This extract shows how easy it then was for any man of determination to acquire a following, especially if he could dispose of a few rifles.  It also gives an excellent idea of the methods employed by the Insurgents in dealing with those who opposed their rule.

General Fred D. Grant once told me, with much amusement, of an interesting experience during a fight on Mt.  Arayat in Pampanga.  His men took a trench and captured some of its occupants.  Several of these were impressed as guides and required to show the attacking forces the locations of other trenches.  At first they served unwillingly, but presently became enthusiastic and rushed the works of their quondam fellow-soldiers in the van of the American attack.  Finally they begged for guns.  Grant added that he could start from Bacolor for San Fernando any morning with a supply of rifles and pick up volunteers enough to capture the place, and that on the return trip he could get enough more to attack Bacolor!

Pangasinan

And now we come to Pangasinan, the most populous province of Luzon, and the third in the Philippines in number of inhabitants.

“In July, 1898, the officer in Dagupan wrote to the commanding general of Tarlac Province that he would like to know whom he was required to obey, as there were so many officials of all ranks who gave him orders that it was impossible for him to know where he stood.” [263]

In a letter dated August 17, 1898, to Aguinaldo, Benito Legarda complained that a bad impression had been produced by the news from Dagupan that when the Insurgents entered there, after many outrages committed upon the inmates of a girls’ school, every officer had carried off those who suited him. [264]

What should we say if United States troops entered the town of Wellesley and raped numerous students at the college, the officers subsequently taking away with them the young ladies who happened to suit them?  Yet things of this sort hardly caused a ripple in the country then under the Insurgent flag, and I learned of this particular incident by accident, although I have known Legarda for years.

I quote the following general description of conditions in Pangasinan from a letter addressed by Cecilio Apostol to General Aguinaldo on July 6, 1898:—­

“You probably know that in the Province of Pangasinan, of one of the towns in which your humble servant is a resident, the Spanish flag through our good fortune has not flown here for the past few months, since the few Spaniards who lived here have concentrated in Dagupan, a place not difficult of attack, as is said.