archipelago was terminated. On July 4, 1902, the President of the
United States issued a proclamation of amnesty proclaiming, with
certain reservations, a full and complete pardon and amnesty to all
persons in the Philippine Archipelago who had participated in the
insurrection."

General Bell's motives and methods in reconcentrating the inhabitants
of this troubled region have been grossly misrepresented, and he
himself has been sadly maligned. He is the most humane of men, and
the plan which he adopted resulted in the reestablishment of law and
order at a minimum cost of human suffering.

Many of the occupants of his reconcentration camps received there
their first lessons in hygienic living. Many of them were reluctant
to leave the camps and return to their homes when normal conditions
again prevailed.

The number of Filipinos killed during the Batangas campaign was
very small. [429] Blount has sought to make it appear that partly as
an indirect consequence of war there was dreadful mortality there,
citing by way of proof the fact that the Coast and Geodetic Atlas,
published as a part of the report of the first Philippine Commission,
gave the population of Batangas as 312,192, while the census of 1903
gave it as 257,715. [430]

The report of the United States Philippine Commission for 1903
gives the population of Manila as 221,000, while in 1900 it had been
260,000. Does this mean that there had been a holocaust in Manila? Not
at all. It means only that the thousands of Filipinos who had sought
the protection of the American forces there during the period when
they feared their own soldiers in the provinces had mostly returned
to their homes. During the disturbed period in Batangas great numbers
of people took refuge in other and more peaceful regions. Some of
them returned later; others did not.

Blount further quotes a statement in the 1901 report of the Provincial
Secretary of Batangas to the effect that:

"The mortality, caused no longer by the war, but by disease, such as
malaria and dysentery, has reduced to a little over 200,000 the more
than 300,000 inhabitants which in former years the province had." [431]

Apart from the fact that these figures, showing a mortality of a
hundred thousand from disease alone, are hardly consistent with those
quoted by Blount as showing a decrease in population during a longer
period of only fifty-four thousand four hundred and forty-seven, it is
not apparent why Ameri