Oh! intelligent people of America! the Filipinos and their untrained army have admired profoundly the courage displayed by your Generals and your soldiers. We are weak in comparison to Titanic machinery, the ambitious Cesarian policy of your government and we judge it difficult to resist their courageous massacres. Our military resources are limited, but we will continue this unjust, bloody and unequal war, not for the love of war which we abhor but for the defense of our inalienable rights of liberty and independence, so dearly won in a war with Spain, to defend our territory threatened by the ambition of a Party that tries to subjugate us.

Yes, war is terrible: its ravages fills us with horror. The unfortunate Filipinos succumb in the din or battle leaving behind them mothers, widows and children. America cannot be indifferent to all the calamities that overwhelm us: but what it cannot desire is to continue to sacrifice her own children, to spread the fright and agony in the hearts of mothers, of widows, of American women to satisfy her caprice to pursue a war contrary to all the traditions bequeathed by Washington and Jefferson.

Return, therefore , oh people of the United States to your times of authentic liberty! Place your hands over your hearts and answer me: what will you say if, in the course of time, North America will find herself in the painful condition of a people weak and oppressed, if the Philippines a free and powerful nation then at war with an oppressor would ask you to join her , promising to deliver you from the yoke as crushing, and if, having defeated her enemies with your aid, she will subjugate you and refuse you the liberation promised?

I affirm the truth of these facts on my honor as President of the Republic, on the honor of a population of eight million souls, on the honor of a people, who for more than three centuries, had sacrificed property and life of its invincible children to obtain the recognition of the most legitimate rights of man, liberty and independence.