the causes of the supposed growth of immorality:
Such is the program of certain people!
Our Enemies
Those who in a great measure are guilty to their nation for
the misfortunes that befell the Filipino people that resorted to
revolution and rebellion to free themselves from a regime opposed to
their progress and happiness, forgetting their incapacity to fulfill
the obligations which, in the name of their country, they assumed
here and which were the causes of the political failure of the past
colonization, they to-day wish to defend their interests in our country
pursuing their policy which would only produce dissension among the
Filipinos. Under the pretext of interesting themselves more than we do
in our own welfare, considering us to be blind and incapable to know
and distinguish the good from the bad, deeming us eternal indios of
inferior mentality, they seek to take us whithersoever they will,
where it suits them, thru the dark path where none see but they,
they who guide or wish to guide the indio, the eternal child who
ought to allow himself to be led!
In a foreign weekly published in Manila, we read the following:
"Dedicated to the search of the enemies of the progress of the
Filipinos, we find them in every bucket, in every cabaret; in the
peaceful invasion of Japanese in the Philippines; in "panguingue," in
billiard games, in the prevailing immorality in the theaters, in the
novel, in the cinematograph and in the postal card; and above all and
over all, in the lay school." He who thus expresses himself seeking to
arouse Filipino hatred against the Japanese, to create suspicion first
and trouble afterwards, is a stranger, and in the language in which
he himself writes are written the theatrical works and the immoral
novels that come to the Philippines. [3] In his language, too, were
promulgated those laws and regulations in our country instituting
cockfighting, lottery, billiard, created as sources of revenue for
the State--things which we the Filipinos could not oppose in the old
political regime without at the same time opposing the government
itself which made vice a source of revenue and which, to increase
its funds, had to encourage such vices, similar to opium in official
smoking-rooms. Of the lay school we shall now speak presently.
The Work of Calumny and Hatred
Considering the nature of this campaign against our present day
institutions, and painfully impressed by the great harm which
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