Opinion is divided on the question of the responsibility of the Spanish freemason lodges or rather the ruling "Oriente" for the beliefs and practices of their filipino brethren. That they were indirectly responsible is more than certain; and oft-times they were so indirectly. D. Manuel Sastrón ex-Deputy to the Spanish Cortes, ex-Civil Governor of the Philippines, speaking on this subject says: "It is not possible for us on any account to fall in line with these suspicious reasonings: never have we had a disposition to form a part of such a sect, because we are old time Christians; but we repeat that we cannot believe nor do we imagine that any masonic centre composed of peninsular Spaniards could tolerate, and much less foment consciously, the propagation of doctrines which, whatever masonry brought about in the Philippines, could have given origin to the congregation of separatist elements." "Nevertheless side by side with this firm conviction we repeat what we tersely maintained, viz: that freemasonry has been the medium which marshalled the element which generalled the Filipino insurrection. Filibusterism knew how to exploit it to a fine point." "We do not find it inconvenient to affirm, but just the opposite, we repeat with pleasure and absolute belief that Spanish freemasonry was ignorant of the true ends of the Filipino masons. But it is proved to our way of thinking, to the point of evidence, that Filipino masonry pursued no other ends than the independence of those islands (the Philippines.)" [17] It must be noted that this is the opinion of a Spanish patriot, for a patriot Sastrón certainly was, and what is more natural than that a true patriot should doubt the possibility of his own countrymen mixing themselves up in anti-patriotic movements: Yet while Sastrón and other writers would redeem their fellow countrymen from such a stain as that of treason, I am inclined to believe that the asserted ignorance of the Spanish freemason was too often official, that is to say it was not genuine, but limited to the members of the society who enjoyed the privileges of the lower degrees. There are two sides to every question, however, and that the "other side" may be given a fair hearing, I will quote a declaration of Antonio Luna on this subject. Luna, among the many statements made before the Lieut. Col. in command of the Cuartel de Caballeria, on the 8th of October 1896, confessed that "in the year 1890 or 91, of his own free-will, he formed a masonic project based on Spanish masonry: a project which might, at its proper time be applied to filibuster conspiracy. This project was discussed and approved by the Oriente Español in Madrid; but that center did not know the secondary ends to which it would be applied.... Of his own free-will he manifested that his ideas were, when he formed the project, anti-Spanish...."