For the correctness of the picture of conditions presented in the above hypothetical talk, I of course intend to be understood as vouching. If such a talk could have been had in 1903 by President Roosevelt with Senator Bacon and those of his colleagues who shared his views, the Albay situation might have been handled creditably. But the Administration was in no position to be frank with the Opposition. No Administration has ever yet during the last fourteen years been in a position to be frank with the Senate and the country concerning the situation at any given time in the Philippines, because at any given time there was always so much that it could not afford to re-open and explain. Mr. Root, for instance, might have been questioned too closely as to why, when Secretary of War, he had gone around the country in the fall of 1900 speaking for Mr. McKinley, and talking about "the patient and unconsenting millions" so anxious to be rid of "Aguinaldo and his band of assassins," when at that very time his (Mr. Root's) generals in the Philippines were engaged in activities, the magnitude of which may be inferred from a telegram sent from Washington to General Wood at Havana, asking if he could possibly spare the 10th Infantry, and adding: Imperative that we have immediate use of every available company that we can lay our hands on for service in the Philippines, [414] although at West Point in 1902 he told the cadets how nobly the army had labored in putting down "an insurrection of 7,000,000 people." No, the Administration in 1903 simply could not afford to be frank concerning the situation in the Philippines. I need not recapitulate here any more of the long train of reasons why, because they have all been fully explained in the preceding chapters. Of course President Roosevelt had no such guilty knowledge of the facts as Mr. Root. He was not in constant daily contact with army officers at the War Department, familiar with the actual situation in the Philippines, as Mr. Root was. He was simply "sticking to Taft." Somewhere along about the time the military folk in the Philippines were scoffing at the unnecessary sacrifice of life incident to the lack of a strong government, President Roosevelt had written his warm personal friend, Hon. George Curry, now a member of Congress from New Mexico, who had been a captain in his regiment before Santiago, was then an official of the civil government of the Philippines, and later Governor of New Mexico, by appointment of Mr. Roosevelt: "Stick to Taft, George" or words to that effect. Mr. Roosevelt's attitude was simply that of an intensely loyal friend of Mr. Taft who simply assumed that the Philippine Government was not going to tolerate impotence in the matter of protecting life and property. But everybody at both ends of the line was too deep in the mire of all the long and systematic withholding of facts from the American public which had been occurring ever since