on and the richest
blessings of a liberating rather than a conquering nation." [439]

Nothing could be more false than Blount's insinuation that we were
sent out to help Otis run the war. [440] There was no war when
we started, and we were expressly enjoined from interfering with
the military government or its officers. We were sent to deliver a
message of good-will, to investigate, and to recommend, and there
our powers ended.

Mr. Schurman and I, with a small clerical force, sailed from Vancouver,
January 31, 1899. On our arrival at Yokohama we learned with keen
regret of the outbreak of hostilities at Manila.

Blount has incorrectly stated that President McKinley had sent the
commission out when the dogs of war were already let loose. [441] The
dogs of war had not been loosed when we started, and one of the main
purposes in sending us was to keep them in their kennels if possible.

Aguinaldo has made the following statements in his "Resena Veridica":--

"... We, the Filipinos, would have received said commission, as
honourable agents of the great America, with demonstrations of true
kindness and entire adhesion. The commissioners would have toured
over all our provinces, seeing and observing at close range order and
tranquillity, in the whole of our territory. They would have seen the
fields tilled and planted. They would have examined our Constitution
and public administration, in perfect peace, and they would have
experienced and enjoyed that ineffable charm of our Oriental manner,
a mixture of abandon and solicitude, of warmth and of frigidity,
of confidence and of suspiciousness, which makes our relations with
foreigners change into a thousand colours, agreeable to the utmost.

"Ah! but this landscape suited neither General Otis nor the
Imperialists! For their criminal intention it was better that
the American commissioners should find war and desolation in the
Philippines, perceiving from the day of their arrival the fetid stench
emitted by the mingled corpses of Americans and Filipinos. For their
purposes it was better that that gentleman, Mr. Schurman, President
of the Commission, could not leave Manila, limiting himself to listen
to the few Filipinos, who, having yielded to the reasonings of gold,
were partisans of the Imperialists. It was better that the commission
should contemplate the Philippine problem through conflagrations,
to the whiz of bullets, on the transverse light of all the unchained
pas