Note 31 — Chapter XXVI · Murder As a Governmental Agency

In La Laguna province Cailles, who was now in command there, found himself compelled not only to fight the Americans in the field, but to combat their growing popularity in the towns, and he promptly inaugurated a reign of terror, ordering the death of any person whom he considered an undesirable. His victims were shot, bayoneted or boloed. If they took refuge within the American lines, they were followed and assassinated. In his book of letters sent,31 there appear the names of thirty-one men whom he ordered killed between August 20, 1900, and April, 1901. Some of these men were described as highwaymen or assassins, and probably deserved their fate, but others were classed as “spies” or “traitors,” and certainly did not, unless in this country where it is claimed that Aguinaldo had his people a unit at his back it was an offence worthy of death to prefer peace and order under American rule to conditions such as Insurgent rule fostered.