Letters
Media
Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal
- Title
- Letters
- Language
- English
- Source
- The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XVII (Issue No.4) April 1937
- Year
- 1937
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- 14 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1937 LetteRS James J. Haselina —Duke University Durham, N. C. "I don’t know if the Journal is in the habit of entering gift subscriptions, but jf it should by any chance, I would appre ciate one for the Duke library. In all truth, the primary reason for this request is that Philippine news is always impor tant to me; but there really is a need here for a magazine on economics to fill the appallinggap of ignorance that the average American has about the Islands. “As is usual when we return to the United States there are the inevitable confusions between the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba. Anot her usual belief is that, every man, woman, and child in the count ry can speak nothing but the purest of Castilian. And for the college man there is another belief: that all women in the Orient are ravishing beauties. Beyond that, not one in a hundred knows any more about the Philippines that they would about the man in the moon. “This university is the youngest one in the count ry-r-a gift from James B. Duke along with an endowment fund that has in ten years created a group of class rooms, dormitories, and a chapel (at $2,000,000 including carillon) for 3,200 students. Building cost was about twenity million dollars, and the endowment is still thirty-two million. Being so new, its reputation is just beginning to spread, chiefly by means of the news of the extra sensory perception (“mental telepathy”) experiments carried on by the psychology department. “The town of Durham about three miles away is one of the tobacco trium virate: Richmond, Winston-Salem, and Durham, that make most of the nation’s cigarettes. Chesterfield and Lucky Strike have large factories here with almost 100$c negro laborers. Textile mills sur ★John “Jack" Carrigan's Home, Paradise, California round the town. Unionization is rudi mentary in this area, but John L. I^ewis has stated that he intends to introduce the C’.I.O. when he finishes with steel. The total result is a dingy looking group of red brick buildings that makes me sure that I will return to Baguio’s well-painted galvanized iron and frame four years hence.” Jack Carrigan * —Pogad na Buaya Paradise, California “Here are a couple of snaps of Pogad Na Buaya—one of the porch with the swimmin’ hole even as in your youth, but not so far to go. And a path of Madonna lilies that you might easily have a hemorrhage over. And if you drop in about the midst of May you can be a Tahitian and put one behind your right ear. “A letter from Ocsch places him well anchored in Los Angeles. Belike being both in the same state, there should be an easy chance to see each other. But I couldn’t drive that far, even if I had a car that would do it. And for family reasons he seems equally rooted. So we have to take it out in writing about the beauties of the Padada River where he apparently has left his heart. I know so well how he feels. It took three attempts for me to break away from Davao, al though I could answer my family’s pro tests only by the weak assurance that I’d left a sick coconut tree there and had to go back to look after it. “Now what with a swimming hole and a rambling log effect lousy with the dust of years this place is sufficiently Philippinized to make the break less painful. But for some reason you never quite get over wanting to go back. "Has Don Antonio Bosque sufficiently recovered from his bitter disappointment over the perfidy of the Sweepstakes to make good his promise to visit California? If he hasn’t, give him my undying affection and send him on his way hither. “And my sincerest regards to your office force and to all the muchachas and muchachos at 182 V. Mapa. God! how I’d love to step into one of those baby busses and shrill into the driver’s ear “Santa Mesa ’n’ step on it! ! ! ” Christian Gauss —Dean of the college Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey (Author of Primer for Tomorrow) “Your cheering letter which included the very interesting discussion by Miss Simpson’s student, G. del Rosario, comes at the busy time of the opening of college but I do wish to send you my very hearty thanks. Nothing that has come to my desk in the last month has given me any more satisfaction. Please accept my grateful appreciation for your interest in the book and your notice of it. “As a teacher I am, of course, partic ularly interested in young men and the ways in which they face the world. It is for this reason that Mr. del Rosario’s dis cussion gave me so deep a satisfaction. May I say that I was graduated from col lege in 1898. My generation and I spent the next fifteen years in a period of rela tively “good times” and under the illusion that all was well with the world. Looking back now, and I say it with deep regret, I feel that that generation of privileged men, among whom I count all those who enjoyed economic security or the benefits of a college education, did not discharge its responsibility. Our fate, the fate of the world so far as we were concerned, the conditions of life under which we were to live in middle age and after, and in which our children were to grow up, was decided in 1918. “We know that those settlements now were not satisfactory, did not get down to the fundamental human problems. This new generation coming on, as represented by del Rosario, is in the very largest sense facing the same problem that ours faced and that every generation must face. The fate of the world, of the world in which they are to spend their mature lives and into which their children will be born, is bound to be decided in the next twenty years. What is happening in Europe today indicates this only too clearly. “I cannot tell you how reassuring it is to me to find young men so deeply aware of the fundamental nature of their prob lems as del Rosario and so idealistic (I use the word in its best sense) as he. It is therefore a source of satisfaction to me to feel that my Primer has been of interest to him. “Please extend to him and to Miss Simpson, as I extend to you, my very hearty thanks.”
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- 14