the prophecy among retentionists that the Filipinos, if independent, will give up all that is good and take to mutual slaughter as the best way to settle their domestic difficulties. This argument is absurd. Filipinos have learned that good water is healthy and that good roads are useful, and they have no more desire to die of disease or to be killed in battle than peaceful Americans have. The instinct of self-preservation is as strong among them as it is among the Anglo-Saxons.

The Philippine schools which received such great impetus under early American guidance, why did they become so pronouncedly successful? Why are there more than a million children attending schools today? It is because the Filipinos have sent their children there to be taught. What made them do this? No law has compelled it. The children went and studied because they wanted to learn—Americans did not implant the desire in their breasts. It was already there in 1900 and it will remain there when America has gone.

How is the rest of the world today faring in this matter of self-government? Are there not nations all over the world governing themselves, not as the United States would have them, but as they themselves prefer? Nor are the eyes of the American people free from beams. We have only to read the morning paper to see things proposed and too often carried out by American governors, legislators, and statesmen, municipal, state and national, that more intelligent Americans deplore. And yet the remedy for these evils is not to invite some more successful nation to come and govern the United States, but to let the parties in error correct the abuses themselves. Well did President Eliot say:

“Political freedom means freedom to be feeble, foolish and sinful in public affairs as well as freedom to be strong, wise and good.”

And this is true of all freedom—individual or political. If the Filipinos should quarrel, therefore, which they have not yet done where the national independence of their country has been concerned, let the nation now free, whose way to freedom has not been made through dissension and folly, through bloodshed and civil war, cast the first stone.

But does bloodshed and civil war necessarily threaten the future of a Philippine republic? Too often it has been said that anarchy would inevitably ensue if the United States left the Islands. Let us look at this closely. When the American troops reached the Islands in 1898, there was no anarchy and the Filipinos were governing themselves. But more blood was shed in the Filipino-American war that ensued than in the three hundred years of Spanish oppression. There is no reason to think that Asiatics are more prone to civil war than Europeans. Turn the pages of history! The War of the Roses, the English Revolution and the wars with Scotland and Ireland occurred while the British nation was in the making. Gettysburg and Antietam, Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor—do not these names mean something to Americans? Are there not gray-haired men even today who remember the days when Americans killed their brother Americans on the field of battle? Remember that, and then bear in mind that Asiatic nations have endured as long as the memory of men extends, undestroyed by civil war. Why then should it be assumed that the Filipinos would develop a passion for slaughtering each other which would exceed the measure allowed to civilized nations?

Nor is this all. The history of the Philippines has shown that its people are natural republicans possessed of the democratic spirit, and the more recent pages of their history are illumined with the most eloquent proofs of their unity. Whenever or wherever the opportunity has been presented to them they have availed themselves of it by an attempt to establish a republic. When the American people first became acquainted with the Filipinos the latter were engaged in a fight for national independence. When success seemed within reach they set up not a Tagalo Republic, or a Republic of Luzon, but a Philippine Republic established by representatives from the Islands. They did not then draw a separate constitution for each province but instead prepared a constitution for the whole group of islands, and when the national hymn was composed by the revolutionists it was addressed not to any portion of the archipelago but to the whole adored fatherland. There is not a region in the whole archipelago which has not been sprinkled with the blood of its inhabitants in their struggle for the liberty of their country. “They could have had any number of men,” said Admiral Dewey in 1898, “it was just a question of arming them. They could have had the whole population.”

A great deal of harm has been done by Americans who misrepresent the true condition of the Philippines, that of calling the Filipinos tribesmen in particular being the most current infamy. The Filipinos know that to this day they are being thus discredited by innuendo if not by direct misrepresentation. They know that the majority of Americans in the Islands look upon them with undue authority and hardly concealed contempt. This attitude is not new to an Anglo-Saxon and where there is political mastery as well, the feeling of superiority is augmented. All this is, of course, offensive to the Filipino and it is an offense which seriously threatens the respect and the admiration which they have for all liberty-loving and democratic Americans.

Assuming, however, for the purposes of argument, that the American administration has governed well, what is there to assure the continuance of good government under their supervision? The whole policy of today which was really begun by Mr. Taft is founded on the assumption that the American people are and will continue to be unselfish toward the Filipino, and that they can be trusted as well to keep men in office anxious to carry out this unselfish and altruistic policy. Is this view compatible with human nature as justified by the experience of the American people at home? Have they forgotten the Tweed Ring and the Teapot Dome, to give only two illustrations?

There will always be in the future, as there has been in the past, a body of Americans anxious to make money and hoping to find it in the Philippines. There will always be governors naturally solicitous for the success of their administration and unwilling to disclose the facts which might lead to criticism or condemnation. They will always tell some of the Americans at home, as Mr. Taft told some thousands of “excellent and prominent gentlemen,” not to intermeddle because they are “very little able to understand” the situation. And then, of course, there will always be the great body of the good-natured but over-busy American people knowing little and caring less about their distant subjects and believing what Americans say about them because the latter are of their own flesh and blood. How many, how many indeed, are the Americans today who, on finding a small headline in some obscure corner of the daily newspaper to the effect that the “Filipinos want independence,” casually dismiss the subject by remarking, “Oh well, they shall have it when they are ready.”

It is in that manner that the good-natured American prides himself on the fair dealing which Filipinos are to receive from people of an alien race. Why do not these Americans pause a moment to consider whether their own house is in such good order, and whether they are willing to trust their own countrymen in matters concerning the life and the destiny of their own country. Do they not see their own officials, judges, mayors, governors and legislators directly opposed to public opinion and severely criticized in the newspapers and on the stump? So little is their trust in their own elected officers that they do not in many jurisdictions permit these men to occupy their positions for even a brief period of time without the additional safeguard of the recall, the initiative and the referendum, or a provision against re-election.

When we find representatives of a defeated political party in America prophesying all sorts of evil because their opponents, men of the same blood, color and ability as themselves, are placed in power by a majority vote,—when Americans will not trust Americans at home, how can the good-natured citizen, with nothing at stake in the Philippines, confidently hope that men can be trusted with absolute power over millions of aliens whom they consider their inferiors, and where there is no public opinion which they may fear, no American press to criticize them, no initiative, no referendum, no recall? Does the graft which disgraces every city in the United States disappear in the Philippines? Men are essentially selfish, and power is always used to benefit him who wields it.

There is another argument, however, which has been constantly urged by retentionists as well as by well-meaning Americans to the effect that an independent Philippines would become a prey to Japanese aggression and commercial exploitation. What are these arguments worth? It is well for these kindly Americans to first consider certain significant facts concerning Filipino-Japanese relations.

In the first place, then, it must be remembered that the Japanese and Filipinos always have maintained the best of relations. Both peoples respect each other, both nations sympathize with one another. Japan has also every desire to gain the abiding confidence of the Filipinos for, as the leader of the Far East, she wants all the other smaller nations to look upon her as their champion and their defender. She can, therefore, ill afford to make any move which may create the enmity of eleven million people.

Nor has Japan shown any desire to make the Philippines a “hitching post” as Secretary Day of McKinley’s cabinet had openly advocated twenty-seven years ago. Although Filipino doors have been open to Japanese immigration in the past, less than seven thousand have availed themselves of it, the tropical climate of the archipelago being extremely distasteful to them.

Assume, however, that Japan does cherish secret intentions against Filipino autonomy, there is this to be considered,—that a Japanese base on Philippine waters would be a direct threat to British supremacy in that corner of the world. Hongkong is thirty-six hours by passenger steamer from Manila, Borneo almost touches the island of Palawan, Singapore is but a step away, and even Australia may well be considered to be on the direct line of trade. Is it conceivable then that Great Britain will permit Japanese occupancy without raising a hand of protest? And it is currently known that English statesmen wield a mighty influence in the foreign affairs of the Japanese Empire.

Japan has, furthermore, made it clear through the utterances of her acknowledged statesmen that if a proposal to neutralize the Philippines were made she would be among the first to affix her seal to such a binding covenant. Now these covenants of neutralization are, of course, not final, and they cannot guarantee for all time the security of the archipelago. But this much is certain,—that promises of that nature become sacred in the eyes of the world and if openly repudiated turn friends into foes. Where the interests of other nations become endangered, who having relied upon such promises, as well they might, have acted upon them, repudiation makes war justifiable. Well did Japan herself herald her participation in the World War in these words:

We of Japan took up arms against Germany because a solemn treaty was not to us “a scrap of paper”.... We are in the war, we insist on being in it, and we shall stay in it because earnestly, as a nation and as individuals, we believe in the righteousness of the cause for which we stand; because we believe that only by a complete victory for that cause can there be made a righteous, honorable and permanent peace, so that this world may be made safe for all men to live in, so that all nations may work out their destinies untramelled by fear⁠[3].

And the Filipinos believe in the Japanese word even if the Congress of the United States apparently does not. Both peoples also realize that they have everything to gain by maintaining an attitude of friendship and coöperation because their economic interests demand it, Japan being essentially a manufacturing nation and the Philippines thriving purely on agriculture. And as peoples of the Far East they have additional reason to stand on good terms, that they may present a direct front to Anglo-Saxon aggressions.

What now of American exploitation in the Philippines? Early in 1924, the American Chamber of Commerce in Manila issued for the third time a little pamphlet which was widely distributed in the United States. It was entitled, the Philippine Problem Presented from a New Angle. After elaborately building an argument to the effect that the Philippines can never be given their independence by Congress because they are as much a part of American domain as California and Louisiana, and hence can only be alienated by a constitutional amendment, these boosters of Philippine trade presented the following tempting considerations to the American public at home.

They said:

1. No unconditional promise of independence has ever been made [to the Filipinos] even in the preamble to the Jones Bill⁠[4].

2. We are here by right, we are here by conquest and we have a title by conquest and a title by purchase⁠[5].

3. We are here as possessors, and we are here as sovereigns; we are here as owners and controllers of absolute sovereignty⁠[6].

4. The Philippines are larger than New England and Pennsylvania combined.... They are United States territory ... [and are] inalienable by Congress⁠[7].

5. The American people own 63,000,000 acres of public domain in this territory⁠[8].

6. Your Philippine territory is the base for your trade with China⁠[9].

7. This portion of the world is the great arena of future commerce⁠[10].

8. Hard fibre! Magic phrase of commerce! The product that beckoned the first Yankee clippers to Manila! In its Philippine territory the United States holds exclusively the premier hard fibre region of the world, sole source of Manila hemp that binds the homeland harvests and outfits homeland ships. The homeland requires two-thirds of all Manila hemp grown in this territory and none of merchantable quality grows elsewhere⁠[11].

9. In this territory homeland farm products find a growing annual market. And so with homeland manufactures⁠[12].

10. Think about this territory; learn about this territory; tell your Congressmen to lay off of this territory as to base attempts to withdraw or curtail your sovereignty!⁠[13]

11. Take a national view of this territory; endorse the organized territory movement. We need such an act⁠[14].

12. “Vizualize!”⁠[15]

And so on ad infinitum,

(Signed) The American Chamber of
Commerce of the Philippine Islands.

These statements need no comment. They are self-incriminating and constitute in the face of all fair opposition the strongest arguments why the Philippines should be free. This movement on the part of the American business men in the Islands was, of course, not new. In the past as in the present, they have been one of the most fruitful sources for the propagation of misinformation regarding Filipino incapacity. Can the statements of Americans in the Philippines be worth a whit, in the face of this evidence?

Let the American public, therefore, be warned for the drive has not abated. Today we find business interests and even public men openly advocating the retention of the Islands, not indefinitely but for all time, in order that the American nation may ride on inflated wheels.

America will never let the Philippines go [said Congressman James Begg to the Filipinos during his visit to the Islands a few months ago]. She cannot.... Much of America’s future prosperity is intertwined with the future of the Far East. The Philippines are America’s outposts in the doorway to the Orient.... America is now on the ground. Our troops are here, our flag is here⁠[16].

Do the American people sanction these views? If they do, then they should say so openly and frankly,—it would be more humane and less cowardly. If they do not, and we believe that the latter is the truth, then it is time that an overwhelming public sentiment should make itself felt against these imperialists and thus destroy the greatest menace which lies in the path of Filipino autonomy, of Filipino freedom, of Filipino life itself.

But there is an even deeper reason why delay may prove fatal. Today, the United States is the greatest nation in the world of men. But that distinction has also been enjoyed by other nations as well, who then felt so secure and so confident in their positions that no one dared prophesy the ruin which the future held in store for them. Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain—where are they today?

When the French historian Guizot asked Lowell how long the American republic would last, he replied, “As long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.” These ideas are indeed the foundation of the American government, and whatever weakens them endangers the life of the Republic.

There are today certain domestic problems which threaten the security of the nation and which Americans must definitely settle among themselves. There is the question of restraining the power of capital and suppressing the excesses of labor; there is the task of hindering the immoderate usurpation of governmental powers by a minority, and there is the nation-wide effort to inculcate in the minds of the masses the necessity of obedience to law. To meet these problems the American people must have a deeply-rooted faith in their institutions and a passionate love of justice.

They cannot, therefore, afford to insist that the American Declaration of Independence was not meant to apply to the Filipinos; they cannot repudiate the words of the men who framed that document when they said, “Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which we contended were the rights of human nature”; they cannot govern millions of men in a foreign land where the constitution does not protect them,—and still hope to preserve in full strength that faith in the equal rights of men which is the soul of the American nation.

Truly did Froude say,

If there be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations cannot govern subject provinces. If they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall to pieces, through mere incompetence for its duties.

This, then, is an appeal to reason,—if a Federal Union cannot live half slave and half free, can it live with millions of men denied a voice in the government which controls them?

How long will the people of the United States assert a right to a foreign country conquered confessedly by “criminal aggression” and held by acts carefully kept from their knowledge through misrepresentation, concealment and what Mr. Lodge called “hypocritical pretences” of altruism? The people of the United States consider themselves sensible, keen and benevolent. Can they read the record presented in these pages and not resent the things which have been done in their name and insist upon a new assertion of the great principles upon which their government rests?