Note 23 — Chapter XXVI · Murder As a Governmental Agency

And now let us briefly review conditions in Luzón. Here many of the common people were at first hostile to the Americans, but flesh and blood could not endue what they had to suffer at the hands of vicious Insurgent officers and ignorant soldiers, and ultimately, having learned by experience that Americans were not the incarnate fiends which they had been led to expect to find them, they began to turn to them for help. And the answer of the Insurgent leaders was everywhere the same,—death. On March 20, 1900, Tinio ordered the killing of all officials who did not report to the nearest guerilla commander the movements and plans of the American troops.23