Aguinaldo promptly met General Otis's proclamation of January 4th by a counter-proclamation put out the very next day, in which he indignantly protested against the United States assuming sovereignty over the Islands. "Even the women," says General Otis (p. 70), "in a document numerously signed by them, gave me to understand that after the men were all killed off they were prepared to shed their patriotic blood for the liberty and independence of their country." General Otis actually intended this last as a sly touch of humor. But when we recollect Mr. Millet's description (Chapter IV. ante) of the women coming to the trenches and cooking rice for the men while the Filipinos were slowly drawing their cordon ever closer about the doomed Spanish garrison of Manila in July and August previous, fighting their way over the ground between them and the besieged main body of their ancient enemies inch by inch, while Admiral Dewey blockaded them by sea, General Otis's sly touch of humor loses some of its slyness. "The insurgent army also," he says (p. 70), "was especially affected * * * and only awaited an opportunity to demonstrate its invincibility in war with the United States troops * * * whom it had commenced to insult and charge with cowardice." The benighted condition of the insurgents in this regard was directly traceable to the Iloilo fiasco. It was that, principally, which made the insurgents so foolishly over-confident and the subsequent slaughter of them so tremendous. Further on in his report General Otis says, with perceptible petulance, in summing up his case against the Filipinos: The pretext that the United States was about to substitute itself for Spain * * * was resorted to and had its effect on the ignorant masses. Speaking of his own modified version of the Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, General Otis says (p. 76): No sooner was it published than it brought out a virtual declaration of war from, in this instance at least, the wretchedly advised President Aguinaldo, who, on January 5th, issued the following