Aguinaldo

A NOTE TO THE READER

As I think of the bullet-pierced bodies of our brave American boys prone on the wastes of Luzon's sun-beaten rice-fields, or sleeping their last sleep in the wilds of the jungle, it is difficult to write impassionately of the enemy behind the gun.

And yet, as I recall those fearful scenes across the trench, and see the ground strewn with silent brown forms, gaping with wounds, horrible in death, the victims of human cupidity and mistaken leadership, my heart softens with conflicting emotions.

For I hear again the rattle of musketry, the rumble of cannon, the whir of bullets, and I remember that this is the final arbiter in the

destinies of races, the tie that binds us im- . mutably to the barbaric past and points significantly to the unwritten future; then sorrow displaces passion, despair tramples on sadness,

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A NOTE TO THE READER

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sorrow for the victims of strife, despair of the signs of progress.

It

The realities of war and its horrors are fresh within me. The vivid scenes of the battlefield are engraven forever upon my memory. So, to those who follow these lines I would say, my pen is earnest, and my purport sincere. is but a narrative I tell; not as an attorney gathers up the thread of evidence, not as a preacher espouses a cause, but only as a witness and student of things and their meanings, full of sympathy for the vanquished, impartiality toward the victors, and unprejudiced by racial conditions, political considerations, or personal ambitions.

If this spirit is manifest through the narrative, I have succeeded in my efforts; if it is lacking, I have failed utterly. The reader must judge.

NEW YORK,

June 15, 1901.

EDWIN WILDMAN.