During October, November and December of 1898 all the vouchers covering disbursements in every department in Manila passed through my hands, and now that I am once more a free citizen of the United States I can say that the administration of General Otis is one of the most tyrannical and rascally military governments that has disgraced the Orient since that of Lord Hastings. An examination of the receipted vouchers now in Washington by any honest accountants or auditors in the United States would result in their recommending that a number of generals, colonels and captains in Manila be at once arrested for malfeasance in office, tried and sentenced to the penitentiary. Extortion and robbery prevail.

The chief commissary purchased at prices from 100 to 200 per cent. higher than retail prices enormous amounts of stores for the Spanish prisoners in the hospital and on parole. Robbery in one bill would aggregate sometimes nearly $1000. Vast quantities of high class wines, groceries, etc., were bought for the Spanish hospitals, and no sick American ever saw such luxuries as were bought for the Spanish. By some peculiar jugglery tons of fresh beef on board a ship in the bay, ostensibly all the property of the United States, would be transferred to the ownership of Warner, Barnes & Co., repurchased by the chief commissary at an advanced price, and all this without the beef ever leaving the refrigerator ship. Purchases of flour at exorbitant prices were made, and the bills show the extortion. Four ounces per day was taken from each soldier's ration of fresh beef and inferior rice substituted. A big profit was made by selling the beef to the foreign firms and then double prices paid for the rice. In the department of Colonel Pope, quartermaster, barefaced robbery became so frequent and notorious that some courts-martial were actually begun and prosecuted up to a certain point, when they mysteriously stopped. I make a specific charge that these papers were hung up by General Otis for the reason that in the attempt to court-martial a certain private for selling government horses and carriages to private parties, it was found that the prosecution of the private also involved the exposure of high officials. Collectors, armed with receipt books, make the rounds, collect the industrial tax from the natives, give them a receipt calling for half the amount actually paid, and thus assist in spreading the impression that all Americans are thieves. This was one of the chief grievances which encouraged the breaking out of hostilities. In many pay rolls, whether it be street, lights, scavenger or any other department, occur numerous duplications of names and hours of service.

The conclusion of Mr. Guyot is this:

The solution of the Filipino problem is this: Emancipate or exterminate the Filipinos. If the policy of expansion and extermination is to be followed logically, then let us have an end of the flying brigade and bill-posting tactics, and put into operation the more businesslike policy of wholesale massacre and starvation, such as an editorial in a San Francisco paper urged the other day. But it will take a "regular" army to do that kind of work. The volunteers will never do it. They can never be made in the future the instruments of combinations of cash against combinations of flesh and blood. The volunteers have been thinking, and I believe the results will be seen in 1900. *

*These charges were briefly referred to in Ch. XIV, Sec. 2.

A few such apocalyptic visions of Thug-and-Thief Otis and his fellow Bucks will convince America that the prime reason why military officers demand a standing army is that the regular soldiers would never get loose to 'peach' on their superiors. Let us by all means have a whole hundred thousand standing thugs like Otis and his scoundrels, without brain, heart, or conscience, and the military bosses can then steal and suborn and lie and murder by court-martial without fear of opposition or detection. Liberty is mounted on a flying-machine now.

LOS ANGELES TESTIMONY.

B. F. Tomlinson, a young resident of Los Angeles who saw Philippine service and was honorably discharged about two months ago, made the following statements to the L. A. Herald after the Colorado round robin appeared:

I firmly believe that the story is true, because my own experience was very similar. I do not believe that the statement was exaggerated in the least. There was fraud, robbery, extortion and harsh treatment all along the line. . . . The food was poor in quality and insufficient in quantity. The officers had fresh meat and vegetables, while the enlisted men were fed on embalmed beef and desiccated vegetables. . I came back on the Morgan City, which carried 447 officers and men, mostly sick and wounded. No provision was made to supply proper food to the invalids, and the medical attendance was insufficient. There were two doctors on board-Major Cardwell and another whose name I cannot now recall. They claimed to have visited all the sick and wounded daily during the homeward voyage, but I know there were some whom they did not see for two weeks.

[At Manila the captain of this company] treated his men so badly that when he was killed in action some time after our arrival there was no manifestation of sorrow or regret from a single man in the company. That is a mighty hard thing to say, and I dislike very much to say it; but it is the truth, and the truth is what I am trying to tell you. The same system of robbery and extortion prevailed in our barracks of which the Colorado boys complained so bitterly. The officers would sell our regular rations, our fresh meat, sugar, coffee, etc., and buy rice for us instead. There was a pretence that the difference in cash secured by such an exchange went into the camp fund. If it did, the enlisted men never got the benefit of it.

[When at the front things of this kind were common :] On one occasion we were crossing a frail bamboo bridge. When we were in the middle the commanding officer made us close up. The concentrated weight was too much, and down we went into the water. One of the boys, Otto H. Brakenwagon, had his eye gouged out by the

broken end of a bamboo pole. The surgeon, whose name was Matthews, dressed the eyeless socket, and sent the boy to the hospital. The hospital surgeon kept him a few days and sent him back to the firing line, saying there were plenty of men there with only one eye. This is merely a sample of the way the boys were treated. Many of the sick and wounded, who should have been kept in the hospital, were sent back to the firing line. I will cite the case of Sergeant Benjamin Hielt, who was shot through one kidney and sent back; another, a boy named Philo, from Los Angeles, was shot in the knee, so that he had a stiff knee; he was sent back. Frank Devlin of Los Angeles was deafened by a shot from the Utah battery, but was forced to go back, although he could not hear at all.

We had no complaint to make of the necessary hardships; it was the cruelty, robbery and extortion that we kicked about. There were times when I wished that I might be killed, to end my misery; and I can never bring myself to vote for any officer or official who had a hand in subjecting us to such cruel treatment."

These are the phantasmal glories of Expansion bursting in our East. Why should not the scullion officers rob everything they can reach? They are sent out by scullion thieves at Washington to rob a nation, they are the agents of robbers, of course they will rob on a private scale as the Washington Statesmen-Lice rob on a frowsier scale, and the millionaire thieves of the world, topping over all, rob on a colossal scale of stupefying grandeur.

CHAPTER XVI.

A War to Enslave America.

1. Press - Censorship on a Jag.

I have already brought much proof that there is a motive back of the assigned motive of the ratty administration for this hell-found war. This cowardly reticence grows from administration knowledge that the motive is inimical to the people, who, if they knew it would call the White House tough from his place and crush his expansion babble. The fact of a concealed motive is ground enough for calling time on this instrument of abomination and ordering him to quit.

Now there is not only supposition but overwhelming fact to show that the president is pushing Philippine conquest and imperialism for some other cause than the polymorphous ones made public, and that he is not listening to the will of the people but strenuously seeking to wrench and mould it to a pre-established discord of his own. Why, on any other explanation, does he shudder to have the Philippine conditions published to the people? Answer this. If you cannot, it is binding proof that majesty has a private policy known by him to be adverse to the enlightened will of his countrymen. He dares not promulgate it for fear of the country's scorn and rejection. Hence he hides truth and drags the people on to inextricable entanglement in his plan, so that when they discover the truth they will think they cannot back out. No other interpretation can tally with his suppression.

The whole matter then turns on this: Is it fully established that he is suppressing facts? The proof of this is absolute. It is also certain that this suppression amounts to complete distortion, which has been constant and designed. Thus far we have referred only indirectly to the 'round robin' protest of the war correspondents in Manila against the censorship of their reports. Let us now examine its contents. It is signed by eleven correspondents.

"We believe that from official dispatches made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines, but that these dispatches have presented an ultra-optimistic view that is not shared by the general officers in the field. We believe that the dispatches incorrectly represent the existing conditions among the Philippines in respect to dissension and demoralization resulting from the American campaign and to the brigand character of their army.

"We believe the dispatches err in the declaration 'that the situation is well in hand,' and the assumption that the insurrection can be speedily ended without a greatly-increased force. We think the tenacity of the Filipino purpose has been underestimated, and that the statements are unfounded that volunteers are willing to engage in further service.

"The censorship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of facts on the plea, as Gen. Otis stated, that they would alarm the people at home,' or 'have the people of the United States by the ears.'

"Specifications: Prohibition of hospital reports; suppression of full reports of field operations in the event of failure; numbers of heat prostrations in the field; systematic minimization of naval operations, and suppression of complete reports of the situation.”

The facts heretofore cited to show the president's suppression and falsification of news and establish his duplicity, were invincible, but this crowns them. Why all these presidential lies without a purpose? Merely the good of the people? Whose business is it to know the good of the people: the president's or king's, or the people's themselves? Is it that the war may go on despite the people? This is infamy and treason, a rabid usurpation of power never vested in any president and never to be there vested. We are getting at the heart of the matter. The president has resolved that the people