Note 1 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Sixteen years after Jagor printed his almost unheeded prophecy, other men less gifted might have seen that his views on Philippine evolution were soundly based. The conditions existing in the Islands could not last much longer. Six or seven discontented millions could not continue to be overawed with soldiery and great guns and managed upon a plan they hated. No matter how assiduously they might be kept from all weapons more deadly than jack-knives and toothpicks, the existing state could not endure. The mere physical fact of the United States, forging ahead upon a totally different principle, would be an influence that soon or late would overturn these sagging bulwarks of antiquity. What was to be the future of the Islands? For a long time the students of Barcelona tried to settle this question, sometimes with debate and sometimes with vociferation. Thence with similar futility it spread to Madrid and elsewhere, and finally Rizal took it up in a series of articles entitled “The Philippines a Century Hence.”1