We touched at Marinduque on our trip south, and found that nothing could then be done there, but the better element were anxious for a change, and we promised them that if they would bring about certain specified results before our return we would give them a provincial government.  They undertook to do so, and kept their word.  Needless to say we also kept ours.

We had grave doubts as to the advisability of establishing civil governments in Cebu, Bohol and Batangas.  In the first of these places the people were sullen and ugly.  In the second there was a marked disinclination on the part of leading citizens to accept public office.  There had been a little scattering rifle fire on the outskirts of the capital of the third very shortly before our arrival there, but the organization of all these provinces was recommended by the military authorities, and we decided to try an experiment which could do little harm, as we could return any one of them to military control in short order should such a course seem necessary.

An effort has been made to make it appear that in organizing Cebu, Bohol and Batangas, we acted prematurely and upon our own initiative, thus complicating the situation for the military authorities.  I will let Blount voice this complaint.  He says in part:—­

“In his report for 1901 Governor Taft says that the four principal provinces, including Batangas, which gave trouble shortly after the civil government was set up in that year, and had to be returned to military control, were organized under civil rule ’on the recommendation’ of the then commanding general (MacArthur).  It certainly seems unlikely that the haste to change from military rule to civil rule came on the motion of the military.  If the Commission ever got, in writing, from General MacArthur, a ‘recommendation’ that any provinces be placed under civil rule while still in insurrection, the text of the writing will show a mere soldierly acquiescence in the will of Mr. McKinley, the commander-in-chief.  Parol [463] contemporaneous evidence will show that General MacArthur told them, substantially, that they were ‘riding for a fall.’  In fact, whenever an insurrection would break out in a province after Governor Taft’s inauguration as governor, the whole attitude of the army in the Philippines, from the commanding general down was ‘I told you so.’  They did not say this where Governor Taft could hear it, but it was common knowledge that they were much addicted to damning ‘politics’ as the cause of all the trouble.” [464]

Prophecy is always dangerous and when unnecessary seems rather inexcusable.  I submit the essential portions of the record to show exactly what we did get from General MacArthur, and add the suggestion that it was really hardly essential that he should make his recommendations in writing, as he did, for the reason that he was a gentleman and would not have repudiated a verbal recommendation once made.