The kind of independent “government” these men established is the kind that they would again establish if they had the chance, [349] but among the persons to be tortured and murdered would now be those Americans who failed to escape seasonably.  I do not mean to say that such a state of affairs would come about immediately, but it would certainly arise within a comparatively short time.  Sooner yet “the united Filipino people” would split up on old tribal lines, and fly at each other’s throats.

CHAPTER VIII

Did We Destroy a Republic?

The claim has frequently been made that the United States government destroyed a republic in the Philippine Islands, [350] but some of the critics seem to entertain peculiar ideas as to what a republic is.  Blount states [351] that Aguinaldo declined to hear our declaration of independence read “because we would not recognize his right to assert the same truths,” and then apparently forgetting the Insurgent chief’s alleged adherence to the principles of this dacument, he lets the cat out of the bag by saying that “the war satisfied us all that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition of Porfirio Diaz,” and would himself have been “The Republic.” [352]

He would doubtless have set up just this sort of a government, if not assassinated too soon, but it would hardly have accorded with the principles of the declaration of independence, nor would it have been exactly “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Blount truly says [353] that the educated Filipinos, admittedly very few in number, absolutely control the masses.  He adds [354] that presidentes of pueblos are as absolute bosses as is Murphy in Tammany Hall, and that the towns taken collectively constitute the provinces.  The first statement is true, and the second, which is tantamount to a declaration that the presidentes control every square foot of the provinces and every man in them, is not so far from the truth as it might be.  I have been old-fashioned enough to retain the idea that a republic is “a state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them.”

Blount labored under no delusion as to the fitness of the common people to govern. [355]

Not only did the Filipinos themselves understand perfectly well that they had no republic, but there were many of them who were fully aware of the fact that they could establish none.  Fernando Acevedo, in writing to General Pio del Pilar on August 8, 1898, said:  [356]—­

“There could be no republic here, even though the Americans should consent, because, according to the treaties, the Filipinos are not in condition for a republic.  Besides this, all Europe will oppose it, and if it should be that they divide our country as though it were a round cake, what would become of us and what would belong to us?”