The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
History
The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946; Philippines -- Politics and government -- 1898-1935
"Those of the Philippine Census are somewhat simpler, the
differences being due mainly to the more homogeneous character
of the population of the Philippine Islands." [320]
When we consider the above in the light of the past and present
operation of our own immigration laws, it is not flattering, but it
may and should tend to awaken some realization of the manifold nature
and blinding effects of current misapprehensions in the United States
concerning the inhabitants of the Philippines. One Filipino does not
differ from another any more than one American does from another
American--in fact they differ less, considering immigration. The
Filipino people are not rendered a heterogeneous lot by having three
different languages, Ilocano, Tagalo, and Visayan, [321] which are
respectively the languages spoken in the northern, the central,
and the southern part of their country, any more than the people
of Switzerland are rendered heterogeneous by the circumstance that
in northern Switzerland you find German spoken for the most part,
while farther south you find French, and near the southernmost
extremities some Italian. At this late date no credible person
acquainted with the facts will be so poor in spirit as to deny that
the motives of the men who originally started the insurrection were
patriotic. Nor will any one who served under General Otis's command
in the Philippines deny that that eminent desk soldier continued to
cling to his early theory that it was a purely Tagalo insurrection
long after the deadly unanimity of the opposition had seeped, with
all-pervading thoroughness, into the general mind of the army of
occupation. The white flag or rag of truce, alias treachery, used
to be hoisted to put us off our guard in pretence of welcome to our
columns approaching their towns and barrios. Such use of such a flag,
followed by treachery, the ultimate weapon of the weak, had been in
turn followed, with relentless impartiality in countless instances,
by due unloosening of the vials of American wrath, until every nipa
shack [322] in the Philippine Islands that remained unburned had
had its lesson, written in the blood of its occupants or their kin,
to the tune of the Krag-Jorgensen or the Gatling. Yet General Otis's
reports are always bland, and always convey the idea of an insurrection
exclusively Tagalo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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