Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/584

192 admitted light and air to the vault below. Then Manila had her Black Hole. Executions followed; and while the artillery band played martial airs on the esplanade, native soldiers, with trembling hands, shot down their own people standing upon the seawall to suffer the death penalty. Wealthy half-castes were implicated. They fled the country, and their estates were turned into the coffers of the government. More troops were hurried out from Spain on board of light cruisers. Earthworks were thrown up at Cavité, and eight-inch guns looked out over the bay. New batteries were planted behind the walls of Old Manila, that stretch from the river south, along the bay, to the promenade, and families living in the suburbs pitched tents in the streets of the old city. And so from then till now some 20,000 Spanish troops have kept the tide of revolt in check, while leaders have been bought off by hard coin, only to wait for better opportunities of renewing the struggle.

What do the "Filipinos" want? Nothing much, save to be left alone by the church and the tax-gatherer. To be free to work or not to work. To know that the results of their enterprise will be theirs, not somebody else's. To be able to knock cocoanuts off a tree for their morning meal, or to shake the fruit from 10,000 trees to the ground, and export the pieces in bags to Marseilles without hindrance. To get enough fibre out of the stalk of the banana tree to sew their thatch together, or to dry the strands from 10,000 trees and send shiploads of hemp to the rope-mills of the world.

The Philippines are the richest gardens of the East, but their light has been hid under the bushel of Spain's colonial system, Our American fleet has silenced the guns on Corregidor; they have sunk the Spanish ships, and silenced the batteries at Cavité. The Krupps that sent wadding over the promenade on the Malecon are still. Manila is ours, the "mestizos" are with us. But up to the north, in the mountains of the interior; over to the east, on the Pacific; and away to the south, in the heart of a hundred islands, are wild tribes who are there to dispute our possession. The gems of the Pacific are as yet rough diamonds, and the cutting is going to be harder than the acquisition. For I take it Manila is the capital of our new colony, and the 400 islands of the Philippine group, with their 8,000,000 inhabitants, the materials to be used in our first great colonial experiment.