You are earnestly asked to hand this after reading to some
other person who will also give it careful consideration.
MASS MEETINGS
OF PROTEST
Against the Suppression of
Truth About the Philippines
FANEUIL HALL
Thursday, March 19
3 P. M. and 8 P. M.
ADDRESSES BY
THE HON. GEORGE S. BOUTWELL
THE HON. CflARLES S. HAMLIN
COL. T. W. HIGGINSON
THE HON. MOORFIELD STOREY
flR. HERBERT WELSH
THE HON. WINSLOW. WARREN
THE REV. CHARLES G. AHES
LIEUTENANT JOHN F. HALL
COL. CHARLES R. CODMAN
THE REV. CHARLES F.. DOLE
MR. THOMAS T. PATTERSON
Testimony by some of the witnesses who were
refused a hearing before the Senate Committee.
Boston, March, 1903.
" Let there be lig'bt."
PLEASE READ AND CIRCULATE.
TREATY WITH NEW GRANADA—CONCLUDED DEC. 12,
1846—PROCLAIMED JUNE 12, 1848.
Article XXXV. The United States of America and the
Republic of New Granada, desiring to make as durable as
possible the relations which are to be established between
the two parties by virtue of this treaty, have declared
solemnly, and do agree to the following points:
1st. For the better understanding of the preceding
articles, it is and has been stipulated between the high
contracting parties, that the citizens, vessels, and mer¬
chandise of the United States shall enjoy in the ports
of New Granada, including those of the part of the Gran-
adian territory generally denominated Isthmus of Panama,
from its southernmost extremity unto the boundary of
Costa Rica, all the exemptions, privileges, and immunities
concerning commerce and navigation, which are now or
may hereafter be enjoyed by Granadian citizens, their ves¬
sels and merchandise; and that this equality of favors shall
be made to extend to the passengers, correspondence, and
merchandise of the United States, in their transit across
the said territory, from one sea to the other. The Govern¬
ment of New Granada guarantees to the Government of the
United States that the right of way or transit across the
Isthmus of Panama upon any modes of communication that
now exist, or that may be hereafter constructed, shall be
open and free to the Gevernment and citizens of the United
States, and for the transportation of any articles of pro¬
duce, manufactures, or merchandise, of lawful commerce,
belonging to the citizens of the United States; that no
other tolls or charges shall be levied or collected upon the
citizens of the United States, or their said merchandise
thus passing over any road or canal that may be made by
the Government of New Granada, or by the authority of
the same, than is, under like circumstances, levied upon
and collected from the Granadian citizens; that any lawful
produce, manufactures, or merchandise, belonging to citi¬
zens of the United States, thus passing from one sea to
the other in either direction, for the purpose of expor¬
tation to any other foreign country, shall not be liable to
any import duties whatever; or, having paid such duties,
they shall be entitled to drawback upon their exportation;
nor shall the citizens of the United States be liable to
any duties, tolls, or charges of any kind, to which native
citizens are not subjected for the thus passing the said
Isthmus. And, in order to secure to themselves the tranquil
and constant enjoyment of these advantages, AND AS AN
ESPECIAL COMPENSATION FOR THE SAID ADVAN¬
TAGES, and for the favors'they have acquired by the 4th,
5th, and 6th articles of this treaty, THE UNITED STATES
GUARANTEE, POSITIVELY and EFFICACIOUSLY, to
New Granada, by the present stipulation, THE PERFECT
NEUTRALITY OF THE BEFORE-MENTIONED ISTH¬
MUS, with the view that the free transit from the one to
the other sea may not be interrupted or embarrassed in
any future time while this treaty exists, AND IN CONSE¬
QUENCE, THE UNITED STATES ALSO GUARANTEE,
IN THE SAME MANNER, THE RIGHTS OF SOVE¬
REIGNTY AND PROPERTY WHICH NEW GRANADA
HAS AND POSSESSES OVER THE SAID TERRITORY.
# # * ,
4th. If any one or more of the citizens of either party
shall infringe any of the articles of this treaty, such citi¬
zens shall be held personally responsible for the same,
and the harmony and good correspondence between the
nations shall not be interrupted thereby; EACH PARTY
ENGAGING IN NO WAY TO PROTECT THE OFFENDER,
OR SANCTION SUCH VIOLATION.
5th. If unfortunately any of the articles contained
in this treaty should be violated or infringed in any way
whatever, it is expressly stipulated that neither of the two
contracting parties shall ordain or authorize any acts of
reprisal, nor shall declare war against the other on com¬
plaints of injuries or damages, until the said party con¬
sidering itself offended shall have laid before the other a
statement of such injuries or damages, verified by compe¬
tent proofs, demanding justice and satisfaction, and the
same shall have been denied, in violation of the laws and of
international right.
6th. Any special or remarkable advantage that one or
the other power may enjoy from the foregoing stipulation,
are and ought to be always understood in virtue and as in
compensation of the obligations they have just contracted,
and which have been specified in the first number of this
article.
Sections 2 and 3 relate to duration of treaty.
150 Nassau street. Room 1520, New York City.
THE AFTERNOON MEETING.
The afternoon meeting was called to order at 3 o'clock by
COL. THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, who said:
I congratulate myself on taking a part, however humble,
in a meeting which ought to be historic in memory, whether
it is or not. I am only sorry that, having just returned from a
fatiguing lecture trip, I have come back without any voice,
which is sometimes convenient even to carry out the historic
traditions of Faneuil Hall. I have come here in a condition
which was said by my medical adviser, when I asked him
whether I ought to undertake it at all, to be exactly the correct
condition for a presiding officer. And he said, "You will not
feel tempted to interfere with anybody else's chance to make
a speech."
I can only congratulate you that we are here to protest, in
behalf of the lovers of national freedom, just when that habit
of mind is growing unfashionable among our leaders. We may
not, like our English cousins, be required to acquiesce while
the British Empire annihilates two little republics; but we see
our nation imitating England in this, that we, like her, are mak¬
ing war upon a Christian nation, although we go beyond her
in putting a Christian priest to death by torture because he re¬
fuses to give up to our soldiers the money he has collected for
his church.
If the themes we have to deal with are such as these, our
meeting can hardly be what you would call festive. But it can
at least tell the truth, which is of itself a sufficient festival to
.truly American minds.
I have now the honor of introducing to you, as the first
speaker of the afternoon, one who was assistant secretary of the
treasury under President Cleveland who was before
that a special envoy to Japan, and how many offices he may
have held under previous presidents, you can only judge by his
youthful appearance. I have to introduce the Hon. Charles S.
Hamlin, who will address you.
ADDRESS OF THE HON. CHARLES S. HAMLIN.
Mr. Chairman, Fellow Citizens:
The object for which this meeting of the citizens of Boston
has been called is not a partisan one. A grave emergency, a
grave crisis, has arisen, which demands action and speedy
action from the entire American people. Grave charges of
cruelty and improper conduct have been filed against officers
of the United States in civil and military life. The issue present¬
ed today before the people of Boston is,—are those officers,
military and civil, the servants, or the masters, of the
American people?
A petition shortly ago was filed, signed by eminent Professors
of Universities throughout the United States, asking that an
investigation of those charges be held by the U. S. Senate.
And that petition was contemptuously ignored. It is not so
many years in the history of our country since the sacred
Right of Petition was defended in the House of Representatives
by John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts: Behind Mr. Adams
there was the solid North. Opposed to him was Mr. Calhoun
and the solid South. Today, unfortunately, we see the con¬
ditions reversed. We see the South, through its Senators,
united in favor of the right of petition and the duty of
proper consideration thereof; we see the North, through its
Senators, opposed to that right—not daring, to be sure, to
reject the petitions; but contemptuously disregarding their
prayers.
I have said and I desire to say again that this is no partisan
meeting. This hall could as well be filled, in perfect consistency
with the objects of this meeting, by those who profess to be im¬
perialists, so-called—by those who believe that we conquered
the Philippine nation by divine right. Even to imperialists we
present an important and vital issue—whether the American
people are the masters or the servants of their civil and military
officers.
I desire to say here, as a Democrat, that I honor and respect
the President of the United States. I fully appreciate the great
ability of the junior senator from Massachusetts, Senator
Lodge. But I believe that party pressure has forced both into
a false position, a position false to their personal ideals of truth,
of honor and of justice. And I believe that that party, joining
issue as it dares to do, with the majority of the American peo¬
ple, must inevitably in the near future meet ignominious defeat.
I want to put this question to those who are in power today
in Washington : Suppose that charges were publicly made that
certain officers, for example, of the New York Custom House
had been guilty of misappropriating government funds, and
that the Secretary of the Treasury were to order an investiga-
tion; let us further suppose that the collector of the Port were
to send a formal report to the Secretary stating that he had in¬
vestigated the charges; that if the officers were guilty, they
were guilty of embezzlement; but that if an investigation were
held it would certainly implicate higher officials; that the men
had had grave temptation put in their way, and that on the
whole he thought circumstances of public policy, sufficiently
grave to silence every other demand, required that no investiga¬
tion should be held. Supposing further that the Secretary of
the Treasury accepted that report in silence, filed it, and that no
investigation was held! Does any sane man believe that the ad¬
ministration would stay in power longer than the next general
election? Would those of us who dared to raise our voices in
protest in Faneuil Hall against such conduct—would we be
branded as assailers of the character of the people of the
United States!
Let me put another case: Supposing an employee of the post-
office were accused of torturing and murdering a fellow creat¬
ure in the Postoffice during business hours, and the Postmaster
General had ordered the Postmaster to investigate, to which
he replied that he had looked into the facts and found that if the
act was done it was simply manslaughter; but that he desired
to say that if it should be investigated it would surely implicate
higher officials, and reasons of public policy forbade, in his
judgment, the desirability of investigation! And supposing we
should gather here in Faneuil Hall to protest against such con¬
duct, would we be assailed for attacking the character of the
American people! On the contrary, would not the administra¬
tion which permitted such a state of things to exist be swept
from office by an angry people at the next general election!
Now, my friends, that is just what has happened in the re¬
cent war in the Philippines. Charges were made of brutal mur¬
der of prisoners of war. Prisoners on their knees asking for
mercy were shot down and bayoneted. And the General of the
Army, called for an investigation. He sent the charges to the
Judge-Advocate, recommending court martial proceedings.
And that officer replied as follows:
"The offence of Private Putnam, if he has committed one, is
manslaughter. His only defense would be a lawful order of his
superior officer. If put on trial, it is probable that facts would
develop implicating many others. I doubt the propriety of his
trial and am of the opinion that considerations of public policy
sufficiently grave to silence every other demand, require that no
further action be taken in this case.
(Signed)
"E. H. CROWDER,
"Lieut.-Col. and Judge Advocate, U. S. Volunteers."
That report was sent to the Secretary of War and placed
upon the files and no action has been taken upon it to this day.
And yet those of us who come here to this historic hall to pro¬
test against such action are branded as assailants of the honor
of the United States Army!
Now, my friends, I have had some acquaintance with army
officers. I believe them to be honorable, upright men. Those
whom I have met—and I know I can speak in general for the
army-—those whom I have met were gentlemen, brave men,
scrupulously sensitive as to their honor as gentlemen and as
soldiers. And those with whom I have talked—and they are
many—have been unanimously of the opinion that the honor
of the army demands a speedy and impartial investigation of
these terrible charges.
The American people have been treated throughout this con¬
test as if they were children, as if they were wards of the na¬
tion. Such information as our superiors at Washington thought
wise to dole out to us, has been given to us. We know that the
censorship of the press has kept from us much which we ought
to have known at the time. And we now find that the archives
of the War Department, filled with information which will
either confirm or refute these terrible charges, are closed to us;
and the administration spurns the demand of the American
people for free access to them.
I wish to be perfectly fair in the illustration I have, just used.
It may be said that when General Otis forwarded General
Crowder's report to Washington, he accompanied it with a re¬
port of his own in which he said that in his opinion it would be
inadvisable to hold that investigation because among other rea¬
sons it would acquaint the Filipinos with what we were doing
and they would claim justification for treating our soldiers as
the report intimated we had treated them|. But, my friends, the
war has been over for two years, and there is no reason of pub¬
lic policy or public justice which should have prevented that
investigation from being held at least two years ago.
My friends, it is indeed a vital issue that is before us, and we
must meet that issue manfully. We must send out a voice of
protest from this great city and this historic hall, against such
conduct on the part of the civil and military servants of the
American people.
Let us not fear, let us seek the truth. I- remember, on a visit
to Chicago at the great exposition, reading over the peristyle of
the Court of Honor, those sacred words, in letters of gold:
"And ye shall seek the truth, and the truth shall make you
free." And let us here, in convention assembled, seek that truth.
Let us demand that the administration shall give us that truth,
no matter who is implicated. Let us demand that an investiga-
tion shall be held which shall go to the very roots of these
charges. And, my friends, in miaking that demand we shall per¬
form a sacred duty,—to ourselves, to our country and to our
Maker.
MR. MOORFIELD STOREY: Colonel Higginson
has been obliged to leave, and I shall take his place
as well as I can. No meeting in favor of human
rights has been held in Faneuil Hall for fifty years
that was complete without the presence of Governor
George S. Boutwell. After his lifelong service in
the cause of freedom, he might well plead his advancing years
as an excuse for devolving upon younger men the burden of
the fight. He has never been willing to make any such ex¬
cuse ; but he stands ready today, as ever in his life, to uphold
the cause of the downtrodden and the oppressed.
I take great pleasure in introducing to you now the Hon.
George S. Boutwell.
REMARKS OF THE HON GEORGE S. BOUTWELL
It is an unfortunate incident in American history that Sena¬
tors have ventured to defend our Philippinean policy by the
statement that the war for the Union was as brutal, as vindic¬
tive and as criminal as was the war in the Philippines. This
statement provokes these inquiries:
When and by whom in the war for the Union was an order
given on either side that prisoners should not be taken in battle ?
When in the war for the Union did the fatalities of battle
exceed the wounded in battle as five to one?
When in the war for the Union were captured and disarmed
prisoners shot without trial or opportunity for defence, and
upon the mere order of the officer in command of the capturing
party ?
When and by whom in the war for the Union were orders
given for the seizure of all the men whether combatants or non-
combatants and the herding of the women and children in the
deserts and mountains ?
When in the war for the Union were famine and pestilence
made inevitable by the systematic burning of homes and the
authorized waste of growing grains, and fertile fields?
When and by whom in the war for the Union were tortures
unto death inflicted upon persons only suspected of holding se¬
crets of hostile import ?
When and by whom in the war for the Union was an attempt
made through processes of torture unto death to extort the se¬
crets of religious brotherhoods from a priest or minister of any
church ?
When and by whom in the war for the Union was an order
issued for the slaughter indiscriminate of all male children of
the age of ten years ?
When and by whom in the war for the Union was there an
attempt made to conceal the operations of the army ? And was
it not in the war for the Union that a committee on the conduct
of the war was in constant session, whose doings were in pub¬
lic and of which trustworthy histories remain to this day ?
And when before was it thought to be necessary in the record
of any war from the wars of Julius Caesar to the wars of Wil¬
liam McKinley for the responsible parties to dig out from the
debris of the past twenty centuries the forgotten, or neglected,
or obscured or concealed instances of barbarism in search of
justifying examples of the brutalities for which the army and
government of the United States have become responsible in a
war of three years and eight mpnths in the Philippine Islands ?
I invite the advocates of the policy of empire through pur¬
chase and subjugation to the comparison which history offers
and to the conclusions which the facts of history require.
We may pass in review the attempts of the Persians to con¬
quer Greece, we may follow Hannibal in his aggressive cam¬
paigns in Italy, we may follow Caesar in his invasions of Gaul
and Britain, we may follow Spain in its trend of empire to
Mexico and Peru under the lead of the barbaric gold seekers
of the sixteenth century, we may follow England in its seizure
of the Indies and its absolute rule through a long century over
two hundred million human beings foreign in race and language,
we may follow Russia and Austria to the partition of Poland
and the sacrifice of her statehood, leaving her "childless and
crownless in her voiceless woe," we may follow Napoleon in
his crusade over Europe, trampling crowns and overturning
thrones, we may follow England through four centuries of its
vain attempt to crush out the spirit of liberty in Ireland, or
we may trace America in its melancholy succession of wrong
doings with the native Indians from the seizure of the eldest
son of their friend and ally Massasoit to the surrender of Ger-
onimo, and yet these historical events when massed or individ¬
ualized do not throw upon the actors as dark a shadow as must
fall upon the American nation for its doings in the Philippine
Islands.
MR. STOREY: The people of the United States have asked
the Senate Committee to hear the truth, and they have refused to
do so. The names of various witnesses were brought to the at¬
tention of the chairman and of the committee, but they would
not listen to them. Those witnesses, or representatives of them
are here. Upon this platform is now sitting the man who was
placed in charge of the line before the Philippine war com-
menced, and who was instructed by General Funston to bring
on the war if he got a good chance. On this platform is sitting
the man who stood by the side of two Kansas officers when a
Filipino rose from the trenches and, clinging to their knees,
begged for his life and was shot down by one of those officers
in his very presence. On this floor is sitting a woman whose
son, for many years a postal clerk in the service of the United
States, the only boy in a family of seven, the only wage earner
who could contribute to her support, enlisted in the army of
the United States only, when he reached the Philippine Islands,
to be tortured to death by Lieutenant Sinclair who had him
bound hand and foot and gagged, and then had water
thrown over his face until he died. That woman is
here. I wish you all had the time, and I wish she had the
voice to tell you of her wrongs and to tell you what reception
she met in Washington.
There is one man to whose persistence, to whose enthusiasm
in the cause of truth, we are all very much indebted. It is he
who has found out these witnesses, who has brought them here
to Boston, who knows their stories well. And he can tell you,
word by word, what they would tell you if they had the voice
to speak. And I now propose to introduce to you Herbert
Welsh of Philadelphia.
ADDRESS OF MR. HERBERT WELSH.
My Friends and Fellow Citizens:
I have been granted by those who have charge of this meet¬
ing a very generous portion of time to present this case as I
understand it, for your consideration. I rejoice in such an op¬
portunity. It is one that I have very rarely obtained during the
last two years in which I have been engaged in this work of
investigation.
I start from' a point of view and from a platform which I
think all here will stand upon with me; the point of view of
American citizenship, of a constitutional right to seek the
truth concerning public affairs and to question those who rep¬
resent us in those public affairs, regarding the truth
with which the public is rightly concerned. That is
my crown of sovereignty, that is the sceptre that I hold within
my hand today, and I do not think any one will take off the
crown or deprive me of the sceptre. I hold those rights in
common with millions of others. I ask only the opportunity to
claim and to defend those rights in common with my fellow
countrymen.
So much for the position in which I stand. Now I wish to
make, as plainly, as lucidly and as correctly as I can, a state¬
ment of what I consider to be the essential facts of this case.
I wish, first, to point to my own personal experience, not be¬
cause that in itself is of any value, but because it illustrates
the path along which I have been led to understand this truth.
Then, at the proper time, I wish to ask for corroboration from
these witnesses to whom' Mr. Storey has referred, for any state¬
ments that I may make that fall within their line of knowledge
and of vision.
Some two years ago, in the month of June, I was in a posi¬
tion of incredulity regarding the charge that torture was used
as a military instrument under the United States flag. I well
remember, at Lake Mohonk, at the peace conference, rather re¬
proaching a brother editor, the editor of the Friends' Intelli¬
gencer, with having published one of these stories, which I
could not credit. He told me that he believed it was true. I
doubted it. Upon going to my home, a gentleman called at my
office, who laid within my hands a letter written by an assistant
commissary in the United States army, recounting various ex¬
periences in the Philippine Islands; and, among others, describ¬
ing what was afterwards well known as the water torture, or
the water cure, euphemistically so-called. That torture, as de¬
scribed, was inflicted by Macabebe scouts; but it was very evi¬
dent to me, from what was said in the letter, that this was done
under the general direction or with the knowledge of officers of
the United States army. I at once arrived at this conclusion—
which has been abundantly justified since—that torture was
being used as an instrument for gaining a military end. It was
not torture used in retaliation, it was not tor¬
ture used as an occasional outburst of rage by some soldier
boy, as we have frequently heard since. Had it been such, it
would have had no historic significance whatever. But it was
far different. It meant that this was an instrumentality which
must have been known to high officers in the government in the
Philippines. What did I do ? I published that statement. I sent
a copy of it to a paper in this state, the Springfield Republican,
which, among others, has done such noble work in this cause.
And a Civil War veteran, who was a personal friend,
reproached me for what I had done. I told him that if he
would come to me I believed I could convince him of the truth.
Later on that summer, in the month of August, a similar story
appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, written by a sergeant of
the United States army. It was similar in tenor to the one to
which I have referred. I then was additionally convinced that
here in these instances were the evidences of a system. Hence,
the importance of the question at issue.
One year ago this past January, I had the honor to speak be¬
fore the Massachusetts Reform Club at the same time that
President Schurman addressed that body. In the course of my
address, which was upon the Philippine question, I referred
to the use of torture as an instrument of war for gaining a mili¬
tary purpose. I condemned it. A short time afterwards a
gentleman wrote to me (He is seated on this platform, and I
point to him now) that one of m!y hearers, having heard this
statement by me, could not credit it; that he had gone to' an
officer of the United States army, recently returned from the
Philippines, who was resident in Boston at that time and asked
him it is was true. The reply, in substance, was that it was
true, that he had used this torture himself and that it was neces¬
sary. I regarded that statement as one of very great importance.
A short time afterwards similar evidence began to come in.
This gentleman who sits at my right talked with a military
friend of his; and the matter was further confirmed, with the
suggestion that if a list should be taken of officers who had
served in the Philippines during the last six months or the
last year, and they put under oath, the matter could be fully
confirmed. They simply could say that when they left Manila
this system was in very general use, and persons thought very
little of it.
Having acquired this information, I felt that here was a
situation of the gravest importance. Here, under circum¬
stances which were peculiar, our men, far from home, con¬
fronted with a difficult situation, not controlled by any public
sentiment, with a censored press, with an administration in
Washington under the strongest political pressure to hide the
truth, were turning the wheel of civilization backward; they
were going upon that road the descent of which is as easy as it
is swift. I determined to do what I could as an individual citi¬
zen ; and I prayed all others whom I could reach to help me to
try and bring these facts to public attention and have this evil
stopped.
When, in the month of December, a short time before I
made the address alluded to, the evidence had reached what I
considered overwhelming proportions, I asked myself, "What
ought I conscientiously to do?" The answer was, "Go to the
chief executive of the country, who is especially responsible for
the army of the United States." That official happened to be
an old personal friend whom I had had the honor to entertain in
my house, for whom I entertained, I may say, an enthusiastic
regard, although in some respects I differed from his views on
public subjects. I wrote a personal letter, entirely personal and
with my own hand, so as to make it as personal as possible. I
laid the information before him; and I said in my heart, "One
thing or the other will happen; either Theodore Roosevelt will
roll me over by showing me that I have been mistaken, or this
evidence will induce him immediately to act with the stren-
uousness that Almighty God has abundantly endowed him
with." I asked what? That some message might be sent which
would arrest this evil in the Philippines. I said, "We are shut
up to this alternative, one thing or the other; either this is being
used as a military instrument for gaining a military end, or else
there is a conspiracy to defame the flag of the United States, in¬
to which its officers of high rank, officers of middle rank, sub¬
alterns, common soldiers, American newspaper editors in Man¬
ila and American school teachers all have entered." There was
no response to that letter, although at the time letters of much
less moment had received very prompt antf very satisfactory re¬
sponse, written by myself to the president. I learned afterwards,
upon a second inquiry, that these charges had been forwarded
to the general commanding in the Philippines; and I learned
later, by inquiry of a citizen of Boston who had had a similar
experience, what that meant. It meant that a printed statement
a statement upon paper, which was saisfactory enough as far
as it went, was returned as an answer, which did not disclose
the real truth. Some time later the Secretary of War, Mr.
Root, upon the basis of evidence which I had forwarded—for,
in his letter to Senator Lodge, the name of the little paper
returned his statement to the United States Senate; and he
which I edit was mentioned as the source of these charges—
quoted a brigadier-general of the United States, General Funs-
ton, in pronouncing these charges to be in substance an infam¬
ous lie. I read the statement over with great care. And I read
over the statement made by Mr. Root, that our war had been
humane; that the rules of President Lincoln, among which was
one .which absolutely forbade the use of torture in order to ob¬
tain information, had been the prevailing guide of our armies
in the field.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. I did not know so much
then as. I know now of the ways of public officials. But in
glancing over the pages of that report, I saw, to my astonish¬
ment, an account written by an officer of the United States,
Lieutenant Ernst Hagegorn, of a torture, not the water torture,
but precisely the reverse, which he had inflicted upon certain
Filipinos in order to extort information. He had fed them for
forty-eight hours on salt fish and had kept them under a burn¬
ing, sun without giving them any water whatever. And he
stated that this had produced admirable results, because he had
got the information that he desired. Then I noticed that his
colonel who had generally approved his conduct, said this was
an excess of zeal and urged that no action should be taken.
What more conclusive proof could there be that here was a
general officer acquiescing in the condition of things?
I will not take your time to cite additional evidence at this
point, further than to say that I wrote an open letter to the
Secretary of War, pointing- out the difference which was essen¬
tial and vital between the statements that he had presented and
the actual truth as it was shown in evidence. No answer was
made to that letter. It was published in very few papers. But
there were the plain facts.
Later on, on the 14th of April, I brought before the witness
stand in Washington a man from Massachusetts, Sergeant
Riley, who gave evidence that he had seen this torture inflicted
by Major Glenn, by Lieutenant Conger, and by Dr. Lyon. For
one year before, Riley's statement had been pronounced by cer¬
tain military papers an "infamous liebut his statement was so
convincing under oath that Senator Lodge, as Senator Patter¬
son informed me, was entirely satisfied as to the force of the
evidence. I judged that that was so, because the following day
a telegram went out from Washington which was very different
in tenor from any that had gone before. It was from the
President of the United States, by Secretary Root, asking Gen¬
eral Chaffee for a full investigation, promising the people of
the United States a thorough investigation and saying that no
one would be safe from punishment, no matter what his posi¬
tion might be. I have looked from that day to this for the ful¬
fillment of that promise, but I have not found it in any particu¬
lar. I have seen no evidence of any real investigation, no evi¬
dence of any real or adequate punishment of any one who was
guilty of these offences as charged.
And now I wish to refer to a specific case which seems to
me most important and most illustrative, if you have the pati¬
ence to hear me. It was in April, seated in my office one morning
that I opened my mail and found there, sent me by the editor of
the Boston Transcript, an anonymous letter, dated "Boston, the
13th of April," and it ran about in this fashion:
"Dear Sir: We have seen what you have had to
say about the cruelties to the Filipinos. They are
cruel themselves, but certain great cruelties have been
perpetrated upon them by certain odd ruffians. But
what we would like to know, now that General
Hughes and Captain Brownell have come home is, whether the
priest of Molo was secretly executed by orders of Gen. Hughes,
or whether he was murdered; for, when the unfortunate padre
failed to succumb to two applications of the water cure, the
worthy captain throttled him. We would like to know
also what has become of the two hundred pesos that
were on his person when he landed from the gun¬
boat Paragua. His body now lies buried in the ball-
ground outside of military quarters, where the boys used to
play ball. Any information that you can give us in this matter
will be thankfully received.
"A Member of Company D, 26th U. S. Volunteers."
I took that letter and endeavored to find out its author, but I
failed, and I have not found him! yet. But I did get, later on, a
letter from1 Alfred W. Bertrand, of whom I now desire to' say
that I think he is a citizen who deserves well of the Republic,
a man born in another country, who nevertheless, in our army,
hates murder, hates robbery, hates the crimes which are against
both the law of God and the law of man. And he,
like others who are here, hates these crimes, not only in the
abstract, but in the concrete, which is often the most important
way to hate crime. And what were the evidences
that he placed within my hands? I wrote to him and
asked him for the evidence. He replied, with a caution which
eminently became him, asking me very courteously by what
right I made that inquiry; and that if I could show that I
had any right, he would answer the questions. But he said in
his letter, "I have already laid the evidences in the hands of
Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, and I have received a letter
from; him," which he then and there quoted, and the original of
which is in the possession of my friend on the right, in which
Senator Lodge said that he was much distressed to hear of this
occurrence, that he did not infer, from what Bertrand had said,
that he himself had witnessed this crime, but that he knew of
officers or men who had witnessed it, and that he would
be very glad to take prompt steps to secure their evidence. Sen¬
ator Lodge's steps are not very prompt. Months and months
have elapsed; but that evidence has never yet, by his desire or
action, been brought before the committee which should have
heard it. More thanj that, a man sits on this stage, there in that
corner seat, who wrote to him some months ago, asking him if
he would not fulfil his promise; and I have the letter of the
Senator in which he says, "I never promised to summon those
witnesses, only Bertrand to put his name on the list of wit¬
nesses." And those two letters held side by side do not accord
together. So that the Senator's memory must be very bad of
what he writes in April and what he writes in December.
Now, what happens next? This crime turned out to be no
ordinary crime. It was not the mere throwing of a man on the
ground simply to extract information .from him. The further
we go into it, the more it piles up in horror. So that it is a
quadruple crime; it is, as we see it today, the crime of kidnap¬
ping a Roman Catholic priest in the Philippine Islands. That is
crime number one. Second, it is the crime of torturing him
repeatedly until he died and until there was fair warning that
he would die. I know not what you call that; but to us down
in our part of the world, and I believe here in Massachusetts,
it is very like old-fashioned murder. Not only that,
but it was torturing in order to extort rfioney. And is it
not strange that a senator from Vermont could stand up in his
place in the Senate of the United States and laud Captain
Brownell as an officer of high character; and yet at the same
time the facts, by Brownell's own confession, were that he had
extorted money out of that priest! How much money? I am
told thirty thousand pesos, which I believe amounts to about
$15,000, I am trying to find out, for I have not yet thoroughly
been able to do so, what became of that money. My representa¬
tive inquired of the War Department a few days ago; and he
has written me that that money has been turned into the in¬
sular treasury; at least, such is the inference. And I ask you,
citizens of Massachusetts, what have ,we come to if you can
have an open acknowledgement in Washington that thousands
of dollars, extorted by torture from a priest who was murdered,
can be turned into any treasury of the United States?
But that is not all—that is by no means all. These crimes con¬
stantly accumulate.
We have a witness here upon this floor, my friend Mr. Cross,
who can tell you that the doctor of Jaro, as he was called, a
Filipino, living in a little town which was near to Iloilo, if I
understand it aright, was tortured during a week's time off and
on, he was kept for weeks; and he was tortured for four hours
until he revealed where his fortune, or a part of it, was,—$1800
or $18,000—which was it, Mr. Cross?
Mr. Cross: $1800.
$1800 was extorted from him. And then, as an¬
other refinement of our modern imperialistic civilization, this
man's wife was brought in. She was not tortured, my friends—
not that; but she was bidden to look upon the agonizing body
of her husband who had been tortured. And she, poor savage,
with a faint touch of our borrowed civilization, fainted at the
horror of the sight. And they got from her $20,000, I am in¬
formed—was it not so?
A Voice: Yes.
Yes, it was so. This man who speaks to me now
was aboard the gunboat Paragua. He helped to take that
priest after he had been caught and kidnapped and dressed up
—disgrace upon disgrace!—in the uniform of a United States
sergeant of artillery—helped to take him, not willingly I assure
you, to Banate, where he met his death. And this $20,000, taken
from this poor woman, was found upon the Island of Guimaras,
a little island which he ' tells me is like a
little mimic Gibraltar, with its tall rock show¬
ing up out of the Bay of Iloilo, where there is
teak wood and where there is mahogany growing and other
rich woods which some of our speculators are so very anxious to
make fortunes out of. And there, in a little shanty where the
pigs grub and where the chickens scratch, was found this
buried treasure, the private fortunes of these poor people. And
that was taken, as I am further informed, by a gunboat of the
United States—a noble enterprise to be engaged in!—and that
money was carted through the streets of Iloilo and placed in the
military headquarters at Iloilo. I know not, unless it also be in
the insular treasury, where that money is today. But I do think
that a knowledge of where it is is a very legitimate concern of
the people of the United States, if we propose to
hold on to any of those fundamental laws of good morals and
laws of civic righteousness which we have preached in every
college of the land, Harvard College and all the rest, and which,
if our schools are to practice and revere them, we must be care¬
ful are carried out beyond the limits of scholastic walls and into
the daily, the individual and the civic life.
My friends, we have been told by Senator Lodge, who told
it to Mr. Bertrand when he met him in Washington, that noth¬
ing more could be done, now that Brownell had confessed to
this crime. What induced Brownell to confess to this crime?
Was it anything that these guardians of the law did? Was it
that? Why, only a few months before, it was stated that there
was no such person and had been none such as Father Au¬
gustine. That was given out from an official in the War De¬
partment. And I remember, in talking with a friend, one of the
editors of the Outlook, when I took lunch with him in New
York last autumn, that he laughed almost pityingly in my face
when he told me that this priest's story about which I had
spoken so much was a very doubtful—I think the term he used
was, a very "fishy" story indeed. We have travelled a long
way from that. Not only is it acknowledged now that this
priest existed, that he lived; but it is also acknowledged that
he is dead and that he was killed under the superintendence of
an officer of the United States. I ask this question here on this
floor, here within these walls that have rung to so many noble
words, are we content that the investigation of this crime
should rest at this point? My friend Mr. O'Connor
can tell you that when he was on the boat, and the
engineer of it, the Paragua, which carried the kidnapped priest
up from Iloilo to Banate, certain things occurred. And I ask
permission to state those facts to you, because they are impor¬
tant to my argument. I have asked this question: Is it usually
the case that a volunteer captain in the United States army can
order about a United States gunboat? Would it not be natural
that he should act under some one else's orders ? Under whom
was Captain Brownell acting at this time? Was not General
Hughes—who I understand is in San Francisco today—com¬
manding that department at the time ? I believe that is correct,
is it not, Mr. O'Connor?
Mr. O'Connor: Yes, sir.
Very well. I am further informed that this gun¬
boat Paragua received her orders from the gunboat Castine
which was lying out in the harbor of Iloilo, Captain Bowman,
commanding. And Mr. O'Connor tells mje that on that night
when this trip was taking place there was constant signalling
going on between those two boats. I want to know whence
the orders came that went through the Castine to the Paragua.
I want to trace that up. I think you ought to want to trace that
up, also. I am informed that General Hughes ordinarily gave
orders through the Castine to the Paragua. I think we ought
to ask, it is our duty—not accusing any one—to ask whether
upon this particular night that ordinary condition of things was
reversed or not.
I want to ask this question: I understand, and my witnesses
in Washington were ready to prove had they had the chance,
which was not given them, that a certain East Indian inter¬
preter, who was always with General Hughes, who never left
him except by his especial orders, upon this particular occasion
did leave him, went with that kidnapping party, went up to
Banate and stayed there with the priest at the time when he
was interrogated. Is that so, Mr. Cross ?
Mr. Cross: Yes.
Mr. Cross says that is true. Very well. That inter¬
preter, I understand, afterwards went back to General
Hughes. General Hughes ought to explain those facts. I think
the people of the United States ought to call upon him to ex¬
plain them if his own sense of honor does not demand that he
should explain them. I desire to ask this of you further. We
found out this autumn that the War Department had asked
General Hughes to explain this whole matter when it was first
made public, the 23d of last April. Now, it seems to m'e it would
have been eminently natural that if he did not know about this
thing, he would have applied to the man who made the ac¬
cusation, namely, to Alfred W. Bertrand, and he would have
said to Bertrand, "On what ground do you make this accusa¬
tion, where are your witnesses ?" I asked that question because
I wanted to get at the truth, and I got at the truth. And here is
one of the witnesses here today; and the others could have been
obtained. But General Hughes replied, in essence, that there
was nothing in this charge. Why did he not apply in that direc¬
tion, and he would have found that there was everything in
the charge.
Now, I give you this, my friends, simply as an illustration of
the kind of work that we are met with and how much patience
it requires on our part. And it seems to me that we are at the
parting of the ways. Are we going to do what President Mc-
Kinley said should be done for these people, give them their
civil and individual rights? If so, here are these individual
rights invaded in the most terrible manner. Here is this man—
I state it only to make it more real to you, it does not make any
real difference what his position in society was, but he was a
man of cultivation, he was a man of wealthy associates in Iloilo.
And Mr. O'Connor can tell you the impression that was made
upon him when he saw that priest, hustled out of a carriage in
this humiliating disguise, stand on the deck of that vessel. He
said that he was a man of force. And he lifted his hand and ap¬
pealed to Lieutenant Althouse, who commanded that vessel,
who is still in the United States navy, who, as I understand, is
on the Chicago today in the North Atlantic squadron, and I
am informed, whether correctly or not, that that squadron is in
New York harbor; there is no difficulty in getting hold of him
and asking him what the truth about this is—the priest stood
there, and he appealed for justice to this officer of the United
States. He pointed to those chevrons on his sleeve and he said,
no doubt seeing the death shadow fall across his path, "This is
not my uniform." But, throwing open the coat, he pointed to
his priest's dress and said, "This is my uniform. I appeal to
you to treat me, not as a brute but as a man. I am treated not
as as man but as a brute." I ask you, knowing that those words
are true, knowing this man here can confirm every one of them,
whether that does not appeal to your heart, and through your
heart appeal to your intelligence? Shall it be said that under
the United States flag any man, no matter how lowly or humble
he may be, could make an appeal like that, so touching, so
founded in reason, so founded in everything that ought to ap¬
peal to a normal human being—that he could make that ap¬
peal and yet his appeal be in vain ? Ought it not to be this way,
that every one of us should feel that we owe it to that poor
man to do him justice, that we owe it to him, not out of any
malice toward any one, not caring about any one, but only car¬
ing about that eternal conflict that goes on between good and
evil, between right and wrong; that we ought to ask in the
very name of justice itself, and knowing that blood unright¬
eously spilled cries from the ground, that justice be done?
My friends, I shall tax your patience a little further. Bear
with me yet a little longer. I want to refer to a few'more cases
before I take my seat. What does all this mean to one who
makes an inquiry into it? It does not mean alone the violation
of the rights of a foreign people with whom we may have
comparatively little sympathy. And yet I do> not see how we
can fail—those of us who know representatives of that race, so
gentle, so cultivated, so right-thinking—how we can fail to
have that sympathy too; but supposing we have it not, is that
the only consideration? Nay, there is far more than that. Look
at the reflex influence upon the men themselves who do these
things. I have no personal malice toward any one of them.
I believe this, that as the pressure of a rigid and a righteous
investigation is put upon those low in rank, the responsibility
for these crimes rises by ever ascending, logical steps, until it
reaches the highest of all, which is the people of the United
States. That has been my experience. When Major Waller
was brought to trial, he pointed to General Jacob Smith. And
so, if General Smith were brought to a trial here in this coun¬
try, where the trial could be full and fair, he would probably
point upward to General Chaffee. And so if General Chaf¬
fee could be brought to a trial, he would point upward to the
War Department in Washington. Nay, that has been done, in
essence; and there is much logic in it. Why ? Because those men
were under a pressure, for political reasons, to finish the war.
And one of the most striking pieces of evidence that was
brought to my attention was the remark made by my friend Mr.
O'Connor when I asked regarding a certain officer whom I
suspected of a very serious crime, what sort of a man he was,
and the answer was that he was considered by the soldiers ori¬
ginally to be "rather an old woman." I felt puzzled for the
moment; I could only wonder if my friend had a little touch
of humor and meant such an old woman as the Empress Dow¬
ager of China might be. But it was not that. He meant it in
good faith. He meant that, the screws of necessity not having
been put upon that officer, his natural tendency was to be mild
in his methods; but when the screws of necessity were put on
—I will not give all the explanation that might be given here
—he was driven by an irresistible force to adopt methods that
all tyrants in all ages of the world always and everywhere have
committed themselves to. That is the great and deep lesson
that we should learn.
But, in addition to that, reflect upon the effect on our army
itself, reflect upon the backward move of this great tide of
wrong. Why is my friend here today,—why is Mrs. Richter
here lamenting out of a true heart so awful a loss as that?
There is no mock sentiment there where a woman has lost her
son, where that son has been killed by such infamous means.
That is very real and very true. And if you should talk with
her, as I have talked with her, you would know the awful
reality of it. What does that mean ? Why, it means that doing
these things to our enemies—getting hardened in blood, we fin-
ally do them to ourselves. If.we cannot give liberty to others,
we deserve it not ourselves; and, as Lincoln said, under a just
God we shall not long have it. And in this way men become
utterly insensible to the things they do. Mrs. Richter sat in
my office as she came back fromi Washington and she said to
me in a very simple manner, "Mr. Welsh, I think we are rep¬
resented by very hardhearted men in Washington." And then
she spoke of a certain officer there who laughed in her face at
the idea that the death of her son could make any very material
difference either to her or anybody else. Now, that, when you
look at it on the outside, seems startling; and yet it is natural.
When you come into contact with a piece of machinery that
moves in this way, all parts of the machinery become alike. The
same spirit that works from the top, works down and con¬
trols men without their knowing it. Why, a bishop
of the Episcopal church wrote me recently that he did not know
what to make of this phenomtenon that in a very cultivated city
of the eastern part of this country, where there was one of our
greatest universities, he talked with business men, with lawyers,
with doctors and with clergymen; and he said, "I have only
found one case where these men feel as I do regarding the mur¬
der and the robbery of Filipinos." My friends, that subtle spir¬
it that we do not understand controls great bodies of men for
good or for evil; and you witness this strange, but neverthe¬
less true, contradiction, that the men who are most sane, that
the men who point to the Ten Commandments and to the Dec¬
laration of Independence and all simple principles of moral
right and goodness that all men in all times, whatever their re¬
ligious profession may be, generally believe and acknowledge to
be right—the men who point to these things and who ask that
they shall be applied to these particular cases, are absolutely
stigmatized as fools and insane. Who are the fools ? Who are
the insane? Are they the mien who cling to principle amid the
turbulent waters of momentary expediency, or the men who
leave that ship of principle and throw themselves upon the
slight and fragile raft of expediency?
My friends—and now I draw to a conclusion—I wish to
counsel with you on this one thought: I have been sometimes
reproached for taking up these individual cases and clinging
to them with such painful detail. I do it, not because I love
these details or because, as a dear friend in New York wrote
to me, I have any glee in finding out wickedness. Nay, it is not
that. It is simply a knowledge which I have gained during a
twenty years' experience in Indian affairs, that the way to ar¬
rive at the practical enforcement of a principle is to walk
through all the tiresome and devious paths of a concrete case.
And so, by taking up the case of Father Augustine, or by tak-
ing the case of General Funston or the case of Colonel Metcalf,
or of Captain Bishop or of Mrs. Richter and the others, not
only is justice—that great and precious and almost forgotten
thing that we call justice—done in the individual case; but, far
more than that, by controlling the individual cases completely,
we control thousands of others. And not only will you do good
to your own country, not only will you go good to the Filipinos;
but even down to the last jot and tittle, will you make things
better. You will find out the causes of desertion from the
United States army and navy. You will find out many things
that you did not suspect at first; and you will see how in all
these things, by following the truth simply, by caring neither
for the praise nor the blame of men, by believing that there is
a Divine Power which works for righteousness through the af¬
fairs of men and that that power is right and that it is law and
that it is eternal and that the men on whom it falls will be
ground to powder but that the man who moves along that line
will move outward to a swift and safe conclusion—by doing
that I believe that we shall meet the most practical results.
Take the case of General Funston, and with that I close. I
think you will find in that case, if there is a thorough investiga¬
tion, that that man—with good qualities I doubt not, of cer¬
tain kinds—nevertheless has, by a false principle of action in
the appointment to place in the army of the United States, been
raised to a position for which he is not fitted and which he
ought not to occupy. That is my belief, and there is no malice
whatever in that belief. I believe that you will find many in¬
cidental pieces of good that may be arrived at by studying the
case. For example, I take this very trivial one, yet it is not
trivial—the school books of children are not trivial things—
here in this book I could turn to the very page where there
is an account given of General Funston performing a feat of
military, valor which I have the best reason to believe he did
not perform, the swimming of two rivers which he did not
swim for the very simple and very good reason that I under¬
stand he cannot swim. Now, that seems to you very small
and humorous, and yet it is not so small. There is my friend
Lieutenant Hall. I think I am right, Lieutenant, in saying that
General Funston cannot swim?
Lieutenant Hall: You are indeed, sir.
And that he did not swim those two rivers, the Marilao or
the Rio Grande?
No, sir, he did not.
Very well. Now, these children are taught that Gen¬
eral Funston did swim those rivers. They are taught
that he swam those rivers in the face of the enemy's fire.
And the men who did swim the rivers—for there were such—
my friend Captain Hardy, for example, whose picture I have
here, who was a brave and gallant soldier, as I know that my
friend Lieutenant Hall was, those men failed to get the credit
that they ought to have gotten for real feats of heroism, for
real deeds of valor; and they were given to one to whom they
did not belong. It is not for me to inquire how that came
about. I wish to go into details no more than is necessary to
prove what I regard as a very great principle. But I know that
these arguments will appeal to you, to all who are here. We
have in this great body of truth and in this great presenta¬
tion of falsehood, things most painful and distressing; and yet,
by taking that truth and by destroying the falsehood with it,
by pointing out to our friends and to our opponents that we
have the courage of our convictions—what can we do? Surely
we can do these things:
First, we can testify to the truth, which is one of the greatest
things that men can do, whether it be in the region of science,
in the region of morals, or in whatever region it may be. But, be¬
yond that, by taking the truth, we can give to these people
whom we have long oppressed—we can give them freedom, we
can give them right, we can give them constitutional law; we
can demand that the seal of secrecy be taken away from their
affairs so they may speak to us as men and as brothers. To en¬
force that truth, to make it clear, to make it to be felt, that is
why we have this meeting here today; that is why these wit¬
nesses come here, that is why I am most anxious, among others,
that they should have an opportunity to meet you and to talk
with you, so that you may see these things, not through my
eyes; so that you may hear them, not through my lips, but by
talking with the actual actors in the events in the very scenes
which have transpired.
And, beyond that, if we stand for this great truth, shall we
not give to our own country precisely that example, precisely
that result which we need most at the present time? It is the
lack of this truth, it is the lack of these great principles
for which such men as Governor Boutwell have so magnificent¬
ly stood, for which all these men in Boston have testified again
and again—it is the lack of them that causes the trouble; and
it is by taking those eternal principles and putting them into
operation in our politics, that our politics will be healed of the
sore disease from which they now suffer.
I thank you, my friends, for your kind hearing.
AIR. STOREY: And now, gentlemen and ladies, I want you
to have a privilege which the Senate committee refused, I want
you to meet and to hear one of the men who was present at that
first battle of the war, and let him speak to you as to what he
saw and what went on under his very eyes.
I take pleasure in introducing Lieutenant Hall of Kansas.
ADDRESS OF LIEUT. JOHN F. HALL.
Mr. Chairman, Fellow Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The object of this meeting was not thoroughly known to me,
and therefore the remarks I shall make will be some¬
what offhand. Mr. Welsh has so thoroughly stated the case to
you that it is scarcely necessary for me to reiterate anything
that he has said.
I will say that I was a first lieutenant of the 20th Kansas;
that I was never sick, was never off duty and was never ab¬
sent from a single skirmish that my regiment was engaged in.
I will say that there has been circulated through the'United
States, through the Associated Press, a lot of fabulous reports
about great heroes swimming rivers in the Philippine Islands—
achievements which never took place.
I will say that in every movement, with the possible excep¬
tion of the battle of Caloocan, I was either in sight or speaking
distance of Col. Funston—Gen. Funston is what he is called
now—and I know positively that he never swam a river, and
never crossed a river under fire while he was connected with
my regiment.
It is in behalf of the students of history that I have raised
my voice in protest against these fabulous reports going down
in history as facts. That is the reason why I took it upon my¬
self to correct a report that I saw in the Kansas City Times. It
was when we were mustered out in San Fran¬
cisco, on our way home to Kansas, that I
saw a report in the Kansas City Times which
read this way, that Col. Wilder S. Metcalf had been promoted
Brevet Brigadier-General of Volunteers for gallant and meri¬
torious conduct in the battle of Guiguinto. The battle of Gui-
guinto was fought on the 29th day of March, 1899. We began
our march early in the morning of that day for Marolon, Maj.
Metcalf was hit in the toe by a Mauser bullet, when he was
some five hundred or a thousand yards in the rear of the firing
line. His battalion was in support that day. He then took the
first relief train back to Manila, and I suppose he was there
by twelve or one o'clock. The battle of Guiguinto was fought
between five and six o'clock that afternoon, and it was the sev¬
erest engagement in which my regiment took part. In the tele¬
graphic reports that I saw published in this newspaper, it was
stated that Gen. Funston had recommended Metcalf for promo¬
tion for gallant and meritorious conduct in that battle. I took
it upon myself to correct that report. To my amazement, Gen.
Funston came out in a newspaper article and said that Col.
Metcalf was in that battle, that I knew he was there and that I
ought not to have made such a statement.
Now, of course, I know you are all tired, and I shall not
detain you very long with miy remarks. We landed in Manila in
December, 1898; we dropped anchor on the night of November
30th, and went ashore on the 10th of December. When we got
there we found that our army was practically in a state of siege.
The Filipinos were encamped on the outskirts of Manila, and
our army was encamped around as a line of skirmishers, keep¬
ing them out. At first, the siege was of a friendly nature. We
were permitted to pass out into the Filipino lines; and the
Filipino soldiers were in turn allowed to pass backward and
forward through our lines into the city of Manila. This friendly
feeling lasted until Gen. Miller was sent south to Iloilo with the
51st Iowa and 18th regulars. Gen. Miller was denied a land¬
ing, and he asked permission from Gen. Otis to take Iloilo by
force. It was about that time that Gen. Otis issued President
McKinley's proclamation extending our sovereignty over all
the Philippine Islands. The next morning Aguinaldo's procla¬
mation was published on every wall in the city of Manila.
Aguinaldo declared that the Americans would be responsible
for every drop of blood spilled in the Philippine Islands; and
that if Gen. Miller made an attack upon Iloilo, the Filipinos
would fight. From that day the situation became more and
more serious. The Filipinos showed a hostile spirit, and our
soldiers did the same. The first shot was fired by Private Casey
of a Montana regiment, followed in a few moments by another
fired by Private Roberts of the same regiment.
This took place three week before the out¬
break ; and had it not been for the prompt
action and diplomacy of Lieutenant Colonel Little of the 20th
Kansas, the officer of the day, the outbreak would have taken
place then and there. Lieutenant Colonel Little put both Casey
and Roberts under arrest, and then sent within the Filipino
lines and had the Filipino commandante come over; and,
through an interpreter, explained to him that these shots were
unauthorized and that the perpetrators would be punished.
This satisfied the commandante, and he went back to his lines.
Nothing more serious came of that. General Otis immediately
issued orders to our outpost guards not to bring on a conflict
with the Filipinos. But several regimental commanders told
their officers and men to bring on a conflict if possible; and such
secret orders were given to me by Col. Fred Funston on the
second day of February, 1899. As a result of such
orders, a Nebraska outpost guard fired on a Filipino patrol on
the night of February fourth and brought on the conflict.
I shall never forget the first flag of truce I ever saw. It was
while we were lying before Caloocan. My company held the
right of the 20th Kansas and occupied the old Spanish block-
house No. i. It was on either February 6th or 7th that a Fili¬
pino colonel came through our lines carrying a message from
Aguinaldo to General Otis. Aguinaldo deplored that outbreak
and said it was against his wishes and orders. He said it was a
spontaneous uprising of the soldiers, for whom no> one could
be held responsible. Aguinaldo asked for a cessation of hos¬
tilities and for a separation of the armies, with a little space
between us, to which General Otis replied that hostilities had
commenced, and the fighting must go on. And the fighting has
gone on ever since and is likely to continue so long as we at¬
tempt to force upon that people a government they do not want.
Let me give you another incident of our colonial affairs,
and then I shall close. On the 7th of February, while we were
lying before Caloocan, Colonel Funston took two or three
companies of the 20th Kansas, made a little chasse out in front
and drove the Filipinos out of a clump of bamboos. They were
annoying us a little bit at that time. In that action two of the
most popular men of the regiment were killed. Lieutenant Fred
Alford and Sergeant J. Sheldon. Several others were wounded.
A report from some unknown cause was circulated through our
regiment that Lieutenant Alford was shot in the back of the
head after we had charged into the enemy's trenches. But
this is a mistake, because Captain Krause of the same company
which Lieutenant Alford enlisted in told me that Alford was
shot in the face instead of- the back of the head.
A few days after that, on the 10th, we made our advance
against Caloocan and fought the battle of Caloocan. Just be¬
fore making that advance, secret orders were passed down our
lines to burn the town of Caloocan and take no prisoners. As
these orders were not official-apd as I supposed them to be of
the same nature as were given to me on the second day of Feb¬
ruary,- I did not take any official notice of them. But I know
one thing to be certain; I know that the town of Caloocan was
burned, there was not a bamboo shack left standing. And I have
every reason to believe that there were not any prisoners taken.
Now, I do not know that I can say anything more. This river
swimming business I have talked about in the press, and I sup¬
pose you would not care to listen to any of it; but I happened
to take part in all of these battles, I happened to be in close
touch with Col. Funston, either within speaking distance or
within sight of him, and I know about what dangers he had to
undergo in crossing the rivers—they were about as much as one
would have in crossing these streets out here in Boston. And
there never was a shot fired at him while he was crossing
any of them.
I thank you for your attention.
MR STOREY: I want to say to the whole audience that
these witnesses will be at the United States Hotel tomorrow af¬
ternoon at 4 o'clock; and if there is anybody who wants to go
and talk with them and to learn for himself what the facts are,
they will be very glad indeed to m'eet him at 4 o'clock tomor¬
row afternoon at the United States Hotel.
And I now take pleasure in introducing to you, as the last
speaker of the afternoon, after whose speech the meeting will
be adjourned to 8 o'clock this evening, the Rev. Charles F. Dole
of Jamaica Plain.
ADDRESS OF THE REV. CHARLES F. DOLE.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen :
I am averse to keeping you a moment, but I simply do as I
am bidden. I am impressed, first, with the debt of obligation
that we all owe to the devotion, the disinterestedness and the
public spirit of our friend Mr. Welsh.
There is a tremendous chapter in the book of the prophet
Ezekiel, where he puts the law of penalty. First, he says if
the wicked ever change from their wickedness and begin to do
right, then all their wickedness is taken away. The one thing
the Lord wants of them is, to get back on to the pathway of
right. And then he goes on to say, if ever the righteous get off
the pathway of right, then they become just like the wicked,
and their fate is the same; no past righteousness, no strenuous-
ness of ancient intention can save the righteous who lose the
highway of right. It seems to me that we have been getting
tremendous object lessons today of this law: How, with a bad
system and a bad beginning, how with the loss of the highway
of right, the best men, the m(en we all love and respect, go to
pieces and do mean and dastardly things because they have
lost the solid highway of righteousness from' under their feet.
It is not merely an incident or a series of incidents that we
have been talking about, however blood-curdling and impor¬
tant. They belong in a great conflict, a world conflict; they are
simply typical and characteristic of the great issue that is on
and that we too often forget, between aristocracy and dem¬
ocracy. That is the issue that is on trial in the world.
Or rather, we are on trial, the American people,
as to whether we really believe in our doctrine of democracy
or not. Step by step all through the history of these years'we
see just how the issue runs. What is the aristocratic doctrine?
It is, that certain people are wiser and better than other people,
certain people are grown up and civilized and superior, and oth¬
er people are barbarous and children; and so the superior peo¬
ple must take in hand the business of the inferior people. Yes,
it flatters our national vanity that we, as a superior people,
should chastise wicked Spain; and it rather flatters our nation-
al vanity that he should set up a government over brown peo¬
ple down in the Philippine Islands. And presently, as we can¬
not keep that sort of doctrine over the seas when v{e have it
in our own hearts, we find the assertion of the same aristocracy
all about us. The Republican party, which had been the heredi¬
tary defender of the rights of the slaves, is now caught in a coil
of circumstances which prevents any longer its defending its
old friends. President Roosevelt may be as'brave in individual
instances as he pleases; but. the Southern leaders have got the
logic of the situation, that we cannot maintain a government
over the seas that denies democracy, and gave anything to an¬
swer when the people of the South say, "This is a white man's
government."
We have this same issue everywhere. We have it in all
our legislatures in the common denial everywhere of home rule
for our towns and cities. Everywhere we are bidden by our lit¬
tle legislators to come to them for permission to try the reason¬
able experiments that people might try for the betterment of
their own city and town government. And now we have what
would be almost amusing, if it were not so pathetic, we have
the consummation of all this series of aristocratic movements
when a lot of college presidents and professors, who are sup¬
posed to be the elite themselves, are shown the door by the
Senate Committee and told, "Oh, no, you children cannot safe- -
ly know these things. You must trust us. We will tell what
it is well for you and the people to know." The
fact is, you cannot stop this aristocratic theory when
once you have admitted it. There is always a higher
range up, that shuts the door on the larger range just below
and treats them as children. So that we are driven back—and
we must thank Senator Lodge for this object lesson that drives
us back to the people of the United States, to ask, What is the
true democratic doctrine ? Are not people divided into superior
and inferior classes? The Senate of the United States is an
answer to that question; we are all children together, the Senate
shows us that—we are all children together. No one
ever looked on to see a debate in either House of
Congress and came away with the conviction that we
were any of us grown men yet. No, you cannot
divide men into any two classes, if you think of others
as children, it is well to think of yourselves as children too. We
are all of us more or less childish at times. But if we want to
be treated as men, there is just one way for it—to treat others
i as men also. To expect their very best of them,
whereby alone shall we get their best, this is the demo¬
cratic doctrine. It is very far-reaching. It sometimes humbles
us all and makes us very modest. We are really only beginning
to try what the true democracy is. It is really quite new in the
world. The old aristocracy, the survival of the old barbarous
tradition is very much m'pre ancient and goes with a tremend¬
ous momentum. It is not surprising that we have these facts
that we are considering today. The Old World barbarism is
mightily stronger than we commonly think.
Yes, the one thing is, to turn back again and trust the demo¬
cratic idea. But it goes everywhere, as I say; it is not simply
a political doctrine, it is an economic doctrine. We are on the
edge of a very great question, we are touching more than in¬
cidents, we are touching a world issue that concerns'us every¬
where. It is in every factory and every shop: How will you
treat men ? Will you treat them as men and brothers, will you
trust them, will you trust their intelligence, will you expect
'their best of them. The only safe rule is the democratic rule.
And that brings us to the last thing that I wanted to say, that
it is not for us here to take on the tone of men who are de¬
feated. The only significance in our being here today is our be¬
lief in this eternal doctrine of dembcracy and brotherhood and
humanity. It is the victorious doctrine. The mighty tide of all
the moral forces in the world goes with us as we assert that
doctrine. The stars in their courses fight with us. We are not
a little band criticising other men. We stand with the pioneers
of a great forward victorious movement. The whole world is
going with us. Only let us be careful that we all do the thing
that we believe, that we do it at all times; and that we make the
mighty ideal real.
MR. STOREY: Gentlemen and ladies, this meeting stands
adjourned until 8 o'clock this evening in this hall.
THE EVENING MEETING.
ADDRESS OF THE HON. MOORFIELD STOREY.
We have come to plead for light, to ask for the truth touch¬
ing public matters of the highest importance to us all. Is this
an unreasonable request for the citizens of a free state to make
of their representatives?
This country has been engaged for nearly five years in the
attempt to conquer a foreign nation, and to impose our sway
upon it against its will. We are departing from the principles
upon which our government is founded, and which we have al¬
ways held to be self-evident truths. Many of the ablest and
wisest of our leaders have felt that this, is a terrible mistake,
sure to result in misery to our victims and in great disasters
to ourselves.
That this is no question of party politics becomes clear, when
I remind you that President Harrison, Thomas B. Reed, ex-
Senator Edmunds, Senator Hoar, Governor Boutwell, Justin S.
Morrill, old and trusted leaders of the Republican party, who
have always enjoyed the fullest respect and confidence of this
people, have opposed this policy of conquest as wicked and
ruinous. They and those who agree with them may be right or
they may be wrong in the judgment of their opponents, but
their views are not to be lightly ignored, supported as they are
by the words of every great American statesman from 1776 to
1898. They present a question which the American people
must decide, and to reach a correct decision the people must
know the truth. This is the people's question. Their sons risk
their health and their lives in the war, their dollars pay the
cost, their honor and good name among the nations of the earth
are at stake, they and their children must bear the consequences
of any mistake.
We know now that we have been deceived, that the state¬
ments made to us for years as to the beginnings of the war, the
feeling of the Filipino people, the extent and nature of the
struggle, the manner in which it was conducted, were not true.
We know now that we were conquering a nation, not a frag¬
ment of a single tribe. We know that many shameful things
have been done in that war which were denied by high author¬
ity, but which have now been proved. We know that the peo¬
ple whom we have conquered have been reduced to the ex¬
treme of misery. No matter who deceived us, and whether inno¬
cently or not, we now want the truth. What are the condi¬
tions of the problem ? What have we done and what are we do¬
ing? What do the Filipinos desire, what do they need, how far
are they fit to govern themselves ? How far are we fit to govern-
them ? What is the effect on American citizens of tropical war
and absolute power? These are vital questions.
Prominent citizens of this country, including in very large
measure the men to whom we have entrusted the education of
our youth, and representing many thousands who did not sign
the petition because they had no chance to do so, have .respect¬
fully asked that the Senate Committee take testimony on Philip¬
pine conditions during the recess of the Senate and summon
all witnesses both Filipino and American desired by any mem¬
ber of'the committee. Is not this a perfectly reasonable and
proper request ? It has been rudely denied without plausible at¬
tempt at explanation, and the responsibility for this refusal rests
upon a senator from Massachusetts.
Senators have asked that the War Department^ lay be¬
fore the Senate the records of the Courts Martial and Courts of
Inquiry held in the Philippine Islands. These are public records,
why should not the public see them? This reasonable request
is refused and the responsibility for the refusal rests on a sena-
tor from Massachusetts. Therefore we citizens of Massachu¬
setts are here to protest against this arbitrary denial of our
rights.
Mr. Lodge is a citizen of Massachusetts like ourselves, no
more interested than every man * in this hall in the fate of this
nation, no more interested than we all are in the questions pre¬
sented in the Philippine Islands. By what right does he deny
to us, whose representative he is, the fullest knowledge of the
public records, the exact truth about these matters which con¬
cern us so much ? The question upon which Senator Hoar and
he differ is a question to be considered fairly and in the light.
By what right does he say, "You shall have just as much light
as I choose to give you and no more?"
This is not free government, and it carries us back to the
days of the anti-slavery contest, when to preserve slavery the
right of free speech, the right of petition, the sacredness of the
mails, the right to a trial by jury on the question of human
freedom were all denied to free citizens of this country. It is
proof, if proof were needed, that imperialism abroad begets im¬
perialism at home. We cannot deny their freedom to ten mil¬
lions of people and be sure that our own rights will be re¬
spected.
The senator and his associates would have us believe that
they have won a great victory over the Trusts during the last
session of Congress. In what does this victory consist? They
have passed a law which is said to secure the publication of the
facts connected with the business of certain corporations. Do
the interests of this country require that the affairs of private
business corporations shall be laid before the public, and yet
permit the affairs of the public itself, the doings of public of¬
ficers, the records of the public departments, to be kept from
public knowledge? Are we more concerned to know what the
officers of the Sugar Company or the Window Glass Company,
or the Tin Plate Company, are doing than to know what our
War Department, our army and our civil officers are doing with
millions of people? Is the Senatorial Trust alone entitled to veil
-its doings from the public eye? I say to Senator Lodge, "If your
policy is right, it will bear discussion. The facts will help you,
and the American people are intelligent enough to understand
them. If you do not dare let them know all that there is to
know, it is because you fear the truth—because the facts will
prove you wrong?" There is no escape from this conclusion.
He says that to ask for the facts is to attack the army! Will
the truth fiurt the army? Is the army afraid to let the country
know what it has done ? What a confession! He who takes this
ground is the army's worst foe.
We say that certain men have violated the rules of war,
have disgraced the army and the nation by barbarous cruelty
and torture borrowed fromj the dark days of religious persecu¬
tion. Are we right or wrong? If we are wrong, the facts will
prove it and we shall be glad to admit it. To refuse us knowl¬
edge of the facts is to admit the charge, and he who refuses this
deprives the accused of all defence, if a defence exists.
If we arrest criminals in civil life, do> we attack the commun¬
ity or do we serve it? If the community defends the criminal,
it assumes his guilt, and what was the act of a foolish or wicked
man becomes the act of a whole society. Thus we hold South¬
ern States guilty of lynching, and hold France responsible for
injustice to Dreyfus. It is so with the army. If the criminals
are punished the army is redeemed. If they are justified by
their comrades, the whole army suffers, and so when a sena¬
tor identifies the whole army with the men accused of crime and
claims that an attempt to punish criminals is an attack on the
entire force, he makes the whole army guilty and is its worst
defamer. What shall we say of the army's courage, if it cannot
face the truth about its own acts ?
We ask for the records of courts martial, which in every
case have resulted in acquittal or nominal sentence. Do ver¬
dicts of acquittal discredit the army? Will the production of
the records dishonor it? This is the claim of Senator Lodge.
Has any one made a worse attack upon the army ?
No, it is not the army which he is anxious to save. He sacri¬
fices its good name by his refusal to publish the truth. The
army has obeyed orders, and whatever it has done, the respon¬
sibility rests upon the men who gave those orders', and who di¬
rected the operations which have reduced the Philippine Islands
to a desert and their people to starvation. It is the men who
defend the policy, which Harrison, Reed and Hoar condemn,
who are seeking shelter by refusing to tell the truth. It is the
policy itself which cannot bear the light, and it is the authors
of that policy who hope to retain their power by concealing a
little longer the ruin they have wrought among the Filipinos
and the demoralization among the American soldiers which
they have promoted. We are here to insist that the truth is
our right, and to deny that any representative from Massachu¬
setts has the right to refuse his fellow citizens the fullest in¬
formation upon public matters.
After five years of bloody and costly failure Mr. Lodge tells
us that "the American people can handle these matters as it has
handled difficult ones before."
I answer that the American people can handle any question
only if it knows the essential facts. No doctor can treat a pa¬
tient unless he knows his symptoms. No lawyer can try a case
unless he knows the evidence. No statesman, no people can
deal successfully with any problem unless they know the facts.
Therefore that the American people may deal with the Philip¬
pine question, that they may apply their intelligence to its so¬
lution, we demand the fullest information. It is because Senator
Lodge and his associates wish to handle this question them¬
selves, and not let the American people handle it that the pol¬
icy of misrepresentation and concealment had been pursued so
long. They have had their chance. Now let them trust the peo¬
ple, and let the people try. We are anxious to let them know
every fact. Senator Lodge is not. Who trusts the people most ?
He says that the American people have handled great ques¬
tions in the past. It is true, and how has it been done? Let me
recall the time when the President of the United States and
his advisers were trying to deprive free American citizens of
their rights upon the plains of Kansas. How was that ques¬
tion met? Not by relying on the statements made by the Presi¬
dent and his associates in power. Had these been trusted, the
free state men were criminals, but an Independent House of
Representatives sent its committee to Kansas and there thor¬
oughly investigated the facts and reported them to the country.
It was upon the facts so discovered that the battle was fought
and Kansas was saved for freedom. The people settled that
great question when they discovered the truth and not till then.
Other great questions in the past have been dealt with but not
by a muzzled House of Representatives controlled by three men
exercising the right to determine what question the House
should consider, how long it should be considered, who should
speak and when the vote should be taken. It was not under
such rules as these that John Quincy Adams fought for the
right of petition, or that the leaders of the anti-slavery move¬
ment educated the people. If another fight' for human liberty
is to be made, we want the educating influence of debates by
Representatives of the people on the floor of the House, we
want free speech; we want the facts. This is the way in which
the American people have handled great questions in the past,
and to these precedents we appeal. We ask that they be given
the same right now that their fathers enjoyed when the last
battle for freedom was fought.
The American people have many problems of its own to han¬
dle. Are any of the great questions settled ? Is labor content, and
is capital no longer grasping? Are our legislatures and high of¬
fices no longer bought? Are the Trusts regulated to our satis¬
faction ? Are our colored fellow citizens secure in that equality
before the law which is their constitutional right, and are their
legal rights respected in practice? Is our system of taxation
just and equal, or is the right to tax our citizens for their food
and their clothes, their luxuries and their necessities bought by
contributions to campaign funds? Is our currency secure or
must the laws which regulate it be broken to prevent a financial
panic? Are our city governments honest, or are St. Louis and
Minneapolis exceptions among their sisters? These are ques¬
tions which disturb the people, and they must be handled by the
people. None have been settled yet, and none will be while
statesmen are afraid to trust the people with the truth.
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
This is the text upon which all freedom rests. Concealment and
falsehood are the allies of tyrants, the bulwark of a bad cause.
In the name of free Massachusetts we are here to demand the
truth.
And now, gentlemen, it is my privilege to introduce to you a
man who, drawing his blood from the first founders of this
great Commonwealth, cannot help being a friend of freedom
and a friend of light, the Hon. Winslow Warren.
ADDRESS OF THE HON. WINSLOW WARREN.
Mr. Chairman, my friends and fellow-citizens of Boston: If
any of you present here tonight were present this afternoon and
listened to the thrilling and dramatic statement of solid facts
made by Mr. Herbert Welsh and others, relating to what has
occurred in the Philippine Islands, you must wonder whether
the American people have any rights that a Senate Investigat¬
ing Committee, so-called, is bound to respect. As I under¬
stand it, the very foundation of Republican liberty is that an
American President, an American Senate, an American army,
an American official is the servant of the people.
They act in the name of the American people, and the American
people have a right to know what they have done and what they
are doing.
Now, gentlemen, in the few words that I have to say tonight,
I propose to indulge in no rhetoric, but to talk to you plainly
face to face, a few words concerning the right of the Ameri¬
can people to petition, and the right to be heard, and the right
to know all the facts, whomever they hit and wherever they
hit. It is a very common thing that the current
stories, and sometimes the current political acts of one genera¬
tion, come around again in later generations; and I want to
read to you and ask your attention to a very few words which
may sound to you more or less familiar. They are these: "The
rights and interests of the colonists will be looked after and
cared for, not by the agitators and rebels, but by the kind and
Christian gentlemen whom I as the direct representative of God
have appointed to look after my lands in the Western World."
Those were not the words of President McKinley nor of Presi¬
dent Roosevelt. They were not dictated by the Honorable
Cabot Lodge, but they were the words of a very sincere and
very stupid old gentleman who was pursuing in 1775 the same
course of action that we have been pursuing the last four years,
—his Britannic Majesty, George the Third of England.
No, I hope you noted those very familiar words "whom I
as the direct representative of God." I think we have heard
somewhere that Providence sent us to the Philippine Islands
and Providence has kept us there, Providence under the direct
guidance of the War and Navy Departments of the United
States. But, gentlemen, that is a very familiar claim. In all
the course of history there never was a monarch, there never
was a conquerer, there never was a despot who set out to crush
a weaker people but who claimed, first, that that people were
not fit to govern themselves, and, second, that he was the di¬
rect representative of God. And, gentlemen, they have usually
proved it to their own satisfaction, provided they had the heav¬
iest battalions. But there is another somewhat deadly parallel
that has worked round in the course of time. You may remem¬
ber that once Massachusetts had in the House of Representa¬
tives a man of whom she was thoroughly proud, and of whom
she has been proud ever since—John Quincy Adams—the old
man eloquent. And you may recall that he made
himself somewhat disagreeable to> the Southern slave holders
and their Northern friends by insisting upon the right of pe¬
tition in regard to the slaves of the South. They would not lis¬
ten to his petitions, and finally, getting-worse and worse, charg¬
ing him with being a traitor, a seditious personage; if in the
present day, it would probably have been Little American. They
finally resorted to refusing to having the petitions presented at
all. Well, one day the old gentleman arose and endeavored to
present a petition. He was immediately shut off by the speaker,
under the rules of the then House, and as he sat down he said,
"Gentlemen, I am rather sorry that you did not let me read
that petition. I think it would have interested you. It was a pe¬
tition from certain black men in Maryland requesting that I,
John Quincy Adams might be hung."
Well, that has rather a familiar sound too. If I remember
rightly, a certain noted swimmer in the army—a gentle¬
man whose ideas of what becomes an officer and a gentle¬
man consists in forging letters and in treacherously capturing a
man who had saved him and his forces from starvation—that
man, who is a very proper judge of such things, undoubtedly,
in a public speech not long since expressed the desire that Sen¬
ator Hoar and other gentlemen might be hung. So, you see, we
have worked round again after the lapse of a few generations.
But, just think of it, gentlemen—Senator Hoar! Well, now I
am not of the same political faith as Senator Hoar, but I honor
the man who stands up with a good old-fashioned New Eng¬
land conscience and dares to speak for what he be¬
lieves to be right. Senator Hoar hung! Is there any-
considerable portion of the American people who believe that
the Senate of the United States would be better
without Senator Hoar ? Or the people of Am¬
erica better without Senator Hoar? Why, gentle¬
men, if all the people who thought that this man Funs-
ton should be condemned instead of promoted—if those men
were to be hung, there wouldn't be hemp enough in the Philip¬
pines to make the rope to do it.
Now, gentlemen, I don't want to have any one say that I
have made any false charge in this matter. Senator Lodge and
his distinguished friends have not denied the right of petition.
They have not yet got as far as the Southern slave-holders did,
but they will later on if we become too much of a nuisance.
They have now simply denied that they will hear the petitions,
although they are presented by men of standing in the com¬
munity, by college presidents, college professors, by men of
known standing, many of whom are not anti-Imperialists; they
simply refuse to hear the evidence, and they say that we are
"hounding the army!" Well, now, that is very cheap talk.
Hounding the army! Who is hounding the armiy?—we who
want everything to the credit of the army shown up, everything
to the discredit of individuals shown up too ? Why, my friends,
the army is no fetich. Nothing could be more disastrous to Am¬
erican popular government and to popular liberty than to have
the army of the United States made a fetich of.
The army is just as subject to criticism in any particular as the
President, the Senate or any other civil officers of the United
States. If men in the army have done wrong, they should be
condemned and if they have done right, they are entitled to all
the glory.
Now, I yield to no man here or elsewhere in my respect for
the true soldier of the United States who acts with self-respect,
and who knows what is becoming to the uniform of the United
States; and in that class I am glad to put the commanding gen¬
eral of the army of the United States. There is a
big difference between a true soldier who respects his uni¬
form, who knows what his duty is, and men who have been
guilty of the outrageous crimes and barbarities in the Philippine
Islands. Now, gentlemen, why have we been refused these
facts ? Why are they afraid of the facts ? As Mr. Storey has well
said, we are not afraid of the facts. We do> not know what they
are, but we want to know, and we are entitled to know, what
the' real facts are. We are entitled to know, as Ameri¬
can citizens, what the army has done in the Philippines, what the
civil authorities have done in the Philippines and what the con¬
ditions in the Philippines are. Until we know those things
it is idle to say that the American people can form any judg¬
ment whatever of what shall be done with the Islands or how
they shall be governed. Without the facts we are pursuing a
blind and foolish course. But why do they shut them off ? They
had to in self defense. Did any one here present suppose we
could get the facts ? It would not be consistent with the course
that has been pursued from the very beginning of this Philip¬
pine trouble. Now, I want briefly, very brief¬
ly,— to go over this matter—you may say it is past
history, but it points straight to what has happened
recently—I want to go over with you the salient facts
relating to our course in the Philippines, and I do not hesitate
to say that in my judgment it is stamped with treachery on the
part of the United States from beginning to end.
Now, that, I am aware, is a strong statement, but it is proved,
and proved by official facts. I do not believe that Aguinaldo
was a second Washington. He was a Malay of limited educa¬
tion. But supposing he was not a second Washington. Do you
not believe he was fighting the same fight that George Wash¬
ing fought, for the liberty of his country ?
Now, who asked Aguinaldo to go to the Philippine Islands?
He never volunteered to go, never. Our consul sought him out
and asked him to go to the Philippine Islands and help us,
and offered to pay his expenses, which he declined. Aguinaldo,
like any other patriot, wanted to know, first, before he went,
whether we would co-operate with him m securing the indepen¬
dence of his people. With Yankee shrewdness we dodged his
question. I do not suppose any promise was made in words to
support the independence of the Philippine people, but promises
are made by acts just as well as by words, and knowing that
Aguinaldo made those terms, the answer came back to him, or
to our consul in Hong Kong, "Send him along," and he wag"
sent along in our ships; and when he arrived in Manila we
furnished him with armls, we made him a present of arms,
and we have been buying them up at so much a musket ever
since.
Now, as soon as he landed we treated him as an equal. We
let him understand, at any rate, that we were there to help him
in securing independence. We turned over Spanish prisoners
to him. We knew that he was organizing an army. Our officers
and our soldiers went out and inspected the parade of that
army, and cheered them as they went by. A distinguished of¬
ficer told me that himself, and he was present. Aguinaldo set
up his capital in Malolos. Over his army and over his camp flew
the Philippine flag. We knew it, we saw it there. Over his boats
in the harbor flew the Philippine flag. We saw it, and not a
word of protest ever came from this country, not one single
word. He issued proclamations of independence to his people
and assured them of our assistance. Those proclamations were
sent home to Washington, and they are in the War Department
today. We never protested. We allowed all this to go forward;
and more than that, we directly co-operated with Aguinaldo.
We used him, as Commodore Dewey said himself, and availed
ourselves of the assistance of his troops, and our generals have
testified it was a very importance assistance. And after that
what happened? We waited till we got troops enough in the
Philippine Islands, waited, letting this Malay believe, as he had
a right to believe, that we were there to assist him in getting his
independence. Then came President McKinley's declaration
of war. On December 21 he issued a proclamation, before the
treaty was ratified, when he had no legal authority whatever
to issue it, announcing that he proposed to take the
sovereignty of the Philippine Islands, and the Filipinos must
submit. That was not only treacherous to the Filipinos, it was
a breach of the term's of the treaty with Spain, and if Spain had
been a powerful country, it would have ended all negotiations.
But she was weak.' Now come to February. February 2 it was'
known in this country that the administration was short of a
few votes to ratify the treaty. February 4 came the outbreak in
the Philippine Islands, which was wired over here, and Feb¬
ruary 6th the requisite votes were found and the treaty was
ratified. Now, that is a coincidence which is singular. Before
that came the meeting of the commissioners in Paris. The Fili¬
pinos requested to be heard about their own country. They were
refused, and were not listened to. Instead of that, our com¬
manding general, Merritt, who had only been in the Philippines
three weeks and had hardly been on shore three days, was sent
for all the way from the Philippine Islands, to testify about the
condition of the Philippines and that is the kind of evidence
the treaty was made with.
Now, later, Senator Hoar, in the goodness of his heart, asked
for an investigating committee, to get all the facts. He was hon¬
est and earnest in it. He wanted all the facts put out before the
people. Senator Lodge claimed that his dignity, or something,
would be hurt, and that they should not have a new committee,
that they had a beautiful committee all formed, and if only the
matter was referred to that committee everything would be
lovely. Well, Senator Hoar agreed. One cannot help admiring
the softness of his heart in so doing. And this whole matter
was referred to an investigating committee constructed to
whitewash the whole proceeding, and it has been done in a most
admirable manner from that time to this. No witnesses were
ever heard before that committee whose testimony might be
damaging, if they could possibly be excluded. Why, gentlemen,
just think of it! It is almost an absurdity. Whom did they call
to inform the people of America as to the real condition of the
Philippine Islands, what the Filipino aspirations were, what
they wanted, and what kind of people,they were? Why, the
conquering generals who were sent out there to subdue them.
It isn't a whit more absurd than if, in the course of the Ameri-
con Revolution, an investigating committee in London had
summoned General Gage and General Burgoyne and Lord
Cornwallis. It is precisely the same thing. What did they know
about the condition of the American people ? What did our gen¬
erals know about the condition of the Philippine people? The
witnesses who did know, who could testify really and truly
what the Filipino people wanted, what the condition of the Isl¬
ands was, how far the people were educated, how far they were
able to maintain a government, and all those things, were the
Filipino people, of course, the educated, leading Filipino people,
and every one of them were excluded from the hearing, and
they have been excluded to this day.
Now, that is one of the things which the petitions recently
sent in asked. These were not petitions to investigate the army.
Not a bit of it. They were petitions that the Filipinos might be
heard, that we might know what they wanted and judge ac¬
cordingly of the situation; and yet, they were refused, these
common, ordinary, reasonable, honest requests. Mr. Lodge
turns them down in his most imperious and indecent manner.
There is the whole history from the beginning to' the end. There
isn't a single thing that I have stated that is not proved by the
official facts on record in Washington, and even a great deal
more, if I had time to state them. In other words, we have not
pursued a fair, open course with the Filipinos from the time
that Dewey took Manila down to the present moment.
I think the American people have something to say about this
thing. We all of us have opinions, but we are liable to change
our opinions if we know the facts. I have a very decided opinion
about the Philippine Islands. If Mr. Lodge and his freinds have
facts that will prove that I am wrong, why, I should be very
glad to know them. I want to get at the facts, and to know the
truth, and that is what we all want, and we don't want anything
less. Now, who is responsible for this? It is not Mr. Lodge and
his committee. It goes farther back than that. The man who is
responsible for this is the President of the United States. One
word, one single word from the President of the United States
would unlock the doors and give us the whole truth. I respect
Mr. Roosevelt for a great many things. I think he is a man of
great physical courage, and I think he means well and means
to do right; but, gentlemen, if he had the real sense of right,
the true moral courage, the willingness to take the people into
his confidence that a President did have ten years ago, if he had
that in addition to his magnificent physical courage, then we
should not be here tonight, but we should have all the facts
that we want, whatever they may be, laid before the people for
the people to judge of.
As Governor Boutwell said this afternoon, during our Civil
War, in the height of the struggle, when the contest was going
on, the American people demanded an investigating commit¬
tee, to know what was going on, and they1 had it. They had an
investigating committee sitting all through the war, and the
facts were spread before the American people, and the Ameri¬
can people formed their judgment upon those facts. Now, we
ask it in times of profound peace. There are no military
operations to be interfered with. There is nothing whatever,
no good reason why we should not know the truth, and we say
that the President or the Senate or anybody else who unlocks
doors, who lets out the truth, the whole truth before the peo¬
ple, they are the men who will honor the American army, who
will honor themselves, and who will honor the whole Ameri¬
can people.
MR. STOREY: We were very much in hopes that President
Schurman, of Cornell University, would be able to address the
meeting this evening. But you must have seen in the news¬
papers that there is an epidemic of typhoid fever there, and he
thinks that that keeps him at home. He has, however, written
this letter:
"I am in receipt of your invitation to speak at the meeting to
be held in Boston on the 19th inst. to protest against the action
of the Senate in refusing to grant the petition numerously
signed by educators and other citizens in many parts of the
country praying for further official inquiry into conditions in
the Philippine Islands.
"In reply I beg to say that my duties here are now so press¬
ing and anxious that it is not practicable for mje to attend the
meeting.
"I desire, however, to express my sympathy with the object
of the meeting, which I understand to be the demand for more
light on Philippine affairs. The American people are now re¬
sponsible for the political condition and destiny of the Filipinos
and also, to the degree (surely not inconsiderable) in which
these are conditioned on congressional action, for their eco¬
nomic prosperity, their social welfare, and their individual con¬
tentment and happiness. This high responsibility we can ade¬
quately discharge only in the light of the fullest knowledge of
the facts. And the Senate in burking further inquiry have de-
privecl the American people, whose delegates and servants they
are, of the best available opportunity of ascertaining impartially
the actual condition of affairs in the Philippines. It is an axiom
of politics that a party in power is apt to be content with the ex¬
isting situation and. to shut its eyes to portents of coming
change. But the American people who beyond doubt desire to
deal wisely and righteously with the Filipinos, must have a
comprehensive and far-sighted view of what these distant
wards are and what they eventually hope to become. As Bishop
Butler used to say, things are what they are, and the conse¬
quences will be what they will be; why then should we wish to
be deceived ?
"Politicians may put off the issue as premature. But the
course of history and the logic of political ideas mjake it clear
that the Philippine Islands must be an independent country, or
a state or states in the American Union, or a dependency by
force. To settle their destiny aright is the gravest problem
now confronting our Republic. More light! More light! ! is
the demand of all thoughtful citizens of our Republic.'
Archbishop Ireland sent a letter, from which tne following is
an extract:
"It is my conviction that 'Abiding appendicies cannot be the
appanage of a Republic.' If we do not intend to make states out
of the Philippines, as soon as the Philippines would be worthy
of the statehood, then logically we must let them go and set
up for themselves."
Mr. Schurz writes a letter:
"Under these circumstances it would be a physical impossi¬
bility for me to go to Boston. I am very sorry, believing that
this is indeed a very proper time for a spirited protest against
the denial of further inquiry."
Plon. Albert E. Pillsbury writes:
"For a variety of reasons, of which one sufficient by itself
is that I have so much to do just now that I cannot undertake
any extras, I must ask you not to count on me. I need not say
that I heartily sympathize with the purpose of the meeting."
Senator Carmack, who was also expected to be present,
writes:
"I am suffering with rheumatism and anxious to get to Hot
Springs for treatment as soon as I can. If I thought you needed
my presence to make a success of the meeting I might strain
a point, but I do not flatter myself that such is the case." .
And by a later telegram he informed us that he was too ill
to leave Washington and that he had tried to secure the attend¬
ance of one of his colleagues of the minority of the Senate
Committee, "Senators Dubois and Culberson out of the City,
impossible for Patterson or myself to come."
MR. STOREY: I told the meeting- this afternoon, and those
who were present then will perhaps pardon my repeating for
the benefit of those who are now present that it is our good
fortune to have here tonight .some of the witnesses that Senator
Lodge was afraid to hear. I believe that this meeting has more
courage. We have here one of the men who stood at the side
of Father Augustine when he was tortured to death by the
water cure. We have here an officer who received secret or¬
ders from General Funston before the war in the Philippine
Islands began, telling him that while the instructions were to
keep the peace, he had inquired among the higher officers, and
he thought if his officers could find a good chance to_bring on
the war he had better do it. We have here the engineer who
was on the Paragua at the time that Father Augustine was kid¬
napped. We have here the mother of the unfortunate young
man who ventured to enlist in the army for the service of his
country, and having incurred the displeasure of his superior
officers, was tied hand and foot for some two hours or more
while cold water was thrown upon him with a man holding
him down, and a gag held in his mouth by a stick until he
died. The mother is here. She has been to Washington, and
she has asked for the record of the court-martial. It was prom¬
ised her, but weeks have elapsed and the report has not been
shown her. But by rare good fortune a gentleman who sits up¬
on this platform secured access to the records of that court-
martial, and knows something about the facts. I wish that she
were able to speak. I wish that her voice could penetrate not on¬
ly to the remotest corner of this hall, but to the remotest cor¬
ner of this country. Unhappily, she is a woman not used to
public speaking, but I am going to ask Mr. Herbert Welsh,
who addressed you this afternoon, again to tell you somewhat
more in detail something of her story, in order that you may
know how it is that men who become accustomed to visit brown
men with torture and with cruelty soon learn to disregard their
fellow white men. I introduce Mr. Herbert Welsh.
ADDRESS OF MR. HERBERT WELSH.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As I stated here this afternoon, I was led to believe some two
years ago that a very dangerous condition of things existed in
the Philippine Islands, of which our people through the cen¬
sorship which was exercised, and the strong pressure put by
the War Department and the authorities at Washington upon
military men and upon soldiers, were entirely ignorant. A very
careful investigation into a large number of cases showed more
and more clearly that this was the truth. I do not intend this
evening to refer to any of those cases, certainly in the begin-
ning of my address, but to try to concentrate attention upon
this case of Mrs. Ellen C. Richter, to which our chairman has
referred—Mrs. Ellen C. Richter of 135 Chester street, Syra¬
cuse, N. Y.
My attention was first called to this case, as doubtless was
so with many here, by an article which appeared in the New
York World about the 9th of March last year. I think it was
about that date, was it not, Mrs. Richter?
Yes, sir; it was on the 18th.
On the 18th of March. That article gave the first
general knowledge that the country had of this case. i>ow
I would like to call your attention to the general disposition of
the War Department towards it—as that disposition, as mani¬
fested by the acts of the department, falls closely in line, as I
can very well state, with a large number of other cases, showing
a systematic effort to produce the impression on the minds of
the public that the case was being thoroughly investigated, that
the authorities were very much concerned about it indeed,
when in reality they were principally concerned in keeping back
the truth regarding it.
There appeared in the Syracuse Post-Standard, a copy of
which I saw this last autumn, a dispatch from General (Sor¬
bin to General Chaffee in Manila. It was like the dispatch
that. Secretary Root sent out to General Chaffee in the month
of April after one of the Massachusetts soldiers, Sergeant
Riley, had testified under oath to the use of torture in the
Philippines, which showed a great deal of anxiety to get at the
actual facts; and any one reading that dispatch, taking it at
its surface value, would have supposed that a very thorough
investigation was going to be made. The general report publish¬
ed by the World was to the effect that this young man, who,
for some alleged act of insubordination or offense, had been
in the guard-house, was treated in the manner which our chair-
m'an has described; and that, under those general conditions, he
died. Now, I wanted to study the thing closely. I knew that
the first statements of the War Department cannot be trusted,
and I wanted to get at the actual facts. So, later on, I read a
little book written by my friend, Mr. Bergey, giving the reasons
why the enlisted men in the United States army desert. Mr.
Bergey knew a good deal on that subject, and I would invite
those who want to know more and to understand this subject
better , to read his book. I noticed in this book a reference to
the Richter case. I noticed, morover, in the pages of the book,
a letter from General Bruce, the head of the postoffice depart¬
ment of Syracuse, strongly recommending this young man,
saying that while he was a postal clerk in his service his char-
acter was a good character. That is so, is it not, Mr. Bergey.
Mr. Bergey: Yes, sir.
And there were other recommendations of a similar
character from people who knew him in Syracuse. Then
I wrote to Mrs. Richter herself; and I got a reply from1 her to
the ^ general effect that she had not been able to recover her
son s body and that she had not been able to get any very exact
or positive information from the War Department concerning
the circumstances of his death. I later corresponded with Miss
May L. Richter, her daughter, who told me that her mother's
health had been greatly shattered as a result of this horrible
affair. And most of my correspondence was with Miss Rich¬
ter from that time until recently.
Now, I wish to draw attention to this matter: Lieutenant
Sinclair wrote a letter to Mrs. Richter which seemed to ex¬
press a very pleasant and respectful and sympathetic feeling.
But any one, from receiving his letter, would simply have in-
fered that this young man died from some natural cause. The
letter ran about in this way: "My dear Madam1: It is my
painful duty to be obliged to inform you that your son died
last night at 12.30 o'clock in Damarinas." Is that the name of
the place ?
Mrs. Richter: Yes, sir.
In the Island of Luzon, I believe it is, is it not,—in the
Philippines ?
.... "From apneumatosi pneumatosis." Now, I asked
a number of physicians of good standing what disease
that was, and they all told me that they did not know. But I
think the idea was, that it meant a lack of breath, or strangula¬
tion. Now, I wish to call your attention to the exceedingly
callous and abominable deception that was contained in
that letter. What were the circumstances? The circumstances
were as Mr. Storey has said. And access to the record of the
court-martial makes these circumstances, I do not hesitate to
say, much more horrible than a person would suppose who had
not had that access. You have no idea of the amount of time,
of effort, of patience, of progressive ingenuity which it requires
to get at the actual truth of these things that are done in these
free United States and that touch, not the brown men, not the'
men with whom you have been fighting—many persons have no
sympathy with them. Now, let us outlaw them for the present
from this discussion; but in reference to American boys and
American mothers in these United States, it is getting home—
it is getting very closely home.
My inquiry satisfied me that until that young man left home
he was a young man of excellent character. I have a great
belief in photography. I got photographs out in the Philippine
Islands of the administration of the water cure by United States
soldiers. And nobody could very well dispute them. A photo¬
graph does not lie. ■ So the next thing I did was to get a photo¬
graph of this young man. And any who have seen that—and it
is very easy to see it now—will say that it showed that his face
was a delicate, sensitive, refined face. I read the last letter,—I
believe it was the very last that he wrote to his mother before
his death; and it was a simple, direct, pleasant, soldier boy's let¬
ter. I know that he sent home such a proportion of his wages
as he could to the support of his mother, who is a plain work¬
ing woman but who has sought honestly and iairly, as an
American mother should, to bring up her children. Very well.
Miss Richter wrote me, "We despair of getting justice." Now,
that stirred me somewhat. I got that letter when I was alone,
living in my little house in New Hampshire. And I never shall
forget the impression I got from reading that letter from an
American girl regarding the death of her brother—what
seemed to be the murder of her brother under the United
States flag—and to think that she could write, "We despair
of justice." I said, "Well, let us see if we cannot get justice, let
us see if there are any hearts in the United States that care for
these things. And later on we got some more money to carry
on our investigation. I would write to Mrs. Richter and her
daughter, begging them to write to the War Department, to get
the record, to know the facts, to know the truth about this
thing. What were the actual facts, the circumstances ? A state¬
ment had gone out that this young man was a ruffian. That was
the impression left from the language used. So that everybody
in the country supposed he was a brutal ruffian. And Mrs. Rich¬
ter was on a train the other day and heard two men discussing
this subject in front of her, and they remarked, "I guess he
was a tough." And she leaned forward and engaged in con¬
versation with them and said "I have known that young man
from his childhood, and he was no tough." And when they
found out that she was the mother of the young man, they be¬
came deeply interested and said they would be glad to do any¬
thing for her that they could.
Well, then the next thought that occurred to me was this—I
want to show you how this came about; I had been going to a
great many high and lofty people in this country—I won't men¬
tion any names, but all the lofty people that I could think of,
college presidents and distinguished people in the church, peo¬
ple very high up indeed, and asked them for help in one way
and another. And I could very rarely get it. There seemed to
be a sort of current running that made it unfashionable to sym¬
pathize with anybody who had been murdered or robbed. Then
this idea occurred to me, that perhaps we were intended to turn
to the common people. And the idea kept ringing in my mind
again and again—Abraham Lincoln's common people—they are
the people that listened to him, and he knew about them. And
the closer I got to those people, the more I was impressed with
their gentlemanly and ladylike qualities and with the quality of
their heart. They seemed to feel; they did not seem to have
lost, as other people had from riches or som)e quality or an¬
other, the faculty of feeling for human distress.
Then I wrote to Mrs. Richter and said, "Will you please
go down to Washington"—and I sent Mr. Bergey along with
her—"and ask there if they won't let you get at the record in
the War Department ?" For Mr. Bergey had previously gone
to Washington; and through the kind act of a senator, he got
into the War Department—a very rare thing; it is a very hard
place to get right into—right inside of. And he got in there,
and they showed him the entire record, did they not, Mr. Ber¬
gey?
Mr. Bergey: Yes, I got in the department and got access,
through a letter of introduction from Senator Foraker. I got
in and read the whole of this account.
Through his letter of introduction from Senator For¬
aker he got in and read this whole account. Now,
there was this idea thrown out—please correct me if
I make any mistake, for we are dealing with a very
serious matter—at least, I consider it very serious. This
idea was thrown out that this young man—one of the witnesses
said something about the possibility of his "squealing" on Lieu¬
tenant Sinclair. Is that correct or not?
Mr. Bergey: That is correct.
That attracted my attention. I could not understand
-—I do not know how it strikes you—I cannot understand
any officer of the United States army going to his quarters and
getting a rope and tying this young man hand and foot, and
seeing him there with a soldier seated on his chest, and a club
irom the wood-pile, fastening a towel in his mouth and pouring
ice water on his face for two hours and twenty minutes until he
died. I don't know how it seems to you. That is true, and there
is no denying it. And then giving out the idea that this was a
ruffian who died under military discipline. Very well. Now what
have we done? That mother has got some feeling. When she
came back from Washington she said, "Mr. Welsh, I think that
the people who represent us down there have not very much
feeling." Now, correct me if I make any mlistake, please. She
said, "There was General Davis who laughed in my face." Is
that true ?
Mrs. Richter: Yes, sir.
That is true: "Who laughed in my face at the
idea that I felt any especial concern about the death of my son
and the court-martial of Lieutenant Sinclair."
Mrs. Richter: Yes, sir.
Mrs.. Richter says that is true. Now I thought,
ladies and gentlemen, that was a pretty serious condition of af¬
fairs, and I believe you will think so too. Well, now, what has
happened since? Mr. Bergey and Mrs. Richter went to Wash¬
ington, and wrote a letter to the President asking for those
court-martial proceedings immediately. Mind you, we had been
a year trying to get them—a year—the mother, to get informa¬
tion regarding the death of her son, and the reply was that ac¬
cording to their regulations, I think, this information could only
be given to the accused, was it not?
Mrs. Richter: Yes, sir.
In other words, the man who does the thing has
the right to get at the information concerning what he does;
•but the man who is put out of life by what he did, and his rela¬
tives, have no right to get at that information.
Now, if that is a regulation of the War Department, I submit
to this audience whether it ought not to be altered, whether in
the progress of human events and the getting into the Twenti¬
eth Century, and all that, we had not better alter that arrange¬
ment slightly.
Now, what happened next? We asked for these proceedings,
and the President consented and the War Department con¬
sented. When that letter went out through the Associated
Press and had gone pretty well over this country, we calculate
that possibly twenty million people may have read it—that is
probably not an excessive calculation—and then they granted
these proceedings, which could not be granted otherwise. Pub¬
licity has a wonderful effect on the trusts and other things.
Then the next point was this. Although the promise was
granted, there is a difference, I find, in the action of the War
Department between promise and fulfillment, and I have be¬
come very cautious and suspicious about those matters; and I
suggested as long as they made the excuse that there were not
enough clerks to copy this before a long period of time, it was
how long, how much time?
Mr. Bergey: Three weeks.
Three weeks. That it might be well for Mrs. Rich¬
ter to write to the Honorable Secretary of War to have
that done by the following Thursday, and if it was not done,
she would be back in Washington again, and she would appeal
to the public press. So she did that, and it had a very, very
stimulating effect. They found they could have it done by Sat¬
urday, I believe they thought they could, and Mrs. Richter went
back to Washington, but it has not appeared yet. About how
many weeks is it ?
Mr. Bergey: About four weeks.
Four weeks, and it has not appeared yet; she can't
yet get this thing.
In the meantime, the Judge-Advocate, General Davis, puts
out, under this hammering, a statement regarding the murder
of Father Augustine and regarding the murder of this young
man. And imagine the mother's feelings when he states that
there were many bad men in the regiment, but this young man
was one of the worst. Well, now, here is his record; here is his
record. I am not going a word beyond what I know to be true,
but here is the record up to this point. He may have become
the worse, but there was no evidence in that trial that he was
one of the worst. The words were said, and said in that trial,
"They are going to kill me." Were they not?
Mr. Bergey: Yes.
That appears as a matter of record now. It is
not so m(uch a surprise to me, when you let officers into the
army under political pull. I know a young man in my town
who went into the army in this way, and he walks round now
boasting of knocking Filipinos on the head, and people listen
to him; and I know he never ought to have gotten into the army
because his character didn't fit him to get in; and I know of a
great many others of the same kind who got in. So you might
get a man in who would commit a horrible crime like this. But
here to me is the marvel, and here is the point that the people
of the United States ought to put their finger right upon and
meditate upon, that a court of his peers, in view of the indisput¬
able evidence of the fact, about which there was no doubt,
should have acquitted him, and that he should remain in the
army after he had done that, and that we, we poor people of
the United States, have to hammer and to hammer and to ham¬
mer to get the simplest kind of justice, to get at the records, to
get at the records, and to know what has been done.
Now, my friend, Dr. Croffut, in Washington went to see
the President about this matter very recently, and Mr. Bergey
with Mrs. Richter, if I mistake not, went to see the President,
did you not?
Mr. Bergey: Yes, sir.
And I know in the Philadelphia Ledger there was
a head-line, which I supposed was true, that the President
had been profoundly moved on the subject. Was there
any evidence of that when you saw him, any evidence
of being moved at all ?
Mr. Bergey: Absolutely none.
But all his efforts, as I understand it, was to defend Sinclair.
Is that true? Because we are dealing with a very important
matter.
Mr. Bergey: Yes, sir, that is true. He defended Sinclair
much stronger than any officer has done with whom, I have
talked, and he never sympathized with Mrs. Richter. He never
once expressed a word of sympathy for the mother of the mur¬
dered boy.
Very well. Now, it seems to me that presents a
a very serious condition of affairs. But my friend, Dr. Croffut,
wrote me within two or three days that he went to see the Presi¬
dent, who is an old personal friend of mine, and whom I ad¬
mire for many qualities—went to see him and asked him if
he could not do something about this. Here was this man. We
are led to understand, and I think it is quite correct that he, on
account of brutality to his men, was transferred from1 the 28th,
wasn't it?
Mr. Bergey: Yes, sir.
To the 5th.
Mr. Bergey: To the 5th.
So the men could not get along with him.
Mr. Bergey: Now he has been again transferred into the 23d.
Now to the 23d. That is the officer that mur¬
dered this young man, and watched until he was actually
dead, and after the physician testified that he had been dead
some time when the gag was removed from his mouth. Very
well.
And now I approach the close of my address. Dr. Croffut
made this point. He said, "Can't you do something about this
matter?" and the President said, the court-martial had decided
it, had finished it. Well, it seemed to me that he might have
written "Disapproved" over that courtmartial the way he
did over the court-martial of General Jacob Smith, might have
done something to show that that was not regarded by the
commander-in-chief of the army of the United States as a
thing that could be allowed to pass without some sort of pro¬
test. Now, that is the feeling of my own heart and my own
head. I believe it is the feeling of everybody else. And the
President claimed he could do nothing. Well, Dr. Croffut's
reply was, "Well, couldn't you even give such a reprimand
as was given to Gen. Nelson A. Miles ?" Couldn't you do that?
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have reached a conclusion.
I want to say, however, one word after dismissing this case
before I take my seat. I have been twenty years in the practi¬
cal study of public affairs in the United States. I have re¬
ceived no compensation of any kind of a pecuniary character
for what work I have tried to do in the Indian service and in
other matters. I have arrived at a few very simple conclusions.
which I consider to be of the highest importance for the ordi¬
nary citizen to take into his mind and to think over carefully.
I want to make this one suggestion and then I take my seat.
I think the right working of this government can be absolute¬
ly procured—I do not take a hopeless view at all, I am not at
all a pessimist—if every man and every woman will take a rea¬
sonable, legitimate interest in public affairs and try to exert just
a little influence, just a little. I believe that the wrong work¬
ing of our public affairs comes about through a spirit of pes¬
simism and fatalism which affects a large number of people.
They say, we can do nothing, or, we can do very little, there¬
fore we can do nothing. Now, my experience has led me to
absolutely the contrary conclusion. I believe that exactly that
influence which is needed to make our government the best
working government in the world—we have the grandest op¬
portunities of any nation in the world—all that is needed is
simply for the highly intelligent people of the United States
—for they are a very intelligent people—to take up things in
a rational way and exert their influence. Now, in reference
to this whole Philippine matter, of which. this is one of the
last and most terrible illustrations, the whole Philippine mat¬
ter, of which this is one of the last and most terrible illustra¬
tions, that whole thing, if you analyze it carefully, you can see
exactly how it has come about. These atrocities, which ended
in this horrible thing, never would have taken place in the wide
world if a man like Gen. Nelson A. Miles had had charge of
military affairs. I know it. I know that is true. I have
known him for twenty years. I have known military men for
twenty years, and I want to tell you that this is not a reflection
on the army, but it is a reflection upon certain murderers and
scoundrels who are in the army. Why, if they dared to speak,
you will find plenty of first-class army officers who hate every¬
thing of this kind, and never would have allowed it. An old
civil war veteran out in Kansas—you know him well—wrote
me. He said that this began by murdering prisoners at Ca-
loocan ; that if Funston and Metcalf and Bishop had been court-
martialled in the early days of the war, and that trouble settled
then and there, all this thing would have stopped, because every
young man would have known that the way to preferment and
to get breveted was not to get hold of a newspaper man and
send in accounts of being present at battles where he was not,
of swimming rivers which he did not swim, or of murdering
prisoners. That is the great lesson that you ought to learn and
all of us ought to learn. Men like my friend there
who fought in those battles, and like Captain Hardy,
a man of marked military ability, and Col. Little—there
are lots of them, but they didn't have a fair chance, and your
duty and mine is to find out the truth about those men and to
give the laurels to the men to whom in fact they belong, and
not to the .humbugs who pretend to things that they did not do,
and who did things that ought to make them execrated from
one end of this land to the other.
MR. STOREY: It has been suggested that some of these
things happeend a great while ago. That may be true, but it only
shows how long a time it takes for the truth to make its way to
the ears of the American people through obstructions which are
placed in its course by the men in power. I am going to ask you
now to listen to something that is comparatively new. We are
told that the Philippine Islands are now enjoying peace. I want
you to see what sort of peace they are enjoying, and I ask Mr.
Patterson to tell us the latest news from the Philippine Islands.
ADDRESS OF MR. THOMAS T. PATTERSON.
Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen:
Perhaps, as a foreigner. I ought to say a word of apology for
presuming to address a meeting in Faneuil hall. And yet, I
have still to learn that Faneuil Hall, of all places, is afraid of a
little wholesome truth, no matter from what source. Further¬
more, I am willing to make a sort of bargain with you: I shall
welcome any of you who will come to my country and lecture
us a little about our recent doings in South Africa.
The chairman has asked you to listen while I tell you some¬
thing that is "comparatively new." What I have to tell you is
really—to use a familiar expression—"Fresh from the oven
and perhaps the expression might be used literally in regard to
the Philippines, for things' have been somewhat "hot" over
there! I am about to read you a letter—or rather a translation
of the salient parts of a letter—received only today from the
Philippines, addressed to Senorita Clemencia Lopez, who, as
many of you know, is now in America. The town of Balayan,
from whence this letter comes, is a populous seaport within 70
or 80 miles of Manila. I mention this because, if the conditions
described in this letter are such in a populous town like Bala¬
yan, within easy reach of Manila and visited frequently by the
higher American officials, what are they likely to be in the re¬
moter parts where the restraint that may be found in Manila
and Balayan is almost entirely absent?
The letter is dated the 31st of January, 1903, and is written
by Senorita Juliana Lopez to her sister:
"Balayan, Batangas, January 31, 1903.
"I would not like our American friends to be here now, for
they would suffer much in seeing and knowing many events
and things to which they are unaccustomed, and which are per¬
mitted out here. Without going further I must tell you that on
the 29th of this month a horrible event took place, which, be¬
lieve me, makes mjy hair stand on end each time I think of it.
Picture to yourself that a workman of ours from Tejiro struck
an American soldier a blow that almost cut off his head and
killed him instantly. He then wounded another of the American
soldiers so gravely that his fingers or perhaps his arm will re¬
quire amputation."
That, you will see, has the appearance of an atrocious crime,,
and I can believe that if the report came from the really guilty
parties it would proceed no> further. But let us see whether
there was any justification for the act. The letter continues:
''This happened on the 29th at midnight. There were six
drunken soldiers intent on forcing a woman, who was a sister-
in-law of the man who killed the soldier. This man, Felix, lived
next door, and hearing the woman's cries, and those of her
brother—who shrieked that they were being killed and begged
for succor—came to the rescue, and seeing what was happen¬
ing, killed the most persistent of the assailants. The party be¬
ing unarmed, the rest took to flight and ran to the soldiers' quar¬
ters about two miles distant. Naturally on this same night all
these events became known. Felix, his brother, his father-in-
law, whose name is Pitaca, and another workman of ours, were
all arrested; the woman also was arrested. According to the
statement of the soldiers there were not more than three of
them, instead of six, which latter I understand to be the fact.
And the soldiers also say that the Filipinos who fought them
were numerous. But the truth is that Felix was the only one,
and he admits having been the slayer of this thief of woman's
honor.
"Ah! Clemencia, this is not the first of such happenings.
When the soldiers are drunk on the streets at night similar
things frequently occur. The people of the barios of Cuma-
mela, Ibabao, and even the people of the town of Balayan it¬
self, complain of the immorality that is seen each day. On one
occasion in Gumamela some of these men, muffled to the eyes,
entered the house of the beautiful Juana, who you will remem¬
ber is the wife of InigO', and attempted the same deed. Luckily
the husband contented himself with cudgelling the assailant
and did not proceed to extremities. Several times complaints
have been laid before the presidente, but they resulted in noth¬
ing, for it is impossible to give the names of these (masked)
offenders.... They enter homes without even a 'by your
leave.'
I ought to state, by way of explanation, that another part of
the letter tells how the conditions which obtained during the
period of "Reconcentration" still exist—or at least one of them
still exists. That is to say: During the reconcentration peri-
od soldiers were permitted, by some new application of martial
law, to enter the houses of the Filipinos at any time of day or
night without let or hindrance. This habit is still practiced by
soldiers, although reconcentration no longer exists and not¬
withstanding the fact that Batan'gas is under some form of
"civil government." The letter concludes as follows:
"Most of the Filipinos say that if this is the education that
is to be taught us, unhappy are the children who must grow
up in such immorality. Here, there are many young girls, who,
fearful of such attacks by the soldiers, never have a chance to
know the pleasure that we used to have in walking out in the
cool of the evening, (the only hour possible in our tropical cli¬
mate) ."
From all this you will see that there is something more
than "matchless prosperity" and famine and pestilence to occu¬
py your attention in the Philippines! And since America has
deprived the Filipinos of their right to self-government and
their power to regulate their own affairs, the duty rests upon
the American people of seeing that all these horrors shall
cease.
I should like, if you will permit me, to say a word about this
man who came to his sister-in-law's rescue. I am) afraid that
he may be in danger of unjust punishment. It is quite human
for the soldiers to tell their own story in order to exculpate
themselves, but they cannot do that without implying a charge
of murder against the man who, if this account is correct, sim¬
ply committed what is regarded throughout the civilized
world as justifiable homicide. I think, therefore, it would be
well, for those of you who have the time, to give some atten¬
tion to future developments in this case.
As to the conditions of which this letter speaks, I was con¬
versing today with Senorita Lopez and she expressed the wish
that the President would at least remove those soldiers from
the Philippines who are addicted to too much drinking. I do
not know whether that is practicable without a considerable
modification of the present policy. You can well understand
the habits that soldiers are likely to fall into in a tropical cli¬
mate to which they are unaccustomed, and especially when
they have little or nothing to do, as at present, when the fight¬
ing is said to be at an end—it is at an end in Balayan. Kipling
describes the conditions which soldiers in such a climate create
for themselves, "Where there ain't no ten commandments, and
a man can get a thirst!" It is natural, if imprudent, for the
soldier to appease that 'thirst" with liberal potations; and the
result—you can well'imagine without having to go to Balayan!
For my part—knowing something of the soldier in eastern
tropical lands—I believe that drunkenness and its concomitant,
crime, will necessarily continue in the Philippines as long as
large numbers of soldiers are stationed there. And further, I
believe it will be necessary to retain a strong military estab¬
lishment in those islands as long as the Filipinos are denied
those elementary rights which every one of the people—from
the least unto the greatest—knows he is entitled to. England
is meeting, or will soon meet, with the same difficulty in South
Africa. The really practical among men are beginning to real¬
ize that the dreams of empire will, in the near future, be only
dreams—for empire has ceased to be a paying investment.
MR. STOREY: From a very early day in Massachusetts peo¬
ple have known what happens in the neighborhood of a mus¬
ter, and I fancy we can imagine what is happening in the
Philippine Islands, where soldiers are quartered on a town,
And that is the way in which the blessings of Christian civiliza¬
tion are carried to "inferior" races.
I should be glad to ask the Rev. Charles G. Ames to tell you
how this method of Christianizing people squares with the no¬
tions of Christianity which we have in Massachusetts.
ADDRESS OF THE REV. CHARLES GORDON AMES.
The voice of the people never sounds more like the voice of
God than when it re-utters the divine mandate, "Let there be
light!" If any of us love darkness rather than light, we are
supposed ito draw inspiration from another quarter. But when
the whole body of citizens are impanelled for a grand inquest,
they are entitled to all the evidence. Publicity is the life of free
government, and concealment or secrecy is one method of
undermining popular rights.
But why do we re-open the ghastly record? Certainly not
for pleasure. We should all be glad to hear no more about
military operations in the Philippines; more than glad if a
wave of oblivion could roll over the history of the last .five
years. Many of our countrymen are so tired and sick of the
whole bloody, blundering business that they are ready to cry
curses on any one who talks about it. It is like a domestic
scandal of which no member of the family speaks to another.
But, as Booker Washington warns us, "No problem is settled
by putting it out of sight."
Whatever we do, or fail to do, we are all the time making
precedents,—precedents which will help us or plague us in
the coming years. The protest we make tonight concerns the
honor of the nation and the honor of the army; not in the past
alone, but in the long future. We are making military pre¬
cedents which will enter into the education of every cadet,
every officer, every man who is to wear the uniform as regular
soldier or volunteer. Is the plea of necessity to justify the
shooting of prisoners, the use of torture to compel information,
the wholesale ravage of populous lands, and the methods of
extermination? Are officers and men who are proven guilty
of such atrocities to be let off with a reprimand? Is a brutal
and confessed murder to be excused as necessary to somebody's
safety? If a large body of evidence to prove such crimes is
offered to the authorities, if the authorities evade the duty of
inquiry, and if then the nation acquiesces—if we all silently
accept the situation, will it not be equivalent to a vote of ap¬
proval? May it not fairly be construed as a warrant for the
similar conduct ot future wars? If we sow such seed today,
what will the harvest be? And the mischief will not stop with
the march of our own armies? Already American example
has been quoted in England as a varnish for some hard practices
in South Africa.
But let us put the plow in deeper, and see what will turn up ?
A request for information excites resentment. What does that
resentment signify? Does it not betray an attitude or an
animus—unconscious doubtless—of hostility to free govern¬
ment ? How long since it was an impertinence for the people
to require their public servants to give account of their steward¬
ship ? When did it become.unpatriotic for citizens to be jealous
of their country's honor?
We have been disturbed by reports that come to us through
a hundred channels, public, private and official—reports that
are likely to be a mixture of truth and falsehood. When we
demand to know exactly what use has been made of our army
on the other side of the globe, we are yet more deeply disturbed
when wre are told by actions that speak louder than words, that
it is none of our business.
The President would not say that, for he is a stalwart
American. The Secretary of War would not say it. Our
junior Senator would not say it. These men have sworn fealty
to the Republic, and they mean to keep their oath. What then
means the resentment felt in administration circles whenever
there is an inquiry or an exposure? We are obliged to con¬
clude that there is a situation that will not bear the full light of
day— a situation to which army irregularities may be merely
incidental. And now the inquiry must go deeper, even 11 it
excites deeper resentment. We do not insist because it is our
right, but because it is our duty.
Within five years, the policy followed by the executive
branch of our government has practically changed the relation
of the army to the nation. It is no longer the chief use of the
army to defend the country and preserve the peace; it tends
to become an instrument in the hands of whatever administra¬
tion is in power, for carrying out a policy of foreign aggression.
Those who are promoting this new departure have not yet be¬
come hardened to it, and they are sensitive to criticism. We
have grown familiar with the spectacle of a party in power—
whatever party—perverting public functions and public re¬
sources to partisan uses. The new peril is that each administra¬
tion will come to claim! and use the army for its own purposes.
Already it is less and less the army of Congress, less and less
the army of the people, more and more a weapon in the hands
of the administration.
The executive initiates a policy which calls for men and
money. It commits us before all the world to an act of
aggression. Congress follows suit to vindicate the national
honor, and the people applaud the subtle encroachment upon
their liberties and laws. Hands off! This is a government
affair; it is none of our business. Yet this makes it all the
more our business.
We were launched in this new departure and course of
usurpation when President McKinley, without waiting for
the ratification of the treaty with Spain or any action of
Congress, directed Gen. Otis to extend our militaYy occupation
over every part of the Philippine Archipelago.
The President seems to have taken it for granted that the
mass of the natives would welcome the benevolent sovereignty
of the "liberators" who had stepped into the shoes of Spain.
But the outbreak of hostilities was welcome to the restless
soldiers; it secured from Congress all the men and money
asked for; and the powers at Washington have been persuaded
ever since that there would be no serious home opposition to
any war measures which would compel submission, or any
use of power which might extend our dominion. And the
policy of concealment began when Gen. Otis forbade the
cabling of any intelligence which "might hurt the administra¬
tion."
This expansion of executive authority was necessary and
inevitable, if we are to conquer and control the Islands. They
have been governed ever since, so far as they have yielded to
our mastery, not by Congress, but by the President, with the
consent of Congress, through his military and civil agents.
Are these agents mainly responsible to the people of the United
States, or to the appointing power? Ask what they think
about it? The authority of the Spanish King was exercised
on similar lines,—far less destructive in war, far less humane
in peace.
We are imitating more closely the example of England.
Her rule over other races, in India, Egypt and South Africa,
is not mainly an affair of Parliament; the authority is exercised
in the name of the King or Emperor, by a handful of official
persons. A few men in London rule the destinies- of three or
four hundred millions of people far away. There is little other
use for soldiers, and the empire is held together by bloody
cement. So long as it works well for British trade and glory,
the nation takes the hush-money and acquiesces. But over
there they are proud to call it by its right name, Imperialism.
The President of the United States is entitled to be called the
Emperor of the Philippines as fitly as Edward of England is
styled Emperor of India.
Now if we are to hold foreign dependencies,—if we are to
graft this mongrel system on the Republic,—it cannot be
chiefly a function of Congress; it will be chiefly a department
of administration, under conditions of arbitrary and ir¬
responsible power. The people of the United States will be
little considered or consulted.
What shall we care so long as all unpleasantness is kept out
of sight; so long as there is prosperity at home; so long as our
army and navy make us felt as one of the world-powers; so
long as ports are open or shut to the advantage of our trade;
so long as our strenuous enterprise is free to elbow the weaker
peoples out of our way, and to exploit their fields, forests and
mines, and to control their domestic and foreign commerce.
We shall ask no questions, and shall provoke no resentment
by meddling.
It is true that Congress will hold the purse while the
President holds the sword; but nothing short of a political
revolution can reverse the accepted precedents. Imagine a
Congress refusing an appropriation asked for by a Secretary
of War for feeding, clothing and paying American soldiers—
whatever wicked work they are set to do!
But in a little while you shall see the President able to dis¬
pense for the most part with such appropriations and to run
an independent war department of his own in the Islands.
What is to hinder his Governor-general from mustering into
the pay of the insular treasury a body of native mercenaries—
Macabebes included—for service in garrison and field?
It will be less and less our concern. We are a busy people,
and shall willingly excuse ourselves—as we do already—from
observing closely what goes on across the Pacific. Or, if any
conscience-crank should open his head to ask questions, he
would learn, as Gen. Miles has doubtless learned, that no man
can be in favor with the powers that be, unless he sits in the
Amen Corner.
Please observe that I am sticking to my text and to the
subject before this meeting. "The decline of Parliamentary
Power"—the diminishing influence of the House of Commons
has just been noted as a sign of the times. This means that
the liberties • of Englishmen at home are threatened by that
executive centralization which uses armies and navies to main¬
tain and extend imperial interests abroad. It is not a matter
of Liberalism or Toryism; it is the working of a system which
puts the power of Great Britain at the disposal of those
interests, and then wheedles people and Parliament into a
belief that loyalty to those interests is loyalty to the British
Constitution.
A voice of warning to all Americans who fail to realize just
what is happening before their eyes! Without changing a
letter of the Federal Constitution, and almost without consult¬
ing that obsolescent document, the Commander-in-chief becomes
master of our foreign dependencies and creates for himself
a great body of officials and retainers, to be paid by the taxation
of the dependencies. Therefore Congress will have a languid
interest in colonial affairs. Therefore these affairs will be
geared into the federal government only through the executive
shafting. Therefore the people of this country will be largely
indifferent. Therefore it will be thought an impertinence for
citizens to petition for inspection or inquiry. Each of these
"therefores" is a link in a chain,—a chain which will lengthen
and strengthen as the system grows. Who can assure us that
free institutions, federal or local, will long be immune from
political blood-poisoning ?
My point is, that these stretches of executive power, which
have been encouraged by our little Philippine venture, have
been directly related to those military uses and abuses which
we cannot call in question without exciting resentment; and
that this exercise of arbitrary authority, limited neither by
Congress, Constitution nor public opinion, is a menace to
Republican liberty.
Remember still that we are making precedents. If this
piece of business succeeds, we shall not stop with acquiring
the Philippines. The appetite for power grows by what it
feeds on. If one dependency can be managed in this way,
another can, and a dozen. So with England, so with old
Rome; and shall Americans play second fiddle to any of them ?
It will always be easy to find a pretext for falling upon a
weaker people; easy to invent plausible reasons, commercial,
benevolent, and pious. An army trained in such traditions
will always be eager to march wherever the commlander's
finger points; and there will be no lack of American youth
ready to offer their lives on the altar of a spurious patriotism
wherever there is fighting to be done under the flag, whether
it wave for freedom or despotism.
I know what the answer will be. "Pooh-pooh! Croaker!
Alarmist! Pessimist!" Let those mock who will; let those
ponder soberly who must. It will still be true that "Eternal1.
Vigilance is the price of Liberty;" that "power is ever stealing
from the many to the few ;" and that "they who are indifferent
to the rights of others cannot, under a just God, long preserve
their own."
We are in danger of becoming a pack of cowards. From all
ports of the country one hears that many people are whisper¬
ing in private their disapproval of our Philippine business,
and their wish that we were well out of it. Many who have
been in the Islands speak in private of strange things and add,
"But my name must not be given." When the nation was-
shaken with the great debate on Slavery, it was asked of some
timid non-committal fellow, "Why does he lie there flat on his
face? Why doesn't he at least get up on all fours?"
When the Goddess of Liberty lifts ner torch to enlighten the
world, it is droll enough to have the fire-department ordered
out to play the hose on her and extinguish the conflagration;
but it would be more pathetic to see Liberty herself slinking
and crouching tongue-tied in a corner.
Well, Liberty does not propose to accept any such humilia¬
tion. She comes to Faneuil Hall, her old cradle, and speaks
out in meeting, defending the freeman's right of petition. She
says, in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius, "If any man has a word
for the public welfare let him be heard." For it is in the name
of Liberty that we utter our challenge; and in the more dread
names of Truth and Justice that we claim a hearing for all
testimony that shall help the people to frame a fair and honest
verdict. We do not complain that a witness who perjures him¬
self on one side should be prosecuted, but we shall probably
complain if witnesses that are known to lie on the other side-
are protected and promoted; or if witnesses on any side are
brow-beaten and intimidated.
We are persuaded also that the whole truth will never be
known till representative Filipinos are summoned and cross-
questioned. When it suited our purpose, we were rather urgent
that natives should talk. We choked scores or hundreds al¬
most or quite to death because they would not talk. But
when they desired to speak, we bade them hold their tongues.
They asked a hearing at Paris when their own affairs were
discussed by American and Spanish commissioners; they asked
again at Washington, when the fate of their country hung in
the balance; and they would willingly have given testimony
last Spring before the Senate Committee, whose business it
was to learn the facts. But the only Filipino who has been
honored with a summons was one who had lost the confidence
of his countrymen by casting in his lot with the invaders.
Will not every American who loves fair play or fair fighting-
join in the demand that all the facts shall be probed and
weighed, before judges who have neither right ear nor left ear
stuffed with cotton or Manila?
What we really seek is to keep our government and our
people standing squarely and solidly on the rock of Impartial
Liberty and Impartial Law. We have no business to be and
do like the other nations. We have been called to establish
"a new order of Ages;" to lead mankind along the path of
Equal Justice; and if we betray this high trust, we shall be
of all people the guiltiest and most dishonored.
We all confess our liability to error of judgment and mis¬
takes of conduct; and each one of us can bear but a small
fractional part of the nation's responsibility; but each must
accept his own part, as freely and seriously as if he were a
crowned sovereign. With some of us the sun hastens to its
setting, and we cannot stop to count majorities or minorities.
But we love our country and it hurts us to have it put in the
wrong. We should be ashamed to live or to die, if we did not
join in the demand that no evil precedent shall pass unchal¬
lenged, and that no part of the power of the nation shall be
used for the injury of mankind.
MR. STOREY: And now, my friends, I shall ask you to
listen to the last speaker of the evening, a gentleman whom
we are always and everywhere glad to hear, the Hon. Charles
R. Codman.
REMARKS OF THE HON. CHARLES R. CODMAN,
. AND RESOLUTIONS.
Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentleman:
It is too late for me to make a speech, and I can add nothing
to what has been so well said. But I have in my hand some
resolutions which I should, like to propose for your considera¬
tion as the sense of the meeting:
By citizens of Boston and vicinity, assembled in mass meet¬
ings held in Faneuil Hall this afternoon and evening, March
19, 1903, after listening to the evidence of certain witnesses
whose testimony the Senate Committee of Affairs in the
Philippine Islands refused to receive and after having heard
the subject discussed by competent and authoritative speakers,
it is:
RESOLVED, That the people ofv the United States now
engaged in the attempt to govern the Philippine Islands need
and have a right to all the information which their representa¬
tives can supply touching the condition of these islands, the
causes of that condition, the action of the Government^ and
its agents and the desires and capabilities of the Filipino
people in order that this nation may decide whether it will
continue to refuse the Filipinos their independence and in
what manner and how long they shall be governed by the
United States;
RESOLVED, That no representative of the people has the
right to refuse them any information which they desire and
which he can furnish touching public questions, and we protest
against the course of Henry Cabot Lodge as Chairman of the
Senate Committee on Affairs in the Philippine Islands in
preventing a full investigation of the matters referred to that
committee, in refusing to allow witnesses to testify whose
evidence was important, and in every way striving to conceal
the truth from the people of the United States;
RESOLVED, That the Philippine Islands have a right to
be heard through their representatives upon all questions affect¬
ing their welfare and that the policy which from) the date of
the protocol with Spain until now has denied them a hearing
first at Washington, then at Paris, and finally before the
Senate Committee, is a policy which a free civilized nation
cannot approve;
RESOLVED, That the United States has no right to hold
another nation in subjection against its will and it is our
duty to give the Philippine Islands the independence which
we are proud to have given Cuba.
MR. STOREY: Gentlemen, you have heard the resolutions
read. I will put the question. All those who are in favor of
adopting these resolutions as read will manifest it by saying
aye.
The resolutions were unanimously adopted.
MR. STOREY: It is a unanimous vote. I will now tell you,
gentlemen and ladies, that those who wish personally to meet
these witnesses who have come here from various parts of
the country will have an opportunity to do so tomorrow after¬
noon at the United States Hotel at 4 o'clock, when they will
be glad to see anybody who would like to inform himself as
to the facts within their knowledge.
And I now ask you to remember that upon every man in
this hall, as distinctly as upon every other citizen of the United
States, rests the duty of putting an end to the condition of
affairs that has been disclosed by the testimony which we
have heard this evening, and securing good government in
the Philippine Islands. And I will ask you all to go to your
homes and do what your duty calls upon you to do to spread
the truth.
The iTass Meetings of
Protest Against the Sup¬
pression of Truth About
the Philippines.
The Call of the Boston Press.
Senator Lodge has turned
down the petition of several hun¬
dred leading citizens, represent¬
ing especially the universities of
the country, asking that the Sen¬
ate Committee on the Philip¬
pines reopen the inquiry sudden¬
ly closed last summer, when
many witnesses, believed to be
able to give important evidence
had not been heard. The in¬
quiry that was had was fruitful,
too fruitful to suit Mr. Lodge.
He hampered it constantly when
it was in progress, and he
stopped it without calling wit¬
nesses he had promised to call,
who would have testified to the
murder of the Catholic priest,
which has since been acknowl¬
edged by the war department.
There is good reason to believe
that other and equally horrible
crimes await revelation. Sena¬
tor Lodge has no mind to dis¬
cover them.—Boston Herald
(Ind.)
The Republican members of
the Philippines committee can¬
not afford to ignore the request
for a recess investigation of the
doings in that distant satrapy,
which is asked by the petition of
many of our leading citizens.
Senator Lodge holds his party
contingent solid for suppression.
No representative of Massachu¬
setts can face the people with a
denial of the fullest investiga¬
tion of this national scandal.—
Boston Post (Dem.)
Before the closing session of
congress is ended it may be
well to remind the country that
the fair name of our army in
the Philippines still lies under
charges of cruelty and murder
too horrible to rest unchal¬
lenged.
Let us know the truth. The
nation cannot afford to sit
quietly under such accusations.
—Boston Globe (Dem.)
Eminent men of both parties
and all shades of political be¬
lief have signed the petition to
the United States Senate to em¬
power its committee on Philip¬
pine affairs to take testimony on
Philippine conditions during the
recess of Congress. Even as a
matter of historical justice alone
it will be well worth while.—Bos¬
ton Transcript (Rep.)
When they get good and ready,
President Roosevelt and Senator
Lodge Avill allow all the facts
about the killing of Fr. Augus¬
tine, the Filipino priest, to be
made public. They are not
czars, and do not want to be.
We believe in letting the facts
be made public, as a matter of
course, without delay, but these
two men must have some good
reason for their attitude or
they would not take it.—The
Evening Record (Rep.)