For some time I had charge of his spies.  Never have men taken longer chances than did the faithful few who at this time furnished us with information as to events in Insurgent territory.  Discovery meant prompt and cruel death.  For a long time Major F. S. Bourns had performed the uncongenial task of directing the spies.  He was then the chief health officer of Manila, and as all sorts of people were compelled to consult him on sanitary matters, visits to his office aroused no suspicion.  He spoke Spanish, and this was imperatively necessary.  Our spies simply would not communicate results through interpreters.  The facts revealed by the Insurgent records show how right they were in refusing to do so.

Major Bourns eventually returned to the United States.  His work was taken over by an army officer, with the result that two of our best men died very suddenly in that gentleman’s back yard.  As I spoke Spanish, and as all sorts of people came to see the commission, I was the logical candidate for this job, which I thereupon inherited.

Each morning, if there was news, I myself laboriously thumped out my notes on the typewriter, making an original and one copy.  The copy I took at once to General Lawton.  The original I took, later, to General Otis.

General Lawton was firmly convinced that most army officers were unfitted by their training to perform civil functions.  He organized municipal governments with all possible promptness in the towns occupied by his troops, and in this work he requested my assistance, which I was of course glad to give.  Sr.  Felipe Calderon drafted a simple provisional scheme of municipal government which I submitted for criticism to that most distinguished and able of Filipinos, Sr.  Cayetano Arellano. [453] When the final changes in it had been made, I accompanied General Lawton on a trip to try putting it into effect.  We held elections and established municipal governments in a number of the towns just south of Manila, and in some of those along the Pasig River.

General Otis watched our operations and their results narrowly, and was sufficiently well pleased with the latter to order General Kobbe to follow a similar course in various towns on or near the railroad north of Manila.  Kobbe did not profess to know much about municipal government, and asked me to go with him and help until he got the hang of the thing, which I did.

Thus it happened that the first Philippine Commission had a sort of left-handed interest in the first municipal governments established in the islands under American rule.

In his endeavour to show that the Commission interfered with military operations, Blount has ascribed certain statements to Major Starr.  He says:  " ... at San Isidro on or about November 8, Major Starr said:  ‘We took this town last spring,’ stating how much our loss had been in so doing, ’but partly as a result of the Schurman commission parleying with the Insurgents, General Otis had us fall back.  We have just had to take it again.’” [454]