RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
been recognised by General Otis before General MacArthur had arrived and many of them have always been prominently associated with the American government in the Islands. Among others were Chief Justice Arellano, Mr. Benito Legarda and Mr. Pardo de Tavera. The Commissioners talked about the situation with these gentlemen, through Mr. Arthur Fergusson, the Spanish Secretary of the Commission, and found them not altogether despondent, but certainly not optimistic about the outcome. They thought the Commissioners were facing very grave problems indeed, if not insurmountable difficulties.
The next day—"just when the sun got the hottest," wrote Mr. Taft—all the launches in the harbour gathered around the Hancock, many whistles blew, many flags and pennants fluttered, and the Commission was escorted to the shore. They entered the city with great pomp and circumstance, through files of artillerymen reaching all the way from the landing at the mouth of the Pásig River, up a long driveway, across a wide moat, through an old gateway in the city wail and up to the Palace of the Ayuntamiento where General MacArthur, the Military Governor, had his offices. But it was not a joyous welcome for all that. All the show was merely perfunctory; a sort of system that had to be observed. Their reception was so cool that Mr. Taft said he almost stopped perspiring. There were few Filipinos to be seen, and as General MacArthur's reception to the Commission wras anything but cordial or enthusiastic they began to feel a discomforting sense of being decidedly not wanted.
If they had any doubts on this point General MacArthur soon cleared them up. He frankly assured them that he regarded nothing that had ever happened in his whole career as casting so much reflection on his position and his ability as their appointment under the direction of the President. They suggested that he could still rejoice in considerable honour and prestige as a man at the head of a division of
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