Unlike Britain and France, the United States had few colonial careerists. Its officials tended to come and go quickly, seeing the territories as hardship posts that might lead to higher office back home—as quickly as possible, they hoped. Still, once in a while, someone slipped into the role of sahib and played it to pith-hatted perfection. In the Philippines, that someone was Cameron Forbes. He delighted in life in the tropics: the exotic Orient, the attentive servants, the languid lifestyle. He loved Filipinos, too, though he loved them, as the nationalist leader Manuel Quezon observed, “in
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