Note 7 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Rizal was in London when the news reached him of the petty vengeance wreaked upon the body of his brother-in-law. There had been launched some months before by the Filipino colony in Madrid a semimonthly magazine called “La Solidaridad,” the object of which was to arouse and unify the Filipinos and wrest reforms from the Spanish Government. With impunity it could be published in Madrid but could not have lived a day in Manila, a fact sufficiently indicating the power and value of publicity. Spain, with the eyes of Europe upon her, did not dare to do at home the things she did daily in the Philippines; dared not to do them or dared not to avow them. Distance, creating an impenetrable screen, created also in effect a transition from the modern to the antique world. There was much freedom of the press in Spain, a freedom, as we have remarked, partly sustained by the incessant threat of rebellion in Barcelona. Therefore, as a singular fact and almost comically incongruous, “La Solidaridad,”7 with its acrid criticism of the Spanish Government, circulated freely in Spain and was not allowed to enter the Philippines. One of its editors was Marcelo H. del Pilar, a resolute and restless man, type of the intransigent, the indomitable and professional revolutionist. Before long he and Rizal quarreled,8 for he was all for revolution by physical force and Rizal was always asserting its futility. A few years later del Pilar died on his way home to start his long meditated uprising. Untimely was his death if any man’s ever was. He would have reached the Philippines to find in full swing a revolution wherein his tireless energies and fiery spirit would have found an outlet at which men might have wondered.