Cruelty by Rizal

CRUELTY

Jose Rizal

          It is an ungrateful task to intervene in a dispute and defend persons who are neither armless nor paralytic or whose pen is kept down or who do not need defenders. For that reason we hesitate to answer the article of Bachelor Manuel de Veras, published in the satirical magazine Manililla of Manila, 1 June 1889.

          Moreover, there are other reasons.

          The character of Manililla (a weekly, illustrated, comical, and humorous) explains the kind of attack and precludes very serious reply.

          The author, despite his apparent evil intention, his irritation, and his coarse jokes, does more harm to himself than to the illustrious Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt, and his attacks are personal rather than arguments and reasons.

          But there are certain considerations that oblige us to defend him or to simulate a defense, if one who does not feel really attacked can need defense. Mr. Blumentritt, because of his love for Spain and the Philippines, is now the target of some childish Spaniards and gross insults and it seems that it is the duty of the Spaniards and Filipinos to defend him, at least for the purpose of protesting against those attacks and to prove that we know what is justice and what is gratitude. Because, if not, the worthy Austrian professor could curse the hour he began to advocate for the rights of Spain, to learn her language, to study her history, to wish the welfare of her colonies, devoting to that nation his time and his life, only to encounter later insults instead of considerations. Ingrates instead of grateful men!

          No; under pain that Bachelor Manuel de Veras himself might laugh at our candour for taking seriously hi sallies against our learned Austrian professor, we are going to make a defense proportional to the attack, for we prefer to be taken as naive rather than ingrates and ill-bred.

          There is a certain irritation against Blumentritt for dealing with Spanish...