72 MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES 



The chronic want of money and perhaps also of energy, the 

 influence of the monks and friars, who may have been jealous 

 of seeing another influence than their own established in the 

 interior of all these islands, gives explanation enough of the fact 

 that the Spanish rule has never been powerful in that country ; 

 but a stronger, more energetic, and more gifted race, with un- 

 limited financial resources, may do in the future all that the 

 former masters failed to do in three centuries. 



If the Spanish government was weak from the military point 

 of view, it was not less so from the standpoint of diplomacy, in 

 the conciliation and real pacification of the Filipino natives. 



Only one religious order succeeded, with its incomparable 

 knowledge of the human heart, with its fine psychological and 

 diplomatic means, in being loved and esteemed by native and 

 government alike. If the friars and the various orders of monks 

 were hated with all the energy of a long-oppressed race, the 

 refined padres and monsignores of the famous society of the 

 Jesuits, remained immune from all these savage feelings. They 

 had understood that it was not the priest in his religious capa- 

 city, but the priestly lord, the priestly landowner, who ex- 

 cited the Filipinos, and so the Jesuits never tried to accumulate 

 property in the interior. They built up a magnificent scientific 

 observatory, with the most valuable instruments of astronomy, 

 seismology, magnetism, and meteorology. They connected their 

 observatory with all the other meteorological stations in the far 

 east, and saved by their prompt warnings hundreds of lives 

 and millions of dollars. When war times came over the coun- 

 try thousands of poor, homeless, and sick Tagale men, women, 

 and children found a home in the wide courts and arcades 

 of the Jesuits' colleges. They had formed a safeguard of mis- 

 erables for their own safety with this praiseworthy mercy. 

 They could be sure that they would remain undisturbed in their 

 scientific work, although between the fighting lines. The same 

 men that lived in the refined atmosphere of the highest intel- 

 lectuality understood the necessit}^ of mercy. The same scruti- 

 nizing eyes that read every morning the tales of the self-regis- 

 tering instruments understood also human nature and human 

 hearts, and they have given to the former rulers of the islands 

 a noble lesson. They have taught them that there are things 

 in the world other than guns ; they have taught them the eter- 

 nal truth that science, knowledge, is and shall be power. 



