Brief description:
First Lieutenant Morey was the military governor of Basang. Basang is a speck of an island a hundred miles to the west and south of Zamboanga in Mindanao; it was one of the things no body else wanted at Versailles, and they wished on us as reward for helping to win the war. The navy had it for a while, and wished it on the army. The army wished it down to the Philippine scouts.
Two years before he had ever heard of Plattsburg, Morey had met a girl named Irene, at a college prom. Her father had just been appointed revenue collector somewhere in the Philippines. Thenceforth Morey had not been happy until he got to the Philippines and got her. Her father had died---meanwhile, and she and her mother had become too acclimated to wish to return to the States.
Morey had carried his second lieutenancy into the command of the scouts. When the major got Basang put up to him, and threother men had failed to bring order out of the chaos Hua Wua made of Basang—he handed Morey a promotion to first lieutenancy and the dignified job of a military governor.
It all sounded so good to Irene and Mrs. Brennan and-to Morey that they celebrated it with a wedding almost on the spot. Then Morey had two weeks of honeymoon and preparation for the assumption of his new and important post.
In those two weeks he learned some of the things about the latter. They didn’t tell him all——but enough to warn him that it were probably better to leave his wife to follow him a week or so later, when he had seen to it that things were calmed down to make Basang a safe and pleasant home for a wife.
He went on and believed the things they had told him. Basang was healthy. Its twelve hundred odd inhabitants were mostly friendly enough savages. Commercially it might be developed to be worth about one per cent of what it was costing Uncle Sam to keep him and the brown scouts there. Strategically it was a weakness. Aside from this, all that ailed Basang was Hua Wua. Hua Wua was supposed to have been the island’s chief some time. At all events he was the only man on earth who wanted the island enough to fight for_ it. The United States was fighting him for it, not because the major had told him to. His first two months had cured him of wanting it.
A year and a month before that morning on the launch Morey had finished a long letter that was a diary. Most of it went to show that he had now got Hua Wua so completely subdued the old rascal would never dare another raid on the island’s one town, and that there no longer existed a reason in the world why Irene should not come right back with the good ship Island Queen.
.....
Two years before he had ever heard of Plattsburg, Morey had met a girl named Irene, at a college prom. Her father had just been appointed revenue collector somewhere in the Philippines. Thenceforth Morey had not been happy until he got to the Philippines and got her. Her father had died---meanwhile, and she and her mother had become too acclimated to wish to return to the States.
Morey had carried his second lieutenancy into the command of the scouts. When the major got Basang put up to him, and threother men had failed to bring order out of the chaos Hua Wua made of Basang—he handed Morey a promotion to first lieutenancy and the dignified job of a military governor.
It all sounded so good to Irene and Mrs. Brennan and-to Morey that they celebrated it with a wedding almost on the spot. Then Morey had two weeks of honeymoon and preparation for the assumption of his new and important post.
In those two weeks he learned some of the things about the latter. They didn’t tell him all——but enough to warn him that it were probably better to leave his wife to follow him a week or so later, when he had seen to it that things were calmed down to make Basang a safe and pleasant home for a wife.
He went on and believed the things they had told him. Basang was healthy. Its twelve hundred odd inhabitants were mostly friendly enough savages. Commercially it might be developed to be worth about one per cent of what it was costing Uncle Sam to keep him and the brown scouts there. Strategically it was a weakness. Aside from this, all that ailed Basang was Hua Wua. Hua Wua was supposed to have been the island’s chief some time. At all events he was the only man on earth who wanted the island enough to fight for_ it. The United States was fighting him for it, not because the major had told him to. His first two months had cured him of wanting it.
A year and a month before that morning on the launch Morey had finished a long letter that was a diary. Most of it went to show that he had now got Hua Wua so completely subdued the old rascal would never dare another raid on the island’s one town, and that there no longer existed a reason in the world why Irene should not come right back with the good ship Island Queen.
.....
Publication
Argosy Magazine, November 1921