the visitors were cordially welcomed by Colonel Tirona, and much feted. While they were there, Tirona transferred his authority to a civil regime. Says Paymaster Wilcox: The steamer Saturnus, which had left the harbor the day before our arrival, brought news from Hong Kong papers that the Senators from the United States at the Congress at Paris favored the independence of the islands with an American protectorate. Colonel Tirona considered the information of sufficient reliability to justify him in regarding Philippine Independence as assured, and warfare in the Islands at an end. He then goes on to describe the inauguration of civil government in Cagayan province. I hope all this will not weary the American reader. It was vividly interesting to me when I read it for the first time thirteen years afterward, in 1911, because it was such unexpected information, so surprising. It will be equally interesting to all other Americans who participated in putting down the subsequent insurrection and in setting up the Taft civil government in that same valley three years later. I was in that town, for a similar purpose, with Governor Taft in 1901, after a bloody war which almost certainly would not have occurred had the Paris Peace Commission known the conditions then existing, just like this, all over Luzon and the Visayan Islands. Of course the Southern Islands were a little slower. But as Luzon goes, so go the rest. The rest of the archipelago is but the tail to the Luzon kite. Luzon contains 4,000,000 of the 8,000,000 people out there, and Manila is to the Filipino people what Paris is to the French and to France. Luzon is about the size of Ohio, and the other six islands that really matter, [138] are in size mere little Connecticuts and Rhode Islands, and in population mere Arizonas or New Mexicos. Describing the ceremonies of the inauguration of civil government in Cagayan, the Wilcox-Sargent report to Admiral Dewey says: The Presidentes of all the towns in the province were present at the ceremony. * * * Colonel Tirona made a short speech. * * * He then handed the staff of office to the man who had been elected "Jefe Provincial" [Governor of the Province]. This officer also made a speech in which he thanked the military forces * * * and assured them that the work they had begun would be perpetuated by the people, where every man, woman, and child stood ready to take up arms to defend their newly won liberty and to resist with the last drop of their blood the attempt of any nation whatever to bring them back to their former state of dependence. He then knelt, placed his hand on an open Bible, and took the oath of office. [139]