d to the idea of a new commission, maintaining
that the best results could be obtained by the appointment of a civil
governor with wide powers. It was therefore taken for granted that he
would not desire reappointment. Colonel Denby was keenly interested
in the work and would have been glad to continue it, but he was past
seventy and with his good wife had then spent some fifteen years
in the Far East. He doubted whether his strength would be adequate
to bear the strain of the arduous task which obviously lay before
the new commission, and Mrs. Denby desired to remain in the United
States where she could be near her children from whom she had been
long separated, so her husband felt constrained to say that he did
not wish to return to the Philippines.

I separated from him with the keenest regret. He was an amiable,
tactful man of commanding ability and unimpeachable integrity, actuated
by the best of motives and loyal to the highest ideals. He constantly
sought to avoid not only evil but the appearance of evil. I count it
one of the great privileges of my life to have been associated with
him. The one thing in the book written by James H. Blount which aroused
my ire was his characterization of Colonel Denby as a hypocrite. No
falser, meaner, more utterly contemptible statement was ever made,
and when I read it the temptation rose hot within me to make public
Blount's personal Philippine record, but after the first heat of
anger had passed I remembered what the good old Colonel would have
wished me to do in such a case, and forbore.

The second Philippine commission, hereinafter referred to as "the
commission," received its instructions on April 7, 1900.

They covered a most delicate and complicated subject, namely, the
gradual transfer of control from military to civil authority in a
country extensive regions of which were still in open rebellion.

In the opinion of President McKinley there was no reason why steps
should not be taken, from time to time, to inaugurate governments
essentially popular in their form as fast as territory came under
the permanent control of our troops, and indeed, as we have seen,
this had already been done by the army. It was provided that we
should continue and perfect the work of organizing and establishing
civil governments already commenced by the military authorities. In
doing this we were to act as a board of which Mr. Taft was designated
president. It was contemplated that the tr