REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES PHILIPPINE COMMISSION. The SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D. C. SIR: We hereby submit our second report on affairs in the Philippine Islands. Our last report was dated November 30, 1900. During December, 1900, and January and February, 1901, there was great military activity in all parts of the islands. In December General MacArthur issued a proclamation warning all who were aiding and abetting the insurrection by furnishing funds and other assistance that they would be severely dealt with. Many persons suspected of complicity in offenses of this description were imprisoned, and it ceased to be regarded as an innocent amusement to enjoy life within American garrisons and assist the guerrillas in the woods and mountains. In November the Federal party had been organized. An account of the feeling of the Filipino people, which made the Federal party possible, will be found in an appended report of Dr. Pardo de Tavera, some time its president, and Señores Benito Legarda and Jose Luzuriaga, members of the party, all of whom are now members of the commission (Appendix A). It was organized to secure peace for this country under the sovereignty of the United States. The party spread like wildfire through the archipelago, and there are now few towns in any of the provinces which have not their Federal committees. Its members were most active and effective in inducing insurgent leaders to surrender. In January the commission adopted the municipal code and the provincial law, and in February began the task of organizing those provinces which were deemed prepared for civil government. This work continued through February, March, April, and May, and indeed was not completed in the north until August. The collapse of the insurrection came in May, after many important surrenders and captures, including that of Aguinaldo. Cailles, in Laguna, surrendered in June, and Belarmino, in Albay, on July 4. There are four important provinces in which the insurrection still continues, Batangas, Samar, Cebu, and Bohol. Parts of Laguna and Tayabas adjoining Batangas in the mountain region are affected by the disturbances in Batangas. In Mindoro also, a thinly settled and almost unexplored island, there are insurrectos. Our troops did not occupy it until August of this year, but they now have driven in to the unhealthy and trackless forests of the interior the 200 insurrectos who had made the island a refuge, and have captured their leader, a white, man named Howard. Malvar, in Batangas, though chased from one hiding place to another, has thus far eluded capture. In Samar, General Hughes has conducted a most difficult campaign against Lukban. The island is mountainous and rough, without roads, and General Hughes has been obliged to build trails to establish necessary communications. He has driven the insurgent leader out of his fastnesses and scattered his forces. The result has been seen in a return of the people to all the towns along the coast, now that the towns are garrisoned and the enemy of the interior has been made less powerful for harm. A great disaster, however, has recently occurred in the last days of September in one of the far southern towns of the island called Balangiga. Company C, of the Ninth Infantry, 66 men and 3 officers, were surprised at breakfast and cut off from their guns by several hundred bolomen who had come into town as unarmed natives under pretense of attending a church fiesta. Forty-five men and officers were killed after a desperate resistance. Twenty-four only were able to escape. Outside of the five provinces named there is peace in the remainder of the archipelago. This remainder includes 30 organized provinces and all the districts of Mindanao, the Jolo Archipelago, Paragua, Lepanto, Bontoc and Nueva Vizcaya, Principe and Infanta. All insurrectos have surrendered, and in most of the provinces, except among the Lake Moros, it is entirely safe during the day for travelers unattended to go from one town to another. In other provinces recent war conditions and suffering and hardship from cattle pest and locusts have developed ladronism. The people are friendly to the civil government and manifest no desire whatever for a continuance of the war, but only a desire for peace and protection. The recent terrible massacre in Samar has been made the occasion for uneasiness on the part of some, as indicating a treacherous hostility on the part of all the Filipino people against Americans and the army. The truth is that nothing could be more unfair than to attribute to the Filipino people at large the motives of those who carried out the well-laid plot at Balangiga. That was in a remote and always turbulent island, still devastated by war, and was devised by persons with all the war passions who have experienced none of the benefits of either peace or civil government. Surely a sense of proportion is wanting in those who would allow an incident of this kind, deplorable as it is, to overcome the evidence which accumulates on every hand of the desire of the people at large for peace and protection by the civil government. Had the peo |