The water cure from a missionary point of view: by Homer C. Stuntz.

"i. This treatment was never given wantonly; or, if so, it
was entirely without sanction and contrary to the most vigilant
efforts of officers commanding.
"2. It was given only to spies and such captured Filipinos as
could give important information as to military movements.
"3. In all countries and in all times the life of the spy is forfeit
to his captors. In the Revolution Andre paid that forfeit like a
man, and no one accused the American soldiers of violating the
laws of war. In the Civil War shooting of spies was not at all
uncommon. Every spy understood that he took his life in his
hands when he donned his disguise and crossed the enemy's lines.
"4. In the administration of the water cure the life of the
spy was spared. He was given a severe time of it for an hour or
so, told what he knew, often enabled the commanding officer of
the squad that caught him to save valuable American lives and
accomplish those ends for which he had been sent out with the
greatest economy of blood and expense.
"5. If the violent critics of this method of gaining information/
from men whose lives were forfeited according to the rules of
warfare the world over would put themselves in the places of
soldiers in lonely and remote bamboo jungles, I fancy,fey would
feel differently. If they were placed where, by rough handling, a'
man whom they had a right to shoot, and compelling him to tell
what he knew, they could have saved scores of lives, including the
life of the man who suffered at their hands, the matter would
not look as it does here, divorced from the stern conditions of warfare with a treacherous enemy.
"I am not apologizing for cruelty. Where cruelty is wanton,
let it be punished to the fullest extent. But war itself is horribly
cruel, and in the war there is such a thing as an economy of cruelty
and an economy of blood-letting. From all the information I
could gather from Americans and Filipinos, the so-called 'water
cure' in the majority of instances was administered in the honest
belief that it was the lesser of two evils.
"On the other hand, it is true that European and American
soldiers are, as a rule, overbearing and insolent. among Eastern
people, and are often guilty of a kind of rough and unforgivable
barbarism in their treatment of them. If it shall be proved
that an order was given to make the island of ar o 'a howling
wilderness,' and to put to death 'every male Filip i lin that island
ten years old and older,' the man who gave it sha-d4 be made to
feel the heavy hand of discipline. That is not war;hat is exter