RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
sand as loyal men as ever wore uniform enlisted in twenty-four hours. I may say here that the Filipino people are divided into a number of distinct tribes and that some of these never did take much, if any, part in the insurrection. The insurrection is to-day referred to as the Tagalog rebellion, the Tagalogs being one of the principal tribes, though not the largest.
There had always been a great number, a majority in fact, of Filipinos who did not like the awful conditions created by the insurrection and who easily could be persuaded to an attitude of loyalty toward any decent and peaceful government; and it was from this number that the Commission wanted to recruit a native constabulary. But no. The Commission would not begin to exercise such powers as it had until September and in the meantime General MacArthur was absolute and in answer to this proposition he merely reiterated his belief that the only way to meet the situation was with additional American troops.
In my husband's earliest letters he characterised the Filipino people much as he did after years of experience with them. He wrote me that of the six or seven millions of Christian Filipinos about two per cent. were fairly well educated, while all the rest were ignorant, quiet, polite people, ordinarily inoffensive and light-hearted, of an artistic temperament, easily subject to immoral influences, quite superstitious and inclined, under the direction of others, to great cruelty. He thought them quite capable of becoming educated and that they could be trained to self-government. He was inclined to think that they had, because of their environment and experience under Spanish rule, capacity for duplicity, but he did not think they had the Machiavellian natures which people attributed to them. Some of those who call themselves "illustrados"—the higher class—took to political intrigue with great gusto.
Almost the first experience which the Commission had
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