RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
the Dominican order. The Archbishop of Manila, once or twice, felt so much outraged at what he said that he attempted to rise, but Archbishop Chapelle prevented him from doing so. At the close of the argument Monsignor Chapelle asked for ten days in which to prepare an answer and we granted him two weeks. The scene was one I shall always carry with me as marking an interesting period in my Philippine experience.”
The Commission did not settle the question. After careful consideration and many hearings, they left the property in the hands of the Dominicans, but appointed a Board of Trustees to prepare and present an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Islands, appropriating at the same time, five thousand dollars to pay the expenses of the litigation.
Archbishop Chapelle did not like this decision and telegraphed to Secretary Root asking him to withhold his approval. Then he asked the Commission to modify the law and give him an opportunity, in case the decision in the Supreme Court should go against the Church, to appeal to the Congress of the United States. This the Commission refused to do on good and sufficient grounds, whereupon the Archbishop cabled to the President, declaring that the decision as it stood would retard pacification. Although he had always been strongly opposed to the continuation of military government, we were much amused to learn that in his cable to the President he took occasion to remark, significantly, that “General MacArthur is doing splendidly.”
But if Archbishop Chapelle was displeased with the action of the Commission, the Filipino press was delighted, and the editorial encomiums heaped upon them can only be described as brilliant. The Diario de Manila, the next morning, was absolutely unable to express itself, and it concluded a more or less incoherently eulogistic editorial with the words: “The decision satisfies everybody; it raises a question which threatened to drag itself over the
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