“… in spite of the press censorship in Manila, the American public slowly came to realize the real situation in the Philippines through the letters of American soldiers to their families describing the horrors and atrocities of the war which were published in local newspapers. Some U.S. senators began to take interest in Philippine affairs and initiated senate investigations on the conduct of the war. Their findings confirmed what Apacible and the Anti-Imperialist group in the U.S. had been ranting about.The last part of the APPEAL states that the war in the Philippines will immediately end, if the Americans will respect the aspirations of the Filipinos for their independence. In exchange for this recognition, the Filipinos offered to do the following: pay back the $20 million that the United States paid to Spain under the treaty of Paris, give the Americans suitable coaling stations, and, conclude a treaty of a mutually beneficial commercial relations.

“Apacible’s proposed settlement was ignored by the McKinley administration and the Philippines became a U.S. colony for fifty years. Right after World War II, the Philippines signed with the United States what looked like Apacible’s proposal fifty years before – a military bases treaty to keep and hold Subic and Clark Field, to name only the major ones, for ninety-nine years as U.S. naval and air force facilities; and, the so-called “parity rights” under the Laurel-Langley trade agreement that gave the Americans equal rights as Filipinos in commerce as well as in the exploitation of natural resources of the country.”

read more: To the American people, an appeal