sed into the hands
of the Americans and showed them the ability and the aspirations of
certain individuals of the archipelago, but Mabini and his followers
did not believe in its form or in its provisions, and Mabini at least
was emphatic in his declarations that the time had not yet come for it
to be put into effect. On January 24, 1899, he wrote to Aguinaldo that
if it should be promulgated it would be absolutely necessary to give
the president the veto power, and replace the elected representatives
by others appointed by the government. If this were not done the
president would be at the mercy of congress, and the people, seeing
that disagreement between the executive government and the congress
was the cause of its misfortunes, would start another revolutionary
movement to destroy both of them. [394]

As long as Mabini remained in power the constitution was mere
paper. Its adoption was not indicative of the capacity of the people to
maintain self-government. It expressed only the academic aspirations
of the men who drafted it. There is not the slightest evidence from
any previous or subsequent experience of the people that it would have
worked in practice. It was enacted for the misleading of Americans
rather than for the benefit of the Filipinos.

While the government of Aguinaldo was called a republic, it was in
fact a Tagalog military oligarchy in which the great mass of the
people had no share. Their duty was only to give soldiers for the
army and labourers for the fields, and to obey without question the
orders they received from the military heads of their provinces.

There is no cause for vain regrets. We did not destroy a republic in
the Philippines. There never was anything there to destroy which even
remotely resembled a republic.

CHAPTER IX

The Conduct of the War

It is not my intention to attempt to write a history of the war which
began on February 4, 1899, nor to discuss any one of its several
campaigns. I propose to limit myself to a statement of the conditions
under which it was conducted, and a description of the two periods
into which it may be divided.

From the outset the Insurgent soldiers were treated with marked
severity by their leaders. On June 17, 1898, Aguinaldo issued an order
to the military chiefs of certain towns in Cavite providing that a
soldier wasting ammunition should be punished with twelve lashes for
a first offence, twenty-four for a second, and court-martialled