is demand be? It is not very difficult to
answer this question. The Filipino is most easily led and influenced;
indeed, it is to be doubted if anywhere else in the world a being
can be found more easily led and influenced. [54] For example, it is
relatively not an uncommon thing, certainly in the Tagalog provinces,
for a man having a grudge against a neighbor to invite three or
four friends to join him in boloing his enemy. The invitation is
frequently accepted, although the guests may themselves have nothing
whatever against the victim-to-be. Early in 1909, a miscreant who had
been parading himself in women's clothes as a female Jesus Christ,
upon exposure by a native doctor, out of revenge got together a band
of nineteen men, and with their help proceeded to cut the doctor to
pieces. This occurred within a day's march of Manila. The example just
given suggests another Filipino trait, the readiness with which the
more ignorant will swallow any and all religious nostrums, and form
absurd sects, usually for the financial or other material benefit of
their leaders. In yet another case, a murderous bandit [55] of Tayabas
Province, a Tagalog province, whom we caught and very properly hanged,
used to promise as a reward for any deed of special villainy in which
he might be interested, a bit of _independencia_ (independence),
and then would show a box with the word painted on it, declaring that
it contained a supply sent down to him from Manila. He never failed
to find men to do his will. Our purpose in citing these examples,
whose number might be indefinitely multiplied, is not to show that
the poor, ignorant Filipino is especially criminal of disposition,
but to point out the ease with which he can be led by other men. If,
under evil influence, he will altruistically, as it were, consent to
almost any crime, obviously he can be induced to consent to almost
anything else. His consent or acquiescence can not be taken to indicate
appreciation of the issue.

If told, then, by his political leaders that he must ask for
independence, the Filipino most certainly will ask for it; and the fact
that in the majority of cases he has no idea of what he is asking for
will make no difference to him, just as this makes no difference to his
_cacique_, or boss. But it ought to make a great deal of difference
to us. We may be giving him edged tools to play with, only to find
when too late that the edge has been turned against him, a result
f