JALANDONI, JULY 4, 1899

Exhibit 1257.

[Original in Spanish. Contemporary copy. P.I.R,. 1042.1]

JULY 4, 1899.

CONSIDERATIONS.

Of the Corps of the General Staff, regarding the advisability of suspending for the present hostilities in this province of Iloilo, proposed and recommended by the Bureau of information (Centro de Informacion) and approved by General Headquarters, during the period of diplomatic negotiations in Manila for the arrangement of an early peace.

1. The Corps of the General Staff of which I am the unworthy Chief, in the name of the army commends and admires the ingenious reasons set forth by the illustrious "Centro de Informacion" and the respected and superior General Headquarters in approving and advising the convenience of suspending military operations for the present.

2. This matter which is of the utmost importance and on which the happiness or the eternal misery of our future perhaps depends, is worthy of discussion and examination by our prominent men, in order that we may not some day lament the consequences of an insufficiently considered and hasty action.

3. Voicing the will of the army, whose military honor I watch over and protect, I am of the opinion that the said suspension would prejudice rather than favor our political position.

4. Any guarantee to assure us our immunities, based on promises not officially sanctioned by both belligerents, is null in the fullest sense of the word.

5. Considering this province of Iloilo in military matters as a departmental region under the jurisdiction of the Centrel Luzon, in questions of this nature upon which the future of our arms depends entirely, it cannot alone pass upon a matter of such great importance as is that of a suspension of hostilities not officially authorized by our Honorable President.

6. The diplomatic negotiations instituted by the Assembly held in the capital of the Archipelago the 21st ultimo, far from presaging an era of peace, entailing the felicity and welfare of this beloved soil, issue a program diametrically opposed to the standard of a custom which we have observed heretofore.

7. In the 7th basis proposed by said assembly, the last clause says: "To extend amnesty with the return of property, to establish the municipalities in accordance with the law of March 29th last." This would entail the recognition of the authority and sovereignty of the United States in these Islands, an essential requisite for the municipal regime to become a fact, a law.

8. The Civil Commission of the United States, called by antonomasia the precursor or carrier of that so much longed for peace, through the mouthpiece of its President, Mr. Taft, declares that it has received instructions from the constituted Government in America, to give the Military Governor General full liberty to increase and continue the military operations for an unlimited time, or at least until the first of September next, when believing probably that we would be convinced of the uselessness of our efforts against the potent force of their elements, we would lay down our arms and say that we had been conquered.

9. The Military Governor, General MacArthur, in his General Order of the 21st ultimo, extends amnesty under the condition of recognizing the authority and sovereignty of the United States in these Islands, and the delivery of rifles in good condition in exchange for a miserable pittance of $30.

10. The proclamations published both abroad by the Philippine Committees, the live organ of our Honorable President, as on the field of battle by our brave army of Luzon, advise us that all the diplomatic negotiations carried on by the said American Civil Commission are nothing but fictions based on alluring promises, for the purpose of winning the people by honeyed words, and they therefore advise us to continue the struggle either conquering or succumbing.

11. The political effect which the proposed suspension of hostilities might cause with regard to the nations which now look upon us with admiration, is that it would be interpreted as incapacity or weakness on our part; these effects would be very disastrous if an attempt should later be made to resume the military operations.

12. The great advantages which up to the present time have been observed in the regular progress of the guerrillas, excite the bellicose spirit of the soldiers who, if the guerrilla tactics were suspended, might again fall into so material and moral an abyss, that disorder and ruin would prevail, which misfortunes would bring us to a lamentable condition and would sully the brillancy of our arms.

13. If the suspension of hostilities should become a fact, who will answer to the Government of the Nation, to the world that is contemplating us and to public conscience, for the danger that our soldiers would run of being captured when, obeying the advice of said Bureau of Information, they would be obliged to avoid the attacks of the enemy?

In view of the consideraVons above mentioned, I regret to have to inform that superior and worthy headquarters, in order that the Bureau of Information may be informed, that I do not agree to the proposition of suspending hostilities as long as an official letter from or a program formed by our government of Luzon determining the matter, is not produced, and therefore, in the name of the Army, let it be made a matter of record that the Corps of the General Staff does not make itself responsible for the consequences which such a proposition may entai1.

For the Army of Panay, the acting Chief of the General Staff, Francisco Jalandoni. July 4, 1899.