justly towards ourselves
and towards our fellow-brothers; when free from all superstition,
healthy, strong and vigorous, we find ourselves capable of governing
ourselves, without there being the possibility of the preponderance
of our passions in the consideration, direction, and administration
of the interests of our country, then, and only then, we will be
free! we will be independent! [348]

"_Hongkong_, 1st October, 1899."

Most of the men who perpetrated the outrages I have detailed are alive
to-day, and are powers in their respective communities. Simeon Villa
was recently elected a member of the municipal board from the south
district of Manila, but fortunately an American governor-general
prevented him from taking his seat. Just prior to my departure from
Manila he was appointed, by Speaker Osmena, a member of a committee
on reception for Governor-General Harrison.

The kind of independent "government" these men established is the
kind that they would again establish if they had the chance, [349]
but among the persons to be tortured and murdered would now be those
Americans who failed to escape seasonably. I do not mean to say
that such a state of affairs would come about immediately, but it
would certainly arise within a comparatively short time. Sooner yet
"the united Filipino people" would split up on old tribal lines,
and fly at each other's throats.

CHAPTER VIII

Did We Destroy a Republic?

The claim has frequently been made that the United States government
destroyed a republic in the Philippine Islands, [350] but some of
the critics seem to entertain peculiar ideas as to what a republic
is. Blount states [351] that Aguinaldo declined to hear our declaration
of independence read "because we would not recognize his right to
assert the same truths," and then apparently forgetting the Insurgent
chief's alleged adherence to the principles of this dacument, he
lets the cat out of the bag by saying that "the war satisfied us all
that Aguinaldo would have been a small edition of Porfirio Diaz,"
and would himself have been "The Republic." [352]

He would doubtless have set up just this sort of a government, if
not assassinated too soon, but it would hardly have accorded with the
principles of the declaration of independence, nor would it have been
exactly "a government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Blount truly says [353] that the educated Filipinos, admittedly
very few in number,