Today in history: Filipino truths, 1936

An American tells a Spaniard only a Filipino could tell fellow Filipinos critical things

In his diary for March 5,1936, former governor-general Francis Burton Harrison recounts a conversation with a Spanish Dominican friar:

San Juan Lateran “commencement” of the military class and presentation of a gold sword to Colonel Vicente Lim, Professor of Military Science there. Marquee on the lawn in front of the old walls of city. Father Rector spoke in English–complimenting the cadets; he said that most of the leading soldiers in the revolt against Spain had been trained in this Corps “and though I am a Spaniard, I recognize the right of a people to fight for their independence.” This address was made just forty years after the day when the prisons behind those walls had been crammed with Filipinos supposed by the priest-ridden Spanish Government to sympathize with the Insurrectos! I sat next to the Father Rector of Santo Tomas University whom I knew of old. He said he approved of military training in the schools, and disapproved of college athletics because of their semi-professionalism. Bocobo, the President of the University of the Philippines, delivered the address in favour of military training; he commended it as a cure for Filipino slackness, tardiness, and lack of discipline in business as well as in social life. I said to Father Rector (who is Spanish), “He is telling the Filipinos some home truths which neither you nor I could express.”…