Leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria
4 February 1890
Prof. Ferdinand Blumentritt
My Brother,
I have just received your letter from Brussels so that you will receive this letter ahead of the one I sent you yesterday.
Barrantes has published in La España Moderna a scathing article (very stupid and very malicious; Barrantes must have a criminal soul) against us. You come out pretty well; he is compelled to admit that you are foremost among the Filipinos. But the scoundrel connects me with Bismarck’s reptile fund! I tremble with fury when I think of this affront. Perhaps he thinks that all men are as bad and corrupt as he is.
The conclusion of his article is: 1st. Representing me as agent of Bismark; 2nd. Showing that the Filipinos are led by me or at least influenced by me; 3rd. In this way embarrassing the Filipino movement before the eyes of the ignorant reading public of Spain.
Some points of “The Rizal-Blumentritt Programme” seem to him “worthy of being taken into account.” Towards the conclusion he says the following: “… I am authorized to address my sincere voice to those young Filipions, principally to Rizal, whose good abilities I recognized and applaud, so that they would not allow themselves to be seduced by sirens here and abroad or accept alien programmes whose good intention I do not doubt, but which can be inspired by prejudices and perhaps European interests incompatible with our own interests.”
In page 179 he calls you “a mind twisted by German education that did not take into account its digestive powers.”
If you do not receive a copy of the review on the day you receive this letter, write me and I will send it to you. I cannot work before the 15th, because the end of the semester and a short trip to Dresden will take up all my time. At Dresden I am going to give a lecture on Mindanao. But it is necessary that you return to me the review by the 15th, because the 16, 17, and 18 are vacation days for me and I wish to spend them to write the reply.
An embrace from
Yours faithfully,
Blumentritt
03-498 [Reformists]