"The search was continued, and finally one of the original orders, a translation of which immediately precedes this note, was produced by Dr. Manuel Xeres y Burgos who was then a surgeon employed in the Bilibid prison in Manila and who had been an officer in the territorial militia of that city. Doctor Burgos wrote in July, 1901, to Colonel Crowder, military secretary to the Military governor of the Philippines, that if he gave him all the details in regard to the means he had employed in obtaining the document, it would require many sheets of paper, and the story would seem like a novel to those who only superficially knew the customs of the Philippines. He said that 'a few days after the beginning of hostilities we were given to read an order of a mysterious character; we were not allowed to take a copy thereof or to keep it in our possession, probably from fear of some treachery. However the bearer told me that several copies had been made which were to be sent to all the districts in which the "Filipino militia" had been distributed. The chief of the latter were the men called upon to execute said order. You know that, thank God, it was not executed, not only through lack of arms, but also because most of the chiefs who were in Manila felt a repugnance to execute such a barbarous and foolish order, which, had it been attempted, would have been the cause of the extermination of all the Filipinos who were within the American lines as a just reprisal for such an atrocious order. "'Luckily, not only the savage measure prescribed was never carried into execution, but it was impossible to attack the American army, the men who had been detailed to do it in Manila having only a few hundred bolos as arms, and the chiefs of the militia understood that with such arms they could not think of resisting the rifles and cannon of the Americans. "'Up to the middle of April, 1899, several Filipinos who came from the lines declared that General Luna had sentenced us to death for having disobeyed that terrible order. We were 14 who were considered as traitors to our country, and we were precisely those who had worked for the release of the prisoners in whom we had the greatest confidence, answering for them to the authorities and exposing ourselves to get into trouble if they had broken their word. "'We had decided to collect all papers which referred to certain facts, in order to show some day who were those who had lent real services to the country, and we resolved to try and find the document which was the principal cause of the danger which had threatened us at that time.