Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [60]
Miles reminded the Senate Committee that the American people also had a prejudice against authoritarianism. He glittered to great effect while portraying Roosevelt and Root as executive upstarts who wished to create a monarcho-militarist court, like that of the Kaiser in Germany. The concept of a general staff was “utterly subversive to the interests of the military establishment.” Miles hitched back his epaulets and declared in martyred tones that he would rather resign than submit to “despotism” from the White House.
Senator Joseph Hawley, the chairman of the committee, was himself a retired major general. He praised Miles’s testimony as “unanswerable,” and allowed that the Army Bill, as presently drafted, would receive no further consideration. GENERAL MILES WINS, The Washington Post blazed, while Watterson congratulated the American people on escaping “an Act to make the President of the United States a military dictator.”
Root’s expressionless calm in the face of this defeat boded ill for Miles. Few doubted that the Commanding General would be dismissed for insubordination. Yet day after day went by with no action by the White House. March gave way to April. Miles and Root continued to work in their opposing suites in the War Department, striding past each other in contemptuous silence.
Roosevelt was struggling with contrary impulses of rage and caution. Miles was “a perfect curse,” but his huge popularity both inside and outside Congress could not be ignored. To dismiss him now might sabotage the Army Bill forever, and set Miles up as a sentimental favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Perhaps, after all, he should be allowed to visit the Philippines. The thought of Miles having to endure a forty-nine-day ocean voyage was pleasing, and with luck his visit would coincide with the mosquito season. But what atrocities might he uncover there, to the detriment of Roosevelt’s own candidacy in 1904? “It is getting to be a case,” the President complained, “of whether I can longer permit great damage to the Army for the sake of avoiding trouble to myself.”
LODGE’S COMMITTEE ON the Philippines reluctantly published the Gardener Report on 11 April. It caused instant national outrage. Two days later, the Anti-Imperialist League released the even more shocking confession of a Major C. M. Waller, on trial for genocide in Samar:
Q Had you any orders from General [Jacob H.] Smith to kill and burn? If so, state all that he said.
A “I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and the more you burn, the better you will please me.” Not once only, but several times …
Q Did you ever ask General Smith whom he wished you to kill?
A Yes. He said he wanted all persons killed who were capable of bearing arms, and I asked if he would define the age limit.
Q What did General Smith say?
A “Ten years.”
Waller also quoted a written order from the general: “The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness.”
No sooner had the phrases kill and burn and howling wilderness registered on the American conscience than a third, water cure, came out of the Committee hearings. Witness after witness testified to widespread use by American soldiers of this traditional torture, developed by Spanish priests as a means of instilling reverence for the Holy Ghost:
A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit on his arms and legs and hold him down and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin … is simply thrust into his jaws … and then water is poured onto his face, down his throat and nose … until the man gives some sign of giving in or becomes unconscious.… His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but who cannot drown.
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