There may be an occasional member of Congress who cannot help believing this, but he does not allow his ignorance to be moderated by any ingredient of information.

On the same day the above publication appeared there was given at Hongkong to the American Consul, Wildman, news of the “discovery of 20,000 rifles and 2,000,000 cartridges stored on lighters at Nankin by Filipinos and ready for shipment to the islands.  The American Minister promptly induced the Chinese authorities to impound the munitions, thus inflicting a hard blow to Aguinaldo.

“The extraordinary thing is that the Japanese government sold the arms to the regular agent of the Filipinos at Yokohama, although, for the sake of appearances, a form of auction was used.  The Japanese officials, it develops, offered 100,000 rifles, with machinery for loading and ammunition, to the Filipinos in September.

“Traitorous Americans here are aiding the insurgents to smuggle arms.  Agoncillo’s dispatches are leading the Filipinos to believe President McKinley intends to treat with them.”

The official correspondence of the American Consuls at Singapore, Manila and Hongkong with the State Department, proves that there was no treaty with Aguinaldo, no deception so far as our Government was concerned, and that he was a professor of Americanism, talking of annexation and a protectorate and his gratitude; and then a sulking and swollen little creature; as Wildman wrote, a spoiled child, requiring flatteries to keep him in a good humor.  Admiral Dewey was very careful never to promise Aguinaldo anything—­giving him some old guns and encouraging him to keep the Spaniards busy, but never presuming or allowing it to be assumed that he was speaking for our Government.  By way of Seattle we have an extract of a letter written by an insurgent officer at Hongkong in these terms: 

“More than 25,000 families have left Manila since we began our war on the Americans.  American soldiers are deserting and presenting themselves to our officers.  In order to get the American troops who were ordered to Iloilo on board the transport many of the men had first been made drunk, others were embarked forcibly.  They all protested against going, saying that they had come to fight Spaniards, not Filipinos.  After the boat got under way the men mutinied.  Many jumped overboard and swam ashore.  Those who remained began to wreck all parts of the vessel.”

The intensity of the folly of the Filipinos making war upon the United States is on exhibition in this letter, and it is serviceable as a measure of their intelligence.  It is with this equipment of elementary knowledge that Agoncillo is in Europe to solicit the intervention of the great powers for his country and asserts that he lost Dewey’s letters in a shipwreck.  He should exploit his mission in Madrid.