Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

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 reminded 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-collared, 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 organisations, 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 the 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 terminated only upon our assuming control of the islands.