victim shrugged his shoulders and let the hand fall again to his
side--Latin refinement could be no further refined!

A moment later there he lay, on his right side, his life-blood
spurting over the Luneta curb, eyes wide open, fixedly staring at that
Heaven where the priests had taught all those centuries agone that
Justice abides. The troops filed past the body, for the most part
silently, while desultory cries of "_Viva Espana!_" from among the
"patriotic" Filipino volunteers were summarily hushed by a Spanish
artillery-officer's stern rebuke: "Silence, you rabble!" To drown
out the fitful cheers and the audible murmurs, the bands struck
up Spanish national airs. Stranger death-dirge no man and system
ever had. Carnival revelers now dance about the scene and Filipino
schoolboys play baseball over that same spot.

A few days later another execution was held on that spot, of members
of the _Liga_, some of them characters that would have richly deserved
shooting at any place or time, according to existing standards, but
notable among them there knelt, torture-crazed, as to his orisons,
Francisco Roxas, millionaire capitalist, who may be regarded as the
social and economic head of the Filipino people, as Rizal was fitted
to be their intellectual leader. Shades of Anda and Vargas! Out there
at Balintawak--rather fitly, "the home of the snake-demon,"--not three
hours' march from this same spot, on the very edge of the city, Andres
Bonifacio and his literally sansculottic gangs of cutthroats were,
almost with impunity, soiling the fair name of Freedom with murder
and mutilation, rape and rapine, awakening the worst passions of an
excitable, impulsive people, destroying that essential respect for
law and order, which to restore would take a holocaust of fire and
blood, with a generation of severe training. Unquestionably did Rizal
demonstrate himself to be a seer and prophet when he applied to such
a system the story of Babylon and the fateful handwriting on the wall!

But forces had been loosed that would not be so suppressed, the time
had gone by when such wild methods of repression would serve. The
destruction of the native leaders, culminating in the executions
of Rizal and Roxas, produced a counter-effect by rousing the
Tagalogs, good and bad alike, to desperate fury, and the aftermath
was frightful. The better classes were driven to take part in the
rebellion, and Cavite especially became a veritable slaughter-pen,