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We Filipinos have all along believed that if the
American nation at large knew exactly, as we do, what is
daily happening in the Philippine Islands, they would rise
en masse, and demand that this barbaric war should stop.
There are other methods of securing sovereignty the true and lasting sovereignty that has its
foundation in the hearts of the people. Has not the greatest of English poets said:
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood?”
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And, did America recognize this fact, she would cease to be the laughing stock of other civilized
nations, as she became when she abandoned her traditions and set up a double standard of
government government by consent in America, government by force in the Philippine Islands.
“Coming events cast their shadows before.”2
Let us look at the situation exactly as it is, as we
know it to be, and let the American people no longer deceive themselves or be deceived by others. . . .
You have been deceived all along the line. You have been greatly deceived in the personality of
my countrymen. You went to the Philippines under the impression that their inhabitants were ignorant
savages, whom Spain had kept in subjection at the bayonet’s point. The Filipinos have been described
in serious American journals as akin to the hordes of the Khalifa; and the idea has prevailed that it
required only some unknown American Kitchener to march triumphantly from north to south to make
the military occupation complete.3
We have been represented by your popular press as if we were
Africans or Mohawk Indians. We smile, and deplore the want of ethnological knowledge on the part
of our literary friends. We are none of these. We are simply Filipinos. You know us now in part: you
will know us better, I hope, by and by.
Some clear-headed men in the United States Senate knew the facts; but, alas, genius and correct
thinking are ever in the minority.