A word just here, preliminary to this interview, concerning the personal equation of Aguinaldo, would seem to be advisable.
While I personally chased him and his outfit a good deal in the latter part of 1899, in the northern advance of a column of General Lawton’s Division from San Isidro across the Rio Grande de Pampanga, over the boggy passes of the Caraballa Mountains to the China Sea, and up the Luzon West Coast road, we never did catch him, and I never personally met him but once, and that was after he was captured in 1901. He was as insignificant looking physically as a Japanese diplomat. But his presence suggested, equally with that of his wonderful racial cousins who represent the great empire of the Mikado abroad, both a high order of intelligence and baffling reserve. And Major-General J. Franklin Bell, recently Chief of Staff, United States Army, who was a Major on General Merritt’s staff in 1898, having charge of the “Office of Military Information,” in a confidential report prepared for his chief dated August 29, 1898, “sizing up” the various insurgent leaders, in view of the then apparent probability of trouble with them, gives these notes on Aguinaldo, the head and front of the revolution: “Aguinaldo: Honest, sincere, and * * * a natural leader of men.”3
Any one acquainted with General Bell knows that he knows what he is talking about when he speaks of “a natural leader of men,” for he is one himself. Our ablest men in the early days were the first to cease considering the little brown soldiers a joke, and their government an opera-bouffe affair. General Bell also says in the same report that he, Aguinaldo, is undoubtedly endowed in a wonderful degree with “the power of creating among the people confidence in himself.” He was, indeed, the very incarnation of “the legitimate aspirations of” his people, to use one of the favorite phrases of his early state papers, and the faithful interpreter thereof. That was the secret of his power, that and a most remarkable talent for surrounding himself with an atmosphere of impenetrable reserve. This last used to make our young army officers suspect him of being what they called a “four-flusher,” which being interpreted means a man who is partially successful in making people think him far more important than he really is. But we have seen General Bell’s estimate. And the day Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the United States, in 1901, General MacArthur, then commanding the American forces in the Philippines, signalized the event by liberating 1000 Filipino prisoners of war. General Funston, the man who captured him in 1901, says in Scribner’s Magazine for November, 1911, “He is a man of many excellent qualities and * * * far and away the best Filipino I was ever brought in contact with.”
Aguinaldo was born in 1869. To-day, 1912, he is farming about twenty miles out of Manila in his native province of Cavite; has always scrupulously observed his oath of allegiance aforesaid; occasionally comes to town and plays chess with Governor-General Forbes; and in all respects has played for the last ten years with really fine dignity the rôle of Chieftain of a Lost Cause on which his all had been staked. He was a school-teacher at Cavite at one time, but is not a college graduate, and so far as mere book education is concerned, he is not a highly educated man. Whether or not he can give the principal parts of the principal irregular Greek verbs I do not know, but his place in the history of his country, and in the annals of wars for independence, cannot, and for the honor of human nature should not, be a small one. Dr. Rizal, the Filipino patriot whose picture we print on the Philippine postage stamps, and who was shot for sedition by the Spaniards before our time out there, was what Colonel Roosevelt would jocularly call “one of these darned literary fellows.” He was a sort of “Sweetness and Light” proposition, who only wrote about “The Rights of Man,” and finally let the Spaniards shoot him—stuck his head in the lion’s mouth, so to speak. Aguinaldo was a born leader of men, who knew how to put the fear of God into the hearts of the ancient oppressors of his people. Mr. Pratt’s own story of how he earned his serenade is preserved to future ages in the published records of the State Department.4 We will now attempt to summarize, not so eloquently as Mr. Pratt, but more briefly, the manner of its earning, the serenade itself, and its resultant effects both upon the personal fortunes of Mr. Pratt and upon Filipino confidence in American official assurances.
It was on the evening of Saturday, April 23, 1898, that Mr. Pratt was confidentially informed of Aguinaldo’s arrival at Singapore, incognito. “Being aware,” says Mr. Pratt, “of the great prestige of General Aguinaldo with the insurgents, and that no one, either at home or abroad, could exert over them the same influence and control that he could, I determined at once to see him.” Accordingly, he did see him the following Sunday morning, the 24th.
At this interview, it was arranged that if Admiral Dewey, then at Hong Kong with his squadron awaiting orders, should so desire, Aguinaldo should proceed to Hong Kong to arrange for co-operation of the insurgents at Manila with our naval forces in the prospective operations against the Spaniards.
Accordingly, that Sunday, Mr. Pratt telegraphed Dewey through our consul at Hong Kong:
Aguinaldo, insurgent leader, here. Will come Hong Kong arrange with Commodore for general co-operation insurgents Manila if desired. Telegraph.
Admiral Dewey (then Commodore) replied:
Tell Aguinaldo come soon as possible.
This message was received late Sunday night, April 24th, and was at once communicated to Aguinaldo. Mr. Pratt then did considerable bustling around for the benefit of his new-found ally, whom, with his aide-de-camp and private secretary, all under assumed names he “succeeded in getting off,” to use his phrase, by the British steamer Malacca, which left Singapore for Hong Kong, April 26th. In the letter reporting all this to the State Department, Mr. Pratt adds that he trusts this action “in arranging for his [Aguinaldo’s] direct co-operation with the commander of our forces” will meet with the Government’s approval. A little later Mr. Pratt sends the State Department a copy of the Singapore Free Press