The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1903-02-28
VINO ARE THE LADRoNEs,

Ii dispatches from Manila are
worthy of crelence the ladrones of
Luzon are giving considerable trouble
to the American authorities. Now,
who are these ladrones? According
to the dictionary, ladrone in the SPAN
ish language means Il rObber or Il pi-
rate. 1t has about the same mean
ing as rapparee, Il name applied by
the English invaders of Ireland in the
seventeenth century to the natives who
would not submit to the rule of the
foreigner, but took every occasion to
make it unpleasant for the ln:rauders
who had devastated the country and
shown no mercy to old or young.
The Irish rapparees are called rob-
bers by the English, but the natives
looked upon them as patriots who had
recourse to the wild justice of revenge.
In the same way, the ladrones of the
Philippines are stigmatiZed as rob-
bers by the Americans, but the Fill
ipinos look upon them in different
light. They are men who prefer death
to slavery and who will never become
reconciled to foreign domination. In
a recent letter to Washington paper,
n. E. GuyOt, who served in the Colo
RADIO volunteers in the Philippines,
| saws:
"FOr ladrOnes read instructors or
'revOlutionists.' For native constabu-
larry, read Tory Or 'IIessian,' and you
have the present situation in the Fill
ipino archipelago. Bands Of ladrones
near Clvite' means guerilla warfare in
the Philippines within ten miles Of the
city Of MANILA. Every few days comes
the report of conflict with the so
called 'ladrones,' and to the initiated
tits simply new affirmation Of the
fact that the United States has put
itself III the very position formerly oc-
cupied by the Spanish i'll every coun-
try which has thrown off the yoke Of
the dOlS.
1.-The Filipinos are simply subdued.
They are not crushed, and we shall all
know and realize this fact sooner or
later. The Filipino people are in
effably the superior OF the average
American negro, and such Il people,
similar, indeed, to the Japanese, can
not be kept in subsection. What do
we export to them? Principally liquor
to be used by the troops. What do
we import? The other day batch
Of over Il thousand 'contumaciOus and
incorrigible' soldiers We're brought to
San Francisco to he discharged. Per-
haps they We're glad to get away from
the heat, the mosquitoes and cholera.
The greatest farce of all ages was
perpetrlted in the Philippine Islands
at cost, to date, Of about $40, OOO,O 900.
How much longer must this go on?"
The Americans in the Philippines
have adopted the tactics of the British
in Ireland, by organizing native COLI
stabulary to kill their own cohntrymeD.
1t is IL well known fact that the Brit
ish soldiers in Ireland never shoot
down the peaSantry. That is done
by native born ruftians who join the
royal Irish constabulary. SO when-
ever the latlrones become active
around Manila, it is not the American
soldier but the native constabulary
who march against them and shoot
them down. II the native constabula-
ny get killed, what difference does it
make. They are only Filipinos.
The fact is that the l;,drones are
holding their own up to date. There
is not enough constabulary to fight
them, and what is worse, they cannot
be trusted. Sometimes they get cap
tured and their arms are taken from
them; then they are set free. The
latlrones are said to he pillaging with
in Il few miles of Manila. They have
nothing else to do, as they have lost
their crops and their animals with
which they have worked their fields
Affairs III the Philippines are III bad
shape, but the Americans ut home are
kept in tlfe dark. The war is not
over by any means.