When Rizal, lured from Hong-Kong by false promises of safety, landed in Manila, Bonifacio was twenty-nine years old. He had long revolved in his mind the fact so patent to all observing Filipinos that the first step to their freedom must be unity. About the time Rizal was founding his Liga Filipina, Bonifacio was formulating another and much more portentous union. The two were launched about the same time; one in the open, the other in the dark and with the utmost secrecy. Bonifacio called his society the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng̃ mg̃a Anak ng̃ Bayan, which being interpreted means Supreme Most Respected Association of the Sons of the People. For brevity’s sake the long unwieldy name soon came to be shortened into K.K.K. or the Katipunan, and so remains in history. Bonifacio shaped it like a masonic lodge, with a ritual, passwords, grips, and the swearing of fealty and silence. Its avowed object was the overthrowing by force of the Spanish power and the establishing of the Philippine nation, free and independent. It appears now that the name of Rizal was used as an honorary president of this society, [196] but wholly without his authority or even knowledge. For this unwarranted use Bonifacio was much to blame. It is likely that he found at first some difficulty in securing recruits and took advantage of Rizal’s great popularity. Either so, or what seems more probable to us, he expected to have Rizal’s support for the Katipunan when it should have grown to formidable size. In either case, the course was inexcusable. But we are to remember that Bonifacio, warring against the most unprincipled and ruthless of powers, believed he was justified in using any weapons that came to his hand. Month after month the Katipunan spread among the disgusted and restless Filipinos—secretly, always; and we are to surmise that the care with which the movement was to be concealed until the instant of the blow recommended it to people smarting under a Government so obese and still so viciously protected. How long this Government was ignorant of what was going on nobody knows. If the vast network of spies and agents provocateurs, with which Spanish, like Russian, rule was maintained, brought in no hint of the mine that was being driven beneath the feet of the governing class, the spies must have made their first recorded failure, and that concerning the one thing most important to their employers. Filipinos, one may say, had not so known these ever busy birds of ill omen.