Letters From Exile.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 1, 5 July 1911, Page 60

Letters From Exile.

By

RANDOLPH BEDFORD.

No. IV.

TIT HERE are so many varieties of II J tlie Filipino that no one form of 1 treatment can hope to apply. South, many of them are like New Guinea men; the Tinguaines more like the people of the Carolines; then the Moros, the northern Filipinos, Macabebes, Metezos, Igorotes, Bontoeks—a score of kinds—pure bloods and no bloods and half-bloods. Men who have lived among the civilised sort for long describe them as gamblers and profligates, liars not to be disconcerted by discovery; polite among themselves, but rude to the white man since the Spaniard lowered the flag. But the Filipino is very respectful to his father and the lash, and jealous of his wife, careless of the virtue of his daughter, caring nothing for his wife’s doings before marriage. He excuses a deliberate murder by saying that his head was hot; one, Joaquin Gil, who murdered the Governor of Iloilo in 1907, has been, by virtue of the American law, which gives a murderer as many lives as a eat, appealing against his execution sentence for years. He is still in gaol in Manila, and still appealing, and his latest excuse is that when he deliberately killed his victim he was “hot in the head.’ That wouldn't avail him under American law if he stole anything; whether hot head or cold feet, he would get a ferocious sentence all the same. As a soldier he was brave when well led, but A CALLOUS BEAST IN VICTORY. In 1896 the Filipino rebel troops captured three priests, they cut one up piece-meal, they burned another in kerosene, and yet another they bathed in oil and tired on a bamboo spit run through him longitudinally. They tied Spanish soldiers to trees and stabbed them to death; they cut off the lips of prisoners; hamstrung them and followed the peace declaration with a long continued brigandage. Spain treated them badly, but did not call for energy, and the American wants to get things done, so the Filipino likes the Spaniards better. A Filipino Independent daily journal, “The Vanguardia,” joyfully reports all anti-American manifestations, and

ALWAYS CALLS ROOSEVELT “THE DICTATOR,” in scare-head type, which nray be right, and is not wrong if it is true. “The Vanguardia” also reports that there has been great popular disapproval through the United States at the election of Governor Hughes for New York, and this sounds false. It is a low-down business—tins sneering at the nation that is regenerating the Philippines, and the ingratitude is explained by the fact that a Filipino edits “The Vanguardia.” These jH-ople think they arc fit to govern themselves because they once were in fact, and still are at heart, the slaves of Spain, and “La Demoerazia” — the organ of the party of national progress, believes the same, and is consistently anti American, too. The Filipinos, by the way. have a new election trick. When opposing a candidate, they say that he is disqualified by leprosy. That is what they did the other day with Antonia Diaz, candidate for Governorship of llodl’s Norte, and he had to submit to medical examination to disprove it. In Spanish times Bilibid Prison was a wall surrounding wall th.itched hovels, tilled with unemployed and occupationlees prisoners, rotten with disease. The death rate then was 338 per 1,000. Iho Americans have made it Till: MODEL PRISON OF THE WORLD, and th death rate is now 20 per 1.000. But for the contemptible habit of giving convicted murderers 21 years to appeal and cry that they didn't mean it, America's penal codes for the white man arc ferocious enough to command the natives' respect—if the native could respect anything which lie did not also fear. In Bilibid Prison are 117 defaulting otl'mers of Philippine American treasuries— all white men serving sentences up to 25 years. Allowing for the commendable desire to punish the most

trivial public fraud, the sentences are such as to support the belief that it is better to be a dollar than a man.

But Bilibid Prison itself is a triumph —the triumph of a good heart and a big brain. It is probably the largest prison in the world, and has an average of 5,000 prisoners. It is reformatory; all are employed and learn trades, and are treated more as workmen at liberty than as prisoners. There is no corporal punishment; there is the dormitory system, but open, as allowed by climate, and to make supervision easy. Cleanliness and regular hours are the main things. Breakfast, 5.50 a.m.; work, 6.30; recall, 11.30; dinner, 11.50; siesta, from 12.15 to 1.45 p.m.; work, 2; recall, 4.30; parade, 4.45; supper, 5; bath; 5.30; night school, 6.30 to 7.30; recreation, 7.30 to 8.45; lights out, 9. That is their day work, and education in machine shops, exercise, bath, school, and play. Prisoners are divided into squads of 24. with A 100 PER CENT GOOD CONDUCT PRISONER

in supervision and responsible charge, and from this comes efficiency. The issue of food for the whole prison takes seven minutes. When the conduct classification was first made, 80 per cent of the prisoners were in the third class. To-day many men are 100 per cent, and over 90 per cent of prisoners are in the first class. The greatness of the system is that in two years or less the man who was a criminal has found the work habit. He has been taught to be a blacksmith, a machine ironworker, a carriage and wagon builder, a silversmith, a maker of wicker furniture, or lias learned tailoring, carpentering, and all the trades from making soap and shoes to learning baking and cooking. The prison has an 80-acre farm, and teaches agriculture, and when a prisoner’s time expires, instead of the police trying to gaol him again, as is usual in respectable countries, the prison authorities help the time-expired man to

get a situation outside. And the training is known for what it U, so that it is not hard for the discharged man to get work. It’s a pity that America has no gaol like this. It is good enough to be copied by every white man’s country on earth —and it is the only one of the kind in the world. . Five thousand, prisoners, with a dozen grilles between them and liberty, guards with loaded rifles on the wall! It is

HARDER SOMETIMES TO GET INTO A GAOL THAN TO GO OUT OF IT, but here, 4.45 p.m. (parade time) is visiting hour, and any decent white man goes in. They show you in a warehouse behind a wall with the broken glass of the Middle Ages set therein, a great display of wickerwork and wood furniture, and hammocks —the work of the prisoners—and sold at prices over those charged outside, but at prices readily saleable, because the manufacture is unique. When a prisoner built this lounge with the cane pockets for the iced whisky of the buyer, I wonder if he thought of the contrast? By the inner gate of the gaol was a fine bit of colour. A yellowfaced prisoner in a black umbrella-hat, his suit banded in slate and grey, carried a red and green blanket up a stair of honey-coloured pine. In the garden some good conduct, prisoners passed among the flowers and looked up at the jalousied balcony in a shy, downhill sort of way. For there walked the gaoler’s daughter opposite the great gates that are closed, and met by a lever on the wall. When the Americans took over Manila, there were prisoners in Bilibid without record, and the Americans let them go. Then the rebuilding began—a wall was built to bisect the prison into Bilibid and Presidio—the place for the reformed prisoner, and that for the reformable, and the bad. There they worked, all of them. THEY MUST EARN THEIR LIVING, even though they are not paid but in food and lodgings and a remission of five days in the month for the highest standard of good conduct. I walked on a balcony on the top of the bisecting wall towards the centre of the prison, where a platform on a •tower commanded all the radiating yards. And as I walked along the wall, but unable to see the yards yet, a fine brass band smote those reverberating dormitories with one of the gayest marches ever penned by a free man. This was exciting and mysterious. 1

ran to the central tower, and looked down upon a great sight. We stood in the hub of the wheel; all the spokes of it were yards. Immedii ately below us 40 men in the black and slate bands of the convict played tlia march that had hurried me; in the spokes were squads of prisoners aggregating 4,000 men stock still to listen to their concert. The march ended with unexpected suddenness; 4,000 hands lifted 4,000 black mushroom hats, and the big band played the “Star Spangled Banner,” the music catching them and making them think like one separated as they are by stone and steel. Then they become soldiers; the band played music for their physical exercises, thronging positions to the stroke of a bell in the tower; 8,000 hands to 8,000 feet as one;] another bell stroke, and 4,000 hats on the ground and 4,000 men lifting themselves arm high from the ground ort fingers and toes; another stroke and] 8,000 hands rose from 8,000 knees to meet at finger tip above. And after all the exercises a ration parade with enamelled plates and pannikins and food served in seven minutes, and then tho band plays them back to the dormitories, and leaves them cheerful to their meal. It is discipline and rivalry and the chance of approbation all in one. Man must show off, and this helps him to it in a good way.

If but for the Bilibid the American has justified himself; but driving back to the Bridge of Spain, I saw before tho escutcheon above the door of the old house of a Don this:—“Horses and Buggies for Hire.” The white man reads the American’s sign, but the native looks at the Escutcheon.