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
We have some ready-made coronet initials in T. R. [403]
"On June 23, 1902," says General Chaffee, in his report for that year,
[404] "by Act No. 421 of the Philippine Commission, so much of Act
No. 173, of July 17, 1901, as transferred the province of Batangas
to military control was revoked. Civil government was re-established
in the province at 12 o'clock noon, July 4, 1902." The rest of the
1,748,573 people herein above mentioned as constituting the population
of Batangas, Cebu, Bohol, Laguna, Tayabas, and Samar, were also in
turn made to "want peace and want it badly," and on July 4, 1902,
President Roosevelt issued his proclamation declaring that a state of
general and complete peace existed. This is the famous proclamation
in which he congratulated General Chaffee and the officers and men of
his command on "a total of more than 2000 combats, great and small,"
most of them subsequent to the Taft roseate cablegrams of 1900,
and the still more roseate reports of 1901 from the same source. The
proclamation appeared in the Philippines as General Orders No. 66,
Adjutant General's Office, Washington, dated July 4, 1902. [405]
It directed, in the body of it, that it be "read aloud at parade in
every military post." It thanked the officers and enlisted men of the
army in the Philippines, in the name of the President of the United
States, for the courage and fortitude, the indomitable spirit and loyal
devotion with which they had been fighting up to that time, alluded
to the impliedly lamb-like or turn-the-other-cheek way in which they
had been behaving (no special reference is made either to Batangas,
Samar, or the water-cure), and closes with a bully Rooseveltian
war-whoop about the "more than 2000 combats, great and small," above
mentioned. It also referred to how, "with admirable good temper and
loyalty to American ideals its (the army's) commanding generals have
joined with the civilian agents of the government" in the work of
superinducing allegiance to American sovereignty. This document is
one of the most remarkable state papers of that most remarkable of
men, ex-President Roosevelt, in its evidences of ability to mould
powerful discordant elements to his will. It put everybody in a good
humor. And yet, read at every military post, it served notice on the
military that if they knew which side their bread was buttered on,
they had better forget everything they knew tending to show the
prematurity of the setting-up of the civil government, sheath all
tomahawks and scalping knives they might have whetted and waiting
for Governor Taft's exit from office, abstain from chatty letters to
United States Senators telling tales out of school, such as the one
Senator Bacon had read on the floor of the Senate (already noticed),
and dutifully perceive, in the future, that the war was ended, as
officially announced in the proclamation itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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