A friend wrote me recently, "I don't think I could give you a more accurate idea of what most Americans and British, and even intelligent natives, think of this Democratic administration than to repeat a conversation I overheard in the Fort McKinley cars one morning between two coloured American soldiers. They began by laughing at Harrison's 'give them what they want' speech, and speaking of the Filipinos as 'spoiled children.' 'Well,' said one dusky brave, 'we have one more year of this rotten administration, then, thank Gawd, we'll have a white man's government!'" Professor Thomas Lindsey Blayney writes in one of the magazines: "I talked with business men, native and foreign educators, clergymen, army and navy officers, editors American and British, and many Filipinos of undoubted patriotism and intelligence, and I do not hesitate to assure you that the demoralizing tendency of the policies of the present American administration in the Islands is deserving of the widest publicity." The situation, he says, "is bidding fair to become a national disgrace if we allow politics and sentiment to take the place of reason and justice." He goes on to say, "There is no phenomenon of our national life more passing strange than that which induces many of our good people to accept the statements of paid emissaries of the Filipino junto, or some of our new and inexperienced officials at Manila, rather than those of our fellow countrymen of long administrative experience in the Islands.... The loss of men like Governor Forbes, Mr. Worcester, Dr. Heiser, and others, is looked upon as a distinct setback in the development of better and more stable institutions in the entire Orient in the interest of humanity as a whole." All of which only bears out what Lord Cromer told Mr. Forbes--"If your personnel employed in the administration of dependencies at a distance becomes subject to change with changing political parties, you are doomed to failure in your effort to govern countries overseas."