While I personally chased him and his outfit a good deal in the latter part of 1899, in the northern advance of a column of General Lawton's Division from San Isidro across the Rio Grande de Pampanga, over the boggy passes of the Caraballa Mountains to the China Sea, and up the Luzon West Coast road, we never did catch him, and I never personally met him but once, and that was after he was captured in 1901. He was as insignificant looking physically as a Japanese diplomat. But his presence suggested, equally with that of his wonderful racial cousins who represent the great empire of the Mikado abroad, both a high order of intelligence and baffling reserve. And Major-General J. Franklin Bell, recently Chief of Staff, United States Army, who was a Major on General Merritt's staff in 1898, having charge of the "Office of Military Information," in a confidential report prepared for his chief dated August 29, 1898, "sizing up" the various insurgent leaders, in view of the then apparent probability of trouble with them, gives these notes on Aguinaldo, the head and front of the revolution: "Aguinaldo: Honest, sincere, and * * * a natural leader of men." [4] Any one acquainted with General Bell knows that he knows what he is talking about when he speaks of "a natural leader of men," for he is one himself. Our ablest men in the early days were the first to cease considering the little brown soldiers a joke, and their government an opera-bouffe affair. General Bell also says in the same report that he, Aguinaldo, is undoubtedly endowed in a wonderful degree with "the power of creating among the people confidence in himself." He was, indeed, the very incarnation of "the legitimate aspirations of" his people, to use one of the favorite phrases of his early state papers, and the faithful interpreter thereof. That was the secret of his power, that and a most remarkable talent for surrounding himself with an atmosphere of impenetrable reserve. This last used to make our young army officers suspect him of being what they called a "four-flusher," which being interpreted means a man who is partially successful in making people think him far more important than he really is. But we have seen General Bell's estimate. And the day Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the United States, in 1901, General MacArthur, then commanding the American forces in the Philippines, signalized the event by liberating 1000 Filipino prisoners of war. General Funston, the man who captured him in 1901, says in Scribner's Magazine for November, 1911, "He is a man of many excellent qualities and * * * far and away the best Filipino I was ever brought in contact with."