Mr. Taft’s plain and unmistakable duty held him in the Philippine Islands. He knew he could not detach himself completely from the enterprise upon which he was engaged without grave consequences to it. His one cause for uncertainty as to what he should do lay in a suspicion that he might have done something to embarrass the Administration in a political sense, or that his opponents in the monastic orders and Friars’ lands controversy might have made representations which caused the President to consider his removal “upstairs” advisable. He discussed the matter confidentially with Mr. Benito Legarda and with the Chief Justice of the Philippines, Mr. Arellano, and the comment of the Chief Justice was: “There, the influence of the Friars has reached even to Washington.” Mr. Taft cabled to his brother Henry in New York to make private inquiries in this connection, since he did not wish to remain in the islands if his presence there was in any way undesirable, but at the same time he cabled to the President: