The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 24, 1899, Page 26

THE SUNDAY CALL Terrible Decrel 9 The =) > darkest page of the Fillpin s people 1s that up etters of blooa —better s the of the true in- s and s been for t In the Philip- s of the low ire concerned. e most obscure nd prominencs, xorable and ning, torn most Influentfal sh estate and hu- ¢ It has com- s by the hundreds—murders nge, mur T f poli; and some- rs of sheer has been fy a savage love 1 butchery so make the to ecarry out its been through no )ose, no lessening of ned in every its vows and Jelegraph JStamp. asping ers reach out 1d ecrotly g s. Rus- terror to t and wealth- r e of the hill of tear. 8 sonrce—the scrpent-wise, e 1 b of their murderous or e and die unknown, but are obeyed ioniigly and as e . The horrible 3 itiny and Tous- possible ths ‘ o coun- x the South, the e Magui »f the coal region of ennsy Ohio, and the White Caps ¢ 1 Vest, have all, with 1 ; or fancied Injury, bar « together by hidden worked in concert for some To this cl acret socleties does the ppines helong. But ; 1afia, more # Nibilists, more deadly ore fiendish in thelr ] engeful slaves Inecrs, more nu- law-defiers w4 ever known, gathered together wder this Fiilpino organiza- slone—a 11ving exemplification ver of Wrong, absolute crushing contlnned to change man's spir- rom ot 1 ge of God” into In the open story of the Philippines and in the various books and articles which have been written about these Islands nce t gprung Into unexpected promi- nence in the horizon of national affars, the Katipunan (erroneously spelled Cata- punan) society is spoken of as being merely a ‘‘strong political assoclation’— 7 the Philipp the “‘sti in fact. t in the Philippines,” t while it most as- suredly is this, its secret aim achievements end potentialities are such as to secure for it a position in its own peculiar way second to that of no organized aggregation of oppressed, mutinous and revengeful humanity in the whole wide world Death was its foundation thou tersign, its emblem, its seal, its pe weapon. In the days when it , its coun- Aty and its & this rapic T i IeE, ming 4 menacing power | 1 it w 3 to take = calcu- for the future, the order was a le- was, in the estima- vt cept that he did not bear otecting mark of God's brand upon his brow. Proscribed, hunted and persecuted, the 1 to their belief and purposes a tenacity that boded ill for their op- pressors. They held their meetings. performed their rites and cercmonic: tiated new mem- bers, invented new methodsof action, inaugu- rated new movements, issued new orders and enforced them, despite all the efforts of those in authority to suppress, disperse and destroy them. Ousted from one place, they assembled-in another. When men, presumably their leaders, were captured and executad, other men, clothed with the same au- thority, took their places withouthesitation and went on with their self-appointed work as if no interruption worthy of even passing notice had occurred. The fight against them, cruel and continuous as it has been, has been like a fight waged by mere human strength against the myriad shadowy powers of darkness and evil. No man, however bold and powerful he may be, can hope to conquer an invisible and whelly Intangible opponent; one who can both see and strike him, but whom he can neither bhehold nor touch The Katlpunans, though visible, were as elusive and mocking as a will- o'~the-wisp. They appeared here and there as the fancy moved them—like the ignis fatuus, proving by their very existence the presence of something noisome and death-dealing, and leading their ili-fated pursuers into track- less morasses and deep-sunken pits where no hope of escape or resciie can ever come. Wken thelr enemies struck they. struck back harder yet, and with more certainty of direction and more prudent conservation of force. accon d y member ast. I e a Banner " ofthe K. K. K. Jecret JSociety in EN\N"-NV'V-\J\M = RTITICADO] { ~AnAnAnNA~A~~NAN~ AN Revenue JStamp. octety That Mncited ine Jslands. Since the mutiny of twenty-eight ago, when the Filipino soldiers a bold but ineffectual effort to throw off the yoke of Spanish bondage, this running fight between the rulers and the ruled has been going on. That unsuccessful attempt atrebellion was what is now the Katipunan Soclety, although the soclety had no regular formation until many years later. The fallure of the soldiers’ uprising was due to lack of mroperly concerted action, and the value of organization began, after that, to be dimly understood by the men who were made to suffer tortures unspeakable be- cause of the poor judgment and blind haste which had impelled them to foolishly and unavailingly betray the secrets of their hatred- burdened hearts before the hand of Fate had pointed out the hour of victory. It Is wise to learn and profit by the helpful examples even of those who are enemies. Years afterward the Filipinos were taught by the unconscious instruction of their foreign residents— hated then as now and ever—the power of numbers bound =o Inextricably together that they can only act—indeed, on all important matters, are obliged to even seem to think— as one. Of this new knowledge they took immediate and sure advantage, and upon this foundation they built, with hands that have never since known faltering, the mystery-shrouded Kataas- taasan Kagalanggalang Katipunan—'the Most Exalted and Honorable Union” —the widely pow- / erful and widely feared “K. K. K., that has for the past six years exerted a subtle but well-nigh despotic influence in all theisland affairs directly re- lating to their native population. Naturally gemtle, good-tempered and non-executive, the Filipinos have long been looked upon as the rightful prey of any nationality enterprising enough to pluck ripe and luscious fruit hanging easily within reach. The story of the encroachments made upon them, of the injustice they have endured, of the tyrannous dominion that has been exercised over them, is too well known ameng all civilized. peoples to here require repetition. The story of the inception, crystallization, aims, growth and work of the one organization of the Philippines that has directed itselt—blindly and fanatically, be it granted, but still unselfishly and unswervingly and to the death—to what its members con- sider to be the welfare of their race and of their countrymen, has never yet been truly and fully told. Ever since Spain took possession of the Philippines and quartered there a hand- ful of Spanish officials to rule over and keep in subjectlon over 7,500,000 of people, @ feeling of sullen unrest and disconten has been rife among those of the natives K LG fn OrGanization the Deeds of Which Rival Those of the a little more an their fellows, of the past ble conditions who were able to thin deeply and earnestly ard to realize the conditio and the possible and proba of the future, as well as those surround- ing them amid the fleeting moments of the present. This feeling has, of course, had its cen- ter in Luzon, for more than half the en- tire population of the Philippines is lo- cated on this one island, and here the cruelty and rapacity of the Sp ernment has had widest and fullest ex- emplification. The present-day native of pines is a child of tyranny and for It is contended by some who claim to have made an impartial and exh: e study of all the causes leading up to his preaont anomalous and decidedly unpleasant situ- ation, that when the Spani: rst 100K the governing reirs in ha hey tried in good faith, and most earnestly, to make Europeans the n amiable but obstinatel tive Mafa s, and the attempt The most zealous efforts of the unwel- come new-comers could not metamor- phose a Filipino into pean ic pealed to as being pleasir in general look gh to him wher 1l point of obs asi wed from hi n, and he did es as to how a re- nothe ane 1 though it ight affect powers of Failing ter the ‘cor Spaniards evidently decided themselves to the more ples bettering their own, and t to do so by upo procee lessly They taxed the na way, and often suc trivial reasons, tf 1 which were afterward made unhappy Owr s ly being compelled stolen acres for the who had robbed them of their own their wrongfully acquired farms aliens were accustomed to requi prohibitive rentals, and when crops faile as they too frequently do even In t Philippines. the cattle and water buf- faloes—the chief dependence of the lower class Filipino for labor and food—were seized, and families thus left in abject poverty. Under these circumstances the spirit of revolt grew strong in every Filipino breast the owner of which was not either a dotard or a craven. Where a crust forms over hidden and ever-increasing fires that crust must sooner or later in- evitably break and expose to the world the raging hell beneath. The mutiny which took place on the evening of the 20th of January, 1873, In UNA MILESIMA Proprigtary Jtamp. Cavite was such a rending and the breach then made never healed. On that evening the native soldiers sta- tloned near this place revolted, having previously given any nders sign of discontent or rebellion, and mas- sacred their officers—the men whom they had followed, looked up to and obeyed un- til that moment—as deliberately, uncon- cernedly and mercilessly as they had been vagrant curs. No European who was in or near Cavite du that night of horror when murder, cold-blooded and long-meditated, held dominion over the erstwhile peaceful town. can ever forget while memory endures, a single dragging moment of thcse awful hours It had been arranged among the na- tives that a simultaneous outbreak should take place at Manila, but through some misunderstanding or some act that precipitated the climax the men at Ca- vite took the initiative with results most disastrous to the cause they had so close at heart. For one night they seemed to be mas- ters of the situation, but the next morn- ing the Spaniards, aroused for on out of their usual state of arrogaat indiffer- ence and haughty unconcern by the po- tentialitles of this most unexpected and surprising obstacle in the smooth and somewhat sluggish current of their offi- clal existence, mustered force sufficient to quell the ipsurrection and restore at least a semblance of security to thelr own positions. The failure of the move- ment so long planned and hoped for plunged the Fillpinos into worse difficul- tles than they had before even dreamed of. In Spanish cyes after that .disas- trous flasco every native was a mutineer at heart, and no man of Filipino Dbirth was 8o humbie or so insignificant as to escape the blighting breath of suspicion. Arrests were made by the wholesals, Honest farmers who had no thoughti above or beyond their dally ‘toll and the success or fallure of their crops were classed {n tho pame category and doomed to suffer the same cruel exveriences as