General MacArthur and the Commission did differ as to where the power lay with respect to the organization of civil governments, as to who should say what civil governments should be organized, the Commission contending that, under the instructions, it was left to them, and General MacArthur thinking that everything was subject to military control ultimately, in view of the fact that the islands were in a state of war. [387]
Governor Taft then added that he and General MacArthur reached a modus vivendi. When a good soldier once finds out just what his commander-in-chief wants done, he will endeavor, in loyal good faith, to carry out the spirit of instructions, no matter how unwise they may seem to him. As soon as General MacArthur saw what President McKinley wanted done, he proceeded to co-operate loyally with Governor Taft to carry out the plan. He well knew the country was not ready for civil government, but if Mr. McKinley was bent on crowding civil government forward as fast as territory was conquered, he would make his recommendations on that basis. In the matter of the utter folly of the prematurity with which the civil government was set up in the Philippines in 1901, and the terrible consequences to the hapless Filipinos, hereinafter described, which followed, by reason of the premature withdrawal of the police protection of the army and the sense of security its several garrisons radiated, from a country just recovering from some six years of war, General MacArthur's exemption from responsibility is shown by his reports for 1900 and 1901. [388] The former has already been fully examined, and the original sharp differences between him and Governor Taft made clear. In the latter report dated July 4, 1901, the date of the Taft inauguration as Governor, and also, if I mistake not, the day of General MacArthur's final departure for the United States, the latter washes his hands of the kindly McKinley-Taft nonsense, born of political expediency, about there having never been any real fundamental or unanimous resistance, in no uncertain terms thus:
Anything in the immediate future calculated to impede the activity or reduce the efficiency of these instruments [our military forces,] will not only be a menace to the present, but put in jeopardy the entire future of American possibilities in the archipelago. [389]