Middleton was assigned as an assistant inspector general in the army headquarters in Manila. Here he listened to complaints as he travelled to various Army installations including Fort William McKinley and Corregidor. Less than six months into his Philippine tour he received a telegram from President Smith renewing his offer of a job at LSU as the dean of administration with a salary of $5,400 per year. Middleton was in the hospital undergoing testing for some heart irregularity when the telegram arrived, and he showed it to two other lieutenant colonels who were visiting him. One of them said he should take the offer, the salary being excellent. The other lieutenant colonel, Dwight Eisenhower, said he should stay in the army. Eisenhower had spent three years in Panama as an aide to General Fox Conner, who knew that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were being ignored by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and who was certain another war was coming soon. Eisenhower reasoned that this was no time for an officer with Middleton's combat experience to be getting out of the Army.