At last the interminable lines of school children came past—all the Government schools, of course—as on Declaration Day; no priests or convents. Mr Taft had looked on unmoved and unsmiling at the Agricultural and Industrial displays, but when he saw these scholars, he broke into the “Taft smile,” and clapped his hands above his head. All the Americans followed his lead by bursting into applause, which they kept up, as he did, all the time the schools were passing. I turned my head to the right, where the little brown parents of these children were crowded together, and saw that not one single Filipino made one gesture of applause!
The schools took a long, long time to crawl past, and the continuous applause became rather tiring. But even a Filipino procession must come to an end if only you can wait long enough, and the last of them went past, and we got down off our bench.
Then followed a great surging and shifting of all the people on the balcony, everyone trying to secure a seat in the Court Room, and we were lucky enough to get near a door and not very far from the front.
On the daïs were placed two or three rows of Vienna cane chairs, those for the important people in front, with arms to them. In these sat the Governor, Mrs Luke E. Wright, and “Miss Alice.” Next to the latter Mr Taft took the chair assigned to him, into which he wedged himself with infinite trouble; but the chair at once broke to pieces. Everyone laughed very much, Mr Taft most heartily of all, saying in a good-natured, jolly way: “Here! Someone give me a chair I can sit down on. I’m tired of standing.”
So they brought him another chair, and he took his place, and the speechifying began.
The Presidente of Iloilo—a very courtly old Filipino of the name of Meliza—made a speech of welcome—a very long affair—which included the subjects of Taxation, Duties, and Independence, to which Mr Taft replied elusively, repeating nothing tangible but his old phrase of “Philippines for the Filipinos.”
Then some more people made speeches—natives—and at last they drove Mr Taft into a corner about the Independence, and he said, “I am not come to give you your Independence, but to study your welfare. You will have your Independence when you are ready for it, which will not be in this generation—no, nor in the next, nor perhaps for a hundred years or more.”
Even though I have told you how up to then no one had any idea of why he and his party had come to the Islands—most people thinking he was going to say something definite about the Americans retiring from the Islands—the natives all firmly convinced that he was coming to ratify the undated promise of Independence he made them two years ago—even though I have told you this, you can have no idea of the effect these words had upon the audience. We were simply staggered, and the darker complexioned amongst us sat quite still and immovable.
The speeches lost some of their force by being translated as they went along by an interpreter, who spoke English and Spanish with equal perfection, and, indeed, he was quite marvellous; but all the same the utterances lost point, and it was not easy to follow the thread with long halts between. What was more serious was that the translations of Mr Taft’s opinions were softened by the courteous Spanish phrases, and the fiery patriotism of the Filipinos was marvellously toned down in the English rendering.