Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1902 — SAVAGES IN SAMAR [ARTICLE]

SAVAGES IN SAMAR

The Sort of an Enemy Our Soldiers Have Had to Fight On That Island. INDIANA CAPTAIN WITH WALLER Cains Recognition for a Feat of Unusual Daring—An Unbiased Correspondent Clears Up Misunderstandings With Reference to the Conditions Our Army Has Been Compelled to Meet. In all. nearly 2,800 Indiana boys tave helped £ght the battles of civil! ration against savagery in the Philippines under a flag that has never been uniurled over a soldier enlisted in the cause of oppression. A thousand young Indlanians, probably, are there today in the uniform of soldier, sailor or marine. They are young, new, fresh from the farms and factories of our own state, the sons of our neighbors. They were not butchers or brutes when they went away—they are not brutes or butchers now. That some of them, in an excess of resentful feel ing might demand “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” on occasion, is probable. That there have been individual instances of wrong-doing on the part of some of our soldiers is without doubt true. But the effort to besmirch the good name of the whole American army to make the American people believe that the American soldier has been engaged in a campaign of slaughter for the mere sake of slaughtering is to assault the intelligence and to impugn the patriotism of the people of Indiana, representative of whom are the thousand Hoosier boys who have been fighting the battles of their country and our country in the Philippines. It was an Indiana regular who was first to scale the walls of Pekin and hang out the starry banner above that ancient city. An Indiana boy who struggled for a chance to enlist in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and later begged without avail for an opportunity to enlist with a volunteer company at Camp Mount when Indiana’s complement for the Spanish-American war was being filled, was close to Major Waller at the head of a company of marines when the march across Samar was made. Captain Hiram I. Bearss of Miami county has been recommended for promotion because of his valor in scaling a cliff 200 feet high in the face of a shower of stones hurled by a* savage enemy entrenched on the heights. Because he struck at every foe who raised a gun or a bolo in an attack on American marines he is, in the language of Senators Carmack and Tillman, a “butcher.”

The “Butchery” in Samar. Stephan Bonsall, a newspaper correspondent of the highest reputation, who because of his personal alignment with the anti-expansionists, may be considered a disinterested witness, contributes to a recent issue of Collier’s Weekly a most interesting article on “The ‘Eutchery’ in Samar,” in which he points out the fact that the “butchery” is no butchery at all, but practical warfare of a sort forced upon oui soldiers by the character of the enemy with which they cope. He calls attention to the magnificent record of Major Waller as a marine officer who had distinguished himself for gallantry and good judgment in Egypt and China. General Smith, he goes on to say, entered the service of his country as an Illinois volunteer during the civil war. On San Juan hill, leading a battalion of the Second infantry, he was shot through the chest, but fought his men to the close of the battle because, he explained, he had 150 recruits in his‘command and he was determined to make veterans of them! “General Order 100.” Mr. Bonsai says: “‘General Order 100,’ was the answer when I asked General Smith how he had succeeded. ‘And I enforced it to the letter. Of course I understand why the insurgents hate me. It is because I have knocked them out. If that order had been uniformly enforced throughout Luzon there would not even be the ghost of a rebellion today. Inhuman? I think not. If it w r as not too severjs for our own people at home during the civil war it is not too severe for these Malays.’ “These lines are not written in defense of what has happened, but in explanation. Major Waller’s point was well taken, and every conscientious, truth-telling officer will bear out his statement that the fighting in southern Samar after the Balangigan massacre was not what goes by the name of civilized warfare. It was simply the slaughter and extertnination whenever the opportunity presented of those on both sides who were capable of bearin arms, and I venture to say that similar conditions have produced like results everywhere, even upon the humane and self-restrained American soldier, whose behavior during the China campaign was our pride and the admiration of all foreigners.’ Mr. Bonsall cites the revenge taken after the slaughter of Americans in the Alamo as an instance in point. Assassins, Not Heroes. The Malays who belonged to the band of Juan Calernos and played the part of amigos while preparing to strike our soldiers from the rear, are not comparable to the heroes of our

Revolution, who did their lighting with their faces to the foe. For treachery the Calernos desperadoes were liable to death under military law, and when to this was added the merciless slaughter of 50 Unarmed men and the indescribable mutilation of their bodies, the Samarites placed themselves beyond the pale. Major Waller is charged with treating the people of Samar as enemies before awaiting hostile acts. Mr. Bonsall shows that the country through which Major Waller marched *had for months been posted with notices that all those who failed to concentrate at given points within 15 days would be treated as insurgents.

The second charge against Major Waller is the execution of native carriers who, after enlisting with him under the guise of friendship, served as spies, stole the provisions and ammunition they had agreed to carry and delivered these supplies to the enemy, and when the marines were starving refused to share with them or point out to them the edible roots to be found in the country through which they were marching. Whereupon Major Waller ordered them shot.

The Situation at Basay. Those who say they cannot understand why Waller ordered these executions at Basay, when the journey’s end had been reached, fail to understand the situation, says Mr. Bonsall. There was more danger at Basay than in the wilderness. It was in the similar town of Balangiga, 20 miles away, that the butchery cf the men of the Ninth infantry took place. When Mr. Bonsall arrived at Basay he found a crowd of savages, on the beach eating a slimy, uncooked fish, fresh from the sea. In the swamps round about could be heard the conch shells of the hordes of Juan Colernos, rejoicing over the slaughter of Americans at Balagiga, and with these insurgents the people of the town were in daily communication. Night after night attacks were made and repulsed by a remnant of a company of the Ninth. “And all the time,” writes Mr. Bonsall, “we had before us the horrible picture, like some blood-drenched canvas of Goya, of the 20 survivors of Balangiga: one with an arm lopped off, another with a leg; there a man with his eyes gouged out, and one with 20 ghastly cuts across his body. In none of the fights of which I have knowledge did the Samarites ask for quarter—they do not understand fighting in that way —but had they done so I do not believe it would have been granted by any man who saw the living and the dead witnesses to their fiendish savagery. These are the things which the marines saw when they landed at Basay, and it must be borne in mind that there were the closest ties of friendship between the murdered men of the Ninth and Waller’s marines. They had stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle of Tien-Tsin and walked side by side on the march to Pekin. Again the critics are at fault —through ignorance of the facts, not wrongheadedness, perhaps—as to the motive which actuated Waller in punishing the traitors in his ranks as summarily as possible.”

Not an Act of Revenge. It was certainly not an act of revenge, Mr. Bonsall points out. Waller realized that it required only unity of action between the insurgents inside and those outside to insure the slaughter of the garrison at Basay. At any moment his prisoners might have brought to a successful termination their career of treason, and Waller determined to go to the limit of his authority under martial law and put them where they could do no harm.

Right to Punish Unquestioned. “There seems to be no doubt as to the guilt of the men. Thib plea was not raised in the course of the courtmartial. The charge seemed to be that Waller had no right to execute the men so summarily, even if they were guilty. And what becomes of the thousand and One drumhead courts-martial, followed by summary execution for treason and espionage, which the annals of the Rebellion reveal —and that, it will be remembered, was the most civilized war ever waged?

“One more incident of the many that came under my observation and reconciled me to the character of the war we are waging in Samar. A little midshipman just out from Annapolis was patroling the strait in a yawl from the flagship New York. He was after the smugglers who bring arms to the Insurgents from Leyte. The grear gale had blown the yawl out into the Pacific, and when it subsided little Noah and his six men were exhausted. Their water had given out and they tried to make Basay, Admiral Rodgers having ordered them not to land except at an armed post. The wind died away while Basay was still two miles off. Two of his men were delirious with thirst, and there was the little village of Nipa Nipa only a few hundred yards away 1 flying the white flag of peace and friendship. Noah, as he floated near the shore, lifted up his empty water-jar and the kindly people on the beach understood. They lifted up water-jars overflowing with the precious fluid and pointed at the white flag to reassure him. He pushed his boat into the surf, and telling his men to wait in the boat, advanced some 50 yards up the beach where the good Samaritans were awaiting him with their water-jars. As he drank his first deep draught two of the natives—one a woman—crept behind him and buried their knives in his back.” And these are the people against whom, it is declared, our troops should wage war according to Roberts Rules of Order and the Handy Compendium of Etiquette!