RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
interesting times. But they deal only with the insurrection, while the main body of his correspondence shows that the Commissioners were engaged upon legislative matters of the gravest import which would be rendered entirely superfluous should Mr. Bryan be elected and his announced policies be carried into effect. In that event they proposed immediately to turn matters back to the military government and withdraw, leaving Mr. Bryan to face the problems which they knew he would soon discover had to be dealt with from the standpoint of constructive statesmanship.
In the meantime the peace movement was rapidly gaining adherents among the people in spite of the still active insurrectos, or rather, because of them and their methods; while everybody seemed to welcome the change from a strictly military to a partially civil government.
The popularity of the Commission, as offering a change from the strictness of military rule, was becoming every day more marked. Juan de Juan, a Spaniard, and editor of the lively organ El Progreso, which was always in opposition to anything American, said that on the first of September when the Commission began to exercise its authority, he intended to devote the whole front page of his paper to just three words: "Gracias a Dios,"—Thanks to God! Juan de Juan was a good deal of a Bohemian and really cared little of what happened so long as he got a sensation out of it. September first came and went, and I don't remember whether he made good this extravagant threat or not. I presume he didn't for, though I had been in Manila less than a week, I surely would have remembered.
After the Commission had been in power for just a month, and while the excited interest in events in the United States was at its height, Juan de Juan broke out in a characteristic Spanish editorial, a translation of which has been preserved. We had entertained Juan de Juan at dinner, and he evi-
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