Aguinaldo came to see me. I said, "Well now, go ashore there; we have got our forces at the arsenal at Cavite, go ashore and start your army." He came back in the course of a few hours and said, "I want to leave here; I want to go to Japan." I said, "Don't give it up, Don Emilio." I wanted his help, you know. He did not sleep ashore that night; he slept on board the ship. The next morning he went on shore, still inside my lines, and began recruiting men. Enterprises of great pith and moment have often turned awry and lost the name of action for lack of a word spoken in season by a stout heart. Admiral Dewey spoke the word, and Aguinaldo, his protege, did the rest. "Then he began operations toward Manila, and he did wonderfully well. He whipped the Spaniards battle after battle * * *." [17] In fact, the desperate bravery of those little brown men after they got warmed up reminds one of the Japs at the walls of Peking, in the advance of the Allied Armies to the relief of the foreign legations during the Boxer troubles of 1900. Admiral Dewey told the Senate Committee in 1902 that Aguinaldo actually wanted to put one of the old smooth-bore Spanish guns he found at Cavite on a barge and have him (Dewey) tow it up in front of Manila so he could attack the city with it. "I said, 'Oh no, no; we can do nothing until our troops come.'" Otherwise he was constantly advising and encouraging him. Why? Let the Admiral answer: "I knew that what he was doing--driving the Spaniards in--was saving our troops." [17] In other words they were daily dying that American soldiers might live, on the faith of the reasons for which we had declared war, and trusting, because of the words of our consuls and the acts of our admiral, in the sentiment subsequently so nobly expressed by Mr. McKinley in his instructions to the Paris peace Commissioners: The United States in making peace should follow the same high rule of conduct which guided it in facing war. [18] "I did not know what the action of our Government would be," said the Admiral to the Committee, [19] adding that he simply used his best judgment on the spot at the time; presumably supposing that his Government would do the decent thing by these people who considered us their liberators. "They looked on us as their liberators," said he. [20] "Up to the time the army came he (Aguinaldo) did everything I requested. He was most obedient; whatever I told him to do he did. I saw him almost daily. [21] I had not much to do with him after the army came." [22]