RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
Taft wrote of several trying experiences when he went out in the evening and forgot his pass and, starting home about half past ten, was held up by one sentry after another who demanded an explanation at the point of a gun.
Mr. Bryan was running for President at this time and he was making a good deal of political capital out of the Philippine situation. He had promised to call a special session of Congress, if he were elected, to consider means for settling the Filipinos in immediate self-government, and he had a large following of mistakenly altruistic anti-imperialists supporting him. Mr. Taft was inclined to think that the whole anti-American demonstration, which was to culminate in the Amnesty Fiesta banquet, was planned by a Mr. Pratt, an American politician then visiting Manila, who wanted the "grandly patriotic" speeches to publish in American newspapers. They probably would have been the perfect material for the anti-imperialists to grow sentimental over.
In the meantime Mr. Bryan's promises and the possibility of his being placed in a position to redeem them, were retarding pacification. All that was needed to discourage the last of the insurrectos was Mr. McKinley's election, and the Presidential campaign of 1900 was probably not watched anywhere with more breathless interest than it was in the Philippine Islands.
Such were the lessons in letters that I got from my husband, and my imagination was fired. He had great projects in hand. The Commission proposed to establish municipal governments wherever conditions made it possible and among the first things they undertook was the framing of a municipal code upon which to base such governments. They sent this to General MacArthur for his comments, but his comments consisted in a rather pointed intimation that military rule was still in force and that he thought they were several years ahead of possibilities,
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