CHAPTER XIII.

Administration War-Bluff To Gain

An Army.

1. The Chatter of Military Fools.

Now the interesting matter is to trace how this thing is being brought about under our very chins, how the Bourbon harness is being put on the United States, for though we have been quite exploited at home by the millionaires, it is a new pleasure for them to take the Nation in hand as an instrument to exploit the world and for a more modern and exalted exploitation of ourselves. Kings did this, the wealthy class-governments of European States do it, but it is new to have it done with us, and it is immensely interesting to see by what art they are manipulating to capture this Commonwealth (ourselves organized), to wield it as their private dynamo in domestic and foreign exploitation.

We are subjugated by a series of frauds, not chained suddenly with militarism-for we should resist that— but little by little, and moral ideas are smuggled in to comatize our minds.

The clutch and keeping of the Philippines means everything necessary to this new development, hence at all hazards must be carried through. But to most Americans it is revolting, the idea of a clotted, interminable war of eradication is horrible. The squeamishness is met by methods: We must not hear the truth about the war, and we must be cozened to think it will soon be over. For the first object

the suppression of news and transmission of official lies, well groomed, from the seat of war answered; for the second, a constant volley of dispatches must be fired from the front announcing that 'the rebellion is about to be crushed.' Here are chunks of these messages, and the headlines embroidered on them by the daily press.

Let us start off with January of this year, just before the war. Everybody in the Philippines had the situation well in hand, as they have had it ever since. “Master of the Situation," said the Compost; "Gen. Otis Cables that Gen. Miller Has it Well in Hand." "That the strength of Aguinaldo's party is waning rapidly is not doubted.' The war began and another Gen. bulged with wisdom. It was De Merritt. We had given the Tagals their first thrash and he was jubilant :

"The military organization of the Filipinos will scarcely, I think, survive this defeat-certainly not, if we at once strike hard again wherever they show front.... There is probably not an officer among them who has any respectable knowledge of modern military science."*

Poor Aguinaldo! He had not been to West Point or Red Tape and could not pass a military examination. Doubtful if he could read, even English. Therefore sure to collapse at sight of bellied martinets. Only knowledge that of swamps; such knowledge useless in a swampy country. Also said to be versed in dead climates. No such course at West Point or Annapolis, Aguinaldo therefore a blooming 'fake.' Merritt wiggles on: "I think we may expect that defeat at Manila will have a disastrous effect upon Aguinaldo's authority. . . . The feebleness of his power having been made manifest, there is every reason to suppose that his numerous rivals, suppressed for the time, will rise to dispute his authority. When they have come to nothing through factional differences and possibly conflicts, they will be entirely amenable to

*N. Y. Evening Post interview, Feb. 1899.

our guidance and rule, I think. They are really docile and amiable people, without much stern stuff—not pugnacious and irreconcilable as our Indians are."

I quote this chatter to show what fools the generals are. Everybody in the country taking it for granted that they being generals must know more than the rest, and they smitten garrulous, squirting sappy rodomontades out of empty wind-swept heads. To such quacking goslings we confide our destinies. A'docile and amiable people, without much stern stuff,' forsooth! And now our orphic officers are lisping of a hundred thousand men to put this singular amiability down. To amalgamate the nuggets of Merritt into an imperishable lump smile warmly on this: "For the subjugation and holding of the entire Philippine group, however, he [Genny Otis] ought to have at his disposal not less than 30,000 men. With that number, I believe that, despite the multiplicity of the islands, we shall with comparative ease and within a measurably short time be able completely to crush all opposition."

We pass on from month to month through the springtime promises of the situation-well-in-hand generals, president and repress. "Plans of Otis. Rebels will be Crushed in a Few Days. Advance to be made when Gen. Lawton Gets There (Hoo!) . . . When Aguinaldo is Captured the Backbone of the Insurrection will be Broken." Quite This was in early March, and at this writing, September, Aguinaldo is still at large and the backbone of the insurrection erect. The sanguine and sanguinary telegraph said:

SO.

Within a week Gen. Otis, according to advices received at the War Department from Manila, is expected to begin an aggressive campaign looking to the crushing of Aguinaldo's forces. Telegrams from Gen. Otis about his plans indicate that he is ready to begin the movement, etc. Gen. Otis will make every effort to capture Aguinaldo. It is believed here that when that is accomplished the backbone of the insurrection will have been broken.

So it coiled on through March and April, always promise and never fulfilment, holding the American peo

ple suspended, by continuance and repetition deadening them to the cruelty, and so far as could be keeping the deeds done a deathly secret. Such deeds for after cheer as these, recorded by a Corporal in Manila :*

We sleep all day here, as we do duty all night walking the streets. We make every one get into his house by 7 P. M., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 men the first night. They tried to set the town on fire If they fire a shot from a house, we burn the house down, and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now.

And this, as told by the Chattanooga Times:

Capt. Elliott of the Kansas regiment, now on duty in the Philippines, after describing the fires set in Manila, last February, by the Filipinos, in which several hundred perished and 30,000 were rendered homeless, proceeds to say: "Talk about war being hell, this war beats the hottest estimate ever made of that locality. Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native. Of the buildings, the battered walls of the great church and the dismal prison alone remain. The village of Maypaja, where our first fight occurred on the night of the 4th, had 5,000 people in it at that day-now not one stone remains upon top of another."-[We thank Thee, O God, Amen.]

The country resembles Cuba as Spain left it: "But where are the happy-go-lucky, parti-colored people that swarmed the wayside stations and loitered along the sunny roads? Death has gathered them all under his shadowy wings-upward of 400,000 of the non-combatant country people of Cuba wiped out by famine in four years' time. Where are the white-walled villas, the straw-thatched huts, the fields of waving cane? The whole province is like a vast crematorium-every hamlet obliterated, every home an ash heap." †

The letters from soldiers concerning the famous orders of Gen. Wheaton to take no prisoners are well known, and there is surely more reason to believe the privates than the denials and obfuscations of officers whose destiny flickers on a chaste record in the American public mind. Can we so soon forget the present of £30,000

*Letter in S. F. Call from a Corporal of California Regiment. †Cuban letter{from Fannie Brigham Ward, Jan. 3, '99.

voted by Parliament to that Sidar Kitchener for his illustrious butcher-damnification of the Soudan? We are now following the holy perforating example of England and what is right for her is right for us.

2. Dum Dums and the Anglo-Saxon Hog.

The following is reported from the Hague Peace Conference:

"The conference finally resolved in favor of prohibiting the use of bullets which spread and flatten out in the human body, explosive bullets, bullets in a hardened case, which does not entirely cover the point, or bullets with an incision. The British and American delegates alone voted in the negative. Major Ardagh, of the British delegation, declared that Great Britain did not desire to use any projectile inconsistent with the principles of modern warfare, and that dumdums should only be used against an uncivilized foe."

The world-wide Anglo-Saxon Hog is satisfied of his stellar superiority and does not find it necessary to be humane or good in any given instance. Self-conviction of goodness is for him what deeds of goodness are in other nations. The most maleficent blatherskites of the whole Hague were fat John and lank Sam. These fine pups of civilization seem to have gone there only to prevent humanity from getting a start in the Conference. To begin, our delegates were a scaly unmodernized lot. It makes your skin creep to imagine Captain Mahan in the same zone with Peace-he and Captain Crozier (captain, captain, you see, two barbers sent to a conference for the abolition of shaves) were there to save dum dums from the grave. Andrew White has eaten so many diplomatic pies from our various presidents and fobnobbed with so many foreign ministerial sneaks that he is only less corrupt than the corrupt Denby, while Saith Low, like Barty and the bull, started in the world to 'show off.' He placed one foot on the bare-backed mustang Principle and the other on the blue-blooded brute Prudence and florished his legs and his whip in great shape before the New York audience. Principle immediately threw him