CHAPTER XVI.

A War to Enslave America.

1. Press - Censorship on a Jag.

I have already brought much proof that there is a motive back of the assigned motive of the ratty administration for this hell-found war. This cowardly reticence grows from administration knowledge that the motive is inimical to the people, who, if they knew it would call the White House tough from his place and crush his expansion babble. The fact of a concealed motive is ground enough for calling time on this instrument of abomination and ordering him to quit.

Now there is not only supposition but overwhelming fact to show that the president is pushing Philippine conquest and imperialism for some other cause than the polymorphous ones made public, and that he is not listening to the will of the people but strenuously seeking to wrench and mould it to a pre-established discord of his own. Why, on any other explanation, does he shudder to have the Philippine conditions published to the people? Answer this. If you cannot, it is binding proof that majesty has a private policy known by him to be adverse to the enlightened will of his countrymen. He dares not promulgate it for fear of the country's scorn and rejection. Hence he hides truth and drags the people on to inextricable entanglement in his plan, so that when they discover the truth they will think they cannot back out. No other interpretation can tally with his suppression.

The whole matter then turns on this: Is it fully established that he is suppressing facts? The proof of this is absolute. It is also certain that this suppression amounts to complete distortion, which has been constant and designed. Thus far we have referred only indirectly to the 'round robin' protest of the war correspondents in Manila against the censorship of their reports. Let us now examine its contents. It is signed by eleven correspondents.

"We believe that from official dispatches made public in Washington, the people of the United States have not received a correct impression of the situation in the Philippines, but that these dispatches have presented an ultra-optimistic view that is not shared by the general officers in the field. We believe that the dispatches incorrectly represent the existing conditions among the Philippines in respect to dissension and demoralization resulting from the American campaign and to the brigand character of their army.

"We believe the dispatches err in the declaration 'that the situation is well in hand,' and the assumption that the insurrection can be speedily ended without a greatly-increased force. We think the tenacity of the Filipino purpose has been underestimated, and that the statements are unfounded that volunteers are willing to engage in further service.

"The censorship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of facts on the plea, as Gen. Otis stated, that they would alarm the people at home,' or 'have the people of the United States by the ears.'

"Specifications: Prohibition of hospital reports; suppression of full reports of field operations in the event of failure; numbers of heat prostrations in the field; systematic minimization of naval operations, and suppression of complete reports of the situation.”

The facts heretofore cited to show the president's suppression and falsification of news and establish his duplicity, were invincible, but this crowns them. Why all these presidential lies without a purpose? Merely the good of the people? Whose business is it to know the good of the people: the president's or king's, or the people's themselves? Is it that the war may go on despite the people? This is infamy and treason, a rabid usurpation of power never vested in any president and never to be there vested. We are getting at the heart of the matter. The president has resolved that the people

shall not settle this question of Philippine war, but that he will settle it himself, and he organizes a detailed, elaborate and prolonged system of lying to morphine the national mind while he steers the affairs of state to his goal. We have still further testimony of this, in a private letter to London from one of these war correspondents, sent June 17, and later published through England

in this country:

There seems to be no end of the war in sight. The censorship is constantly becoming more troublesome. Gen. Otis recently established a rule that anything relating to the navy must be taken to the commander of the fleet for his approval and afterward submitted to the military censor, thus adding to our difficulties. . . . It is impossible to write the truth about the situation. The resources and fighting qualities of the natives are quite misunderstood by the American papers, and we cannot write the facts without being accused of treason; nor can we tell of the practically unanimous opposition to and dislike of the war, among the American troops. The volunteers, or at least a portion of them, were at one time on the verge of mutiny, and unless Gen. Otis had begun sending them homeward there would have been sensational developments. We have been absolutely refused all hospital figures.

So hateful then was this McKinley murder booze to the soldiers who fully knew the case that a part of them were on the verge of mutiny, and we only hear of it long after and far around. Is America longer a democratic country? Has not a president prosecuting a struggle so repulsive as this to the grim end some ulterior reason other than his countrymen's good? Is not this discovery of presidential perfidy cause enough for striking down this administration plague?

The only official notice taken of the correspondents' protest was indirect, in statements from members of the Cabinet and the major-domo Corbin, and they all amounted to this: Otis is a man of excellent judgment, full of military experience, he is on the ground, ‘he is, therefore, more competent to judge of the conditions than anybody in this country, or, for that matter, than any newspaper men who are on the ground.' That is, in plain terms, the president's puppet is to be placed against

the entire human field, against all the volunteers who were on the point of mutiny because of his currish policy, against the dissenting officers like Captain McQuesten, against the newspaper correspondents, against the common sense and judgment of all the people in the United States if necessary. Well, McKinley, this is going it rather strong, even for your Oriental Highness. You may meet with a trip if you keep on sky-climbing.

As to that humdrum shibboleth, the surpassing judgment of the generals, have we not shown that they are the last people to look for good judgment in? Did not that entire military constellation, Dewey, say, 5000 men are enough for the Philippines "in my best judgment"? Mighty poor best judgment, but just like the rest of the military infallibles, yet McKinley takes up red-tape Otis and sets his judgment against all mankind. look for the world if this thing goes on.

Sorry out

2. "Political and Diplomatic Considerations."

I have reserved a choice piece of evidence for the last in order to supply what few inordinate sceptics there may be, with a cud to chew. Gen. T. M. Anderson, one of the division commanders in the Philippines under Otis, made a public statement very astonishing in character, and then publicly corrected it with one far more astonishing. Both statement and correction follow as given to the Associated Press at Cincinnati on the 21st of July:

General T. M. Anderson, commanding the Department of the Lakes, who was quoted yesterday as saying if he had not been held back he would have finished the Filipino war with his own division, stated that he had been misquoted. Gen. Anderson made the following statement:

"I said my division or Lawton's could have defeated the organized forces, but no one could tell how long predatory warfare would last. I said that a division commander, whose business it was to fight, did not take the same view as a governor-general, restrained by political and diplomatic considerations. The term politics was not used in a party sense.'

I ask the American people what this means? Here is one of the highest commanders that fought under Otis, one who was in the field seeing all that went on while Otis sat in his tent or mansion sopping up bulletins for America, who says outright that his division alone, or Lawton's alone, could have smashed all organized opposition in the Philippines, if they had been allowed to do it. Then they were not allowed. And why not? Because Otis did not want it done. And why was that? Because Otis as Governor-General had diplomatic and political grounds for dragging the war out.

Here is unimpeachable substantiation of that which we set out to confirm-that this war is a god-send to the president, that he has not wanted to end it but has intentionally trailed it on, in order to engender militarism in the United States. He has wanted not to seem able to crush the organized opposition for some shrewd reason in his vasty mind. And that reason is now obvious, even to ordinary soul. First, if the war had been ended at once what ground would have remained for the new building of the army now going jubilantly on? How would the green military spirit of the country have been ripened? No, at all hazards the war needed to be nursed like the sick heir to a crown if there was any danger of its dying. Our fresh and 'rosy-gilled' diplomacy demanded that. But we have brought invincible evidence that when the 'organized opposition' of the Filipinos is broken it will not end the war at all. Organized warfare is our element, unorganized warfare is theirs, and as soon as we dissipate their battalions they will emerge in their native strength to fight us forever with the consummate jungle science of unconquerable Apaches.

This would put a new and exceedingly ugly visage on the war in the eyes of all Americans. It would reveal this looting picnic in its own colors, showing the natives