From Four Nodes of History: The Human Rights Challenge in the Philippine Security Sector • • • Our regiment participated in the battle of Caloocan, Philippine Islands, February 10, 1899. At that battle Funston ordered that no prisoners be taken. (Editor’s note: Colonel Funston was the highest ranking among the officers who gave the orders to take no prisoners. He was directly under Gen. Arthur MacArthur, Jr). At an officer's meeting of our regiment, held in the trenches at Caloocan, March 23, 1899, the day before our advance on Malolos from Loma, in reference to a question; Colonel Funston said, with a grin, “Don’t kill any more prisoners than you have to,” or words to that effect. During the fight before Caloocan an order was passed down the line, as was the custom when heavy firing was in progress, to “take no prisoners.” (Hall, quoting one of his witnesses) b) Public execution (hanging) of prisoners of war To instill fear on the population of the rural areas, public hangings of prisoners of war became a widespread practice. Gen. Frederick Funston was quoted by a journalist of the New York Sun in reaction to the courts-martial of Brig. 62 Gen. Jacob H. Smith and Maj. Littleton Waller for atrocities committed in Samar:14 I personally strung up thirty-five Filipinos without trial, so what was all the fuss over Waller’s ‘dispatching’ a few ‘treacherous savages’? If there had been more Smiths and Wallers, the war would have been over long ago. Impromptu domestic hanging might also hasten the end of the war. For starters, all Americans who had recently petitioned Congress to sue for peace in the Philippines should be dragged out of their homes and lynched. One of the last to be hanged was the Katipunan leader, Macario Sakay, who was enticed to come down on a promise of amnesty. His last defiant words were: Death comes to all of us sooner or later, so I will face the Lord Almighty calmly. But I want to tell you that we were not bandits and robbers, as the Americans have accused us, but members of the revolutionary force that defended our mother country, Filipinas! Farewell! Long live the republic and may our independence be born in the future! Farewell! Long live Filipinas!