heir
caps and gave back smiles and bows; a few natives cried, "Viva los
Americanos," and behold, the terrible event was all over.

Acquaintance was at once struck up. The officers came to pay their
respects, drank beer and muscatel, consumed sweets, and paid florid
compliments in Spanish. They began to take possession of those houses
whose owners were out of town, and the news went out. Then there was
as great a scramble to get back as there had been to get away. In
a few days everything was running smoothly, and, as my interlocutor
remarked, all the American officers were much in love with the charming
Filipino girls.

Almost the first act of the military was to open the schools. The
schoolhouses had been used as barracks by the Tagalogs. The chaplain
of the Eighteenth Infantry, the children told me, was their first
teacher. The opening of the schools was a great surprise to the
Filipinos, who were clever enough to appreciate the national standards
which the act implied.

At the time of my arrival the foregoing facts were, in the rush of
events, almost ancient history. Two years had passed. American women,
wives of officers, had come and gone. Peace had been declared and
the machinery of civil government had been put in action.

It would be foolish for me to spend time discussing the Filipino's
aptitude for self-government. Wiser heads than mine have already
arrived at a hopeless _impasse_ of opinion on that point. There are
peculiarities of temperament in the Filipino people which are seldom
discussed in detail, but which offer premises for statements and
denials, not infrequently acrimonious, and rarely approached in a
desire to make those judging from a distance take into consideration
all that makes opinions reliable. Such peculiarities of character
seem to me pertinent to a book which deals with impressions.

Whatever their capacity for achieving the Anglo-Saxon ideal of
self-government, it ought to be recognized that the Filipinos are both
aided and handicapped by receiving not only their government but their
civilization ready made. Their newly aroused sense of nationality
is asserting itself at a period in the world's development when
the mechanical aids to industry and the conscience of a humane and
civilized world relieve Filipino development from the birth throes by
which other nations have struggled to the place at which the Filipinos
begin. Thus, at the same time that individuals are spared the painf