American torture in the Philippines. V

I have another letter. All that I know about it is that it appeared in
the Portland Oregonian of January 29, 1902, and is as follows:


SEATTLE, January 28.
Clarence Clowe, of Seattle, who recently arrived home from the
Philippines, where he served as a private in Company H, Twenty-fifth
Infantry, United States Volunteers, has authorized the publication of
a letter written by him to Senator HOAR from the islands June 10,
1900. Clowe asks in the letter honorable discharge from a service that
is outraging his conscience. In alleging inhuman treatment by American
soldiers toward Filipinos he says in part: "At any time I am liable to
be called upon to go out and bind and gag helpless prisoners, to
strike them in the face, to knock them down when so bound, to bear
them away from wife and children, at their very door, who are
shrieking pitifully the while or kneeling and kissing the hands of our
officers, imploring mercy from those who seem not to know what it is,
and then, with a crowd of soldiers, hold our helpless victim head
downward in a tub of water in his own yard, or bind him hand and foot.
attaching ropes to head and feet, and then lowering him into the
depths of a well of water till life is well-nigh choked out and the
bitterness of death has been tasted, and our poor gasping victims ask
us for the poor boon of being finished off, in mercy to themselves.
"All these things have been done at one time or another by our men,
generally in cases of trying to obtain information as to the location
of arms and ammunition. "Nor can it be said that there is any general
repulsion on the part of the enlisted men to taking part in these
doings. I regret to have to say that, on the contrary, the majority of
soldiers take a keen delight in them and rush with joy to the making
of this latest development of a Roman holiday."


Title: The problem in the Philippines. Speech of Hon. Henry M. Teller,
of Colorado, in the Senate of the United States ... February 11, 12,
and 13, 1902.
Author: Teller, Henry Moore, 1830-1914.