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
belittling of the work the army had to do to make them accept it.
I remained in charge of the First Judicial District for more
than a year, and during that period tried few or no crimes of a
political character, that is to say, indictments for sedition or the
like--attempts to subvert the government. The district comprised a
total population of about a half million people, more than one-eighth
of the population of Luzon, and a total area of over 13,000 square
miles, nearly one-third of all Luzon. But remember, this was in
northern Luzon, where the work of pacification was lucidly completed
by the army before the "peace-at-any-price" policy began. We will see
what happened in my friend Judge Carson's district, and in the rest of
southern Luzon later. The principal broad general fact I now recall,
in connection with the administration of justice in the First Judicial
District during the year or more I had it, is that the main volume of
business on the court calendars was crimes of violence of a strictly
non-political character due to lack of efficient police protection
in the several communities, consequent on withdrawal of military
garrisons. The country was in an unsettled state. The aftermath
of war, lawless violence, was virulently present, and the presence
of troops scattered through a province, under such circumstances,
is a wonderful moral force to restrain lawlessness. However high
the purpose, however kindly the motive, the setting up of a civil
government in the Philippines at the time it was set up, when the
country was far from ready for it, was a terrible mistake. Of course
no one man in a given province or judicial district had a bird's-eye
view of the whole situation and the whole panorama at the time,
such as we can get at this distance, in retrospect. Of course it did
not lie in human nature for the men responsible for the mistake to
see it at first, and, the die once cast, they had to keep on, with
intermittent resort to military help, the extent of which help was
always minimized thereafter. To show how little the general state of
the archipelago was understood by American provincial officials busy in
a given part of it, and getting little or no news of the outside world,
I remained in the First Judicial District from July, 1901, to August,
1902, and heard nothing of the great insurrection in southern Luzon,
in Batangas, and the adjacent provinces, which raged during the winter
of 1901-02, except a vague rumor that there was trouble down there. The
Filipinos did, however. Of course for Mr. Root to be able to furnish
in December, 1901, a report, as Secretary of War, to the President,
for consumption by Congress and the people of this country, to the
effect that his volunteer army had been mustered out on schedule time,
June 30, 1901, and a "civil" government set up and in due operation,
was a nice showing, calculated to sooth latent public discontent with
wading through slaughter to over-seas dominion. Reports thereafter of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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