Now for the facts. We have the reports of two naval officers and of two members of the signal corps who travelled extensively behind Aguinaldo's lines through the country controlled by his government. And what did they find? Quiet and orderly rural or municipal communities, in all appearance well organized and governed, full of enthusiasm for their liberty and independence, which they thought secured by the expulsion of the Spaniards, and for their leader Aguinaldo, and at the time—it was before President McKinley had ordered the subjugation of the islands—also for the Americans, whom, with childlike confidence, they still believed friendly to their freedom from all foreign rule. We may be sure that if any anarchical disturbances had happened among them, our imperialists would have eagerly made report. But there has been nothing at all equivalent to such things of our own as the famous “battle of Virden” in Illinois, or the race troubles in our own States, or the numerous lynchings we have witnessed with shame and alarm in various parts of our Republic. The only rumors of so-called “anarchy” have come through a British consul on the island of Borneo, who writes that bloody broils are occurring in some of the southernmost regions of the Philippine archipelago, and that the Americans are wanted there. But the Americans are engaged in killing orderly Filipinos—Filipino soldiers of just that Filipino government which, on its part, would probably soon restore order in the troubled places, if it had not to defend itself against the “criminal aggression” of the Americans.
The imperialists wish us to believe that in the Philippines there is bloody disorder wherever our troops are not. In fact, after the Filipinos had expelled the Spaniards from the interior of their country, bloody disorders began there only when our troops appeared. Here is an example. In December last the city of Iloilo, the
