Each province is divided by the senior inspector into sections, and the responsibility for patrol work and general policing rests on the senior company officer in each station.  The provinces are grouped into five districts, each commanded by an assistant chief who exercises therein the authority, and performs the duties appropriate to the chief for the entire Philippines.  The higher administrative positions have always been filled by detailing regular officers of the United States army.

The constabulary soldiers are now neatly uniformed, armed with Krag carbines and well disciplined.  They show the effect of good and regular food and of systematic exercise, their physical condition being vastly superior to that of the average Filipino.  They are given regular instruction in their military duties.  It is conducted in English.

The Philippine constabulary may be defined as a body of armed men with a military organization, recruited from among the people of the islands, officered in part by Americans and in part by Filipinos, and employed primarily for police duty in connection with the establishment and maintenance of public order.

Blount’s chapters on the administrations of Taft, Wright and Smith embody one prolonged plaint to the effect that the organization of the constabulary was premature, and that after the war proper ended, the last smouldering embers of armed and organized insurrection should have been stamped out, and the brigandage which had existed in the Philippines for centuries should have been dealt with, by the United States army rather than by the constabulary.

Even if it were true that the army could have rendered more effective service to this end than could have been expected at the outset from a newly organized body of Filipino soldiers, the argument against the organization and use of the constabulary would in my opinion have been by no means conclusive.  It is our declared policy to prepare the Filipinos to establish and maintain a stable government of their own.  The proper exercise of police powers is obviously necessary to such an end.

From the outset we have sacrificed efficiency in order that our wards might gain practical experience, and might demonstrate their ability, or lack of ability, to perform necessary governmental functions.  Does any one cognizant of the situation doubt for a moment that provincial and municipal affairs in the Philippine Islands would to-day be more efficiently administered if provincial and municipal officers were appointed instead of being elected?  Is any one so foolish as to imagine that the sanitary regeneration of the islands would not have progressed much more rapidly had highly trained American health officers been used in place of many of the badly educated and comparatively inexperienced Filipino physicians whose services have been utilized?

Nevertheless, in the concrete case under discussion I dissent from the claim that more satisfactory results could have been obtained by the use of American troops.