The death-rate is not greater than in the native villages under ordinary conditions.

There are approximately 400 Filipino prisoners confined at Catbalogan, and the churchyard has been made into quarters for them. The yard is surrounded by a high stone wall, against which nipa shacks have been set. In these shacks, devoid of furniture, bedding, and with only the nipa walls and bamboo, the prisoners live, breathe, and have their being. They squat all day about the walls of the shacks, and only vary their attitudes for the purpose of eating or sleeping. They are fed the regulations' native prisoner ration, which is rather skimpy. The majority of the prisoners looked far from happy. A large part of them had a pinched, hungry look, and some thirty or forty are suffering from all stages of beriberi. It is the usual thing for them to get this disease after they have been confined any length of time. The disease is prevalent on the island, and under prison conditions it thrives. A number of the prisoners are suffering from malaria and dysentery. One of the medical officers at Catbalogan tells me that they die at the rate of from two to four per day. There are not sufficient medical supplies at Catbalogan to care for the prisoners; and, as far as I could see, when they are taken sick, they are liable to die, as far as their health may depend upon proper medical attendance. General Sanger, learning of these conditions, took the medical officers to task; and they pleaded as an excuse that they had sent many requisitions to Tacloban for supplies, but they were never filled, and, when filled, only partially. For example, carbolic acid in large quantities was asked for, and one-tenth of the amount asked was sent. It is probable that an investigation will be made in Manila as to why these conditions exist. Prisoners of war must have proper food and medical attendance. There are rears dug about the prison which are kept in a perfectly sanitary condition, boxes being used, and the contents removed daily. The prisoners also have the use of two large stone tanks filled with water for bathing, and soap is issued to them as part of the ration. It is difficult to ascertain if the rations were always fully issued; but it is supposed that they are, although one hungry and despondent-looking chap of decidedly prepossessing appearance told me that they did not get enough to eat. However, if it is issued, -- the full ration, -- it should be enough for their wants, and is probably more than the average native receives outside. There is an offensive smell about the quarters, but this is generally found in jails where large numbers of men are confined.

All of the prisoners had a more or less cowed appearance, and seemed ready to dodge upon the approach of an American. General Chaffee visited every one of the different quarters, and, with the aid of an interpreter, talked with various of the prisoners. The usual response was, "No sabe"; and they did not look as if they did. They are a miserable-looking lot of little brown rats, and were utterly spiritless. All rose from their squatting position whenever an American approached, and stood to "attention," raising their hands to their heads in a sort of half-salute and half-doffing of an imaginary hat. The great majority of them are in rags, and have hardly enough of them to cover their nakedness. There is no provision for furnishing them clothing. Among all the quarters not a cigarette was to be found; and the lack of these, which is almost as necessary to the Filipino as food or water, seems to wilt them altogether. Outside the shacks, day after day, the rain falls incessantly. Some of the shacks leak, but the majority are in good condition. One of the party remarked that death would be preferable to him than month after month of such imprisonment, and no one disagreed with him. However, it is possible that the natives have become used to it. Nothing seems to break their apathy. One to whom I spoke kindly and questioned as to his treatment changed for a moment into a gleam of intelligence, but quickly resumed his original stare.

Mr. President, I want to read to you a description of a reconcentrado camp. I will say that this letter is written by an officer whom I know personally, and for whom I vouch in my place in the Senate as a high-toned man and a courageous and chivalric officer, one who does his duty regardless of whether he approves of the cause in which he is told to fight or not, and one in every way worthy of confidence and esteem. This was a letter written by him with no injunction of secrecy in it, because he had no idea or thought that it would ever be made public. I make it public now simply for the information of the Senate, in order that they may have some idea of what a reconcentrado camp is.

I omit the name of the place from which the letter was written for the same reason that I omit the name of the officer. I will not say any more of him than that he is a graduate of West Point and a professional soldier. I will state further that there is some allusion in the letter to vampires. A vampire in those islands is a bird about the size of a crow, which wheels and circles above the head at night, and which is plainly visible at night. As I have said, I know the officer personally and vouch for him in every way. Senators will see from the reading of this letter that it is simply the casual and ordinary narration of a friend writing to a friend. He says:

"On our way over here we stopped at ---- in peaceful ---- to leave our surplus stuff so as to get into" --

I have left out these names --

"light shape; and, as we landed at midnight there, they weren't satisfied with bolos and shotguns, but little brown brother actually fired upon us with brass cannon in that officially quiet burg under efficient civil government. What a farce it all is!"

That is his comment on that fact.

"Well, consider, ten miles and over down the coast, we found a great deposit of mud just off the mouth of the river, and after waiting eight hours managed to get over the bar without being stuck but three times -- and the tug drew three feet.

"Then eight miles up a slimy, winding bayou of a river until at 4 A.M. we struck a piece of spongy ground about twenty feet above the sea-level. Now you have us located. It rains continually in a way that would have made Noah marvel. And trails, if you can find one, make the 'Slough of Despond' seem like an asphalt pavement. Now this little spot of black sogginess is a reconcentrado pen, with a dead-line outside, beyond which everything living is shot.

"This corpse-carcass stench wafted in and combined with some lovely municipal odors besides makes it slightly unpleasant here.

"Upon arrival I found thirty cases of small-pox and average fresh ones of five a day, which practically have to be turned out to die. At nightfall clouds of huge vampire bats softly swirl out on their orgies over the dead.

"Mosquitoes work in relays, and keep up their pestering day and night. There is a pleasing uncertainty as to your being boloed before morning or being cut down in the long grass or sniped at. It seems way out of the world without a sight of the sea, -- in fact, more like some suburb of hell."

If that is a suburb of hell, Mr. President, what must hell be! That is a description that applies to more than one; and, if you would order an investigation of what has occurred in the Philippine Islands, it would, I have no doubt, be found that that was a picture of many.

We are apt to think about the reconcentrado camps simply in connection with sufferings which may be endured by those within the camps; and, in the case of the Cuban reconcentrado camps, where there was not food, then, of course, all the added horrors of that tropical climate constituted one of the features of the reconcentrado camps. But the greatest horror and the greatest suffering which are occasioned by the reconcentrado camps is not the horror and the suffering within the camp, but the horror and the suffering without the camp.

When a general prescribes a certain limited area within which he says all the people must congregate, there must be the corresponding direction which will enforce that order; and the corresponding direction is that everything outside of those prescribed limits shall be without protection, and, both as to property and life, be subject to destruction. Only in that way can people be carried within the limits of the reconcentrado camps.

It is because life is unsafe out of them, because life is almost certain to be sacrificed out of them, because all property left outside is to be destroyed, because all houses are to be burned, because the country is to be made a desert waste, because within a camp is a zone of life and without the camp a wide-spread area of death and desolation. That is what a reconcentrado camp means. Do you suppose if there is an invitation to people to come within a reconcentrado camp, that they are going to come there unless they are forced there? Is there any way to force them except to say that it is death to remain outside?

Why, Mr. President, when the limited area of a reconcentrado camp is prescribed, the people cannot be collected and driven in there. The soldiers cannot go out and find them and drive them in as you would a drove of horses. It is only by putting upon them this order, this pressure of life and death, that they are made to flee within the limits of the reconcentrado camps to escape the torch and the sword that destroys all without. When a general prescribes a reconcentrado camp, -- and I am going, before I get through, to read Bell's order to show that that is what it means, -- when a general prescribes a reconcentrado camp, he practically says that everybody outside must come inside or die: he practically says to his soldiers, Those who do not get inside shall be slaughtered; and the practical operation is, that those who do not get inside are slaughtered.

The cruel policy of concentration was initiated [in Cuba February 16, 1896. The productive districts controlled by the Spanish armies were depopulated. The agricultural inhabitants were herded in and about the garrison towns, their lands laid waste, and their dwellings destroyed. This policy the late cabinet of Spain justified as a necessary measure of war and as a means of cutting off supplies from the insurgents. It has utterly failed as a war measure. It was not civilized warfare: it was extermination.

Against this abuse of the right of war I have felt constrained on repeated occasions to enter the firm and earnest protest of this government.

The efforts of Spain were increased both by the despatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration inaugurated by the captain-general's bando of Oct. 21, 1896, in the province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops....

The agricultural population, to the estimated number of 300,000 or more, was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions.... Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as a war measure in order to cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its predestined result. As I said in my message of last December, it was not civilized warfare: it was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.