[76] Blount claims that the Filipinos hoped that the Treaty of Paris would leave their country to them as it left Cuba to the Cubans, [77] and adds that having helped us take the city of Manila, they "felt that they had been 'given the double cross,'" "believed that the Americans had been guilty of a duplicity rankly Machiavellian, and that was the cause of the war." [78] The quotations already given from Insurgent records show plainly that the principal thing for which the Filipinos were waiting was the ousting of Spain from the Philippines by the United States; those which follow show that war was by no means inevitable as a result of a a decision at Paris adverse to Filipino hopes, for the question of whether a United States protectorate, or even annexation to the United States, might be considered, was left open to a very late date.

[79] It has been claimed not only that the Insurgents whipped the Spaniards without our assistance, but whipped them so thoroughly that Spanish sovereignty had practically disappeared from the islands at the time Manila surrendered.

It has further been alleged that "decrepit" Spain "could not possibly have sent any reinforcements to the Philippines.

Besides, the Filipinos would have 'eaten them up.'" [80] But the Filipinos had fought Spain before and were by no means sanguine.

Their more intelligent and reasonable men clearly foresaw that they could not win unaided.