The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
and the next day a man attempt the assassination of that minister. Who
is to say, if this doctrine be sound, that the newspaper did not
instigate the murderous attempt? It is apparent that if such a view
were ever deemed valid an end would come to all free discussion or the
pretense of a free press; no journal would dare to have an opinion
about anything but the weather.
The inhibition would never stop with the press; the most ordinary and
the most useful activities of organized society would be put into
jeopardy. Suppose, for instance, Rizal had opposed and denounced
vivisection, and a weak-minded man anywhere, maddened by the loss of
his pet dog, should assault the physician that had cut it to pieces.
Who could say that Rizal under this doctrine was not the guilty
assailant? Even supposing the man that did the deed never to have read
Rizal nor heard of him, Rizal’s influence might have been transmitted
through many persons and still be his. It is evident that at once we
plunge into limitless possibilities for oppression and wrong. Suppose
an American reformer to denounce some official grafter and a fanatic to
shoot that grafter. The reformer might be hanged, and the assassin go
free.
Of all places in the civilized circuit the Philippine Islands were then
the most perilous in which to introduce such a theory. In the
Philippines an evil oligarchy maintained itself by terrorizing the
population. Before its need and greed, justice was at best farcical. To
admit that any man that criticized its methods might be held
responsible for the acts of any revolutionist, murderer, or lunatic
whatsoever was to place in the hands of the oligarchy the last and
worst of weapons. It would need nothing else to render unassailable and
unlimited its already despotic power. The courts would be a hangman’s
noose.
Yet on such preposterous grounds and none other the terrible travesty
of justice was now urged along. It is likely that since the days of
Caiaphas has been no such desperate hunting for testimony against
innocence. “This man spake blasphemy,” cried the high priests, and,
when they could find no confirmation of the charge, twisted to a
desired meaning the most casual utterance, the cross being made ready
in advance. The proceedings were as illegal as unjust. Supposing the
offenses charged to have been committed, they were under the civil law
of the Islands. The civil law and the civil courts were brushed aside
lest even in the Philippines they might fail of legalized murder, or
halt it; and the proceedings were held by court martial.
Before this tribunal, organized to slay, Rizal was brought bound, his
elbows drawn back with cords so as almost to touch. Thus he must sit
throughout each session, though the notion that he might try to escape
or to assault any one was obviously fantastic, for he was heavily
guarded and the room was filled with soldiery. To a gratuitous malice
all this must be ascribed, the malice of immature or perverted minds.
The torments he endured from aching muscles and constricted arteries as
thus he sat grew almost intolerable while the long sessions dragged on,
but it is not recorded that the victim made complaint. He was not
allowed an attorney, but a list of army officers was spread before him
from among whom he might select counsel—so called. He found in the list
a name that had a friendly sound in his ear. It was de Andrade, and
proved to be borne by a brother of the young army officer that had been
assigned to watch him and had ended by becoming his warm admirer and
charmed companion on so many walks in 1887. But the choice of a counsel
was mere formality. Luis de Andrade did all he could to win justice for
the prisoner, but before such a court he might as well have used
question with a wolf. [212]
There was no taking of testimony in any sense that civilized nations
have of that term. A few terrified Filipinos were put upon the stand,
and answers were extracted from their lips to carefully prepared
questions; but cross-examination was not allowed, and the value of
their admissions was nothing. The judge-advocate denounced Rizal as a
traitor and an enemy to Spain. Extracts were read from his writings
that it was pretended had encouraged the existing revolt. The Christmas
holidays intervened while the ghastly processes of slaughter were still
incomplete. On December 29 the court found him guilty and sentenced him
to be shot within twenty-four hours.
To this and nothing else he had looked forward from the beginning of
the hearing. Some nights before the verdict, knowing well what it would
be, he had written in his cell by the light of his little alcohol lamp
his farewell to his country, his family, and his friends. It is that
poem now become the national classic of the Philippines, the beautiful
and tender elegy that he called “My Last Farewell.” On the last night
he folded the manuscript and hid it in the bowl of the lamp.
Of this marvelous production, almost unequaled in literature for its
pathetic sincerity and noble feeling, there exist in English two
versions. [213] That which seems the more adequately to express the
thought of the original we offer here, and his must be a strangely
indurated heart that can read it without emotion:
Land I adore, farewell! thou land of the southern sun’s choosing.
Pearl of the Orient seas! our forfeited Garden of Eden,
Joyous, I yield up for thee my sad life, and were it far brighter,
Young, or rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I
give it.
Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle,
Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered, nor paused, in the
giving.
What matters way or place—the cypress, the lily, the laurel,
Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture—
When ’tis the hearth and the country that call for the life’s
immolation?
Dawn’s faint lights bar the east; she smiles through the cowl of
the darkness,
Just as I die....
Vision I followed from afar, desire that spurred on and consumed me!
Greeting! my parting soul cries, and greeting again! O my country!
Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment
Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the
death-throe;
Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land of enchantment!
If in the deep rich grass that covers my rest in thy bosom,
Some day thou seest upspring a lowly tremulous blossom,
Lay there thy lips—’tis my soul!...
And if at eventide a soul for my tranquil sleep prayeth,
Pray thou, O my fatherland! for my peaceful reposing;
Pray for those who go down to death through unspeakable torments;
Pray for those who remain to suffer torture in prison;
Pray for the bitter grief of our mothers, our wives, our orphans;
Oh, pray, too, for thyself, on the way to thy final redemption!
When our still dwelling-place wraps night’s dusky mantle about her,
Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning,
Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death’s mystery open.
If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern,
Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that is
singing.
When my tomb, that all have forgot, no cross nor stone marketh,
There let the laborer guide his plow, there cleave the earth open.
So shall my ashes at last be one with thy hills and thy valleys.
Little ’t will matter, then, my country, that thou shouldst forget me!
I shall be air in thy streets, and I shall be space in thy meadows;
I shall be vibrant speech in thine ears, shall be fragrance and color,
Light and shout, and loved song, for ever repeating my message.
Idolized fatherland, thou crown and deep of my sorrows,
Lovely Philippine Isles, once again adieu! I am leaving
All with thee—my friends, my love. Where I go are no tyrants;
There one dies not for the cause of his faith; there God is the ruler.
Farewell, father and mother and brother, dear friends of the fireside!
Thankful ye should be for me that I rest at the end of the long day.
Farewell, sweet, from the stranger’s land—my joy and my comrade!
Farewell, dear ones, farewell! To die is to rest from our labors!
Before his murderers, before the jeers and savage exultations of the
well dressed mob clamoring for his death, throughout the hearing, at
the moment of the unjust verdict, he had maintained the same attitude
of perfect serenity described as wonderful by all that observed it.
Other condemned men have simulated this self-possession; this man had
it in truth and not in seeming. Calmly he heard his condemnation,
calmly he reëntered the prison where for his last night on earth
quarters had been made for him in the chapel. A newspaper reporter came
to interview him. He was like a prosperous and well bred host
entertaining a cultured friend; [214] no eyes, however searching, could
discover a joint in that perfect armor of the soul sustained and
possessed, without a tremor and without a gloomy thought. To the
reporter and to others that had watched him this bearing seemed not
bravado but something mystical and inexplicable, but it seemed so only
because the source of it was beyond their understanding. He was calm
because he had long before in effect given his life to this cause and
the shooting of the next day would be only the last incident in a
sacrifice already made. Of this there is every indication. What men
call the joy of living had since his youth meant to him the joy of
serving Filipinas. He seems to have had since the day of his exile to
Dapitan a feeling that in other ways his service [215] was at an end,
but there remained the service of his death. All the hard tests of life
had left him unshaken and uncorrupted, a man truly without fear and
without reproach. With the same faultless and unpretentious courage he
walked forward to meet the end.
As was to have been expected in the conditions attending his fate, the
power that had dragged him down with so much of trickery and deceit
attempted to soil with other deceit the name he should leave to his
countrymen. To the newspaper reporter he said that “Noli Me Tangere”
had been much misunderstood because the authorities had selected from
it only passages that seemed to indicate sacrilegious or seditious
purpose, whereas when read in their proper places with the context they
had no such appearance. This statement was so distorted as to appear as
an expression of regret that he had written the book. When he said that
the Republicans in Spain had mistaken their strength and their
opportunities, this was distorted into a petulant charge that the
Spanish Republicans had been the cause of all his troubles. When he
spoke with characteristic modesty of his own work as feeble and of
small avail, the remark was twisted into a dubiety of his basic faith.
Attempts were made to wrest from him something that could be called a
retraction of his political opinions; even the last solemn offices of
the church were utilized toward an end so base. All his life he had
remained a true Catholic, [216] despite his sharp condemnation of the
friars. He now desired to partake of the holy sacrament, and priests
were sent to him. What took place when they gathered around him was so
perverted that no man may feel sure he has the truth of the story.
According to one account the priests refused him the sacrament until