“Receive caution news hostilities Manila discredited here denied Filipino circles supposed political move influence vote Senate to-day any ease insignificant skirmish due intentional provocation.

“Bray.” [232]

The extracts from the Insurgent records above quoted leave no escape from the conclusion that the outbreak of hostilities which occurred on February 4, 1899, had been carefully prepared for and was deliberately precipitated by the Filipinos themselves.

Blount says:—­

“It would be simply wooden-headed to affirm that they ever expected to succeed in a war with us.” [233]

It may have been wooden-headed for the Filipinos to expect this, but expect it they certainly did.  We have seen how they held their soldiers in check until after Spain had been ousted from the Philippines by the Treaty of Paris as they had originally planned to do.  It now only remained to carry out the balance of their original plan to get rid of the Americans in one way or another.

General Otis states that “when Aguinaldo had completed his preparations for attack he prepared the outlines of his declaration of war, the full text of which was published at Malolos on the evening, and very shortly after, hostilities began.  This declaration was circulated in Manila on the morning of February 5.” [234]

The Insurgents brought down upon themselves the punishment which they received on February 4 and 5.

Blount has stated [235] that if the resolutions of Senator Bacon introduced on January 11, 1899, had passed, we never should have had any war with the Filipinos.  The resolutions in question concluded thus:—­

“That the United States hereby disclaim any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said islands except for the pacification thereof, and assert their determination when an independent government shall have been duly erected therein entitled to recognition as such, to transfer to said government, upon terms which shall be reasonable and just, all rights secured under the cession by Spain, and to thereupon leave the government and control of the islands to their people.”

I must take issue with Blount as to the effect which these resolutions might have had if passed.  The Insurgents felt themselves to be fully competent to bring about such pacification of the islands as they deemed necessary.  At the time the resolutions were presented in the Senate their soldiers were straining at the leash, ready to attack their American opponents upon the most slender excuse.  Aguinaldo himself could not have held them much longer, and it is not impossible that they got away from him as it was.  They would have interpreted the passage of the Bacon resolutions as a further evidence of weakness, and hastened their attack.  As we have seen, “war, war, war” was what they wanted.

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.