# Recollections of Full Years/Chapter 6

In the Far East one meets certain expressions the significance of which may be described as adamantine. Each represents a racial attitude against which it is useless to contend. In Japan it is the equivalent of it cannot be helped; a verbal shrug of the shoulders with which the Japanese tosses off all minor and many grave annoyances. "Masqui," down the China coast, has the same import, but with the added meaning of "what difference does it make." In the Philippines the phrase which must be met and which cannot be overcome by any system of reform is "el costumbre del pais"—the custom of the country.
If it is el costumbre del pais it has to be done and there is nothing more to be said about it. The manaña habit—putting everything off until to-morrow—is, perhaps, to Americans, the most annoying of all the costumbres del pais in the Philippines, but it yields to pressure much more readily than do many others, among which is the custom of accumulating parientes; that is, giving shelter on a master's premises to every kind and degree of relative who has no other place to live. This is, I suppose, a survival of an old patriarchal arrangement whereby everybody with the remotest or vaguest claim upon a master of a household gathered upon that master's doorstep, so to speak, and camped there for life.
(LEFT TO RIGHT) GENERAL WRIGHT, MR. TAFT AND JUDGE IDE AS PHILIPPINE COMMISSIONERS
I had a pair of ponies and a Victoria; Mr. Taft had his two little brown horses and a Victoria; besides which there was an extra horse to be used in case of accident to one of the others, as well as a pony and calesa for the children. This rather formidable array was necessary because we found it impossible to take a horse out more than twice a day, and usually not more than once, on account of the sun. My ponies were taken out only in the early morning or the late evening, and those of Mr. Taft had all they could do to take him to the office and bring him home twice a day. Distances were long and there were no street-cars which ran where anybody wanted to go.
This number of conveyances made a good many stablemen necessary and all of them, with their families, lived in quarters attached to the stables. These families consisted of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins near and far removed, wives, children, grandchildren, and a few intimate and needy friends with their family ramifications. Besides our three cocheros and the stable boys, there was a gardener with his parientes, so it is no wonder that on my first inspection of the lower premises I should have thought that some sort of festivity was in progress. I might have lived in Manila twenty years without being able to straighten out the relationships in this servant colony; it was not possible to learn who had and who had not a right to live on the place; and my protest was met with the simple statement that it was el costumbre del pais, so I, perforce, accepted the situation.
Filipino servants never live in the master's residence; they never want to; they want the freedom of a house of their own, and these houses are, as a rule, built on the outer edges of the garden, or compound. I believe Americans now are learning to meet the pariente habit by having room for just ​as many people as they need, and no more. But those who live in the old places, with their ample quarters, still gather the clans and are permitted to enjoy a most expansive and patriarchal sensation.
My horses, when I first saw them, were a source of the greatest pride. A beautifully matched pair of coal-black, stylishly-paced and glossy little stallions, hardly larger than Shetland ponies, they looked as if they had been washed in some sort of shrinking soap and had come out in perfect condition except that they were several sizes smaller than they ought to have been. These Philippine ponies are doubtless descendants of the Arabian horses brought over by the Spaniards and have been reduced to their present size by the change of climate and the difference in food and environment, but they still have the fine lines and the general characteristics of their progenitors.
Mr. Taft secured mine from Batangas, where all the best ponies come from, through the kindness of Mr. Benito Legarda, the staunchest of Americanistas. Batangas was a most unquiet province, the last, in fact, to become pacified, and Mr. Legarda had to pay an insurrecto for bringing the horses through the insurgent lines and delivering them at Calamba, near Manila. Although he did not know their exact origin when he bought them, Mr. Taft said that if the facts became known he would be accused, in certain quarters, of giving indirect aid to the revolutionists; but he wanted the ponies so he did not return them.
When they were hitched to the shining little Victoria which had been built for them, they were as pretty as a picture and, as I did not propose to have such a turn-out ruined by a couple of Filipinos on the box in untidy camisas hanging outside of as untidy white trousers, I had made for my cochero and boy, or coachman and footman, a livery of white and green in which they took such inordinate pride that they seemed to grow in stature and dignity.
​Maria and I felt a sense of the utmost satisfaction the first time we stepped into this carriage for a drive down to the Luneta where we were sure to see everybody we knew and hundreds of people besides; but our vanity was destined to be brought to a sudden termination.
As we were driving along with much satisfaction, a bit of paper floated down alongside the blinkers of the little ebony steed on the right and he made one wild leap into the air. His companion gave him an angry nip, and then the fight was on. Maria and I jumped out, which was not difficult in a low-built Victoria, and no sooner had we done so than we saw the complete wreck of all our grandeur. With all the leaping and plunging and biting and kicking, in the vicinity of a handy lamp-post, the smash-up was fairly complete. Neither of the ponies was hurt, except by the lash of the whip, and I must say the little wretches looked rather funny; like very pretty and very bad children, sorry for what they had done. But their characters were established and they proceeded after that to live up to them. We never could have any confidence in them and my coachman was the only person who could do anything with them. He was a most unsatisfactory man in many ways and used often to call for us at dinner parties in a state of gay inebriety, but we didn't dare discharge him because everybody else in the stables stood in awe of the blacks while he seemed greatly to enjoy his constant and spectacular struggles with them.
The Filipinos are a most temperate people; there is no such thing as drunkenness among them; but coachmen seem to be an exception in that they allow themselves a sufficient stimulation of the fiery vino to make them drive with courage and dash, sometimes minus all care and discretion. The drivers of public vehicles seem to love their little horses in a way; they are inordinately proud of a fast paced or stylish-looking pony; yet they are, as a rule, quite harsh to ​them. They overload them and overdrive them, and under all conditions they lash them continuously.
No Filipino cochero likes to have another cochero pass him, and the result is constant, indiscriminate racing, on any kind of street, under any circumstances,—and never mind the horse.
My children were driving with their governess to the Luneta one evening, when two caromatas came tearing down behind them, each driver hurling imprecations at the other and paying no attention to what was ahead of him. The result was a violent collision. The two caromatas went plunging on, the cocheros not stopping to see what damage they might have done—which was very characteristic—and the children narrowly escaped a serious accident. Charlie was hurled out and fell under the children's calesa and Robert and Helen both declare they felt a sickening jolt as a wheel passed over him. The baby, too, vowed that the calesa "went wight over me, wight dere," indicating a vital spot; but upon the closest examination we could discover nothing more serious than a few bruises. However, it made us very much afraid to trust the children out alone.
The gardener had two little boys, José and Capito, who were a few years older than Charlie, but about his size, and he took a tremendous fancy to them. They were clad, simply, in thin gauze—or jusi—shirts which came down a little below their waists, and I think Charlie envied them this informal attire. He used to order them around in a strange mixture of Spanish, Tagalog and English which made me wonder at my wholly American child; but it was an effective combination since he seemed to have them completely under his thumb and, as he revelled in his sense of power, he never tired of playing with them.
Maria and I soon adopted the universal habit of driving down to the Escolta in the early morning to do such shop​ping as was necessary. We found a variety of interesting shops, but with very little in them to meet the ordinary demands of an American woman. There were delightful Indian bazaars and Chinese tiendas where all manner of gaudy fabrics and strange oriental articles were on sale, while the Spanish shops upon which everybody had to depend in those days, and which had such grandly European names as Paris-Manila and La Puerta del Sol, catered largely to the Filipino taste for bright colours.
The Escolta at that time was full of saloons, established by the inevitable followers of a large army, and the street being very narrow and the old, rickety, wooden buildings being very wide open, the "beery" odour which pervaded the atmosphere at all hours was really dreadful. Mr. Taft decided that as long as this was the only street in town where women could go shopping, the saloons would have to be removed. There was opposition on the Commission to the bill which provided for their banishment, and it was fought from the outside with great vigour and bitterness, but a majority were in favour of it, so it passed, and the saloons had to move. There has not been a saloon on the Escolta from that day to this and, indeed, they have ever since been under such satisfactory regulation that there is little evidence left of their existence in the city.
I am afraid it is going to be very difficult to convey an adequate picture of Manila society during the first years of American occupation. There had been, in the old days, a really fine Spanish and rich mestizo society, but all, or nearly all, of the Spaniards had left the Islands, and the mestizos had not yet decided just which way to "lean," or just how to meet the American control of the situation. I may say here that most of the educated, high-class Filipinos are mestizo; that is, of mixed blood. They may be Spanish mestizo or Chinese mestizo, but they have in them a strong strain of foreign blood. Besides the Spanish- and ​Chinese-Filipinos, there are a number of British mestizos who are very interesting people. Mr. Legarda, Chief Justice Arellano, Dr. Pardo de Tavera and Mr. Quezon, the Filipino delegate to the United States Congress, are Spanish mestizos, while Mr. Arañeta, the Secretary of Finance and Justice, as well as the Speaker of the Philippine Assembly and many able lawyers and successful business men are of Chinese descent. The mestizos control practically all the wealth of the Philippines, and their education, intelligence and social standing are unquestioned. It is the only country in the world that I know about—certainly the only country in the Orient—where the man or woman of mixed blood seems to be regarded as superior to the pure blooded native.
Dating back also to the Spanish days was quite a numerous foreign society consisting of a few consuls, some professional men, the managers of banks and large British and European mercantile firms, and their families. The leaders of the British colony were Mr. and Mrs. Jones—Mr. Jones being the manager of the Manila branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Mrs. Jones, a very beautiful and charming woman, gave some very elaborate parties during that first winter. Bank House, the residence maintained by the bank for its manager in Manila, is a beautiful place in Uli-Uli, a district on the picturesque banks of the upper Pásig, and it is finely adapted for balls and large receptions. Then there were several German families who also entertained quite lavishly, and I remember, especially, one Austrian exile; indeed, I shall never be able to forget him because my husband took such joy in pronouncing his name. He was Baron von Bosch.
This was the "set" which entertained the Commission most cordially during our first season in Manila, while the Army officers, following the lead of their Commanding ​General, held themselves somewhat aloof. I kept up a constant round of parties of different kinds in my house, and gave a dinner at least once a week at which were gathered companies of a most interestingly cosmopolitan character. And we did not fail to observe all the desirable forms. Both Filipinos and Europeans expect a certain amount of ceremony from the representatives of government and are not at all impressed by "democratic simplicity"; so believing in the adage about Rome and the Romans, we did what we could. Beside the spic and span guard at the outer gate of the illuminated garden, we always, on dinner party nights, stationed coachmen, or other stable boys disguised as liveried footmen, on either side of the entrance, to receive guests and conduct them to the dressing-rooms, and up the stairs to the reception room.
Our house was nicely adapted for a dinner of twelve and I usually tried to confine myself to that number. We always had an orchestra, orchestras being very plentiful in Manila where nearly every native plays some sort of instrument, and the music added greatly to the festive air of things, which was enhanced, too, by a certain oriental atmosphere, with many Japanese lanterns and a profusion of potted plants and great, hanging, natural ferneries and orchids which were brought in from the forests by the Filipinos and sold on the streets.
My husband is supposed to be the author of the phrase: "our little brown brothers"—and perhaps he is. It did not meet the approval of the army, and the soldiers used to have a song which they sang with great gusto and frequency and which ended with the conciliating sentiment: "He may be a brother of William H. Taft, but he ain't no friend of mine!"
We insisted upon complete racial equality for the Filipinos, and from the beginning there were a great many of them among our callers and guests. Their manners are ​models of real courtesy, and, while their customs are not always like ours, wherever they are able they manifest a great willingness to be conforme,—to adapt themselves,—and their hospitality is unbounded.
I shall never forget my first call from a Filipino family. They arrived shortly after six in the evening: el señor, la señora and four señoritas. We went through a solemn and ceremonious handshaking all around. I received them first, then passed them on to my husband who, in turn, passed them on with a genial introduction to my sister Maria. We had been sitting on the verandah, and when a semi-circle of chairs had been arranged, the six of them sat down; el señor noisily cleared his throat a couple of times while the ladies calmly folded their little hands in their laps and assumed an air of great repose. It was as if they had no intention of taking any part whatever in the conversation.
El señor explained in Spanish that they were our near neighbours and that they had called merely to pay their respects. Mr. Taft had been studying Spanish diligently ever since he left the United States, but he is not conspicuously gifted as a linguist, and he had not yet waked up—as he so often expressed a wish that he might—to find himself a true Castilian. However, his ready laugh and the cordiality of his manners have always had a peculiar charm for the Filipinos, and he was able on this occasion, as he was on many future ones, to carry off the situation very well. We all nodded and smiled and said, "Si Señor" and "Si Señora,” to long and no telling what kind of speeches from our guests; then Maria and I complimented the ladies on their beautifully embroidered camisas, which started things off properly. They praised everything in sight, and what we didn't get through the little Spanish we knew, we got from gesture and facial expression. They got up and wandered all around, feeling of my Japanese tapestries and ​embroideries, breathing long "ahs!" of admiration over my gold screens and pictures and curios, and acting generally like callers who were being very well entertained. Then the children came in and they broke out afresh in voluble praise of them. I assumed the proper deprecatory mien in response to their laudation of my children, and altogether I felt that we were acquitting ourselves rather well in this first inter-racial social experience.
But at the end of half an hour the strain was getting a little severe and I was wondering what to do next, when our six callers arose and said they must be going. I breathed an inward sigh of relief and was making ready to escort them to the top of the stairs, when my husband cordially exclaimed:
“Why, no! Porque? Tenemos bastante tiempo. Why hurry?” And—they—all—sat—down!
I regretted then even the little Spanish Mr. Taft had learned, though, of course, he didn't expect them to heed his polite protest. He knew nothing at all about Filipino manners; he didn't know they expected to receive some sign from him when it was time to go and that they would consider it discourteous to go while he was urging them to stay. He kept up, without much assistance, a brave if laboured conversation, and the minutes slowly passed. Our dinner hour approached and I darted warning glances at him, for I had a horrible fear that he just might ask them to remain and dine. But at the end of another hour a strained expression began to spread itself over even his face, and there was not a word of protest from him when, at a quarter past eight, our little brown neighbours once more indicated an intention of going home. We entertained Filipino callers nearly every day after that, but never again did we urge them to reconsider their sometimes tardy decision to depart.
With regard to Filipino manners and customs; I am re​minded that we were nonplussed, though greatly amused by the costumbre del pais which decreed that some return be made by a Filipino for any and all favours bestowed upon him. We grew accustomed to this before we left the Islands, and came to expect a few offerings of sorts almost any day in the week, but in the beginning it was usually most embarrassing.
One time, soon after our arrival, a very loyal Americanista was shot down in the street, during the peaceful discharge of his duty, by an insurrecto. His widow, with her children, came into Manila in a state of utter destitution, to secure some recompense from the government for her husband’s services, and while her case was pending Mr. Taft, in great pity for her, sent her money enough to live on. The next day the whole family, from the wide-eyed boy to the babe carried astride the mother’s hip, came to call on their benefactor, bringing with them as a gift a basket containing a few eggs, some strange Philippine fruits and a lot of sea-shells. Mr. Taft was deeply touched, and with the brusqueness of a man who is touched, he told her he had given her the money to buy food for herself and her children and not for him, and he refused her offering. I know, by the light of a fuller knowledge of the character of the lowly Filipino, that she went away feeling very much cast down.
But in connection with such gifts there were always more laughs than sighs. We invited to luncheon one day a dashing Filipino named Tomaso del Rosario. Señor Rosario, a man of wealth and prominence who had a fine Spanish education and was well dressed in the high-colored, patent-leathered and immaculate-linened Spanish style, was quite self-confident and enjoyed himself very much. He seemed attracted to Maria and she, being linguistic, was able to talk to him in a mixture of many languages. The next day she received from Señor Rosario, ​not a floral offering, but a basket filled with nuts, a canned plum-pudding, some canned chocolates and preserved fruits. This attention did not seem so remarkable, however, when we learned, to our amusement, that he had sent exactly the same present to Alice Worcester, then five years old.
Our life, on the whole, was intensely interesting in its unusual atmosphere and curious complications, but throughout everything we were made to feel the deep significance of our presence in the Islands; and the work of the Commission was first, last and always to us the subject of the greatest moment. Even in our daily round of social affairs we dealt with tremendous problems whose correct solution meant the restoration of peace and prosperity to what then should have been, and what we knew could be made, a great country. That for which the American flag had always stood began to assume, for many of us, a broader and a finer meaning; and being so much a part of our flag’s mission in a strange field a certain zest was added to our patriotism which we had never felt before. I believe, and I think all those who know the truth believe, that Americanism, in its highest conception, has never been more finely demonstrated than in the work done by the United States in the Philippine Islands; work, the broad foundation for which the Commission was engaged in constructing during the period of which I write.
So many were the problems to be met and dealt with that in the beginning the Commissioners were each given a set of subjects for investigation and study, their findings being submitted for debate and consideration in the general meetings.
Taxation, civil service, provincial and municipal organisation, currency and finance, police, harbour improvements, roads and railways, customs, postal service, education, health, public lands, an honest judiciary and the revision of the code of laws; these were some of the vital problems, ​but underlying them all was the immediate necessity for the establishment of tranquillity and confidence throughout the archipelago.
In order to make clear, in any degree, the Philippine situation as we found it, it is essential that, briefly, the position of the Catholic Church and its representatives, the Friars, be explained. For the first time in its history the American government found itself compelled to adjust a seemingly insurmountable difficulty between a church and its people.
With us the Church is so completely separate from the State that it is difficult to imagine cases in which policy of a church in the selection of its ministers, and the assignment of them to duty could be regarded as of political moment, or as a proper subject of comment in the report of a public officer, but in the first reports of the Philippine Commission to Washington this subject had to be introduced with emphasis.
The Spanish government of the Philippine Islands was a government by the Church through its monastic orders, nothing less. In the words of the Provincial of the Augustinians, the Friars were the "pedestal or foundation of the sovereignty of Spain" which being removed "the whole structure would topple over." The Philippine people, with the exception of the Mohammedan Moros and the non-Christian tribes, belonged, during the Spanish dominion, to the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church registry of 1898 showed a total membership of 6,559,998. The parishes and missions, with few exceptions, were administered by Spanish Friars of the Dominican, Augustinian and Franciscan orders, and it was to the nature of this administration that Spain owed the insurrections of 1896 and 1898, the latter of which was terminated only upon our assuming control of the islands.
In 1896 there were in the Philippines 1,124 monks of the ​Augustinian, Dominican and Franciscan orders, which body included a company of Recolletos, who are merely an offshoot of the order of St. Augustine and differ from the Augustinians only in that they are unshod. In addition to these there were a few Jesuits, Capuchins, Benedictines and Paulists, but they engaged in mission and educational work only and did not share with the other orders the resentment and hatred of the people. Filipinos were not admitted to any of the orders, but they were made friar curates and served as parish priests in some of the smaller places.
When a Spanish Friar curate was once settled in a parish he remained there for life, or until he was too old for service, and because of this fact he was able to establish and maintain an absolutism which is difficult to explain in a few words. He was simply everything in his parish. As a rule he was the only man of education who knew both Spanish and the native dialect of his district, and in many parishes he was the only Spanish representative of the government. In the beginning, through his position as spiritual guide, he acted as intermediary in secular matters between his people and the rest of the world, and eventually, by law, he came to discharge many civil functions and to supervise, correct or veto everything which was done, or was sought to be done in his pueblo.
He was Inspector of Primary Schools, President of the Board of Health and the Board of Charities, President of the Board of Urban Taxation, Inspector of Taxation, President of the Board of Public Works, Member of the Provincial Council, Member of the Board for Partitioning Crown Lands, Censor of Municipal Budgets, and Censor of plays, comedies or dramas in the dialect of his parish, deciding whether or not these were against the public peace or morals. In a word, he was the government of his parish; and in addition to all things else, it was he who, once a year, went to the parish register, wrote on slips of ​paper the names of all boys who had reached the age of twenty, and putting these into a receptacle, drew them out one by one and called every fifth man for military service. So hateful was this forced duty to the Filipino youths that many of them would run away into the mountains and hide, become outlaws in order to escape it. But the civil guard would go after them and when they were captured they would be put in jail and watched until they could be sent to their capital.
The monastic orders had behind them a powerful church organisation the heads of which took an active and official part in the administration of government. The Archbishop and the Bishops formed part of what was known in Manila as the Board of Authorities; and they, with the Provincials of the orders, belonged to the Council of Administration, a body analogous to the Council of State in Spain or France, charged with advising the Governor General on matters of urgent moment, or in times of crises. The Friars, Priests and Bishops constituted a solid, permanent and well-organised political force which dominated all insular policies, and the stay in the islands of the civil or military officer who attempted to pursue a course at variance with that deemed wise by the orders, was invariably shortened by monastic influence. Each order had in Madrid a representative through whom the Court of Spain easily could be reached without the intervention of any authority.
Upon the morals of the Friars I can only touch. That some of them brought up families of sons and daughters is beyond question. Such were guilty of violating their vows of celibacy rather than of debauchery. On this point the moral standard of the Filipino people was not rigid, and women were rather proud than otherwise of the parentage of their Friar-fathered children who were often brighter, better looking and more successful than the average Filipino. The truth is that this charge was urged with more eagerness and ​emphasis after the Filipinos began to appeal to the American government than during Spanish times, and when the standard of morality in the Filipino priesthood of the period was considered, it seemed as if the accusers thought the charge would have more weight with those they sought to influence than it did with themselves.
The three great orders of St. Francis, St. Augustine and St. Dominic owned, in different parts of the Islands, more than 400,000 acres of the best agricultural land, and this they rented out in small parcels to the people. Their income from these immense holdings was not what a prudent and energetic landlord would have realised, but they paid no taxes, while the Filipino was taxed in every possible way.
In the province of Cavite alone the Friar estates amounted to 131,747 acres, and it was in the province of Cavite, which is just across the bay from Manila, that the two insurrections against Spain, or rather against Friar domination, began.
When we arrived in Manila all but 472 of the 1,124 Friars had either been killed or had fled the country. In each of the uprisings many of them lost their lives, and many more were taken prisoners. Indeed, the last of them were not released until the rapid advance of the American troops in our own encounter with the insurrectos made it necessary for the insurgent army to abandon all unnecessary impedimenta. All the Friars remaining in the Islands had taken refuge in Manila.
Strange to say, this resentment against the Friars interfered in no way with the Filipino's love for the Church. With a strong and real emotion he loves the religion which has been given him; and the elaborate and beautiful forms of the Roman Catholic Church are calculated, especially, to make a powerful appeal to his mind. It is really an astonishing commentary on the character of these people that ​they should be able to rise against the men who administered the sacraments which they so deeply loved and revered. Or, is it more of a commentary on the conditions which caused the uprisings?
Without exception the Spanish Friars had been driven from their parishes, and the most burning of all the burning political questions which the Commission met and had to settle, was whether or not they should be permitted to return. It was impossible to make the people understand that the government of the United States and the government of Spain were two different matters, and that if the Friars were returned to their parishes they would exercise no secular functions of any kind. The people had the proverbial dread of the "burnt child" and no amount or kind of reasoning could move them from the position they had taken, nor could any of them, from the highest to the lowest, talk calmly or rationally about the subject. The one point upon which the Filipinos were united was that the Friars should never be reinstated.
Universal agitation, uneasiness, fear, hatred, a memory of wrongs too recently resented and resented at too great a cost; these were the factors which made necessary the stand which the Commission finally adopted. The question with the Friars became one, largely, of getting value for their property, their title to which was never seriously disputed, and it was decided that on condition of their leaving the Islands, the insular government would undertake the purchase of their vast estates. The intention was then to make some arrangement whereby the lands might be sold back to the people in the homestead tracts, and on terms which the poorest man might be able, in time, to meet.
It was to negotiate this transaction, involving the expenditure of $7,000,000 that my husband was sent to Rome the following year as an emissary of the United States government to the Vatican. This was in the time of Pope ​Leo, and it made a most interesting experience which I shall detail in another chapter.
The first thing, really, that the Commission undertook when they arrived in Manila, was the settlement of a definite dispute between the Church and the People as to which had the right to administer the affairs of the Medical College of San José. Their manner of procedure in this case instituted in the Islands a new and never-before-thought-of system of evenly balanced justice, and made a tremendous sensation.
The case was called: "T. H. Pardo de Tavera, and others, for themselves and other inhabitants of the Philippine Islands—against—The Rector of the University of Santo Tomas, a Dominican monk, and the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, represented by the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of Manila, and the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Apostolic Delegate." Its importance, under the conditions then existing, can hardly be exaggerated.
San José was one of the oldest institutions in the Islands; it was founded, as a matter of fact, in 1601, by virtue of a legacy left by a Spanish Provincial Governor named Figueroa who provided that it should always be managed by the head of the Jesuits in the Islands. It was originally a college for the education of Spanish boys, but through various vicissitudes, including the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1766, it had changed from one thing to another until, finally, it had become a college of physicians and pharmacists and was made a department of the University of Santo Tomas, the Rector of which was a Dominican Friar. One of the Philips had granted to the college a Royal charter, and within the last hundred years the Crown had asserted its right of control. So when the American government took over all the public property in the Philippines, General Otis closed San José, but he did not issue an order as ​to its management. The Church was petitioning for a restitution of what it regarded as its rights in the property, and the Commission was called upon to settle the controversy.
They conducted their examinations in open meetings so that all might see the full and free workings of a wholly equitable system, and the Filipinos were enabled to behold, for the first time, the, to them, astonishing spectacle of high ecclesiastics presenting in open court the arguments upon which they based their claims.
The first hearing Mr. Taft describes as “an historic scene.”
“There were the two Archbishops in their archiepiscopal cassocks,” he writes, “with purple girdles and diamond crosses, accompanied by a Secretary of the Dominican order robed in white; while opposed was a Filipino lawyer, Don Felipe Calderon, who derived his education in the University of Santo Tomas. Accompanying him were a lot of young Filipino students and others of the Medical Association interested in wresting San José from the University. The Archbishop of Manila made a speech in which he was unable to restrain the feeling of evident pain that he had in finding the rights of the Church challenged in this Catholic country. He made a very dignified appearance.”
And at the second hearing:
“Both Archbishops were again present, and the same scene was re-enacted except that we had rather more of a formal hearing. We had them seated on opposite sides of a table, just as we do in court at home, and had seats for the spectators.
“Senor Don Felipe Calderon, who represents the Philippine people, was given an opportunity to make the first speech. He had printed his argument and read it, having given us translated copies with which we followed him. His argument was a very strong one, lawyer-like and well conceived, but he weakened it by some vicious remarks ​the Dominican order. The Archbishop of Manila, once or twice, felt so much outraged at what he said that he attempted to rise, but Archbishop Chapelle prevented him from doing so. At the close of the argument Monsignor Chapelle asked for ten days in which to prepare an answer and we granted him two weeks. The scene was one I shall always carry with me as marking an interesting period in my Philippine experience.”
The Commission did not settle the question. After careful consideration and many hearings, they left the property in the hands of the Dominicans, but appointed a Board of Trustees to prepare and present an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Islands, appropriating at the same time, five thousand dollars to pay the expenses of the litigation.
Archbishop Chapelle did not like this decision and telegraphed to Secretary Root asking him to withhold his approval. Then he asked the Commission to modify the law and give him an opportunity, in case the decision in the Supreme Court should go against the Church, to appeal to the Congress of the United States. This the Commission refused to do on good and sufficient grounds, whereupon the Archbishop cabled to the President, declaring that the decision as it stood would retard pacification. Although he had always been strongly opposed to the continuation of military government, we were much amused to learn that in his cable to the President he took occasion to remark, significantly, that “General MacArthur is doing splendidly.”
But if Archbishop Chapelle was displeased with the action of the Commission, the Filipino press was delighted, and the editorial encomiums heaped upon them can only be described as brilliant. The Diario de Manila, the next morning, was absolutely unable to express itself, and it concluded a more or less incoherently eulogistic editorial with the words: “The decision satisfies everybody; it raises a question which threatened to drag itself over the ​hot sands we tread, cleanses it of all impurities, and makes it the beginning and the end of a most transcendental principle of sovereignty and law.” The Filipino or Spanish editor is nothing if he is not hyperbolic.
When we arrived in Manila it was a source of great worry to us that we could not send our children, eight and ten years old, to school. The Jesuits had a school for boys in the Walled City, and Mr. Taft considered for awhile the possibility of sending Robert there, where he might, at least, learn Spanish; but so strong was the feeling against the Friars that this would have been taken by the people as a certain indication that the President of the Commission was leaning toward the Church in his deliberations on the vital subject. As I have said, they could not look upon this question, in any of its bearings, in a reasonable light.
We eventually settled Helen in a convent where she made an effort to learn Spanish, and Rebert we turned over to Mrs. LeRoy, the wife of Mr. Worcester’s Secretary, who was a graduate from the University of Michigan and a most excellent teacher.
Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy went to the Philippines as bride and groom. They were classmates, graduated together, and this was their first big venture into the world. They were a valued part of our little pioneer circle, and it was with the greatest dismay that we learned, after about two years in the Islands, that Mr. LeRoy had developed tuberculosis. He had either brought the germs with him from the United States or had contracted the disease there, where, indeed, it is most prevalent. He continued to act as Secretary for Mr. Worcester beyond the time when he should have gone to another climate to devote himself to a cure, but finally, when he realised that the sentence was upon him, he decided to leave the Islands, and my husband was able to secure for him, because of his splendid efficiency, a position in the Consular service under Mr. Hay, at Dur​ango, Mexico. This post was chosen because it is in a dry, mountainous region where the ravages of tuberculosis are supposed to be checked.
Mr. LeRoy was an exceedingly well-informed and studious man. He was a natural linguist, spoke Spanish with ease, and soon was able to acquire enough Tagalog to enable him to go among the people and get their point of view at first hand. He immediately became interested in writing a history of the Islands and wanted much to go to Spain to examine Spanish-Philippine documents at Seville and other places, but he was never able to do so.
In the days when death faced him in New Mexico, whither he had gone after leaving Durango, he wrote, as Grant wrote, on a book which he hoped might furnish some means to his wife after his death. He died before he was able to complete what Mr. Taft says is a very accurate, comprehensive and interesting history of the Archipelago from the beginning down to, and including, Dewey’s victory, the taking of Manila and the work of the first Commission. He had planned to give a full account of the work of the second Commission, with which he was so intimately connected, but his pen dropped before his purpose was fulfilled. His history has been only recently published.
Mrs. LeRoy later went to Washington, and Mr. Taft appointed her to one of the few clerical positions not covered by the Civil Service law. This is in the Land Office where she signs the President’s name to land patents. She is the only person in the government who has the right and power, given by special act of Congress, to sign the President’s name to a document.
Throughout the autumn of 1900 the insurrection dragged itself along; behind any bush the American soldiers were likely to find a lurking “patriot”; and the uncensored reports of the “brave stand” of the Filipinos were being sent ​out daily by Democratic reporters, to help along the anti-expansionist cause, represented by Mr.Bryan, in the United States.
The insurrectos were being assured by their incitants to violence that the eyes of the world were upon them. They were being told that they were winning undying renown throughout the civilised universe; and they believed it. They read with avidity all the anti-imperialistic newspapers which came out to the Islands and accepted as a true estimate of themselves the laudations therein contained. Besides, the promoters of the insurrection pretended to translate from other languages still more extravagant praises, and they certainly were enjoying a most exalted opinion of themselves.
We understood that Aguinaldo was trying to concentrate for one spectacular move shortly before election, in order to add to the chances of a Democratic victory; and there was some cause for alarm. The Filipinos are born politicians and many of them knew much more about the campaign between Bryan and McKinley than the Americans in the Islands knew.
Apropos of this: Archbishop Chapelle told Mr. Taft that Aguinaldo had, through Archbishop Nozaleda, requested an interview with him. Monsignor Chapelle went to General MacArthur and asked that Aguinaldo be allowed to enter Manila. The General readily gave his consent, and even offered the revolutionary Dictator the hospitality of his own roof. Aguinaldo, in due military form, acknowledged this courtesy and fixed the time for his arrival in Manila. He clearly indicated that he was discouraged and had decided to solicit permission, through Archbishop Chapelle, to leave the Islands. But just then the news of Bryan's plan for calling an extra session of Congress to settle Philippine independence came out, so the insurgent general sent word that he had decided not to come. No ​American knew just where he was, but he probably got the papers and telegrams just as soon as any of us.
I remember the sixth of November as a very nervous day. We had received all manner of reports from home; we were so far away that mail and newspapers were a month old when they reached us; and the cable reports had been contradictory in the extreme. We really were on our tiptoes with excitement. And the worst of it was that because of the thirteen hours' difference in time between Washington and Manila, we lived through the day knowing that the United States was asleep, and went to bed just about the time voters began to go to the polls. We kept getting all manner of doubtful telegrams throughout the next morning--when it was night in the United States and the votes were being counted--but just at one o'clock, as we went to lunch, Mr. Taft received a despatch from General Corbin in accordance with his previous agreement. It read: "Taft Manila McKinley Corbin." It had been sent from the War Department in Washington at eleven o'clock the night of the election and had taken just forty-five minutes in transmission. This was record time for a cablegram then between Washington and Manila, despatches having to be sent by numerous relays.