Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/109

Rh instructed not to make any promises to the Filipinos as to the future. But the Filipinos themselves were not so informed. They were left to believe that, while fighting in coöperation with the American forces, they were fighting for their own independence. They could not imagine that the Government of the great American Republic, while boasting of having gone to war with Spain under the banner of liberation and humanity in behalf of Cuba, was capable of secretly plotting to turn that war into one for the conquest and subjugation of the Philippines. Thus the Filipinos went faithfully and bravely on doing for us the service of allies, of brothers in arms, far from dreaming that the same troops with whom they had been asked to coöperate would soon be employed by the great apostle of liberation and humanity to slaughter them for no other reason than that they, the Filipinos, continued to stand up for their own freedom and independence.

But just that was to happen. As soon as Manila was taken and we had no further use for our Filipino allies, they were ordered to fall back and back from the city and its suburbs. Our military commanders treated the Filipinos' country as if it were our own. When Aguinaldo sent one of his aides-de-camp to General Merritt with a request for an interview, General Merritt was “too busy.” When our peace negotiations with Spain began, and representatives of the Filipinos asked for audience to solicit consideration of the rights and wishes of their people, the doors were slammed in their faces, in Washington as well as in Paris. And behind those doors the scheme was hatched to deprive the Philippine Islanders of independence from foreign rule, and to make them the subjects of another foreign ruler; and that foreign ruler their late ally, this great Republic which had grandly proclaimed to the world that its war against Spain was not a war of conquest, but a war of liberation and humanity.