In such strange and fateful ways of which he never dreamed, Rizal has come to be the liberator of his country and the inspiration of its national life. It is a story so different from any other in the records of the human advance that it may be deemed worth the world’s attention on its own account. With arms and conflict Washington and the other patriots of his time freed America, Bolivar and San Martin freed South America, Garibaldi and Mazzini freed Italy. With an idea and an ideal Rizal freed the Philippines. The more his brief career is studied the more it appears as apart from the ordinary aims and walks of men—singular, selfless, and admirable. If while he lived he had little recognition worthy of his great attainments, the veneration of his countrymen since his death has atoned for all former indifference anywhere. For the term of Spain’s dominion and a short time thereafter his dust remained obscurely buried. [235] When peace had come between the Americans and Filipinos both began to pay tribute to his memory. The body was disinterred from its nameless grave and reburied with high honors, civic and military. When the Filipinos came to have a measure of control over their own affairs they made a new province of the region around Manila, including Calamba, and named it Rizal. The anniversary of his death they made the national holy day. On the spot where he was killed they erected a magnificent monument, a stately and worthy memorial. Elsewhere they multiplied the tributes to his fame until by 1921 scarcely a considerable town in the Philippines was without his statue or bust or some commemoration of his story. Of the ground he had tilled in Dapitan, surrounding the little house where he had taught his school, a national park was made. In his honor the waterworks he had engineered were extended and perpetuated. From every available source the Government collected, often at great cost, the relics of his physical existence. [236] Each return of Rizal day is marked with elaborate ceremonies; addresses are delivered to his memory; the schools hold special exercises; the press reviews his life and dwells upon its import. Year by year the earnestness of these tributes increases. Other men, as their tangible presence recedes, become more or less the lay figures of history. This man seems to become with time only the more potent and real.