Panorama

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume IV (Issue No. 8) August 1938
Publisher: Community Publishers Inc.
Year: 1938
Language: English
Subject: Periodicals
Rights
extracted text: 20 centavos a copy Four th Year of Publication I The Philippine Digest of Good Reading VoL. IV AUGUST, 1939 No.8 RIZAL ON SECTIONALISM Can We Hold the Richest Land on Earth? • Man of Brair Philippine Tycoon• Poison for Beauty• Dorothy Thompso What are These Japanese? • Britain Must Keep Hongkon To Have Democracy • Smallest and Tallest • God or Caesa Inside a Modern Harem • Pesapallcr-Baseball's Rivi VoL. IV PANORAMA No. 8 ,, CONTENTS Rizal on Sectionalism Philippine Tycoon ... Poison for Beauty .. Those Roman Emperors D Can we Hold the Richest Land· on Earth? Circumstantial Evidence Smallest and Tallest .... . Siam. Wants to be Alone ... . Studying Politics ......... . What are These Japanese? Dorothy Thompson ........... . Stupid or Foolish? . . . . . ....... . Spiders in Busines~ . . . ..... . Man of Brains . . . . . . . ........ . God or Caesar . . . . . . ..... . To Please Women . . . . ................ . Inside a Modern Harem ........ . Printing Feat . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . Letters Will Win Friends . . . . . ..... . Fantastic Rumour . . . . . . . . . . . ....... . Experiences of a London Taxi-Driver ............. . Britain Must Keep· Hongkong .................. . Pesapall0:--Baseball's Rival ..................... . Hot Air-Courtesy ..................... . Panorama Quiz . . . . . . . ......... . Big Brains ..... ·.. . . ........................ . Editors are Human, Too Panoramic Views ........ . That Baccalaureate Custom ............. ·-· .. To Have Democracy ........ . Comment . . . ..... . I\'< ' 2 7 7 9 14 15 2 17 19 20 22 26 27 28 33 34 35 39 40 42 t 43 .;:::::: 46 48 52 53 54 55 58 63 ~ ·63 ' 64 ~ ,..-..- ~ A N O R A M A is published monthly by the COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. 2 Crystal Arcade .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... Manila, Philippine1 President: Manuel Camus Managing Editor: Bert Paul Osbon Business Manager: Benjamin Racelis Subscription Rates: In the Philippines, one year, P2.00; three years, P5.00 oreign subsctiption, one year, $1.50, three years, $3.75. Single copies 20 centavos a copy ne month's notice is required for changing a subscriber's address. The request £01 iange should state both the old and the new address. Entered. ·a11 second class mail matter on May 9-, 19116, at the Post Offoce of Manila VOL. IV AUGUST, 1939 Rizal on Sectionalism Now let us take the case of Don Diego Silang. While I am happy to have a fellow countryman as educated, as intelligent, and as active as Don Isabelo de los Reyes, nevertheless I feel sorry for his excessive Ilocano feeling which, as you suspect, might one day break us down as an argument against us. While he has some works of great force, he has other works, on the contrary, that seem to be written by Spaniards, so superficial, trivial, and of little discernment, one of these being that about the catapusan. In this case of Silang, the only historian I have been able to consult here is. Mas, besides Zuniga, for neither Concepcion nor Aduarte has anything about it and the others merely copied one from another . . . I am with you and can very well maintain that the uprising of Silang had a fanatical character, although Silang himself was not a fanatic, because he seems to be a great politician but a rogue without honor nor civic virtues, because of which he failed.-From the Letter of lose Rizal to Del Pilar, London, February 4, 1889. No. 8 'lfHaussermann, the Magnificent. PHILIPPINE I'VE just learned about a man who unwittingly, at least without design, made himself and others a huge fortune just through tryin;; to do a couple of people a good turn. Incidentally he has been the means of giving steady employment to no fewer than ten thousand people and he has paid millions into the treasuries of two governments in taxes, to say nothing of having developed as many as three rich steadily-producing gold mines, with invaluable chromite deposits on the side. So I present Judge John W. Haussermann, rated in Manila as American Citizen Number One. He is a stout, smiling, young fellow of seventy-one years, one of the most cheerful and most amicable you ever met. When he talks of his achievements in the Philippines you find out that his greatest pride is not in the fortune he has built up-almost with his left hand. His proudest boast is that with those ten thousand employees, subject to agitators of more kinds than we have on the mainland, he has never had any labor trouble. 2 TYCOON But let's take the Haussermann story in proper sequence. He was born at New Richmond, Ohio, the son of a butcher. He put himself through law school working as a janitor in the post office, as a riverman, and as a la.11 borer in his elder brother's packing' plant at Cincinnati. He mov,ed to Leavenworth, Kansas, and hadn't been there long· before he became the boy city attorney. Whe~ the Spanish-American War broke he enlisted in the Twentieth Kan~ sas, became one of Funston's offi..: cers, and went to the Philippines. After the Twentieth Kansas was withdrawn from the fighting lines, young Haussermann was detailed to the office of the Judge Advocate General and became Acting Judge Advocate. He had married in Leavenworth and Mrs. Haussermann 'was in Manila with him. By the time the war was over, he was pretty so-. lidly established in Manila and -decided to stay. When Ta.ft was made Governor of the Philippines, Haussermann was Assistant Attorney General and Taft assigned him PANORAMA to draw up the first Charter of the City of Manila. That Charter stands today. The firm Coudert Brothers, famous as international lawyers,· needed a representative in Manila. Upon inquiry they found out that young Hanssermann was just about tops. So he was obviously in a nice spot. As a matter of fact he was doing so well in the practice of law that he had promised his wife to retire and return to the States in 1915. Before that, however, one of his clients got into trouble. The client was a rest;mrant owner who had grubstaked a couple of discharged .American soldiers. They had found the vestiges of an old mine which used to provide gold for the chests of the Spanish kings in the days of the conquistadors. For six years Haussermann's client and his associates. struggled, pouring into the ground money which never came back. At the end of the six years they were in the soup and came to Haussermann with their troubles. The Judge, though wellto-do, couldn't command out of his own pocket the funds necessary for reorganization. But he was able to finance the assessment work to keep the mine going and the title clear. AUGUST, 1939 Of course his first act was one which any other sensible person would have taken. He engaged mining engineers, experts, to report on the property. As a result he could write an amusing chapter on experts. His engineers reported that gold was there but it was, in the language of the profession, a "pocket" property, i. e., spotty. They advised against developing it. And here's the pay-off: Haussermann ignor~d their pessimistic advice. Twice later in his career as a miner that experience was repeated. Three times top-notch mining engineers had advised Haussermann against going ahead with the properties in which he became interested. Three times he threw the advice into the wastebasket. Three times they were wrong and he, with no knowledge of geology or mineralogy, was right. The long and short of it is that Haussermann was able to get together enough capital to reorganize "that old Spanish mine which is known today as Benguet Consolidated. Haussermann insisted that the men who had poured their money into the ground should be in on the reorganization upon equal terms with the new investors. But that wasn't the end of the 3 troubles of Benguet Consolidated. In 1910 there came a terrific storm followed by a flood which washed the mill down the valley. This looked like the end. Against the advice of the experts he got together enough money to build a new mill. He kept his promise to Mrs. Haussermann and went home to New Richmond, Ohio, in 1915-but not before he had done and seen enough to know that Benguet, after more than ten years of tribulations, was on its way. One year after he had returned to Ohio he received the report that he had expected : gold was pouring out of the Benguet mine. Soon dividends started pouring in on the stockholders. In the next four years they produced more than ten million dollars' worth of gold, paid more than five million in dividends, and in 1923 cut a melon of 100 per cent stock dividend. In 1926 the experts reported the mine was played out. Haussermann again played his hunch against the men of learning. He overrode his board of directors, ordered diamond drills and other equipment, started exploration in the mine. The new vein that he tapped made it more valuable than ever. 4 At about the same time a grave misfortune had overtaken another friend, in fact his family physician. Dr. Vincent of Manila had invested practically his entire life savings in the shares of the Balatoc Mining Company. Haussermann .took hold as he had with Benguet. He took 60 per cent of Dr. Vincent's stock, paying the par price for it, though its market1 value was trifling. In the reorganization he insisted upon the same terms as before-that the original investors should share and share alike with the new stockholders. In a couple of years Balatoc too was paying quarterly, dividends, and in spite of the stock dividend the shares became rated at three times their par value. The story was repeated in 1932 when Haussermann took over another gold mine at Ipo, not far from Manila, which an engineel' had recommended be shut down. In 1934 he got his money back and today that mine looks better than ever. The Haussermann mines in 1936 reported almost $1,000,000 in dividends-that is more than 70 per cent of the total dividends of all gold mines in the Philippines. As a matter of fact, Judge Haussermann has received an offer from PANORAMA Japanese sources for his Benguet, Balatoc, and lpo properties, as well as the rich chromite deposits in western Luzon. He did not accept. Like some other Americans in the Philippines, he is hanging on, principally, he says, because he feels that to get out would be to desert a post. The Americans in the Philippines look upon the Tydings-McDuffie Act as ·nothing short of disastrous. And by this time the educated Filipinos are dismayed at what they have done. For after all, the Tydings-McDuffie Act is the consequence of three decades of pleading by the Filipino leaders. But, as one of them said to me, "We can't turn around now all of a sudden and tell our people we were wrong. While we were agitating for independence, the Japanese menace was not apparent. But now it is all too clear. The standard of living among our peoples has been pushed ·up to a point where it is higher than those of any others in our part of the globe, thanks to the work of such men as Judge Haussermann. When that standard of living is reduced to the Japanese level, it will be a sad step backwards." The evacuation of the Philippines by Uncle Sam means literally the end of the White man in the Far East. It means that not only we get out but that the French, British, and Dutch will be pushed out. That is Haussermann's conviction and he speaks for the other Americans in the Philippines. Confidentially, as we have observed, the more educated Filipinos now agree with him. But for the reasons explained, they can't say so. Some of the Americans are hanging on, cherishing the hope that something will happen to avert the sad day promised in the Tydings-McDuffie Act. As an employer, John W. Haussermann is emphatically of the benevolent, paternal order. In the administration of Benguet, Balatoc, and lpo, the treatment of employees is his own keen personal province.-Lowell Thomas, condensed from The Commentator. * * * TACK .\UGUST, 1939 She: "Am I the first girl you've ever kissed?" He: "As a matter of tact, yes." 5 POISON FOR BEAUTY FoR some poisons individuals can work up a tolerance by gradually increasing the dosage until they are able to take without apparent ill effect quantities far larger than the lethal dose for the average person. In the province of Styria in Austria it is said that a large proportion of the population are what are termed "arsenic eaters." It is a form of drug addiction : these people eat the white powder, arsenic trioxide, because it gives them a feeling of well-being, an exaggerated degree of physical stamina and resistance to fatigue. The big trouble is that, once a person becomes an arsenic eater, he can never stop the habit. To do so brings a rapid decline in health, leading inevitably to death. In Styria the peasants start feeding arsenic to nursing infants, gradually increasing the dose as the child grows up. One striking effect of arsenic on both humans and animals is that, if given within the individual's tolerance, it causes the development of great physical beauty. It is said that the girls m Styria are more beautiful than 6 others anywhere in Europe. These people in Styria have been eating arsenic for generations-no one knows how long-and appear to have developed an unusual tolerance, as· a race, for the poison. For the average person, arsenic is a violent and deadly poison. About two-tenths of a gram is sufficient to kill most people when conditions are right, whereas the adult Styria addict can eat as much as three grams without ill effect. Of course, the Austrian government tried to put d~wn the practice, but without marked success. The arsenic oxide is sold from house to house by "bootleggers" in the form of cream-colored paste looking somewhat like cottage cheese. The peasants spread it on bread and eat it as they would butter. For many centuries the countryside of Styria has abounded with iron smelteries, using an iron or~ that contains an unusual amount of arsenic as an impurity. In the smelting process the arsenic gqes out of the smokestack in the form of the light powder, arsenic trioPANORAMA xide. The wind blows it over the neighboring country, and sometimes the pastures where the horses graze are visibly coated with a thin layer of the dust. The speculation is that some time, long ago, a peasant who was rather more astute than his fellows noticed that the horses grazing in pastures sprinkled with the white dust were more beautiful, stronger, and had glossier coats and were generally more satisfactory animals than those grazing on other pasthe correct assumption that it was the white powder that made the horses so fine (race-horses are "doped" sometimes with arsenic before a race to give them greater speed), that what was good for horses might be good for men. So he collected some of the dust and tried it on himself, with the results that he had anticipated. That might have been the beginning of the arsenic-eating m Styria.From The Doctor Looks at Murder, by M. Edward A1 art en and tures. He must have reasoned on Norman Cross. * * * THOSE ROMAN EMPERORS! CALIGULA, the third ruler of Rome, declared himself God so that he might enter the sacred temples and seduce the virginal female vestals, who were similar to our modern nuns. Caligula made his favorite horse a priest, and gave it a marble palace, plus furniture and slaves. * CLAUDIUS, who next ascended the throne, was so absent-minded that when he had his wife killed for adultery, he forgot about it, and the following evening asked his servants why she didn't appear for dinner. AUGUST, 1939 7 Nature's Wealth and Force 8 PANORAMA 'ITW.hy America should annex the Philippines. CAN WE HOLD THE RICHEST LAND ON EARTH? WHEN the United States took over the Philippines, their riches were only suspected. Today, enough is known to drive mmmg engineers balmy with dreams. Enough is known to give pause to world economists. Enough is known for responsible leaders to estimate that the natural resources of the Philippine Islands are adequate in all save one element-tin-to supply the whole needs of the United States in case of wars, long or short, independent of world rawmaterial markets. I don't mean that everyone m the Philippines is rich. There is misery and failure here. Worse, there is virtual peonage, all the wreti:hed inequalities of a system that draws its heritage from both European medievalism and Oriental despotism. ln spite of the efforts of the United States, the humbler people of the islands are still more than forty per cent illiterate culturally; more than ninety per cent illiterate economically. AUGUST, 1939 What is meant is that: that to men within initiative and enterprise the Philippines are uncommonly, incredibly bountiful. If the Philippines were a state of the union they would stand fifth in land size. They are ten times bigger than Holland or Palestine ; much larger than the British Isles; nearly twice as large as old Austria-Hungary. Yet they have a population of only fifteen million, barely exceeding that of New York State. Japan, slightly bigger, has a population of eighty million. Italy, almost the same size, has forty-five million. In a world of striving nations, hungry for raw materials, the Philippines, alone of vast and fertile areas, remain virgin. Their very physical appearance, their geography, their throatchoking beauty under all conditions of season and weather, seem to thrust forward a guarantee of wealth untold. The Philippine Islands have the majority of the world's coconut 9 supply. In Tayabas Province chased by the Spaniards. Japanese alone, there are 22,000,000 coconut trees. The coconut has a part in the deadly quarrels of men. Its oil has a high glycerin content, and is therefore essential in the manufacture of explosives. I ts dried shells make charcoal, used in manufactures of gas masks. But the munificent coconut is not the most important single factor in the wealth of the Philippines, although thirty per cent of the population depends upon it for their living. Rice and sugar exceed it in crop values; it stands fifth in area cultivated. But it forms a point from which you can judge, backward and forward, the scope of the resources of the Philippines. Your money, as an American tax-payer, helped to bring these resources out of rumor into reality. Your money and efforts paid for roads and communications and education that made them available. You ought to know just what we are giving up when we give up the Philippines. Even before Europeans coveted the treasure-troves of the Philippines, Siamese, Chinese and Japanese were raiding· them. A Japanese pirate, Tayfusa, made an attempt to settle there nearly four hundred years ago, but was 10 "pirates" are still at it. Japanese fishermen net in Philippine harbors. Other Japanese ships anchor, send crews ashore, build logging camps, and steal millions upon millions of board feet of the best Philippine hardwoods each year. This is known to the authorities. Because it happens in areas so remote, it is difficult for constabulary patrols to reach them ; because word of the activities are withheld by bribed provincial officials; and because the Commonwealth has not yet enough armed vessels to establish an effective guard-nothing can be done about it. The Japanese government "officially" knows nothin_g. But you continue to read in Manila papers of fights in lonely barrios in which natives are killed by Japanese lumber or fish pirates. These are small affrays, which can suddenly grow into large ones. The confused status of Philippine-American relations, the unc:ertain political future of the islands, makes them a danger spot. Three courses are open to the United States to end this suspense -and this hazard : First, to extend permanently the PANORAMA present economic co-operation and trade preferences. Remain, m brief, the benevolent "Uncle." Second, to cut loose absolutely and let the Philippine republic take its chances economically and politically among the family of free nations. Third, hold onto them, frankly and boldly: repeal the Tydings"'.\lcDuffy Act, annex the Philippines, The first course, most everyone who knows anything about the islands agrees, is the most perilous. A joint commission has recommended that Uncle Sam not button his pocket until 1960. The Commonwealth, with a lobby of its most astute and charming big shots, is striving desperately to have the free trade extended for all time. This would give the United States the responsibility for the Philippines, without the authority. It would complicate our national military policies, increase out armaments budget. It would give us much expense, but little profit. It would permit unwarranted competition to some domestic products. Its "preferred nation" · trading privileges would inevitably bring friction with Japan, the best foreign customer of the Philippines. AUGUST, 1939 Justifiably, the Japanese could ask for the same privileges we got. It would make us the "cop" of the Orient. "It would practically guarantee a war between Japan and the United States," the Americans in Manila will tell you. Th e Tydings-McDuffy Act would give us naval and military base rights in the Islands. It would make us accountable for their protection. Thus it would bring up the whole question of whether the Philippines can or should be defended. This much you may as well hear right away. It is the reasoned judgment of every responsible American Navy and Army officer with whom I have discussed it. The Philippines are indefensible. It would be humanly impossible for the United States, without a fantastic outlay of money, to hold the islands more than briefly against an enemy with short lines of communication from home bases close at hand. We should have to put· a gun in the hands of every able-boiiied Americans, turn out whole nation into a munitions factory, to garrison 7,083 islands to the point whereat a militarist would admit they were "safe." The general idea, if war comes to the Philippines, would be for 11 us to retire fighting-and come back later. The United States has made little attempt to prepare for more than that. The Navy has the base of the Asiatic Fleet at Cavite; repair bases elsewhere. Don't be impressed by the term "Asiatic Fleet" -its a motley collection of old cruisers, obsolete destroyers, gunboats useless away from rivers. Corregidor, the island fortification at the entrance of Manila Bay, and its related defenses undoubtedly could withstand enemy fleets indefinitely; prevent landings in either Manila or Subic bays. But they could not prevent occupation of Manila by troops landing elsewhere on Luzon. Corregidor is the strongest post in the Orient, in sharp contrast to Singapore, which French and American and Japanese intelligence officers tell you is a "publicity base"-that is, its guns exist chiefly on paper. One of the first acts of Quezon was to establish a "National Defense" program. The Filipinos of all the islands and races are excellent fighting men-brave, intelligent, enduring. In their jungles and moutains, on even terms as to armaments, they are invincibleas the American soldier of I ,goo quickly learned. If a~ old-fashioned war would be arranged for them, perhaps Quezon's defense plans could be taken more seriously; but modern war is industrial, and the Philippines are agricultural. J\tloreover, a population of I 5 million cannot turn out an army large in the modern way. Quezon's choice of a commander for his new army exposed the thinness and futility of his plan. He selected out of friendship rather than stark capability. He picked MacArthur, an old personal crony, but a man not considered by militarists as better than third rate in military talents and savvy. MacArthur, for example, as a professional soldier, a military student, cannot be mentioned in the sam~ breath with American officers like, for instance, Fox Conner. The Quezon-MacArthur army is all togged out in boy scout uniforms with shiny helmets, a handful of small planes that are used for training purposes in the States but are called "light bombers" out here, and a fleet of motor launches -these to patrol a coast line more than twice as long as that of the who 1 e United States !-which serve chiefly to give joy rides to politicos around Manila Bay. MacArthur is called a "Field :Marshal" and he is set up in fine PANORAMA style in an air-conditioned penthouse, everything "found"-with a salary twice as large as Pershing ever got for commanding the A. E. F. The "army and its high command," so far as usefulness goes, is an imposition upon the poor taxpayers of the islands. As a contribution to their national defenses, it is laughed at by responsible American military men. It is recognized by them for exactly what it amounts to in a military sense; the personal bodyguard of an Oriental war lor~ with potentialities for inSitring his tenure of of /ice, for keeping him in power, for discouraging domestic political opponents rather than repelling !~reign enemies. The second course, washing our hands completely of the Philippines, would be less dangerous. Provided : we take home all our soldiers and sailors from the Orient. Provided: we resolutely shut our eyes to subsequent events in the Philippines, no matter what happened there, no matter which nation snapped them up. Provided : we close our ears, and turn our backs, upon the inevitable calls for help. "Tilis course," Americans in l\1anila declare, "would never get us into war with Japan if we really minded our own business. But AUGUST, 1939 independence for the Philippines means loss of independence by the common people of the Philippines. It means the loss of all the money we have invested in the Philippines. No responsible Filipino leader, from Quezon down, really wants independence, but they don't know how to reverse their yelps of forty years and save face." The third course is to hold onto the richest land on earth. Frankly to develop the exploit and enjoy the wealth in the way the British and French and Dutch draw treasure from their colonies. To give the Philippines up, Ford Wilkins, an American in Manila suggests, is as though some foreign nation conquered us after we had kicked Joose from Britain in 1 776, improved and developed us to modern times-and then handed us back to the Indians. The great fear of Americans at home seems to be that if we do not clear out of the Philippines we shall get into war over them. Americans on the spot, who should know, say this is a misunderstanding; that quite the contrary is true. We are far more likely to have a \var with Japan over the Philippines if we give them up than if we hold them. 13 We do not have to expend enormous sums, build huge armies, to hold the Philippines. Our flag over a territory-if other nations know we are not· fooling, and will back it up-has greater effectiveness than cannon. The simple act of annexation would insure the safety of the islands. We had disputes with foreign nations about Hawaii until we annexed it; that ended that. We could divide the Philippines into several units, with consideration for racial problems, and take th~m into the Union as states; this would multiply the disinclinations to tamper with them-W. B. Courtney, condensed from Collier's. "No nation," says High Commissioner McN utt, "would think of attacking the Philippines while the American flag flies over them, even if there wasn't a rifle in the islands!" 14 * * * CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE A MAN was charged with shooting a number of pigeons, the property of a farmer. Counsel for the defense tried to frighten the farmer. "Now," he remarked, "are you prepared to swear that this man shot your pigeons?" "I didn't say he did sl:oot 'em," was the reply. "I said I suspected him of doing it." "Ah! Now we are coming to it. Whaf made you suspect this man?" "Well, firstly, I caught him on my land with a gun. Secondly, I heard a gun go off and saw some pigeons fall. Thirdly, I found four of my pigeons in his pocket-and I don't think them birds flew in there and committed suicide."-Kablegram. PANORAMA 'lfSalt is candy to pygmies. SMALLEST AND TALLEST IN THE darkest corner of Africa live two strange and contrasting races of people, the pygmies and the giants. The pygmies, the smallest people on earth and the most primitive, live in the dense jungles of the Congo. In a land of withering heat, of torrential rains and raging rivers, of cannibals and savage beasts, these tiny people survive by their courage and cunning. One can't be sure how many of these strange little people there actually are. They slip like shadows through impenetrable forests and never remain long in one place. But it is believed that there are between forty thousand and fifty thousand pygmies. The average pygmy is about four feet tall and weighs about seventy-five pounds. A full-grown pygmy is not much taller and not nearly as heavy as a boy twelve or fourteen years old. At birth pygmy babies are about the same size as any normal child. For a few years they grow at a normal rate, like any other children. Then nature seems suddenly to check their growth. They AUGUST, 1939 are like children, rather than the ferocious arid treacherous savages they often have been reported to be. They are shy, light-hearted, irresponsible and generous. And once you make friends with them, they are loyal and trusting. Pygmies do not live in villages, as do most native tribes the world over. They are always on the move, drifting through thick forests in search of game. When they find it, they build themselves shelters of leaves placed over sticks, and that is their home for the time being. The pygmies clothe themselves in garments made from the bark of trees. They live largely on meat. This diet gives them a terrible craving for salt, and the greatest gift an explorer or traveler can offer them is a box of common kitchen salt. They eat it by the handful, as children eat candy. For their food, they snare game in cunningly made nets of vines, or hunt it with bows and arrows and spears. Their arrows are small, the tips dipped in poison obtained from trees. But they depend largely on their skillful nets. rs The woodcraft of the pygmies is almost uncanny. Their sense of direction is amazing. Trails mean nothing to them. When they decide to go anywhere, they simply take a direct line, traveling through dense woods as silently as shadows. Rivers alone halt their progress. Pygmies do not know that a person can swim or build a boat or a raft, and the only things on earth which they fear with mortal terror are the crocodiles that infest the nvers. Nevertheless, they do cross the nvers. They build bridges. At bridge-building, the pygmies are master craftsmen. They spin a web of vines from tree to tree across the river. With apparent ease they swarm up trees 150 fee~ tall and swing across on a. stout rope woven of vines to the other side. To go from the Land of the Dwarfs to the Land of the Giants, you travel from the steaming jungles across snow-capped volcanic mountains into a world of sleet and snow and biting winds. Although the Congo is right on the equator, these mountains are three miles high and the veritable Kingdom of Old Man Winter. Beyond the sleet and snow belt is a 16 volcanic region, where you walk over blistering lava, the earth shaking and rumbling and threat~ enlng to open under your very feet. But at last you come to the rolling hills and green plains of Belgian Ruanda, the Land of the Giants. These people, the Watusi, are 7-1/2 feet tall, but they are so well proportioned, so splendidly built, their height does not at all make them appear grotesque. People who have made a study of this tribe believe that they emigrated into Ruanda from Egypt many thousands of years ago. In those days Egypt suffered terrible famines and it is quite possible that these people went forth in search of greener pastures. They found them in Ruanda. Here, like the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin. All their work is done for them by slaves, descendants of the people who were there before them. It is believed that the giants conquered the original inhabitants, too1c the land from them, and enslaved the natives. These now till the soil and carry the burdens, while the giants, the overlords, live in ease and comfort.-Armand Denis, condensed from Radio Digest. PANORAMA SIAM WANTS TO BE ALONE IN RECENT years many people have supposed that Siam would welcome the rise of an all-powerful Japan in East Asia. The fact that she abstained from voting on the League of Nations resolution which condemned Japan's action in Manchuria has not been forgotten. Her purchase of warships in Japan and Italy has given rise to fears that a military line-up was in the offing. Finally certain sources of friction between Siam and French lndo-China have been made much of, and, on the other hand, the old Kra Canal rumor has been brought to life at intervals as a threat to the British naval base at Singapore. Admittedly some of these points have given rise to questions very difficult to answer and therefore more subject to speculation than to direct interpretation. But during the past few months the foreign policy of Siam has become much less nebulous. This is due in part to the fact that the denunciation of all ·the old foreign treaties, together with the signing of new agreements giving the counAUGUST, 1939 try full jurisdictional and fiscal autonomy, has at last been completed. The new treaties make it possible for Siam to proceed with the task of national reconstruction without outside interference, to impose customs duties and other forms of taxation freely, levy military requisitions and claim as citizens all those born within her boundaries. The Japanese occupation of Hainan Island has, moreover, given Siam reason to pause. French lndo-China has been drawn into the danger zone, and should . J apan one day pounce upon this rich territory, there is little doubt as to what the fate of Siam might be. In any event, if Japan meets with anything approaching success in her China campaign, efforts will be made to draw Siam directly within her sphere of influence. The Siamese now welcome every new decision to strengthen the Singapore naval base, and consider it in no way detrimental to the interests of Siam. Exponents of the theory that there is a growing hostility toward 17 England in Siam might do well to study the prospects of a serious breach between the two in the light of economics. The Siamese government keeps its currency and treasury reserves in British securities, and the Ministry of Finance in Bangkok traditionally maintains a British financial adviser recommended by his own government. The latest available trade returns show that 84.56 per cent of the exports of Siam go to Singapore, Penang and other British ports, whereas only 3-49 per cent go to Japan. Moreover, Britain enjoys more than half of the import trade, selling Siam nearly twice as much as does Japan. Perhaps the fairest approach to the question of Japanese influence is to inquire what part other countries are playing in the program of reconstruction or in the realm of government. The adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is traditionally an American, and, as noted previously, an adviser on finance is brought from London. In addition, nearly all the foreign technical experts in the government service are Americans, while there is still a certain amount of British and French influence in the law courts. The only Japanese adviser employed by the 18 government is an economic expert, and rumors that others are associated with the army and navy are groundless. Siamese army and navy officers may obtain their training in German, British or Danish schools, but beyond that all foreign influence has been done away with in the services. If Siam purchases her warships from Japan and Italy, the reason is said to be that ships bought anywhere else would not come within her limited budget for armament. The most critical problem in Siam from a domestic point of view is that arising from the presence of 2,500,000 Chinese in the country. The Chinese are the traders and money-lenders of Siam, while the Siamese may roughly be separated into the peasant and upper classes: an alien minority thus virtually constitutes the middle class. The most frequently heard charge against the Chinese is that they have shouldered the Siamese farmer with debt and all too often taken advantage of him in the rice market. The government sees a cure in the establishment of farmers' cooperatives, where money may be borrowed at a low rate of interest, and in various other enterprises. The Siamese are not a PANORAMA drastic people, and their ambition is to handle the question diplomatically and with as little friction as possible. In preference to driving the Chinese out, they would rather absorb them racially, but in recent years the tendency toward intermarriage has become much less pronounced. This is laid at the doors of nationalistic feeling among the Chinese and their consequent unwillingness to look upon themselves as citizens of Siam. Educational restrictions imposed by the Siamese government now require all Chinese schools to devote a certain amount of time to the teaching of the Siamese language, in the belief that the Chinese cannot otherwise become an integral part of the new order of things.-William E. Fisher, condensed from Asia. * * * STUDYING POLITICS THE training in politics offered by the universities nowadays is a mixture of theory and idealism with hard-boiled actuality and practical expenence. Professors urge students to pick a party and align themselves with it. The University of Chicago uses the municipal elections as a lal:o:·atory. The state of Illinois puts into each voting place a neutral observer called a "deputy of the court," and as far back as 1924 the faculty persuaded Cook County to swear in a corps of students of political science as deputies. Distributed among the toughest wards, some students were slugged, some thrown out bodily. One, telephoning news of an irregularity to headquarters, glanced up to find a revolver pointed at his head. Chicago students still serve at every election, not only as. deputies but as watchers for their parties. In fact, these days some of the watchers are co-eds. Many of tre professors themselves have varied their studies with a whirl at politics. Dr. Guy S. Ford, president of the~University of l\.1innesota and a teacher in the Political courses, has had government administrative experience. Dean Joseph R. Hayden of Michigan served his turn as deputy governor of the Philippines under Frank Murphy. Almost all of the political-science faculty at Chicago has taken a hand in municipal politics. Columbia professors have .been making, year after year, contributions to good government.-Will Irwin, from The American Mercury. AUGUST, 1939 19 WHAT ARE THESE JAPANESE? JAPAN leads the Orient in industry, trade and shipping, as well as in military power. Back of this leadership lies a marked capacity for learning the practical sides of western life while remaining, I think, much more impervious than the Chinese and the Hindus to western methods of thought. I once traveled from Fukien Province, in south-western China, to Formosa. The Formosan, the majority of whom are Chinese, are very similar to the Fukienese in racial stock and physical appearance. The contrast between the two regions in such matters as public order, sanitation, townplanning, railway and industrial development was striking and would have been painful to the most ardent Chinophile. To be sure, the cream of Formosa's resources has all been skimmed by the Japanese. But what Japan has made out of this formerly neglected and pirate-ridden island is impressive. It shows that Japanese imperialism is not merely parasitic, but is still in the vigorous, hard-working stage. 20 Certain qualities of Japanese character also make for imperialism: tenacity of purpose, frugality, national solidarity, stoicism, capacity for disciplined common effort. And some weaknesses in the Japanese intellectual make-up; lack of the gifts of analysis and reflection, an insular onesidedness of outlook, may well be elements of strength in pushing through a program of imperial conquest. It is a familiar gibe among foreign residents of Tokyo that the average Japanese can only recognize two viewpoints: the Japanese viewpoint and the wrong viewpoint. I asked a student in one of the best Japanese preparatory schools what the students thought of the war and whether they discussed it very much. His ·reply was psychologically revealing: "We reaily don't discuss it ve~y mtich. Every one is sure that Japan is right. And every one is sure that Japan will win." A Japanese journalist of long experience in foreign countries was frankly amazed and taken aback PANORAMA when an America acquaintance said to him: "After all, you should not expect foreign opinion to be favorable. It is you who are going into China's country, bombing its cities, killing its people." This way of regarding the war had simply not occurred to the Japanese. These psychological blind spots, of which many other i"llustrations could be given, may give the foreigner in Japan a comforting sense of intellectual super10nty. But they are positive aids to morale in a struggle for empire which, however it may turn out, w-ill require great sacrifices during its early stages. When I look back toward J apan, I think of the endless ranges of green hills, of the peasant villages in the valleys, of old shrines surrounded by groves of cool cryptomerias. I recall the white cone of incomparably symmetrical Fuji emerging from behind the clouds as I view it from high pass in the surrounding hills aQd the rugged broken coastline of the Izu Peninsula, with its fishermen, a sturdy weather-beaten race, mending nets and calking boats on the shore. I think of the "plain people" of Japan, the farmers and fishermen and small handicraftsmen and shopkeepers. I never learned enough of their language to share their lives intimately; but in my rucksack wanderings I never experienced anything but kindness and courtesy from them. And with their gardens, where every stone is a symbol, and their formal bows on meeting in the street, their noteworthy absence- of brawling and cursing, they created the impression of having infused some little measure of dignity and grace and beauty into lives that are very much constricted by the limitations of an overcrowded oriental country.-William Henry Chamberlain, condensed from Asia. * * * BILLS TO FACE~ AUGUST, 1939 Hubby: "Don't bring me any more bills, dear. I can't face them." Wife: "You needn't, darling. I only want you to foot them." 21 ,The most influential American Woman todayDOROTHY THOMPSON SEVEN million, five hundred and fifty-five thousand readers of 196 newspapers -in the United States read the column called On The Record, whose author is Dorothy Thompson. Five and a half million radio listeners every week in the United States hear Dorothy Thompson discuss politics. Dorothy Thompson is read, believed, and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands. She has also WTitten six books. Her opinion is valued by Congressional committees. She has been given the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by six universities, including Columbia, and has received a dozen medals and special awards for achievement. She is the only woman ever to have addressed the Union League Cl uh, the Harvard Club of New York, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. She is prodigiously informed, selfconfident, and inconsistent. Three years ago Dorothy Thompson had won some fame as a foreign correspondent. She had 22 written a few articles for The Saturday Evening Post and was considered an intelligent journalist; but she was a reporter and no pundit. Then, in March 1936, Mrs. Ogden Reid, super-clubwoman vice president of the New York Herald Tribune, hired her to write a column. It was to run three times a week, presenting the woman's point of view toward such public matters as women could be expected to grapple with. Dorothy Thompson surprised everybody, including her employer and herself, by turning out a column that was sensationally informative. To a sound reportorial instinct she added an astonishing capacity to read and absorb vast quantities of printed matter. She re-established contact with old friends in Europe, who gave her inside gossip. As Mrs. Sinclau Lewis she had become a· hostess to Manhattan literati; now she invited to her house more and more experts on foreign and domestic politics, economists, historians, and educators, whose minds she assidously pumped. She had tremenPANORAMA dous energy and insatiable curiosity; she wrote lucidly and was not afraid to pour into her column whatever emotion she felt. Today, after writing nearly a million words for On The Record, she has lost some followers and gained more. Liberals have regretfully come to the conclusion that she is a conservative, a fact which she freely admits. Conservatives do not altogether trust her. Radicals hate and fear her. But to those Americans who live in smaller cities and towns, and especially to the women, Dorothy Thompson is infallible-not so much because of what she thinks as because of what she is. To them she is the embodiment of an ideal, the typical modern American woman they think they would like to be : emancipated, articulate, and successful, living in the thick of one of the most exciting periods of history and interpreting it to millions. What they do not see, although it shines through everything she writes, is that she is also restless, dissatisfied, and nostalgic for the past, when life must have been simpler for everybody. If Dorothy Thompson were a contented woman, she would not be so influential as she is. AUGUST, 1939 Her father was a minister who moved from parsonage to parSO!lage. Dorothy loved him and hated her stepmother, who appeared on the scene soon after her mother's death, when the future columnist was seven. At 14 she was sent to Chicago to live with an aunt, who saw her through school and junior college. Then she went to Syracuse University because the tuition was free to children of Methodist ministers. When she took her A. B. in 1914 she was a chubby, grave-faced maiden of 20. She had had an unhappy childhood and she had to earn her living. She went to Manhattan, took teachers' examinations, and flunked in English grammar (Mr. Lewis still has to correct her speech). She . tried writing short stories, then drifted into social work. But she disliked it and so she got a job addressing envelopes in the woman's suffrage headquarters m Buffalo. · That gave her the chance she wanted. Soon she was stumping all over upper New York State. She was husky and exuberant, she needed a cause, and the pay left her something to send home. She used to get up at six in the morning to catch the milk train and loved it. She loved the 23 rough-and-tumbled arguments she got into, the job of talking down the mayor and the local minister and the village trustees until they let her speak. In one town she always got a contribution from a rich old woman who said she couldn't see any sense in the suffragette movement but gave money to it because it was such a good show. That was why Dorothy Thompson liked it. And she was part of the show. She left suffrage work after three years to take a copy-writing job in a Manhattan advertising agency. She hated that, too, and went to Cincinnati to help start an experiment in preventive medicine. Her employers sent her back to New York and the next thing she knew she was in love. When that seemed to be turning out badly she ran away to Europe, as everybody did in 1920. She crossed on a liner with a shipload of Zionists, and by the time the boat reached England she was full of the Zionist cause. This got her job covering the Zionist conference in London for International News Service and made her a newspaperwoman. To her new career she brought the same mixture of romanticism and vitality that had made her a successful suf24 fragette. She got interviews with prominent personalities and at Warsaw she covered the Pilsudski revolution in evening dress. She was almost shot in Bulgaria. In Vienna she established a salon of sorts and entertained politicians, refugees, psychoanalysts, novelists, musicians, and spies. In Budapest she married a Hungarian named Josef Bard, who was just as restless as she. When she met Sinclair Lewis in 1927 Dorothy Thompson was restless again. She had just divorced the elusive Josef Bard and Lewis was being divorced by his first wife. After their marriage in 1928, she plunged into her new career, as wife of the No. One American Novelist; as energetically as she had followed her previous ones. She entertained famous people, calling herself Mrs. Sinclair Lewis. She had a baby. For two years she hardly read a book. She wrote some articles and short stories, but they were not enough to keep her busy. Following her inevitable pattern, she was restless and dissatisfied again. The columnist's job saved her from boredom and turned her burgeoning energy into the channels from which she could derive the most personal satisfaction. PANORAMA The job of conducting a column requires a peculiar admixture of journalistic talents. A columnist must be receptive and selective, absorptive and digestive, and must be both an introvert and an extravert, a reporter and exhibitionist. Dorothy Thompson wakes up at ten o'clock and reads furiously for two or three hours in bed. Along about noon she gets up, dresses fast, then dictates her column. She has three secretaries, named Madelein, Madline, and Madlon (she distinguishes them by their last names). One is always at the Herald Tribune answering mail and digging up research; and one or two go to her apartment to help her while she works. Miss Thompson seldom goes to her office because the telephone never stops ringing. She usually has a luncheon date, to make a speech, receive a medal or talk politics with somebody. After lunch she reads some more, paces around her apartment, with a pencil and a pad of yellow paper in hand, and generally gets curious about something and starts telephoning people. She runs up tremendous telephone bills calling Washington and London. At teatime people start dropping m: friends, experts, and refugees. She AUGUST, 1939 almost always goes out to dinn~r, or has a flock of people to her apartment. She seldom talks anything but world affairs and seldom stops taking them. Her husband has been heard to shush her after hours of it. When she is alone again late at night, if she is worked up about something, she will sit down and write a column at white heat, and these columns are usually her best. Dorothy Thompson believes the United States should be governed by the Cabinet ; and nowadays she has her own private cabinet which governs the thinking of her co1 umn. Her chief adviser on economic· problems is Alexander Sachs, an economist who used to be head of NRA's economic research division. On foreign affairs she consults Hamilton Fish Armstrong, John Gunther, Quincy Howe. If she wants to know what the British are doing she calls J arold Nicolson in London. About France she talks to Raoul de Roussy de Sales, U.S. Correspondent for Paris-Soir. For writing her column, speaking over the radio, doing a monthly article for the Ladies' Home Journal, and delivering lectures, Dorothy Thompson was paid $103,000 last year. Her business 25 expenses were $25,000 and she contributed $37 ,ooo in taxes, which left her $4 I ,ooo to live on. She gave 20% of that away. To the career of being a mother Dorothy Thompson devotes herself with gusto. She does everything that way. She eats enormous meals and loves heavy Viennese food. Two hours after a big dinner at her house sandwiches are brought in. She smokes in chains and drives too fast. She dresses sloppily most of the time, but when she decided about two years ago that she needed more feminine clothes she went down to a very fashionable shop and bought a bunch of evening dresses at $2 50 each. She is a pl ump, pretty woman of 45, bursting with health, energy, and sex appeal. She thinks, talks, and sleeps world problems and scares strange men half to death. This is too bad because she likes men better than women, and when she takes a train she rides in the smoking car.-Condensed from Time. * * * 26 STUPID OR FOOLISH'! ALPHONSE, King of Naples, had a court fool whose custom it was to enter all the stupidities committed by his superiors in a large notebook. One day the King entrusted a huge sum of money to a Moor in his employ with which to travel to Arabia and buy horses. The fool jotted this incident down in his book. Idly thumbing its pages shortly after, the King discovered the entry and called the jester to his presence to explain. "Well, Sire," began the fool, "it was monstrously stupid to give a man so much cold cash-you'll never see it again!" "And if he does come back?" asked the monarch. "Then I'll cross out your name and put his there instead!" was the fool's reply.-Reclam Universum. PANORAMA SPIDERS IN BUSINESS SPIDERWEBS are now being soldand are making one resourceful Frenchman a rich man. Pierre Grantaire furnishes spiders for distribution in the wine vaults of the French merchants. His trade is chiefly with the wholesale merchant, who is able to stock a cellar 'rith new shining, freshly labeled bottles and in three months see them veiled in filmly cobwebs, thus securing the effect of twenty years of storage. The impression upon a customer can be imagined. It is a trifling matter to spray the bins with dust, but cobwebs spun from cork to cork to reproduce the seal of years of slow mellowing and fruition-that's where l\!I. Grantaire comes in. He has what he calls a spider room where he raises the little creatures. There are about four thousand spiders in the room, all raising large families. Then in special nests he keeps at least ten thousand old and young spiders in stock for immediate shipment. These spiders require special care and attention and must be watched closely because when hungry enough they are indined to be cannibalistic. AUGUST, 1939 A customer calls or writes; he is a wine merchant from some large city, who says he has just stocked a cellar with some fiveyear-old wines. The bottles have been brushed clean in shipping; they look like new and will not sell for old wine. The merchant has attached to them labels of twenty or thirty years past, some year of a "grand vintage." He tells M. Grantaire the number of bottles in the order. The owner of the spider farm soon figures out how many of his pets will be needed to cover the merchant's cellar in cobwebs of the finest variety. He selects his spiders, packs them in boxes, and ships them off. The price is about fifteen or twenty dollars a hundred. In two or three months the dealer's cellar looks as though it had not been disturbed for twenty or thirty years. It may have cost the dealer a tidy sum to buy all these weavers but the wines in their spider-spun old robes bring returns that well repay him for his investment.-From The Commentator. 27 ~An expert in brain operations. MAN OF BRAINS THE Sterling Professor of Neurology at Yale's famous Medical School, Dr. Harvey Williams Cushing, no longer works the surgical miracles that carried his name around the world and peopled it with grateful patients. He is 67 and he thinks he is too old for the operating room. But his influence is likely to remain in the umverse for many decades to come. To Dr. Cushing's disciples-the scores of young men he trained to be brain surgeons at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospitalhis retirement 11).akes it seem as though a great force had gone out of the world. It takes a strong man, a man of steel and ice to operate successfully on the human brain. Those extraordinary Cushing operations! The most intimate of his associates find it impossible to say what it was, exactly, that made his technique so much better than that of anybody else. Precision, decision, intmt1veness--yes, but many other men have them, too. Cushing seemed to have every28 thing, plus. For twenty years there was hardly a Cushing operation that did not have its little knot of visiting surgeons on hand. Cushing had one hard-and-fast rule about spectators. Few nonmedical people ever were admitted. One of the few was Walter de la Mare, the poet, who pleaded that to one of his temperament a glimpse of the living brain would be a marvelous sight. Dr. Cushing let him into the operating room. On the table the poet beheld a patient, fully awake, aware of. what was going on, but with his scalp anesthetized with novocaine. A brain operation is certainly no sight for the faint-hearted. Down through the soft tissues sliced the surgeon. Drills gnawed the bones, saws split it. Crack! came the skull away from the dura, the tough inner sac enclosing the brain. With deft, silent strokes, Cushinii cut the membrane, peeled it back, and the poet had his wish gratified. The living brain is not such an inspiring sight as a poet might imagine. It is grayish, uninterestPANORAMA ing-a soft, pulpy, corrugated mass. Faced with the difficulty of keepin~ a patient totally anesthetized for the length of time required for a brain operationsometimes as long as eight hours-Dr. Cushing developed the method of operating under local anesthesia. The method had other advantages; if the patient is totally out, under ether, he cannot cooperate. Moreover, his breathing or heart is apt to stop. Dr. Cushing's operations relieved one of the cruelest, strangest diseases that torture mankind. Most often it strikes in the prime of life. A young business man, per..: haps on the eve of success, finds suddenly that his powers are failing. First, it is incessant, splitting headache from which no drug will give more than temporary relief. Then he may get a little dopey, sluggish. His stomach will not retain food. Finally appears the symptom that sends him hurrying-sometimes hobbling, hitching or stumbling to the doctor: his eyesight begins rapidly to fail. The physician makes an examination, shakes his head. Brain tumor. Inside the man's skull a little nest of cells has run wild. Multiplying all out of reason, they have escaped the control of whatever AUGUST, 1939 mechanism it is that keeps things to scale in the body. They have formed a little alien colony, drawing nourishment from the common source but giving nothing in return. In the bony apartment of the skull there is room for only one tenant; the space is normally filled with the brain. Now this tumor, at first microscopic, then the size of a cherry, a walnut, an egg, an apple, demands roomseizes it. The brain tissue is crowded, squeezed, compressed, finally crippled. For the victim there could have been no hope 40 years ago. When young Harvey William Cushing left Yale as a graduate in I 891 the current teaching was that diseases of the brain and nervous system were largely incurable. But the brain nevertheless fascinated him. In medical school at Harvard he learned all he could about it, which was little enough. Later he went-to London and became a student of Sir Victor Horsley, the world's greatest nerve surgeon. He hurried over to Berne to learn from Theodor Kocher, the first man to cut out diseased thyroid glands. Then back to Liverpool to study nerves with Charles Scott Sherrington. 29 Dr. Cushing probably knew more about the brain and nervous system than any man in the country when he returned to America and became, in 1897, an assistant at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was meanwhile pursuing with such admirable zeal the new specialty of brain surgery that by 1912 his former professors at Harvard were taking notice, and invited him to accept a full professorship there. To Harvard he went, with his family, his books and the beginnings of his "Brain Tumor Registry," now at New Haven Hospital and ultimately to become the property of Yale University. This registry is more than a monument to his work. It contains the complete records of every brain-tumor operation Dr. Cushing ever performed, meticulously typed and filed away in steel drawers. In many cases the brain itself is filed with them, preserved in a glass jar. He always followed the careers of patients, and, if possible, obtained the brain at death. Surgeons for years to come may restudy these cases and see the brains. In Boston-as Moseley Professor of Surgery at Harvard and Surgeon-in-Chief at Peter Bent 30 Brigham Hospital-Dr. Cushing really came into his own. By 1926 he was able to report that he had operated on more than 1 ,ooo cases of brain tumor, a number he has since doubled, exceeding the score_ of any other surgeon by hundreds. "Never have I seen him operate," one of his assistants of those days said to me recently, "without experiencing the same emotions you might have listening to great music. Over and over again in the operating room I realized that I was being privileged to see a genius at work." There was nothing consciously spectacular about his operations. He dressed simply in gray, the custom at Peter Bent Brigham He had no theatricality. But from the moment he entered, only one thing interested him-the operation. In his gown, hood, mask, and rubber gloves, he was a precise, concentrated, focused consciousness. His mind traveled like lightning ahead of his hands; each gesture had the planned, accurate quality of a move in a master chess game. During the operations he practically never spoke to the distinguished surgeons who came to witness them. His remarks wer·e only the necessary ones: low, quiet inPANORAMA structions to nurses or assistants; quick requests for information on the patient's condition; sometimes a warning to the patient that the next move would cause him a little discomfort. Every operation has its little unexpected puzzles. Surgeons have various ways of meeting them. Some pause, ponder, or confer. Some grow flustered. Only Cushing's most intimate students could tell when he had struck an unexpected problem. When the Russian physiologist Pavlov visited America in 1929 one of the attractions was a brain operation by Cushing. The patient on that occasion was a young man from Pittsburgh whose life had been despaired of by physicians in his home city. He was brought to the operating table with his entire right side paralyzed. Cushing gravely introduced the patient to Pavlov, remarking, ''You are now shaking hands with the world's greatest living physiologist." Twenty-six other visitors, some from Europe, were crowded into the theater to see the operation. It lasted four and a half hours. Cushing removed the tumor with a Bovie electro-surgical unit, which cuts by high-frequency electricity, a method especially AUGUST, 1939 valued by brain surgeons be.::ause it cauterizes the blood vessels at the edges of the wound and controls hemorrhage. Pavlov was so delighted with the apparatus he later burned his name on a piece of beefsteak with it. As for the patient-the next day a friend visited him in the hospi·· tal, and was astonished to find him not only still living, but cured of his paralysis. Today, the patient, completely recovered, oc~u pies an important industrial position. A year ago one of Cushing's grateful patients, Mrs. Hansi Glogau of Vienna and New Rochelle, New York, willed him her brain, upon which he had operated four times since I 926. When she died -m 1935-her son and three daughters notified Dr. Cushing at New Haven, and he promptly sent instructions, collecting the legacy. ~rs. Glogau had been the victim of a pituitary tumor, one of the bitterest, most stubborn afflictions, and one which Cushing had been among the first to study. A nodule of glandular tissue about the size of a small pea, the pituitary is attached to the under side of the brain in a little bony cup called the sella turcica, the Turk's seat. Cushing developed 31 two ways of getting to tumors in this inaccessible place, both difficult, but not nearly so unpleasant as the disease. The earliest operation was a laborious one; few surgeons, even Cushing-trained, cared to risk it. The newer method involves an incision through the eyebrow, up the middle of the forehead, and through the scalp to a point behind the eat. This leaves only an almost invisible vertical scar on the forehead when the wound has healed. The skull parts removed, the surgeon gently raises up the front lobe of the brain with a "brain spoon," and reveals the pituitary. It can be examined, the tumor removed, the brain resettled and the skull replaced, all under local anesthesia. Though only the nerves of the scalp and skin are deadened, the patient feels nothing. Manipulation of the brain produces no painful sensation. One of the high spots in Cushing's career was his war service. Of the many fine medical men America sent abroad, he is one of three who are today best known, the others being George Washington Crile of the Cleveland Clinic, and Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. It is a curious coincidence that books by all three-and such characteristic books !-should have been published recently, within a few months of each other.-G. Edward Pendray, condensed from Today. * * * 32 WISDOM IS ACTION Two persons take trouble in vain, and use fruitless endeavors,-he who acquires wealth without enjoying it, and he who is taught wisdom but does not practice it. How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely you are ignorant. The beast whom they load with books is not profoundly learned and wise; what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth firewood or books ?-Saadi. PANORAMA GOD OR CAESAR NINETEEN hundred years ago civilization had to make a choice of allegiance. Were men to bow the knee to God, the Creator of the Universe, or to Caesars who claimed the divinity of supreme beings? Mankind again faces this issue, and the conflict between God and Caesar is as wide as the world. Civilization embraces many religions and no religion. But when Pope Pius XI departed this life, the peoples of the world were unanimous. They poured forth gratitude for his services to mankind. For he had the courage to uphold the goodness and mercy of God. The dictators are very much alike. They wield power and exult in conquest. But they awaken no gratitude. They are obeyed only because they are dreaded, and vast communities are arming to resist their aggression. Nineteen hundred years ago the struggle between God and Caesar seemed to oe unequal. On the one side were humble men and women, often reduced to the status of slavery and the Colosseum was a conAUGUST, 1939 centration camp for the martyrs. On the other side were the wealth and aristocracy of the Roman Empire, backed by mobilized legions with their faces-rods for scourgiAg the people, bound around axes for cutting off their heads. Amid pain and poverty and what is sometimes ridiculed as superstition, the weaker side won against the stronger. The communities of people who believed in God grew into the civilization of the future. The paganism of imperial Rome collapsed in ruins. The Pope was only a secular sovereign by symbolism. His kingdom, his army, his post office, his courts of law, his coinage-all were token alone of the power that is abroad in the world. Within an hour, the Caesars could obliterate Vatican City-with its traditions and its treasures-from the face of the earth. Ye t t h e Pope, murmuring "Peace" with his dying breath, meant more to mankind than all of the dictators put together as they breathed forth fire and slaughter over land and sea. For 33 the Pope was serving God who is Death, and Man's instinct for surthe author of Life, and the Dicta- vival has always been victorious tors are angels of Death. over the impulse to suicide. That victory may be hard to win. But The issue between God and it is assured.-Conde.nsed from Caesar is a duel between Life and The Commentator. * * ,.. TO PLEASE WO.MEN GIRL students of an American university have compiled the following "Dont's" which men are advised to observe if they want to be on the best terms with Eve: If you are a man, then DON'T: Be late for appointments. Boast. Walk on the inside of the pavement when accompanymg a woman. Consider the opinions of your sex superior to those of the fair sex. Talk continually of the wonderful things you can do. Blow your motor-horn instead of coming to the door for your girl friend. Be so conceited that you think every woman is on your trail, their object being matrimony. Domineer. Rather conceal the fact that you're master in your own home. Be careless about personal grooming. Be stingy. Argue with your wife or hold her up to ridicule. Talk about business all the time. Leave ashes except in ashtrays. Feel inferior if you have to help with the housework, Talk about other women with whom you used to go out. Use a potent-smelling hair cream. Attribute all bad driving to women.-Parade. PANORAMA 'lfBeauty in love's cloister. INSIDE A MODERN HAREM ALTHOUGH most Indian Moslems are content with one wife, there are some who, with the sanction of the Koran, possess two, three, or even four, as the case might be. I had always wondered what a harem was like. I had often tried to understand how certain women could live, or be content to live, within the four walls of a house. So, when I was in India, I asked a girl friend, somewhat timidly, whether I could visit a harem. I say "timidly" because from what I had read it appeared that these institutions were as jealously guarded as arsenals in Europe. Great, then, was my surprise when I was told that the matter was quite simple. "I can take you to any harem you like," said my friend. "Would you care to see the household of Mr. A. H., who may be getting a knighthood any day? He has four wives, but the one who matters is Nadja Begum. She is worth knowing. Clever, cultured,, very ambitious, she is a favourite with everyone, including the English. She has been round the world twice, speaks English AUGUST, 1939 fairly well . . . Or would you rather meet Hamida Begum? She is the third wife of a well-known architect. She is very sweet, and how beautiful! She is a pukka (orthodox) l\foslem and lives a secluded life. She rarely goes out, and when she does it is in a thickly curtained car. She has pactically nothing to do. She eats and sleeps, dresses and dreams. Occasionally, when she feels like it, she composes passionate love lyrics a la Hafiz ... " "I should very much like to meet this one," I interrupted. Two days later we went to see the pretty poetess. A servant was standing before a large iron gate, taut, deferential. He salaamed profoundly as the car drew up, a:nd led us inside. We followed him. A narrow alley, bordered with pomegranate and mango trees, all interlaced by a trellis-work of flowering j asmines, buried itself in a thicket, and keeping along this narrow pathway, we reached the rear of a plot of ground overrun with vegetation, at the end of which ap35 peared a lofty building, its rose-coloured mass standing out straight and grand against a deep blue sky. Near the door-step, bowing and scrapping, stood an old ayah. Seeing us, she smiled with all her yellow teeth. Then, with many flourishes, she took us inside. After crossing interminable passages, we were shown into a cool and faintly perfumed chamber. "Hamida Begum will be here in a fraction of a second," said the ayah, moving away noiselessly. I looked round. Large mirrors reflected the light of many electric lamps; rich carpets, and sofas spread with cashmeres, covered the floor ; and the magnificence of the appointments, and the profusion of bibelots, gave the scene a very colourful appearaP-ce. One felt as though one was reliving a page of The Arabian Nights. Suddenly, as though sprung from nowhere, a young woman appeared. She rushed at my friend and embraced her again and again, talking in endearing terms. Then she turned to me. "You are the friend of my friend, so are my friend, too,' she said. I smiled. "Please sit down,'' she said. Then she clapped her hands three times. 36 Scarcely had I taken my place on a soft diven when I was surrounded by a host of maid-servants, who offered me sherbets and sweets, and sprinkled me with rosewater from great silver flagons. When we had partaken of the refreshments, Hamida Begum came and sat by my side. "You don't mind?" she asked. "Oh, no." She was really lovely. My friend had not exaggerated in the least. Slender, wellformed, she was graceful as a gazelle. Her skin was olive-tinted, and soft as a rose-petal; her hair, which was black with blue reflections, was drawn tight, and was smooth as a raven's wing. Of her eyes it is difficult to speak adequately, for they were Oriental eyes, large, almond-shaped, with a touch of witchery in them. When she spoke a flush overspread her small oval face, and her voice, low and mellifluous, took on a lyrical quality. "Are you English?" she asked, after gazing at me. "Almost," I said. "Almost?" she repeated, and looked puzzled. "By birth I am French, but I have lived a long time in England,'' I explained. PANORAMA "French! ... Paris ... Yes, I have heard a little of all. this. But, tell me, are French and English the same?" "In many ways, yes; yet, in some ways, quite different. But don't you wish to see London and Paris?" She shook her head. "I should be afraid to go so far. I would be lost. You see, I rarely go out, and when I do I always have my burka (veil) on. Everything, seen thus, seems dim and shadowy. I have no daylight view of things. I am always afraid-I know not of what . . . Vilayat (Europe) is said to be even darker. It is always night there. I love the sunshine. So I sit at home. I -need not wear the burka here." "Don't you feel stifled at times? Don't you wish you could push away these walls?" "Why, don't you like my house?" "Yes, it is very nice, but to spend an entire life in it must be very depressing." "You mean you like new things every time?" "I like to travel~to see something of the great world." "You Europeans are queer. You love change; all we want is security." AUGUST, 1939 Here an elderly woman entered, dressed in soiled Moslem trousers and a shirt of some coarse cloth, her grey hair tinted a furious yellow in parts. Without a word of greeting, she squatted on her heels in a corner of the room. The Begum rose and offered her sherbets and sweets. The woman refused them with an angry gesture. "I don't come to eat your good things, but to see your Memsahib friend." "You are surprised that I prefer to remain in purda~,'' continued Hamida Begum, trying to divert my attention from the new-comer. "Yes, I do, though I know that several of my countrywomen have discarded it. I think it is shameful for a true Moslem to show her face to strangers. You seem to pity me? Why should you? I am happy, very happy ... My husband adores me. Ever since I married I have been the queen of this house. My wish is law here." The figure on the floor raised her head and said loudly in Urdu: "Don't forget you are the third wife; A fourth may be coming soon. Who knows?" and she laughed sardonically. "I am so glad you are content,'' I said to Hamida Begum, "and su.re of your husband's love." 37 She smiled beatifically. "He is !DY slave," she said. It was getting late, and I rose to go. "You will come again, won't you?" she asked. "I like you very much. Treat this as your own house. Just drop in without any " ceremony ... We left the house, quiet as a nunnery. Soon the car was zigzagging its way through the narrow lanes where men, cows, donkeys, dogs, cats, hens could be seen in any numbers. :Man and beast live in the East in strange kind of camaraderie. I was out of town for about a month. When I returned, I thought of my pr~tty cloistered acquaintance. I went to see her. The same servant opened the gate, but he looked very mysterious. He salaamed profoundly, but kept on turning his eyes hither and thither in a most funny manner. "Hamida Begum at home?" I asked. He did not say anything, but led me inside. When I reached the door of the red building, wife number two came out, smiling with one side of her face. "Welcome, Memsahib, welcome," she said, grinnirig. 38 "Hamida Begum all right?" I asked. "Hamida ?" she said, trying hard not to laugh outright. "I don't think you will find her as gay as before.'; "What is the matter? Is -.she ill, or what?" "Ill? Pah ! Worse . . . She is no more the Begum Sahib. She is just ordinary meat like me. Look, there is the new Begum Sahib . . . Isn't she a beauty?" I turne.d to see where she pointed. In a bower of jasmine sat a negress, smoking a hookah, while an ayah fanned her with a peacock-feathered fan. Her enormous face, her crinkly hair, her thick lips suggested some creature of the backwoods. But she lounged as though the whole place belonged to her. A number of maidservants hovered around her, ministering to her least wish. I stood stupefied. Then I turned to go. Poor Hamida Begum would not like to see me iri her humiliation, I thought. As I reached the end of the path, someone came running in my direction. It was Hamida Begum's old ayah. When she was near enough, she muttered "Kismet!" Then, according to the Moslem custom, she PANORAMA sat herself on the ground and, striki.ng her breast, began reciting a sort of litany in honour of her dethroned mistress. "Aie ! Aie ! how lovely was her face! and how bright her eye! Aie, Aie, ·what kindness!" pressed my hand, and then fled, fled, like a fawn in a forest . Kismet? I asked myself as I returned home. Can Allah will such things? No. But this much is certain. "K=smet !" said a soft voice. I looked up. It was Hamrda Begum. But how changed ! She was dressed like one of the ayahs. Before I could say anything, she Indian women are undoubtedly more philosophical than we of the West. -Suzanne Marye, condensed from The Spectator, London. * * * PRINTING FEAT WHAT was probably the most remarkable feat of printing in the history of the world occurred on the night of March 28, 1898. The United States battleship Maine had been destroyed bl' the explosion of a submarine mine in the Harbor of Havana, Cuba, at 9 :40 on the night of Feb. 15, 1898. All America was awaiting the report of the Na val Court of Inquiry and the message of President McKinley concerning the· sinking of the ship. Suddenly at 8 p. m., on March 28, the entire Government Printing Office in Washington was electrified. The copy had arrived! It called for the printing of 330 pages of 100,000 words, 20 engravings, 30 diagrams. Although no preparation had been made beforehand, a neatly bound copy of the book measuring S 3/ 4 x 9 inches, and half an inches in thickness was found on the desk of every member of Congress by noon the next day. -Christian Science Monitor. AUGUST, 1939 39 'lfAnswering letters is a civilized man's duty. LETTERS WILL WIN FRIENDS DURING the course of any calendar or fiscal year dozens of persons tell me: "I just ha-a-a-ate to write letters!" And then they smile, confident that this has established a common bond. I am shocked and amazed that so many thousands of literate and otherwise civilized persons are guilty of this fault. They would not be so unabashed in telling me that they never say "Good morning," or "Thank you," or "I beg your pardon," or "I am pleased to see you." But answering mail is equally an obligation, and of the same nature. With tools no more complicated than a sheet of paper, an envelope, a stamp, and a pen you can cultivate fertile soil and make it bloom. T h e w o r 1 d champion for promptness in answering mail was, in my experience, the late George Horace Lorimer, editor of The Saturday Evening Post. And he probably received as many letters daily as any human being has ever received, year in and year out. He usually answered within twentyfour hours, often within twelve. 40 Never more than .three days; and if it was three days he would apologize for the delay and state the cause. For millions of men and women the "must" letters are probably not more than one a day, possibly not more than three a week. Why don't they write these letters promptly? I have discovered two answers about which I am certain. First, and this may astound you if you are not one of the offenders, is lack of proper paper and envelopes. No one would accept an invitation to grand opera if he had to wear overalls. However, millions of us who cannot afford evening gowns and dress suits can afford the cost of good paper. It is amazingly cheap. I cannot avoid wondering why any of us who brush our teeth and comb our hair and have telephones and send our linen to the laundry can be so silly as not to provide ourselves with excellent paper. For indirect contact with our friends and acquaintances it is our clothing. Second of the two causes for PANORAMA neglecting letter-writing is a peculiarly vain and silly idea that the letter must be a literary product comparable to an essay by Charles Lamb or one of The Spectator papers. Let us assume that you are a dealer in hay, grain, lime, coal, and ice; and that you laboriously compose a letter of astounding literary merit. If I received it, my first thought would be that you did not write it. And I wouldn't like that. If I like you, it is because of what you are. What I want in your letter is the essential you. The best letters are short. Abrahara Lincoln wrote many that are classic, on half a sheet of paper. But he wasn't trying to compose classics. He was hurried and harassed. The sense of duty to mankind impelled him to write. His brief letter to the mother who had lost five sons in the War was probably dashed off in haste, but it ranks close to the Gettysburg address as sublime literature. The moral lesson is: write that letter that civilized human relations demand ! When I was a newspaper reporter, aged 2 I, death exploded close to me for the first. A District Judge, who was a dear and revered friend in the prime of life, AUGUST, 1939 died of acute indigestion. He was 38 years of age, and thousands of his friends and admirers thought he would be the next governor of ~he state if they could induce him to run. I was studying law and he was directing my reading. When I received the stunning news of his sudden death I knew that I must write a letter to his widow, but I did not know how to write such a letter. After bitter and tearful travail, it seemed to me necessary to confess this fact and trust her to excuse it. She knew my age. She, herself was only 27. So I wrote: "I have just received the tragic news. If there is anything appropriate to write or say or anything that could be in the slightest degree helpful, I do not know it. Therefore this letter will be just a line to say that I am thinking of you during these sad hours." She received hundreds of letters and scores of callers. On the second day after the funeral a woman friend called and took the widow to her home. That was on the fifth day after Christmas. She took the young widow into her children's playroom, where they were having a grand time with their new toys. She said to her: ''These babies do 41 not know the words, death or funeral. They want to show you their toys. They love you. Play with them. It will be good for you." Years later the widow told me that answering the letters was the most painful ordeal she had ever suffered; and that mine was the only one she didn't have to answer. Also that her knowing friend saved her from prostration.Chester T. Crowell, condensed from Your Life. * * * FANTASTIC RUMOUR RECENTLY a remarkable letter was published in New Yorker from a man who wrote that Hitler had been assassinated in Hamburg in November or December of 1935 and that the man now appearing in his place is always one of four carefully selected doubles. Skeptics doubt this story, placing it in a sort of reverse category with reports that Rudolph and Marie V etsera never died at Mayerling. The Editor of the New York paper has no such misgivings. His correspondent's letter, it is stated, was quietly matter-of-fact, confining itself unemotionally to names and dates. After stating that he had heard the same from other unprejudiced sources, the editor asserts: "An Englishman, for instance, told us last week at tea that it was common gossip in London that a great deal of Chamberlain's confosion at Munich was the result of his sudden, horrified realization that the man he spoke to in that carefully darkened room was not Hitler at all! Some time before that we heard a doctor, one of the best laryngologists in New York, say that it would be impossible for a man .with der Fuhrer's throat condition to speak in public for as long as ten minutes. Confirmation indeed has come from many people, even from some who were high in the Nazi regime and then suddenly and mysteriously found it wise to leave Germany. It is our private conviction that Adolf Hitler has been as dead as vaudeville for more than four years, but we realise that fuller documentary proof is desirable. The editor therefore will welcome further communications on this subject."-From Australian Digest of World Readi11;g. 42 PANORAMA ~Does a Manila taxi-driver live this way? EXPERIENCES OF A LONDON TAXI-DRIVER I'vE BEEN driving a taxi now for nine years. And I don't think I'd change my job with anyone. Not for long. There are plenty of better jobs, as far as earnings are concerned. But none that I know of where a man is so completely free. London is a difficult town to learn. It covers nearly seven hundred square miles, including the suburbs, with streets turning and twisting at all angles. It isn't a bit like a modern American city, laid out in neat, rectangular blocks. When I presented myself for examination the inspector convinced me I knew nothing abou~ the town in which I was born and raised. Altogether, I suppose I must have attended about twentyfive of these examinations, and that wasn't too bad. I met one man who had been up eighty times and still couldn't pass. These examinations were oral. The inspector gave me the point of departure and the destination, and I had to take him over the route, giving the names of every street I passed through, and all the turns I made, sometimes even desAUGUST, 1939 cribing the appearance and giving the names of the buildings I passed on the way. The trouble was the inspector was always calling his cab in places I'd never seen and wanted to go somewhere I'd never heard of. Nine times out of ten he'd give me only the names of the buildings, without any street or even the district. Well, at the end of three months I felt like a human directory; but I couldn't satisfy the examiners. At the end of six months, I knew just about enough to know how little I knew. Then they told me I could take a driving-test. After passing that, I passed a final examination on London covering my weakest points. I received my license and badge and went out with a cab the same night. A taxi-driver sees without being seen, and so sees-well, a lot more than most people think. We see some strange things, especially at night, though to me the strange things are the ordinary things, the sort of things most folk take for granted. The very ordinary fact, for instance, that two human be43 ings can live almost side by side, one unhealthily rich and the other miserably poor; and that each knows the condition of each, and that both so take it for granted that neither attempts to do anything about it. At one in the morning, for instance, I'll set down passengers at a fashionable nightclub full of human beings with more money than they know what to do with ; and then I turn the corner, and I'm in Trafalgar Square, not fifty yards away, and there is another group of human beings, without even the price of a bit of bread and cheese, lining up for the coffee dole. Taxi-driving is a good job; but it's got its drawbacks, mind you. We don't get any wages, for one thing, simply commission-tips when we're lucky. In some companies the driver guarantees the proprietor a definite sum for the cab before he starts, or what we call the flat-rate system. We're not insured against unemployment, either. And if the cab breaks down, or there isn't one for us to take out, we get no compensation. We're usually paid a third of the meter-takings. That's the tradeunion rate. No company pays less than that. Though some pay a: lit44 tle more-especially if they're running old cabs and finding it difficult to get drivers. Of course our earnings fluctuate according to the weather and the time of year. But taking the average, I should say a cabman earns about the same as a truck-driver-about fifty to seventy shillings a week, say twelve to eighteen dollars in U. S. money. Nearly half of that is tips, as a rule. Without tips we'd hardly earn an errand boy's wages. I know some cabmen who have bought their own houses and sent their children to secondary schools, and others who find it difficult to scrape up the rent for a couple of rooms. l\1ost of the company's cabs are what we call double. There's a day driver and a night driver to each cab. But some may have cabs all to themselves and work twelve and fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. Once they let themselves in for the houses and things, they've got to find the money or kill themselves in the attempt. I know of more than one cabman who has done that. Myself, I prefer to work eight or nine hours a day, six days a week, and let those have houses as wants them. I'd sooner do without luxuries and have more leiPANORAMA sure. For what's the use of a house, anyway, if you've got no time to live in it? We need to be good drivers, especially in our London fogs. We'll be standing on the rank one minute in perfectly clear weather and the next a bank of fog will come rolling up and blot out everything. It's an uncanny sensation. Sometimes I'll be sitting on the cab quite stationary, but the rolling fog will give me the sensation of movement. I'll snatch at the handbrake in sudden fright, only to find it's full on. But even that won't convince me. I '11 stamp on the foot brake and still feel I'm moving. Fog's the time the taxi-driver comes into his own. With his short bonnet and open driver's seat he can see so much better than the driver in the long-bonneted, powerful car that folks who hoot him out of their way in fine weather are only too glad to fall in meekly behind and follow him. True, if the fog gets too bad, even taxicabs have to stop. But we're philosophical. We go inside the cab-shelter and drink tea and play dominoes, tell tall tales about jobs we've carried in far worse fogs than this one. Cab-shelters are more expensive to eat in than coffee-stalls or Italian cafes. But the food is much better, and it's always freshly cooked, and that's more than can be said for many so-called betterclass restaurants. Some of London's richest epicures go into a cabshelter when they fancy a really good steak and chips, but we don't encourage visitors as a rule--at least, not sightseers. When people in evening dress come into a shelter to watch the lower classes eat, we never disappoint them!Herbert Hodge, condensed from Radio Digest. * * * YAWS? A PROFESSOR, lecturing at a medical school on a tropical disease called Yaws, noticed one of the students having a quiet map. The professor shot at him: "Mr. So and So, what is Yaws?" The student, probably dreaming of the party of yesternight, replied: "Mine's a beer, what's yours?" (Collapse of the lecturer.) AUGUST, 1939 45 BRITAIN MUST KEEP HONGKONG WHEN the Chinese ceded Hongkong to the British after the Opium War nearly a century ago, it was only a desolate barren island, inhabited by a handful of fishermen and pirates. But its site was exceptionally favorable for the maintenance of a permanent battalion of troops to protect British interests in the Far East, and it was strategically situated at the estuary of the Canton river, one mile from the mainland and some 90 miles from Canton itself. Overlooking and commanding the valley of the Si-Kiang, and equidistant from Indo-China and the Philippines, Hongkong became an almost obligatory port-of-call for all boats plying the China Sea. In one hundred years the population of Hongkong has grown from nothing to more than a million; from a simple naval base it has become one of the most prosperous shipping centres in the British Empire. All the industries, docks, warehouses, banking and insurance firms on its 390 square miles are connected with shipping. It is the only large oceanic port 46 between Shanghai and Singapore and as such the crossroads of the international shipping lines. In addition, this island off the southeast coast of China is the junction of the British, American and Chinese air services. Such a development could not have been realized without strong military protection-and, indeed, Hongkong is frequently referred to as the "Gibraltar of the East." She boasts a summit crammed with casements, perforated with lcopholes through which peep the muzzles of mighty cannons. Powerful, mysterious batteries lie in wait behind every hill along the coast, torpedo tubes under every rock. The innocent traveller who makes a tour of the island is confronted with prohibitions at every step, particularly if he happens to be carrying a camera. No one ever forgets the day he first disembarked at Hongkong. From afar he sees a great peak towering in the mists, rising sheer from the yellow waters of the bay. Approaching closer, he observes that the mountain is entirely covPANOR~MA ered by a terraced city with houses rising in tiers above each other. And then suddenly he is surrounded by the seething turmoil of a Chinese port. The harbor ts crowded with all kinds of craftsliners, tramps, ferries, the grey dispatch boats of the British navy, junks and sampans. The sampan seems like the incarnation of the winged dragon with its red sails extended in the wind, skilfully manoeuvred by a Chinese woman carrying a baby on her back. And the ancient wooden junks are alive with men, women and children, as well as with squealing pigs and cackling geese. The air resounds with the weird cacophony of sirens, bells, whistles and a thousand and one sounds of indeterminable origin. On the quays all China leaps forth to greet the eyes, ears and nostrils of the visitor. The streets are filled with cooks stewing their savory ragouts in the open air; street-merchants cry their wares, rickshaws carve a passage for themselves through the dense throng of humanity. But this panorama lasts for only a short distance and one realizes that Hongkong is British to the core. That is evident in the wonderful sleek black roads, the flowered bouleAUGUST, 1939 vards, the lavish hotels, the buildings, the bank;s, the factories. This, then, is Hongkong, fortified bastion of the Empire, guarding her far-flung interests in the Far East. And behind her is China, insatiable China, home of four hundred million customers, all of whom must be fed and clothed ... With whose food? W h o s e clothes? Recent Japanese acttv1t1es in the South China Sea, and her invasion of South China, of Canton itself, threaten to isolate Hongkong. That woud mean the loss of Britain's most lucrative market. For Japan declares openly her intention of stopping or controlling all traffic via Hongkong with the Chinese world. And Britain's behavior in the last critical months has done nothing to instil any fear of opposition in the minds of the Japanese war-lords. The loss of Hongkong would be a major set-back for the British Empire-economically, diplomatically, militarily. But it is unthinkable that Britain will abandon Hongkong to whatever ignominious fate Japan may have in store for her. For in abandoning Hongkong, Great Britain will lose her supremacy in the East.-Max Cousin, condensed from Parade. 47 ':A game Filipinos should play. PESAPALLO-BASEBALL'S RIVAL BASEBALL has become a father. The wayward son of cricket has grown up to acquire the benign dignity of the family man. Its child is a vigorous but eccentric youngster named pesapallo. It makes its home in Finland, and in the grimly athletic air of that country it has grown until today it is played every year by some I 00,000 Finns in organized leagues and watched by many times that number. An American baseball fan goes to see his first game of pesapallo. The bat is long, anemic. The ball is yellow, cloth-covered. The glove looks like half a cantaloupe with webbed fingers stuck on the edges. The players wear sweat suits and track shoes. The bases are six feet wide and home plate is 20 feet wide--all the bases being mere semi-circles marked on the ground in white chalk. The calm, silent umpires dress in street clothes and signal their decisions modestly with a wave of a fan that has an "X" painted on one side. But the great surprise is the field itself. Though disturbingly 48 familiar, it is strangely distorted and reduced for some reason or other to a 50-by-40 meter rectangle with an equilateral triangle at the bottom. And now the game begins . but not without new shocks. The pitcher, for instance, walks not to the mound but to a point just five feet away from the batter on the right side of home plate. Here he stretches his gloved hand, palm down, in the general direction of batter's face, while the catcherwell, there isn't any catcher. Now, careful not to bring his right hand higher than his motionless left, the pitcher tosses the ball ten or 12 feet straight up in the air. Thud! The batter hits out a nastily bounding grounder past the shortstop. But hey, why doesn't he run? Well, he has decided he will not be able to beat out the second baseman's throw-in, and so he stands leaning on his bat, cheerfully awaiting another pitch. That's his privilege! Luckily for our spectator's peace of mind, the batter is allowed only two such options. On the third PANORAMA hit he must run whether he thinks he can get to first base or not. But all this is only a prelude to greater things. Our unfortunate fan must now stare, all but hypnotized, while a batter who has just rapped out a tasty Texas leaguer streaks down the third-base line, pulling up with a great screaming of brakes halfway between home plate and third, where kind caprice has located first base. Nightmarish as this scene is the first time you see it, it at least marks the end of the dizzying departures from true baseball, and if our man has been able to last this long, the rest will be easy. Once he has mastered the fact that second base is situated on tht> site of the American first base, that the American second base has gone on to a better world, and that third base clings to its old familiar position, he can enjoy watching the game. Minor pertubations will crop up now and then, it is true. There is a lean sort of barber pole sticking up where the third-base coaching box ought to be, around which the runner must go on his way from third to home; there is an overgenerous rule which allows a man who has hit a triple to go on home unmolested; and a caught fly, instead of putting the hitter AUGUST, 1939 out, merely makes him lose his turn at bat. But for the most part the game will be normal baseball, and pretty good baseball at that. But why all these fantastic variations? Because Lauri Pihkala deemed them necessary to adapt the game to Finnish conditions and to remove the defects unnoticed by the love-blinded American addict. This wiry, cheerful, and pungent-tongued Finn is the father of pesapallo. Before the World War he lived in the United States and spent much of his time studying baseball with the cold eye of a practical athlete. He wanted to introduce the game into Finland; he liked it because it was a sport everyone could play with little expense, and because it developed the whole body and trained muscles that could be used in many other sports. He felt, however, that the game as played in the "States" and Canada had traveled in the wrong direction for his purposes. It had become, for one thing, far too much of an exclusive pitcher-batter duel, which was great for the spectators but hard on the players. During 90 per cent of the game, Mr. Pihkala noticed, half the players used no more muscles than were necessary to lift 49 them from their traditional stoop and jog them back to the bench. \Vhile this was going on, the pitcher solemnly and deliberately "burned out" his arm in a few years and, unless he was smarter than most, retired to a dignified old age as first-base coach for thePumpkin Center Terriers. Mr. Pihkala could not quite see the logic of all this, and he also looked with unfeigned horror on the epidemic of torn ligaments, sprained ankles, and spiked calves that resulted from the practice of sliding into bases. Swayed thus by both practical and humanitarian motives, he proceed to evolve the first two fundamental changes: ( 1) he moved the pitcher up to home plate and made him feed the ball to the batter gently, providing him with exercise by letting him take over the catcher's fielding duties; ( 2) he allowed the runners to overrun the bases as much as they pleased, and, by forbidding the runner to go back to a base once he left it on a hit-andrun, he made it unnecessary for the baseman to touch the runner, eliminating by these moves all the necessity for sliding. The other changes in the game rose primarily from Finland's topographical knobbiness. Almost 50 nowhere in that land is there a field large enough for a conventional ball park, a.nd the cost of levelling such large plots would be prohibitive-pesapallo is still on an amateur footing_ only-so that l\1r. Pihkala was forced to cut down the size of the field. The position of the bases grew out. of this limitation. The ball had to be made rather dead, to keep it in the small park, and hence the. batter, with five infielders all but stepping on his toes, could scarcely be asked to run all the way down to the American first base. Shortening the first-base line then made American second base too far from first, and so many dozens of combinations had to be tried out before the present satisfactory one was hit upon in 1922. Pesapallo is a very fast, very brainy game. Baseball, it is true, makes plenty of use of clear, fast thinking, but pesapallo demands this and more. Batting in pesapallo, for example, has become much more than a matter of swing and pray; the mild pitching enables the batter to place his hits within a few feet of where he wants them, and the strategy of this placing is constantly influenced by the shifting positions of the base runners and the fielders. The PANORAMA fielders, meanwhile, must be thinking one jump ahead of the batter, and figure out, chess fashion, just where he is going to hit. Pesapallo's greater speed is demanded, of course, by the small size of the park, the crowded infield, and the short distance to first base, and when this speed is combined with good, foresighted strategy on the part of the batters and fielders, smart and dazzling play becomes almost a commonplace. For the spectator it is a slightly different dazzle, however, from that of baseball; to the sheer pleasure of watching clever fielding and heads-up base running is added the suspense of trying to guess what the batter is guessing about what the fielders are guessing about him. This ·terrific mental strain, unfortunately, produces a hush-hush atmosphere in the stands slightly reminiscent of that surrounding a chess match. Provided you do not need a yelling crowd to intensify your thrills for you, you can have a good, exciting afternoon at a pesapallo game. You might infer from all this that the pitcher is out of the picture. Actually he has merely shifted his emphasis from his arm to his brain. Standing as he does at home plate, with the whole field AUGUST, 1939 spread out before him, he is in a natural position to coordinate the strategy and lend a helping hand to the boys out yonder, which enthusiastically he does with a running fire of comment that can be heard for five city blocks. The actual pitching, it is true, is pretty undramatic, as the ball must leave the pitcher's hand even with his shoulder, and be thrown so that it will land on a wooden plate t\.Vo feet in diameter. This leaves, as you might guess, pitifully little scope for trickery. These changes in the pitcher's status mean that he is no longer the tender link on which the fate of the entire team depends, but the field general of a balanced group all of whose members bear an equal responsibility for success or failure. Finns who learned to play ball in America, and have since gone back to the old country, report that once you get used to pesapallo's few eccentricities you like the game better than the American version. The only part of American baseball which they really confess to missing is the solid satisfaction that comes from pasting a well..,pitched ball for a home run; Finnish batting, unfortunately, amounts to little more than hitting fungoes for fielding practice, but this mmor 51 loss, the repatriates ms1st, 1s more than made up for by the benefits of the share-the-play system which are best symbolized by the rejuvenated right fielder. That normally graven image receives, in pesapallo, more fielding chances in one game than his American colleagues see in two weeks. for the privilege of playing for clubs-in the face of endless opposition from the soccer and track associations and the sporting editors, who grumble that it takes potential stars away from the two sports with the greatest spectator interest. It is not only sponsored by schools, labor unions, Army camps, Civil Guard Associations, and kindred organizations, but also receives a substantial subsidy from a Government entranced by its widespread appeal and low cost. -Robert Sel!mer, condensed from The Rotarian. If further proof of pesapallo's basic soundness is needed, it can certainly be found in the rapidity of its rise and the firmness with which it is entrenched in Finland. It has in 20 years gained 100,000 players-35,000 of whom pay dues 52 * * * HOT AIR-COURTESY Drn you ever hear tell of Marshal Foch in Detroit, which tale has to do with the "no courtesy" movement? Well, the marshal was visiting that delectable spot in about 1921, when up came a member of the "no courtesy" league. "You know, marshal," said the member, "you Frenchmen, with your flowing manners, do not impress me. It is all just so much hot air." "Maybe," replied the marshal, "but perhaps you have noticed that pneumatic tires, though filled with nothing else but air, enable automobiles to pass over the bumps in the road with comparative ease. So, too, is it with life-good manners, though only possibly hot air, enable us to pass over the bumps of life without undue joltings." -Viscount Castlerose in Sunday Express, London. PANORAMA PANORAMA QUIZ THIS feature is intended to test your fund of information on matters that an educated person should know. Read each question carefully. Check the answer you think is correct. After you have gone over all of them, look up the correct answers on page 64. 1. Mex stands for Mexican coins which used to be accepted in Philippine domestic trade; and Metaxas is (1) a South American lake, (2) the present Greek dictator, (3) the mistress of King Carol, (4) a Mexican general. 2. You know autonomy, but tell us if autarchy is ( 1) the rule of one man, (2) the rule of the few, (3) the opposite of anarchy, ( 4) national economic self-sufficiency. 3. Sanctions is heard in international affairs to mean ( 1) commercial agreements between two or more nations; (2) concerted steps for the punishment of an aggressor nation; (3) Catholic movement to help the youth; ( 4) treaties for mutual help among states. 4. The eagle is the American symbol while the hammer and sickle is the symbol of (1) Fascism, (2) Bolshevism, (3) Democracy, (4) Anarchy, ( 5) Social Justice. 5. According to President Quezon for a democracy to exist it is enough that there be ( 1) two equally balanced parties, (2) no political parties at all, ( 3) only orfe party, ( 4) many parties. 6. That the Philippines be made a state of the United States was advocated by (1) High Commissioner AUGUST, 1939 McNutt, (2) Howard of the ScrippsHoward newspapers, (3) Courtney of Colliers Magazine, (4) General Aguinaldo. 7. The first action of Congress for the government of the Philippines after the acquisition of this country by the United States was the passage of ( 1) the so-called Philippine Bill in 1902, (3) the Jones Law, (3) the President's Instructions to the Second Philippine Commission, ( 4) the Spooner Amendment. 8. In the history of the Philippines, Dagohoy was the name of ( 1) a mountain where Spaniards were massacred by Filipinos, (2) a native chief who fought against Magellan, ( 3) a chief of Bohol who rose against Spain, ( 4) a Moro sultan. 9. In our study of current affairs, anschluss means ( 1) a province of Poland, (2) a friendly agreement between England and Germany, ( 3) a union of two countries, particularly the annexation of Austria to Germany, (4) an air bombardment. 10. Nehru is (1) a Japanese prime minister, (2) the new President of Turkey, ( 3) a leader of the Nationalist movement in India, ( 4) the Persian King. 53 11. The Third International is ( 1) Trotzky's mo'Vement against Stalin, (2) the Olympic games, (3) a worldwide Communist organization, ( 4) the Russian Communist official song. 12. The Italians really desire to control Djibouti which is (1) a port in Albania, (2) a town in Palestine where bloody riots took place, ( 3) the capital of Ethiopia, ( 4) a port of French Somali/and in Africa. 13. Some economists have dei:lared that they favor the "Middle Way," meaning ( 1) a cooperati'Ve mo'Vement such as that of Sweden, (2) liberal capitalism, ( 3) exalting the laboring class O'Ver all other elements, ( 4) arming the country for defense. 14. The Cliveden set is (1) a group of influential Englishmen said to be pro-Fascist, (2) a party in Australia, ( 3) a famous band of bandits in London, ( 4) a high society circle in New York. 15. Balilla is ( 1) a Russian musical instrument, (2) a new dance, (3) an Italian organization for young Fascists, ( 3) a soft drink recently concocted at the World's Fair in New York. * * * BIG BRAINS his not true that the width, length, shape, or size of one's head has some connection with intelligence. This belief is just as unfounded and false as the one that proclaims a big chin denotes will-power, a high forehead shrewdness, a sharp nose inquisitiveness, and large ear of culture. With the exception of extremely large or small heads (both of which are quite rare), which may be indicative of mental deficiency or deterioration, the contour and size of the head, within normal limits, has as much connection with intelligence as the number of bumps on the head, the lines in the palm, or the number of letters in the name. It has been shown by po5t-mortem exam~ inations of brains that intelligence seems to be correlated with the number of convolutions in the brain and the degree of their complexity.-Dr. Hyman Goldstein, from Parade. PANORAMA •The ways and problems of an editor. EDITORS ARE HUMAN, TOO I HAVE no illusions about myself or my work. I know the failings of my magazines judged by academic standards. However, in editing a magazine, we must first ask ourselves: What is the function of such a thing as this? The primary function of a magazine is to entertain the public. Call it escape or what you will, but the army of readers wants to be beguiled. Now, entertainment somehow is not quite respectable. It may be the inheritance of religious or educational misconceptions, but the troubadour, the singer is not quite socially acceptable in the literary world. And yet, as Stevenson said, in talking to writers: "Your business is to please." The path of the entertainer is hard, especially of the magazine editor. I don't know any wretch in Christendom who is more abused than an editor. There seems to be in the public mind a feeling that one has a perfect right to ins ult an editor without any qualms of conscience at all. Every week over two million, AUGUST, 1939 · three hundred thousand people ask for Liberty magazine at the newsstands all over the country. The contents of the magazine are of vital import.ance. The material must call two and a half million buyers back to the newsstands after a week. To entertain, we depend on our writers. There are two hundred thousand people in the United States who think they are writers and all send manuscripts to LibertJ'· All human beings, editors included, have a vast capacity for making mistakes. Walter Hines Page turned down David Harum. Trader Horn, and All Quiet on the Western Front were rejected by several publishers. All of these later became best sellers. We read all manuscripts at considerable expense. We read them all in the hope of discovering a new writer. Editors are accused of not wanting new writers. Our accusers do not take into consideration the facts. Magazines must have new writers. The public gets tired of seeing the same names on magazine covers for twenty-five 55 years. The public is wa1tmg for the man that will come and talk in a new way. We had a contest about a year ago for short stories. In addition to our regular "cargoes," thirty thousand manuscripts poured in. We got fifteen stories out of the thirty thousand. Not one of the fifteen has been able to repeat. People like to be moved. We looked for simple tales that will give them pleasure. That is all our readers ask from us. And the well-turned story, the beautifully done, the adroit, the subtle thing is very often what they do not want from us. Dickens wrote the kind of thing we would like to print. When Dickens' stories were appearing in parts, in days before magazines, the installments were brought to New York by steamer. One day at the Battery there stood a crowd of thousands of people watching the ship come up the harbor. As it came within distance of what is now the Aquariwn, a shout went up from the crowd: "Is little Nell dead?" That was what they were down there to know. Dickens' stories reached the heart of the masses. We cannot reconstruct the social structure of the United States. Yet day after day, our readers lay 56 responsibilities upon us. People ask serious questions by mail. They want answers to grave problems. We can't ignore it, We have an editorial page. But our job does not end there. We are willing to present the views of any man or any group that feels it can say something constructive but say it entertainingly. A magazine can do more than make people think. It can fulfill other social functions. One thing we did in another magazine shows that a magazine can be really of some practical assistance to the Government. I had an idea one day of putting a "Line-up" in our detective story magazine. We went to the authorities and asked for the pictures of six fugitives from justice, with descriptions and a history of the crimes for which they were wanted. Within two weeks after our magazine appeared on the stands, two of them were caught, and in a year we caught thirty-six. We had murderers, forgers, confidence women-a great galaxy of criminals-restored to their proper place-behind the pri - son bars once more. In formulating an editorial. policy we try to anticipate the things that will serve some practical purpose to the reader. When the inPANORAMA come tax comes around we tell him how to make out his report, what exemptions he is entitled to and try to give him the advice he could get if he were to employ counsel. We do not discard out entertainment formula. We dramatize it and make it interesting. Mr. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel said that there were five themes with which you deal and interest any human being-birth, hunger, sleep, love and death. As life is constituted today, I should add one to his list-money. When Mr. Roosevelt first began to be thought of in the public mind as a possible candidate against Mr. Hoover the whisper went around: "He is a cripple. No man like that could ever be trusted with the responsibility of office. He isn't physically fit to be President of the United States." \Ve sent a letter to Mr. Roosevelt. "This is what the people are saying and we do not know whether it is true or not. Now, any statement from you would not serve our purpose. You are an interested party. Would you permit us to investigate you? We would like to send a man into your home to live for two months and sit by your side day after day, getting up in the morning and putAUGUST, 1939 ting you to bed at night until we can have a history of just how much is done by other people. Furthermore, we would like to have our physicians examine you and state their conclusions." It was an impertinent letter. The then Governor wrote back and said : "Name your man and name your time." So we sent a representative up to Albany. He stayed there, and wrote a story which we published. In a survey conducted by a large advertising agency in America, this article was shown to be the most widely read of the year. I was astounded when I heard the Governor's story. Disease had paralyzed him from the shoulders down. He couldn't move a finger. Only his head and heart were left working. Little by little he moved a finger -a hand-an arm-a leg. In a few short years he became President of the United States! And one of the best we have ever had. Such was his invincible spirit. vVe are looking for the writer who can put a crowd around our office, asking us what's going to happen to Little Nell next week. -Fulton Oursler, Editor of Liberty, condensed from Writer's Digest. 57 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Panoramic Views WHEN people ask for criticism, "vhat they want is praise. -Reinald W errenrath. * IF the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses were alive today, every one of them would be in jail.-W m. Lyon Phelps. * MAN wants to know; when he does not want to know he ceases to be a man.-Fridtjof Nansen. * THE fault of most persons in conversation is not hanging back-it is straining to plunge in.-A lison Aylesworth. * HATE, you see, is as powerful an incentive as love. Your hatred molded me, transformed me, made me think, gave me emotions, a character, added this to me, took that from me.-A ndre Birabeau. * THE jails of history have produced perhaps as many masterpieces as the colleges.-Vincent Starrett. * I mistrust the judgment of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned.-W ellington. * ONE man's word is no man's word; we should quietly hear both sides.-Goethe. * THE more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do. -Disraeli. +++++++-+ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ++++ 58 PANORAMA THAT BACCALAUREATE CUSTOM You'o never guess where the name Baccalaureate comes from. In 1916 Professor Barclay W. Bradley of the College of the City of New York made what is apparently the only summ~ry extant of the origin of the baccalaureate business. He pointed out then that, under the Faculty of Arts in the University of Paris-which alone may be looked on as the ancestor of the degree as it is given in the modern college-degrees were conferred on students in an initiation ceremony in which the university had officially no part and which was more like a cane rush than a solemn occasion. The baccalaureate ceremony was a part of the great wave for fraternalization which swept over Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But within 100 years of the original voluntary and halfplayful ceremony, the degree became a necessary preliminary to the ecclesiastical license to teach. And by 1400, at Paris as elsewhere in Europe, the degree was synonymous for matriculation. But at Oxford University it took a differAUGUST, 1939 ent aspect, which was reflected in the early history of Harvard and other American colleges. The first statutes of Harvard College refer to the baccalaureate as "the first degree, given at the end of four years of residence, to be followed immediately by three years, leading to a Master's-or 2nd degree." Since that period, as preparation has become fuller for college entrance, the baccalaureate has been pushed up to the end of the course and -Dr. Bradley noted this with some sadness-the requirements for a Ivlaster's degree have been reduced until it is only one supplementary year that is required and, as recently as 1912 or so, even that year did not demand resident study after the baccalaureate. In 1931, Bruce Bliven wrote a baccalaureate sermon to be published in a magazine, doubtless on the theory that its appearing in print left him at ·a safe distance from the wrath of those who never can see anything humorous in such matters. Mr. Bliven began relatively 59 tamely, contenting himself with remarking, "Gentlemen: In accordance with academic custom, it is considered desirable that you should hear a baccalaureate address." Here there should have been cries of "Why? Who said so?" But as this was on paper, l\lr. Bliven was free to continue uninterrupted. "Like most academic customs," he remarked, "this one is meaningless, having no more value than any other serving of advice you may be given-which is none at all. But the wise man yields to foolish customs to avoid the wear and tear of combat, so we shall proceed with this ceremony." Well, that's where baccalaureate sermons came from. But they are no longer funny and no apprentice to learning is eligible. You have to have learned. At least something. Although, come to think of it, Mr. Bliven had a wry word to say about that. "As you go forth into the world," he said, "if any of you are able to think straight and to act upon your thoughts, that fact is a tribute to the indomitable power of the human mind to survive the worst of miseducations."-J. M., Condensed from the Christian Science Monitor. * * * 60 AS HISTORY GROWS DIM ALL THAT will be left of our forgotten worthies m a future dictionary: Gladstone: a travelling bag with a specially wide mouth. Victoria: low carriage with a broad seat. Prince Albert: a stuffed coat, very long, formal, and never unbuttoned. Chateaubriand: a French beefsteak, made of something else. Lincoln: a kind of car, origin of name lost. ] eff erson: a hotel, avenue, or post office. Napoleon, Washington, Caesar, Samson: trade names for bathroom fixtures. Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise, Eugenie: trade names for ladies' underwear.-Stephen Leacock in New Yorker. PANORAMA Guadalupe Ruins .\ t:ccsT. J 9 3 9 62 DouGLAS NIAcARTHUR, only American ever to have the rank of field marshal, and youngest full general in the U. S. Army, has another distinction less known. He was only U.S. general taken prisoner in World War. He was captured by a patrol from Ist Div., U. S. Army, that thought he "looked like a German" !-From Ken. PANORAMA TO HAVE DEMOCRACY I HAVE BEEN connected with politics for 40 years, and I know that a certain flexibility of principles is not a novelty in politics. It existed long before the dictatorships. But lately we have been playing fast and loose with principles to such an extent that the time has come to call a halt. Freedom of discussion, of scientific thinking, of religious tolerance-all these are being attacked by a powerful group to whom the individual means nothing, and who forbid everything they do not enforce. And I must confess that th:s is my most serious fear and preoccupation. If we realize the spiritual, ethical values that are being destroyed in Europe every day, we should realize that none of us is definitely out of danger. The physical, military, and community success of the totalitarian states is being paid for by values which democrats cannot spare. The greatest service to democracy which America in general and educators in particular can do is to make youth realize the overwhelming advantages of democracy over every other system of government. Democracy has its shortcomings, but these are our fault. It is within our reach to make democracy every bit as attractive to our young as the other system has been made by its proponents. But let us do it by intellectual independence instead of regimentation; by baseball instead of continuous marching; by training for dignified peace instead of preparation for horrible slaughter; by religious liberty instead of making a God out of either an individual or the state; by love instead of hate; by truth instead of lies. -Jan Masaryk, from The Education Digest. AUGUST, 1939 63 READERS' COMMENT Lucban, Tayabas-Enclosed you will find a money order for two pesos as payment for my subscription to PANORAMA. I wish to extend to you my gratitude and appreciation for your valuable monthly magazine. I wish you continuous success.-Silvestre Faller. * * * A pa/it, Pam pang a-I have no other eloquent means of appreciating PANORAMA that enclosing this money order for the renewal of my annual subscription to it. I find PANORAMA as a source of digested informations on international politics, science, industry and humor, which are the ma* * terials for cultural improvement. I recommend to every enlightened family to have a copy of PANORAMA.Benigno B. Castro. * * * Bureau of Education, Manila-Let me congratulate you for the February issue of the PANORAMA. I am sure the other subscribers of the magazine will agree with me in saying that those pictures, "In the Gloaming," and "Still Water," are very appropriate for this magazine. They added more beauty to the already fine PANORAMA. Give the subscribers some more of those pictures.-Emiliano Tanega. * Panorama Quiz-Answers 1. The present Greek dictator. 2. National economic self-sufficiency. 3. Concerted steps for the punishment of an aggressor nation. 4. Bolshevism. 5. Only one party is enough. 6. Courtney of Collier's Magazine. 7. Spooner Amendment. 8. A chief of Bohol who rose against Spain. 9. A union of two countries, particularly the annexation of Austria to 6+ Germany. 10. A leader of the Nationalist movement in India. 11. A worldwide Communist organiZMtion. 12. A port of French Somaliland in Africa. 13. A cooperative movement such a.<S that of Sweden. 14. A group of influential Englishmen said to be pro-Fascists. 15. An Italian organization young Fascists. PANORAMA ' "' 1 )fie atf ctl/lltitin9 ha.j TWELVE IMPORTANT POINTS And each one is available in the Ester· brook Fountain Pen. Choose your favor· ite, and know inexpensive pen pleasure with a point that was made for you. 8Jte;iCtvu/t FOUNTAIN PENS· Distributing A gents J. P. ·HEILBRONN CO. 233 David Manila Pl.170,000.00 IN PRIZE MONEY TO BE PAID IN THE DRAW NEXT SEPTEMBER 17 You certainly do not want to miss an opportunity to win a fortune for a lifetime. Buy Your Tickets Today PRIZES 2 First Prizes at Pl00,000.00 2 Second Prizes at P40,000.00 2 Third Prizes at P15,000.00 AND THOUSANDS OF SMALLER PRIZES Be an authorized reseller and earn handsome commission with a possibility of winning any of the prizes given for the sale of tickets winning the big prizes. Save A Life and Win A Prize PHILIPPINE CHARITY SWEEPSTAKES NATIONAL CHARITIES BUILDING P. 0. Box 141 Manila Books For The Library Of Every Filipino • 1. Rizal-Man and Martyr by Dr. Frank C. Laubach. A thrilling tale of the life of the greatest of Filipinos. Highly praised in book reviews which appeared in American, Philippine, and Indian magazines. Price per copy-P4.00. 2. The Government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines by Prof. V. G. Sinco. An up-to-date and readable discussion of the present government of the Philippines. Price per copy-P3.00. 3. The Call of the Heights by Alfredo Gonzalez. A set of beautiful and inspirational essays. Price per copy-Pl.80. You need these 3 books for mental uplift. Published and Sold by COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. I 22 Crystal Arcade Manila, Philippines