The third of a thousand years during which Spain misgoverned the archipelago that Magellan had discovered for her was a period of Philippine preparation.

Divided already so each town was jealous of its neighbors and anxious to enlist the Europeans in waging war upon them, the Filipinos were an easy conquest for soldiers whose first military maxim was Rome’s “Divide and Conquer.”

The conquest might better be called a conversion for the cross did much more to establish and maintain Spain’s authority than the sword. And the new religion formed a bond of union, perhaps the only one which could have brought together such diverse elements.

Spanish catholicism was not merely a Spanish church, the church was Spain. There was therefore no humiliation over subjugation, rather exultation in having found salvation.

The people were seafaring folk with the sturdiness such a life gives. Their chiefs were their captains, and, in waters that are the home of the typhoon, leadership, if in no other way than by the survival of the fittest, came to the most capable.

Women held high position, for with their husband so much away not only the household but all the family affairs were under their control, a condition still notable. Thus the home influence in which the children grew up was not that of the Orient, a shut-in Zenana with, for the child’s first model, a mother who had been a slave and now as mistress was a tyrant, but the youth of the Philippines earlier saw the real world and had training from mothers who knew its ways.

There were gradations of rank, but people were constantly falling from the higher to the lower so that these had ambitious persons among them seeking to regain their former estate and arousing ambition among their fellows. And the condition of even the lowest was not hopeless. So well ordered was society that even slaves had rights and knew them; had too the civic courage to stand up for them against their masters. Witness the story of the surprise of the Spaniards who heard slaves saying to their masters, “What is there in it for me in this?”, when orders were given them.

Nor should it be thought that the wholesale conversion betrayed weakness of character. The islands had had a nature religion, the belief of an artistic people, that their Gods would delight in and frequent the most beautiful spots. Then came the religion of Mahomet with a system which reason readily recognized as superior, but before it was fairly established there arrived another religion which not only commended itself to reason but appealed to the artistic sense, both in larger measure than either of its predecessors.

Those who had felt exalted in the glory of the tropical sun, found comfort in the moonbeams’ softer radiance, had sought the leafy recesses of the forest for reflection and were soothed and sustained by the musical murmurs of mountain cascades found greater comfort and a higher gratification in the rites and ceremonies of a church which has ever been the patron of art and consecrates all that is beautiful in music, painting and sculpture to adorn its sanctuaries and dignify its worship.