differently to him.

Mr. Schurman acquired a working knowledge of the Spanish language
with extraordinary promptness. Shortly thereafter Colonel Denby and
I discovered that when Filipinos came to see the commission in order
to impart information or to seek it, he was conferring with them
privately and sending them away without our seeing them at all.

Soon after we had made our formal statement of the situation to the
President, Mr. Schurman had an interview with an Englishman who had
been living in Insurgent territory north of Manila, from which he had
just been ejected, in accordance with Luna's order. This man told
him all about the mistakes of the Americans and evidently greatly
impressed him, for shortly thereafter he read to us at a commission
meeting a draft of a proposed cablegram which he said he hoped we would
approve. It would have stultified us, had we signed it, as it involved
in effect the abandonment of the position we had so recently taken
and a radical change in the policy we had recommended. Mr. Schurman
told us that if we did not care to sign it, he would send it as an
expression of his personal opinion. Colonel Denby asked him if his
personal opinion differed from his official opinion, and received an
affirmative reply. We declined to approve the proposed cablegram,
whereupon he informed us that if his policy were adopted, he and
General Aguinaldo would settle things without assistance from us,
and that otherwise he would resign. He inquired whether we, too,
would send a cable, and we told him certainly not, unless further
information from us was requested. He sent his proposed message,
in somewhat modified form, and received a prompt reply instructing
him to submit it to the full commission and cable their views.

He did submit it to Colonel Denby and myself at a regularly called
commission meeting, argued that in doing this he had obeyed the
President's instructions, and vowed that he would not show it to
General Otis. I showed it to the General myself, allowing him to
believe that I did so with Mr. Schurman's approval, and thus avoided
serious trouble, as he had been personally advised from Washington
of the instructions to Mr. Schurman. The General then joined with
Colonel Denby and myself in a cablegram setting forth our views,
and so this incident ended.

Mr. Schurman did not resign, but thereafter we saw very little of
him. He made a hasty trip to the Visayas and the Southern Islands
and