For some reason they were not given
the flag, and the sending of a garrison was long delayed. Having grown
weary of waiting, they made an American flag of their own, hoisted
it, and when the Insurgents from Mindoro came intrenched themselves
and defended it. They were actually being besieged when the American
garrison finally arrived. Here is one more fact inconsistent with
the theory that the Filipino people were a unit at Aguinaldo's back,
and of course the easiest way to get around such an occurrence is to
forget to mention it!
_Mindanao_
And now we come to the great island of Mindanao, which all but equals
Luzon in size, having an area of 36,292 square miles as against the
40,969 of Luzon. Blount's first mention of it is peculiar.
In connection with the words "the other six islands that really
matter," in the passage above cited on page 116 of his book, he has
inserted a foot-note reading as follows:--
"The six main Visayan Islands. Mohammedan Mindanao is always dealt
with in this book as a separate and distinct problem." [330]
But it was hardly possible for him to dismiss this great island, which
is a little continent by itself, quite so cavalierly and I will quote
the more important of his further and later statements regarding it:--
"While the great Mohammedan island of Mindanao, near Borneo, with its
36,000 square miles of area, requires that the Philippine archipelago
be described as stretching over more than one thousand miles from
north to south, still, inasmuch as Mindanao only contains about 500,000
people all told, half of them semi-civilized, the governmental problem
it presents has no more to do with the main problem of whether, if
ever, we are to grant independence to the 7,000,000 Christians of the
other islands, than the questions that have to be passed on by our
Commissioner of Indian Affairs have to do with the tariff.
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