e military leaders
of the Filipinos have the explanation to offer, if they have the
enlightenment to comprehend their own predicament, as a discomfited
mass of fugitives, that they never, before the American regulars and
volunteers charged them, met soldiers who would not have retreated
in dismay from the fiery ambuscades. The achievement of the Americans
in confronting, rushing and routing the array, formidable in numbers,
of natives, gathered with great expectations of a victory that would
convert them into the barbaric conquerors of a civilized community--the
consecutive and conclusive victories over them that covered our arms,
will have honorable distinction, of putting soldiers to the proof
and finding them pure steel, for a long time to come. Our boys,
weary of the aggressive attitude of the still insurgent crowds,
though the power of Spain had been broken, welcomed with cheers the
order to charge; and it has been many days since there has been a
trial of manliness more severe, or testimony of devotion more true,
and of the staunch fighting quality of the troops whose only way out
of difficulty was to find the enemy and drive them headlong.

It is not to be forgotten, while the flag of the nation flies, that the
brave regiments that will bear upon their banners the name Manila, with
the dates of February, 1899, are from all sections of the country, from
the Alleghenies to the Pacific. They come from western Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Utah,
Montana, Idaho, and California, and as Admiral Dewey said so well of
the crews of his ships on his immortal May day, "There was not a man
in the fleet who did not do his duty, and no man did more." It is,
as Admiral Schley said of the famous naval victory on the Southern
Cuban coast, "There is glory enough to go around." Take the list of
regiments and batteries and troops in the Eighth Army Corps, under the
command of Major-General E.S. Otis, and there is but one record--each
officer and enlisted man was in his place, and all are worthy to be
glorified, for their dashing rushes through the swamps and the hideous
tropic tangles, they penetrated to find the foe, equally with those
heroes who mounted with unquailing ardor that only death could quench
and that victory crowned the bloody hills of Santiago.

The easy capture of Iloilo proves the inadequacy of the followers of
Aguinaldo to do any mischief beyond bushwhacking, and it w