Criticism of the bank must have gone beyond the borders of the archipelago and must have produced alarm in high places. . . to induce the War Department to send here a special commissioner to make a thorough investigation. . . . When this gentleman [Mr. Coates] left the Islands . . . without disclosing his conclusions, a storm of conjecture was aroused . . . [but] to-day his report is a mystery to all but two or three men. And Mr. Recto further indicates his observation that the bank exists to serve as a political campaign tool for the Big Caciques; that the immediate result of its operations has been the piling up of a few big fortunes impossible of honest explanation; that, as to its services to agriculture, it has helped no farmer save only district caciques controlling votes; and that, as to commerce, it has aided only such business men as repay favours. Neither eloquence nor accusation, however, sufficed to produce the document. The control of the Big Caciques was supreme. Mr. E. W. Wilson, it will be remembered, arrived from America to take over the bank's managership in January, 1921 -some two months before Mr. Harrison's departure. It is credibly alleged that he came out under instructions from Washington to "keep the lid on." And, whatever the main purpose of such instructions, if such he had, it is obvious that their observance would operate powerfully to "save face" for the Big Caciques. It is a gauge, then, of their capacity to realize the nature of their own deeds and condition, that they should now permit a movement in House and Senate to pull open Mr. Wilson's stewardship of the bank, and thus with one hand to expose the very thing over which the other held the veil. This movement, based on "alleged abuses, irregularities and injustices committed in the employment of experts . . . with fabulous and exorbitant salaries" was, in fact, merely an attack on the re-installment of Americans in the bank's staff. Mr. Wilson, in a letter addressed to several members of the Legislature, met the demonstration with a perfectly human outburst of downright speech. He said: ... I came here under contract. . . . This contract is definite and plain. I have put no one in the bank that was not originally contemplated and specified by this contract and duly approved by the board of directors of the bank. If you desire to investigate the bank, let me suggest that there is no information that you cannot get by calling here. . . . Coates's Report and Haskins and Sells's Report are the most astonishing documents that have been presented concerning any bank in any part of the world during the last generation. The less publicity they get, the better for the bank, the Philippine Government and the Philippine Islands. . . . It is not necessary to hunt quail with a brass band.. ... The letter appeared in the Manila Bulletin on November 14, 1922. Six days later Mr. Benjamin F. Wright placed the Wright-Martin report in the hands of the Governor-General. Governor-General Wood now desired to send the WrightMartin report, in a Special Message, to the Legislature. This in order that the widest discussion and study might be brought to it and that its lesson might be learned by the greatest possible number of the people. Before doing so, however, he sent for Mr. Quezon, President of the Senate, and Mr. Roxas, Speaker of the House, showed them his covering message and asked them if they could suggest any alterations that would make their medicine easier to take. "I don't want to hurt you any more than I must," he said. Both men read the General's message through, having done which, they said that they could take no exceptions to any part of it. Then they went back to their respective seats as President of the Senate and Speaker of the House, as such received the message in due form, and instantly locked it away in their desks. Locked it away so completely that until, late in August, 1923, a species of accident enabled the Governor-General to release the message to the press, the majority of the members of the Legislature remained unaware of its very existence. The immediate result of the release was significant. The leading Filipino dailies burst forth in blasts of fury-but at what? At the heavy financial blow to the country? At the national loss of credit before the world? At the reflection upon Filipino capacity? At the criminals who did the deed? At the self-helpful directors? At the Big Caciques who had engineered the whole scheme? At the American Executive who consented to their banditry?—No and no. Their wrath was for none of these, but all for one single man whom they accused of black spite and of an autocratic design to destroy the life of the country. Their wrath-the whole of it-was poured out upon the present Governor-General of the Islands. And the bank's Board of Directors themselves hastened solemnly to record their condemnation of General Wood's action as "showing ignorance of the principles which govern commercial practices in the civilized world." The Governor-General's Special Message on the Bank, containing the Wright-Martin report with its summary of those of Messrs. Coates and Haskins and Sells, was now given all the publicity that any document can attain in a country 63 per cent illiterate. And it is not without significance as to the moral development of the people, that the standing and power of the Big Caciques was in no wise thereby stained or weakened. In the words already so often repeated:-There is no public opinion in the Philippine Islands. The United States of America has bank-looters and public thieves in high places. But the people of the United States, once informed of the offence, pull down the offender. In the stage as yet attained by the Filipino no offence is felt. As to the gauge of business intelligence afforded by the |