The Social Cancer - The Original Classic Edition. Хосе Рисаль

protest, pointed out to the soldiers the spot in his back at which they should aim, and with a firm step took his place in front of them.

       Then occurred an act almost too hideous to record. There he stood, expecting a volley of Remington bullets in his back--Time

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       was, and Life's stream ebbed to Eternity's flood--when the military surgeon stepped forward and asked if he might feel his pulse! Rizal extended his left hand, and the officer remarked that he could not understand how a man's pulse could beat normally at such a terrific moment! The victim shrugged his shoulders and let the hand fall again to his side--Latin refinement could be no further refined!

       A moment later there he lay, on his right side, his life-blood spurting over the Luneta curb, eyes wide open, fixedly staring at that Heaven where the priests had taught all those centuries agone that Justice abides. The troops filed past the body, for the most part silently, while desultory cries of "Viva Espana!" from among the "patriotic" Filipino volunteers were summarily hushed by a Spanish artillery-officer's stern rebuke: "Silence, you rabble!" To drown out the fitful cheers and the audible murmurs, the bands struck up Spanish national airs. Stranger death-dirge no man and system ever had. Carnival revelers now dance about the scene and Filipino schoolboys play baseball over that same spot.

       A few days later another execution was held on that spot, of members of the Liga, some of them characters that would have richly deserved shooting at any place or time, according to existing standards, but notable among them there knelt, torture-crazed, as to his orisons, Francisco Roxas, millionaire capitalist, who may be regarded as the social and economic head of the Filipino people, as

       Rizal was fitted to be their intellectual leader. Shades of Anda and Vargas! Out there [l]at Balintawak--rather fitly, "the home of the snake-demon,"--not three hours' march from this same spot, on the very edge of the city, Andres Bonifacio and his literally sanscu-lottic gangs of cutthroats were, almost with impunity, soiling the fair name of Freedom with murder and mutilation, rape and rapine, awakening the worst passions of an excitable, impulsive people, destroying that essential respect for law and order, which to restore would take a holocaust of fire and blood, with a generation of severe training. Unquestionably did Rizal demonstrate himself to be a seer and prophet when he applied to such a system the story of Babylon and the fateful handwriting on the wall!

       But forces had been loosed that would not be so suppressed, the time had gone by when such wild methods of repression would serve. The destruction of the native leaders, culminating in the executions of Rizal and Roxas, produced a counter-effect by rousing the Tagalogs, good and bad alike, to desperate fury, and the aftermath was frightful. The better classes were driven to take part in

       the rebellion, and Cavite especially became a veritable slaughter-pen, as the contest settled down into a hideous struggle for mutual extermination. Dark Andres went his wild way to perish by the violence he had himself invoked, a prey to the rising ambition of a young leader of considerable culture and ability, a schoolmaster named Emilio Aguinaldo. His Katipunan hovered fitfully around Manila, for a time even drawing to itself in their desperation some of the better elements of the population, only to find itself sold out and deserted by its leaders, dying away for a time; but later, under changed conditions, it reappeared in strange metamorphosis as the rallying-center for the largest number of Filipinos who have ever gathered together for a common purpose, and then finally went down before those thin grim lines in khaki with sharp and sharpest shot clearing away the wreck of the old, blazing the way for the new: the broadening sweep of "Democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-do, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the whole world!"

       MANILA, December 1, 1909 [li]

       1 Quoted by Macaulay: Essay on the Succession in Spain.

       2 The ruins of the Fuerza de Playa Honda, o Real de Paynaven, are still to be seen in the present municipality of Botolan, Zambales. The walls are overgrown with rank vegetation, but are well preserved, [viiin]with the exception of a portion looking toward the Bankal River, which has been undermined by the currents and has fallen intact into the stream.

       3Relation of the Zambals, by Domingo Perez, O.P.; manuscript dated 1680. The excerpts are taken from the translation in Blair and

       Robertson, The Philippine Islands, Vol. XLVII, by courtesy of the Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio.

       4"Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas, o Mis Viages por Este Pais, por Fray Joaquin Martinez de Zuniga, Agustino calzado." Padre Zu-

       niga was a parish priest in several towns and later Provincial of his Order. He wrote a history of the conquest, and in 1800 accompanied Alava, the General de Marina, on his tours of investigation looking toward preparations for the defense of the islands against another attack of the British, with whom war threatened. The Estadismo, which is a record of these journeys, with some account of the rest of the islands, remained in manuscript until 1893, when it was published in Madrid.

       5 Secular, as distinguished from the regulars, i.e., members of the monastic orders.

       6 Sinibaldo de Mas, Informe sobre el estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, translated in Blair and Robertson's The Philippine Islands, Vol. XXVIII, p. 254.

       7Sic. St. John xx, 17.

       8 This letter in the original French in which it was written is reproduced in the Vida y Escritos del Dr. Jose Rizal, by W. E. Retana

       (Madrid, 1907).

       9Filipinas dentro de Cien Anos, published in the organ of the Filipinos in Spain, La Solidaridad, in 1889-90. This is the most studied of Rizal's purely political writings, and the completest exposition of his views concerning the Philippines.

       10 An English version of El Filibusterismo, under the title The Reign of Greed, has been prepared to accompany the present work.

       11 "Que todo el monte era oregano." W.E. Retana, in the appendix to Fray Martinez de Zuniga's Estadismo, Madrid, 1893, where the

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       decree is quoted. The rest of this comment of Retana's deserves quotation as an estimate of the living man by a Spanish publicist who was at the time in the employ of the friars and contemptuously hostile to Rizal, but who has since 1898 been giving quite a spectacular demonstration of waving a red light after the wreck, having become his most enthusiastic, almost hysterical, biographer: "Rizal is what is commonly called a character, but he has repeatedly demonstrated very great inexperience in the affairs of life. I believe him to be now about thirty-two years old. He is the Indian of most ability among those who have written."

       12 From Valenzuela's deposition before the military tribunal, September sixth, 1896.

       13Capilla: the Spanish practise is to place a condemned person for the twenty-four hours preceding his execution in a chapel, or a cell fitted up as such, where he may devote himself to religious exercises and receive the final ministrations of the Church.

       14 But even this conclusion is open to doubt: there is no proof beyond the unsupported statement of the Jesuits that he made a written retraction, which was later destroyed, though why a document so interesting, and so important in support of their own point of view, should not have been preserved furnishes an illuminating commentary on the whole confused affair. The only unofficial witness present was the condemned man's sister, and her declaration, that she was at the time in such a state of excitement and distress that she is unable to affirm positively that there was a real marriage ceremony performed, can readily be accepted. It must

       be remembered that the Jesuits were themselves under the official and popular ban for the part they had played in Rizal's education

       and development and that they were seeking to set themselves right in order to maintain their prestige. Add to this the persistent and systematic effort made to destroy every scrap [xlviin]of record relating to the man--the sole gleam of shame evidenced in the impolitic, idiotic, and pusillanimous treatment of him--and the whole question becomes such a puzzle that it may just as well be left in darkness, with a throb of pity for the unfortunate victim caught in such a maelstrom of panic-stricken passion and selfish intrigue. [Contents]

       What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now? Not an Andromache