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.

316 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

God has made the Philippines a country composed of many
islands. It is truly difficult and costly to have an effective
system of national defense. But the capacity of a country in
order to become independent should not depend on its capacity
to defend against a foreign aggression. If that is the standard
which would be required of a country that wishes to manage
its own destinies, many independent nations smaller and poorer
in natural resources than ours, as Belgium and Switzerland in
Europe and many South-American republics, would not have
survived as nations independent of foreign tutelage.
For purposes of our national defense, it is enough that we
have a system of defense which would make costly the invasion
of our territory by any foreign power.
To require the Philippines to have its national defense organized to the extreme of making impossible all foreign invasion as a prerequisite to its independence would result in its
never enjoying it.
Fortunately there were established institutions called to
check frequent war among nations. There we have the International Court to decide the controversies between two nations;
there is the League of Nations established to preserve not only
the great but also the small democracies.
But let us suppose the case that the Philippines be the
object of an unjustified transgression on the part of a stronger
nation, and that its voice demanding justice be unheeded by
the powers that have interests in the country and who exercise
the moral leadership of the world, we the Filipinos would
do as an individual does when attacked by wrong-doers; defend
himself against the attacks as much as possible even if it costs
his own life. The Filipinos would learn to resist and repel the
aggression with all the means and resources they can dispose of
and defend the statutes of their national dignity. And if they
perish in the conflict, over the corpses of 13,000,000 Filipinos
would raise up the soul of a country whose heroism would
occupy an immortal page in the history of Humanity.
Even now under the aid and protection of the most powerful nation in the world, if there should be a conflict between