Upon learning this, I was carried away by passion and went so far as to say to Basa the following: 'Many of us, especially myself, think ourselves to be wise, without being so; politicians for what we hear from others; we claim to be patriots, but we are only so in words; we wish to be chiefs, but none of us act in a way worthy of a chief.' To this he did not reply.

Perhaps his conscience accused him of an act of treachery, since we agreed in the meeting to await your letter.

What union can you expect from this people ?" [84] Note that the Basa here referred to is the man whose initials were forged on the letter quoted on page 67.
In the course of the above-mentioned letter Agoncillo came back once more to the question of independence under a protectorate and made it very clear that at this late day he did not know whether this was or was not what the Filipinos desired.

[85] On August 21, Apacible obviously did not think that it would be an easy matter to escape from Spanish domination, much less that the islands were already rid of it, for he wrote to Mabini that the United States were likely again to deliver the Filipinos into the hands of Spain.

He said that "if events will be what their telegrams indicate, we have a dark and bloody future before us.