In Paris when the exposition of 1889 came on he was struck with the fact that in that vast and imposing procession of the children of earth his own people, whom he felt and knew to be as worthy as the others, had no place. Therefore he organized an international league to make known to the world the facts about the Filipinos and to refute the slanders that Spanish writers had sown thickly in European literature. He called this society the “Association Internationale des Philippinistes.” Dr. Blumentritt was president, Dr. Rost vice-president, and Dr. Planchut of Paris one of the directors. [123] If Rizal was a nationalist, he was also an internationalist; a fact that must be already apparent in these annals. No doubt, being wise about other things, he was not deceived into thinking that internationalism could come by any other than the nationalist route. The first of the declared objects of his Association Internationale was to summon an international congress. Others were to study the Philippines historically and scientifically, to create a Philippine library and museum of Philippine objects, to publish books on Philippine topics, and to arouse public interest in these objects. That the world looked with some disdain upon his people, that under the spell of the Spanish pen it ignored the honorable record of Philippine culture and the stirring Philippine history, were thorns that gave his mind no rest. None knew so well as he that this misprision was rankly unjust. In the face of almost universal opinion in Europe, he knew that the Malay mind, though different, was not inferior; he knew that what it wanted was no more than the sunlight and free air. In all ways the general verdict was askew: the Filipinos were not even innately lazy, as hundreds of writers had asserted, hundreds still repeated, and doubtless other hundreds will continue to parrot for years to come. He knew that lazy people could never have made the progress the Filipino had made before the evil day of the Spanish flag. The respect he had for the latent powers of his countrymen sprang from research and not from prejudice. It was true enough, but not a truth that he could keep refrigerated in scientific abstractions. It burned and struggled in him like something fighting to get free, and he relieved himself of an intolerable protest by writing (for “La Solidaridad”) a brochure on the subject. “The Indolence of the Filipino” [124] it is called, and, if he had written nothing else, thoughtful men would still admire him for the cool, masterly marshaling of his reasonings in this. He purposes to deal with the truth. “Let us calmly examine the facts,” he says in beginning, “using on our part all the impartiality of which a man is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid bases of virtue.” Two pages later he says: