, and I should know if he had any ground to think that the
slightest promise was made by Pratt to Aguinaldo he would declare it
unauthorized and decline to sanction it. I am certain Pratt reported
what he supposed took place accurately; he had no surety on what you
might have said, naturally.

"And, curiously, you never mentioned to me anything of the agreement
as having taken place then, nor in the paper you communicated to me
was there any mention of one, nor did Pratt know of any. It is only
more recently that the fiction took shape. 'The wish father to the
thought,' or the statement repeated till it has become believed by
the--, [37] this is common.

"Now I would like to urge you, from the practical point of view, to
drop any such foolishness. The vital thing, and nothing else counts,
is what Dewey said and did when he at last met Aguinaldo. That, that,
that, is the thing, all else is empty wind.

"Supposing that Pratt and Wildman had covered inches of paper with
'Clauses' and put on a ton of sealing wax as consular seals,
what, pray, to any common sense mind would all that have been
worth? Nothing!! Nothing!! And yet, where is the agreement, where is
the seal? Where are there any signatures? And if you had them--waste
paper--believe me, that all this potter about Pratt and Wildman is
energy misdirected. The sole thing to have impressed upon the public
in America would be the chaining of Dewey and Aguinaldo together as
participants in common action; you surely comprehend this means! Think
and think again; it means success as far as it is possible. The other
work is not only lost, but does not gain much sympathy, especially
this criticism of the conduct of American troops; things may be true
that are not expedient to say. Sink everything into Dewey-Aguinaldo
cooeperation, that was on both sides honest even if it did not imply
any actual arrangement, which, of course, Dewey himself could not
make. That here you have the facts,--undenied--incontrovertible." [38]

The following letter of Bray to Aguinaldo, dated January 12, 1899,
seems to me to throw much light on the question of how these claims
relative to the promised recognition of Filipino independence sometimes
originated and were bolstered up:--

"With regard to your proclamation, there is still a trump card to
be played. Did you not say that the basis of any negotiation in
Singapore was the Independence of the Philippines under an American
protectorate? Th