American Atrocities in the Philippines: Some New Evidence

The recent controversy between Gore Vidal and John M. Gates yields one indisputable conclusion: the Philippine War of 1898-1902 can still arouse passionate interest.' To be sure, some of this interest is politically motivated, bound up with concerns over American high-handedness in foreign affairs and with distant murmurs that the United States may fight for the Philippines again before century's end. But it was in a spirit of objectivity that Gates wrote to "encourage a more systematic look at the cost, in human life, of the PhilippineAmerican War."2 I do not propose to take that more systematic look at this time; however, until someone should undertake such a project it is surely not idle to study other aspects of the character of the fighting.