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,[5] 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. [[327]]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; [[328]]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.
