“Any person who fights for his country has absolute power to kill any one not friendly to our cause.”[1]
Aguinaldo armed not only ignorant and irresponsible people, but thieves, outlaws and murderers, and turned them loose on the common people with blanket authority to kill whomsoever they would, and they promptly proceeded to exercise it. “Dukut”[2] stretched out its bloody hand even in Manila, under the very eye of American officers, and as often as not struck down wholly innocent victims.
Aguinaldo was not alone in his views on the subject of murder. Felipe Agoncillo, long secretary of the Hongkong junta, and official representative of the Insurgent government in Europe and the United States, wrote him on August 1, 1898, from Hongkong, suggesting that he kill the Spanish prisoners “if the country requires” that this be done, and adding, “if you deem it wise you should secretly issue an order to kill the friars that they may capture.”[3]
Obviously Aguinaldo did not deem it wise to order the murder of the Spanish prisoners as a whole, nor that of the friars as a whole.
The following letter, marked “confidential,” addressed to his cousin Baldomero Aguinaldo, for a time the Insurgent secretary of war, tells a significant tale of the course finally decided upon:—
“Filipino Republic,
“Office of the Military Governor,
“Malolos, February 17, 1899.
“Señor Secretary of War:—
“Referring to your note in regard to an unhealthy town or place in the province of Nueva Ecija fit for the concentration there of the friars; beside the town of Bongabong there is no good place except the town of La Paz in the province of Tarlac, because, according to my observation, even the persons born there are attacked by malarial fever and ague and if they are strangers very few will escape death.
“Your always faithful subordinate,