Note 15 — Chapter III · FIRST CONTACTS WITH THE ENEMY

In this, and as a piece of art, it was powerful and significant. He addressed the young men of the Philippines as if they were like other young men of the world, free, and able to put forth their powers, to make their way; not inferior, not the fags and drudges of the hateful Spanish tradition. Here was innovation—here was danger! In no such vein were they accustomed to be addressed, and the neuremic espionage that sustained the existing order seems to have been quick to notice the novelty. He had been careful to declare with due emphasis his loyalty; but in every autocracy the uneasy governing class learns first of all to discount such professions. The poem added to the disfavor in which the official world held him; his aloofness and studious habits seem to have multiplied suspicion. A youth with such sentiments and such ways must be thinking mischief; devilish plottings were irresistibly suggested. So, then, the blacker the mark against his name! The press of Manila, all censored, all edited in behalf of the rulers, seems to have learned early of this proscription. In the stealthy way of the journalistic prostitute it was already giving Rizal warning.15