Blount has endeavoured to shift the responsibility for the outbreak
of hostilities to the United States by claiming that certain words
italicized by him in what he calls the "Benevolent Assimilation
Proclamation" were necessarily, to the Insurgents, "fighting
words." The expressions referred to have to do with the establishment
of United States sovereignty and the exercise of governmental control
in the Philippine Islands.
These words were not "fighting words," the Insurgent policy being,
as I have shown by the records, to consider the acceptance of a
protectorate or of annexation in the event that it did not prove
possible to negotiate absolute independence, or probable that the
American troops could be driven from the islands.
The growing confidence of the Insurgents in their ability to whip
the cowardly Americans, rather than any fixed determination on their
part to push a struggle for independence to the bitter end, led to
their attack.
CHAPTER V
Insurgent Rule and the Wilcox-Sargent Report
The Good Book says, "By their fruits ye shall know them, whether
they be good or evil," and it seems proper to apply this test to the
Insurgents and their government.
The extraordinary claim has been advanced that the United States
destroyed a republic in the Philippines and erected an oligarchy on
its ruins.
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