Charles Edward Russell

“ He has returned full of hope for the Islands, full of faith in their Government. Gradually he is disillusioned, as one ugly development after another shows him the blight under which his people drag out their lives.
Still he knows nothing against Father Damaso. That dark and scowling figure he greets as his father’s friend.
The views of Island life, sharp, vivid, are like those of a stereopticon or the wizard Zola. There is a native woman, Sisa, married to a worthless dog of a husband who beats her, robs her, and gets drunk. All her life centers in her two boys, Basilio and Crispin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If those that seek to guide the destinies of the Philippines could be so obstinate as to insist upon holding the country in darkness instead of relieving it with adequate reforms, the people would brave the chances of revolt and prefer revolt’s hazards, whatever they might be, to the certainty of the misery and wrong in which they would be dwelling. What would they lose in such a fight? To normal men the choice between long-drawn-out oppression and a glorious death is no choice at all. ”

“ With Spain or without Spain they would always be the same, and perhaps worse! Why independence, if the slaves of to-day will be the tyrants of to-morrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.
“Señor Simoun, when our people is unprepared, when it enters the fight through fraud and force, without a clear understanding of what it is doing, the wisest attempts will fail, and better that they do fail, since why commit the wife to the husband if he does not sufficiently love her, if he is not ready to die for her?” ”

“ I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the sword’s point, for the sword plays but little part in modern affairs, but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them; and when a people reaches that height God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn. ”

“ As to how José Rizal would stand such a test applied to his career and all of it, take this testimony of Retana, who from antecedent probability at least would invent no extravagance of praise. Even in his youth, said Retana, every injustice, every crime, every wrong, struck home to his sensibilities. He walked with unsmirched garments through a world filled with the reek of a sordid time and the cruelty that man [214] works upon man, trying to make a protest against all oppressions and busy to the end with the troubles of his fellows but not with his own. ”

“ In a world wearied of artificiality, her simple sincerity shines to cheer as much as to charm. Visitors that have observed her well have usually noted the excellence of her mind, the honesty of her walk, and the reserve strength of her character. Rizal’s mother was of this order, the diligent ruler of the household, the laborious instructor of her children; and, when the blows of the Spanish tyranny fell upon her head, bearing them with the proud fortitude of a Roman matron of the republic. Doubtless, the halo of Rizal and Leonora’s own romantic story have magnified her intellectual stature ”

“ 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. ”

“ What life meant for average millions in the Philippines, under what chill shadows of the jail and visions of the firing-squad they must draw breath, how shifty and blackguard was the Government imposed upon them, we may glimpse from what happened as soon as Rizal’s absence was discovered. Civil Guards and official eavesdroppers were busy at Calamba; all members of the family were dogged, watched, waylaid, and cross-questioned as if suspected of murder. They must do more than lie to protect themselves. ”

“ In the face of almost universal opinion in Europe, he knew that the Malay mind, though different, was not inferior; he knew that what it wanted was no more than the sunlight and free air. In all ways the general verdict was askew: the Filipinos were not even innately lazy, as hundreds of writers had asserted, hundreds still repeated, and doubtless other hundreds will continue to parrot for years to come. He knew that lazy people could never have made the progress the Filipino had made before the evil day of the Spanish flag. ”

“ With the news of the discovery of the Katipunan and the cruelties of the hysteria in high places that followed next, the revolution spread swiftly to the provinces. Cavite, Batangas, Zambales, Tarlac rose as the clans rose in Scotland; a remarkable fact, for here had been no preparation, and the Katipunan had not gone far beyond Manila walls. Nothing would seem to show more plainly that the psychology of the people had been all misread. At Rizal’s school he had noticed that the Spaniards deemed the natives submissive to kicks and insults when in reality wrath burned in the native heart. ”

“ We can be moved not only by his profound reading of human nature, but we can also be inspired to emulate, if we may, the high level of talent for which his name will ever be famous in the history of literature. Here in the Philippines I would, if I could, arouse you to more earnest devotion to a literary career. You have natural advantages second to no country in the world. Your history is replete with incidents and romance and your present latter-day development is a true inspiration to the youth of the world in all countries. ”

“ For, whatever scholiasts may imagine and Utopians dream, it is experience and experience alone that tutors man in the good use of his freedom. The theory that a nation must wait until all its men have university degrees before it can be trusted with its destinies is either the dishonest handmaid of exploitation or, as in Rizal’s case, the footless product of the cloisters. Man, endowed with freedom, will use it wrongly and use it rightly; and which is the right way and which the wrong he will not know until responsibility enlightens him. ”

“ The artist is usually saved, says Edmund Clarence Stedman, by his devotion to beauty. Rizal was an artist, and never has knelt before the ideal of beauty a worshiper more devout. The beauty of righteousness seemed to rule out of him all promptings to the coltish excesses of youth; that, and the dignity of his love, and his conception of the gravity of his mission. He that is called to bring light to his people must not linger at the wayside inn nor ruin their hopes by capitulation to man’s grosser senses. ”

“ There can be no doubt that a condition of oppression or general injustice is in essence a condition of violence, and so far in the human story half-emancipated man has found no way to end one condition of violence except by means of another. “It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood,” might have been written across the gates of every house of tyranny. The hope that the frightful wrongs laid upon the Filipinos could be an exception to this primordial rule was alluring to a soul like Rizal’s. ”

“ Taxes in the Philippines had always been haphazard. They were levied without system or anything akin to system. Only one feature about them could be said to be uniform: everywhere the wealthy evaded their just share of the taxation burden; everywhere the poor bore more than was right for them to bear. The history of Spanish rule was a succession of promises of reform, usually wrenched by an insurrection from the unwilling lips of a governor-general and ignored when the time of danger had passed. ”

“ For all that, education at the Ateneo was not to be had except at the price of a struggle. There was no suggestion there, at least, of Tennyson’s idea of a row of empty pates and kindly Instruction tumbling in the sciences. A student like Rizal, reputed in his second year to be the hardest working in the institution, seemed like a soldier fighting in doubtful trenches; education to be won, as it were, by hand-to-hand conflict. ”

“ The functions of a shield against these ravenous wild beasts, a function later supposed to be performed unselfishly by the United States, was then imagined to fall to the lot of mighty Spain. But for her frowning guns and men-of-war, behold the Philippines a breakfast any morning for Japan or for Great Britain! In those days there were a few Filipinos that were impressed with these fantasies, or said to be; in later times the superior white man often seemed strangely infected with them. To one inclined to take them seriously Rizal’s words might have been commended then, or may be now. ”

“ 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! [297]
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 ”

“ It has been said that if American institutions had done nothing else than furnish to the world the character of George Washington, that alone would entitle them to the respect of mankind. So, sir, I say to all those that denounce the Filipinos indiscriminately as barbarians and savages, without possibility of a civilized future, that this despised race proved itself entitled to their respect and to the respect of mankind when it furnished to the world the character of José Rizal. ”

“ But of anything civilized men could call evidence against him or of reason for anything such men could call a trial there was no trace nor suggestion. Say that the Katipunan was all that hysteria described it; not a scrap of paper connected Rizal with it. He was not a member; he had expressly disapproved of its aims; he had been an exile in Dapitan while it was being formed. How then? And what then? In all such dilemmas it had been the practice of the Government of the Philippines to resort to those medieval precedents that best befitted the theory upon which its authority was based. ”

“ Instead of freedom of publication, the censor sat upon an impregnable throne and scrutinized not merely every word to be printed in every journal but every book that was imported, even in a traveler’s hand-baggage. Instead of free speech, the natives might not even petition of their grievances. Instead of general education, the masses were of a purpose kept in ignorance. Instead of justice, they must lead their lives without other protection than they could win by a feigned humility beneath the arbitrary power of their rulers. ”

“ Men whose talents had never been suspected because they had never had a chance to function arose in the Filipino ranks to astonish their enemies and overwhelm prejudice. Great commanders appeared like Luna and del Pilar; statesmen and thinkers like Felipe Calderon; and profoundly philosophical and illuminating intellects like Apolinario Mabini.
Next to Rizal himself, this was the greatest genius the Islands had produced and one that would have deserved eminence in any country or any time. ”

“ We speak of novels. In “Noli Me Tangere” all is fresh, ingenuous, impetuous; it is a novel that impresses one in such a way that it is never forgotten; it is a work of feeling. “El Filibusterismo” is a work of deep thought, and in literature it must be remembered that sentiment is preferred to thought. “Noli Me Tangere” is a picture of the whole country, rich in color and in fantasy, entwined with the dreams of a delicate poetry. ”

“ Thou shalt not recognize in thy country the authority of any person that has not been elected by thee and thy countrymen; for authority emanates from God, and as God speaks in the conscience of every man, the person designated and proclaimed by the conscience of a whole people is the only one that can use true authority.
Eighth. Thou shalt strive for a republic and never for a monarchy in the country; for the latter exalts one or several families and founds a dynasty; the former makes a people noble and worthy through reason, great through liberty, and prosperous and brilliant through labor. ”

“ Years afterward Rizal wrote in his own vivid style a description of the manner in which wisdom was imparted in even the highest Philippine seat of learning, from which wonder grows to amazement that there were in those days any educated Filipinos. It reveals them again as of iron will and unmatchable persistence. No such dogged resolution in chase of knowledge is now required of any people; the pursuit of learning under difficulties, it may well be called. ”

“ As education spread, as mankind elsewhere struggled more and more into comparative liberty, as the sense of injustice grew in the Filipino heart, the day would come when these people, too, would be driven to unite for the one great all-embracing, all-inspiring object of national freedom and national existence, and they would win it.
To this the friars and the governing class of the Philippines were now contributing by providing the immediate sting that seems always to be needed when an old and deep-lying resentment is to be goaded into outward and physical activities. ”