Admiral Dewey is strengthened by gunboats enough to keep out the Filipino supplies of arms picked up in Asia, and Congress may not be making a noise agreeable to our enemies for the rest of this year.  There is compensation in the omission.  There will be no European or American interference in the process of pacificating the military faction of Filipinos, who are ungrateful and murderous, during the rest of the last year of the century.

Hugh Brown, an Englishman, who arrived at Hongkong from Manila February 11, gives in detail evidence of the conspiracy of the insurgent swarms in attacking the American army.  He was at a circus where there were no natives when our soldiers were called out.  They behaved nobly, disarming natives, but not killing them.  There was mysterious shooting going on in the city “when an American shell struck a tree 200 yards away, and four natives dropped to the ground.  The trees were found to be full of hiding natives, using smokeless powder.”  Aguinaldo was fifty miles away and telegraphed Admiral Dewey that he was not to blame, and for God’s sake to stop the firing of the fleet.

Captain Frazer of London, late of the Imperial British forces, arrived at Vancouver direct from Hongkong March 8th, and gave this account of the declining health of Admiral Dewey: 

“The war at Manila will have to end soon or the life of the great American Admiral will be worth nothing.

“I dined with him at Manila within a month, and am convinced that if he is not relieved of the terrible strain imposed upon him he cannot last a month longer.  As he sat at the banquet table, surrounded by his staff, he looked to me like a dying man.  His hair is snowy white, his face ashen, and he ate hardly anything.

“I had the pleasure of a few minutes’ conversation with him when we retired to the smoking-room.  Having in mind his enfeebled appearance., I asked him if he thought of returning to America soon.

“’I would like to, but my work is by no means finished here.  When it is, and only then, will I return.’

“I am thoroughly convinced that only the Admiral’s indomitable will has kept him up so long.  The strain on him is terrible, and the climatic conditions have reduced him to a shadow.

“One of his officers said to me just before I left Manila: 

“’The war will be ended by the Admiral soon or it will end him.  No man can stand such a strain as he does in this climate and live long.’”

If this is to be literally accepted, and we may hope that it is overstated, there has been a distressingly unfavorable change within five months in the Admiral.  His trouble is said to be with his liver.  There is no question the strain upon him has been more wearing than the public have realized.  Last summer his anxieties afflicted him with insomnia at night, and he has not for a day since he left Hongkong in April been free from burdens of harrassing care.  His