A Letter From the Philippines

I.

NATURE, his environment, and the system of Spain during the last three hundred years have combined to make the Filipino, the degenerate scion of the ancient Malay pirates, typical of a racial sunset.

Devoid almost to nudity of anything even remotely approaching literature, folk-lore, traditions, or history, the Filipino people of to-day presents a pitiful spectacle.Terrorized by the Spaniard and his cruelty, the native lies stupidly, on every occasion, without the slightest regard for fact; his sole desire is to save himself a beating. By nature and heredity and environment disinclined to work hard for anything –as a race –he takes easily to theft. Never having had within the limits of his low mental horizon such a thing as education to fit him for a trade, he is not tractable, and views our efforts in this respect with suspicion and fear. As an individual, the Filipino is the most innocent and harmless of any semi-civilized people; as a race, he presents a grave danger unless handled without sentiment, unless put in his place and literally forced to prove that he is capable of further rights and privileges. Whether we shall be able to accomplish the mental liberation of this collection of tribes, raising it from the mire of ignorance in which it is steeped, rests entirely with the home government.

At the present time, under the undue liberty granted by America, the Filipinos appear to be divided sharply into two classes, which, after all, are really one. One class professes loyalty. Some individuals of this class are really as loyal as they can be ; others are buenos hombres during the day, only to foster rebellion at night. The other class is in open defiance of all our conceptions of law and order, setting at naught every ordinance we have established. Of the two classes, the latter is by far less dangerous. In the past year there have been perhaps an hundred convictions of individuals to death or life imprisonment for open rebellion : a few days ago one judge passed sentences of death and various terms of duress, from life imprisonment down to a year or so, on twenty of the outlaws. But of those receiving the heavier punishments, several were of the outwardly loyal class, men who secretly fomented insurrection and ladronism.

The Philippine situation has reached a stage of complexity now that is comparable with the Eastern question ; the old familiar and ghostly Balkan problem is very like to the unrest that is to be found in the Archipelago. The offensive term “ nigger-lover,” implying one who sets the black up as preëminent, but who does not do so from any humanitarian principles, has been applied to the government here, which has also been most bitterly arraigned as un-American, autocratic, and blind to its own future. A good-sized insurrection is going on in the north ; famine, cholera, ladronism, and stubborn Moro chiefs stir the south; friction locally between the various branches of the government, and between the government and the people, has brought affairs in the islands to a standstill. Commerce is dull; business houses of the first class are daily retrenching ; dissatisfaction grows with the attitude of the home government, and anxiety as to what the effects of the new gold Peso will be is stronger every day.

One of the best of the Spaniards here said to me a few days ago, while we were discussing the future of the city of Manila, that there would be nothing here for a long time. “ The city is a sink,” said he gravely. “You Americans have flocked in here in crowds, expecting to find El Dorado. What you have is a city you yourselves have spoiled. Shall you be here long : no — yes ? Well, if you shall not stay much time more, you will do well to get out quickly. This place offers no inducements. There will be no money here made, no great positions created. Stagnation will continue to prevail. We are waiting — for what? We do not know ; for something. But on account of the so great expense to live here, one must have outside means to be even fairly comfortable. If you are satisfied with what you are earning, with what you are saving, if indeed you can save anything, stay ; if not, go home at once ; conditions here will be worse before they can be any better.”

Señor — is a gentleman who stands high with the Civil Commission, with which he is connected, and his utterances carry the more weight, coming, as they do, from a man who knows what the purposes of the government are, and what it will do. In corroboration of his prophetic remarks, “ Deacon ” Prautch, aMethodist who has for some time been steeped in the peculiar new sect of Catholics calling themselves Aglipayanos, has backslidden from rosary and censer to the canons of his old church. He tried, it is said, to settle the friar question single-handed by egging on Aglipay and his deserters from Rome, thus breaking the Vatican’s grip on the Archipelago. Prautch found, after spending a few months as editor of La Verdad (The Truth), organ of the National Independent Filipino Church, and adviser-in-ordinary to Gregorio Aglipay, the self-consecrated archbishop of the new organization, that “my Methodist principles could not agree in perfect harmony with many of the usages and rites of the Catholic Church.” The whole scheme seems to have been a piece of purely political trickery, with its object the dismissal of the friars. Both Prautch and Aglipay expected to seduce the people from allegiance to Rome, thus making it imperative that the religious orders should go back home, defeated. The scheme was pretty, and it had a very fair chance of success, owing to local conditions, but a keener tool than Aglipay was needed to do the cutting. Aglipay’s ability in his chosen field, the pastoral and polemic side of his church work, is conceded patiently, but he has no such fire of personal magnetism, no such singular attraction for the people, as have Antonio Mabini, Pio del Pilar, and even little Aguinaldo, the least conspicuous of them all.

Speaking of Aguinaldo’s limitations reminds me of what an officer told me not long ago. He had been in the party that met General, then Colonel, Funston, when returning with the captured “ President.” Captain — was among the first to go through the insurgent’s papers. Among them he found the diary kept by Aguinaldo, which showed what the man’s ideas were regarding the responsibilities resting upon the leader of the new republic which he so fondly imagined could be established. He, Aguinaldo, his chief adviser and confidant, with their respective wives and a proper suite, intended to make a tour of Europe that should last at the very least a year. Other entries in the diary showed the discussions the four had had about the trip, what they should see, and how the vast moneys they counted upon should be spent. This book was begun not long after the famous Malolos Congress, and during the most critical period of the inchoative republic, the most keenly anxious moments of the exwasherman’s career. Aguinaldo, though most people, even in the islands, do not know it, was in 1896 a common washerman in the Cavite arsenal’s laundry, and had so poor a knowledge of Spanish that the Castilians themselves declared he spoke it de cocina, or kitchen-fashion. Like a good many other tauos, he was an adept at lightning political changes, and so, when he jumped from the party with which he had been connected to a new one, some time after this, and was made a Capitano Municipal in the same year, it occasioned no one any great surprise.

Practically every Filipino who was identified with the insurrectionist movement has since been given some government position. One is a judge of the Court of Customs Appeals; another, whose nom de guerre is Philip Goodroad, and whose real name few beside himself know, is a member of the Civil Service Board ; still another equally well-known filibustero and insurgent is a member of the city of Manila’s Municipal Board. Among the last of the old junta of Katipuneros is a man who has just had created for him the position of collecting librarian of the Philippines. This man was closely connected with Rizal in the propaganda of the later ’90s. The new position pays a salary of thirty-five hundred dollars in gold, more than the man ever saw at one time before. He was, until recently, professor of history in the Lyceo, in Binondo, the Chinese section of Extramuros, Manila. He himself is a Chino-mestizo by birth, and has been given letters of marque and reprisal, as it were, to ravish the libraries and collections of Spain, France, Italy, the Continent generally, and wherever else he can find any old manuscripts or records of expeditions to and affairs in the old Islas Filipinas. It is a position to make the cockles of his heart glad. Beside his salary he also gets all his actual traveling expenses, and many an American and European was most anxious to have the place.

II.

El Kataastaasang Kalagayan Katipunan Nang Manga Anac Nang Bayan, or as it is better known, the Katipunan, is a society whose name means, in Tagalog, Supreme Society of the Sons of the People. Its object was and is yet to filibuster, to get independence, if possible, for the Philippines. More properly rendered into English from the native dialect, the name means a society of the supreme sons of the people; that is, composed of the most noteworthy men. No exact English equivalent of the Tagalog can be given, but a prominent Spaniard of the “ days of the Empire ” says of the Katipunan : “ A reunion or organization of the people who meet to concoct assassinations cannot be called a reunion of noteworthy people (supreme society), but rather a reunion of noteworthy criminals.” To this title the Katipunan can justly lay claim, but to none other.

Strange as it may seem, this clique of would-be murderers and real insurgents is the illegitimate offspring of Filipino masonry. Some twenty years or more ago, a Gran Oriente lodge of the Spanish Masons was founded in the Philippines. About ten years later, by various crooked political intrigues, Filipinos managed to gain consent from Señor Morayta, in Madrid, to found “Tagalog” lodges, as up to that time only Spaniards had been Masons. These Tagalog lodges finally split off from the parent body, the Gran Oriente, and in the course of time lost their identity as Masonic bodies completely, by reason of being merged into the Liga Filipina, from which was eventually constructed the grimmer Katipunan, which had as its secret purpose the assassination of all the friars, the overthrow of religion, and the ultimate independence of the islands. How successful it has been we already know, but the K. K. K. is still capable of yelling around town at night: “Hindi aco patay ! ” (I am not dead yet!)

Within the past six months it has been shown, by a search of old Spanish archives in the possession of the government, that every Filipino, mestizo (halfbreed), and Indio of any consequence in the islands is still a member of the order.

Three of the members of the Civil Commission were in it. Dozens of others, all of whom have taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, are old members.

The Katipunero’s relation to the Church of Rome is that of a very precocious but also very naughty child, who has kerosene and matches in plenty, with no one by to watch his performances. Having all the supposed Masonic hatred of things Catholic as a working basis, the Katipunan circulated propaganda against the church and the friars, accusing them of having “ debased the ancient and prostituted the noble customs of the country,” beside which their very presence was inimical to liberty and Filipino autonomy. It is interesting in this connection to note that the ancient and noble customs of the country, before the correcting hand of Spain, iron - stern, closed over las Islas Filipinas, were, –according to old Padre Moraga, –the sale of men, women, and children as mere chattels to pay small debts of a few dollars, the practice of defloration as a recognized custom, the holding of virginity as a disgrace which would prevent the woman from going to heaven, and the right of the tribal chief or village presidente to hold all his people as his own personal property, with the right to kill off, maim, sell, or give away whomsoever he chose. Details of certain other well-recognized customs are so shocking as to be beyond the possibility of publication in a decent magazine.

Some idea may be gathered from this statement as to what the Filipino is when the thin veneer of European influence is burned through by the Malay instinct, the old pirate savagery. These same customs, to a limited extent, still prevail among some of the non-Christian tribes. Among the Igorrotes, who live in the northern province of Nueva Viscaya, a fever cure is practiced to-day that for barbarity and heartlessness is the equal of anything the American Indians ever inflicted upon their sick. An old captain of the constabulary told me about it, on returning from a recent tour of duty among the people, whom he regards as being misguided children rather than malignant fanatics. The story runs thus :–

When any member of the tribe is attacked by the low fever that prevails among the mountains of that region, the sufferer is at once taken out of his bed and put into a frame or chair that has been prepared for the purpose. This frame resembles an easel to a certain extent. Straps are tied about the patient’s head, which is drawn back as far as possible, thus stretching the throat out, others are passed about the chest, and still others fasten the legs in a bent position, so that the man is half-lying, halfsitting. Then the fire which has been built under the frame is lighted, and the heat and smoke pour up around the poor wretch, who is either killed or cured in a very short time. He has the fever smoked out in from one to three applications of the cure, each application lasting from an hour to two and a half hours. This treatment is repeated at intervals of about three hours all day long, and has, in rare and stubborn cases, been applied for three successive days. Another method of applying the same cure to fevers is to make the fire hotter and hotter for the first hour, and then to put it out with water. The collection of stones which has previously been put below the fire being white - hot, the water creates a great cloud of reeking steam. This is even more favored than the other, but, being much severer, is not so frequently used. As a general rule, three patients out of five recover; the others are literally killed by the hideous torture to which the cure subjects them.

It is to people like this that Uncle Sam has come with the olive branch. Developments of the American occupation, and particularly of the past year, seem to show that our captain’s estimate of the people is very correct. He describes the Filipino as a very impudent and impertinent child, but, withal, a very dangerous one ; he must be sternly disciplined, taught to respect the sovereign authority, and learn to be obedient and respectful. The average “civilized”

Filipino has many good traits and qualities : he is a thief and a liar, brutal to animals, and exceptionally thoughtless; but he is clean, mentally, toward women. His evil side is not nasty. He is not of a kindly nature, but this is rather his misfortune than his fault. When he is made to realize his shortcomings and to remedy them, at least to some extent, he attains to a measure of the full stature of manhood, as has been proved in several cases.

III.

About six months ago the Commission passed what is generally regarded as the most impressive piece of legislation, from a judicial standpoint, of the year. This act empowered the governor to close any bank of whose workings he had the slightest suspicion ; and he cannot be held accountable for his acts under this law. There is in Manila no power of the people or of the press to “get back,” speaking colloquially, at the government. But this new law was so evidently needed, it was so sane, that public opinion for once sided with the authorities, an unusual thing indeed in Manila. A few days after the act had become a law, one of the more prominent banks, an American institution, closed the doors of its savings department, and has not reopened them under the old régime. I took the pains personally to seek out the president and ascertain the reasons for this action. After considerable fencing I learned that the deposits in the bank exceeded by some seven or eight times the amount of its paid up capitalization. The government was not satisfied that this should be the case with a small and close private corporation, whose paid up capital amounted to very much less than fifty thousand dollars. Of the personal honesty of the banker there was no doubt, but it had been felt generally for some time that the institution was shaky ; hence the governor’s action. The old savings bank has been reorganized as a triple partnership since then, with the American and two wealthy Filipinos as the members of a regular brokerage, exchange, and banking institution.

Another law that was designed to have an important effect upon general commerce, with particular regard to the high local rates for sea freights between Manila and other coast ports, was one that gave foreign vessels the right, until July 4, 1904, to engage in the coastwise traffic of the Philippines under an American registry. It was known as the Coastwise Shipping Act, and the discussion of it was bitter in the extreme, but when it was finally brought up in the great Sala de Sesiones of the Ayuntamiento Palace for public and open discussion, the opposition dwindled down to a mere dissatisfied twitter. Since the act has become a law, one vessel only has taken advantage of the registry thus afforded, the Norwegian steamer Hjelm.

The conditions leading up to this drafting and passage of what seemed likely to be the most unpopular of laws were, and still are, peculiar. So meagre are the facilities for transportation about the islands, which number altogether nearly seventeen hundred and fifty, with a coastline more than double that of the United States, that practically everything either north or south of Manila has to be carried in steamers or in the little, batwinged schooners that fancy they are seaworthy craft. Taking, for instance, the trade between ports like Zamboanga on the south, and Aparri on the north, with the metropolis, Manila, the freight rates are relatively ten times as great as they are between Manila and San Francisco. In some cases they are relatively twenty times higher. In the case of ManilaIloilo cargoes, the cost is about the same for the three hundred miles as it is for the seventy-five hundred of the FriscoManila passage.

To combat this, alleged by the government to be due to a pool of shipowners’ interests, the new law was passed. It has brought in one steamer to compete with the local craft. It was argued that competition would bring the rates down. The new steamer runs on practically the same schedule and rates as the others. There is no pool of shipowners. Local conditions alone are responsible for the high tariffs, for many of the ports of call are inaccessible during many months of the year, and steamers sometimes have to lie offshore a full week before it is safe to land cargo.

Commercially, the year has been one of the most disastrous the islands have ever known. The rice crop has been a failure in most of the provinces ; thousands of carabao– water buffalo –have died with the surra ; ladronism is responsible for the devastation of province after province; money is bitterly scarce and tight, time and call loans at usurious rates being hard to get and still harder to meet; general agriculture is in a deplorable condition, though measures are now being taken for its revivification ; church is at war with church, and a very deepseated and hearty dissatisfaction obtains throughout the community.

Here the old question of sugar duties and free trade with the United States crops up again. Practically, it costs the planters at least twenty dollars for every ton of sugar they produce in the islands, including what the newspapers are pleased to call an “ infamous ” and “ iniquitous export tax ” of a dollar a ton on all sugar that is sent out of the Archipelago. The selling price hovers around the twenty-one-dollar mark. It is easy to see, therefore, that only the most powerful and wealthy of the planters can at all afford to produce. It is this that caused the demoralization of the sugar industry here last winter. Furthermore, it was stated at a meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce last December, in my presence, that the laws regulating the amount of land a corporation in the Philippines may hold is limited to 2000 or 2500 acres. At this meeting resolutions were passed with the object of trying to get the laws amended so as to make it possible for a company or organization to hold land up to ten thousand acres or more, according to the responsibility of the corporation. As it is now there are vast tracts of land of a good quality for cane-raising which have been refused by local companies, simply because they could not afford to do business in the face of the limit, and also because of other grave disadvantages. It is the opinion of those best versed in sugar that the sugar industry here cannot recover until tentative measures at least, like the removal of the export tax and the extension of the land holdings law, are enforced.

Rice, which is the only food of about a fifth of the natives, and with fish the staple diet of about nine tenths of them, has been the cause of much distress by its failure as a food crop. This failure has been due to a number of reasons, principal among which is ladronism. So few people know anything of the labor involved in rice-planting that it may be worth while to show the methods now in use among the Filipinos. For weeks the planter flounders in a quagmire, knee-to waist-deep in the slime of the field. He eventually sticks in by hand, under pitiless sun or in pelting rain, each one of the eighty thousand plants in his little two-acre patch. After the crop has been tended most carefully, irrigated, flooded, dried off, he steps in once more, and cuts by hand all the suckers he planted,– that is, all that the animals and thieves have left. And for this arduous toil he earns the magnificent wage, if he be the proprietor, of fifty-five dollars in gold per annum, or fifteen cents a day. During the year just past many of the rice-farmers have refused to raise any crops : all they did was to produce sufficient to keep life in their badly nourished but sinewy bodies. When such an one is asked why he did not raise plenty, he will reply in Spanish if he speak it: “ Asi mucho ladron,” or, in Tagalog, “ Maramin ladrón,” or if he be a Pampangan, “ Tutuh lañ dakal amapanaco ” (Too many thieves).

Conditions in the southern provinces, where this effect has been most apparent, are even yet so bad that few men raise anything except what they most desperately need for themselves. Ladrón means thief : but it is a very flexible term, like the Turkish word for oil, yagh. The sneak who picks your pocket is ladrón ; he also who cracks a safe, the horsethief, the looter of mails or villages or churches ; he who flocks by himself in bands of fifty or more, and wipes out whole towns at a single swoop, killing, violating, burning, and stealing; the muchacho who has been your ever faithful body-servant for twenty years, and who at last runs off with your dollar watch, and leaves your rickety, rat-andvermin-infested casa for some nipa shack in the bosque, — each of them is ladrón. Never by any possibility a ladrón, but simply “ ladrón,” without the saving grace of even that introductory “a.”

In the north of Luzon conditions are different. In the Bulacan and Rizal provinces the petty disturbances and unrest of the early part of 1902 have grown into a full-fledged rebellion, an insurrection that is fought according to the rules of war, though the civil government still refuses to recognize it as such, in spite of the fact that the army has already done so. Faith ! since when did common thieves march in bands of three hundred or more, in uniforms, carrying “ state papers,” under brigadier-generals, armed like regular troops, and bearing the dreaded Katipunan rising sun and double stripe flag of the old insurrection, yelling that keen cry, “ Hindi aco patay ” ? These insurgents, whose general, Apolonario San Miguel, was killed a few months ago, take nothing in their periodical raids but ammunition, arms, and enough food for their immediate needs. Members of San Miguels and Faustino Guillermo’s t( armies ” have been shot and hanged for the crimes of violation and looting. No white woman, strangely enough, has ever been offered any insult of this sort by any native since the American occupation. The reverse is, unfortunately, true of native women at the hands of Filipino, American, and Spanish men. The natives were told early in the war that a single white woman violated would mean the utter destruction of them and all the islands by the Americanos, who would bring el infierno to pass.

In connection with the ladrón and insurrection movements, the order came not long ago for the native scouts to be taken over by the constabulary under Henry T. Allen, a captain of the Sixth Cavalry, detailed to that service with the temporary rank of brigadier-general. The scouts are still fed by the army, though under General Allen’s orders ; this gives them an anomalous position, and they report all fights to the Adjutant-General of the Division before the chief of the constabulary gets any word. This move on the part of the administration has more political significance than appears at first sight.

IV.

Politics has presented during the year several changes that are of interest. The movements headed by the National, Federal, Liberal, and Socialist parties might be inimical to the public safety and peace if they were cohesive. As it is, party politics among the Filipinos has been made the subject of some rather ribald jesting: no one who knows the conditions as they are has ever taken the matter seriously.

The Workers’ Party (La Union Obrera) is practically no more and no less than a gigantic labor union. Like the other unions of a similar nature at home, it plays a sort of Ishmael part; but aside from exerting considerable influence over the working classes, it has little concern with anything but fiestas. It is impossible to conceive of any Filipino “ nation.” The native has no idea of solidarity: “ party interests ” are to him as meaningless as the word “ snow ; ” never having seen either, or the effects of either, he affects a stolid indifference from which it is not possible to rouse him. Some months ago Pascual Poblete, the agitator and blowhard, announced that his “ labor bureau ” could furnish at any moment 200,000 men for any sort of unskilled labor by the day. Nobody took up his proposition, and now he considers that he has dealt the Chinese skilled labor importation scheme a deadly blow. As a matter of fact, he merely added one more argument to the quiverful in the hands of the Chinaman’s partisans. Poblete is the Chino-mestizo of whom the Madrid Herald spoke so bitterly a year or so ago, accusing him of practically every crime a man can commit without landing himself behind the bars for life. He is a gamester, habitué of the mains, subscriptionraiser and labor agitator of the most dangerous type, being, with Isabelo de los Reyes, always embroiled in some labor controversy. Poblete’s subscription lists raised considerable money, and as no accounting was ever made, it is popularly believed that the cash went to the owners of various victorious roosters in the pits at Caloocan and Pasay. He is, of course, prominent in the councils of the obreros, or toilers.

Of the other parties, it can only be said that they are never able to agree on anything among themselves. Doctor Jesús even, one of the most prominent of the local politicians, cannot get along with the men of his own peculiar ideas, and has repeatedly quarreled bitterly with his best political friends. So it is, that none of the parties amounts to much as a weapon.

The new democratic labor union, an outgrowth of the older Obrera, which celebrated its first gran fiesta on May 1, is composed mainly of such skilled labor as the Philippines can boast. Many of the newspaper compositors are enrolled in its ranks, among them being not only Filipinos, but also East Indians, Chinese, and a few Arabs. Carpenters, machinists, carriage-builders, masons, and artisans of all trades make up the rest. There is no such thing as a separate union here for each trade ; it is merely necessary that individual artisans be of the same political stripe, which covers, to the native mind, a multitude of other shortcomings. This union is, however, as arbitrary as any similar body in the United States. Some days ago, the editor of one of the newspapers had occasion to wish the dismissal of a lazy compositor. He told the man to go at once, and was informed by the union patron that the man could go if it was necessary, but that the whole force would go out in sympathy. If he was permitted to remain until Saturday night, he could be dismissed, and nothing would be said about it by the union. The man stayed. This party could have a powerful influence if elections were held and the natives enfranchised. Though experience has shown, particularly within the past six months, that the Filipino does not readily assimilate new ideas as a general rule, he picks up some things with a rapidity that is positively startling. His childish love of gaudy finery and the ease with which he is swayed by an oily and passionate tongue leave him largely at the mercy of his more educated brother, –the spellbinder would find him easy prey.

Most spectacular and interesting, from the public’s point of view, have been the workings of the sedition and libel laws during the past year. These laws are somewhat similar to our old law, the difference being that they are enforced here on what seems to the average newspaper man very slight provocation. Three men are now under sentence, two for having committed libel, and one for sedition. All three were supposed to be working against the government, and the consequence was that at the first opportunity they were made to feel the weight of the law. None of the sentences has as yet been executed, as all three cases are on appeal, and the principals are out on heavy bonds. The first case involved the former owner and editor of the Freedom, F. L. Dorr, and E. F. O’Brien, the editor. The other case had to do with the alleged libel of General Davis by William Crozier, proprietor and editor of the American. All three men have heavy fines and terms of imprisonment hanging over them, and it is generally believed that they will have to go to jail. The Freedom case is too well known to need comment here, except to say that the seditious editorial in question was a critique on the government of the sort that is published every day at home. The other case was different. In reviewing General Davis’s review of the Glenn court martial, which disapproved the findings of the court, the American said editorially that General Davis ought not to have “ smeared over ” the findings with his comment. The charge was simple libel, but the animus of the prosecution made it appear that Mr. Crozier had been guilty of seditious libel, by holding an official up to public ridicule, hatred, and contempt. This, of course, was stated to be subversive of the general welfare of the government. The case had several features of more than usual interest, but it is not advisable to reopen the matter here. But as a plain fact, conditions now in Manila are such that no paper can tell at what minute it is likely to be summoned to the office of the attorney-general to answer for any one of a number of things it had no idea of doing, and which it did not believe were done. Retractions are as a rule fruitless, for the prosecution goes on just the same, as in the Davis case. It would be a boon for the editors were a censor appointed, as in the old days here, for then there could be no mistakes, and no one would have to see the inside of Bilibid to know about Philippine prisons. The fact that we are all kept anxious has much to do with the rapid aging of most of the newspaper men who have come to the islands. Those who keep away from liquor fall a prey to nervous anxiety, which has an effect almost as evil and as quick.

From politics and sedition to religion is an easy step. Church and intrigue are synonymous in the Philippines. After residence in the islands, and some understanding of the native character, I have come to the conclusion that the friars do not entirely deserve their hard lot and evil reputation.

There have just come into my hands certain translations of old Spanish documents and official reports which have aided me in the formation of this opinion. These translations have been made during the last year at the instance of certain officials, if the reports are correct. They have, I believe, the formal acceptance of the authorities. They err in the respect that they are all too keenly severe on the native, or Indio, who plotted against Spain, but they also open many doors previously sealed. They afford brief but vivid glimpses of the heroic lives of many old padres who worked devotedly, faithfully, amid obstacles and dangers that the American mind can have no adequate idea of under any circumstances. There were, of course, and still are, many of the priests who are simply swine, bearing the mark of the beast writ large and clear on puffy face and distended paunch. But they and their narrow lives are overshadowed completely by such men as Padre Mariano Gil, of the Augustinians. He it was who uncovered the dastardly plot of the Katipunan, and who, for this intrepid piece of daring, was placarded. The posters showed his head at the top, with a pistol on one side and a short knife on the other, while a few significant words below gave his name and title. He was parish priest of the Tondo district, a hotbed of insurrection and discontent.

Between those days, of the middle ’90’s, and the present there is a great difference. In some measure this is due to the presence of the Americans, with their prejudice against the religious orders, and in some measure to the keen church war that has been begun by Aglipay. Without considering the merits of the case very much, the average American has decided that the orders must go. Aglipay, after years of thought, has reached the same conclusion. The two forces, though pulling at different angles, have practically assured Rome of defeat. Just what the true significance of Aglipay’s movement is, it is hard to say. Some very well-informed persons believe the movement to be purely a shift in the political game, merely a back-stairs scheme, as it were, fostered officially, for the expulsion of the friars. Others claim Aglipay to be a most genuine and honest religious leader, with no thought of anything save the work of his church and flock. Still another opinion, which seems equally well founded, though not having so much numerical strength, declares that the old insurrection spirit is recrudescent in him ; that he is slowly and surely weaving about us a net, with old leaders, and others who have taken the oath of allegiance to help him secretly in the cities, and men like Faustino Guillermo and other avowed insurgents in the field, to bring the old days once more to pass, and to compel the Americans to give over the islands to the sovereignty of the Filipino.

Silly and fatuous as the latter scheme appears to be, it would yet find ready and fanatic adherents by the thousand. Let the Filipino get a really compelling leader, and the issue will be forced upon us. If it comes, –and there seems a very good chance that it may, –it will be impossible to hold in the men ; they will carry into deadly effect the provisions of Lincoln’s General Order 100, with or without the consent of their officers. And any Filipino troops that have the temerity to attack ours will be wiped out of existence in smoke and blood. There will be no nonsense about it next time. This is the opinion of the army.

Aglipay has not had entirely plain sailing. He made the defections from the Roman Church so serious that Mgr. Guidi came to the islands to look after the interests of the Gran Papa. He stopped the desertions in numbers, but he was unable to get back into the fold those who had deserted it for Aglipay’s rather homoeopathic Catholicism. Meantime the latter had been strengthening his fences all along the line, and has succeeded in keeping his main body intact. It is hard to believe that he could have any grave political import or influence, not being a big or broad enough man. His doctrines are less for ritual and more for spontaneity than those of Rome. In several important respects his teachings split squarely off from those of his preceptors, and the Filipinos who found the stern discipline and forms of the Romish Church irksome were his readiest apostles and converts. He is still proselyting steadily, but the movement by which he and his church sprang into prominence came suddenly about the first of the year as a result of the sub rosa proceedings of the preceding six months.

v.

In conclusion, a summary of the year shows nothing particularly startling or unusual among the natives. They are always in ebullition ; plots without number are being made every day to dispose of the Americans, and fail as fast as made. Holy Week was to have seen the slaughter of many ; it saw a few ladrones killed and more captured. Just about that time Governor Taft issued an order that every one having firearms must register them, and get a bond of two hundred dollars in gold for permission to have them. A considerable opposition to this was felt, but most people obeyed it.

The financial situation shows no improvement. Mexican silver is going up, but quotations are based on open markets, and what effect the gold peso will have when it and the Mexican peso are in the market together no one is prepared to say. Most of the best business men, however, hold Congress and the customs service responsible for the greater part of the depression, and say that until free trade with the United States is given them, things will be growing worse instead of better. The anomalous position of the islands is what does the mischief. The Constitution did not follow the flag in the Philippines in any respect, and until business men know what to expect, when, and from whom, trade will be dull and prospects slight, as at present. Retrenchment is the order of the day with the business houses of any value.

Nevertheless, improvements to the city during the year have been marked. Houses are going up on all sides, part of the wall is coming down, work has been begun on the new electric street railway, the most important innovation Manila has ever seen, and rents are still at highwater mark. Houses that could not be rented at all at home are considered in Manila thoroughly sanitary and clean, but the Health Department has been doing a great work, and though we still have considerable cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, beriberi, and other diseases originating in filth, the city is now kept very clean for a tropical seaport with an unsavory reputation. The harbor works are also coming along well, and the submarine work on them is about three quarters done. When the trolley is running there will be notable changes in the present problem of transportation, which makes it imperative for every man to own at least one horse. Bishop Brent has established within the year a settlement house and free dispensary, hospital, and school in Trozo, a section of Extramuros, Manila, which has already done a great deal of very important work among the poor. The young women of the settlement are trained nurses and teachers, and the value of their work is testified to by the crowds they handle every day, and the distress they relieve. What with teaching, healing, helping overburdened mothers, –Filipino families number anywhere from two to twenty, –and doing the little things that are so needed and usually so little thought of, these young women and their leader are doing a noble and great work.

Judicial affairs have altered but little during the year. Some of the magistrates have sickened of work and climate and have gone home ; their places have been filled, and the grind goes on. The Commission has created some amusing positions during the year, one being for a deputy chief of non-Christian tribes. This man was sent down to Moroland to study the language and customs. Those who understand, envy the gentleman his chance to pick up bolos and collect specimens of Moro cloths.

At the moment, the raising of the old cruiser Reina Cristina occupies the public mind to a great extent. The government had abandoned her, and the work was done by a corporation, which has her on view now. She was found not to have been sunk by Dewey at all, but was scuttled by the Spaniards, who opened the sea-cocks and injector-valves themselves, sinking her. Her engines and hull are in good condition, as the rapid growth of barnacles and other forms of life in these waters have preserved them remarkably. The old wreck will be sold, doubtless, as junk, or for use as a coaster. Her guns and other valuable accoutrements were long ago taken by the government divers.

Arthur Stanley Riggs.