Young men did it all. The old-timers suddenly found that they were living in new times, in clean, healthful towns: found that business was increasing by leaps and bounds as the natives fell in behind the young Americans with a quicker stride than Orientals had ever known. And they are the reasons—those few thousands of smooth-faced Americans who laughingly threw themselves at the wall of immemorial sloth and apathy—why Kipling's phrase is seldom quoted east of India, and now not often there. And they are the reasons, those carefully chosen, confident young men of whom too many are buried over there, that we have so much of which to be proud in what has been done in our name for a backward, unfortunate people.
But we, you and I, do not know very much about it all: it is so far away and we are so busy with our affairs, our politics, our—
... You know ... we are just too busy to bother about those Tagalogs and headhunters who live over there where Dewey licked Cervera, and Aguinaldo was king of the Igorotes or something, and Pershing rose from a captain to a general: why, I heard one of those Filipinos make a speech about independence and he was so smart and bright—he had been sent to our congress or something and was handsome and polished and....
Yes, he doubtless was. That is why he was sent: but he bore about the same mental relation to the race he is supposed to represent as a Supreme Court Justice bears to a Georgia cracker!
Terry had thoroughly assimilated the atmosphere of the Luzon provinces in his seven months in the Islands, so he found a real pleasure in studying a Moro town which had been under the energizing influence of the Army for nearly two decades. He wandered slowly through the native quarter, cutting down clean cross streets lined with neat nipa huts inclosed behind latticed bamboo fences, enjoying the novelty of a community different from any he had known. Every detail of the well kept streets testified to the strictness of the standards set by the white men who governed the town. The few Moros whom he encountered on the noon-deserted streets passed him silently and with averted eyes, wary, secretive, entirely alien. One looked him square in the eye, leaving him uncomfortable with the antipathy unveiled, the cold, everlasting contempt of the Mohammedan for the unbeliever whom he does not know.
He walked with lids half-closed against the white glare and the heat waves which danced above the tortured roads and roofs: by the hour set for his luncheon engagement he had covered the town thoroughly, including the beautiful post which had been turned over to Scouts when the Army at last finished its tedious Moro project.
He found the Major waiting him at the Club, a large, single-story building set in a grove of tall palms at the edge of the beach and cooled by the breezes from the Straits. He followed him out on the wide veranda built over the water's edge, passing through a friendly, incurious group of young Americans who sat at little round tables in groups of three and four. Major Bronner responded to a dozen greetings as they crossed to a table set for two at the edge of the veranda. In a moment the deft tableboy had their service under way.
"Well," began the Major, "you will have a busy time of it during the rest of your stay—I wish it were to be longer. This afternoon I want you to come to the office with me—there are lots of things to talk over about your work down there. The Governor will see you about five o'clock. How do you like Zamboanga?"
"It's clean, and interesting, Major."