“I condemn you to continue saying and writing nonsense for the rest of your life, so that the world may laugh at you, and also, that on the Day of Judgment you may be judged according to your deserts!”

“Amen!” replied Friar Rodriguez.

The vision then disappeared; the light of the lamp regained its yellowish flame, and the soft perfume dispersed.

On the following day Friar Rodriguez started writing greater nonsense, with renewed energy.

Amen!

Jose Rizal.

Note.—­The foregoing admirable translations from the writings of
Dr. Rizal were made by Mr. F.M. de Rivas, of Chicago.

CHAPTER XV

Events of the Spanish-American War.

No Mystery About the Cause of the War—­The Expected and the Inevitable Has Happened—­The Tragedy of the Maine—­Vigilant Wisdom of President McKinley—­Dewey’s Prompt Triumph—­The Battles at Manila and Santiago Compared—­General Shafter Tells of the Battle of Santiago—­Report of Wainwright Board on Movements of Sampson’s Fleet in the Destruction of Cervera’s Squadron—­Stars and Stripes Raised Over Porto Rico—­American and Spanish Fleets at Manila Compared.—­Text of Peace Protocol.

The war between Spain and the United States was a long time coming, and there is no more mystery about its cause than doubt as to its decisions.  It was foretold in every chapter of the terrible stories of the conflicts between the Spaniards and their colonists, largely of their blood, in Central and South America.  The causes of war in Cuba, and the conduct of warfare by Spain in that island were the same that resulted in revolutionary strife in Mexico and Peru, and, indeed, all the nations in the Americas that once were swayed by the sovereignty of Spain.  The last of the islands of the Spanish possessions in the hemisphere introduced to the civilized world by Columbus were lost by the western peninsula of Europe, symbolized and personified in the Crown, as the first crumbling fragments of the colonial empires of Spain fell away from her.  Only in the case of Cuba there was the direct intervention of the United States to establish “a stable government” in the distracted island, desolated by war, pestilence and famine, that had evolved conditions, of terrible misery incurable from within, and of inhumane oppression that should be resented by all enlightened people.  It had long been realized by the thoughtful men of Spain capable of estimating the currents of events, that the time must come, and was close at hand, when the arms of the United States would be directed to the conquest of Cuba.  It was not only in the air that this was to be, it was written in the history of Spanish America, and more than that, there was not an Atlas that did not proclaim in the maps of the continents of the Western world, that Cuba would and in the largest sense of right should, become a part of the United