"For these reasons the Department has not caused the article to be given to the press lest it might seem thereby to lend a sanction to views the expression of which it had not authorized." "The Department" was very scrupulous about even the appearance, at the American end of the line, of "lending a sanction" to Pratt's arrangement with Aguinaldo, while all the time it was knowingly permitting the latter to daily risk his own life and the lives of his countrymen on the faith of that very "arrangement," and it was so permitting this to be done because the "arrangement" was daily operating to reduce the number of American lives which it would be necessary to sacrifice in the final taking of Manila. The day the letter of reprimand was written our troop-ships were on the ocean, speeding toward the Philippines. And Aguinaldo and his people were fighting the Spaniards with the pent-up feeling of centuries impelling their little steel-jacketed messengers of death, thinking of "Cuba Libre," and dreaming of a Star of Philippine Independence risen in the Far East. Such are the circumstances from which the Filipino people derived their first impressions concerning the faith and honor of a strange people they had never theretofore seen, who succeeded the Spaniards as their overlords. Mr. Pratt was subsequently quietly separated from the consular service, and doubtless lived to regret that he had ever unloosed the fountains of his Alabama French on the Filipino colony of Singapore. CHAPTER II DEWEY AND AGUINALDO Armaments that thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake And monarchs tremble in their capitals. Childe Harold. The battle of Manila Bay was fought May 1, 1898. Until the thunder of Dewey's guns reverberated around the world, there was perhaps no part of it the American people knew less about than the Philippine Islands. We have all heard much of what happened after the battle, but comparatively few, probably, have ever had a glimpse at our great sailor while he was there in Hong Kong harbor, getting ready to go to sea to destroy the Spanish armada. Such a glimpse is modestly afforded by the Admiral in his testimony before the Senate Committee in 1902. [11] Asked by the Committee when he first heard from Aguinaldo and his people in 1898, Admiral Dewey said [12]: