Finally a court-martial was convened for Rizal’s trial, in the Cuartel de España. No trained counsel was allowed to defend him, but a list of young army officers was presented from which he might select a nominal defender. Among the names was one which was familiar, Luis Taviel de Andrade, and he proved to be the brother of Rizal’s companion during his visit to the Philippines in Page 2371887–88. The young man did his best and risked unpopularity in order to be loyal to his client. His defense reads pitiably weak in these days but it was risky then to say even so much.

The judge advocate in a ridiculously bombastic effusion gave an alleged sketch of Rizal’s life which showed ignorance of almost every material event, and then formulated the first precise charge against the prisoner, which was that he had founded an illegal society, alleging that the Liga Filipina had for its sole object to commit the crime of rebellion.

Luis T. de Andrade.

The second charge was that Rizal was responsible for the existing rebellion, having caused it, bringing it on by his unceasing labors. An aggravating circumstance was found in the prisoner’s being a native of the Philippines.

The penalty of death was asked of the court, and in the event of pardon being granted by the crown, the prisoner should at least remain under surveillance for the rest of his life and pay as damages 20,000 pesos.

The arguments are so absurd, the bias of the court so palpable, that it is not worth while to discuss them. The parallel proceedings in the military trial and execution of Francisco Ferret in Barcelona in 1909 caused worldwide indignation, and the illegality of almost every step, according to Spanish law, was shown in numerous articles in the European and American press. Rizal’s case was even more brazenly unfair, but Manila was too remote and the news too carefully censored for the facts to become known.

Page 238The prisoner’s arms were tied, corded from elbow to elbow behind his back, and thus he sat through the weary trial while the public jeered him and clamored for his condemnation as the bloodthirsty crowds jeered and clamored in the French Reign of terror.

Then came the verdict and the prisoner was invited to acknowledge the regularity of the proceedings in the farcical trial by signing the record. To this Rizal demurred, but after a vain protest, affixed his signature.

He was at once transferred to the Fort chapel, there to pass the last twenty-four hours of his life in preparing for death. The military chaplain offered his services, which were courteously declined, but when the Jesuits came, those instructors of his youth were eagerly welcomed.

Rizal’s trial had awakened great interest and accounts of everything about the prisoner were cabled by eager correspondents to the Madrid newspapers. One of the newspaper men who visited Rizal in his cell mentions the courtesy of his reception, and relates how the prisoner played the host and insisted on showing his visitor those attentions which Spanish politeness considers due to a guest, saying that these must be permitted, for he was in his own home. The interviewer found the prisoner perfectly calm and natural, serious of course, but not at all overwhelmed by the near prospect of death, and in discussing his career Rizal displayed that dispassionate attitude toward his own doings that was characteristic of him. Almost as though speaking of a stranger he mentioned that if Archbishop Nozaleda’s sane view had been taken and “Noli Me Tangere” not preached against, he would not have been in prison, and perhaps the rebellion would never have occurred. It is easy for us to recognize that the author referred to the misconception of his novel, which had arisen from the publication of the censor’s Page 239extracts, which consisted of whatever could be construed into coming under one of the three headings of attacks on religion, attacks on government, and reflections on Spanish character, without the slightest regard to the context.

But the interviewer, quite honestly, reported Rizal to be regretting his novel instead of regretting its miscomprehension, and he seems to have been equally in error in the way he mistook Rizal’s meaning about the republicans in Spain having led him astray.

Rizal’s exact words are not given in the newspaper account, but it is not likely that a man would make admissions in a newspaper interview, which if made formally, would have saved his life. Rizal’s memory has one safeguard against the misrepresentations which the absence of any witnesses favorable to him make possible regarding his last moments: a political retraction would have prevented his execution, and since the execution did take place, it is reasonable to believe that Rizal died holding the views for which he had expressed himself willing to suffer martyrdom.

Yet this view does not reflect upon the good faith of the reporter. It is probable that the prisoner was calling attention to the illogical result that, though he had disregarded the advice of the radical Spaniards who urged him to violent measures, his peaceable agitation had been misunderstood and brought him to the same situation as though he had actually headed a rebellion by arms. His slighting opinion of his great novel was the view he had always held, for like all men who do really great things, he was the reverse of a braggart, and in his remark that he had attempted to do great things without the capacity for gaining success, one recognizes his remembrance of his mother’s angry prophecy foretelling failure in all he undertook.

Page 240His family waited long outside the Governor-General’s place to ask a pardon, but in vain; General Polavieja had to pay the price of his appointment and refused to see them.

Interior of the cell in which Rizal’s farewell verses were written.

The mother and sisters, however, were permitted to say farewell to Rizal in the chapel, under the eyes of the death-watch. The prisoner had been given the unusual privilege of not being tied, but he was not allowed to approach near his relatives, really for fear that he might pass some writing to them—the pretext was made that Rizal might thus obtain the means for committing suicide.

To his sister Trinidad Rizal spoke of having nothing to give her by way of remembrance except the alcohol cooking lamp which he had been using, a gift, as he mentioned, from Mrs. Tavera. Then he added quickly, in English, so that the listening guard would not understand, “There is something inside.”

The other events of Rizal’s last twenty-four hours, for he went in to the chapel at seven in the morning of the day preceding his execution, are perplexing. What purported to be a detailed account was promptly published in Barcelona, on Jesuit authority, but one must not forget that Spaniards are not of the phlegmatic disposition which makes for accuracy in minute matters and even when writing history they are dramatically inclined. So while the truthfulness, that is the intent to be fair, may not be questioned, it would not be strange if those who wrote of Page 241what happened in the chapel in Fort Santiago during Rizal’s last hours did not escape entirely from the influence of the national characteristics. In the main their narrative is to be accepted, but the possibility of unconscious coloring should not be disregarded.

In substance it is alleged that Rizal greeted his old instructors and other past acquaintances in a friendly way. He asked for copies of the Gospels and the writings of Thomas-à-Kempis, desired to be formally married to Josefina, and asked to be allowed to confess. The Jesuits responded that first it would be necessary to investigate Page 242how far his beliefs conformed to the Roman Catholic teachings. Their catechizing convinced them that he was not orthodox and a religious debate ensued in which Rizal, after advancing all known arguments, was completely vanquished. His marriage was made contingent upon his signing a retraction of his published heresies.

The Archbishop had prepared a form which the Jesuits believed Rizal would be little likely to sign, and they secured permission to substitute a shorter one of their own which included only the absolute essentials for reconciliation with the Church, and avoided all political references. They say that Rizal objected only to a disavowal of Freemasonry, stating that in England, where he held his membership, the Masonic institution was not hostile to the Church. After some argument, he waived this point and wrote out, at a Jesuit’s dictation, the needed retraction, adding some words to strengthen it in parts, indicating his Catholic education and that the act was of his own free will and accord.

The prisoner, the priests, and all the Spanish officials present knelt at the altar, at Rizal’s suggestion, while he read his retraction aloud. Afterwards he put on a blue scapular, kissed the image of the Sacred Heart he had carved years before, heard mass as when a student in the Ateneo, took communion, and read his à-Kempis or prayed in the intervals. He took breakfast with the Spanish officers, who now regarded him very differently. At six Josefina entered and was married to him by Father Balanguer.

Now in this narrative there are some apparent discrepancies. Mention is made of Rizal having in an access of devotion signed in a devotionary all the acts of faith, and it is said that this book was given to one of his sisters. His chapel gifts to his family have been examined, but though there is a book of devotion, “The Anchor of Page 243Faith,” it contains no other signature than the presentation on a flyleaf. As to the religious controversy: while in Dapitan Rizal carried on with Father Pio Pi, the Jesuit superior, a lengthy discussion involving the interchange of many letters, but he succeeded in fairly maintaining his views, and these views would hardly have caused him to be called Protestant in the Roman Catholic churches of America. Then the theatrical reading aloud of his retraction before the altar does not conform to Rizal’s known character. As to the anti-Masonic arguments, these appear to be from a work by Monsignor Dupanloup and therefore were not new to Rizal; furthermore, the book was in his own library.

Again, it seems strange that Rizal should have asserted that his Masonic membership was in London when in visiting St. John’s Lodge, Scotch Constitution, in Hongkong in November of 1891, since which date he had not been in London, he registered as from “Temple du honneur de les amis français,” an old-established Paris lodge.

Also the sister Lucia, who was said to have been a witness of the marriage, is not positive that it occurred, having only seen the priest at the altar in his vestments. The record of the marriage has been stated to be in the Manila Cathedral, but it is not there, and as the Jesuit in officiating would have been representing the military chaplain, the entry should have been in the Fort register, now in Madrid. Rizal’s burial, too, does not indicate that he died in the faith, yet it with the marriage has been used as an argument for proving that the retraction must have been made.

The retraction itself appears in two versions, with slight differences. No one outside the Spanish faction has ever seen the original, though the family nearly got into trouble by their persistence in trying to get sight of it after its first publication.

Page 244The foregoing might suggest some disbelief, but in fact they are only proofs of the remarks already made about the Spanish carelessness in details and liking for the dramatic.

The writer believes Rizal made a retraction, was married canonically, and was given what was intended to be Christian burial.

The grounds for this belief rest upon the fact that he seems never to have been estranged in faith from the Roman Catholic Church, but he objected only to certain political and mercenary abuses. The first retraction is written in his style and it certainly contains nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there, Rizal prepared a practically similar statement. Possibly the report of that priest aided in outlining the draft which the Jesuits substituted for the Archbishop’s form. There is no mention of evasions or mental reservations and Rizal’s renunciation of Masonry might have been qualified by the quibble that it was “the Masonry which was an enemy of the Church” that he was renouncing. Then since his association (not affiliation) had been with Masons not hostile to religion, he was not abandoning these.

The possibility of this line of thought having suggested itself to him appears in his evasions on the witness-stand at his trial. Though he answered with absolute frankness whatever concerned himself and in everyday life was almost quixotically truthful, when cross-examined about others who would be jeopardized by admitting his acquaintance with them, he used the subterfuge of the symbolic names of his Masonic acquaintances. Thus he would say, “I know no one by that name,” since care was always taken to employ the symbolic names in introductions and conversations. Page 245

Rizal’s own symbolic name was “Dimas Alang”—Tagalog for “Noli Me Tangere”—and his nom de plume in some of his controversial publications. The use of that name by one of his companions on the railroad trip to Tarlac entirely mystified a station master, as appears in the secret report of the espionage of that trip, which just preceded his deportation to Dapitan. Another Page 246possible explanation is that, since Freemasonry professes not to disturb the duties which its members owe to God, their country or their families, he may have considered himself as a good Mason under obligation to do whatever was demanded by these superior interests, all three of which were at this time involved.

The argument that it was his pride that restrained him suggested to Rizal the possibility of his being unconsciously under an influence which during his whole life he had been combating, and he may have considered that his duty toward God required the sacrifice of this pride.

For his country his sacrifice would have been blemished were any religious stigma to attach to it. He himself had always been careful of his own good name, and as we have said elsewhere, he told his companions that in their country’s cause whatever they offered on the altars of patriotism must be as spotless as the sacrificial lambs of Levitical law.

Furthermore, his work for a tranquil future for his family would be unfulfilled were he to die outside the Church. Josefina’s anomalous status, justifiable when all the facts were known, would be sure to bring criticism upon her unless corrected by the better defined position of a wife by a church marriage. Then the aged parents and the numerous children of his sisters would by his act be saved the scandal that in a country so mediævally pious as the Philippines would come from having their relative die “an unrepentant heretic.”

Rizal had received from the Jesuits, while in prison, several religious books and pictures, which he used as remembrances for members of his family, writing brief dedications upon them. Then he said good-by to Josefina, asking in a low voice some question to which she answered in English, “Yes, yes,” and aloud inquiring how she would be able to gain a living, since all his property had Page 247been seized by the Spanish government to satisfy the 20,000 pesetas costs which was included in the sentence of death against him. Her reply was that she could earn money giving lessons in English.

The journey from the Fort to the place of execution, then Bagumbayan Field, now called the Luneta, was on foot. His arms were tied tightly behind his back, and he was surrounded by a heavy guard. The Jesuits accompanied him and some of his Dapitan schoolboys were in the crowd, while one friendly voice, that of a Scotch merchant still resident in Manila, called out in English, “Good-by, Rizal.”

The wife of José Rizal.

The route was along the Malecon Drive where as a college student he had walked with his fiancée, Leonora. Above the city walls showed the twin towers of the Ateneo, and when he asked about them, for they were not there in his boyhood days, he spoke of the happy years that he had spent in the old school. The beauty of the morning, too, appealed to him, and may have recalled an experience of his ’87 visit when he said to a friend whom he met on the beach during an early morning walk: “Do you know that I have a sort of foreboding that some such sunshiny morning as this I shall be out here facing a firing squad?”

Troops held back the crowds and left a large square for the tragedy, while artillery behind them was ready for suppressing any attempt at rescuing the prisoner. None came, however, for though Rizal’s brother Paciano had joined the insurrectionary forces in Cavite when the death sentence showed there was no more hope for José, he had discouraged the demonstration that had been planned as Page 248soon as he learned how scantily the insurgents were armed, hardly a score of serviceable firearms being in the possession of their entire “army.”

The firing squad was of Filipino soldiers, while behind them, better armed, were Spaniards in case these tried to evade the fratricidal part assigned them. Rizal’s composure aroused the curiosity of a Spanish military surgeon standing by and he asked, “Colleague, may I feel your pulse?” Without other reply the prisoner twisted one of his hands as far from his body as the cords which bound him allowed, so that the other doctor could place his fingers on the wrist. The beats were steady and showed neither excitement nor fear, was the report made later.

His request to be allowed to face his executioners was denied as being out of the power of the commanding officer to grant, though Rizal declared that he did not deserve such a death, for he was no traitor to Spain. It was promised, however, that his head should be respected, and as unblindfolded and erect Rizal turned his back to receive their bullets, he twisted a hand to indicate under the shoulder where the soldiers should aim so as to reach his heart. Then as the volley came, with a last supreme effort of will power, he turned and fell face upwards, thus receiving the subsequent “shots of grace” which ended his life, so that in form as well as fact he did not die a traitor’s death.

The Spanish national air was played, that march of Cadiz which should have recalled a violated constitution, for by the laws of Spain itself Rizal was illegally executed.

Vivas, laughter and applause were heard, for it had been the social event of the day, with breakfasting parties on the walls and on the carriages, full of interested Page 249onlookers of both sexes, lined up conveniently near for the sightseeing.

The troops defiled past the dead body, as though reviewed by it, for the most commanding figure of all was that which lay lifeless, but the center of all eyes. An officer, realizing the decency due to death, drew his handkerchief from the dead man’s pocket and spread the silk over the calm face. A crimson stain soon marked the whiteness emblematic of the pure life that had just ended, and with the glorious blue overhead, the tricolor of Liberty, which had just claimed another martyr, was revealed in its richest beauty.

Sir Hugh Clifford (now Governor of Ceylon), in Blackwood’s Magazine, “The Story of José Rizal, the Filipino; A Fragment of Recent Asiatic History,” comments as follows on the disgraceful doing of that day:

Page 251

Chapter XI

The After-Life in Memory

An hour or so after the shooting a dead-wagon from San Juan de Diós Hospital took Rizal’s body to Paco Cemetery. The civil governor of Manila was in charge and there also were present the members of a Church society whose duty it was to attend executions.

Rizal had been wearing a black suit which he had obtained for his European trip, and a derby hat, not only appropriate for a funeral occasion because of their somber color, but also more desirable than white both for the full day’s wear, since they had to be put on before the twenty-four hours in the chapel, and for the lying on the ground which would follow the execution of the sentence. A plain box inclosed the remains thus dressed, for even the hat was picked up and encoffined.

No visitors were admitted to the cemetery while the interment was going on, and for several weeks after guards watched over the grave, lest Filipinos might come by night to steal away the body and apportion the clothing among themselves as relics of a martyr. Even the exact spot of the interment was intended to be unknown, but friends of the family were among the attendants at the burial and dropped into the grave a marble slab which had been furnished them, bearing the initials of the full baptismal name, José Protasio Rizal, in reversed order.

The entry of the burial, like that of three of his followers of the Liga Filipina who were among the dozen executed a fortnight later, was on the back flyleaf of the cemetery register, with three or four words of explanation later erased and now unknown. On the previous page was the entry of a suicide’s death, and following it is that of the British Consul who died on the Page 252eve of Manila’s surrender and whose body, by the Archbishop’s permission, was stored in a Paco niche till it could be removed to the Protestant (foreigners’) cemetery at San Pedro Macati.

The day of Rizal’s execution, the day of his birth and the day of his first leaving his native land was a Wednesday. All that night, and the next day, the celebration continued the volunteers, who were particularly responsible, like their fellows in Cuba, for the atrocities which disgraced Spain’s rule in the Philippines, being especially in evidence. It was their clamor that had made the bringing back of Rizal possible, their demands for his death had been most prominent in his so-called trial, and now they were praising themselves for their “patriotism.” The landlords had objected to having their land titles questioned and their taxes raised. The other friar orders, as well as these, were opposed to a campaign which sought their transfer from profitable parishes to self-sacrificing missionary labors. But probably none of them as organizations desired Rizal’s death.

Rizal’s old teachers wished for the restoration of their former pupil to the faith of his childhood, from which they believed he had departed. Through Despujol they Page 253seem to have worked for an opportunity for influencing him, yet his death was certainly not in their plans.

Some Filipinos, to save themselves, tried to complicate Rizal with the Katipunan uprising by palpable falsehoods. But not every man is heroic and these can hardly be blamed, for if all the alleged confessions were not secured by actual torture, they were made through fear of it, since in 1896 there was in Manila the legal practice of causing bodily suffering by mediæval methods supplemented by torments devised by modern science.

Among the Spaniards in Manila then, reënforced by those whom the uprising had frightened out of the provinces, were a few who realized that they belonged among the classes caricatured in Rizal’s novels—some incompetent, others dishonest, cruel ones, the illiterate, wretched specimens that had married outside their race to get money and find wives who would not know them for what they were, or drunken husbands of viragoes. They came to the Philippines because they were below the standard of their homeland. These talked the loudest and thus dominated the undisciplined volunteers. With nothing divine about them, since they had not forgotten, they did not forgive. So when the Tondo “discoverer” of the Katipunan fancied he saw opportunity for promotion in fanning their flame of wrath, they claimed their victims, and neither the panic-stricken populace nor the weak-kneed government could withstand them.

Once more it must be repeated that Spain has no monopoly of bad characters, nor suffers in the comparison of her honorable citizenship with that of other nationalities, but her system in the Philippines permitted abuses which good governments seek to avoid or, in the rare occasions when this is impossible, aim to punish. Here was the Spanish shortcoming, for these were the defects Page 254which made possible so strange a story as this biography unfolds. “José Rizal,” said a recent Spanish writer, “was the living indictment of Spain’s wretched colonial system.”

Rizal’s family were scattered among the homes of friends brave enough to risk the popular resentment against everyone in any way identified with the victim of their prejudice.

As New Year’s eve approached, the bands ceased playing and the marchers stopped parading. Their enthusiasm had worn itself out in the two continuous days of celebration, and there was a lessening of the hospitality with which these “heroes” who had “saved the fatherland” at first had been entertained. Their great day of the year became of more interest than further remembrance of the bloody occurrence on Bagumbayan Field. To those who mourned a son and a brother the change must have come as a welcome relief, for even sorrow has Page 255its degrees, and the exultation over the death embittered their grief.

The alcohol lamp in which the farewell poem was hidden.

To the remote and humble home where Rizal’s widow and the sister to whom he had promised a parting gift were sheltered, the Dapitan schoolboy who had attended his imprisoned teacher brought an alcohol cooking-lamp. It was midnight before they dared seek the “something” which Rizal had said was inside. The alcohol was emptied from the tank and, with a convenient hairpin, a tightly folded and doubled piece of paper was dislodged from where it had been wedged in, out of sight, so that its rattling might not betray it.

It was a single sheet of notepaper bearing verses in Rizal’s well-known handwriting and familiar style. Hastily the young boy copied them, making some minor mistakes owing to his agitation and unfamiliarity with the language, and the copy, without explanation, was mailed to Mr. Basa in Hongkong. Then the original was taken by the two women with their few possessions and they fled to join the insurgents in Cavite.

The following translation of these verses was made by Charles Derbyshire: Page 256

My Last Farewell

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily white,
Scaffold of open plain, combat or martyrdom’s plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and country’s need.

I die just when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;
And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take,
Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.

My dreams, when life first opened to me,
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Were to see thy lov’d face, O gem of the Orient sea,
From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow free;
No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye

Dream of my life, my living and burning desire,
All hail! cries the soul that is now to take flight;
All hail! And sweet it is for thee to expire;
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
And sleep in thy bosom eternity’s long night.

If over my grave some day thou seest grow,
In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb below
The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath’s warm power.

Let the moon beam over me soft and serene,
Let the dawn shed over me its radiant flashes,
Let the wind with sad lament over me keen;
And if on my cross a bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my ashes.

Let the sun draw the vapors up to the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy protest;
Let some kind soul o’er my untimely fate sigh,
And in the still evening a prayer be lifted on high
From thee, O my country, that in God I may rest.

Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur’d pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture tried;
And then for thyself that redemption thou mayst gain.

And when the dark night wraps the graveyard around,
With only the dead in their vigil to see;
Break not my repose or the mystery profound,
And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn resound;
’Tis I, O my country, raising a song unto thee.

When even my grave is remembered no more,
Unmark’d by never a cross nor a stone;
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn it o’er,
That my ashes may carpet thy earthly floor,
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.

Then will oblivion bring to me no care,
As over thy vales and plains I sweep;
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air,
With color and light, with song and lament I fare,
Ever repeating the faith that I keep.

My Fatherland ador’d, that sadness to my sorrow lends,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends;
For I go where no slave before the oppressor bends,
Where faith can never kill, and God reigns e’er on high!

Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
Friends of my childhood in the home dispossessed!
Give thanks that I rest from the wearisome day!
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is rest!

For some time such belongings of Rizal as had been intrusted to Josefina had been in the care of the American Consul in Manila for as the adopted daughter of the American Taufer she had claimed his protection. Stories are told of her as a second Joan of Arc, but it is not likely that one of the few rifles which the insurgents had would be turned over to a woman. After a short experience in the field, much of it spent in nursing her sister-in-law through a fever, Mrs. Rizal returned to Manila. Then came a brief interview with the Governor-General. Page 259He had learned that his “administrative powers” to exile without trial did not extend to foreigners, but by advice of her consul she soon sailed for Hongkong.

Mrs. Rizal at first lived in the Basa home and received considerable attention from the Filipino colony. There was too great a difference between the freedom accorded Englishwomen and the restraints surrounding Spanish ladies however, to avoid difficulties and misunderstandings, for very long. She returned to her adopted father’s house and after his death married Vicente Abad, a Cebuan, son of a Spaniard who had been prominent in the Tabacalera Company and had become an agent of theirs in Hongkong after he had completed his studies there.

Two weeks after Rizal’s execution a dozen other members of his “Liga Filipina” were executed on the Luneta. One was a millionaire, Francisco Roxas, who had lost his mind, and believing that he was in church, calmly spread his handkerchief on the ground and knelt upon it as had been his custom in childhood. An old man, Moises Salvador, had been crippled by torture so that he could not stand and had to be laid upon the grass to be shot. The others met their death standing.

That bravery and cruelty do not usually go together was amply demonstrated in Polavieja’s case and by the volunteers. The latter once showed their patriotism, after a banquet, by going to the water’s edge on the Luneta and firing volleys at the insurgents across the bay, miles away. The General was relieved of his command after he had fortified a camp with siege guns against the bolo-armed insurgents, who, however, by captures from the Spaniards were gradually becoming better equipped. But he did not escape condemnation from his own countrymen, and when he visited Giron, years after he had returned to the Peninsula, circulars were distributed Page 260among the crowd, bearing Rizal’s last verses, his portrait, and the charge that to Polavieja was due the loss of the Philippines to Spain.

The Katipunan insurgents in time were bought off by General Primo de Rivera, once more returned to the Page 261Islands for further plunder. The money question does not concern Rizal’s life, but his prediction of suffering to the country came true, for while the leaders with the first payment and hostages for their own safety sailed away to live securely in Hongkong, the poorer people who remained suffered the vengeance of a government which seems never to have kept a promise to its people. Whether reforms were pledged is disputed, but if any were, they never were put into effect. No more money was paid, and the first instalment, preserved by the prudent leaders, equipped them when, owing to Dewey’s victory, they were enabled to return to their country.

On the first anniversary of Rizal’s execution some Spaniards desecrated the grave, while on one of the niches, rented for the purpose, many feet away, the family hung wreaths with Tagalog dedications but no name.

August 13, 1898, the Spanish flag came down from Page 262Fort Santiago in evidence of the surrender of the city. At the first opportunity Paco Cemetery was visited and Rizal’s body raised for a more decent interment. Vainly his shoes were searched for a last message which he had said might be concealed there, for the dampness had made any paper unrecognizable. Then a simple cross was erected, resting on a marble block carved, as had been the Page 263smaller one which secretly had first marked the spot, with the reversed initials “R. P. J.”

The first issue of a Filipino newspaper under the new government was entirely dedicated to Rizal. The second anniversary of his execution was observed with general unanimity, his countrymen demonstrating that those who were seeing the dawn of the new day were not forgetful of the greatest of those who had fallen in the night, to paraphrase his own words.

His widow returned and did live by giving lessons in English, at first privately in Cebu, where one of her pupils was the present and first Speaker of the Philippine Assembly, and afterwards as a government employee in the public schools and in the “Liceo” of Manila.

The last portrait of José Rizal’s mother.

With the establishment of civil government a new province was formed near Manila, including the land across the lake to which, as a lad in Kalamba, Rizal had often wonderingly looked, and the name of Rizal Province was given it.

Later when public holidays were provided for by the new laws, the anniversary of Rizal’s execution was in the list, and it has become the great day of the year, with the entire community uniting, for Spaniards no longer consider him to have been a traitor to Spain and the American authorities have founded a government in conformity with his teachings.

On one of these occasions, December 30, 1905, William Jennings Bryan, “The Great American Commoner,” gave the Rizal Day address, in the course of which he said:

“If you will permit me to draw one lesson from the Page 264life of Rizal, I will say that he presents an example of a great man consecrated to his country’s welfare. He, though dead, is a living rebuke to the scholar who selfishly enjoys the privilege of an ample education and does not impart the benefits of it to his fellows. His example is worth much to the people of these Islands, to the child who reads of him, to the young and old.”