Everything that could be done to make smooth the path of the new Commission was done. At their own request the powers of the Commissioners were carefully defined so that complications with the military government then in force in the islands, might be avoided. They were given equal rank with ministers plenipotentiary in the matter of naval courtesies and precedence; and Mr. Root drafted a letter of instructions, which the President signed, outlining their duties in such precise and correct detail that it was afterward adopted and ratified in its entirety in the act of Congress by which the Philippine government was established.
So—I believed we were going to have “smooth sailing” in every sense, when we started on the long voyage with which began this interesting experience.
CHAPTER III
TO THE PHILIPPINES
The United States Army Transport Hancock had been assigned to the Commission for the trip from San Francisco to Manila and it was at noon on a pleasant day in mid-April—the seventeenth—that she pulled away from the crowded dock and headed straight for the Golden Gate and the long path across the Pacific that leads to the other side of the world. There were forty-five people in our party and, although most of us had met for the first time in San Francisco, we soon became well acquainted, as people do on shipboard, and proceeded at once to prove ourselves to be a most harmonious company.
The Hancock was the old Arizona, a one-time greyhound of the Atlantic, which the Government had purchased and remodelled for service as an army transport. A considerable fleet of such vessels plied the Pacific at that time, carrying large consignments of troops to and from the Philippines and, though there are not so many now, I still read with interest of the comings and goings of ships whose old, friendly sounding names became so familiar to us in the course of our residence in the East. The Grant, the Sherman, the Sheridan, the Thomas, and others, all named for great American generals, awaken memories of interesting days. The Hancock was later given up by the Army and turned over to the Navy on account of her heavy consumption of coal. She is now used as a recruiting ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
We found her very comfortable. There were few people aboard besides the members of our party, and, as she was equipped to carry the officers and men of an entire regiment, we found ourselves commodiously quartered. Moreover, the commissary of the transport service had received instructions to give us excellent fare; this, I believe, through the thoughtful kindness of Mr. McKinley himself.
Mr. McKinley never failed to take a personal interest in the everyday welfare of all those in his administration who came under his own observation and we were made to feel this throughout our experience on the Philippine Commission, while he lived. On every appropriate occasion we were certain to receive from him some kindly compliment, a cablegram or other communication, and it made everybody who came within range of his influence anxious to serve him well and to make the work which was being done satisfactory and pleasing to him. I owe to our connection with President McKinley’s administration some of my happiest recollections.
The men who made up the second Philippine Commission were Mr. Taft, General Luke E. Wright of Memphis, Tennessee; Judge Henry C. Ide of Vermont, Professor Dean C. Worcester of the University of Michigan, and Professor Bernard Moses of the University of California. A short introduction of my husband’s colleagues and the members of their families who went with them to the Philippines will be necessary at this point, because I was destined to be constantly associated with them during four of the most interesting years of my life. Our co-operation, social and governmental, was based upon a common purpose, and our attachment to this purpose, as well as the bonds of friendship which united us, were greatly strengthened by the opposition we had to meet for some months after we reached Manila, not only from the Filipinos, but also from the military government which the Commission was sent out gradually to replace.
The men of the Commission, coming, as they did, from different parts of the United States, were widely contrasted, no less in associations than in their varied accents and family traditions.
General Wright was, and is, one of the ablest lawyers in Tennessee, and enjoyed, at the time of his appointment on the Commission, the finest practice in Memphis. He is a Democrat; and old enough to have been a lieutenant in the Civil War on the Confederate side. But perhaps his finest laurels for bravery and devotion to duty were won at the time when he exerted himself to save Memphis in the days when she was in the grip of a terrible epidemic of yellow fever. I don’t know the exact year, but the epidemic was so out of control that all who could, left the city, while General Wright remained to organise such resistance as could be made to the spread of the dread disease.