The report of the United States Philippine Commission for 1903 gives the population of Manila as 221,000, while in 1900 it had been 260,000. Does this mean that there had been a holocaust in Manila? Not at all. It means only that the thousands of Filipinos who had sought the protection of the American forces there during the period when they feared their own soldiers in the provinces had mostly returned to their homes. During the disturbed period in Batangas great numbers of people took refuge in other and more peaceful regions. Some of them returned later; others did not. Blount further quotes a statement in the 1901 report of the Provincial Secretary of Batangas to the effect that: "The mortality, caused no longer by the war, but by disease, such as malaria and dysentery, has reduced to a little over 200,000 the more than 300,000 inhabitants which in former years the province had." [431] Apart from the fact that these figures, showing a mortality of a hundred thousand from disease alone, are hardly consistent with those quoted by Blount as showing a decrease in population during a longer period of only fifty-four thousand four hundred and forty-seven, it is not apparent why Americans should be charged with deaths due to malaria or dysentery, since no systematic effort to rid Batangas of these ills had ever previously been made, and the very thing which then prevented the adoption of the measures subsequently so successfully put forth to this end was the disorderly conduct of the people themselves. As a simple matter of fact, however, there was no such dreadful mortality from these diseases at this time. Malaria has never been especially bad in this province, and even cholera, which swept it during the period in question and is far more readily communicated than is dysentery, caused only twenty-three hundred and ninety-nine known deaths. In the end peace was established and prosperity followed in its wake. This result was brought about in part by the efficient activity of the armed forces of the United States and in part by the efforts of the first and second Philippine Commissions. [432] CHAPTER X Mr. Bryan and Independence In order to bring home to some of my Democratic and Anti-Imperialist friends the unreliable character of the testimony of even the very high officers of the so-called Philippine Republic, I here quote certain extracts from the Insurgent records, showing the important part played, doubtless unwittingly, by Mr. William Jennings Bryan in Philippine politics during the war. The first of these might properly have been considered in the chapter entitled "Was Independence Promised?" Others are instructive in that they show the use made of false news in bolstering up the Insurgent cause, and might with propriety have been included in the chapter on "The Conduct of the War." I have thought it best to keep them by themselves. Further comment on them would seem to be superfluous.