all united effort. But the world makes no allowance for the
general who fails. To-day he is left entirely alone, pitied by some,
shunned by a few, and almost forgotten by the large majority. He is
indeed worthy of respect for his humanity in the conduct of the war,
and of some pity in his present peculiar position. Many of his late
subordinates now occupy good and high-salaried posts. Members of the
Government of which he was President have espoused American doctrine
and enjoy high social positions and fat emoluments. Aguinaldo's
scholarship is too meagre for an elevated position, and his dignity
and self-respect too great for an inferior one.

CHAPTER XXV

The Philippine Republic in the Central and Southern Islands

So interwoven were the circumstances of General Aguinaldo's Government
in Luzon Island with the events of the period between the naval battle
of Cavite and the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, that they form
an integral and inseparable whole in historical continuity. In the
other Islands, however, which followed the revolutionary movement,
with more or less adherence to the supreme leadership of Aguinaldo, the
local incidents severally constitute little histories in themselves,
each such island having practically set up its own government with
only the barest thread of administrative intercommunication.

The smaller islands, adjacent to Luzon, cannot be justly included in
this category, because their local rule, which naturally succeeded the
withdrawal of Spanish administration, was nothing more than a divided
domination of self-constituted chiefs whose freebooting exploits,
in one instance, had to be suppressed at the sacrifice of bloodshed,
and, in another, to succumb to the apathy of the people.

In _Yloilo_, on December 23, 1898, General Diego de los Rios, in the
presence of his staff, the naval commanders and the foreign consuls,
formally surrendered the town to the native mayor, prior to his
evacuation of Panay Island on the following day. On December 27
an American military force (finally about 3,000 strong) arrived in
the roadstead in transports under the command of General Miller in
co-operation with two American warships, afterwards supplemented by
two others. The Spanish troops having departed, the Filipinos who had
assumed control of public affairs made their formal entry into Yloilo
to the strains of music and the waving of banners and constituted
a government whose effective