And we were to go on pretending that the war was not there, and that we had answered the unsettled question, when we really had simply turned our heads aside and refused to look. And then when the troublesome matter had been so nicely laid to sleep, the result followed which is usual when Congressmen and Presidents and nations are trying to make shams pass for realities." [362]
By the same high token the Philippine question will always remain "the unsettled question" until it is settled right. In other words, the American occupation of the Philippines, having been originally predicated on the idea that the Filipino people did not really want independence, a fiction which political expediency incident to government by parties inexorably compelled it to try to live up to thereafter, took the form, in 1901, of a civil government founded upon a benevolent lie, which expressed a hope, not a fact, a hopeless hope that can never be a fact. And that is what has been the matter with it ever since.
The papers 'id it 'andsome, But you bet the army knows.
For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying--Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Jeremiah viii., 11.
On February 22, 1898, the American Consul at Manila, Mr. Williams, after he had been at that post for about a month, wrote the State Department, describing the Spanish methods of keeping from the world the outward and visible manifestations of the desire of the Filipino people to be free from their yoke thus:
Peace was proclaimed and, since my coming, festivities therefor were held; but there is no peace, and has been none for two years.
Conditions here and in Cuba are practically alike. War exists, battles are of almost daily occurrence, etc. [363]
As will hereinafter appear, this is not far from a correct description of the conditions which prevailed successively in various provinces of the Philippines in gradually lessening degree for the six years next ensuing after the report of the Taft Commission of November 30, 1900, wherein they said:
A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States. [364]