“Malvar surrendered on April 16, 1902.  Most of the people had turned against their once highly respected chief, and toward the end several thousand natives of Batangas joined the Americans in their determined hunt for the fugitive leader.  Realization of the fact that the people were against him materially aided in forcing his surrender.

“General Bell had captured or forced to surrender some 8000 to 10,000 persons actively engaged, in one capacity or another, in the insurrection.  These prisoners were rapidly released when they had taken the oath of allegiance.  By the first week of July no political prisoners were held in this region.  They had returned to their homes.

“The policy of concentrating the people in protected zones and destroying the food which was used for the maintenance of guerrilla bands was not new.  There had been precedents even in the United States.  One of these is the order issued on August 25, 1863, by Brigadier-General Ewing, commanding the district of the border, with headquarters at Kansas City, Mo., in which he ordered the inhabitants of a large part of three counties of that State to remove from their residences within fifteen days to the protection of the military stations which he had established.  All grain and hay in that district was ordered to be taken to those military stations.  If it was not convenient to so dispose of it, it would be burned (Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol.  XXII, Part II, p. 473).  The American commanders in the Philippines had adopted no new method of procedure in dealing with war traitors; they had, however, effectively employed an old one.

“The insurrection had originated among the Tagalogs and had spread like a conflagration from the territory occupied by them.  The fire had been quenched everywhere else.  General Bell had now stamped out the embers in the Tagalog provinces.

“On July 2 the Secretary of War telegraphed that the insurrection against the sovereign authority of the United States in the Philippines having come to an end, and provincial civil governments having been established throughout the entire territory of the archipelago not inhabited by Moro tribes, the office of military governor in the archipelago was terminated.  On July 4, 1902, the President of the United States issued a proclamation of amnesty proclaiming, with certain reservations, a full and complete pardon and amnesty to all persons in the Philippine Archipelago who had participated in the insurrection.”

General Bell’s motives and methods in reconcentrating the inhabitants of this troubled region have been grossly misrepresented, and he himself has been sadly maligned.  He is the most humane of men, and the plan which he adopted resulted in the reestablishment of law and order at a minimum cost of human suffering.

Many of the occupants of his reconcentration camps received there their first lessons in hygienic living.  Many of them were reluctant to leave the camps and return to their homes when normal conditions again prevailed.