To dissipate the gloomy smoke of the conflagration, to still the groans of those who fall in this immense expoliarium into which fatality has converted the Philippine fields, is the mission which the men composing the American Commission desire to bring to a successful issue. To make peace. For this they came, and if fortune does not reserve for them the happy chance of accomplishing so beautiful an ideal, they will retire, and the factor they represent in the problem to be solved, with its distinguishing traits of civil moderation, will be substituted as a system that has failed, by another, wherein the martial power will prevail over political wisdom.
As General MacArthur undoubtedly spends many hours over maps of the Philippines, Mr. Taft also often rests his gaze on a map covering one of the walls of his office, tracing, in mente, a railroad which, crossing the island, shall drown with the cheery whistle of the locomotive the moans of the victims of war. Thus would Mr. Taft like to pacify the Philippines.
It is now one o’clock P.M. and Mr. Taft is at home, where this personage stands out more boldly before us, since the trials through which the country is passing do not permit us yet to judge him politically.
The President of the Commission, in his private life, has many points of similarity with Count de Caspe, that stainless gentleman the Filipinos still recall with veneration. Excepting the brilliancy of those splendid entertainments with which he endeavoured to blot out all racial differences by mingling in fraternal embrace Filipinos and Spaniards at the Malacañan villa, there ordinarily reigned in the governor’s mansion the placid silence of the home of a well-to-do retired merchant. The Countess, who on Thursdays did the honours of her salon with exquisite tact, was during the other days of the week a housekeeper who did not disdain to go to a grocery store to make purchases, or to look over the laundry list.
The same thing happens in the elegant chalet at Malate where Mr. Taft lives. This is a quiet and peaceful home, a temple erected to the affections, under whose roof Mr. Taft rests some hours after the efforts which his political work demands.
His table reflects his modest character. Four courses, two kinds of fruit, a dessert and sauterne compose the menu of the luncheon where Mr. Taft is always accompanied by some guest, either Filipino, American or Spanish. During the meal politics are banished; if the guest is a Filipino who speaks French Mrs. Taft interrogates him on the customs of the archipelago; if he is Spanish, as to the toilettes worn in Manila by the ladies at the most brilliant receptions held here; as to the favourite musical composer of the Hispano-Filipino society; and this conversation increases in attraction when Miss Herron, sister-in-law of Mr. Taft and the incarnation of the modern woman’s education, takes part therein. Miss Herron speaks French correctly, has travelled much, and journeyed through Spain like an intelligent tourist. The architectural lace-work of the Alhambra charmed her, and she went into ecstasies over the orange blossoms growing along the banks of the Guadalquivir. With what Miss Herron was not in harmony, and she berates them like an unsubsidised journalist, were the Spanish railroads. Miss Herron is right.
The children, Robert, about eleven years old; Helen, a girl of nine, and Charles, a baby of three, who is the king of the household:—the McKinley, as it were, of this patriarchal republic—do not come to the table; they eat with the governess.
After the meal, in the fine gallery overlooking the sea, sipping the coffee, Mr. Taft talks of the education of his children, of the difficulties met in the Philippines in the solution of so interesting a problem; and his wife converses of the charitable work she expects to undertake when she shall have assumed a more permanent place in the Archipelago, which Magellan discovered for Spain, and which, through a horrible fatality, is no longer ours. Politics are also eschewed on the gallery.
Needless to say this extraordinary editorial afforded us all boundless amusement; we began to caution Mr. Taft frequently about the careful preservation of his “aureole” and Maria and I decided that we would have to walk warily indeed, if we were destined to be so minutely reported.