Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

EDUCATIONAL SECTION

163

regional rivalries in order. that if we wish to understand one
another it is necessary to use a medium to impose an official
language as the most powerful instrument of attachment of the
foreign domination.
Here I am now, a Filipino, born in the center of Luzon, in
order to reach with a spiritual message the heart and intelligence of my brothers from the south and north of the same
island and of my brothers who live in the Visayas and Mindanao, I still have to go through Cervantes' land which trip
back and forth is said to take months of efforts and sacrifices;
and others equally Filipino bearing an identical mission have
yet to make a trip through Shakespeare's country or Uncle
Sam's empire, which is supposed to take forty and more days
of trans-oceanic life; when such a long and painful journey
may well be simplified if we know how to accommodate ourselves in any of the proper means of mental transportation of
our common Mother.
In very clear terms: I, who am a Filipino in order to be
better understood by you, my countrymen, need to talk to
you in Spanish while the others need to talk in English, even
if the subjects we wish to speak of are eminently of Philippine character. Is not this one of the paradoxes of the destiny
of the conquered countries?
But, of what use are these lamentations and inculpations at
present! We have to accept the finished deeds as they are
presented to us. We should get all the possible good from
the bad that we lament of. The Spanish language as well as
the English are foreign elements which are found as strongly
rooted in our social and political culture that to pretend to
exterminate them now to be supplanted with ours, would be
equivalent to inflicting an act of violence against the stability
of our own institutions.
Hundreds of millions of pesos have we spent already for
the teaching and propagation of the English language in the
whole Archipelago and we should not let them be lost for
stupid boxerism. Millions of Filipino children and youths
have already nourished their mind in the first letters and in
the sciences and arts by means of American books and models