The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
triumph of constructive statesmanship. On September 15, the first
Philippine Congress met at Malolos, about twenty-five miles north of
Manila, and proceeded to draft for the Philippine Republic a
constitution that for wisdom and sound democratic philosophy may be
compared with any other similar chart by which any government ever was
steered. On November 29, 1898, the Congress adopted this constitution,
and on the following January 21, the Philippine Republic, complete and
functioning, was installed in place of the Provisional Government.
Mabini was chief justice of the Supreme Court.
The United States refused to recognize the new republic, but, in
accordance with the absurd treaty of Paris, insisted upon its own
sovereignty over all the Philippines. For twenty million dollars it had
bought of Spain a title that Spain did not possess. We need not dwell
long on the deplorable strife that now ensued between the American and
Filipino forces. [233] On February 4, the Americans advanced into
territory held by the Filipino army, and for the next two years war
raged. The Filipinos, although badly armed and always outnumbered,
showed a tenacity, a courage, and a military prowess that continually
astonished the Americans and won their candid and reiterated praise.
Much of the credit for the skilful handling of the Filipino forces was
due to General Antonio Luna, Aguinaldo’s chief of staff, whose natural
aptitude for arms had been developed by study in the best schools of
Europe. When he lost his life in June, 1899, the Filipino cause
suffered a heavy blow, but not so heavy as its enemies expected. For
the singular fact was to be noted that out of the body of natives once
despised and scornfully classed as “brethren of the water-buffalo”
arose men capable of inspiring the soldiers of a hopeless cause and of
leading them well in desperately fought battles. If for the moment we
can lay aside nationalistic consciousness, the dauntless strivings of
the Filipinos against the Americans will appear worthy of a place in
best records of the struggles of the weak against the strong.
On March 23, 1901, President Aguinaldo was captured, and thereafter the
war slowly subsided until on July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt issued a
proclamation of amnesty and the American Government took up the work of
reconstruction, of which the first purpose was to prepare the natives
for the independence repeatedly promised them.
Reviewing this chapter (none too edifying) in American history, one
cannot well escape the feeling that the American success was stained
with a needlessly harsh treatment of Mabini, the Thomas Jefferson of
the Filipino cause. The American forces captured him in September,
1899, and kept him in prison for a year. He had been at liberty a scant
six months when he was arrested again and carried a prisoner to Guam,
[234] where he was kept two years, returning home to die. While he was
under examination by American army officers, occurred a characteristic
passage. He was asked if he had heard any one talking in favor of
Philippine independence.
“I have,” said Mabini, speaking always in the same low, even voice.
“Whom have you heard?”
“Myself.”
“What? Are you opposed to the rule of the United States in the
Philippines?”
“I certainly am. I am opposed to the rule of any power here except that
of the people of these Islands. If you wish to shoot somebody for
holding such sentiments, shoot me. Do not shoot or imprison those to
whom I have urged this doctrine; do not waste time in hunting for them.
Shoot me, the author of it. I am ready whenever you are.”
He died in Manila, May 13, 1903. Next to that of Rizal, his memory is
dearest to the Filipino people.
The historian and the philosopher considering these typical passages in
the long struggle upward will see that, while ostensibly the Philippine
Republic had been defeated, in reality it had triumphed. Instead of
being crushed and obliterated, it had never ceased to exist. To this
day it is not a memory but a living organism of veritable and powerful
influence. Its flag flies side by side with that of the United States
on every public building; it functions in effect in every session of
the Philippine legislature. So far as one can see now it was a
deathless creation that Rizal unconsciously called into being, and
there could be no more impressive lesson in the inevitable destiny of
democracy than the reflection that the cruelties intended to destroy
freedom in the Philippines really gave to it enduring life. When so
easily the governing class shattered Rizal’s body and silenced his
physical voice, it did but give wings to his teachings, vindicating
them at once and multiplying them. If the result is not yet complete
and the Philippines lack still their national entity, no one that knows
their people and no one that has studied attentively the significance
the life and death of Rizal have for them will believe that this
anomaly can continue. They live now under the solemn undertaking of the
United States to set them free; that pledge they have accepted at its
face-value; from day to day they continue in expectation of its
fulfilment.
In such strange and fateful ways of which he never dreamed, Rizal has
come to be the liberator of his country and the inspiration of its
national life. It is a story so different from any other in the records
of the human advance that it may be deemed worth the world’s attention
on its own account. With arms and conflict Washington and the other
patriots of his time freed America, Bolivar and San Martin freed South
America, Garibaldi and Mazzini freed Italy. With an idea and an ideal
Rizal freed the Philippines.
The more his brief career is studied the more it appears as apart from
the ordinary aims and walks of men—singular, selfless, and admirable.
If while he lived he had little recognition worthy of his great
attainments, the veneration of his countrymen since his death has
atoned for all former indifference anywhere. For the term of Spain’s
dominion and a short time thereafter his dust remained obscurely
buried. [235] When peace had come between the Americans and Filipinos
both began to pay tribute to his memory. The body was disinterred from
its nameless grave and reburied with high honors, civic and military.
When the Filipinos came to have a measure of control over their own
affairs they made a new province of the region around Manila, including
Calamba, and named it Rizal. The anniversary of his death they made the
national holy day. On the spot where he was killed they erected a
magnificent monument, a stately and worthy memorial. Elsewhere they
multiplied the tributes to his fame until by 1921 scarcely a
considerable town in the Philippines was without his statue or bust or
some commemoration of his story. Of the ground he had tilled in
Dapitan, surrounding the little house where he had taught his school, a
national park was made. In his honor the waterworks he had engineered
were extended and perpetuated. From every available source the
Government collected, often at great cost, the relics of his physical
existence. [236]
Each return of Rizal day is marked with elaborate ceremonies; addresses
are delivered to his memory; the schools hold special exercises; the
press reviews his life and dwells upon its import. Year by year the
earnestness of these tributes increases. Other men, as their tangible
presence recedes, become more or less the lay figures of history. This
man seems to become with time only the more potent and real.
Happy should be the land that has such a national hero, in whom the
pitiless searchings of later years have not discovered enough of flaw
to discredit any part of the homage paid him but instead cause him to
appear always the more imposing figure, morally as well as
intellectually. It is but truth to say that his analogue is hard to
find in any nation of any color at any period of history. He had, what
is so seldom to be found in the men we call great, a union of brilliant
gifts and of lofty character. Of him it is never necessary to offer the
Baconian apology; he was of the brightest and wisest of mankind but
without an alloying trace of the mean.
Intellectually, there is no doubt he deserved the praise paid
wonderingly to him by Sir Hugh Clifford and others; he was a master
figure. To the capacity of his mind there seemed no normal limit; he
could comprehend any subject, learn any craft, acquire any language,
absorb any science. It seemed to be a mind of the order of Octopi, with
tentacles that reached out and pumped up not the superficies but the
heart of the matter. Hence he could out-argue the learned theologians
with the most abstruse lore of their cult, discuss with the artists the
recondite principles of their art, classify for entomologists and
zoölogists unheard-of specimens of life, thread with economists the
endless mazes of theoretical taxation, write exquisite lyrics and sing
them to music of his own composing. Such are the facts of his life,
however reluctant prejudice may be to acknowledge them. If there has
yet appeared upon this earth what may be justly called a universal
genius, it seems from the records that he was not of the white race,
the world’s confident overlords, but of the misunderstood Malay.
So slowly we yield to truth when it runs counter to theories that it
may be advisable to dwell for another moment on this man’s indisputable
achievements. Let us say, then, that to have attained to his mastery of
any two of the branches of knowledge he followed would have deserved
distinction; yet he attained to this mastery in six or seven. He was
one of the greatest ophthalmologists of his time; he was a great
ethnologist, anthropologist, biologist, zoölogist, linguist; he was
sculptor, painter, illustrator, poet, novelist, publicist, engineer,
educator, reformer. With almost any of these gifts or accomplishments
or whatever they may be termed, he could have won to eminence or to
wealth anywhere among civilized men. He is almost the only example we
have of a man marvelously endowed for material success and putting it
all aside and every thought of it; putting aside, too, even the natural
yearning for renown, that he might give himself entirely to the one end
of benefiting his people.
Of the veritable basis for these conclusions, so strange in an age and
a world that makes of disillusion a fetish, no fair-minded inquirer can
have a doubt. It is but the truth that Rizal’s private life has endured
the touch as surely as his public career. [237] That government of
himself he began to learn at the Ateneo, that scorn of the revolt of
flesh and fierce determination to put it under the dominion of spirit,
he diligently fostered all his life. He had controversies and disputes;
he even had quarrels (as we have seen) that might have had deadly
outcome; it appears that he did not in any of these lose the perfect
control of his temper. The contagion of the world’s slow stain never
came near him. He looked upon life and all its phases with a coolly
reasoned disdain of all things false. A hundred times he might have
saved himself with one only step that the world would have applauded;
he would not take that step because it would mean a compromise with the
stern, iron-bound Puritan-like standard of virtue he had chosen for
himself. No instance has been discovered in him of lies or
equivocation. As he himself declared, he had his full share of human
frailties and failings, but he managed to avoid those that scar the
soul. Some of his jests, it is true, verged upon practical joking, the
usual contradiction in men of a melancholy inclining. The wisdom of his
marriage, for reasons that need not be gone into here, is now rather