The Story of the Philippines Part 1

The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, Including The Ladrones, Hawaii, Cuba and Porto Rico.

by Murat Halstead.

Author's Preface.

The purpose of the writer of the pages herewith presented has been to offer, in popular form, the truth touching the Philippine Islands. I made the journey from New York to Manila, to have the benefit of personal observations in preparing a history for the people. Detention at Honolulu shortened my stay in Manila, but there was much in studies at the former place that was a help at the latter. The original programme was for me to accompany General Merritt, Commander-in-Chief of the Philippine Expedition, but illness prevented its full realization, and when I arrived in Manila Bay the city had already been "occupied and possessed" by the American army; and the declaration of peace between the United States and Spain was made, the terms fully agreed upon with the exception of the settlement of the affairs of the Philippines. While thus prevented from witnessing stirring military movements other than those attending the transfer of our troops across the Pacific Ocean, an event in itself of the profoundest significance, the reference of the determination of the fate of the Philippine Islands to the Paris Conference, and thereby to the public opinion of our country, in extraordinary measure increased the general sensibility as to the situation of the southern Oriental seas affecting ourselves, and enhanced the value of the testimony taken on the spot of observers of experience, with the training of journalism in distinguis.h.i.+ng the relative pertinence and potency of facts noted. Work for more than forty years, in the discussion from day to day of current history, has qualified me for the efficient exercise of my faculties in the labor undertaken. It has been my undertaking to state that which appeared to me, so that the reader may find pictures of the scenes that tell the Story that concerns the country, that the public may with enlightenment solve the naval, military, political, commercial and religious problems we are called upon by the peremptory pressure of the conditions local, and international, to solve immediately. This we have to do, facing the highest obligations of citizens.h.i.+p in the great American Republic, and conscious of the incomparably influential character of the principles that shall prevail through the far-reaching sweep of the policies that will be evolved. I have had such advantages in the a.s.surance of the authenticity of the information set forth in the chapters following, that I may be permitted to name those it was my good fortune to consult with instructive results; and in making the acknowledgments due. I may be privileged to support the claim of diligence and success in the investigations made, and that I am warranted in the issue of this Story of the Philippines by the a.s.siduous improvement of an uncommon opportunity to fit myself to serve the country.

Indebtedness for kind consideration in this work is gratefully acknowledged to Major-General Merritt, commanding the Philippine Expedition; Major-General Otis, who succeeds to the duties of military and civil administration in the conquered capital of the islands; Admiral George Dewey, who improved, with statesmans.h.i.+p, his unparalleled victory in the first week of the war with Spain, and raised the immense questions before us; General F.V. Greene, the historian of the Russo-Turkish war, called by the President to Was.h.i.+ngton, and for whose contributions to the public intelligence he receives the hearty approval and confidence of the people; Major Bell, the vigilant and efficient head of the Bureau of Information at the headquarters of the American occupation in the Philippines; General Aguinaldo, the leader of the insurgents of his race in Luzon, and His Grace the Archbishop of Manila, who gave me a message for the United States, expressing his appreciation of the excellence of the behavior of the American army in the enforcement of order, giving peace of mind to the residents in the distracted city of all persuasions and conditions, and of the service that was done civilization in the prevention, by our arms, of threatened barbarities that had caused sore apprehension; and, I may add, the Commissioner of the Organized People of the Philippines, dispatched to Was.h.i.+ngton accompanying General Greene; and of the citizens of Manila of high character, and conductors of business enterprises with plants in the community whose destiny is in the hands of strangers.

These gentlemen I may not name, for there are uncertainties that demand of them and command me to respect the prudence of their inconspicuity. This volume seems to me to be justified, and I have no further claim to offer that it is meritorious than that it is faithful to facts and true to the country in advocacy of the continued expansion of the Republic, whose field is the world.

Steams.h.i.+p China, Pacific Ocean, September 20, 1898.

The Origin of this Story of the Philippines.

The letter following is the full expression by the author of this volume of his purposes and principles in making the journey to the East Indies.

_Going to the Philippines_.

Was.h.i.+ngton City, D.C., July 18.

With the authorization of the Military Authorities, I shall go to the Philippine Islands with General Merritt, the Military Governor, and propose to make the American people better acquainted with that remarkable and most important and interesting country. The presence of an American army in the Philippines is an event that will change broad and mighty currents in the world's history. It has far more significance than anything transpiring in the process of the conquest of the West India possessions of Spain, for the only question there, ever since the Continental colonies of the Spanish crown won their independence, has been the extent of the sacrifices the Spaniards, in their haughty and vindictive pride, would make in fighting for a lost Empire and an impossible cause with an irresistible adversary. That the time was approaching when, with the irretrievable steps of the growth of a living Nation of free people, we would reach the point where it should be our duty to accept the responsibility of the dominant American power, and accomplish manifest Destiny by adding Cuba and Porto Rico to our dominion, has for half a century been the familiar understanding of American citizens. Spain, by her abhorrent system, personified in Weyler, and ill.u.s.trated in the murderous blowing up of the Maine with a mine, has forced this duty upon us; and though we made war unprepared, the good work is going on, and the finish of the fight will be the relegation of Spain, whose colonial governments have been, without exception, disgraceful and disastrous to herself, and curses to the colonists, to her own peninsula. This will be for her own good, as well as the redemption of mankind from her unwholesome foreign influences, typified as they are in the beautiful city of Havana, which has become the center of political plagues and pestilential fevers, whose contagion has at frequent intervals reached our own sh.o.r.es.

In the Philippine Islands the situation is for us absolutely novel. It cannot be said to be out of the scope of reasonable American expansion and is in the right line of enlarging the area of enlightenment and stimulating the progress of civilization. The unexpected has happened, but it is not illogical. It must have been written long ago on the scroll of the boundless blue and the stars. The incident of war was the "rush" order of the President of the United States to Admiral Dewey to destroy the Spanish fleet at Manila, for the protection of our commerce. The deed was done with a flash of lightning, and lo! we hold the golden key of a splendid Asiatic archipelago of a thousand beautiful and richly endowed islands in our grip. This is the most brilliant and startling achievement in the annals of navies. Never before had the sweep of sea power, ordered through the wires that make the world's continents, oceans and islands one huge whispering gallery, such striking exemplification. There was glory and fame in it, and immeasurable material for the making of history. We may paraphrase Dr. Johnson's celebrated advertis.e.m.e.nt of the widow's brewery by saying: Admiral Dewey's victory was not merely the capture of a harbor commanding a great city, one of the superb places of the earth, and the security of a base of operations to wait for reinforcements commensurate with the resources of the United States of America--the victorious hero fixed his iron hand upon a wonderful opportunity it was the privilege of our Government to secure at large, according to the rights of a victorious Nation for the people thereof--a chance for the youth of America, like that of the youth of Great Britain, to realize upon the magnificence of India; and this is as Dr. Johnson said of the vats and barrels of the Thrale estate--"the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." It is a new departure, but not a matter for the panic or apprehension of conservatism, that the Stars and Stripes float as the symbol of sovereignty over a group of islands in the waters of Asia, that are equal to all the West Indies. If we are strangers there now we shall not be so long. We have a front on the Pacific Ocean, of three great States--Was.h.i.+ngton, equal to England; Oregon, whose grandeur rolls in the sound of her famous name, and incomparable California, whose t.i.tle will be the synonym of golden good times forever. The Philippines are southwest from our western front doors. They have been the islands of our sunsets in the winter. Now they look to us for the rosy dawn out of which will come the clear brightness of the white light of mornings and the fullness of the ripening noons, all the year around. With our bulk of the North American continent bulging into both the great oceans, it was foreordained since the beginning when G.o.d created the earth, that we, the possessors of this imperial American zone, should be a great Asiatic Power. We have it now in evidence, written in islands among the most gorgeous of those that s.h.i.+ne in the Southern seas--islands that are east from the Atlantic and west from the Pacific sh.o.r.es of the One Great Republic--that we may personify hereafter, sitting at the head of the table when the empires of the earth consult themselves as to the courses of empire. Our Course of Empire is both east and west.

The contact of American and Asiatic civilization in the Philippines, with the American army there, superseding the Spaniards, will be memorable as one of the matters of chief moment in the closing days of the nineteenth century, and remembered to date from for a thousand years. It is my purpose to write of this current history while it is a fresh, sparkling stream, and attempt something more than the recitation of the news of the day, as it is condensed and restrained in telegrams; to give it according to the extent of my ability and the advantages of my opportunity, the local coloring, the characteristic scenery; the pen pictures of the people and their pursuits; sketches of the men who are doers of deeds that make history; studies of the ways and means of the islanders; essays to indicate the features of the picturesque of the strange mixture of races; the revolutionary evolutions of politics; the forces that pertain to the mingling of the religions of the Occident and the Orient, in a chemistry untried through the recorded ages. It is a tremendous canvas upon which I am to labor, and I know full well how inadequate the production must be, and beg that this index may not be remembered against me. It is meant in all modesty, and I promise only that there will be put into the task the expertness of experience and the endeavor of industry.

_Murat Halstead._

CHAPTER I

Admiral Dewey on His Flags.h.i.+p.

A Stormy Day on Manila Bay--Call on Admiral Dewey--The Man in White--He Sticks to His s.h.i.+p--How He Surprised Spaniards--Every Man Did His Duty on May-Day--How Dewey Looks and Talks--What He Said About War with Germany in Five Minutes--Feeds His Men on "Delicious" Fresh Meat from Australia--Photography Unjust to Him.

Steaming across Manila Bay from Cavite to the city on an energetic ferry-boat, scanning the wrecks of the Spanish fleet still visible where the fated s.h.i.+ps went down, one of them bearing on a strip of canvas the legible words "Remember the 'Maine,'" the talk being of Dewey's great May-day, we were pa.s.sing the famous flag-s.h.i.+p of the squadron that was ordered to destroy another squadron, and did it, incidentally gathering in hand the keys of an empire in the Indies for America, because the American victor was an extraordinary man, who saw the immensity of the opportunity and improved it to the utmost, some one said: "There is the Admiral now, on the quarter-deck under the awning--the man in white, sitting alone!" The American Consul at Manila was aboard the ferry-boat, and said to the captain he would like to speak to the Admiral. The course was changed a point, and then a pause, when the Consul called, "Admiral!" And the man in white stepped to the rail and responded pleasantly to the greeting--the Consul saying:

"Shall we not see you ash.o.r.e now?"

"No," said the man in white, in a clear voice; "I shall not go ash.o.r.e unless I have to."

Some one said: "This would be a good chance to go. Come with us."

The man in white shook his head, and the ferryman ordered full speed, the pa.s.sengers all looking steadily at the white figure until it became a speck, and the fresh arrivals were shown the objects of the greatest interest, until the wrecks of the Oriental fleet of the Spaniards were no longer visible, and there was only the white walls to see of Cavite's a.r.s.enal and the houses of the navy-yard, and the more stately structures of Manila loomed behind the lighthouse at the mouth of the Pasig, when the eyes of the curious were drawn to the mossback fort that decorates as an antiquity the most conspicuous angle of the walls of "the walled city."

There was a shade of significance in the few words of the Admiral that he would not go ash.o.r.e until he must. He has from the first been persistent in staying at Manila. There has been nothing that could induce him to abandon in person the prize won May 1st. His order from the President was to destroy the Spanish fleet. It was given on the first day of the legal existence of the war, counting the day gained, in crossing the Pacific Ocean from the United States to the Philippines, when the 180th degree of longitude west from Greenwich is reached and reckoned. It was thus the President held back when the war was on; and the next day after Dewey got the order at Hongkong he was on the way. The Spaniards at Manila could not have been more astonished at Dewey's way of doing, if they had all been struck by lightning under a clear sky. They had no occasion to be "surprised,"

having the cable in daily communication with Madrid, and, more than that, a Manila paper of the last day of April contained an item of real news--the biggest news item ever published in that town! It was from a point on the western coast of the island of Luzon, and the substance of it that four vessels that seemed to be men-of-war, had been sighted going south, and supposed to be the American fleet.

What did the Spaniards suppose the American fleet they knew well had left Hongkong was going south for? If Admiral Dewey had been a commonplace man he would have paused and held a council of war nigh the huge rock Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay. There is a channel on either side of that island, and both were reputed to be guarded by torpedoes. The Spaniards had an enormous stock of munitions of war--modern German guns enough to have riddled the fleet of American cruisers--and why did they not have torpedoes? They had the Mauser rifle, which has wonderful range, and ten millions of smokeless powder cartridges. Marksmen could sweep the decks of a s.h.i.+p with Mausers at the distance of a mile, and with the smokeless cartridges it would have been mere conjecture where the sharpshooters were located. There are rows of armor-piercing steel projectiles from Germany still standing around rusting in the Spanish batteries, and they never did any more than they are doing. It is said--and there is every probability of the truth of the story--that some of these bolts would not fit any gun the Spaniards had mounted. The Admiral paid no attention to the big rock and the alleged torpedoes, but steamed up the bay near the city where the Spaniards were sleeping. He was hunting the fleet he was ordered to remove, and found it very early in the morning. Still the thunder of his guns seems to thrill and electrify the air over the bay, and shake the city; and the echoes to ring around the world, there is no question--not so much because the Americans won a naval victory without a parallel, as that Dewey improved the occasion, showing that he put brains into his business. They say--that is, some people seem to want to say it and so do--that Dewey is a strange sort of man; as was said of Wolfe and Nelson, who died when they won immortality. Dewey lives and is covered with glory. It has been held that there were not enough Americans hurt in the Manila fight to make the victory truly great. But the same objection applies to the destruction of Cervera's fleet when he ran away from Santiago. General Jackson's battle at New Orleans showed a marvelously small loss to Americans; but it was a good deal of a victory, and held good, though won after peace with England had been agreed upon. The capture of Manila is valid, too. Spain surrendered before the town did. If Dewey had been an every-day kind of man, he would have left Manila when he had fulfilled the letter of his orders, as he had no means of destroying the Spanish army, and did not want to desolate a city, even if the Spaniards held it. He remained and called for more s.h.i.+ps and men, and got them.

"How is it?" "Why is it?" "How can it be?" are the questions Admiral Dewey asks when told that the American people, without exception, rejoice to celebrate him--that if one of the men known to have been with him May 1st should be found out in any American theater he would be taken on the stage by an irresistible call and a muscular committee of enthusiasts, and the play could not go on without "a few words"

and the "Star Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia," "Yankee Doodle,"

"Dixey" and "My Country, 'tis of Thee"; that the hallelujah note would be struck; that cars are chalked "for Deweyville"; that the board fences have his name written, or painted, or whittled on them; that there are Dewey cigars; that blacksmith-shops have the name Dewey scratched on them, also barn doors; and that if there are two dwelling-houses and a stable at a cross-roads it is Deweyville, or Deweyburg or Deweytown; that there is a flood of boy babies named Dewey, that the girls sing of him, and the ladies all admire him and the widows love him, and the school children adore him. The Admiral says: "I hear such things, and altogether they amaze me--the newspapers, the telegrams, the letters become almost unreal, for I do not comprehend what they say of my first day's work here. There was not a man in the fleet who did not do his duty."

The Admiral is told that he need not think to stay away until the people who have him on their minds and in their hearts are tired of their enthusiasm; that he cannot go home undiscovered and without demonstrations that will shake the earth and rend the skies; that the boys will drag the horses from his carriage, and parade the streets with him as a prisoner, and have it out with him, giving him a good time, until it will be a hard time, and he might as well submit to manifest destiny! His country wanted another hero, and he was at the right place at the right time, and did the right thing in the right way; and the fact answers all questions accounting for everything. Still he has a notion of staying away until the storm is over and he can get along without being a spectacle. Why, even the ladies of Was.h.i.+ngton are wild about him. If he should appear at the White House to call on the President, the scene would be like that when Grant first met Abraham Lincoln.

One rough day on the bay I took pa.s.sage in a small steam-launch to visit the Olympia, where the Admiral's flag floated, to call on him. There was plenty of steam, and it was pleasant to get out a good way behind the breakwater, for the waves beyond were white with anger, and the boat, when departing from partial shelter, had proceeded but two or three hundred yards when it made a supreme effort in two motions--the first, to roll over; the second, to stand on its head. I was glad both struggles were unsuccessful, and pleased with the order: "Slow her up." The disadvantages of too much harbor were evident. The slow-ups were several, and well timed, and then came the rise and fall of the frisky launch beside the wars.h.i.+p, the throwing of a rope, the pull with a hook, the stand off with an oar, the bounding boat clearing from four to ten feet at a jump; the clutch, the quick step, the deft avoidance of a crushed foot or sprained ankle, with a possible broken leg in sight, the triumphant ascent, the safe landing, the sudden sense that Desdemona was right in loving a man for the dangers he had pa.s.sed, the thought that there should be harbors less fluctuating, a lively appreciation of the achievements of pilots in boarding Atlantic liners. The broad decks of the Olympia, built by the builders of the matchless Oregon, had a comforting solidity under my feet. The Admiral was believed to be having a nap; but he was wide awake, and invited the visitor to take a big chair, which, after having accompanied the launch in the dance with the whitecaps, was peculiarly luxurious. The Admiral didn't mind me, and had a moment's surprise about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and going forth in a high sea to make a call. I confessed to being an ancient Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation of the deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of a bird--a feathered ruffian that ought to be shot.

The Admiral would be picked out by close attention as the origin of some millions of pictures; but he is unlike as well as like them. Even the best photographs do not do justice to his fine eyes, large, dark and luminous, or to the solid ma.s.s of his head with iron-brown hair tinged with gray. He is a larger man than the portraits indicate; and his figure, while that of a strong man in good health and form and well nourished, is not stout and, though full, is firm; and his step has elasticity in it. His clean-shaven cheek and chin are ma.s.sive, and drawn on fine lines full of character--no fatty obscuration, no decline of power; a stern but sunny and cloudless face--a good one for a place in history; no show of indulgence, no wrinkles; not the pallor of marble, rather the glint of bronze--the unabated force good for other chapters of history. It would be extremely interesting to report the talk of the Admiral; but there were two things about him that reminded me of James G. Blaine, something of the vivid personality of the loved and lost leader; something in his eye and his manner, more in the startling candor with which he spoke of things it would be premature to give the world, and, above all, the absence of all alarm about being reported--the unconscious consciousness that one must know this was private and no caution needed. A verbatim report of the Admiral would, however, harm no one, signify high-toned candor and a certain breezy simplicity in the treatment of momentous matters. Evidently here was a man not posing, a hero because his character was heroic, a genuine personage--not artificial, proclamatory, a picker of phrases, but a doer of deeds that explain themselves; a man with imagination, not fantastic but realistic, who must have had a vision during the night after the May-day battle of what might be the great hereafter; beholding under the southern constellations the gigantic shadow of America, crowned with stars, with the archipelagoes of Asia under her feet and broad and mighty destinies at command.

It was the next day that he anch.o.r.ed precisely where his famous s.h.i.+p was swinging when I sat beside him; and his words to the representative of three centuries of Spanish misrule had in them an uncontemplated flash from the flint and steel of fixed purpose and imperial force. "Fire another gun at my s.h.i.+ps and I will destroy your city."

We can hardly realize in America how flagrant Europeanism has been in the Manila Bay; how the big German guns bought by Spain looked from their embrasures; how a powerful German fleet persisted in a.s.serting antagonism to Americanism, and tested in many ways the American Admiral's knowledge of his rights and his country's policy until Admiral Dewey told, not the German Admiral, as has been reported, but his flag lieutenant, "Can it be possible that your nation means war with mine? If so, we can begin it in five minutes." The limit had been reached, and the line was drawn; and Dewey's words will go down in our records with those of Charles Francis Adams to Lord John Russell about the ironclads built in England for the Confederacy: "My Lord, I need not point out to your lords.h.i.+p that this is war."

Perhaps the German Admiral had exceeded the instructions of his Imperial Government, and the peremptory words of the American Admiral caused a better understanding, making for peace rather than for war.

Next to the Americans the English have taken a pride in Admiral Dewey, and they are in the Asiatic atmosphere our fast friends. They do not desire that we should give up the Philippines. On the contrary, they want us to keep the islands, and the more we become interested in those waters and along their sh.o.r.es, the better. They know that the world has practically grown smaller and, therefore, the British Empire more compact; and they find Russia their foe. They see that with the Pacific Coast our base of operations looking westward, we have first the Hawaiian Islands for producers and a coal station, naval a.r.s.enal, dockyards for the renovation and repair and replenishment of our fleets; and they see that we have reserved for ourselves one of the Ladrones, so that we will have an independent route to the Philippines. The j.a.panese have cultivated much feeling against our possession of Hawaii, the animus being that they wanted it for themselves; and likewise they are disturbed by our Pacific movement, antic.i.p.ating the improvement of the most western of the Alutian Islands, an admirable station overlooking the North Pacific; all comprehending with Hawaii, the Alutian Island found most available, the Ladrone that we shall reserve and the Philippines, we shall have a Pacific quadrilateral; and this is not according to the present pleasure and the ambition for the coming days, of j.a.pan. England would have approved our holding all the islands belonging to the Spanish, including the Canaries, and Majorca and Minorca and their neighboring isles in the Mediterranean, and take a pride in us. She has been of untold and inestimable service to us in the course of the Spanish War, and her ways have been good for us at Manila, while the Germans have been frankly against us, the Russians grimly reserved, and the French disposed to be fretful because they have invested in Spanish bonds upon which was raised the money to carry on the miserable false pretense of war with the Cubans. One day while I was on the fine transport Peru, in the harbor of Manila, the American Admiral's s.h.i.+p saluted an English s.h.i.+p-of-war coming in that had saluted his flag, and also displayed American colors in recognition that the harbor of Manila was an American port. That was the significance of the flashes and thundering of the Admiral's guns and the white cloud that gathered about his s.h.i.+p that has done enough for celebrity through centuries.

Admiral Dewey created the situation in the Philippines that the President wisely chose by way of the Paris Conference to receive the deliberate judgment of the Senate and people of the United States. Dewy has been unceasingly deeply concerned about it. His naval victory was but the beginning. He might have sailed away from Manila May 2d, having fulfilled his orders; but he had the high and keen American spirit in him, and clung. He needed a base of operations, a place upon which to rest and obtain supplies. He had not the marines to spare to garrison a fort save at Cavite, twelve miles from Manila; and he needed chickens, eggs, fresh meat and vegetables; and it was important that the Spanish Army should be occupied on sh.o.r.e. Hence, Aguinaldo, who was in Singapore, and the concentration of insurgents that had themselves to be restrained to make war on civilized lines. One of the points of the most considerable interest touching the Filipinos is that the smas.h.i.+ng defeat of the fleet of Spain in Manila Bay heartened them. They have become strong for themselves. The superiority of the Americans over the Spaniards as fighting men is known throughout the islands Spain oppressed; and the bonds of the tyrants have been broken. It should not be out of mind that the first transports with our troops did not reach Manila for six weeks, and that the army was not in shape to take the offensive until after General Merritt's arrival, late in July. All this time the American Admiral had to hold on with the naval arm; and it was the obvious game of Spain, if she meant to fight and could not cope with the Americans in the West Indies, to send all her available s.h.i.+ps and overwhelm us in the East Indies. At the same time the German, French, Russian and j.a.panese men-of-war represented the interest of the live nations of the earth in the Philippines. As fast as possible Admiral Dewey was re-enforced; but it was not until the two monitors, the Monterey and Monadnock, arrived, the latter after the arrival of General Merritt, that the Admiral felt that he was safely master of the harbor. He had no heavily armored s.h.i.+ps to a.s.sail the sh.o.r.e batteries within their range, and might be crippled by the fire of the great Krupp guns. It was vital that the health of the crews of his s.h.i.+ps should be maintained, and the fact that the men are and have been all summer well and happy is not accidental. Admiral Dewey took the point of danger, if there was one, into his personal keeping, by anchoring the Olympia on the Manila side of the bay, while others were further out and near Cavite; and throughout the fleet there was constant activity and the utmost vigilance. There was incessant solicitude about what the desperate Spaniards might contrive in the nature of aggressive enterprise. It seemed incredible to Americans that nothing should be attempted. How would a Spanish fleet have fared for three months of war with us in an American harbor? There would have been a new feature of destructiveness tried on the foe at least once a week.

The Spaniards ash.o.r.e seemed to be drowsy; but the Americans were wide awake, ready for anything, and could not be surprised; so that we may commend as wisdom the Spanish discretion that let them alone. The s.h.i.+p that was the nearest neighbor of Admiral Dewey for months of his long vigil flew the flag of Belgium. She is a large, rusty-looking vessel, without a sign of contraband of war, or of a chance of important usefulness about her; but she performed a valuable function. I asked half a dozen times what her occupation was before any one gave a satisfactory answer. Admiral Dewey told the story in few words. She was a cold-storage s.h.i.+p, with beef and mutton from Australia, compartments fixed for about forty degrees below zero. Each day the meat for the American fleet's consumption was taken out. There was a lot of it on the deck of the Olympia thawing when I was a visitor; and the beef was "delicious." I am at pains to give Dewey's word. While the Spaniards ash.o.r.e were eating tough, lean buffalo--the beasts of burden in the streets, the Americans afloat rejoiced in "delicious" beef and mutton from Australia. It was explained that the use of cold-storage meat depended upon giving it time to thaw, for if it should be cooked in an icy state it would be black and unpalatable, losing wholly its flavor and greatly its nouris.h.i.+ng quality. Australia is not many thousand miles from the Philippines--and one must count miles by the thousands out there. The Belgians have a smart Consul at Manila who is a friend of mankind.

One of the incidents in the battle of Manila--all are fresh in the public memory--is that Admiral Dewey did not make use of the conning-tower--a steel, bomb proof, for the security of the officer in command of the s.h.i.+p--the Captain, of course, and the commander of the fleet, if he will.

This retreat did not prove, in the battle of Yalu and the combats between the Chileans and Peruvians, a place of safety; but as a rule there is a considerable percentage of protection in its use. Admiral Dewey preferred to remain on the bridge--and there were four fragments of Spanish sh.e.l.ls that pa.s.sed close to him, striking within a radius of fifteen feet. The Admiral, when told there had been some remark because he had not occupied the conning-house in the action, walked with me to the tower, the entrance to which is so guarded that it resembles a small cavern of steel--with a heavy cap or lid, under which is a circular slit, through which observations are supposed to be made. "Try it," the Admiral said, "and you find it is hard to get a satisfactory view." He added, when I had attempted to look over the surroundings: "We will go to the bridge;" and standing on it he annotated the situation, saying: "Here you have the whole bay before you, and can see everything." I remarked: "The newspaper men are very proud of the correspondent of the Herald who was with you on the bridge;" and the Admiral said: "Yes; Stickney was right here with us."

There were many reasons for the officer commanding the American fleet that day to watch closely the developments. The Spaniards had, for their own purposes, even falsified the official charts of the bay. Where our vessels maneuvered and the flags.h.i.+p drew twenty-two feet of water and had nine feet under the keel, the chart called for fifteen feet only!

It is not a secret that the President wanted Admiral Dewey, if it was not in his opinion inconsistent with his sense of duty, to go to Was.h.i.+ngton. Naturally the President would have a profound respect for the Admiral's opinion as to the perplexing problem of the Philippines. The Admiral did not think he should leave his post. He could cover the points of chief interest in writing, and preferred very much to do so, and stay right where he was "until this thing is settled." The opinion of the Admiral as to what the United States should do with, or must do about, the political relations of the Philippines with ourselves and others, have not been given formal expression; but it is safe to say they are not in conflict with his feeling that the American fleet at Manila should be augmented with gunboats, cruisers and two or three battle-s.h.i.+ps. It was, in the opinion of the ill.u.s.trious Admiral, when the Peace Commission met in Paris, the time and place to make a demonstration of the sea power of the United States.

The personal appearance of Admiral Dewey is not presented with attractive accuracy in the very familiar portrait of him that has been wonderfully multiplied and replenished. The expression of the Admiral is not truly given in the prints and photos. The photographer is responsible for a faulty selection. The impression prevails that the hero is "a little fellow." There is much said to the effect that he is jaunty and has excess of amiability in his smile. He weighs about 180 pounds, and is of erect bearing, standing not less than five feet ten inches and a quarter. His hair is not as white as the pictures say. The artist who touched up the negative must have thought gray hair so becoming that he antic.i.p.ated the feast of coming years. The figure of the Admiral is strong, well carried, firm, and his bearing that of gravity and determination, but no pose for the sake of show, no pomp and circ.u.mstance, just the Academy training showing in his att.i.tude--the abiding, unconscious grace that is imparted in the schools of Annapolis and West Point--now rivaled by other schools in "setting up." The Admiral is of solidity and dignity, of good stature and proportions; has nothing of affectation in manners or insincerity in speech; is a hearty, stirring, serious man, whose intensity is softened by steady purposes and calm forces, and moderated by the play of a sense of humor, that is not drollery or levity, but has a pleasing greeting for a clever word, and yields return with a flash in it and an edge on it.

CHAPTER II

Life in Manila.

Character of the Filipinos--Drivers Las.h.i.+ng Laboring Men in the Streets--What Americans Get in Their Native Air--The Logic of Destiny--Manila as She Fell into Our Hands--The Beds in the Tropics--A Spanish Hotel--Profane Yells for Ice--Sad Scenes in the Dining Room--Major-General Calls for "Francisco"--A Broken-Hearted Pantry Woman.

The same marvelous riches that distinguish Cuba are the inheritance of Luzon. The native people are more promising in the long run than if they were in larger percentage of the blood of Spain, for they have something of that indomitable industry that must finally work out an immense redemption for the eastern and southern Asiatics. When, I wonder, did the American people get the impression so extensive and obstinate that the j.a.panese and Chinese were idlers? We may add as having a place in this category the Hindoos, who toil forever, and, under British government, have increased by scores of millions. The southern Asiatics are, however, less emanc.i.p.ated from various indurated superst.i.tions than those of the East; and the Polynesians, spread over the southern seas, are a softer people than those of the continent. However, idleness is not the leading feature of life of the Filipinos, and when they are mixed, especially crossed with Chinese, they are indefatigable. On the Philippine Islands there is far less servility than on the other side of the sea of China, and the people are the more respectable and hopeful for the flavor of manliness that compensates for a moderate but visible admixture of savagery. We of North America may be proud of it that the atmosphere of our continent, when it was wild, was a stimulant of freedom and independence. The red Indians of our forests were, with all their faults, never made for slaves. The natives of the West Indies, the fierce Caribs excepted, were enslaved by the Spaniards, and perished under the lash. Our continental tribes--the Seminoles and the Comanches, the Sioux and Mohawks, the Black Feet and the Miamis--from the St. Lawrence to Red River and the oceans, fought all comers--Spaniards, French and English--only the French having the talent of polite persuasion and the gift of kindness that won the mighty hunters, but never subjugated them. We may well encourage the idea that the quality of air of the wilderness has entered the soil. When, in Manila, I have seen the men bearing burdens on the streets spring out of the way of those riding in carriages, and lashed by drivers with a viciousness that no dumb animal should suffer, I have felt my blood warm to think that the men of common hard labor in my country would resent a blow as quickly as the man on horseback--that even the poor black--emanc.i.p.ated the other day from the subjugation of slavery by a masterful and potential race, stands up in conscious manhood, and that the teachings of the day are that consistently with the progress of the country--as one respects himself, he must be respected--and that the air and the earth have the inspiration and the stimulus of freedom. The Chinese and j.a.panese are famous as servants--so constant, handy, obedient, docile, so fitted to minister to luxury, to wait upon those favored by fortune and spurred to execute the schemes for elevation and dominance, and find employment in the enterprise that comprehends human advancement. It must be admitted that the Filipinos are not admirable in menial service. Many of them are untamed, and now, that the Americans have given object lessons of smiting the Spaniards, the people of the islands that Magellinos, the Portuguese, found for Spain, must be allowed a measure of self-government, or they will a.s.sert a broader freedom, and do it with sanguinary methods. As Americans have heretofore found personal liberty consistent with public order--that Republicanism was more stable than imperialism in peaceable administration, and not less formidable in war, it seems to be Divinely appointed that our paths of Empire may, with advantage to ourselves, and the world at large, be made more comprehensive than our fathers blazed them out. But one need not hesitate to go forward in this cause, for we have only gone farther than the fathers dreamed, because, among their labors of beneficence, was that of building wiser than they knew, and there is no more reason now why we should stop when we strike the salt water of the seas, and consent to it that where we find the white line of surf that borders a continent we shall say to the imperial popular Republic, thus far and no farther shalt thou go, and here shall thy proud march be stayed--than there was that George Was.h.i.+ngton, as the representative of the English-speaking people, should have a.s.sumed that England and Virginia had no business beyond the Allegheny Mountains, and, above all, no right to territory on the west of the Allegheny and Kanawha, and north of the Ohio river, a territory then remote, inhabited by barbarians and wanted by the French, who claimed the whole continent, except the strip along the Atlantic possessed by the English colonies. Was.h.i.+ngton was a believer in the acquisition of the Ohio country. He was a man who had faith in land--in ever more land. It is the same policy to go west now that it was then. Was.h.i.+ngton crossed the Allegheny and held the ground. Jefferson crossed the Mississippi, and sent Louis and Clark to the Pacific; and crossing the great western ocean now is but the logic of going beyond the great western rivers, prairies and mountains then. We walk in the ways of the fathers when we go conquering and to conquer along the Eastward sh.o.r.es of Asia.

One of the expanding and teeming questions before the world now, and the authority and ability to determine it, is in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States, is whether Manila shall become an American city, with all the broad and sweeping significance attaching thereto. Manila was not dressed for company when I saw her, for she had just emerged from a siege in which the people had suffered much inconvenience and privation. The water supply was cut off, and the streets were not cleaned. The hotels were disorganized and the restaurants in confusion. The trees that once cast a grateful shade along the boulevards, that extended into the country, rudely denuded of their boughs, had the appearance of the skeletons of strange monsters. The insurgent army was still in the neighborhood in a state of uneasiness, feeling wronged, deprived, as they were, of an opportunity to get even with the Spaniards, by picking out and slaying some of the more virulent offenders. There was an immense monastery, where hundreds of priests were said to be sheltered, and the insurgents desired to take them into their own hands and make examples of them. The Spaniards about the streets were becoming complacent. They had heard of peace, on the basis of Spain giving up every thing, but the Philippines, and there were expectations that the troops withdrawn from Cuba might be sent from Havana to Manila, and then, as soon as the Americans were gone, the islanders could be brought to submission by vastly superior forces. There were more rations issued to Spanish than to American soldiers, until the division of the Philippine Expedition with Major-General Otis arrived, but the Americans were exclusively responsible for the preservation of the peace between the implacable belligerents, and the sanitary work required could not at once be accomplished, but presently it was visible that something was done every day in the right direction. There was much gambling with dice, whose rattling could be heard far and near on the sidewalks, but this flagrant form of vice was summarily suppressed, we may say with strict truth, at the point of the bayonet. The most representative concentration of the ingredients of chaos was at the Hotel Oriental, that overlooked a small park with a dry fountain and a branch of the river flowing under a stone bridge, with a pretty stiff current, presently to become a crowded ca.n.a.l. It is of three lofty stories and an attic, a great deal of the s.p.a.ce occupied with halls, high, wide and long. The front entrance is broad, and a tiled floor runs straight through the house. Two stairways, one on either side, lead to the second story, the first steps of stone. In the distance beyond, a court could be seen, a pa.s.sable conservatory--but bottles on a table with a counter in front declared that this was a barroom, as it was. The next thing further was a place where was.h.i.+ng was done, then came empty rooms that might be shops; after this a narrow and untidy street, and then a livery stable--a sort of monopolistic cab stand, where a few ponies and carriages were to be found--but no one understood or did anything as long as possible, except to say that all the rigs were engaged now and always. However, a little violent English language, mixed with Spanish, would arouse emotion and excite commotion eventuating in a pony in harness, and a gig or carriage, and a desperate driver, expert with a villainous whip used without occasion or remorse.