to fire. Seeing America attacked, seeing their friend attacked, they stood up straight before the assailant and defied him to his face. It was the response to the Liberty Loan over again and in far costlier form-for this-and they knew it was to cost them their lives.

Chief among the spokesmen was the strongest man in Lanao, Ami Binaning. Frank, intelligent, direct as an Anglo-Saxon, he had been the first of the datus to send his boys to school, the first to pay his taxes, the greatest help to the American government, the best and most powerful influence for law and order in the region. And his feeling against the cutting loose of the Moro countries from America had been from the first outspoken and extreme. On the visit of the Wood-Forbes Commission he had declared with emphasis to that effect. "Let the Filipinos go where they will. But they shall not govern us. And we Moros will stay under America. Give us the American flag," he had said. Now, in Quezon's teeth, and with the Filipino Constabulary hedging him round about he repeated his declaration. "You shall not govern us. We stay with America."

Quezon listened, smiling.

"Go ahead and talk now, all of you," he rejoined, they say. "Soon there will be neither American government nor American men here. And then, you friends of America, you—had better clear off to the hills."

As he ceased speaking the datus went straight out and pulled down the Filipino flag, wherever they found it, leaving the Stars and Stripes to fly alone.

For it is the custom in Philippine government places to fly the Filipino flag and the American flag together.

Shortly thereafter a young son of Ami Binaning came down from Lanao with a message from his father to a certain American living on the coast.

"It seems that my days are soon done," that message ran. "I will not longer risk staying in my house, which has already been shot up. I am going with my family into the hills. It is

because of my words to Quezon-of which I shall retract nothing. This is to assure you of my good friendship, and if, as I think, the Constabulary kill me soon, to say good-bye."

The mere fact that he did so withdraw furnished their pretext. He had become a rebel they said—had gone on the warpath.

The refuge he chose was an abandoned and ruinous stockade standing on a little hill in the wilderness, where a tumbledown shack offered shelter. There he led his family-three young men, two women and a little child. There, as soon as they had tracked him, came the Filipino Constabulary, some twenty strong. And when they had closely surrounded the place, Ami Binaning, with his only weapon-his little shortbladed work-knife in his hand-for he would not die unarmed -Ami Binaning walked out, with his boys at his side, and came before them. And so they shot him down. Also, they shot and killed the unarmed boys and the women and the little child. Without any pretext of battle, or excuse of women fighting. For no one fought at all. They had nothing to fight with.

They simply died-for honour and for America.

Chapter XXIX

BUT, YES, WE'LL HAVE NO BANANAS

AFTER the killing of Ami Binaning matters grew rapidly worse. The Lanao Moros felt a weight of personal loss. All Moros believed that so conspicuous a murder was intended as an emphasis of Quezon's threatening speech. They resented the affront to America-and speculated uneasily as to how it came that such an affront could be dared. Was America fallen upon evil days of weakness and decay-an old watch-dog grown blind and deaf and toothless? Was the end of the world at hand?

And then, as if planned as a spark to gunpowder, came the next move. It took the shape of an identical letter addressed to the presidentes of municipalities, signed by Teodoro M. Kalaw, Secretary of the Filipino Commission of Independence in Manila.

Under date of August 22, 1923, the document read in part:

Unless we are mistaken, the next Congress will again see a battle royal between the supporters of Philippine Independence and the advocates of retention. I . . . point out to you and to the Municipal Council . . . the necessity and convenience that the Council approve, as soon as possible, a resolution expressing faithfully and sincerely its views and desires regarding the future political status of our country. Such a resolution is absolutely necessary . . . as the enemies of our cause are engaged in spreading the news that independence is desired only by a few Filipinos, and that a great majority of our people prefer the continuance of American sovereignty. . . .

When this letter, carefully phrased, but with an unequivocal implication, became known among the Lanao Moros, they understood it to mean that the Filipinos had declared war on the

United States. And at that, almost to a man, they proclaimed themselves for America to the finish-they with no guns, surrounded by armed enemies.

Fire flashed all down the ranks. Young chiefs came out, each with fifty to a hundred men at his back and swore on the Koran before their priests-the unbreakable oath to die fighting. Poor men and women on their individual initiative did the equivalent. For this, it is testified, some were dragged under the staff of the flag they declared for, ordered to look up to it, since they liked it so much, and then clubbed with rifle butts. Others were punished in other ways. After which, such as remained alive repeated just what they had said before. One whole village was killed off at this time. And, with few exceptions throughout the Moro country, such Filipino officials as up to now had seemed to aim at justice so suddenly slacked off that the theory of chance coincidence in the trend of events grew day by day less tenable.

Now to speak in particular of the Zamboanga region:-The town of Zamboanga stands alone-a unique case. Its core is the old Spanish fort. Around that fort lie the military barracks, once headquarters of the American Governors of the Moro Province, now given over to a detachment of Scouts. Hugging the barracks, again, crowds the little modern town, with a population chiefly Filipino.

These Filipinos have sprung in the main from a nearby prison set up in earlier days to take the overflow from Bilibid. The prison, in its turn, disgorged its graduates upon the land. And the convicts thus released-for the most part foreigners on an unwelcoming soil-naturally huddled for cover as closely as possible under the guns of the Spanish fortress, there making their settlement. In later days-days of Filipinization-Filipino clerks and officeholders implanted in numbers have been added to their compatriots in Zamboanga town.1 Around the

1 Further, Zamboanga to-day has its small American and European element-chiefly bank people, vice-consulate staffs and the staffs of trading

alien islet so constructed the native Moro population spreads off and away over land and sea.

It was this islet, with its scattering offshoots, that, in 1922, put into office the first elected Governor of Zamboanga Province,2 a young Filipino ilustrado named Saguin-a quaint little figure perched like a toy on the chair that General Pershing once found none too small.

In the beginning Saguin to all appearances was the best local Filipino that could have been chosen-really anxious to do good work. But it would have been unfair to expect him to develop character and resistance strong enough to keep on the rails, with the pressure from Manila rushing up as it did in the autumn of 1923. From the autumn of 1923 Governor Saguin began to travel sidewise and to become, to his credit be it said, an uncomfortable young man.

By December he had already sand-bagged his record, except as a politico tool, and the Moros, who with their soothsayer's gaze look any man through to his farthest side, knew exactly his weight and his measure. Which was why they took him in part as a joke.

On December 31st-Rizal Day 3-1923, Zamboanga town, obedient to Manila's orders, held a parade-a demonstration with banners, aimed against subservience to America, against

firms-and its Chinese store-keepers. Taken together, exclusive of Filipinos, these pay 98 per cent of the internal revenue and 94 per cent of all taxes. They have, however, no representation on the municipal board and no voice either as to assessment rates, which have sometimes been quintupled for Americans, or as to the disposition of the taxes collected. Since Filipinization taxes have doubled, improvements have practically stopped, and public property and public utilities alike are falling toward decay.

2 In this year four provinces-Zamboanga, Agusan and Davao in Mindanao, and Nueva Viscaya in Luzon, for the first time elected their governors by the vote of the people. The percentage of voters averaged about 5 per cent of the population.

3 A holiday invented by Mr. Taft during his governor-generalcy, as an effort to crcate public spirit among the Christian Filipinos. Mr. Taft's idea was that if a national hero could be given them, a much-needed ideal might, in time, grow up around that name. No Filipino was thus known to the people. Mr. Taft, in consultation with the best available advice, decided, therefore, to pick out José Rizal, executed by Spain in 1896 for sedition, and, by a deliberate publicity campaign, artificially to create him the Filipino hero. This was accordingly done.