These were the conditions⁠—merely sketched⁠—which existed in the Philippine Islands when the second Commission was sent out, and the first Filipinos Mr. Taft ever met, he met in Hong Kong. They were not members of the “junta” but were high-class, wealthy, noncombatant refugees named Cortez, who lived under a threat of assassination, who had had all their property confiscated because of their sympathy with the insurrection against Spain, had secured restitution through the government at Washington, and who came now to beg the Commission for protection against their own people and for the speedy establishment of peaceful American rule in the islands.