at there was
no treaty with Aguinaldo, no deception so far as our Government was
concerned, and that he was a professor of Americanism, talking of
annexation and a protectorate and his gratitude; and then a sulking
and swollen little creature; as Wildman wrote, a spoiled child,
requiring flatteries to keep him in a good humor. Admiral Dewey was
very careful never to promise Aguinaldo anything--giving him some
old guns and encouraging him to keep the Spaniards busy, but never
presuming or allowing it to be assumed that he was speaking for our
Government. By way of Seattle we have an extract of a letter written
by an insurgent officer at Hongkong in these terms:

"More than 25,000 families have left Manila since we began our war
on the Americans. American soldiers are deserting and presenting
themselves to our officers. In order to get the American troops
who were ordered to Iloilo on board the transport many of the men
had first been made drunk, others were embarked forcibly. They all
protested against going, saying that they had come to fight Spaniards,
not Filipinos. After the boat got under way the men mutinied. Many
jumped overboard and swam ashore. Those who remained began to wreck
all parts of the vessel."

The intensity of the folly of the Filipinos making war upon the United
States is on exhibition in this letter, and it is serviceable as a
measure of their intelligence. It is with this equipment of elementary
knowledge that Agoncillo is in Europe to solicit the intervention
of the great powers for his country and asserts that he lost Dewey's
letters in a shipwreck. He should exploit his mission in Madrid.

It was on the nights of the 22nd and 23d of February that an effort was
made by the Filipinos to burn Manila. The attempt to destroy property
closely resembled in the stealthy preliminaries, and desperate strife
to burn the city, the cunningly prepared first attack upon the American
army, repulsed with a slaughter that has moved deeply the sympathies
of our statesmen opposed to the administration of our Government
the growth of the country and the public honor. The fact is they are
sentimentalists in decay or degenerates running for a decline and fall.

There was some fighting in the streets during the night, but the
Americans quickly quelled the uprising. A number of the insurgents were
killed and several American soldiers severely wounded. A large market
place was the first to burn. Between six and seven