"For the purpose of better maintaining peace, law
and order in the various provinces of
the Philippines...."
--Constabulary Manual

THE native resistance to American authority in the Philippines may be readily grouped into three overlapping phases. The first of these was the Philippine Insurrection, so-called, conducted by an official Filipino army which took the field in company, battalion, and regimental formation. The second phase was the period of guerrilla warfare that marked the breaking of the insurgents into disorganized bands of brigands and outlaws. The third and final phase, must, of necessity, be divided into two sections, the first of which was the long series of homicidal operations conducted by the "Popes," "Sons of Jesus," and "Messiahs," who organized the outlaw bands into formidable, well-armed plunderers. The second section was the lengthy campaign in Mindanao and Sulu, where the Moros fortified their cottas against American penetration.

These three phases of conflict shaded into one another, and quite often simultaneous operations were in progress against Moros, insurgents, bandits, and the "Popes."

The Philippine Insurrection burst into flame on the night of February 4, 1899, when Private Grayson of the Nebraska Volunteers fired the first shot of the Filipino-American War.

His statement:

"I yelled halt. . . the man moved. I challenged him with another halt. Then he shouted 'Halto' to me. Well, I thought the best thing to do was to shoot him. He dropped. Then two Filipinos sprang from a gateway about fifteen feet from us. Miller fired and dropped one. I saw another one was left. Well, I think I got my second Filipino that time. We retreated to where six other fellows were. I said, 'Line up, fellows, the "niggers" are all through these yards.' It was some minutes after our second shots before the Filipinos began firing."

The war was on. Started by an irresponsible young sentry, it lengthened into a ghastly hemorrhage of jungle patrol duty that was to last for more than two years.

It was during this two-year period of active warfare that the regular army of the United States reached its point of highest efficiency. The operations were on a larger scale, against massed troops, and the army accomplished, the killing of many thousands of Filipinos with the loss of comparatively few men. The official records of the War Department show a loss of men killed in action during the period from February 4, 1899, to July 4, 1901, of but 752. This was in the period immediately preceding the formation of the Philippine Constabulary. At this time, the army was at its point of high strength in the Philippines, with a force of 71,528 men under arms. It becomes apparent, then, that our regulars, against an official Filipino army, had been a most efficient body of warriors. The loss of 752 men is very small.

This figure is significant, and will be referred to hereafter in evaluating the part played by the Philippine Constabulary.

The insurrection ended officially in November, 1899. Unofficially and actually, the sputter of insurrection persisted until the middle of the year 1902, at which time it was replaced with a definite era of banditry. But in November, 1899, the American administration believed the pacification to be complete. General Otis stated his convictions in print in emphatic manner. "The country has been pacified," he wrote. "There will be no more real fighting in the Philippines."

But General Otis was looking, not at conditions as they existed, but at the uncertain temper of the American people, who were not sympathetic to the colonial aims of President McKinley. And McKinley had expressed those aims quite definitely. There was no question but that we were headed for the confiscation of the Philippines.

The carefully prepared, misleading statements of General Otis were issued from behind the screen of a severe military censorship that he had set up in Manila. Nor could Otis be blamed for this. He was an army man, and the army acts under the orders of its commanding chief. American correspondents on the spot were unable to break through this wall of censorship to convey to the people of the United States knowledge of the formidable conditions of unrest that actually prevailed in the Philippine Islands.

But newspaper men will find a way and these correspondents were no exception. Otis stands on his orders, which are to refuse transmittal to all messages "that will be prejudicial to the forthcoming election of McKinley." The correspondents mail their statement secretly to Hong Kong, and from there it is dispatched by cable to the United States, to be published in the Review of Reviews.

When General MacArthur succeeded General Otis, he was keenly aware of the dangers of this fragmentary insurrectionist army that was breaking up into guerrilla bands. His writings also indicate that he considered the condition not brigandage, but a continuation of the insurgent resistance. "The disbandment of the Filipino army," he writes, "was not considered in the nature of a calamity by the natives but simply as a transition from one form of action to another; a change which was regarded by many as a positive advantage and was relied upon to accomplish more effectively the end in view."

General Chaffee, who replaced MacArthur, stated that in June, 1901, it was "unsafe to go three miles from Cebu, where two companies of regular infantry were stationed."

So, when the American government offered amnesty to outstanding insurgents in 1900, the offer was very generally ignored, and our government awoke to the unpleasant fact that the insurrection was not yet finished. Filipino secret societies were springing into being--some frankly military, others semi-religious, all intensely anti-Americanista. Many of the old insurrecto units were still in the field, armed, uniformed, and desperately ready to resist American confiscation. Allied with these were the guerrilla bands who used patriotism as a cloak to justify their lawless acts of pure banditry.

The northern islands of the Philippine group were in a state of ruin, with anthrax destroying the work animals and cholera sweeping the population. It was a time of bitter aftermath of war. The coconut estates were in disrepair, with buildings fallen and rotting away. The noncombatant population was caught in a vise between the terrors of starvation and the marauding bands of guerrillas who had shown no inclination to resume again the arts of peace and agriculture.

Meanwhile, a glance into the bush in 1901 revealed ominous conditions. Isio was there, for one; a wrinkled little Filipino with a delusion of grandeur and a vast following of rabid and frenzied bigots. From his mountain-top citadel he was mentally surveying his Kingdom of Negros; fingering his tinsel crown. . . . Pedro de la Cruz was building up his banditti, who were to lay a trail of red across the archipelago; Rios, the "Pope of Tayabas," was commissioning his "Major-Generals"; Simeon Ola was carrying torch and terror across the vast hemp estates of Albay; Guillermo was unknowingly threading his bloody way to the gallows.

The island of Samar, in 1901, was in process of spawning the most formidable organization of religious desperados that American arms were ever to oppose. Elsewhere in the middle islands, the native secret societies were gathering adherents and flaming with fanaticism.

To the south, in the Moro country, the prestige of America was unfelt. To the natives of Mindanao and Sulu, the United States was not even a name. To the Moros, we were but new white cannon fodder to replace the battered Spaniards. In the mosques, the grave Imams were gathering the corded krismen about them, exhorting in the name of Allah. Their voices were droning as they chanted a battle refrain that was old when America was unborn:

"O ye who believe, when ye meet the marshalled hosts of the infidels, turn not your backs to them;
Who so shall turn his back to them on that day, unless he turn aside to fight, or to rally some other troop, shall incur wrath from God; Hell shall be his reward and abode and wretched the journey thither."

A battle front was flaming across sixteen degrees of latitude. . . .

But it was at home in the United States that the military authorities were confronted with the greatest problem of all. The people of the United States were singularly apathetic to the colonial aspirations of the administration. And sometimes not so apathetic, as the wave of indignant protests were making it appear. The treaty with Spain had been ratified with but a single vote to break the deadlock, and that vote cast by the Vice President at the direction of the President. A crucial Presidential election was safely passed.

Then, with more than 70,000 soldiers under arms in the Philippines, the administration undertook to convince the public that the Islands were at peace, and that everywhere the natives welcomed American intervention in their affairs.

But it soon became apparent that a reluctant and stubborn American people would expect more tangible proof that an unpopular insurrection was finished. With 70,000 troopers in the field, the situation was awkward, nor could the presence of this large body of fighting men be satisfactorily explained. It was apparent that something must be done.

Something was done. On July 4, 1901, the military regime in the Islands came to an end, and the government was officially delegated to a Philippine Civil Commission. It sounded much better. It was argued that the establishment of this civil government would make the doubting public look with tolerance upon the colonial project afoot; and to encourage that tolerance, some 25,000 troopers of the regular army were ordered to the homeland. The effect was precisely as McKinley had anticipated. The sight of the returning warriors lulled the suspicion in the public mind and made it easier to forget that there were still some fifty thousand American soldiers in the Philippine bush.

When the Commission, headed by Governor Taft, arrived in Manila, they were informed by the General commanding the Philippine Division that the time was not yet ripe for the setting up of a civil government. The country was in an uproar and had need of the stern policies of a military regime. Governor Taft was inclined to agree with them after a cursory survey of the scene--but orders were orders.

The Commission soon found the statement of the military to be not exaggerated, for they were confronted immediately by three pressing problems. The first of these was how to make the Philippine Islands that place of peace and quiet that had been represented to the American people. The second was how to effect the discharge of a goodly portion of the armed force remaining in the Islands, thereby reducing the cost of the war and stilling the last murmurs of doubt. The third, and most perplexing problem, was how to accomplish the first if the second was to be accomplished.

The fact that all colonial powers maintained a corps of native troops as auxiliary to the regular military establishment was considered at the outset by the Philippine Commission. A tentative step in that direction had been taken with the formation of one company of Macabebe infantry, one company of Tagalog infantry, two companies of Vis-ayan infantry, and a squadron of Filipino cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Batson. The work of these units had been followed with great interest by the members of the Civil Commission. The grand service rendered General Funston by the Macabebes during the campaign that resulted in the capture of Aguinaldo had focused the attention of the administration upon the possibilities of a native force. Too, the army had several thousand Scout soldiers who were an experiment in natives officered by white men.

But the Commission did not want a Federal body of native troops. They wanted a force of unofficial policemen.

What the administration really did want was a union of efficiency and economy. The Philippine Insurrection had cost the United States $176,000,000, and it was time that this drain on public resources should cease. It was pointed out by certain thrifty members of the Commission that the average cost of maintaining an American soldier in the Philippines was in excess of $ 1 ,000 annually. Some authorities estimated the cost as high as $ 1 ,400.

When this figure was multiplied by the 70,000 troopers in the Philippines in 1900 and 1901, the drain on government resources approached the not inconsiderable figure of $75,000,000 annually. Against this sum was balanced an estimated cost of $250 annually for each tentative Constabulary soldier. It was believed that the Constabulary would be willing to die more cheaply than a regular soldier, and it was hoped that a force of 6,000 native police, well split into detachments, would maintain a semblance of order. As support for this Constabulary, the military authorities expected to maintain greatly depleted garrisons of regular army troops.

How well the idea worked is best shown by the subsequent reduction in regular forces. Moreover, the Insular government would stand the expense of this force, thus providing a pacification force with no cost to the American citizenry.

There was yet another reason to warrant the formation of a native constabulary, that being, as before mentioned, the nature of the work remaining to be accomplished. It was soon apparent that regimental groups of regulars, concentrated in large garrisons, could not maintain law and order throughout the scattered villages, and the very nature of the guerrilla bands precluded the possibility of massed troop movement against them.

Furthermore, the army, as a pacification force, moves under martial law, and is usually unwilling to take the field unless the writ of habeas corpus and other constitutional guarantees are suspended. The presence of the army in the field is tacit admission that the nation is at war. This ad mission of a state of virtual war was the last thing the Commission desired.

Luke S. Wright held the uncomfortable portfolio of Commissioner of Commerce and Police. Peace was the thing Mr. Wright desired above all things. It was he who proposed the establishment of the Philippine Constabulary, and it came into being as the result of Act 175, Philippine Commission, dated August 18, 1901.

"An Insular Constabulary is hereby established under the general supervision of the Civil Governor for the purpose of better maintaining peace, law and order in the various Provinces of the Philippines, organized, officered and governed as herein set forth, which shall be known as the Philippines Constabulary."

In deference to the Army, military titles were not adopted for the new force. A group of Inspectors was created to supervise a force not to exceed 150 men for each province, the whole to be under a Chief and four Assistant Chiefs. The pay rates were established much lower than those in effect in the army. Pacification with economy was the watchword.

Imagination gives us a picture of Governor Taft escorting a tall and distinguished Kentuckian into his offices after Act 175 had been made a law. The Southerner was Captain Henry T. Allen, of the 6th United States Cavalry, and Taft could not have picked a better man to whip into line the newly organized corps.

Allen was temperate and severe in a military way, and he was an excellent balance to the rowdy days that brought the Insular Police into being. Jungle of Samar or rue de la Paix in Pans--it was all the same to this gentlemanly aristocrat who had seen so much of the world. He had a code of conduct and he remained with it: it fitted him equally well in jungle or in drawing room.

We are to see Filipino later in the course of the fierce fighting in Samar, ploughing his way through high cogon grass, three feet to the rear of Captain Cary Crockett, on patrol in very hostile country. He wears the full dress uniform of a brigadier-general; he insists that his officers go into battle clothed as becomes their rank. When grimacing and shouting pulajans rise all about the party there in that tangled grass, Captain and Private and Brigadier-General fight for their lives. But always, Allen is the General; if the pulajans wish to kill him, there he is, silver stars and all. Allen was a soldier in the gtand manner; he was a dashing cavalryman who refused to let the glamour and romance of campaigning ever die.

Allen--"A model soldier; one of the handsomest men I have ever seen," says one of his officers. "Over six feet, with a mustache; a thorough Southern gentleman from Kentucky." The meticulous note again: "We all thought Allen placed too much stress on personal appearance and he seemed to favor officers who had had experience in foreign armies. He was partial to English and Germans."

We have a good portrait of General Allen as he was in 1901. Tall and impressive, the man; with few words and a great personal dignity. Never ruffled, seldom annoyed. Not convivial, seldom cordial, and always courteous. Nor was he a mixer: barbers and tailors came to attend him in his office, and they tiptoed away when they were finished. He was very much against liquor, but was not a fanatic on the subject of temperance.

But one man of all his officers seemed to have a complete lack of awe of the General; of him we shall speak later.

From Constabulary headquarters at Calle Andra, in the old Spanish Walled City, the General's staff would see him en route to his desk in the morning. He arrived in his own carriage, and each evening the carriage came to return him to his home. On these drives, his wife was always with him.

Allen could be excessively military on occasion, but he was also very much in tune with the times. A story is told of a Volunteer Captain of excellent record who applied for a Captaincy in the Constabulary. He was an excellent soldier indeed--and an exceedingly heavy imbiber of liquor. This Volunteer officer was very anxious to join the Insular Police but, knowing Allen's attitude toward liquor, he had decided to tell the truth and throw up his chance for a commission if Allen mentioned the subject.

As usual, the interview with Allen was severely formal. The General sat there, perusing the Volunteer's papers. The General was impressive and neat--and awe-inspiring. Finally Allen said, "Captain, do you drink intoxicating liquor?" The Captain rose from his chair in front of the General's big desk. That finished him: he knew that, but he was a very sturdy fellow. "General Allen," he said, glaring across the desk, "I drink all I want, any time I want it. But," he continued, "drunk or sober, I can fight like Hell."

Allen leaned across his desk. "Where are you from, Captain?" he said darkly.

"From Kentucky, sir," the applicant answered. "Hmm, I thought so," answered Allen, "You will go to Lepanto-Bontoc as a Captain."

The development of the Constabulary was rapid. The restless youth of Manila swarmed to headquarters for commissions. A few mistakes were made in this rushed period of recruiting, but in general the officer list was of high type.

Captain W. S. Goldsborough, Major Wallace C. Taylor, and Captains Howard Atkinson and Jesse S. Garwood were commissioned Colonels and Assistant Chiefs (Garwood was Major and Assistant Chief), and almost before the public was aware of the existence of the unit, the Constabulary was ready to take the field.

As a quasi-military organization, great care was taken to uniform the Insular Police in some manner that would distinguish them from the army. The material adopted was a soft, cottony fabric, steel-gray in color. Camano cloth, it was called. The shoulder ornaments and commissioned ratings were fantastic and wholly unmilitary.

More than a year was to elapse before army hostility had abated sufficiently to permit adoption of a khaki uniform and standardized commissioned ratings for the officers.

We see the new force, then, in the year 1901. They are reaching a tentative hand into the jungle; they are raw, ill-trained, and poorly armed police, facing a mighty epoch of combat. They had 183 officers and 2,417 men at the end of that first year, and they were occupying 94 jungle stations.

The great experiment was in process.

The army was now in garrison, and for a period of many months the entire burden of preserving the peace of the archipelago fell upon the shoulders of the Constabulary. It is a matter of record that from July 4, 1902, until the end of that same year, not a single shot was fired by a soldier of the regular army in the preservation of the peace of the Philippines.

The Constabulary made its presence felt with startling rapidity. We have noted previously that the army strength in the Islands in 1900 had been about 71,000 men, and that their casualties, killed in action, to July 4, 1901, had been 752 men.

The army casualty list following the creation of the Constabulary contains illuminating figures. During the period from July 5, 1901, to December 31, 1906, the army loss in men killed was 239. From January 1, 1907, until December 31, 1913, their loss was 23 men. And since January 1, 1914, no American soldier has lost his life in battle in the Philippines.

The reduction in army strength following the birth of the native infantry is as striking. In 1901, the force was reduced to 50,000. In 1902, it had dropped to 27,000; in 1903, to 17,000. In 1904, we had 12,000 regulars in the Philippines. At that figure it remained until the Great War, when a substantial reduction was made, leaving the present army force of less than 5,000 men. These figures do not include native Scout troops.

With these data in mind, we turn back to the organization of the Philippine Constabulary.

With a force of native police preparing to take the field, there remained the troublesome question of their armament. Even the most rabid opponents of the force admitted that the Constabulary could not take the field with police clubs. But by no argument could the General commanding the Philippine Division be convinced that it would be wise to arm the new force with rifles.

There was a certain logic to this objection, for the native force was little more than a dubious experiment. During the months of severe guerrilla warfare, the Filipinos had acquired a deserved reputation for treachery; and there was no reason for believing that the mere recital of a Constabulary oath would make natives loyal American policemen.

One officer of the regulars reported: "By no means arm the Constabulary with smokeless, repeating rifles. Do not arm them with rifles at all. If they are held to black powder shotguns, they will be infinitely less dangerous should they revolt. The smoke of the black powder shells will reveal their positions to army sharp-shooters."

There had been ordered set aside for Constabulary use 1,372 army rifles, and these had been partially issued when the flood of adverse opinion caused General Chaffee to order their recall to the government armories. He objected to the Constabulary bearing the same arm as the regulars, and his position was sustained.

Orders were hastily placed in America for 1 ,000 Winchester shotguns and a suitable quantity of brass shells. Also ordered were 5,000 Colt revolvers, caliber .45. (This to satisfy the army, who at the time were using .38-caliber revolvers.) ¹ No long-range arms were ordered, as it was definitely decided that the Constabulary could not be trusted with a weapon that had a range of more than one hundred yards. So the Insular Police was to take the field with smoke-belching shotguns, against insurgents who had high-velocity, smokeless rifles (the most excellent Mauser of Spain) which had a point-blank range of 600 yards.

And then, there were no shotguns!

The Winchester Arms Company advised that they had no stock of repeating shotguns and were unable to fill the order without great delay. Other equipment and ordnance supplies were similarly lacking, and the men went into action without raincoats, without sufficient shoes or underwear, and with a very deficient weapon.

The administration made frantic scurries to the rejected and confiscated arms depots and emerged with single-shot Remington shotguns of an obsolete vintage. One officer recalls them: "As I remember, they were more dangerous to the user than to the target." With the shotguns, they had a few .45-caliber revolvers. One wonders, looking back thirtyfive years, when one considers those stores of high-powered Mausers that had been confiscated from Spain. Certainly they remained in the warehouses during this period of arming the Constabulary. Brutal historical facts seem so silly in retrospect. The action was undoubtedly reasonable and logical in 1901.

The situation was so obviously unfair that Sydney Adamson was impelled to remark in Leslies Weekly on March 27, 1902:

"The change in the government from military to civil has robbed the army of supremacy in the Philippines and left it in not the happiest of tempers. The Constabulary is armed only with shotguns and revolvers and events might go hard with them. On account of the class of men who will be enlisted and the caliber of the white men appointed to command, I have little hesitancy in saying that they will be loyal and might as well be armed with carbines at the start. The policy of giving it arms inferior to the ladrones and the insurgents it will engage seems foolish in the extreme. It is calculated to break confidence in their power, to undermine their courage and to give them a feeling of being half trusted. The Remington single-barrel shotgun with black powder ammunition is an easy mark for the smokeless powder rifles of the insurgents and it has a range of but one hundred yards. The success of these brown men at arms under white officers will determine largely the success or failure of the United States in the Philippines."

Meanwhile, the captured Mauser rifles of Spain lay snugly in cosmaline in the government arsenals, and the shotgun force was in the field. Their old Remingtons were belching clouds of sulphurous smoke and the ladrone bands were beginning to know this easily spotted, shoeless force who wore the initials "I.C." on their collars. Knauber was winning his Medal of Valor, and in their out-stations his companions were undergoing constant attack.

The thin-spread station list of the Constabulary during this period inspires awe.

Winfield Scott Grove was patrolling Romblon Island then, with a force of three officers and eighty-six men. He was to have a great career in the Constabulary, and to become the head of its secret service. But in this year of which we write, he was on patrol on Romblon, and knowing Grove as we do, the man must have been in his element there, against odds. He had been a Sergeant-Major in a Colorado Volunteer regiment, and he was very young for his Constabulary rank. He had a deep crease in his head from a pulajan bullet on Leyte, a wound that he had not bothered to bandage until long after the fight was over.

"Winnie" is well remembered. How he must have cringed at that name! He was of medium height, solid and chunky, blond and blue-eyed. He was athletic, lively, of quick intelligence and great vitality. "The bulldog type," they said of him. "A swell friend and a dangerous enemy." But, at that, I don't believe he had an enemy in the world.

Sometime later, after his Romblon patrol was finished, we have a view of Grove assigned as new Senior Inspector of Laguna Province. He is tendered a banquet upon arrival to take over his station. The native Governor of the province had been an East Indian, posing as a Filipino, and he had thought well of himself. The banquet had been mostly liquid and inhibitions melted away. When all concerned were pleasantly drunk, this Governor had risen and remarked that he doubted if Grove's ability as a fighting man was commensurate with his actual prowess. "For example," he said, "I don't think the Senor Grove could whip me in a fist fight."

They had one more drink and adjourned the banquet, to retire to the Governor's patio. The Governor was a powerful man and he had studied boxing--these East Indians are surprising fellows sometimes--so the fight was not too uneven.

After a while, Grove came back to the banquet hall to have another drink and servants went out to help the stricken Governor.

The Governor was badly marked up and news of the fracas reached the ears of Taft in Manila. He decided to make an example of Grove, and he sent for the Governor to appear and file charges against the Constabulary Captain. The East Indian executive appeared, one eye closed and his lip badly cut.

"Now," said Taft, "I want you to prefer charges against Grove. This is a scandal." Rumor has it Taft said, "God damned scandal."

Grove was a mighty man--not only in fistcuffs, but in the force of a great personality. And that native Governor was a mighty man too.

"But," said the Governor, "you are in error. Captain Grove is my best friend. He defended me when I was attacked by ruffians. He also got a black eye helping me."

Nobody was deceived, but Governor Taft dropped the matter and Grove was promoted and assigned to secret service duty in Manila. Possibly so Taft could keep an eye on him.

One must approach the campaigns of the Constabulary with an understanding of the fact that the Philippine Archipelago is made up of more than 3,000 islands, ranging in size from tiny coral reefs to the island of Luzon, which has several million inhabitants. Luzon is greater in area than all of Austria.

Dominating the southern scene, as Luzon dominates in the north, is the island of Mindanao, second largest of the group. This mighty island fringes the equator; it is larger than Indiana and three times the area of Belgium.

Some fourteen of the islands of the Philippine Archipelago will be of particular interest in this volume. They are Luzon, with an area of 41,000 square miles; Mindanao, with 38,000 square miles; Samar, with 5,124; Negros, 4,902; Palawan, 4,500; Panay, 4,448; Mindoro, 3,794; Leyte, 2,709; Cebu, 1,694; Masbate, 1,255; and certain smaller islands of the Sulu Archipelago, namely, Jolo, Tawi-Tawi, Siasi, and Bongao. And to these might be added the island of Basilan.

As a basis for comparison of the various land areas of these islands, let us imagine the little State of Rhode Island transported to the Philippines: it would fit nicely into the minor island of Masbate, leaving room on the edges for a large agricultural development.

A description of one of these islands of the archipelago might serve as a picture of them all. The traveler passing them on a steamer today will see on each the same strip of glittering white beach and tangled mangrove swamp that fronts to the sea.

Then the bush begins, broken here and there by the clearngs the planters have carved out of it for their rubber and sugar and hemp. The principal islands are spined, in the interior, with a backbone of rising tableland and sheer mountain. These highlands are dense and overgrown with forests of hardwood trees, with tigbao and nipa, and with bamboo thickets and high waving cogon grass.

One receives the impression, during a passing cruise in the Islands, that the interior mountains are soft and rounded. Seldom can be seen a spur of jagged rock or the sheer face of a cliff to indicate rugged country. The moutains roll away before the eye, hazy purple and misty with distance; they seem to be gentle, rolling hills. But the rocks and the cliffs and the deep ravines are there. The outlines are blurred with jungle.

The eye of the traveler unknowingly includes a panorama of great jungle and oozing, mottled swamps and game-filled forests and rushing rivers, and wild fields of waving cogon. A tremendous, jungle-wrapped country that is uncompromisingly Malay. White man's experiment for a while, perhaps--but never a white man's country. The native population, the climate, the fauna, and the flora all combine in subtle fashion to bar permanent occupation by the Caucasian.

Even today there are too few trails in that silent inner country that is crisscrossed with crocodile rivers; inside, there is no protection from the sting of malaria mosquitos and no let-down or breather if one is to wage successful war against the horrible growth of the jungle.

It is a terrain to try the souls of men. . . .

The total land area policed by the Philippine Constabulary was in excess of 119,000 square miles, an area not appreciably smaller than Italy, and almost identical in size with the whole of the British Isles. To this land measurement add the fact that it was separated into hundreds of islands, each with a peculiar problem, a distinct dialect, and often a new type of mankind. Remember that these islands are swept by difficult currents and often by severe typhoons, and that the coast line is double that of the United States.

Remembering these things, some idea of the beat of the Constabulary can be approximated.

In 1901, most of this country was jungle. Much of it is jungle today. When the Constabulary took over the Island patrol service, there was barely one hundred miles of road in the entire archipelago. Army reports show less than five miles of road on Samar, for example. The bush was penetrated by means of trails, which were twisted and overgrown with brush and were often impassable in the wet season.

The rivers of the Philippines are many, but for the most part they are too shallow for navigation in the dry season and they become raging torrents when the rains come in April.

The governmental divisions of the Philippines will be of interest to the serious reader because of the almost constant references to scenes of action by provinces. These provinces are the divisions of the principal islands and they correspond, roughly, to an American state. In the case of the smaller islands, the scene of the narrative can be readily identified by consulting the maps, as none but the largest islands have provincial divisions.

In order to locate specific battle areas with exactness, the provinces of the larger islands are considered here in detail for the convenience of the reader.

On the island of Luzon:

Luzon has some twenty-six provinces. Beginning in the north and continuing to the south, the provincial arrangement is as follows: Ilocos Norte, Cagayan, Abra, Ilocos Sur, Lepanto-Bontoc, Isabela, La Union, Nueva Viscaya, Benguet, Zambales, Pangasinan, Nueva Ecija, Principe, Tarlac, Pampanga, Bulacan, Infanta, Bataan, Rizal, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Tayabas, Ambos Camarines, Sorsogon and Albay. All of these provinces may be located on the map in this volume.

On the island of Panay:

Panay has three provinces: Antique to the west, Ilo-Ilo on the east coast, and to the north the province of Capiz.

On the island of Negros:

Here we have the island divided longitudinally, with Negros Oriental to the east and the Province of Negros Occidental on the western coast.

On the island of Mindanao:

The subdivisions of Mindanao are very large, and are to a great extent undeveloped in 1937. There have been some changes in the provincial arrangement in recent years. The provinces are eight in number, north to south as follows: Dapitan, Misamis, Agusan, Surigao, and Lanao; and in the south: Zamboanga, Cotabato, and Davao. On Mindanao, there are still 2,000,000 acres unexplored and 5,000,000 acres of standing timber. Less than 12 per cent of the land is under cultivation.

To the south of Mindanao are to be found the smaller islands of the Sulu Archipelago, which are referred to by name in the text and may be readily located. These twin sections of Mindanao and Sulu are known as the Moro Province, and they are the habitat of the Moslems who have so little in common with the Christian Filipinos of the northern islands.

With these brief but essential remarks on the geographical, political, and religious divisions of the Philippine Archipelago, we turn now to the opening reach of the Philippine Constabulary.

That reach was to be inexorable. . . .

The Constabulary blazed their passage through the bush with the bodies of their dead. Their duty was the patrolling of twisting trails over fierce high mountains where there was everlasting and eternal rain; the slogging of dripping swamps, where the big yellow mangrove snakes hung from the limbs; the fording of swift mountain freshets and of slow, gloomy rivers where the red eyes of crocodiles glowed.

As the police of the jungle died, they were replaced by others as hardy and as chill in the face of danger. Theirs was a daily patrol from the little outstations that fringed the dark bush; their lot was to be hacked by bolo and made bloodless by malaria. Sometimes they had no food--sometimes they expended their last cartridge in the face of a bolo rush. And always, that oozing bush overshadowed their lives.

Too many of them had lives of appalling shortness--at twenty or twenty-one, they were snapped off, before they had time to realize their capabilities or accomplish the things they had set out to do.

They built outposts of nipa and bamboo, with ground cleared bare of brush and grass for a firing zone. They were simple shacks that sometimes were waiting posts for death. In their stockade walls they made provision for the belching muzzles of their antiquated shotguns. When the dreadful patter of bare feet brought them to arms to meet the swishing blades, they lived fearful short moments that seemed to stretch away to encompass an eternity.

But they endured; they killed and were killed; they patrolled and starved and died of dysentery.

They were insulated from the world with a life constricted to jungle islands that were theirs to defend and explore and to pacify. They ranged those islands, from the equator to the very shadow of Japan.

¹ In this one respect of hand arms, the army gave the P. C. an unconscious advantage. In those days, the .45 revolver was considered cumbersome and unsuited for soldiers. A few years later, when the army fought Moros, they learned the Mohammedans could not be stopped with the .38. The army changed then to the .45, and it has remained the official side arm.

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Original publication © 1938 E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

This publication (HTML format & original artwork) © 2001 Bakbakan International.

Transcription courtesy of Ashley Bass.