hen passed on Sugar House Hill and during its
advance on San Juan Hill he conducted himself in a most gallant and
efficient manner."

The war with Spain was soon terminated but the executive ability of
Lieutenant Pershing was still in demand. The period of reconstruction
was difficult then, as it always is, presenting problems different from
those of active fighting, but no less puzzling and perplexing. In this
trying time we find him serving as an executive under the direction of
the War Department and manifesting in his quiet, persistent way the same
qualities of efficiency which had marked his career up to this time. On
August 18, 1898, he was serving as Major Chief Ordnance Officer with the
United States Volunteers, remaining on duty at the Headquarters of the
Army until December 20, 1898, and then on duty in the office of the
Assistant Secretary of War, under whom he organized the Bureau of
Insular Affairs, and was at the head of that Bureau until the following
August. On May 12, 1899, he was honorably discharged from Volunteer
service and on June 6, 1899, he was Major and Assistant Adjutant
General, United States Volunteers.

Office and work of detail did not, however, appeal strongly to him.
Having known the life and work in the field, and also possessed of a
temperament that demanded more active work and out-of-door life that an
office provided, at his own request he was sent to the Philippine
Islands and was assigned to duty as Adjutant General of the District of
Mindanao and Jolo (afterwards a Department under the same name).

He became captain in the First Cavalry, February, 1901, and on August
20th of the same year he was transferred to the Fifteenth Cavalry. His
work in the Philippine Islands continued and there his soldierly
qualities found a larger field for development and activity than they
had known before.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE PHILIPPINES

THE supreme testing of Pershing up to this time in his career came in
the Philippines. There he was dealing with a strange people who for
three centuries had learned their lessons and formed their opinions of
the white men from their contact and dealings with the Spaniards, of
whom they had seen chiefly the adventurers or those who for the "good of
their country" had fled from their homes. To such men the exploitation
of the "natives" was a legitimate game and the little brown men had
thoroughly learned to play their part in it.

The provinces in wh