Note 13 — Chapter III · Anderson and Aguinaldo

This Dewey-Anderson call on Aguinaldo was on July 1st. Admiral Dewey now began to foresee that the Washington programme was going to put him in an awkward position. So he began to take Aguinaldo more seriously. On July 4th, he wired Washington: “Aguinaldo proclaimed himself President of the Revolutionary Republic on July 1st.”13 It was on July 7th that Admiral Dewey captured 1300 armed Spanish prisoners, the garrison of Isla la Grande, off Olongapo, and turned them over to the forces of the Aguinaldo government because he had no way to keep them.14 Was not that taking that government a bit seriously? How wholly unauthorized by the facts was this of “not taking it seriously,” on the part of “The Liberator of the Filipinos,”15 the immortal victor of Manila Bay, who two months before had taught the nation the magnitude of its power for good, in a cause as righteous as the crusades of old, and more sensible!