The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-07-21
FALSE PRETENsEs IN WAR.

The war in the Philippines, as con-
Quoted by Otis, Alger and Mckinley,
I has been one of false pretenses. Ad-
ministration organs convinced the
Fflipinos that they were the allies of
this government-one even went so far
as to say that the insurgents were the
principals and the American troops the
allies-and Consuls Pratt and Wildman
| held out inducements and made prom
Z ises to the natives that We're never re-
allied. Later, when General Otis, act
I ing under instructions from Washing
ton, refused to treat the insurgents as
allies. ignored them in spite of the
promises of administration agents and
organs, what was more natural for
{ such a people, born in the tropics and
educated in the Spanish school of
Z warfare. than TO revolt exactly as they
! did? Yet they deserved to be punished
I for that cowardly attack upon the
army of occupation, and if anyone
doubts that they have been punished.
! he has not read of the havoc wrought
in Luzon.
The war upon the Tagals has been
/ the presidents war. It was never au-
thorized by congress. It has been a
war of false pretenses from its very
+ inception. The promises made to the
Islanders, the impressment of the vol
uuteers who enlisted to fight Spain, the
distortion and mutilation of the dis
patches sent out from Manila, the doc
toring of Bulletins published by the war
department, the deliberate attempt to
deceive the American public, which the
honest correspondents on the ground
deprecate and denounce, has made it
a war of misrepresentation and folly.
a near contemporary quotes at
length, and with evident satisfaction,
from an article in Harper's Weekly
concerning the Philippine problem and
situation. Here is an article by John
+. Bass, special correspondent of Har-
per's in Luzon, that imperialists are
not quoting:
1T was a very desolate picture as 1
rode between the charred ruins of for
ar homes. Nearly all the people had
fled. Occasionally q woman with her
children, or an ole man, sat discon-
solateIy near a heap of smouldering
ashes; as 1 rode through mile after
mile of this desolation the conclusion
forced itself upon ne that our govern
ment. with its weak, vacillatory policy
and want of tact, and Aguinaldo and
his followers, with their nagging trick
mess ana their Misrepresentation of
our every act, would be called to ac-
count for all this destruction when
history, in cold blood. shall write the
truth"
Very little of this kind of matter has
been permitted to pass the censor at
Manila. Such letters have to be sent
to Hongkong on the dispatch boat and |
sabled from there The truth is gen.
orally suppressed. The censorship has
prevented the American people from |
learning the facts about the war from |
which to form an estimate of the out /
look The volunteers have had the gag
of Imperialism thrust between their
teeth; their relatives. friends and fell |
low citizens have been kept in the
dark while the purposeless, criminally
conducted campaign was pushed into
the rainy season without results.
And this is why the press correspon-
dents at Manila declared in their joint
protest that '-the people of the United
states have not received a correct
impression of the situation in the Phil
;npines," owing to dishonest dispatches
which did not represent the true con-