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The Future of the Philippines
The Foreign Policy Association Luncheon
For the Honorable Manuel Luis Quezon
President of the Philippine Commonwealth
The Hotel Astor, April 3rd, 1937
Address of Major General William C. Rivers
U. S. Army, Retired
Privately printed for General Rivers
1937
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The Foreign Policy Association Luncheon
April 3rd, 1937
President Quezon Made The Principal Address
(The addresses were broadcast on the radio.)
The Address of Major General William C. Rivers, U. S. Army (Retired)
Your Excellency, President Quezon:
Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen:
For me it is a great pleasure to see Manuel
Quezon as the President of the Philippine Common-
wealth. I gave the best ten years of my working
life to the service of the Filipinos. Soon after arrive
ing in the Philippines as one of the first group of
officers selected for Elihu Root's new army General
Staff, I accepted duty under the Philippine govern-
ment civil authorities—with the Constabulary.
When I settled my family in Mr. Quezon's town,
sixty miles south of Manila, Mr. Quezon was a
young lawyer. Mrs. Quezon, the able and charming
First Lady in the Philippines, was a very young
school girl, Aurora Aragon.
My duty required our residence in various pro-
vincial towns and I had to work in all parts of the
Islands and with the Filipinos of all classes. My
wife and I soon grew to like the Filipino people.
They are a hard-working people with ability, ambi.
tion and much racial pride. With peace in the
Orient, the Filipinos will govern themselves well.
I want to say a few words about the Far Eastern
policy of the United States; the military problem
in the Orient from an American viewpoint. Also,
about the alleged Japanese menace to the Philip-
pines. (Here, however, I warn you all not to ex-
pect very much from an old General: Lloyd George
has written five volumes to prove how stupid old
Generals are. I am an Old General for I saw
as a cadet-boy at West Point the great triumvir
rate of the Civil War — Grant, Sherman and
Sheridan. Lloyd George may be right; but why
did he omit old Admirals and the diplomats and
officials of the State and Foreign Departments of
the various lands? Old Generals may study the
last war; but diplomats study the status quo and the
status quo ante and talk of bi-lateral and multi-lat-
eral conversations between nations. I say let us
have both kinds of talks: do let every one talk at
once and at the same time, if it will make for peace
in the Pacific!)
America has no Far Eastern policy. Such as we
have developed might be expressed: “We took the
Philippines to protect our trade with China; now
many seem to think we must fight Japan to protect
China so as to guard the Philippines: “–around the
circle Far East policy, you see.
I think the Republic of the Philippines can be
and should be neutralized. It is to the selfish and
national interest of Australia, New Zealand, Java,
Singapore, Siam, France, China, Great Britain,
Russia and especially Japan to have the Philippine
archipelago neutralized. The small armament of the
Swiss has had little effect on the neutrality of
Switzerland for a century: it is the peculiar stra.
tegic situation and location of the country. This is
also the case with the Philippines.
The United States should now withdraw from
the Philippines and from the Orient. We have no
territory in Asia proper and no political interests
at all in Asia. We are not going to interfere in
Asiatic affairs; the United States is not the guard-
ian of Asiatic morals. The future of Eastern Asia
will inevitably be settled by the people who live
there—by Japanese, Chinese and Russians.
The Filipinos alone, nor the United States alone,
nor the Filipinos and the United States combined
in an alliance, can not defend the Philippines
against a near-by military power which is squarely
between the United States and the Philippines.
There are two routes from the West coast of the
United States to the Philippines. The normal and
short steamer route passes very near Japan. The
long route by Hawaii and Guam is 7,500 miles and
is flanked for almost 3,000 miles by the numerous
Japanese mandated islands. Guam with its poor
harbor is surrounded by islands of the mandated
groups and is in easy bombing range by airplanes
from the Bonin Islands and from Japan itself. No
two Western Powers combined—England and
America, for example—could permanently dominate
and control the Philippines region.
It is far-fetched to speak of an American naval
base at Manila. A base is a fortified place from
which forces advance and to which they may return.
With Japan and the Japanese mandated islands
blocking the way to Manila, all the Congress can
build at Manila would be a far-off, exposed and
untenable salient. No such distant salient has ever
been successfully defended in the history of war.
fare—where both contestants had great fleets. For
the United States to defend an exposed fortified
salient at Manila, we would have to construct a new
and additional fleet for service in the Philippines—
such a fleet would have to be at least as large as
the Japanese fleet. We would also have to maintain
at Manila a field army of American soldiers—fully
equipped with the heavy impedimenta of war.
Heavy land-based airplanes (more powerful than
any airplanes carried by a fleet) could bombard
such a salient; airplanes from Japan's bases at For-
mosa—very near the Philippines—and from other
Japanese bases.
Holding the Philippines will involve two dangers
of war for the United States: a war with Japan at
some time and the responsibility for the United
States to suppress a revolt at some time of the Fili.
pinos against the Filipino government at Manila.
Either of these conflicts—at greater distances than
any war has ever been fought between two armed
peoples—would be for the United States the most
difficult war the wit of man could devise.
Vast changes have taken place in the Northwest
Pacific regions. Some of these are: the rise of Japan
as a first-class power, the return of Russia to that
region far more formidable than Czarist Russia ever
was and the doubling of the range, speed and ca-
pacity of the airbombers in the past four years—
with the development of the new submarines. (The
airplane will make the greatest changes in warfare
since the introduction of gunpowder.)
Russia now has in Eastern Asia more soldiers
than Japan has in its peace army, lines of new con-
crete forts, many airplanes and many railway.
shipped submarines.
Russia threatens Japan at the North from Vladi.
vostok and Russia pushes from the West into Outer
Mongolia toward the sea. Unless Japan holds
Manchuria as a buffer and also pushes westward in
North China, Russia can soon have the islands of
Japan proper in dire peril. A strong foothold on
the mainland of Asia is vital to the continuance of
Japan as a first-class power.
I favor our recognition of Manchukuo and our
recognition of Japan's strategic movements in North
China. I favor efforts on the part of the United
States to secure the interest of Japan in the indepen-
dence and the success of the Philippine Republic. I
am in favor of a world system for peace—as most
people are—but it is evident that such a system is
not practicable at present.
Japan will not attempt forcible annexation of the
Philippines, because such action would interfere
with Japan's trade in the Philippines and make the
division of the Japanese fleet necessary.
I hope that our own people here in America will
grant generous trade privileges to the Filipinos for
a number of years. I hope that our people will
generously pay off the some $70,000,000 bonded
debt of the Philippines, for money which the Ameri-
can administrations at Manila borrowed.
I trust that our ‘Good Neighbors' policy is not
only for the nations to the South of us. All honor
to those who went to South America. Especial
honor to the dozen women who took the Clipper
at Washington and flew down; who took the Doves
of Peace across the great Andes Mountains to
Buenos Aires! I hope that these ladies will soon
take the Hawaii Clipper to Honolulu and meet there
representatives who come from Asia to meet the
ladies, representatives of people who live in Asia—
Chinese, Japanese and Russians. I hope the ladies
will carry the Peace Doves into the Pacific.
We are now assembling in the North Pacific
Ocean the greatest (certainly the most costly) ag.
gregation of fighting ships and combat airplanes the
world has ever seen in one place. The Pacific crisis
will come in two or three years, when the Japanese
and ourselves have completed and ready for the
line-of-battle the additional war ships both are now
constructing. I have been to several over-seas wars
and I had a line-of-battle command in all our major
combats in France: I am convinced that the only
way to minimize or to end such conflicts is to start
movements to avoid them several years before the
advent of a crisis. We can well defend our West
coast with a more moderate fleet based on the ice-
free harbors of the Aleutian Islands. (Honolulu
is more than 2,000 miles from the route to the
Orient—it is not suitably located for a primary
base. Honolulu is necessary for us as a secondary
base.)
We can well defend in the Pacific our normal
line (more than 2,000 miles from our own shores)
which runs from the Aleutians to the Hawaiians
and on down to Panama. Then our normal line in
the Atlantic running from Panama through the Car.
ribean to the general neighborhood of Newfound.
land. We can well have a national defense policy
to maintain forces adequate for the defense of our
borders and coasts and to control that portion of
the seas in the vicinity of—adjacent to—our own
coasts and harbors.
A P P E N D I X
(The Appendix was added later—after the Address.)
Japan took Manchuria from Russia and not from
China in 1931. Russia had long ruled over Man-
churia.
The constant accusation against Japan, which
runs through the statements of the press and of
the Chancelleries of the Western Powers, is that
in Manchuria and in North China, Japan is violat-
ing the Nine-Power Treaty she signed at the Wash.
ington Conference in 1922—to respect the terri-
torial integrity of China. There is also the frequent
intimation that in denouncing the Treaty for naval
ratios Japan has been guilty of some sort of moral
obliquity.
Many of these allegations against Japan are made
by persons who do not recollect or who have never
known the conditions in Eastern Asia at the time
of the Washington Conference. The Nine-Power
Washington Conference sat during December, 1921,
and the first two months of 1922. The Nine-Power
Treaty of February, 1922, between the United
States, Belgium, Great Britain, China, France, Italy,
Japan, the Netherlands and Portugal bound the
Contracting Powers other than China to respect the
sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial
integrity of China. The Treaty for the limitation
of naval armaments was between the United States,
Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. It prescribed
the 5-5-3 ratio for the navies of Britain, the United
ſ
the islands about Formosa. The
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the Pacific Powers would not build new naval bases
or fortifications on their possessions in the Pacific
West of the Hawaiians. Japan was forbidden to add
to fortifications in the Kuriles, the Bonin Islands and
prohibited from fortifying the Aleutians and Britain
from adding to the defences of Hongkong. (These
relinquishments of the rights to fortify places in the
Pacific are no longer binding, since Japan denounced
this Treaty.) -
At this Washington Conference there were
nited States was
signed also the Treaties outlawing noxious gases in
war and requiring submarines to visit and search
merchant vessels and to see that the passengers and
crews are placed in safety before destroying any
such ships. -
First, I fail to understand the criticism of Japan
for denouncing the Naval Ratio Treaty—for saying,
as the time limit of the agreement was drawing near
in 1936, that she did not care to continue as a
party to that agreement. The technical word “de-
nunciation”—used in the Treaty itself—is, I am
sure, responsible for much of the feeling which the
action of Japan aroused.
Second, the Nine-Power Treaty was a defective
instrument in that—at a moment of great turmoil
in Eastern Siberia—it was proposed and signed to
run for a long period of time.
There was a strange war fought over the whole
. . . of Russia during 1919. There were the North Rus’
sian army at Archangel, the Northwest Russian
army from Esthonia down to the Ukraine country
and to Odessa; Denekin (then Wrangel) at the
South—in the Crimea—with his White Army and
Kolchak in Eastern Siberia with his White Army.
The Big Five, deliberating in Paris, decided in that
year of 1919 to support Kolchak in Siberia. In fact,
all the above efforts had the support of some of the
victorious Powers.
The American troops did not evacuate Eastern
Siberia until March, 1920. The Japanese troops
withdrew from Eastern Transbaikalia in August,
|
1920. The Japanese troops evacuated the Maritime
Provinces of Eastern Siberia as late as October,
1922. . . '
We see, therefore, that when the Nine Great
Powers met at Washington in November, 1921, to
survey the Far Eastern part of the world these
Powers had very little vision as to what the immedic
ate future would show as to conditions in that part
of Asia. The Soviet Revolutionary government had
set up the provisional Far Eastern Republic in Si-
beria which was contesting the efforts of the White
Russians and of the Japanese and others in Siberia.
The Japanese troops had not yet evacuated Siberia.
Although ten years had passed since the revolution
in China, there had been evolved no effective gov.
ernment or system of order in China. Following
the evacuation of the troops of Japan, the Far East-
ern Republic was dissolved and its territories were
merged into the dominions of the Soviet Republics
of Great Russia. *
| 4 || S (a 2- . . . . . . . . . . . . .
States 3. Japan. That Treaty prescribed also that Czarist Russia had been for many years pushing,
into Siberia and into Manchuria. The Trans-Si-
berian railway was opened in 1897. There were
the Treaties—one for twenty-five years and one for
some ninety-nine years—which Russia made with .
China in 1896 to aid China by protecting that
country, by building the Chinese Eastern railways
and by developing Manchuria. France and Germany
shared in this by supplying some of the funds for
the new railways. - -
Russia pushed boldly into Manchuria during and
after the Boxer outbreaks in Peking in 1900. The
Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905
—following the gains of the Japanese by hard fight-
ing in Manchuria—merely arrested the penetration
of Russia to the southward in Manchuria. The
Russian railway system in Manchuria was left in-
tact, though Japan got the Russian rights over the
Southern branch from Port Arthur only as far as
Changchu.
It is fair to say now that the Nine-Power Treaty
to respect the territorial interests of China was a
defective instrument, because the Contracting Pow-
ers did not know the conditions in the regions about
which they were agreeing. These Powers evidently
felt that Russia was a country the government of
which was much in doubt. They thought so little
of the Russian government that they did not ask
that government, with its immense interests in the
Far East, to attend the Washington Conference.
These Nine Great Powers appear to have had little
real knowledge of China. They seemed to think
that there would soon be in China a government
over the whole of Chinese territory. Several of the
Nine Powers had behind them the knowledge of
their own past futile efforts, singly or in concert,
to aid China for more than a half of a century.
Everything points to the fact that the Nine-Power
Treaty should have been for very short periods of
time—made in fact as matters stood then in the
Far East as an experimental Treaty.
Japan evidently had then—and the other Powers
at the Washington Conference apparently had—no
idea or conception of the strength and power which
Soviet Russia would soon develop in Siberia—so
near to Japan itself. None of the attending Powers
at Washington had any idea of what tragedy
awaited the people of China under the War Lords.
The chaos, wholesale suffering, ruin and mass starva.
tion in China for a generation must be the measure
of the character and the capacity of the Chinese
rulers. Japan's general control in North China will
aid the Chinese. Japan will not send to an already
over-crowded land masses of Japanese. But by send,
ing to China a relatively few supervising experts
to coordinate China there will be great improve.
ment. All nations will have more trade in China
than ever before. When China becomes effective
under the tutelage of Japan, I have confidence in
the ability of the Chinese to expel Japan from
China proper—to become the nemesis of Japan.
(Oswald Garrison Villard, Contributing Editor, The
2Nation, and Stephen P. Duggan, Director, Institute of
International Education, also made addresses.) -
*