The insurgents fought in small groups and generally under local chieftains. Their advantage lay in their thorough knowledge of the country and in the sympathy of a part of the population and the fear of another part, for outlaws living in concealment and moving in the dark can often inspire a terror which regular troops under discipline fail to engender. The Americans could not trust the natives, as it was impossible to tell the truthful from the treacherous. Nevertheless it was a kind of fighting which gave unusual scope for that American individualism, so strongly represented in the army, to which the romance of precisely this sort of thing had drawn just the class of men best fitted for the work. Scouting, counter scouting, surprise attacks, and ambuscades formed the daily news transmitted from the front--affairs not of regiments and companies but of squads and individuals. When face to face, however, the Filipinos seldom stood their ground, and the American ingenuity and eager willingness to attempt any new thing gradually got the better of the local knowledge and unscrupulousness as to the laws of war which had at first, given the natives an advantage. Funston, now Brigadier General, and his "suicide squad" continued to play an active part, but a similar spirit of daring and ingenuity pervaded the whole army. Broken as were the Filipino field forces and widening as was the area of peace, the result of the island campaign was still uncertain. It rested upon two unknown quantities. The first was the nature of the Filipinos. Would they remain irreconcilable, ever ready to take advantage of a moment of weakness? If such were to be the case, we could look for no real conquest, but only a forcible occupation, which the people of the United States would never consent to maintain. The second unknown quantity was the American people themselves. Would they sustain the occupation sufficiently long to give a reasonable test of the possibilities of success?