elligent
young lawyer, Sergio Osmena, already mentioned at p. 521. This organ,
the type and style of which favourably compared with any journal
ever produced in these Islands, passed through many vicissitudes;
it was alternately suppressed and revived, whilst its editors were
threatened with imprisonment in the _cotta_ and deportation to
Guam. Meanwhile the Americans made strenuous efforts to secure the
co-operation of the Filipinos in municipal administration, but the
people refused to vote. Leading citizens, cited to appear before
the American authorities, persistently declined to take any part in
a dual _regime_. The electors were then ordered, under penalties,
to attend the polling, but out of the hundreds who responded to the
call only about 60 could be coerced into voting. Finally a packed
municipal council was formed, but one of its members, a man hitherto
highly respected by all, was assassinated, and his colleagues went
in fear of their lives.

The war in Panay Island having terminated on February 2, 1901,
by the general surrender at Jaro (_vide_ p. 518), General Hughes
went to Samar Island, where he failed to restore peace, and thence
he proceeded to Cebu in the month of August at the head of 2,000
troops. A vigorous policy of devastation was adopted. Towns, villages
and crops were laid waste; Pardo, the insurgent military centre,
was totally destroyed; peaceful natives who had compulsorily paid
tribute to the insurgents at whose mercy they were obliged to live,
were treated as enemies; their homes and means of livelihood were
demolished, and little distinction was made between the warrior and
the victim of the war. Desolation stared the people in the face,
and within a few weeks the native provincial governor proposed
that terms of peace should be discussed. The insurgent chief Lorega
surrendered on October 22; Mateo Luga and Arcadio Maxilom submitted
five days afterwards and at the end of the month a general cessation
of hostilities followed. A neutral zone was agreed upon, extending
from Mandaue to Sogod, and there the three peace commissioners on
behalf of the Americans, namely Miguel Logarta, Pedro Rodriguez,
and Arsenio Climaco met the insurgent chiefs Juan Climaco and Arcadio
Maxilom. As a result, peace was signed, and the document includes the
following significant words, viz.: "putting the Philippine people in
a condition to prove their aptitude for self-government as the basis
of a future independe