Aguinaldo has made the following statements in his “Reseña Verídica”:—
“... We, the Filipinos, would have received said commission, as honourable agents of the great America, with demonstrations of true kindness and entire adhesion. The commissioners would have toured over all our provinces, seeing and observing at close range order and tranquillity, in the whole of our territory. They would have seen the fields tilled and planted. They would have examined our Constitution and public administration, in perfect peace, and they would have experienced and enjoyed that ineffable charm of our Oriental manner, a mixture of abandon and solicitude, of warmth and of frigidity, of confidence and of suspiciousness, which makes our relations with foreigners change into a thousand colours, agreeable to the utmost.
“Ah! but this landscape suited neither General Otis nor the Imperialists! For their criminal intention it was better that the American commissioners should find war and desolation in the Philippines, perceiving from the day of their arrival the fetid stench emitted by the mingled corpses of Americans and Filipinos. For their purposes it was better that that gentleman, Mr. Schurman, President of the Commission, could not leave Manila, limiting himself to listen to the few Filipinos, who, having yielded to the reasonings of gold, were partisans of the Imperialists. It was better that the commission should contemplate the Philippine problem through conflagrations, to the whiz of bullets, on the transverse light of all the unchained passions, in order that it might not form any exact or complete opinion of the natural and proper limits of said problem. Ah! it was better, in short, that the commission should leave defeated in not having secured peace, and would blame me and the other Filipinos, when I and the whole Filipino people anxiously desired that peace should have been secured before rather than now, but an honourable and worthy peace for the United States and for the Philippine Republic.”[4]
These statements, made to deceive the public, make interesting reading in the light of our present knowledge as to the purposes and plans of Aguinaldo and his associates.
On our arrival at Yokohama we were promptly informed by a secretary from the United States Legation that no less a personage than Marquis Ito had been in frequent communication with the Filipinos since 1894, that they had been looking to him for advice and support, and that he had interested himself in the present situation sufficiently to come to the American minister and offer to go to the Philippines, not in any sense as an agent of the United States, but as a private individual, and to use his influence in our behalf. His contention was that the then existing conditions resulted from misunderstandings.
He said that Americans did not understand Asiatics, but he was an Asiatic himself and did understand the Filipinos, and thought that he could settle the whole affair. The minister had cabled to Washington for instructions. Naturally the offer was not accepted.
I was reminded, by this extraordinary incident, of a previous occurrence. I spent the month of March, 1893, in Tokio when returning from my second visit to the Philippines, and was kindly invited to inspect the zoölogical work at the Imperial University. When I visited the institution for that purpose, I was questioned very closely on the islands, their people and their resources. The gentlemen who interrogated me may have been connected with the university, but I doubt it.
We reached Hongkong on February 22. Here I had an interview with Dr. Apacible of the junta, while Mr. Schurman visited Canton. Apacible told me that the Filipinos wanted an independent republic under an American protectorate. Pressed for the details of their desires, he said that “the function of a protector is to protect.” Further than that he could not go. I tried to convince him of the hopelessness of the course the Filipinos were then pursuing and of the kindly intentions of my government, but felt that I made no impression on him.
We arrived at Manila on March 4, 1899, too late to land. Firebugs were abroad. We watched a number of houses burn, and heard the occasional crackle of rifle fire along the line of the defences around the city. The next morning there was artillery fire for a time at San Pedro Macáti. Everywhere were abundant evidences that the war was on.
This left little for us to do at the moment except to inform ourselves as to conditions, especially as Colonel Denby had not yet arrived, and General Otis was overwhelmed with work and anxiety.