To this request the commissioners appointed by General Aguinaldo made response that in their opinion the aspirations, purposes, and desires of the Philippine people might be summed up in two words "Absolute Independence." Of course even General Otis does not reproduce this laconic answer as part of his petulant summing up of how little the Filipinos knew, before the outbreak of February 4th, as to what they really wanted. He merely alludes to it as being of record elsewhere. It is one oL the various pieces of jetsam and flotsam that have floated from the sea of those great events to the shores of government publications since. The minutes of these meetings may be found among the hearings before the Senate Committee of 1902. [182] General Otis's report complains that Aguinaldo's commissioners did not know what they wanted, "could not give any satisfactory explanation" of the "measure of protection" they wanted, they having declared that they would greatly prefer the United States to establish a protectorate over them to keep them from being annexed by some other power. But he fails to state, which is a fact shown by the minutes of the meeting of January 14 (p. 2721), that the Filipino commissioners did say that this was a question which would only be reached between their government and ours when the latter should agree to officially recognize the former. To quote their exact language, which is rather clumsily translated, they said: "The aspiration of the Filipino people is the independence with the restrictions resulting from the conditions which its government may agree with the American, when the latter agree to officially recognize the former." It is perfectly clear from the voluminous minutes of the proceedings that the Filipinos were only seeking some declaration of the purpose of our government which would satisfy their people that the programme was something more than a mere change of masters. "They begged," says General Otis (p. 82), "for some tangible concession from the United States Government--one which they could present to the people and which might serve to allay excitement." General Otis of course had no authority to bind the government and so could make no promise. But the day this Otis-Aguinaldo parleying board had its second meeting, January 11th, and probably with no more knowledge of its existence than the reader has of what is going on in the Fiji Islands at the moment he reads these lines, Senator Bacon introduced in the United States Senate some resolutions which were precisely the medicine the case required and precisely the thing the Filipinos were pleading for. These resolutions concluded thus: