The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

THE MOROS MEET AMERICA

69

boiling water before drinking it, and told the Moro that the fire
chased the cholera out of the water. The Moros are very
skeptical men, and cross-question one about almost everything
but to Bullard's surprise this old Moro did not cross-question
that; instead he began to spread among other Moros the information that the Americans had good Mohammedan 'doctrines, for they drove devils out of water with fire. In a short
time the Moros began to come from every direction with all
sorts of ailments; and medicine, particularly quinine, became
one of Bullard's chief allies.
Knowing well that "Moros could be managed in only one
of two ways-by putting them to work and keeping them at
work, or by putting them in fear and keeping them in fear,"
Bullard set them to work building a road to the interior, paying
what to them seemed enormous wages. Here is seen the difference between American and Spanish strategy: the Spanish
soldiers would have made the Moros work for nothing. Old
Alandug came first "with a handful of ugly fellows, whom we
treated like kings and handled like infernal machines ready to
go off any time." Charmed by the money they received, they
came in ever increasing numbers-"armed, always armed,
stuck all over with daggers and krises." Even bitter enemies,
who, if they had met anywhere else, would have fought to the
death, buried their hatred for the time in their love of gold
and copper and silver, and worked side by side on the road.
A new force, the love of money, was at work among the Moros,
and far from being "a root of all kinds of evil" it worked for
peace and progress.
Bullard had become their doctor and their employer. Now
he decided to become their priest. He "crammed" late into the
night until he could talk fluently about the Koran, and the following day amazed the priests who came to visit him, with his
show of knowledge of their sacred book. In the presence of
this wizard from America who told them things about the
Koran they never knew, they grew more and more reverent.
At the point where the Spaniards had had the most troublewith their religion-the American governor had none whatever.