After General Lawton had finished his part of the round-up, he had a final conference with General Young on November 18th at Pozorubio, which is near the northeastern border of the plain, bade him good-bye, and soon afterward went south to dispose of a body of insurgents who were giving trouble near Manila. It was in this last expedition that he lost his life at San Mateo about twelve miles out of Manila on December 19, 1899. The first of the two purposes of the great Wheaton-Lawton-MacArthur northern advance, viz., the dispersion of the insurgent army of northern Luzon had been duly accomplished. The other purpose had failed of realization. Aguinaldo had not been captured. He escaped through our lines. Such is in brief the story of the destruction of the Aguinaldo government in 1899 by General Otis, or rather by Mr. Root. But the trouble about it was that it would not stay destroyed. It "played possum" for a while, the honorable President retiring to permanent headquarters in the mountains "with his government concealed about his person," as Senator Lodge put it later in a summary of the case for the Administration, before the Senate, in the spring of 1900. If the distinguished and accomplished senator from Massachusetts, in adding at that time to the gaiety of nations, had had access to a certain diary kept by one of Aguinaldo's personal staff throughout that period, subsequently submitted, in 1902, to the Senate Committee of that year, he could have swelled the innocuous merriment with such cheery entries as "Here we tightened our belts and went to bed on the ground"--the time alluded to being midnight after a hard day's march without food, the place, some chilly mountain top up which the "Honorable Presidente" and party had that day been guided by the ever-present and ever-willing paisano (fellow countryman) of the immediate neighborhood--whatever the neighborhood--to facilitate them in eluding General Young's hard riding cavalry and scouts. The writer has no quarrel with Senator Lodge's witticism above quoted, having derived on reading it, in full measure, the suggestive amusement it was intended to afford. It is true that about all then left of the "Honorable Presidente's" government, for the nonce, was in fact concealed about his person. It was of a nature easily portable. It needed neither bull trains, pack ponies, nor coolies to carry it. It consisted solely of the loyal support of the whole people, who looked to him as the incarnation of their aspirations. Said General MacArthur to the Senate Committee in 1902 concerning Aguinaldo: "He was the incarnation of the feelings of the Filipinos." "Senator Culberson: 'And represented the Filipino people?' General MacArthur: 'I think so; yes'." [265] We of the 8th Army Corps did not know what a complete structure the Philippine republic of 1898-9 was until, having shot it to pieces, we had abundant leisure to examine the ruins. To admit,