country concerning the military situation, and took the advice of a few native Tories, or Copperheads, of wealth, who had never really been in sympathy with the insurrection and who, flocking about him as soon as he arrived, told him what he so longed to be told, viz., that the war did not represent the wishes of the people but was kept up by "a conspiracy of assassination" of all who did not contribute to it either in service or money. He thereupon decided that the men who told him this really represented the voice of the people, and that the men in the field who had then been keeping up the struggle for independence for sixteen months, in season and out of season, were simply "a Mafia on a very large scale." Consequently the Taft Commission had been in the islands less than three months when Secretary of War Root at Washington was giving the widest possible publicity to cablegrams from them, such as that dated August 21, 1900, mentioned in the preceding chapter, conveying the glad tidings that "large number of people long for peace and are willing to accept government under United States" [324]; and by November next thereafter, the "large number" had grown to "a great majority," and the "willing" to "entirely willing." The November statement was: A great majority of the people long for peace and are entirely willing to accept the establishment of a government under the supremacy of the United States. [325] Yet, as we saw in the preceding chapter, the real situation in the Philippines at this very time was described four years later at the Republican National Convention of 1904 by Mr. Root thus: When the last national convention met, over 70,000 American soldiers from more than 500 stations held a still vigorous enemy in check.