Note 128 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

A quite sufficient answer, if there were not plenty of others, to Dr. Schurman’s statements quoted above is afforded by this passage in a proclamation of Aguinaldo as Magdalo at Old Cavite (Kawit), Oct. 31, 1896 (Castillo y Jimenez, El Katipunan, pp. 298–302): “The revolutionary committee addresses to all Filipino citizens who love their country a general call to arms for the proclamation of Filipino liberty and independence as [a matter of] right and justice, and the recognition of the new revolutionary government established by the blood of its sons.” And, on the same date, in a proclamation outlining a rough revolutionary organization of Cavite province and each of its towns, he says: “Filipinas witnesses today a fact unprecedented in its history: the conquest of its liberty and of its independence, the most noble and lofty of its rights.” Yet, in March, 1897, Aguinaldo discussed in the correspondence with the Jesuit superior, as already mentioned, the reforms he thought the country asked, and expressly disclaimed for the revolutionists the aim for independence. So also his proclamations and interviews on leaving for Hongkong after the pact of Biak-na-bató (see La Política de España en Filipinas, viii, pp. 46, 47).

However, in a letter to Fray Tomas Espejo (undated, but written probably in January, 1898), Aguinaldo says: “A great work is this, which demands great sacrifices, followed by the shedding of quantities of blood. But what matters that, for it is very little compared to the sublime and holy end which we hold before ourselves in attempting to take arms against España. For this we have resolved to sacrifice our lives until we shall hear issue from the mouths of our compatriots, the blessed phrase ‘All hail, Filipinas! forever separated from España and conquered through the heroism of their inhabitants.’ ” (La Política de España, viii, p. 44).—Eds. ↑