The Law of the Bolo

The Law of the Bolo, which runs throughout the Philippine Islands, has the crowning merit of simplicity. Unlike the codes of other countries, with their folios of verbiage, their precedents, decisions, and interpretations, their hair-splitting subtleties and refinements of phrase, their hidden dangers for the unwary and unfortunate, the Law of the Bolo, of the terrible two-foot-long knife, with which a Filipino can cleave his enemy from collar-bone to the waist, has but one clause—that the spoil shall go to the man with the longest reach.