It was enacted for the misleading of Americans
rather than for the benefit of the Filipinos.
While the government of Aguinaldo was called a republic, it was in
fact a Tagalog military oligarchy in which the great mass of the
people had no share. Their duty was only to give soldiers for the
army and labourers for the fields, and to obey without question the
orders they received from the military heads of their provinces.
There is no cause for vain regrets. We did not destroy a republic in
the Philippines. There never was anything there to destroy which even
remotely resembled a republic.
CHAPTER IX
The Conduct of the War
It is not my intention to attempt to write a history of the war which
began on February 4, 1899, nor to discuss any one of its several
campaigns. I propose to limit myself to a statement of the conditions
under which it was conducted, and a description of the two periods
into which it may be divided.
From the outset the Insurgent soldiers were treated with marked
severity by their leaders. On June 17, 1898, Aguinaldo issued an order
to the military chiefs of certain towns in Cavite providing that a
soldier wasting ammunition should be punished with twelve lashes for
a first offence, twenty-four for a second, and court-martialled and
"severely punished" for a third.
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