GOVERNOR TAFT
There is no denying that the arrangements made, during my absence in the
north, for my participation in the events attending my husband’s
induction into the office of Governor of the Philippines were enough to
fill me with dismay.
Mr. Taft had issued two thousand invitations for the reception at our
house in honour of General MacArthur, and on my way down from Baguio I
had been spending my time wondering how I should take care of the three
or four hundred I imagined had been asked. I had received no information
more definite than the simple statement that invitations had been sent
out, and it was not until I reached Manila that I learned the startling
number. I thought my husband knew something about the limitations of our
house, but I found that he had not taken this important matter into
consideration at all.
Fortunately we had a large garden in fairly good condition by this time,
so I immediately went to work and had it decorated with long lines and
festoons of Japanese lanterns; I ordered a large refreshment tent put up
in the middle of the wide lawn; then I sat down and prayed for fair
weather. It was the rainy season and I knew that only a specially
importuned Providence could keep the afternoon of the Fourth of July
clear.
The inauguration of the first American Governor was an occasion of great
dignity and interest. The ceremony took place on a platform erected at
one end of a large square in the Walled City which is enclosed on one
side by the Ayuntamiento, or Insular Capitol, and on another by the
Cathedral. The foundations of the Inaugural stand were of historic
interest in that they were originally intended to support a magnificent
residence for Spanish Governors-General and were on the site of the
ancient gubernatorial mansion which was destroyed by an earthquake in
1863. The rebuilding had never progressed beyond the laying of the
massive granite base, and this still stands as a mute reminder to
progressive Americans of the dilatory and otherwise questionable methods
which once obtained in the Philippine government.
The Cathedral Plaza—since renamed Plaza McKinley—presented a memorable
scene that Fourth of July morning. The architectural grace and
time-mellowed colours of the old Spanish buildings blended with the rich
luxuriance of many-hued tropic plants and the green of spreading
acacias. American flags covered the canopied platforms and floated from
every possible point of vantage. Americans and Filipinos, all in gala
attire, were pressed close together in the spectators’ stands which
extended on either side of the central pavilion; the plaza below was
thronged with Filipinos of every rank and condition, in all manner of
bright _jusis_ and calicoes; while above the crowd towered many American
soldiers and sailors in spic-and-span khaki or white duck.
The programme was much like other programmes. General MacArthur and his
staff occupied the centre of the platform. A well trained and finely
conducted Filipino band played several numbers; there was a prayer and
an invocation; then my husband, looking larger even than his natural
size in his crisp white linen suit, stepped to the front of the platform
and stood gravely looking down upon the stocky little Chief Justice of
the Archipelago, Señor Arellano, who administered the oath of office.
Afterward Mr. Taft and Mr. Fergusson stood together and delivered, in
English and Spanish, paragraph by paragraph in translation, the
Inaugural address.
I think only one unfortunate incident occurred to mar the complete
harmony of the occasion, and that was furnished by a United States
Congressman of the Military Committee of the House, who was visiting
Manila at the time.
Tickets of admission to the central pavilion had been sent to him, but
he had forgotten to bring them with him. However, when he arrived at the
plaza he started, with several ladies who were with him, to mount the
steps of the Inaugural platform on which no ladies were allowed. He was
stopped, naturally, and a guard offered to conduct his guests to seats
on a side pavilion, telling him at the time that the central stand had
been reserved for government officials and representatives, among whom
he, of course, was included. This separate seating of the ladies seemed
to annoy him for some reason, and he announced his intention of
remaining with his party. He was then shown to the best available seats
and the incident seemed to be closed. But he was by no means satisfied
with his position, especially when he found that the wives of some of
the Commissioners had seats in front of him. I think the heat must have
been affecting him for he called the Naval Lieutenant, who was in charge
as usher, and made audible protest against “those wives of clerks” being
put before him and his wife. The young naval officer was polite, but
quite firm in his refusal to take any steps to remedy matters.
“You don’t seem to know who I am!” he exclaimed, with manifest
indignation.
“No, sir, I do not,” mildly replied the Lieutenant.
“Well,” said the angry man, “I’m a member of the Military Committee of
the House of Representatives. I helped to make this Army out here and
I’ve come out to see what kind of work I did. I don’t like it, and I’m
going home and unmake it. This treatment of me here is of a piece with
the treatment I’ve received ever since I’ve been in these islands.”
This didn’t sound quite fair. He had been treated with marked courtesy
by everybody and had accepted rather lavish hospitality from both Army
officers and civil officials. In fact, he had received every possible
attention in a most unusually hospitable community. The young Lieutenant
bristled up and said:
[Illustration:
MR. TAFT TAKING THE OATH OF OFFICE AS THE FIRST AMERICAN GOVERNOR OF
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
]
“Sorry, sir, but I’m obeying orders; and I’d just like to tell you that
I consider your remarks exceedingly impolite.”
Upon which the gentleman from Washington left the pavilion and went down
to stand in a place which the guards had been ordered to keep clear.
The rest of the story I heard afterward. It seems that both General
Barry and General Davis saw him and took pains to go down and ask him up
into the central pavilion, but he refused to go. Then one of the guards
came up and politely informed him: “Orders, sir, you’ll have to stand
back.” By this time he was infuriated and he turned on the guard and,
after identifying himself, repeated his remarks about having made the
Army and being determined to go back to Washington and unmake it.
“Well,” said the guard, “I guess you can’t unmake me. I’ve just been
mustered out of the United States Army and am a plain American citizen.
I don’t understand that Congress can do much about unmaking American
citizens.” Which all goes to show that it doesn’t do much good to lose
one’s temper. The gentleman took his party and stalked out of the plaza.
My hopes for the evening were blasted. About five o’clock the heavens
opened and such a sheet of water descended upon my refreshment tent and
my strings of gay paper lanterns as one never sees in the Temperate
Zone. It was raining in torrents when our guests began to arrive, and if
many of those invited had not been kept at home by the weather I don’t
know what I should have done with the crowd. I had a wide hall, a small
reception room, a dining-room and the verandah, but two thousand people
are a good many, and I’m sure a large majority of them came in spite of
the weather. It was a “crush,” and a warm, moist crush, but it was a
gala occasion, everybody was in good humour and the evening passed much
more pleasantly than I had any reason to expect. This was the first
entertainment of such proportions that I had undertaken in Manila, and I
saw at once that, as the Governor’s wife, I should need all the
spaciousness of Malacañan Palace.
I think General MacArthur was pleased with our farewell hospitality to
him; he seemed to be; and I think his feelings toward Mr. Taft, when he
left the Islands the next day, were exceedingly friendly. But we heard
later that letters had come from companions of his on the ship which
said that he very keenly resented the fact that the new Governor had not
seen fit to mention him with praise in his Inaugural address. Mr. Taft
said he was very sorry, but, in view of the relations which were known
to exist between the Military government and the Commission, he thought
it would have been very difficult to find the tactful words which would
have satisfied the General, and in uttering which he would not have
stultified himself.
I am quite sure that General MacArthur never disliked my husband
personally. His resentment was against the Commissioners in their
official capacity, whereby his own authority was diminished. In later
years, as Secretary of War, Mr. Taft met him very often and their
relations were always perfectly cordial. After his death there was
considerable newspaper comment to the effect that he had been very badly
treated. There was no refutation of the charges, but everybody familiar
with the facts knew they had no foundation. When Mr. Taft was Secretary
of War, on his recommendation General MacArthur was given the highest
rank in the United States Army, that of Lieutenant-General, and at his
own request was sent by Mr. Taft on a mission to travel through China
with his son, an Army officer, as his aide, and to make a military
report upon the country. On his return, at his own request, he was not
assigned to specific command, but was ordered to his home at Milwaukee
to prepare the report on China, and there he remained by his own choice
until his retirement.
On the morning of July 5, we moved to Malacañan, and General Chaffee,
who succeeded General MacArthur, took our house on the Bay. There was a
great deal of contention with regard to this exchange of houses. Mr.
Taft knew that to the mind of the Filipinos the office of Governor,
without the accustomed “setting” and general aspects of the position,
would lose a large part of its dignity and effectiveness. He also knew
that a Civil Government, unless it were quartered in the Ayuntamiento,
the recognised seat of government, would inspire but little confidence
or respect. The outward semblance is all-important to the Filipino mind,
yet knowing this the Military authorities clung with dogged tenacity to
every visible evidence of supremacy, and it took an order from
Washington to get them to vacate the Ayuntamiento in which they had, in
the beginning, refused the Commission adequate office room. An official
order also turned the Governor’s residence over to the new Governor and,
at the same time, relieved Mr. Taft of the necessity for deciding what
to do with our house in Malate. It was the best available house in the
city and every man on the Commission wanted it, so if the War Department
had not taken it for the Commanding General somebody’s feelings surely
would have suffered. Mr. Taft had about decided to toss a coin in the
presence of them all to see which one of his colleagues should have it.
In some ways we regretted that the move was necessary, for we were very
comfortable in our “chalet,” as Señor Juan de Juan had editorially
called it, and invigorating dips in the high breakers of the Bay had
become one of our pleasantest pastimes. But we knew that no amount of
executive orders could turn our homely and unpalatial abode into a
gubernatorial mansion, so we needs must move for the effect on the
native mind, if for nothing else. Not until we did, would the Filipinos
be convinced that Civil Government was actually established.
Not that I wasn’t well pleased with the idea of living in a palace,
however unlike the popular conception of a palace it might be. I had not
been brought up with any such destiny in view and I confess that it
appealed to my imagination.
Malacañan is old and rather damp and, in my time, some of it had not
been furnished or finished according to modern ideas, but in size and
dignity it leaves nothing to be desired, and it has historic
associations which give it an atmosphere that I found to be quite
thrilling. It contains many fine, old-world Spanish portraits, and there
is one large canvas of especial interest which hangs at the head of the
main stairway. It depicts the ceremony through which Magellan made peace
with the natives of Cebu when he landed on that island in April, 1521.
This consisted of drawing blood from the breasts of the principal
parties to the contract, the one drinking that of the other. The
Spaniards called it the _Pacto de Sangre_, or the Blood Pact, and so the
picture is named. In our own day the Katipunan League, the strongest and
most sinister of all the insurrectionary secret societies, are said to
have adopted this ceremony in their rites of initiation, and members of
the League could be identified by a peculiar scar on the breast.
The grounds at Malacañan contain, perhaps, twenty acres, and in those
days there were fields and swamps in the enclosure as well as lawns and
fountains, flower-beds and kitchen gardens. There were five or six
good-sized houses in the grounds for the use of secretaries and aides,
and the stables were very large.
I would not care to hazard a guess as to the number of _parientes_ we
sheltered in the quarters of our employés. Mr. Taft called these
quarters our “Filipino tenement” and “Calle Pariente,” but screened with
shrubbery and spreading down the sides of a twenty-acre lot the colony
did not seem as conspicuous as our huddled tribe had been in Malate.
The Palace is architecturally Spanish, yet it lacks the large patio,
having two small courts instead. The lower floor, on a level with the
ground, is really nothing more than a basement and has no usable spaces
in it except some raised offices and cloak rooms. Frequently during bad
typhoons I have seen water two and three feet deep in the entrance hall,
but it always receded very rapidly and seldom gave us any inconvenience.
The entrance, which is paved with marble, is very broad, and there is a
wide and imposing staircase of polished hardwood leading to the
reception hall above. The great living-rooms open one into another,
giving a fine perspective, and they lead, through a dozen different
doorways, on to a splendid, white-tiled verandah which runs out to the
bank of the Pásig River. There is a picturesque, moss-covered river
landing on the verandah below.
There are about twenty rooms on the one floor, all of them good sized
and some of them enormous, and it took a great many servants to keep the
place in order. The floors were all of beautiful hardwoods and it
required a permanent force of six _muchachos_ to keep them in a proper
state of polish. The Filipino method of polishing floors is interesting.
Your _muchacho_ ties either banana leaves or some sort of bags on his
bare feet, then he skates up and down, up and down, until the floors get
so slick that he himself can hardly stand up on them. It is easy to
imagine that six boys skating together in the spaciousness of the Palace
might cut fancy figures and have a delightful time generally, if they
thought they were unobserved. Filipinos of the _muchacho_ class always
play like children, no matter what they are doing, and they have to be
treated like children.
The Palace furniture, which must have been very fine in Spanish days,
was of red _narra_, or Philippine mahogany, handsomely carved and
displaying on every piece the Spanish coat-of-arms. But during the
changing Spanish régimes some one with a bizarre taste had covered all
the beautiful wood with a heavy coat of black paint. The effect was
depressingly sombre to me.
The porcelain, however, or what was left of it, was unusually good. The
Spanish coat-of-arms in beautiful colours was reproduced on each plate
against a background of a dark blue canopy. I must say there were quite
as many reminders of Spanish authority as I could wish for and I
frequently felt that some noble Don might walk in at any moment and
catch me living in his house.
But, it didn’t take us long to get settled down in our new domain, and I
soon ceased to regret the sea breezes and the salt baths of Malate.
Malacañan enjoyed a clean sweep of air from the river and our open
verandah was in many ways an improvement on the gaudily glazed one that
we had gradually become accustomed to in the other house. The Malacañan
verandah, being much of it roofless, was of little use in the daytime,
but on clear evenings it was the most delightful spot I have ever seen.
I began to love the tropical nights and to feel that I never before had
known what nights can be like. The stars were so large and hung so low
that they looked almost like raised silver figures on a dark blue field.
And when the moon shone—but why try to write about tropical moonlight?
The wonderful sunsets and the moonlit nights have tied more American
hearts to Manila and the Philippines than all the country’s other charms
combined. And they are both indescribable.
[Illustration:
TWO VIEWS OF MALACAÑAN PALACE. THE FIRST PICTURE SHOWS THE WIDE,
ROOFLESS VERANDA OVER THE PASIG RIVER
]
When I lived in Malate and could look out across the open, white-capped
bay to far-away Mt. Meriveles, I sometimes forgot I was in the Tropics.
But at Malacañan when we gazed down on the low-lapping Pásig, glinting
in the starlight, and across the rice fields on the other side where
swaying lanterns twinkled from beneath the outline of thatched roofs,
there was little to remind us that we were Americans or that we had ever
felt any air less soothing than the soft breeze which rustled the bamboo
plumes along the bank.
Our household was in every way much enlarged on our change of residence
and circumstances. There were eight or nine _muchachos_ in the house,
two extra Chinese helpers in the kitchen, and the staff of coachmen and
gardeners increased on even a larger scale. Our stable of ponies
multiplied to sixteen, and even then there were too few for our various
needs. It is difficult for the dweller in the Temperate Zone to realise
how small an amount of work the native of the Tropics, either man or
beast, is capable of.
We thought at first that the salary attached to the office of Governor
of the Philippines was quite splendid, but we soon gave up any idea we
might have had of saving a little of it for a rainy day. Our rainy day
was upon us. It rained official obligations which we had to meet. The
mere cost of lighting Malacañan was enough to keep a modest family in
comfort. I don’t know about conditions at the Palace now, but I imagine
they have not changed much, and I do know that Manila is a more
expensive place in which to live than it was in my time. And yet there
is serious talk of reducing the salary of the Governor-General. It seems
a pity. This would place the office in a class with Ambassadorships
which nobody but rich men can accept. The present salary, with nice
management and a not too ambitious programme, will just about cover
expenses, but I feel sorry for the wife of the Governor who must try to
do what is expected of her on less.
My cook, who had been quite independent of me at Malate, became at
Malacañan wholly unapproachable. I don’t know why, but so it was. He
occupied quarters opening on one of the courts below and connected with
the dining-room by an outside staircase up which I was never able to
inveigle him. I had to deliver my orders from the top of the stairs and
when he had listened to just as much as he cared to hear he would
disappear through the kitchen door, and no amount of calling would bring
him back. As the kitchen was an ante-chamber to a sort of Chinese
catacombs, extending over a good part of the basement, I never ventured
to follow him and I had to swallow my wrath as best I could.
But he was a jewel despite his eccentricities. He could produce the most
elaborate and varied buffet suppers I ever saw and I never knew a cook
who could make such a wonderful variety of cakes and fruit tarts and
cream-puffs. He took a real delight in their construction, and for two
days before a reception he would spend all his time filling every pan in
the house with _patisseries_ elaborately iced in every imaginable
colour.
I began at once to give an afternoon reception every week and if it
hadn’t been for my disagreeable, but capable, old Ah Sing I should have
been in a constant turmoil of engagements with caterers and
confectioners. As it was, I never had to give an order, really.
“Reception Wednesday, Ah Sing,” was all that was necessary, and except
for a glance now and then to see that the _muchachos_ were giving the
floors and the furniture a little extra polish on Wednesday morning, the
only preparations I had to make for receiving two thousand people were
to put on an embroidered muslin gown and compose myself.
These afternoon receptions were public, our only form of invitation
being an “At Home” notice in the newspapers, and considering the
unsettled state of Manila society in those days, it is really remarkable
that we had so few unwelcome guests. There were a great many derelicts
and generally disreputable people, both American and European, trying to
better their fortunes or add to the excitement in our agitated
community, but we suffered no unpleasant consequences from our open
hospitality, though every Wednesday the Palace was thronged and every
Wednesday many new faces appeared. Army and Navy people, civilians of
every occupation and many foreigners—Germans and British mostly—came
nearly always. I remember especially the first instalment of American
school teachers. They were, for the most part, a fine lot of men and
women who had come out with high hopes and ideals and an enthusiastic
desire to pass them on. There were some pretty girls among them and a
number of very clever looking men. I believe they used to enjoy my
parties as much as anybody in Manila. They were homesick, no doubt,
especially the girls, and I suppose the sight of so many friendly
American faces cheered them up.
The Filipinos had to have a little coaxing before they began to avail
themselves very freely of our general invitation. But by asking many of
them personally and persistently to “be sure and come Wednesday” we
prevailed on a good number to believe they were really wanted; and after
a little while there began to be as many brown faces as white among our
guests.
Speaking of school teachers reminds me that it was just about this time
that our minds were relieved of all anxiety with regard to Bob’s and
Helen’s education. My husband had wanted to send our ten-year-old son
back across the Pacific and the United States, all by himself, to his
Uncle Horace’s school in Connecticut, and I had opposed the idea with
all my might without being able to offer a satisfactory substitute plan.
But now a school for American children was opened and they were as well
taught as they would have been at home. Moreover, Bob and Helen found a
large number of congenial companions, and I don’t think I ever saw a
happier set of boys and girls. They lived out of doors and did
everything that children usually do, but their most conspicuous
performance was on the Luneta in the evenings, where they would race
around the drive on their little ponies, six abreast, or play games all
over the grass plots which were then, and always have been, maintained
chiefly for the benefit of children, both brown and white.
My husband’s change in title and station made very little difference in
the character of his duties, but it gave him increased authority in the
performance of them. The onerous necessity for submitting legislation to
an executive whose point of view was different from that of the
Commission came to an end, and he was able to see that such laws as the
Commission passed were put in operation without delay. Under General
Chaffee the feeling on the part of the Army against the encroachments of
civil government gave way, slowly but surely, to an attitude of, at
least, friendly toleration. It was as if they said: “Well, let them
alone; we know they are wrong; but they must learn by experience, and,
after all, they mean well.”
General Chaffee and General MacArthur were two quite different types of
men. General Chaffee was less precise, less analytical. General
MacArthur had always been given to regarding everything in its
“psychological” aspect and, indeed, “psychological” was a word so
frequently on his lips that it became widely popular. General Chaffee
was impetuous; he was much less formal than his predecessor both in
thought and manner, and Mr. Taft found co-operation with him much less
difficult. He made no secret of his conviction, which was shared by most
of the Army, that civil government was being established prematurely,
but he was not unreasonable about it.
He refused at first to listen to the proposition for the establishment
of a native Constabulary. This had been the Commission’s pet project
ever since they had been in the Islands, and it was a great
disappointment to them to find that the opposition which they had
encountered in the former administration was to be continued.
What they wanted was a force of several thousand Filipinos, trained and
commanded by American Army officers, either from the regular Army or
from the volunteers. The same thing had been done with success by the
British in India and the Straits Settlements, by the Dutch in Java and
by our own General Davis in Porto Rico, and as the insurrectionary force
had dwindled to a few bands and to scattered groups of murderers and
ladrones, so acknowledged by everybody, there was no reason why a native
constabulary should not be employed to clear these out.
This plan was among the first things submitted to General Chaffee, but
he was evidently not impressed. “Pin them down with a bayonet for at
least ten years” was a favourite expression of Army sentiment which
sometimes made the Commissioners’ explanations to the natives rather
difficult.
General Wright, on behalf of the Commission, called on General Chaffee
and was much surprised to learn that he had not even read the
Constabulary bill which had been passed some time before and held up
pending the hoped for opportunity to carry it into effect. When General
Wright explained the purport of the measure General Chaffee said,
“I am opposed to the whole business. It seems to me that you are trying
to introduce something to take the place of my Army.”
“Why, so we are,” said General Wright. “We are trying to create a civil
police force to do the police work which we understood the Army was
anxious to be relieved of. You have announced your purpose to
concentrate the Army in the interest of economy, and to let our civil
governments stand alone to see what is in them and we consider it
necessary to have a constabulary, or some such force, to take care of
the lawless characters that are sure to be in the country after four
years of war, and especially in a country where the natives take
naturally to ladronism. The Municipal police as now organised are not
able to meet all the requirements in this regard.”
“There you are,” said General Chaffee, “you give your whole case away.”
“I have no case to give away,” replied General Wright. “We are trying to
put our provincial governments on a basis where they will require
nothing but the moral force of the military arm, and actually to
preserve law and order through the civil arm. The people desire peace,
but they also desire protection and we intend through the civil
government to give it to them.”
The Commissioner then suggested the names of some Army officers whose
peculiar tact in handling Filipinos had marked them as the best
available men for organising and training native soldiers, but General
Chaffee was not inclined to detail them for the work, so General Wright
returned to the Commission quite cast down and communicated to his
colleagues the feeling that they were to have a continuance of the same
difficulties with which they were required to contend under the former
administration.
But a peacemaker came along in the person of General Corbin. He spent
some time with General Chaffee and then came to Malacañan to visit us.
He made a hurried, but quite extensive trip through the Islands and gave
the whole situation pretty thorough inspection. After he left, a change
was found to have come over the spirit of affairs, and it was thought
that he had managed to make clear to everybody concerned that, while
there was a military arm and a civil arm of the government in the
Philippines, they represented a single American purpose and that that
purpose had been expressed by the administration at Washington when the
Commission was sent out to do the work it was then engaged upon.
After that General Chaffee seems not only to have been amenable to
reason, but to have been imbued with a spirit of cordiality and
helpfulness which was most gratifying to the long-harassed Commission.
To facilitate co-operation, a private telephone was installed between
the offices of Mr. Taft and the Commanding General, and it seemed to me
that my husband suddenly lost some of the lines of worry which had begun
to appear in his face.
The Constabulary, as everybody knows, was eventually established and
perhaps no finer body of men, organised for such a purpose, exists. It
took a long time to get them enlisted, equipped and properly drilled,
but to-day they are a force which every man and woman in the
Philippines, of whatever nationality, colour, creed or occupation,
regards with peculiar satisfaction. They include corps enlisted from
nearly every tribe in the Islands, not excepting the Moros and the
Igorrotes. The Moro _constabulario_ is distinguishable from the
Christian in that he wears a jaunty red fez with his smart khaki uniform
instead of the regulation cap, while the Igorrote refuses trousers and
contents himself with the cap, the tight jacket, the cartridge belt and
a bright “G-string.” To the Ifugao Igorrote uniform is added a
distinguishing spiral of brass which the natty soldier wears just below
the knee. It is difficult to imagine anything more extraordinary than a
“crack” company of these magnificent barelegged Ifugaos going through
dress-parade drill under the sharp commands of an American officer. The
Constabulary Band of eighty-odd pieces, under the direction of Captain
Loving, an American negro from the Boston Conservatory of Music, is well
known in America and is generally considered one of the really great
bands of the world. All its members are Filipinos.
Press clippings and some correspondence which I have before me remind me
that even at this period there began to manifest itself in the Taft
family, and otherwheres, a mild interest in the possibility that my
husband might become President of the United States. Mr. Taft himself
treated all such “far-fetched speculation” with the derision which he
thought it deserved, but to me it did not seem at all unreasonable. We
received first a copy of the Boston _Herald_ containing two marked
articles in parallel columns, one of which, headed by a picture of Mr.
Taft, stated that in Washington there had been serious suggestion of his
name as a Presidential candidate and the other giving a sympathetic
account of an anti-imperialistic meeting at Faneuil Hall. We thought the
two articles as “news items” hardly warranted juxtaposition, and it
seemed to us the editor was indulging a sort of sardonic sense of humour
when he placed them so. Not that my husband was an “imperialist,” but
that he was generally so considered. Indeed, he was the most active
anti-imperialist of them all. He was doing the work of carrying out a
thoroughly anti-imperialistic policy, but he recognised the difference
between abandoning the Philippines to a certain unhappy fate and guiding
them to substantial independence founded on self-dependence. It took a
long time to get the shouters from the housetops to accept this
interpretation of our national obligation, but there was reassurance in
the fact that where our honour is involved Americanism can always be
trusted to rise above purely partisan politics.
Mr. Taft’s mother, who took an active and very intelligent interest in
her son’s work and who sent him letters by nearly every mail which were
filled with entertaining and accurate comment on Philippine affairs,
took the suggestion of his being a Presidential possibility quite
seriously. And she did not at all approve of it. Having seen a number of
press notices about it she sat down and wrote him a long letter in which
she discussed with measured arguments the wisdom of his keeping out of
politics. At that time the idea appealed to nothing in him except his
sense of humour. He wrote to his brother Charles: “To me such a
discussion has for its chief feature the element of humour. The idea
that a man who has issued injunctions against labour unions, almost by
the bushel, who has sent at least ten or a dozen violent labour
agitators to jail, and who is known as one of the worst judges for the
maintenance of government by injunction, could ever be a successful
candidate on a Presidential ticket, strikes me as intensely ludicrous;
and had I the slightest ambition in that direction I hope that my good
sense would bid me to suppress it. But, more than this, the horrors of a
modern Presidential campaign and the political troubles of the
successful candidate for President, rob the office of the slightest
attraction for me. I have but one ambition, and if that cannot be
satisfied I am content to return to the practice of the law with
reasonable assurance that if my health holds out I can make a living,
and make Nellie and the children more comfortable than I could if I went
to Washington.”
This letter is dated August 27, 1901, and was written on a Spanish
steamer which the Commission had taken from Aparri, on the north coast
of Luzon, after they finished the last of the long trips they had to
make for the purpose of organising civil government in the provinces.
It was just after they returned from this trip; just when things were at
their brightest; when everything seemed to be developing so rapidly and
our hopes were running high, that we were shaken by the appalling news
of the attack on President McKinley. We had kept luncheon waiting for
Mr. Taft until it seemed useless to wait any longer and we were at table
when he came in. He looked so white and stunned and helpless that I was
frightened before he could speak. Then he said, “The President has been
shot.”
I suppose that throughout the United States the emotions of horror and
grief were beyond expression, but I cannot help thinking that to the
Americans in the Philippines the shock came with more overwhelming force
than to any one else. Mr. McKinley was our chief in a very special
sense. He was the director of our endeavours and the father of our
destinies. It was he who had sent the civil officials out there and it
was on the strength of his never failing support that we had relied in
all our troubles. It might, indeed, have been Mr. Root in whose mind the
great schemes for the development of the islands and their peoples had
been conceived, but Mr. Root exercised his authority through the wise
endorsement of the President and it was to the President that we looked
for sanction or criticism of every move that was made. Then, too, the
extraordinary sweetness of his nature inspired in every one with whom he
came in close contact a strong personal affection, and we had reason to
feel this more than most people. Truly, it was as if the foundations of
our world had crumbled under us.
But he was not dead; and on the fact that he was strong and clean we
began to build hopes. Yet the hush which fell upon the community on the
day that he was shot was not broken until a couple of days before he
died when we received word that he was recovering. We were so far away
that we could not believe anybody would send us such a cable unless it
were founded on a practical certainty, and our “Thank God!” was
sufficiently fervent to dispel all the gloom that had enveloped us. Then
came the cable announcing his death. I need not dwell on that.
Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt knew each other very well. They had been in
Washington together years before, Mr. Taft as Solicitor General, Mr.
Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, and they had corresponded with
some frequency since we had been in Manila. So, in so far as the work in
the Philippines was concerned, my husband knew where the new President’s
sympathies were and he had no fears on that score. At the same time he
was most anxious to have Mr. Root continued as Secretary of War in order
that there might not be any delay or radical change in carrying out the
plans which had been adopted and put in operation under his direction.
All activities suffered a sort of paralysis from the crushing blow of
the President’s assassination, but the press of routine work continued.
We were very much interested in learning that a great many Filipinos,
clever politicians as they are, thought that after Mr. McKinley’s death
Mr. Bryan would become President, and that, after all, they would get
immediate independence.
Then came the awful tragedy of Balangiga. It happened only a few days
after the President died, while our nerves were still taut, and filled
us all with unspeakable horror intensified by the first actual fear we
had felt since we had been in the Philippine Islands. Company “C” of the
9th Infantry, stationed at the town of Balangiga on the island of Samar,
was surprised at breakfast, without arms and at a considerable distance
from their quarters, and fifty of them were massacred. About thirty
fought their way bare handed through the mob, each man of which had a
bolo or a gun, and lived to tell the tale. It was a disaster so ghastly
in its details, so undreamed of under the conditions of almost universal
peace which had been established, that it created absolute panic. Men
began to go about their everyday occupations in Manila carrying pistols
conspicuously displayed, and half the people one met could talk of
nothing else but their conviction that the whole archipelago was a
smouldering volcano and that we were all liable to be murdered in our
beds any night. Of course this made the Army officers more certain than
ever that the Islands should have remained under military control
indefinitely, and I cannot deny that, at the time, their arguments
seemed to have some foundation. It was a frightful nervous strain and it
took several months of tranquillity to restore confidence. If it had
been a regular engagement in which the Americans had sustained a reverse
it could have been accepted with some philosophy, but it was a plain
massacre of a company of defenceless men by many times their number who
had gotten into the town with the consent of the American authorities,
and in conspiracy with the local headman and the native parish priest,
on the pretext of bringing in for surrender a band of insurrectos.
The man, Lucban, who was in command of the Samar ladrones who committed
this atrocity, is now a prominent politico in Manila, and it is
interesting to know that only last year, in a campaign speech, he
referred with dramatic intensity to “our glorious victory of Balangiga.”
He was appealing to an ignorant electorate, many of whom, as he knew,
wore the scar of the awful Katipunan “blood pact,” but it is just to
record that the average Filipino is not proud of the Balangiga
“victory.”
Shortly before these unhappy events my sister Maria was called back to
America by the illness of our mother, and I was left to face the tragic
excitements of the month of September without her comforting
companionship. By October I began to feel that I would have to get out
of the Philippine Islands or suffer a nervous breakdown, so my husband
and I agreed that it would be well for me to “run up to China,” as they
express it out there. Running up to China at that time of year meant
getting out of tropic heat into bracing autumn weather with a nip of
real winter in it, and there was nothing that I needed more.
Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Moses were both anxious to see something of China
before leaving the Orient, and as this seemed an excellent opportunity
to make the trip, they decided to go with me. The Boxer Insurrection had
just been suppressed and the Dowager Empress had not yet returned from
the West, whither she had fled during the siege of Peking. We were used
to the alarums of war and we thought we were likely to see more of China
“from the inside” than if we visited the country during a period of
complete calm. Then there were wonderful tales of valuable “loot” which
interested us. Not necessarily illegitimate loot, but curios and art
treasures in the hands of Chinese themselves who were selling things at
ridiculously low figures and, sometimes, with a fascinating air of great
mystery. There is some allurement in the idea of bargaining for
priceless porcelains, ivories, silks and Russian sables behind closed
and double-locked doors, in the dark depths of some wretched Chinese
hovel. Our Army officers who had helped to relieve Peking brought us
stories of this kind of adventure, and I secretly hoped that we should
be able to have just some such experience. But being the wives of
American officials I thought likely we should be “taken care of” every
hour of every twenty-four. And so we were.
We sailed to Shanghai and went from there straight to Peking, where we
became the guests of Colonel and Mrs. Robertson, who had gone in with
the American troops in the Allied Armies and were quartered in no less a
place than the Temple of Heaven. The casual tourist looking now upon
that glorious collection of ancestral shrines would find it difficult to
believe that they once served as barracks for American soldiers. Most
people who visit the Temple of Heaven find in it an atmosphere of peace
and serenity such as is achieved by few structures in the world, and to
have this deep calm invaded by business-like “foreign-devil” troops must
have ruffled the spirits of the high gods. But the soldiers had to be
quartered somewhere and this great, clean, tree-sheltered enclosure in
the heart of the Chinese city offered ample space.
Mr. Conger was then our Minister to China, and after spending a few very
busy days sightseeing we went to the Legation to visit him. The Legation
quarter, which had been laid in ruins during the Boxer troubles, had not
yet begun to assume an aspect of orderliness, and many were the
evidences of the weeks of horror through which the besieged foreign
representatives had lived.
As the Empress Dowager and her court had not yet returned, we hoped to
be able to see all the mysteries of the Forbidden City, but order had
been restored to a point where it was possible to make the palaces once
more “forbidden,” so we were shown only enough to whet our curiosity.
But the wonderful walls and the temples, the long, unbelievable streets
and the curious life of the people were sufficient to save us from any
feeling of disappointment in our visit. At a dinner given for us by our
Minister we met a number of men and women who had been through the
siege, and I sat next to Sir Robert Hart, of the Imperial Chinese
Customs, the most interesting man, perhaps, that the great
occidental-oriental co-operation has ever produced.
When we returned to Shanghai on our way down from Peking I was greeted
by two cablegrams. It just happened that I opened them in the order of
their coming and the first one contained the information that my husband
was very ill and said that I had better return at once to Manila, while
the second read that he was much better and that there was no cause for
alarm. There was no way of getting to Manila for several days, because
there were no boats going. So I decided to take a trip up the Yangtse
River on the house-boat belonging to the wife of the American Consul. If
I had been doing this for pleasure instead of for the purpose of
“getting away from myself” I should have enjoyed it exceedingly, but as
it was I have but a vague recollection of a very wide and very muddy
river; great stretches of clay flats, broken here and there by little
clumps of round mounds which I knew were Chinese graves, and bordered by
distant, low hills; an occasional quaint grey town with uptilted tile
roofs; and a few graceful but dreary-looking pagodas crowning lonesome
hill-tops. And in addition to all of this there was a seething mass of
very dirty and very noisy humanity which kept out of our way and
regarded us with anything but friendly looks.
I had left my husband apparently perfectly well, but I subsequently
learned that the night after I left Manila he developed the first
symptoms of his illness. It was diagnosed at first as dengue fever, a
disease quite common in the Philippines which, though exceedingly
disagreeable, is not regarded as dangerous. It was about two weeks
before a correct diagnosis was made, and it was then discovered that he
was suffering from an abscess which called for a serious emergency
operation. He was taken to the First Reserve Army hospital and the
operation was performed by Dr. Rhoads, the Army surgeon who afterward
became his aide when he was President.
The children must have been much frightened. They had never seen their
father ill before, and he told me afterward that he should never forget
the way they looked as he was being carried out of Malacañan on a
stretcher borne by six stalwart American policemen. They were all
huddled together in the great hall as he passed through, and while Bob
and Charlie were gazing at the proceedings in open-eyed astonishment,
Helen was weeping.
For twenty-four hours after the operation the doctors were not at all
certain that their patient would live, nor did their anxiety end at that
time. The abscess was of long growth, the wound had to be made a
terrible one, and there was great danger of blood poisoning. Mr. Taft
rallied but a second operation was necessary. By the time I reached
Manila he was well on the way to recovery, though even then there was no
prospect of his being able to move for many weeks to come.
He used to lie on his cot in the hospital and recite to his visitors a
verse of Kipling’s which he thought fitted his case exactly:
“Now it is not well for the white man
To hurry the Aryan brown,
For the white man riles and the Aryan smiles,
And it weareth the white man down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here
Who tried to hurry the East.’”
It was decided at once by everybody, including the doctors, Mr. Root and
President Roosevelt, that Mr. Taft must leave the Islands as soon as he
was able to travel, and there were several reasons, besides those
connected with health, why it seemed best for us to return to the United
States. The principal one was that Congress was becoming very active
with regard to Philippine matters, and as Mr. Taft was anxious that the
right kind of legislation should be passed, he wished to go to
Washington and present the facts about the situation as he had found
them during his long hand-to-hand struggle with the problem. Mr. Root
cabled him that his presence in Washington was necessary and granted him
a three months’ leave of absence from his duties as Governor, while
General Wright was appointed vice-Governor to fill his place for the
time being.
Mr. Worcester was the ranking member of the Commission, but my husband
felt that he had not quite the same talent for genially dealing with
every kind of person, whether evasive Filipino or dictatorial Army
officer, which General Wright so conspicuously displayed, and, moreover,
Mr. Worcester was entirely engrossed with the problems of his
department, which included health and sanitation and the satisfactory
adjustment of the difficulties connected with the government of the
non-Christian tribes. These were matters which appealed to Mr.
Worcester’s scientific mind and which he vastly preferred to the
uncongenial task of administering the routine of government, so he was
only too willing not to be encumbered with the duties of Governor. This,
I understand, was Mr. Worcester’s attitude throughout his thirteen years
as Secretary of the Interior, during which time he was always the
ranking Commissioner with the first right, under a promotion system, to
the Governorship whenever a vacancy occurred in that office.
The transport _Grant_ was assigned for our use by General Chaffee, and
we made our preparations for an extended absence.
One incident of my husband’s convalescence in the hospital I think I
must relate. In an adjoining room General Frederick Funston was
recovering from an operation for appendicitis and he was sufficiently
far advanced to be able to walk around, so he used to call on Mr. Taft
quite often. Now General Funston, for the benefit of those who have no
mental picture of him, is by no means gigantic. He has the bearing of a
seven-foot soldier, but the truth is he is not more than five feet three
or four inches in height.
One day there was an earthquake of long duration and extended vibration
which would have been sufficient to destroy Manila had it not lacked a
certain upward jerk calculated to unbalance swaying walls. One gets used
to earthquakes in the Orient in a way, but no amount of familiarity can
make the sensation a pleasant one. My husband was alone at the time and
he had decided to hold hard to his bed and let the roof come down on him
if it had to. The hospital was a one story wooden building and he really
thought he was as safe in it as he would be anywhere. Moreover, he was
quite unable to walk, so his fortitude could hardly be called voluntary,
but he had scarcely had time to steel himself for the worst when his
door was thrown open and in rushed General Funston.
“We must carry out the Governor!” he shouted; “we must carry out the
Governor!”
“But how are you going to do that, General?” asked Mr. Taft.
He knew quite well that General Funston, in his weakened condition,
would be incapable of carrying an infant very far.
“Oh, I have my orderly with me,” responded the doughty General, and by
this time he had begun to get a firm grasp on the mattress while behind
him hurried a soldier, shorter even than his chief, but with the same
look of dauntless determination in his eye.
In spite of the straining on the rafters, Mr. Taft burst out laughing
and flatly refused to let them try to move him. Fortunately for them all
the upward jerk necessary to bring down the roof didn’t occur, so there
is no way of telling whether or not, for once in his life, General
Funston started something that he couldn’t finish.
We sailed from Manila on Christmas Eve, 1901, and, much as I had enjoyed
my life and experiences in our new world of the Philippines, I was glad
to see the tropic shores fade away and to feel that we were to have a
few months in our own land and climate, and among our own old friends,
before I sighted them again.