23 May 1892

Hong Kong

Disgusted by the article of Lete in La Solidaridad – Rizal believed he was alluded – “What animal has bitten you that you attack me?” – “I am not meddling in politics and I work only to prepare a place for refuge.” – “I made Simoun a dark figure so that show of Solidaridad would not appear as filibusteros.” – An article on Borneo ready – Awaiting satisfactory explanation.

* * *

Hong Kong, 2 Rednaxale Terrace

23 May 1892

MR. MARCELO H. DEL PILAR

FRIEND PILAR,

I have just written a letter to Naning and I am not satisfied unless I write you too. I have read Lete’s article against me.[1] I have reflected much on the purpose you might have in attacking me and in truth I am lost in conjectures. There are moments when I believe that you act following a most profound policy which is useless to explain, and there are moments when it seems to me that you operate with earnestness and on your own account, I screw my wits uselessly, as they say, je donne ma langue aux chiens,[2] and I do not know what to think. If you act according to a refined policy, why do you do it? Had I not told you before leaving Europe that I would never undertake anything against you? What animal has bitten you that you attack me when here I do not meddle at all in politics and I work only to prepare a free place for refuge for the Filipinos, devoting the rest of my time to writing some books? Have I not told you that I was leaving you in politics so that you may earn much prestige? Do you need to attack me for that? I cannot explain myself. So that I say to myself: if you have acted for political reasons, I applaud you and I should like you to continue, for it seems to me that you are on the right road. That was my purpose in making Simoun a dark figure in order to show that those of La Solidaridad are not filibusteros. I thought you had understood my ideas, only that in executing it you have played your role with such naturalness that you strike even me. But then, why do you not name me at once so that the Spaniards who are not well informed about our affairs and may not know how to read the allusions may have no doubt that you are attacking me? Why do you do it under so much cover? Are the Filipinos going to say that there is hatred in the attack, real hatred, only that the author does not wat to do it face to face? If the attack has a political purpose, I confess that it is rash and imprudent, and I fear that La Solidaridad has staked in it its last cent. May God grant that attack may be understood by my friends in the Philippines so that differences may not be exacerbated. If I were sure that you do it for political reasons, I would now write to Manila to tell them not to take it ill. But I am afraid to commit a mistake, for as I have said, I doubt and doubt.

Blumentritt writes me that you fear that La Solidaridad may die, and this also makes me believe that you might have written the article in a moment of bad humor. I do not know yet the consequences that that article may produce, but it has been a long time that I do not pay attention to politics, nor do I know the state of things in Manila, I cannot prejudge anything. Let the responsibility fall on those who have premeditated it without warning me. If I were sure that it is a political trick, I would write now to Manila telling them not to take it ill, that only a personal question is involved in it, and that politics has nothing to do with it.

Nevertheless, I will write my friends and those who are not friends that I have written you and not to adopt any resolution until you answer me.

This is not to say that I ask you for an explanation of the article; neither is it to say to you that I despise it; on the contrary, it attracts my attention very greatly and I esteem the courage of Lete in attacking me with so much fierceness and courage and above all with so much confidence. I like determined men. Give me an explanation if you wish; I warn you only that the step taken is most delicate and of great importance. I wash my hands.

I had already prepared an article for La Solidaridad, telling about Borneo and its colonization, and now I abstain from sending it. The Governor of Borneo grant us 100,00 acres, port, government, and the like, all free for a period of 999 years.

I am anxious to receive the satisfactory explanation for it seems to me that we are now entering a crisis. To my regret you are making me enter again politics and I shall have to write again letters these days to Manila and to other places in order to prevent the schism. More and more I am getting convinced that in writing that article Lete has been too precipitate and you have allowed yourself to be dragged along. Friend or enemy, if the article could hurt me, it will hurt more the interests of the Philippines. Who knows, however, if after all it is a blessing. It awakens me and after a long silence, I enter the campaign again. And here again I want to assure you: I enter the campaign but I will not attack you or any other Filipino. I will reactivate the campaign and strengthen the Liga.

You can read this letter to Lete and you will tell him that, at the worse, I will consider his article an unbosoming in his moments of ill humor.

Yours,

RIZAL

I note that in the article, Edilberto de Leporel denounces himself by confessing his revolutionary plans, and it seems that he wants the mantle of asimilismo now only to prepare better the revolution. This makes me think that he did not have all with him when he wrote the article; why say this? Why sell one’s self if nobody buys?

[Lete’s Explanation of his Article]

[Lete’s Comment on the above letter of Rizal]

He denies having attacked Rizal – He is not the character criticized in his article – He caricatured the Iluso in La Solidaridad at the request of Plaridel – “A type of a revolutionary dreamer, without practical means for action”, damaging to the cause in the metropolis.

This letter deserves a very long and minute commentary, giving a history of the facts since the beginning, which will explain its contents without great efforts.

We in Madrid who directed the political campaign in a serene manner, without stepping out of the bosom of the Asociacion Hispano-Filipina as well as the Logia Solidaridad, and the review Solidaridad itself, we, saw with a certain misgiving, fearing its damaging effects, the violence of some of our comrades, seemingly partisans of force, revolutionaries, among them the never sufficiently lauded Lopez-Jaena; and in order to check in part the said tendencies, which do not seem to us prudent to make public in the very seat of the government of the metropolis, the manager of the Soli, Marcelo H. del Pilar – the supreme talent, serenity itself, prudence personified, illustrious diplomat, eminent politician, kindhearted man, loyal friend, the abandoned martyr who died in misery, who sacrificed his life on the altar of the Motherland – personally and with his own lips entrusted to me the drafting of the article which under the title of Iluso was published in one of the issues of La Solidaridad. He explained to me his wish; he suggested that I stress the comical aspect (as I did later on in another work of the same kind in defense of Blumentritt, which the hated Retanan denounced to the Spanish government), and so I made it thus, caricaturing a type of revolutionary dreamer who had no practical means for action, without the living figure of anyone crossing our imagination. And we said so successively in copious letters, as Marcelo and I swear by our honor. So then, this letter that I am commenting on, became stale from that very moment when the inspirer of that work, whose honorable word on one has a right to doubt, belied it explicitly and categorically. And that is explained by itself. Do not we all know that Rizal never made any declaration in favor of violence? Could we attribute to him any of this? How, knowing him intimately, loving him dearly, the three having pursued the same policy publicly, could we justify and logically attack him in that sense?

In the same manner I had to express it to my dear friend Ariston Bautista (fondly we called each other cousins) when from Paris he sent me some observations on the misunderstood article.

This letter of Rizal reveals once more in clear manner the innate something that illuminated his soul as leader, apostle, redeemer, the visible head of the patriotic movement.

Why, who gave him that appointment? When the people manifested in that manner their intentions? Who appointed him with the attributes of power that are inferred from the writing of his letter? His genius, destiny, God himself certainly.

In no other way can be explained his protest against the impersonal, the unnamable, what seems to be so removed from his known procedure.

His letter created a most profound impression on us and we deeply regret his error that we hasten to remove. And I think that at the end we had the luck to achieve it through a letter of later date that he sent to Marcelo H. del Pilar. Luckily, our conscience was clean, we were at peace knowing the absolute honestly of our purpose.

And an extraordinary fact: none of the Ilusos (perhaps only one) considered himself alluded to.

Afterwards, events rushed headlong. Rizal, back in the Philippines, was banished. Towards 1895 La Solidaridad lacked funds. In the lodges and outside of them work was intensified, until an insignificant and fortuitous discovery, disclosed by a fanatical woman through the friar confessor, unexpectedly led to the outbreak of the Revolution, hatched in the lap of patriotic love and in the ardent desire for liberty.

Such was the origin of that article inspired with the best intention by our sublime politician and which was so unfortunately interpreted by our national hero.

Thus then, in order to do honor to the glorious memory of the most illustrious and self-denying public man, this commentary should be joined always to the letter that I comment on. The death of our beloved colleague Mariano Ponce deprives us now of our most important and only witness.

I beg the Filipinos, my countrymen, in charge of preserving these relics, to please perpetuate this desire of the only survivor of that triumvirate of La Solidaridad, who perhaps not for long will also pay his tribute to death.

EDUARDO DE LETE

Madrid, June 1929.

03-740 [Reformists]