8 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
fighting continued, despite staggering losses to the insurgents.
The Army's problems were not easily solved. In the Philippines
the Army faced millions of inhabitants, urban and rural, living
in both complex and simple societies. It was confronted with
ancient social, tribal, religious, and economic rivalries and
a subwar between the Filipinos themselves. It was matched
against political organization and nationalism.
In 1899 the Army needed sixty thousand men just to hold
the major towns and break up the organized insurgent army.
In the meantime, the rebel shadow government continued to
function; taxes were collected for the rebels even inside
occupied Manila. The population supplied the insurgents with
arms, food, recruits, and information. Native policemen, local
officials, and American sympathizers were kidnaped, tortured,
and murdered. Nationalist propaganda, much of it publicizing
American anti-imperialist sentiment, reached many barrios.
The strength of the resistance, built on a foundation of popular
support, was admitted by Major General Arthur MacArthur—
in 1900 the senior Army commander in the islands: "... the
real effective opposition to pacification comes from towns. The
'skulking bands of Guerrilla' ... are mere expressions of the
loyalty of the towns. They could not exist for a month without
urban support."^12
The American response was to increase the number of
occupying troops to seventy-three thousand in 1900 and to
step up its efforts to control the population. Appalled by the
cruelty of the insurgents to their own countrymen and out
raged by what it considered to be guerrilla treachery and
brutality, the Army showed little sympathy for suspected
insurgents. Although policy until 1900 had been to leave
civilian sympathizers alone, this act of generosity, according
to Secretary Root, was interpreted as a sign of weakness. A
Filipino officer-historian writes, however, that "the violent
repressive measures adopted by the Americans in subduing
the guerrillas proved ineffective because, instead of winning
the sympathy of the Filipino civilians, they brought about
more indignation and defiance against the Americans."^13