Books in Brief

A Second Look at America, by General Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis (Speller, $5.00). Yes, this is the same General Emilio Aguinaldo who had his brief moment on the stage of history at the end of the nineteenth century; and Yes, he is still alive and—in each of two directions—kicking. His book is mostly devoted to his own version of what, surely, is the most inglorious business in American history: Dewey’s recruitment of Aguinaldo and his forces as allies in the Spanish American War, with the promise of independence as bait, and the U.S. Government’s subsequent insistence a) that no such promise had ever been made, and b) that the Philippines were not ready for independence. No reader who survives 200 pages of the half-bad-Spanish and half-bad-English syntax will fail to be convinced of the fact that the General got the rawest of raw deals; and the moral, insofar as the book is directed at the conscience of mankind, would appear to be, “Don’t trust the Americans as far as you can throw a Cunarder’s anchor.” But that turns out not to be the point at all: the book ends up being a vindication of long-term U.S. policy in the Islands, and a summons to the uncommitted peoples to put their faith in that nation whom History has called to leadership of the free world. The General seems blissfully unaware of the net harm the U.S. has done by setting in the Philippines, on the cheap, a precedent that other colonial powers can follow only at great cost and by jeopardizing the future of Western civilization.

w. kendall

Featured Tags

A Second Look at America, by General Aguinaldo and Vicente Albano Pacis (Speller, $5.00). Yes, this is the same General Emilio Aguinaldo who had his brief moment on the stage of history at the end of the nineteenth century; and Yes, he is still alive and—in each of two directions—kicking. His book is mostly devoted to his own version of what, surely, is the most inglorious business in American history: Dewey’s recruitment of Aguinaldo and his forces as allies in the Spanish American War, with the promise of independence as bait, and the U.S. Government’s subsequent insistence a) that no such promise had ever been made, and b) that the Philippines were not ready for independence. No reader who survives 200 pages of the half-bad-Spanish and half-bad-English syntax will fail to be convinced of the fact that the General got the rawest of raw deals; and the moral, insofar as the book is directed at the conscience of mankind, would appear to be, “Don’t trust the Americans as far as you can throw a Cunarder’s anchor.” But that turns out not to be the point at all: the book ends up being a vindication of long-term U.S. policy in the Islands, and a summons to the uncommitted peoples to put their faith in that nation whom History has called to leadership of the free world. The General seems blissfully unaware of the net harm the U.S. has done by setting in the Philippines, on the cheap, a precedent that other colonial powers can follow only at great cost and by jeopardizing the future of Western civilization.

w. kendall