Asked as to how big a force Aguinaldo had under arms then and afterwards, the Admiral said maybe 25,000, adding, by way of illustration of the pluck, vim, and patriotism of his valuable new-made friends, "They could have had any number of men; it was just a question of arming them. They could have had the whole population." [26] Eleven months after that, when we captured the first insurgent capital, Malolos, General MacArthur, the ablest and one of the bravest generals we ever set to slaughtering Filipinos, said to a newspaper man just after a bloody and of course victorious fight: "When I first started in against these rebels, I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction." "I did not like," said this veteran of three wars, who was always "on the job" in action out there as elsewhere, "I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon * * * was opposed to us * * * but after having come thus far, and having been brought much in contact with both insurrectos and amigos, I have been reluctantly compelled to believe that the Filipino masses are loyal to Aguinaldo and the government which he heads". [27] Is it at all unlikely that Admiral Dewey did in fact say of his proteges, the Filipinos, to an American visiting Manila in January, 1899, three or four weeks before the war broke out, "Rather than make a war of conquest upon the Filipino people, I would up anchor and sail out of the harbor." [28] If Dewey and MacArthur were right, then, about the situation around Manila in 1898, it was a case of an entire people united in an aspiration, and looking to us for its fulfilment. When the American troops reached the Philippines and perfected their battle formations about Manila, and the order to advance was given, they did "march in," to use Admiral Dewey's expression above quoted. But they did not let the Filipinos have a finger in the pie. The conquest and retention of the islands had then been determined upon. The Admiral's reasons for saddling his protege with a series of bloody battles and a long and arduous campaign are certainly stated with the proverbial frankness of the sailorman: "I wanted his help, you know." But what was Aguinaldo to get out of the transaction, from the Dewey point of view?