The rest of the story I heard afterward. It seems that both General Barry and General Davis saw him and took pains to go down and ask him up into the central pavilion, but he refused to go. Then one of the guards came up and politely informed him: “Orders, sir, you’ll have to stand back.” By this time he was infuriated and he turned on the guard and, after identifying himself, repeated his remarks about having made the Army and being determined to go back to Washington and unmake it.
“Well,” said the guard, “I guess you can’t unmake me. I’ve just been mustered out of the United States Army and am a plain American citizen. I don’t understand that Congress can do much about unmaking American citizens.” Which all goes to show that it doesn’t do much good to lose one’s temper. The gentleman took his party and stalked out of the plaza.
My hopes for the evening were blasted. About five o’clock the heavens opened and such a sheet of water descended upon my refreshment tent and my strings of gay paper lanterns as one never sees in the Temperate Zone. It was raining in torrents when our guests began to arrive, and if many of those invited had not been kept at home by the weather I don’t know what I should have done with the crowd. I had a wide hall, a small reception room, a dining-room and the verandah, but two thousand people are a good many, and I’m sure a large majority of them came in spite of the weather. It was a “crush,” and a warm, moist crush, but it was a gala occasion, everybody was in good humour and the evening passed much more pleasantly than I had any reason to expect. This was the first entertainment of such proportions that I had undertaken in Manila, and I saw at once that, as the Governor’s wife, I should need all the spaciousness of Malacañan Palace.
I think General MacArthur was pleased with our farewell hospitality to him; he seemed to be; and I think his feelings toward Mr. Taft, when he left the Islands the next day, were exceedingly friendly. But we heard later that letters had come from companions of his on the ship which said that he very keenly resented the fact that the new Governor had not seen fit to mention him with praise in his Inaugural address. Mr. Taft said he was very sorry, but, in view of the relations which were known to exist between the Military government and the Commission, he thought it would have been very difficult to find the tactful words which would have satisfied the General, and in uttering which he would not have stultified himself.
I am quite sure that General MacArthur never disliked my husband personally. His resentment was against the Commissioners in their official capacity, whereby his own authority was diminished. In later years, as Secretary of War, Mr. Taft met him very often and their relations were always perfectly cordial. After his death there was considerable newspaper comment to the effect that he had been very badly treated. There was no refutation of the charges, but everybody familiar with the facts knew they had no foundation. When Mr. Taft was Secretary of War, on his recommendation General MacArthur was given the highest rank in the United States Army, that of Lieutenant-General, and at his own request was sent by Mr. Taft on a mission to travel through China with his son, an Army officer, as his aide, and to make a military report upon the country. On his return, at his own request, he was not assigned to specific command, but was ordered to his home at Milwaukee to prepare the report on China, and there he remained by his own choice until his retirement.
On the morning of July 5, we moved to Malacañan, and General Chaffee, who succeeded General MacArthur, took our house on the Bay. There was a great deal of contention with regard to this exchange of houses. Mr. Taft knew that to the mind of the Filipinos the office of Governor, without the accustomed “setting” and general aspects of the position, would lose a large part of its dignity and effectiveness. He also knew that a Civil Government, unless it were quartered in the Ayuntamiento, the recognised seat of government, would inspire but little confidence or respect. The outward semblance is all-important to the Filipino mind, yet knowing this the Military authorities clung with dogged tenacity to every visible evidence of supremacy, and it took an order from Washington to get them to vacate the Ayuntamiento in which they had, in the beginning, refused the Commission adequate office room. An official order also turned the Governor’s residence over to the new Governor and, at the same time, relieved Mr. Taft of the necessity for deciding what to do with our house in Malate. It was the best available house in the city and every man on the Commission wanted it, so if the War Department had not taken it for the Commanding General somebody’s feelings surely would have suffered. Mr. Taft had about decided to toss a coin in the presence of them all to see which one of his colleagues should have it.
In some ways we regretted that the move was necessary, for we were very comfortable in our “chalet,” as Señor Juan de Juan had editorially called it, and invigorating dips in the high breakers of the Bay had become one of our pleasantest pastimes. But we knew that no amount of executive orders could turn our homely and unpalatial abode into a gubernatorial mansion, so we needs must move for the effect on the native mind, if for nothing else. Not until we did, would the Filipinos be convinced that Civil Government was actually established.
Not that I wasn’t well pleased with the idea
