The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-09-11
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER II, 1905.
MISLEADING STATEMENTS.

VIII there ever be peace in the Phil ippines? General Leonard Wood, who lately sailed to those islands to take what grandiloquently remarked just before embarking that there is now no trouble on the islands" Thereupon The Norfolk Landmark calls attention to the fact that the War Department has just made public the report of Gen. William H. Carter. commanding the Department of the Visayas, who asserts that from July, 1904, to July. 1905, thirty-eight engagements took place on the island of Samar between Insurrectionists and the United States troops, some of the encounters being desperate battles. General Carter rs- ports that. the instruction in Samar has been Suppressed in the northern and eastern parts of the island, but that it is still strong in the southwest ern section. In the various engage ments of the past year, the General es- inmates that from 500 to 75O insurrec- tionists have been killed. Of the American forces, two officers. fourteen regulars and sixty-one native scouts have been killed"
 If this report Is true. and we see no cause for doubting 1t, fighting, in a sort of guerilla style has been going on in some parts of the islands all the while. In truth, there has been no real peace, and the semblance of order ds only maintained by constant vigil lance and frequent fighting. The peo- pie of the United States have known very little about it, for the facts have not been made public. When any of the truth has leaked out and been conn mented on by the newspapers, the lat ter have been charged with libelling the administration and with trying to discredit 1t with our own people.
 The truth is that there has not been what may properly be called peace and good order in that country. As an old Roman General once said of certain turbulent provinces, it Is like laying a dry hide on the ground and trying to, smooth 1t down with the feet. ''when you put your foot down on one place." said he, the hide will rise up in other places" That seems to be about the way matters have gone in the Philippines. While our troops are putting down an outbreak or upris- ing in one place there are revolts In other places, and 1t begins to look as if nothing but a standing army large enough to cover the entire country all the time can preserve the peace.
 Our Government has had enough ex- perience with savages at home, one would think, to know that they are not to be pacified or conquered in a year or two. The warfare with the Indians has been going on ever since we had a government Yet there are Indian uprisings almost every year. and the difnculty of keeping our own savages quiet Is not nearly so great as 1t is to keep the Filipinos in order
 Doubtless when General Wood arr rives at his destination we will again be treated to the oft-repeated report that order prevails in the Philippines
 and it will be as far from the truth as most of the other reports of the kind. It will be an "Order reigns in Warsaw kind of report, but the people of the United States will be expected to be- Iieve that all is quiet in that country. There has been a great deal of hard lying done in connection with the Philippines, the way we look at 1t.