The Politics of Intervention

The Burdens of World Power 9

Even the effectiveness of the American soldiers in skirmishes
with guerrilla bands turned against them. By virtue of better
marksmanship, leadership, and tactics, the Americans killed
twenty-five insurgents for every soldier lost. This kill ratio and
the relatively few numbers of wounded captured seemed im­
plicit proof of wanton slaughter, despite General MacArthur's
patient explanations to Congressional investigators.^14 In any
event, General MacArthur, according to an Army historian,
"saw the profitlessness of treating captured insurgents with
consideration. They always responded with cruelty and
treachery. Leniency seemed merely to cause more blood to
be spilled."^15
The American public, on the other hand, saw its soldiers
behaving in what some considered a dishonorable, unchristian,
and inhumane manner. As one journal put it: "There have
been more wicked wars than this on the liberties of the
Filipinos, but never a more shabby war." While Funston was
praised by many for his capture of Aguinaldo, he was also
memorialized in a ditty of the day:

Sing a song of Funston

How his treachery

Captured Aguinaldo;

Macabaeus by.

Forgery and lying

That's the modern thing... ,^16

Funston also won the attention of Mark Twain's North
American Review. A staunch anti-imperialist, Twain con­
demned Funston for using a ruse to enter Aguinaldo's camp.
Funston had defiled the "holy custom" of respecting the safety
of these who fed the distressed. By feigning hunger, Funston,
instead, had captured his host. Funston, in Twain's eyes,
represented a new man, an amoral agent of imperialism, the
irresponsible hero of a nation run amok.^17
One especially controversial tactic was the resettlement of
rural noncombatants and the destruction of their property:
reconcentration. For the American newspaper reader in 1900,