Panorama. Vol. VII, No.4 March 1955

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama. Vol. VII, No.4 March 1955
Issue Date: Vol. VII (No. 4) March 1955
Year: 1955
Language: English
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extracted text: CONTENTS ARTICLES What's Wrong With Philippine Education? James -W. ·Dunnill Manila's Beggars . . . Nicetas V. Epistola Animals on the Mpve . . . . . • Students Look at Courtship and Marriage . How to Handle a Wat<;h . . The Uncommon Man in the Theatre . Recasting the BeU Trade Act . The Fastest Game in the World . Jesus Sta. Domingo The Wisconsin Idea . • Man Was Also Here . . William Faulkner Daring Young Man on· Wings . Hunting With Binoculars Translating Machine' . . . Barnum Rides the Bandwagon The Story of the Linotype . Electricity from the Sun . USIS Two Kings and 64 Squares . . . . Know Thyself First . . Thomas a Kempis The British Occupatio'i' of Manila (continued). FICTION 1 8 11 16 20 23 26 32 35 39 42 51 58 66 69 73 74 78 87 The Dead . Amador T. Daguio 45 REGULAR FEATURES Panorama Peek . . . . . . . • 4J. Book Review - The Weight of the Cross . Leonard Casper 54 Are You Word Wise? . . . . . 57 Literary Personality - III: T. S. Eliot 62 Panorama Quiz . 79 In the Beginning . . . . 81 Philippine Panorama - IV: Zamboanga 82 Fun.Orama by Elmer 86 PANORAMA is published monthly by the Community Publishen, Inc., 2664 Hemm. Manila, Philippines. Editor: F'ELJXBERTo C. STA. MAllIA. Assistant: ROMY V. DLu Business Manq9r: M11S. C. A. MARAMAG Subscription rates: In the Philippines, one year PS.00; two yean P9.00. Fonn;1rl subacription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two yean $7.00 U.S. Single copy 50 c:entavo1o MARCH 1955 -°'SOL. VII MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 4 1f/W4 '1flltOIUJ 1fltd 'P~E~? ') N ITS general _state Fili~ education represents more encouraging aspects than any educational system with which I have come in contact. The factor which causes me to state this view can best b~ illustrated by the signifr:ant fact that when a new semester i<>pened recently, the whole trafA European educator looks at us fie d Manila came to a st~"'ld· still because thousan~ of pu· pils and students were eagerly making their way to their various institutions of learning. This overwhelming interest in education is found not only in large towns, but in the rP.moto barrios, and indeed everywhere in the Philippines. There is a kind of renaissance spirit about the search for education in the Philippines today. This is so well illustrated by the fact that parents are willing to beggar themselve!il for years in order to purchase this priceless commodity for their children. Of course it strikes a European most forcibly, and especially an Englishman, coming from a welfare state when'! free education is automatically ac-.. repted. There is more hunger for education in the Philippines than in any other country I have cotne across. The community scr"lol system initiated in public schools is vital and encouraging. It Tflpresents one of the most realistic phiiosophies of f!ducation in the world today. Now let me venture a iew objective statements about education as I see it in these Islands. I speak as an individual, 8Pd not as a UN official. My observations will fall into three main categories: First the administrative set-up; second, the educational philosophy that is being practiced in schools and col:eges; and third, a general word about lay interest in education. 7 HE.. FIRST thing that impres~ me, and indeed impresses any European concerning the Philippine administrative i;etup, is the vulnerability of the 2 educationai system to politir.c. pressure in the country. A things are in the Philippines, the secretary of education is subject to political influence. It is a fact that the uncertain nature of ms position weakens the office considerabllity the fact that every time the government changes, the secre'-"ary of education changes, subjects the entire system of public education to political pres:;urc. Even though this pressure i8 not exerted, I find that from the teachers to the highest offi• cials, there is an awarenes.<1 of the ever present possibility of political pressure. I would suggest that the presence of a permanent secretary of education would remedy to a considerable extent this malaise. It would give the entare system of public edu=ation stability. Let me give you an example which, of course, forced itself upon us, upon all of us in Burope. Had there been in the early thirties in Germany strongly fortified, permanent civil service, Hitler could not possibly, with one or two quick strokes, have reversed the whole educational policy irr Germany. Of course the great thing about a permanent ci'lil service is the fact that the poli· ticians can interfere with the lives of the people as little 8\11 possib!e, smd this is eu: ely a desirable state. PANOlllll! A HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION. Says the author: "Instead cf decking out the kids in white twcedos for the '1'aduation ceremony, buy them a few book~ To turn to another aspect uf administration, sometimes I recall :\ story by Stephen Leacock, the Canadian humorist, who writes: "Lord Eustace flung out ol the room, flung out of tho house, and rushed madly ofl ill all directiom.n The impressions whic:t I have gained in a year's survey of Filipino education somei:lr.tes brin~s to my mind a parallel ·\IAacH 1955 wim the above quotation. As I sajd before, there ia an infinite amount of excellent work going on in different circlea; far example, the community school is developing a most eft49'-tive prc!?;ram of economic and social betterment, and the Univc:-srty of the Philippines, gaining stature daily, is obviously going to be a most COS!ent force in the cultural life of Southeasl Asta. Again there are certainJy fine 3 normal colleges for training teachers, notably of course the Philippine N o r m a 1 College. T!::.en, in addition, there are the great private and independent C!!~·.'ers1ties ail of which in certain spheres are producing s~u dents of quality. But how little coordinatio:i there is between various educational agencies! Indeed sometimes one finds conttictmg poi1cies, conflicting ideas on educational theory and practice. As a result, we see sometimes bitter feuds developing. There are many great problems - the difference in exam;nation standards, the disparity between the salaries of thP teachers in the various institutions. There is also danger of overproduction, so that we find thousands of surplus teachers being turned out. So far as I am aware, there is no joint a!!.visory council for these various agencies to meet and di!:cuss their common problems. "') N THE present state of affairs, it seems to me, as a European, that the head of the government should appoint a National Advisory Committee to advise him on all needs relating to educational policies. To this committee should come representatives of the Congress, of officials of the bureaus of public and private schools, representatives of the teachers, of 4 both private and public schools representatives of the administration of the University of the Philippines, Philippine Normal College, normal schools and private universities. To this formidable list there should be ad" ded laymen who are interested in education and uninterested in educational profits. This committee should be a standing, permanent committee, and it should develop such prestige that any member v10uld be proud to be elected. This committee would then have an O!Jportunity for general coordin - tion of educational effort in this. country. As I see it, a coherent plan is the great need in Philippine education. Let us, unlike Lord Eustace, rush madly in one direction, even if by different roads, to one common goal, and so save the waste of uncoordinated effort. The next point I would like to raise may seem somewhat variance with the point I made about a strong, permanent secretariat. Many people on coming to the Philippines remark on the centralized nature of the system of public administratiOft" in education, and make unjust criticisms about the system. Th~ fail to remember that Filipino educators had to achieve.. a great deal in a short time m edu::ational matters. In the pioneer state, it is inevitable that officials should be given PANOaAMA strong, direct powers to put educational policy into force But there should at :he same time be some form of local decentralization of education and that there should be set up within each lay education div;sion, committees who will work with the superintendcmts and staff to give education a local flavour. The officials in the central government and the politicians of the central government c:"n.,11ot possibly be cognizant of the local factors which must be taken into consideration in framing the education of the children in the neighborhood Education is c.s much a local affair as a national ;iffair and therefore should be sdministered both by local and central agencies. To give you an example in my own country, we strike an effective and harmonious distribution of authority by dividing the cost ot education between tl:e central govMARCH 1955 ernment and the local government, roughly on a 50-50 basis. I think also that local education committees would have the effect of ensuring harmony between the laymen and the educational officials. ~ET us now turn from administration to educational theory and practice. John Keats once remarked, "Philosophy will clip an angel's wings." I am happy to say that the philosophy behind Philippine educational practice concerns itself with providing angels with wings to fly from squalor an d hunger to what Mr. Chu:-chdl described in a memorable speech as the "serene uplands of life." The PhiJippine government has embarked upon a system of educatirm which is best described as the community school. The basic idea behind thiti system of education is that the school and the community act as a unity for the social, cultural and economic betterment of the people in a particular community. There is no finer philosophy of education in the world than this. Up and down these Islands one sees, for example in Bulacan and Iloilo, the practical results of this doctrine of education in the physical presence of well-cropped land, good piggery and poultry projects, and a profusion of fishponds. 5 One sees the excellent interrelationshio between the life of the schooi and the life which has to live outside the scnool. Filipinos have already earned a right to the hall of fame in the educator's Vallialla by reason of this system. It has vitalized education in this country. I believe, however, that the system has inherent dangers. The first and obvious observation that a European would make is that an enormous burden is being placed on the teacher - and let us also remember that the majority of teachers in the Philippines a re women. The teacher, it would seem, has· to be omniscient and completely resourceful. In addition to the teaching all day she has to organize animal husbandry, to take a lead in barrio affairs; she conducts discussion groups and additional adult classes. My argument here is that a teacher who has to face 60 young ruffians four hours a day cannot rush around the · barrio every night organizing this, that, and the other thing. Something is going to suffer when the teacher appears in the morning tired and drained of energy before her class. The danger is that the class teaching will suffer. Great care must be taken to avoid overburdening the willing horse. A second possible danger that may arise in the community school system is the fact that 6 if a nation accepts the doctrin that the be-all and end-all o public education is to better the community economically and socially, there is the danger that other moral, spiritual and academic values in education might suffer. If a child spends tlte greater part of school time cleaning out the pigs and pout .. try, attending to the fish, clean .. ing and sweeping out the barrios, when does a child learn long division or compound interest? If it is constantly held up to a child that economic betterment is the prime aim in life then there is the danger surely that the most precious spiritual and moral values may be ignored and a kind of iconoclastic sentiment develop. 7 HERE IS a danger, too, as I have suggested that academic standards may deteriorate. One educator made the remark ·that there was as much mental training and formal discipline in making a hot biscuit to a hungry Filipino child, but I cannot believe that a hot biscuit tran&mits the same message as the words of Aristotle, or exerts the same strengthening of mental processes as a theorem of Euclid. Closely linked with the above problem is the devastating ef· feet on education of book short .. age. From oral and written examination I have become convinced that Filipino children p::e not feeling in anything like full measure the impact of the great minds of the world. I found !or instance that after fo11r years of collef'e, students 'had never heard of. Plato or Aristotle, never read a play of Shakespeare, never heard of Macaulay, nor read Jane Austen, Dickens, Bernard Shaw, Hemingway or Graham Greene and - take this on the chin - had not the slightest knowledge of Rizal's works. Only they seem to have read a drelilf'Y Vic){"orian novel, Silaa .Marner. New books cost money, hut instead of decking out the kids in white tuxedos and the girls in pifia for the next graduation ceremony, buy them a few books instead. Bound up with all the foregoing is something else which I find absent in young Filipinos .ind for which I feel the schools must accept a little blame. It is the absence of what I call the questing spirit. Young Filipinos seem most reluctant to leave their mothers' apron strings. Young teachers are not even prepared to venture into the next province in search of a job. All these rich lands at one's disposal, but who will take the challdnge? MARCH 1955 ~ ASTLY: no educational system 1s exportable. One slogan I would de:laim in the most forthright manner possible is "Philippine education for Filipinos." Now by this I do not mean Filipinos should ignore what has been proven in other educational sys t e m s throughout the world. It would indeed be foolish for a young country to ignore lessons that have been gained the hard way by other countries. But I do feel that the Filipinos are now strong enough and of a maturity which •Nill enable them to go their own way. Apin, educatiooal tbeoriel showd evolve empirically from practice in the classroom: they should not be hurled like Jove's thunderbolt• from above, stupe. fying the humbl~ little creature struggling to give Pedro a t~ hold on compound interest. America and England are greatly technological countries, highly industrialized, and what is good for them cannot always be good for the Philippines, even apart from different national characteristics. The only educational system which is right for the Philippines is that which is developed in the Philinnines by Filipinos. - From the Philippine Journal ol Bdq.:atiot1, October 1954., 7 Think twice before you drop a penny in that outstretched palm: its owner may be better oil than you 71z ANY CENTURIES before Christ, somebody wrote in the Old Testament, "Blessed is he that considereth the poor'' and again, "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the I.Ord." Upon such precepts and upon man's desire to do penance with his sins, mendicancy and almsgiving have com~ - to .stay. Seeing your fellowmen suffer is always too difficult to bear. And your sympathies often come ia the ~·orm of dropping a coin in the palms of every 8 V. EPISTOLA suffering fellowman that crosses your way. Besides, your conscience tells you to give be:ause you hold on to that pre:ept. "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." You refuse to quarrel with your conscience for, after all, what is a ten-centavo coin to you? You throw it away in "1 pack of .:hewing gum so easily. Sometimes you become extra generous. You give more than ten centavos to every beggar who tugs at your dr~!'s .>r .:tt your pants. "Charity cover!i the multitude of sir.s" says the Bible and so you '.ak-e almsgiving as one sure and easy passport to a life that is happy and b!essed, hereafter. You - and many people like you - have caused mendicancy to flourish in the country. PANO:v.MA After the war, when money poured into man's purse easily and in great amounts, mendicancy which has always been a problem took a turn. From the innocent begging to which certain people were forced, it turned into what is now known as professional begging. FrG>m the files of the Social Welfare Administration the result of the intensive case studies shows that only 30% of the beggars we see on the streets are the real, deserving beggars. The remaining 70 7n are impostors. These . professional beggars have caused you to be fullfledged members of that special institution of the time, the institution of suckers. Most of these professional beggars are without handicap; they are physically and mentally fit to work but they are allergic to it. They throw away their self-respect and live in indolence. They prefer to roam the streets and beg. 1 HESE pseudo-beggars are smart. They pull all sorts of bell:ging promotion tactics. They even put a touch of histrionics to their trade. They put on sloven, ragged garments to touch your "kind and gentle" heart. Some sing and recite poems bewailing their tragic plight to win your sympathies. And what is most gruesome about their tactics is the way MARCH ·1955 they use children and infants. These they teach the art .:if begging early in life and lead to future delinquency. Some equally foolish parents rent out their babies at the rate of fifty centavos a day. The blind hire children to lead them in their daily rounds. When begging became alarmingly rampant some years after the war, Mrs. Asuncion Perez ordered a thorough study of cases to find out who really deserve help. The following are some of the reports gathered: Case 1. A beggar when followed to his home was found to be so well off that his wife could afford to play panguingue while he did his daily rounds with his begging. The beggar, by the way, was able to acquire two apartments which were rented out to tenants. Case 2. A woman who was a "false cripple" and who forced attention by pulling skirts and pants of passersby was followed to her house at Pingkian, Tondo. She was found, with her husband, to h ave accumulated enough means with which she built a house. The house was made of wood, had five rooms on the ground floor, each rented at Pl3. The big community kitchen had running water. She was known to be very strict with her tena11ts. She confiscated belongings worth the amount owed if renters ·g failed to pay on time. She usually sent them out of the house. Case 3. A man who used to do his trade at Plaza Goite was known among his fellpw beggars to have "a trunk full of coins gathered in his begging." He carried a blind child in his arms. The child belongs to a woman whom he married when he found that the child brought him luck in his begging. He had a bank account of P4,000 and he owned a house worth P2,000. WHEN Mrs. Pacita M. Warns became the SW A commissioner, she ordered another program to suppress, if not to totally eradicate, mendicl(lncy. This time operatives from the Manila P o 1 i c e Department helped by gathering all beggars they saw roaming. And intensive case studies - home visitations and follow-up - are again being undertaken. But reports seem to show that professional beggars have b e com e more smart. They are now more careful in their answers to the questions of social workers who follow them to their homes. All . of them seem to be in dire need. Nevertheless, here is one report to show that begging has not ceased to be a profession; even kids have learned to try their hand at it: Generoso is a young boy who sells sweepstakes t i c k e t s . When his business is rather dull, he keeps his tickets and turns to begging. He has a trick which he learned all by himself. He prete>nds to be blind in one eye. He likes nothing bu( to roam and livE' the life of a hobo. Can we do away with beggarn on th~ streets? That is difficult to answer. Beggars have found begging a very lucrative enterprise. These beggars earn at least PS daily and during church feastdays and distl."ict fiestas they make as much as PlO. Besides, their business does not require capital and it• is stable. Why should they change occupation? * * * 10 Proverbs A bout Life Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. He that goes a-borrowing gDes a-sorrowing. -Benjamin Franklin * PANORAMA Animals on the Move Why do eels die in mid-Atlantic? W HY DOES one species of bird fly from pole to pole twice a year while another never leaves its orchard nest? "Why do birds cross the hundreds of miles of landless ocean between New Zealand and Australia, only to return in several months? How does the golden plover from Alaska find its way each year to the tiny islands of Hawaii? Why do European eels suddenly c 1). a n g e color and swim across the Atlantic to lay their eggs; and why do their offspring spend three years struggling back to European shores? Although observations (often unscientific) of t h e s e mo•Jements have been recorded for thousands of years, man is not sure that he knows the answer. Meanwhile the migrations e;o on. In the early 1940's, a single ;;warm of locusts near the Red Sea covered an area of 200 square miles; the weifdit of the insects was estimated at over 42 billion tons! The following MARCH 1955 • Swallows Come Back SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif., March 19-The swallows returned to mission San Juan Capistrano on St. Joseph's Day today just as they have been doing for more than 150 year:;. The main group of the birds, numbering several hundred, fluttered in frcm the sea shortly after dawn, amid the tolling of mission bells for mass. The birds circled high over the missicn and then darted in and out of the mission eaves, trees and vines and ruins of the older buildings. Mission caretakers said that some 500 persons, most of them armed with photographic equipment, were on hand to· witness and record the annual phenomenon.-News item. day an even. larger swarm passed along the same route. ln Canada and Norway, hordes at ratiike animals known as lemmings pour onto the coasts from 11 time to time, plunge into the sea and disappear. In South Africa, herds of antelopes known as springbok suddenly m as s from all directions and likewise plunge to their death in the sea. These latter examples repres1mt not migration (movements designed to continue the species) but mass suicide. One kind of Norwegian l.emming inhabits the barren mQuntain uplands, the other the woods below. At intervals of so many years, the upland lemmings and their natural enemies - owls, weasels and hawks - increa11e in such numbers that they spill over into the woodlands, driving out the tree lemmings before them. Within three years the 1 a t t er species has been pushed to the coast, despite the loss of millions by starvation along the way. Finally, the victims of mass hysteria, they press into the Atlantic and perish. Partly the craze that leads to this mass . suicide is caused by the loss of certain vitamins as the lemmings are pushed farther and farther from the lichens which are their source. This is how science has tried to explain the spectacular deathby-drowning of millions of lemmings. By contrast, the normal migration of animals is astonishing without being frightening because of its wholesale destruction. 12 IN JAMAICA, the land crabs which dwell in rock-crevi-· ces all over the island, descend in hordes once a year to breed on certain shelving beaches. Because their instinct is to follow the straightest (not necessarily the shortest) line possible, they scramble o v e r all obstacles,even houses, in their path. But the crabs must go to the sea, because the larvae· carried by the females can live only in water. One species of green flies spends half the year on apple trees and the other half on the stems of grasses. These flies, or aphids, are herded and pro-: tected by ants who squeeze them periodically, to get a honneylike fluid from their bodies which can be eaten by the ants. Knowing that aphids must migrate each six months, the ants actually have enough consideration to carry them down from the apple trees and to place them on the grass stems, and to take them from the grass u~ to the apple trees as the season demands! The seal trade depends on the seasonal migration of these mammals from Nova Zembla (Siberia), the east coast of Greenland and the channels west of Canada's Hudson Bay, to the ice floes north of Iceland and in the mouth of the St. Lawrence river. As soon as the males arrive, each seizes a piece of territory which the others must respect. PANOltAMA Later, the females arrive and immediately give birth to the "white coats" that they have been carrying since the previous year. After they have been claimed again by the males, they are deserted by the males who swim away alone. The mothers linger only long enough to see that the young can care for themselves. Then they too go their separate way. Many tree frogs not only descend to the ground but even travel great distances to reach a special pond or river. Naturalist I van Sanderson once camped in a narrow African valley that became a highway for frogs on their way to a large river. One night at the beginning of the rainy season, hh camp was invaded by green-boned frogs that live on the tops of forest trees. A few nights later there was an invasion of tiny yellow-and-brown frogs; then big brown ones with spurs on their thumbs. In a dozen days more than a dozen species overran the valley camp on their way to the river. Within a month, moreover, they returned, heading for the forests to spend another year. Lawrence of Arabia wrote of being confronted by a mass of migrant snakes while advancing toward Iraq with his Arabs during World War I. These snakes .were so numerous and his army suffered so many more MARCH 195i casualties from them than from the enemy that he was forced to retreat and make a long dt:tour. THE CHAMPION traveler of all, however, probably is the Arctic tern, a g,.ull-like bird, slender, white, w i th tapered wings and a forked tail. The Arctic tern makes its nest on the northwestern coast of Canada and northwestern Greenland. Small, numbered metal bands have been attached to the legs of nestlings in Canada. A few months later the grown birds have been recaptured in West Africa as well as on the southeastern coast of Africa, facing the Indian Ocean. The latter area is 9000 miles from Canada; but since it is unlikely that such a sea bird would cross the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, it would seem that these terns must have covered well over 10,000 miles. Moreover, although its final destination is the Antarctic, the tern never is seen on the eastern coast of North or South America. So that, to reach the South Pole, it flies from Arctic America across the North Atlantic to Europe, down the African c o as t to the Antarctic Ocean, and back again by the same route - a total of 24,000 miles, almost equivalent to a circumnavigation of the globe! Why do animals perform these incredible feat&? Science's 13 Earliest Sailors WHILE the Mediteranean sailors were still hugging shores in 1200 A.D., in order to navigate, the Norsemen were bravely crossing the Atlantic. It was seveh day's sail from Norway to Iceland, and another four days to Greenland. But even earlier, in the seventh and eighth centuries, under the T'ang dynasties, the Chinese had vessels which went to the Euphrates, Ceylon and Malabar coasts, carrying 600 to 700 people. The earliest navigation charts were • Stone Age and were. used by the Polynesians. Islands like the Tuamotu group were charted by fitting shells into a lattice frame made of the sinews of coconut palms. In addition to holding the shells in place, the rods indicated such things as the prevailing wind and swell; and the charts were close-guarded tribal secrets. best guess so far is based on facts known about the lemmmgs. In certain vegetation and therefore in the. insects that llve on this vegetation is found a vitamin which stimuiates breeding and which is craved for by birds and beasts. When reasonal changes· make this vi!amin temporarily unavailable, the animals must move. Sometimes the vitamin deficiency affects their nerves enough to cause mass hysteria. However, even if the vitamlII theory is a valid explanation for certain animal movements, it seems it cannot answer for all cases. It used to be believed that the lemmings :swam out to sea, led by instinct towards an island which once 14 existed in the Atlantic but which since submerged. A similar theory still is held, to E:xplain the behavior of Atlantic eels. After years in the ponds and rivers of Europe and No1 th America, the dark green eels suddenly turn r.ietallic silv.::r and, leaving their homes, swim out into the Atlantic untii they reach the great deep south of Bermuda. There they sink down and msappear forever. Later, their offspring rise to the :mrface and divide into two groups, one going northwest to America, the other east to Eurnpe (the latter migratfon, the longer, takes three year). Strangely enough, those that go to Europe are invariably the European species of eel, and PANORAMA those to America the quite difterent American species. To explain such actions, recourse is had to Wegener's theory of continental drift. W EGENER SUGGESTED that the earth's crust is composed of separate layers, and that at one time the continental surfaces cracked into great pieces which drifted until the earth, still lopsided and wobbling, was a balanced sphere. As evidence, he showed on a map how remarkably the east coast of the ·Americas fits against the west coast of Europe and Africa. The same is true of other continents. Should the eels have originated in the sea-filled crack between the Old and New Worlds when they lay together, but have spent their time between breeding seasons in the ponds and rivers of the land on either side of the crack; then as- the continents drifted apart, they would have to make longer and longer journeys. With this process carried to its extreme, the behavior of the eels would become exactly what, in fact, it is. Now, when the eels swim to the ancestral grounds to breed, thousands of miles from their home, the effort so exhausts them that they do not survive the breed~ng. Whether such explanations -the vitamin theory anc! continental drift - continue to account for mounting facts from the animal world, migrations such as these will always be impressive spectacles for man to watch with wonder .. * * * Hunger and Locomotion ACCORDING to Per Cullinder, historia::i of sea travel, man was first driven to the high seas by "hunger, the mother of invention." As evidence, l'e cites the great hunger migrations: Abraham southwards out of Mesopotamia, Israel to the rich com lands of the Nile, the Heruis, Cimbrians and Goths to .the Balkans n:id Mei-!itcrranean, etc. However, fear for one's life and ordinary curiosity-as in the cases of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Magellanhave also proved important. MARCH 1955 .15 How close to beina "Westernized" are the ways of today's youths? Students Lool~ and at C9ourtship 111arriage 'JR. £CENTLY, an instructor from the University of the Philippines, Richard Coller, was enabled to publish data collected by his graduate students on sample attitudes towards courtship and marriage. The test group was composed of 236 U.P. students, boys and girls between the ages of 17 and 21. General~ ly, they \\'.er~ from urban middle-class backgrounds and, predominantly, from Manila and the island of Luzon. According to Coller's analysis in the Philippine Sociolo~ical Review, this sampling of students represented the families whose effect on the living patterns and aspirations of the national population is often decisive. In addition, most of them were upper classmen, those members of the college community who are most experienced and "sophisticated." Be16 • cause college students are considered the most "modern" or "liberal" group in any nation, the results of the poll, a111 interpreted, are suggestive of the nature of whole areas of Filipino society. It was discovered that over sixty percent of this group began courting in high school, between the ages of 14 and 16. Ce.rtainly this contrasts with patterns of even a generation ago,( However, it is significant that the courtship experience of the boys came later than the girls'. This finding is consistent with the general social mores which expect a man to be older than the woman he courts. Furthermore, although the majority of students had their first experiences of love (including infatuation) in high school, the college years were the ones most favored by the students for steady dating. PANORAMA J::Aater section of the poll revealed that the question of chapercentageis still controversial. The traditional Filipino family regards itself (or more precisely, regards the father) as the proper agent for choosing the child's marriage partner, since the social role to be played by the new couple inside that larger family structure is the most important consideration. However, the more persona.I pattern of the modern West is the selection of one's husband or wife on an individual basis. The presence of a chaperon hardly allows the intimate observation of personality necessary to the Western pattern. pr WAS readily noted that · while the majority of the boys go out without a chaperon, most of the girls are always accompanied and, in fact, prefer to be. Probably this is the effect of· the ·"double standard of morality" general in the Philippines. It follows that.the girls who are willing to date unchaperoned must have manY. dates, to makE" up for those who are unwilling and to make possible the boys' assertion that they often date unaccompanied. Surprisingly enough, the girls· were much more in favor of "play-the-field" d at i n g than were the boys. Perhaps this is true because their greater freedom in courting has already allowed the boys to find the MARCH 1955 girls of their choiee, while the girls have always been more restricted and therefore require opportunities. However, onethird of all students were opposed to wide circulation in dating, probably in adherence to the older pattern which found a girl who had too many boy friends subject for gossip. The same acceptance of conservative traditions can be seen in the responses to time set by parents, and adopted by students, for being home at night afte!" a date. In general, both boys and girls admit to being required to return home by 9 p.rn. after an informal date and midnight after a formal. Similarly there were almost no girl& who reported ever having sneaked out from class with a boy friend to attend a movie or to eat in a restaurant. Even the preferred age for marriage approximated what is generally predictable for college students of the urban middleclass. Boys chose the ideal age as 25; girls, 23 to 25. Only 10% of the girls were willing to wed after 25, and none after 29. However, of the boys, onehalf would marry past 25, and 15% actually preferred age 30 or above. On the other hand, only 6-% of the boys cared to wed before the age of 24. These figures indicate strongly what is generally noticeabie in th i s country: the fact that men are 17 usually older than the women they marry. '\'\)HEN THE students were asked if they would let religion interfere with their choice of mate, the boys were almost evenly divided in their answers; but to a majority of the girls, the faith of their future husband was cru-::ial. Richard Coller, the analyst, suggests that this difference may come from the traditional assignment of religious activities, in the Filipino home, to the woman. Also, the woman as house- and chiid-keeper perhaps is more aware of the effect on family ·unity and child development that conflicting religious training may have. Female students were more willing than the males ·to delay marriage in order to finish their education. Probably this is true because the boys feel that they would be capable of supporting a family even while studying, but girls 6enerally suspect that marriage will stop their chance to become educatMales Yes I 59 No I 28 Do not know I 14 No reply I 13 Total I 114 ed. This assumed supe1 ority of the male is reflected also in the boys' expressed design to marry partners of the same or less educa!ion, although the girls preferred their husbands to have the same or a hiaher ~du cation. Such statistics are to be expected ir. a patriarchal society. However, in the replies to questions about willingness to marry foreigners, a t~nclency on the girls' part to rebel against the patriarchal family ts indicated. Many of the boys shewed their willingness to take wive.:z from neighboring Asian countries or from Spain, in all of whith countries the family JS ruled by the father, as it is here. But the girls rejected their Asian neighbors (and f;herefore their family systems) and preferred American and English husbands (who would allow· them greater equality) to the Spanish. Nevertheless, in the last poll questions, which concerned the possibility of parental objection % I Females! % I 51. 7 44 36.6 24.6 48 39.4 I 12.3 7 5.7 I 11.4 23 18.3 I 100.0 122 100.0 Question asked: "Do you believe that girls should ao out without a chaperon?" 18 to the person with whom one might be in love: although both girls and boys, in general, deci<l· ed that they would continue an engagement despite such op. position, there were many- more girls who were not able to make up their minds. Perhaps, in this culture, girls still are not used to making important de.cl· sions; and so, even when they are sure of their feelings, they are reluctant to act. On the basis of these samp. lings, Coller concludes that even the so.called modern students from U.P. have a natural ten· dency towards traditional conservatism. Chaperons are accepted by the girls because so. cial pressure (gossip) still con· strains the.m. The fact that the boys do . not want cl1aper.'.>ns, consequently, has little influence on the actual behavior of most girls. It merely betrays the "double standard" which, again, is traditional in the Philippines. Education is placed before romantic impulse, in questions of marriage. Students as a whole expect husbands to be older than their wives; and only their preference for American or English husbands shows the girls' dissatisfaction with the male-dominated Filipino family. Both boys and girls lean ta. wards modern romantic, individualistic courtship in their desire to "play the field" in their dating; and both place their engagement before all, even parental, opposition. Nevertheless, despite these few leanings, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the group, in general, is not "emancipated" but surprisingly conservative. * * * Earthly Facts The earth on which we live is a planet. It is one of a family of nine planets whieh, with many smaller heavenly bodies, travel around our sun. Our earth is a tiny speck compared with the whole universe, whieh consists ef millions of stars. Some of these stars are a million million times larger than our planet. The earth spins once around its axis daily, at a speed of about 1,000 miles an hour. It travels around its orbit at a speed of nearly 67,000 miles per hour. The solar system as a whole dashes through space in the direction of the star of Vega at about 43,000 miles per hour. A person standing on the surface of the earth is thus moving in three directions at \lnbelievable speeds. · MAlteH 1955 19 How to Hatt~le a Watch Here's what to look for in buying a timepiece a N INSTRUMEN'I" of precision which most of us acquire at .one time or another is a watch. Though we are fully aware of its importance, we are not sufficiently informed on how to handle, keep or buy a watch. If you want a watch that will last, get a big one. A large watch has stronger parts and it is easier to make and repair. A good big watch, given normal care, can last a lifetime. A good small watch, especially women's watches, can give satisfactory service for only 25 years or less. The pocket watch has gone out of style but it is a more durable timepiece than the wrist watch. Only special, and thus expensive, watches approach accuracy. Tpe watches used by timekeepers of Olympic games or by scientists are of this. kind. The more common, but none20 theless also expensive, watches lose about five seconds a day. This is normally considered very satisfactory. With most watches, a loss of 25 seconds a day is considered very good. Cheap watches lose as much as a minute a day. But if you are no slave of time, there is no reason why this should ~ ther you very much. Not all of us are planners of synchronized bombings and beach land~ ings or engaged in experiments that will determine the speed of ·osmosis in a spirogyra. @HAT MAKES people buy 81 particular kind of watch is the advertised number of jewels. All fine watches are jewelled but not all jewelled watches are fine. Jewels have almost no intrinsic value; they cost only P6 a dozen. Seven jewels in a watch protect the PANORAMA points of greatest friction. To protect all important points, a watch must have 17 jewels. The best pocket watch has 23 jtiwels. The buyer must beware, how-ever, of watches that are dummy-jewelled. Frequently these jewels are put where the buyer can see them, not where they are needed. The principal enemies of watches are lint, moisture and dust. Women have more watch trouble than men because they keeo their watches in their handbags along with the face powder and perfume. The volatile oils of perfume affoct the machinery of delicate watches. Watches have to be clearted at least once every 18 months. A good horologist should be entrusted with the job. To balance correctly the wheels of a watch is a delicate operation that requires both training and experience. Most - sidewalk watch repairers do not appreciate this aspect of watch-repairing fully. Irregular winding is bad for the watch. Watches must be w o u n d at regular intervals. Back-and-forth winding is not necessary, but it is easier. Take off your watch when cooking or washing your hands. If you drop your watch in water, dip it in benzine at once and then take it to your watch repairer. MARCH 1955 When you buy a watch, test the case by pinching it between the forefinger and the thumb. If the back yieids, the case is not sturdy enough. Gold-filled, electroplated or rolled-gold cases wear out faster than stainlesssteel cases. A stainless-steel case with gold-filled or rolledgold rims are unsatisfactory because the weaker metal will give way in time. m ANY WATCHES have added features like calendars, or devices that show the phases of the moon. These watches naturally cost more. If you want only a timepiece, avoid such watches. They cost more tO repair and it is improbable that you would be required everyday to swear by the inconstant moon. A watch advertised as "waterproof" can withstand water under a pressure of 35 pounds per square inch for at least five minutes. Water-resistant watches may or may not keep out moisture. A truly waterproof watch keeps out dust and corrosive vapors as well. A feature of a waterproof watch is a gasket made of rubber, plastic or soft metal along the rim of the watch and around the winding crown. When buying a watch check it for tightness. A good watch can be opened only with a je2J weler's case opener. of a good watch is clear. The tick quick and the guarantee that the watch maker gives you, the retailer · will back up the watch. You can save on repairs in this way, in case the watch does not live up to its guarantee. When you are shopping for an expensive watch go to reliable stores. Over and beyond 22 * * * All A bout M enen W HAT IS strange about Aubrey Menen, recent arrival in the world of non-fiction, is that he has no less thah three· native lands-India, Ireland and England. His ancestors on his mother's side were brigands of MacGillicuddy's Reeks, his paternal ancestors were Nayers cf Malabar, and he himself was given an English education. As a boy in England he treated both the Irish and Indians as his inferiors. But at the age of 12 he went to Calicut to visit his aristocratic grandmother: "She rarely spoke to a:iyone who was not cf her own social station and she iecieved them formally; that is to say, with her breast& completely bare." The values of his schoolboy world were turned upside clown on her coconut plantation where the English were regarded as low-caste barbarians, "incurably dirty in their personal habits." Later, however, when he had encountered assorted fakirs, some of them having held their right arms ever their heads for 20 years, "holding up the world," he began to withhold his judgments or not apply them to wholesale groups of pe~ple. At present, Mene~ b comfortably neutral un the Italian Riviera. * The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one. --GecrlZ:! Herbart * PANORAMA The Uncommon Man in the Theatre Is drama subject to kin~s? W ILLY LOMAN became an old man when, after driving 700 miles, he found that no one cared any more if he was dead or alive. He was just another forgotten salesman. He died talking to himself. Willy had always envied the death of a salesman whom he had known, a man who quietly fell asleep forever with . his green velvet slippers beside him, in a plush railroad car. Hundreds of friends had attended that man's funeral. At the requiem for Willy only a scattering of acquaintances appeared. One said, understandingly, "Willy was a salesman ... He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back, that's an earthquake.'' Between Hamlet and Death of a Salesman a revolution in the social rank of heroes has oc::urred. Hamlet was a prince; even the man whom he slowly hunted down, his stepfather, was a king. Now, however, we live in what is sometimes called the century of the common man. Willy Loman was a salesman, not a nobleman. Can Death qi a Salesman be a tragedy then? Many critical playgoers, although themselve3 common men, have accepted. traditional standards and said: No. Arthur Miller, the playwright, is an unu:;ual man who spends as much time behind a drill press in automobile factories as he does with his writing. He can speak, therefore, with double authority. What he says MARCH 1955 23 24 to the critics is that even though it is uncommon for the common man to be treated with dignity on the stage, that is the only treatment that he deserves. Miller has argued that modern psychiatry supports the spiritual id~ntification of nobleman and commoner. It bases its analysis upon classic formulations, such as the Oedipus complex, which originally were enacted thrm.\gh the characterization of royalty but which are seen now to apply to everyone in similar emotional situations. Moreover, if tragic -action were a property ~)f the high-bred character alone, certainly the average playgoer would not cherish tragedy and perhaps would not even be able to understand it. For Arthur Miller, the tragic feeling is excited in the presence of a character ready, if need be, to lay down his life to secure his sense of personal dignity The heroic individual is one who tries to gain his "rightful" position in his society. The tragic fiaw of the hero is the force of his own indignation which will not let him ignore the challenge to his dignity. Tragedy results from man's compulsion to prove the high opinion he has of his worth as a man. In this process of rebellion, of self-assertion, the total environment is shaken open. It is this direct and honest look into the fabric of things which creates the terror and fear usually associated with tragedy. Centuries of protest and revolution prove that the common man is capable of such questioning of his universe. IT IS NOT the problem of rank, therefore, that stirs the playgoer's interest. It is the problem of general mankind, the disaster that threatens whenever men are deprived of their chosen image of themselves. The destruction of man during his act of self-evaluation points to evil in his environment: the successful play discovers this moral through the nature and actions of its characters. Tragedy exalts, even in the moment of the hero's death, by attending to the heroism of his thrust for freedom. Tragedy, according to Miller, would be impossible if the cramping of human life were caused solely by man or solely by the society that surrounds him. It is the whole truth that is demanded- the participation of both self and society in human affairs. PANORAMA The Greeks probed the stars and finally comfirmed the rightness of cosmic law. Job faced God in anger but ended by submitting. Nevertheless, by the act of challenge alone, in the demand for total knowledge, the character gains stature. Any man, though lowborn, thus becomes royal and exalts the. rank of all mankind. It is this exaltation which saves tragedy from being identified with pessimism and unhappy endings. Far from being the essentials of tragedy, such emotions actually contradict its basic intentions. Tragedy, in fact, demonstrates man's indestructible will to achieve his humanity. Consequently, there is a victory of the spirit. Death of a Salesman has received the four major awards possible in the American theater. Apparently, then, America's professional cnt1cs saw a victory of the spirit even in a play about a traveling salesman who is sometimes unfaithful to his wife, contemplates suicide, and is driven at least partly insane by his own business failures and by the cruel treatment received from his sons. Hamlet too was sometimes mad; he falsely suspected his mother of being an accomplice to murder; he contributed to the death of Ophelia. Tragic heroes are . not pure, not impossible. Whatever their rank, they are notably human. When, by sheer persistence, they rise above human failures, they become heroic in the playgoer's eyes. - The professional critics did not recognize the importance of Death of a Salesman because of anything said by its author to the press or to a public gathering. They were moved rather, by what the play itself had to sayfor example, the advice of Willy Loman's wife to their sons: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the papers. He's not ·the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally pirid to such a person. You called him crazy ... The man is exhausted." MARCH 1955 25 Recasting the Bell Trade Act • How successful was the Laurel mission in securina favorable amendments? u NQUESTIONABLY THE most significant development in 1954 for the young Republic of the Philippines was the conclusion last December of a revised trade agreement with the United States. After three months of difficult negotiations, the chief delegates of both countries sat down in the austere diplomatic reception room of the state department of Washington to put their signatures to the new agreement. Thus the finishing touches were put to the master plan of Philippine economy. It is a plan which will shape the country's economic future for the next 20 years and even beyond. The agreement now awaits formal adoption by the congresses of both countries. 26 Popularly known as the Bell Act, the Philippine Trade ar.d RehabUitation Act of 1946 is a statute passed by the U.S. Congress in April, 1946 governing the trade relations of the Philippines and the United States for a period of 28 years. It was embodied in the Executive Agreement of July 4, 1946 between· the two countries. Here is a sutn:nary of the trade provisionS' of the Act: 1. Free trade with the United States for eight• years, from July 4, 1946 to July-4. 1954, and gradually increasing tartffs (or declining duty-fre~ quotas) in the case of certain speeific exports from the ·Philippines for .the remaining 20 yt>ars of the agreement, which will terminate July 3, 1~4. PANORAMA 2. A graduated duty of five percent of the basic Philippine tariff rate, increased by an annual average of five percent, to be imposed beginning July 5, 1954 on all dutiable U.S. articles entering the Philippines, and similarly on all dutiable Philippine articles entering the United States, with four exceptions: coconut oil, cigars, scrap tob'acco and pearl buttons. For these articles there are absolute duty-free quotas which are declining by an annual average of five percent during -the 20year period beginning also on July 5, 1954. The absolute quotas fixed fefr these articles are as follows: coconut oil, 200,000 long tons; cigars, 200 million pieces; scrap tobacco, 6.5 million pounds; and p e a r 1 buttons, 850,000 gross. These are duty-free up to July 4, 1954. After that date, export of these articles in excess of the duty-free quotas will be subjP.ct to the full U.S. tariff. Absolute quotas are also fixed for: sugar 850,000 long tons; cordage, 6 million pounds; and rice 1,040,000 pounds. All other articles not specified above are without quota limitation and are free from ordinary customs duties up to July 4. 1954, but will be subject to graduated tariffs. after that date. MARCH 1955 On the other hand, no quota is fixed on United States articles entering the Philippines during the life of the agreement. Aside from these trade provisions of the Act, there are portions of the statute which regulate immigration, control the Philippine peso and grant socalled parity rights to American citizens in the Philippines. c RITICS of the Bell Act ha v e consistently denounced its onerous provisions and clamoured for changes. With the a d v e n t of the Magsaysay administration, and the approaching end of the eight-year period, steps were taken to secure needed provisions. A panel of negotiators, led by Senator Jose P. Laurel, was dispatched to the United States last October. There a counterpart American panel, led by Mr. James M. Langley, met the Philippine group. Philippine objections to the Bell Act centered around four aspects of the agreement; namely, the unequal trade benefits, the unequal immigration provision, the control of the peso by the president of the United States and the parity provisions. It was argued that under the onerous trade provisions of the Act the Philippines had been prevented from tapping a ma27 jor source of revenues: customs duties. According to a study m2.de by the department of finance, the average customs duties which the Philippines could have collected on American goods imported into the country from 1949 to 1951 is P369 million per ye a r . This is against the P69 million in duties which the Philippines would have paid on commodities exported annually to the United States for the same period. Net total loss: P900 million. It was also claimed that the provisions had forced Philippine economy to become utterly dependent on the United States. Native industries had been discouraged, since they cculd not compete with massproduced and duty-free American goods. Foreign capital did not care to come in either, since American industrialists could make a. neat profit by merely exporting their goods to the Philippines. Why should they takz on unnecessary risk by setting up factories here? It is true that the import control adopted by the Philippines a few years ago restricted the entry of American goods, especially non-essential products, yet these controls v1ere not sufficient to offset the bad effects of the Bell Act. Somehow the matter of immigration reciprocity - or the lack of it - seemed to bother 28 Philippine officials least. Filipino students have always been welcome to the United States, and that was the important thing. The practically unlimited right of American businessmen to enter the country was entirely welcome. It seemed that the Philippines stood to lose rather than to profit from strict immigration measure against the Americans, whose capital is being attracted into the country. But control over the peso, which was in the hands of the President o! the United States, had understandably bothered' the Filipinos. In brief, this pr0-: vision stated that the Phili~ pine peso is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate cf 2 to 1, and that it may not be devalued without the consent of the U.S. President. The question involved the principle of sovereignty. Ame-· rican jurisdiction over Philippine currency was a vestige of colonio.lism. It certainly had no place in an independent econoo.y. It had to go. The parity provision had drawn some of the bitterest cri• ticisms against the Bell Act. Ne::essitating an amendment of the Philippine Constitution, these provisions granted equal rights to American citizens in the exploitation of natural resources - w it h o u t similar rights guaranteed to Filipinos PANORAMA in the United States. The agreement was patently unfair. At the time Philippine cfficials in power considered it essential as an inducement for American capital to invest in the country. THESE were the main areas of the Philippine Trade and Rehabilitation Act of 1946 in which the Laurel mission sought changes. Obviously, to obtain 100 percent favorable revision of these provisions was out of the question. Any attempt to secure preferences for Philippine trade in the United States would meet with opposition from powerful interest groups. But the Philippine delegation was optimistic it could get some reasonable concessions. The question to ask now is: How well did the mission fare? At present a complete and impartial answer to this simple question is not possible. Opinions are con~icting. On the basis of the full text of the revised U.S.-P.I. agreement released on December 17, however, it would seem that the mission has been generally successful. Quite expectedly men of the opposition (although President Magsaysay was extra careful in appointing opposition men to the Philippine MARCH 1955 panel) lashed at the new agreement, charging that the Laurel mission had accomplished nothing of value. These critics claim that most of the concessions granted to the Philippiees have rightly belonged to her by virtue of her independent status (example: the yielding of the control of currency to the Philippines). They claim further that the onerous trade provisions, such as the limited sugar quotas, have not been removed. Senator Gil J. Puyat, chairman of the technical panel of the Laurel mission, declared upon his return, on the other hand, that to reject the revised trade act would be "a tr~gedy" to the nation. He said the Philippine group obtained the best deal possible under circumstances, and that the net result was an unprecedented concession to the Philippines. To back his statements, Puyat cited the 9-year nominal free trade, the new accelerating and decelerating tariff arrangement which is favorable for the Philippine~, the improvement of the parity provisions by making it more mutual in nature, and the a.bsolute Philippine control over the peso. From the political point of view, the revised agreement gives to the Philippines full 29 sovereignty. Parity rights given to Americans in the exploitation of natural resources has been restricted to citizens whose home states grant reciprocal privileges to Filipinos. The .control of the peso, as previously mentioned, has been transferred completely to the Philippines. Yet such changes, as again Senator Puyat said, are actually nominal. The Philippine peso, although unpegged from the American dollar, need not be a run-away currency; neither does it mean probable devaluation. The Philippin~s' membership in the International Monetary Fund exacts enough restrictions on Philippine c_urrency to make it stable. And the grant of re:::iprocal rights to Philippine citizens is largely theoretical, since the probability that Filipinos would exploit natural resources in the United States or invest in that country is re~ mote. Just the same, these changes are welcome. They r.oothe the ruffled dignity of the Filipinos. About immigration, nothing has been mentioned so far. Once more, the issue has been ignored, perhaps unfortuR.a.tely. p ROBABLY no accurate evaluation of the Laurel mission for the present can be made. Only time will tell. There are certain arrangements under the new act, for instance, 30 which may prove beneficial to the Philippines only after the lapse of several years. Included in this are the aboi.ition of the 17 percent exchang~ tax and the substitution cf a special import tax, and the rieht to seek favorable revision of the sugar quota of 850,000 loag tons. A summary of the main revisions of the Act as released in a joint statement of the American and Philippine negotiation panels last December 15 follows. This agreement: 1. Yields to the Philippines control over its own currency by,' eliminating Article. V thereof; 2. Eliminat~s the most; absolute quotas on Philippin~ articles entering the United States; 3. Eliminates quota &llocation limitations on Philipp ne articles of either country in the United States; 4. Makes reciprocal the en· joyment of parity rights by citizens of either country in the territory of the other; 5. Makes reciprocal the :mposition of quantitative restrictions on p::-oducts of both countries; 6. Gives to r.itizens of either country on a rc;>ciprocal basis the right to engage in business activities in th:i> territory of the other; 7. Provides security exceptions in the mutual interest of both countries; PANORAMA 8. Increases tariff preferences for United States articles entering the Philippines; 9. Decreases tariff preferences for United States articles entering the Philippines; 10. Eliminates the prohibition against the imposition of Philippine export taxes; 12. Permits the Philippines to ask the United States congress for possible increases in the sugar quota when other nations are permitted to do &Oi and 11. Provides for the elimination of the Philippine exchange tax and creates, by substitution, an import levy to be progressively reduced and eliminated; 13. Increases duty-free quotas on Philippine articles which are subject to declining dutyfree quotas in th~ United States. -F. C. Sta. Maria, from the PHIL· IPPINE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, February 1955. * * * First Aid Tips Antidote for iodine poisoning: Give several glassfuls of a thin paste of starch in water or flour in water and induce vomiting until the vomitted material no longer has a blue color. Antidote for: wood and de.natured alcohol poisoning: Induce vomiting by giving an emetic. Follow with bicarbonate cf soda ( 2 teaspoonfuls in 1 pint of warm water). Continue to induce vomiting until there is no odor of alcohol on the breath. Then place the patient in a dark room and give a glass of milk to which 1 teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda has been added . • The vagabond, when rich, is called a tourist. -Paul Richard • MARCH 1955 31 J AI-ALAI is one of the most dangerous games played by man. A combination of teanis, lacrosse and handball, it is played with ~ cesta on a three-walled fronton. The speed of the game calls for endurance, strength and th!: muscular coordination of a bal· let-dancer. The ball is small, slightly bigger than a golf ball and almost as ha:::d. It is thrown against the wall with the cesta, a basket shaped like the lower bill of a pelican, made of rat· tan in the Philippines and of marsh reeds in South America and Spain. J ai-alai is played in almost all of the capitals of the world. Recently it was introduced in the United States and it is reportc-d that three frontons in Florida collected last year almost $12,000,00C) from the bettinljt public. The Basques are al.most always- the players of the game but jai-alai did not originate with them. It originated with the Aztecs and the explorer Cortes introduced it in Spain. Basque kids go for jai-:ilai with the same enthusiasm as · Filipino boys go for basketball. The I3asque country is poor and people there are eitl:rer goatherds or pe!otaris, as jai-alai players are called. The demand for pelotaris has incressed atl over the world and most Basque kids have made it their ambi32 r The FASTEST GAME in the WORLD J ai-alai is rightly cof.led "the game of a thousand thrills" By Jes us Sto. Domingo tion to play on the international frontons. The money is big and pleasure and fame await the successful. JN THE Philippinc.s, there i2 only one fronton, owned by the Madrigal Company. A tall, glass-walied building, several blocks away from the City Hall, it ts ni~htly packed with aficionados and ::ociety people anrl desperate young men and women trying hard to earn some cash on the side. The Madrigal J ai-alai was badly damag~d during the war PANORAMA and reopened on May 1, 1948. It introduced certain innovations in the game. Some of these are: special forecast pool, ten-point, ten-player event and fifteen-point grand partie for amateurs. In tqe ljpecial forecast pool, the idea is to pick the player who will score the greatest number of points in the six senior or junior events. In case of a tie between two players, they break the draw in a five-point game. When more than two players are tied, the Intendente will draw lots to determine which player takes the court first. In the ten-point ten-player event, there are ten players, intead of the usual six in the ordinary single entry events. The pelotari who scores ten points first is declared the winner. The place winner is the player who scores the highest number of points. A point is, for the winner, a perfect thrO\y that hi:; opponent has missed. The greatest player that the game has produced is Eusebio Garate, who calls himself Edroza, after his native village in the Basque country. A big, heavily-built man (250 lbs.), he can leap and run as lightly as a buck. He was world champion at fifteen and he died in 1941 on the fronton in Barcelona. So dexterous was he that three p 1 aye rs were often MAJtCH 1955 matched against him. Once he threw a ball so hard that when his opponent caught it with his cesta, it went clear through the basket. The fellow looked at the hole in his cesta, then at Edroza and walked off the court, trembling. Some players say that they heard the ball hit the wall but they never saw it, when ~droza was playing against them. T HE PHILIPPINE .spectators have not seen any pelotari of Edroza's stature but they are satisfied with the spectacular poses and falls that the pelotaris take when playing the game. Thirty-six pelotaris perform in Manila today. All of them are Basques. Since the jai-alai gamblers bet on men, the question always arises: are the games fixed? The answer is no. The game is played by so many pelotaris that to insure the out~me thA fixer has to bribe all the men. The total take by one man would normally be less than the bribe money he. has so generously distributed. And fnr another thing, nobody is allowed inside the pelotaris' quarters except officials of the gamP.. The House does not have to fix the game for a bigger spht. The management takes 12 % from every bet and only the 33 difference is distributed to winners of each game. on the gamE: none of them hava made jai-alai a profession. Most of the amateur contestants in the Philippines are Svaniards and Americans. Filipinos are not built for the gainc. Some Filipino am~eur pelotaris have appeared after the war but they aren't much. They did not even last the first round of the Amateur Jai-Alai World Tournament. And then there is the provision in the Pelotaris' Code that says ·that any player caught cheating will be exiled from all the frontons of the world. Jai-alai players get as much as P 100 a night. So normally they do not have to scrounge for extra cash. Although Filipinos like to bet * * * _The Glass 34 klenagerie~~~---.._.._.._~~~~~~~------r-1 The room of Tennessee Williams' si11ter in St. Louis, Missouri, overlooked a narrow, sunless areaway so dreary that she lived in constant twilight shadows rather than open the window curtains. Williams named the areaway "Death Valley," after the dog and cat fights that occurred there nightly. Finally they painted the furniture white and hung white curtains over the window. Then, on shelves on every wall, they placed miniature glass qnimal1 which suffused the room with stran11:e .:oft light. Only in that way was their pattern of life made endurable. Eventually this room, these souv~irs, and his sister provided Williams with the central material for his play, The Glass Menagerie. PANOJIAllA " . . that continual and fearless sift. ins and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found." 7 00 OFTEN the notorious theatrics of U.S. Sen at or Joseph McCarthy, reaching into a full briefcase as if it really contained a rabbit, have made his fellow citizens and foreign spectators overlook the true nature of the state which McCarthy represents only• politically. Despite its growing industrialization and its superior position on two of those "inland seas," the Great Lakes, Wisconsin is chiefly noted for its hometown atmosphere, the humbl~ness of its people, and their hospitality. Its lakes, its stands of second growth timber, its vast Indian reservations not only provide vacationland for summer tourists from out-of-state but also preserve the residents themselves from the tensions of overurbanized areas. Its rolling terrain has reminded waves of immigrants, widely varied in their cultures, of their own native MARCH 1955 lands, and they have settled together side by side and become good neighbors. The Wisconsin Idea, which conceives of the whole state as part of the campus of its state university, symbolizes this neighborliness. In order to bring knowledge to the very boundaries of the state, the University of Wisconsin, as early as 1919, began experiments which eventually resulted in Station WHA (on campus) and its School of. the Air. Throughout all daylight hours, radio education programs - recorded music, college lectures, farm reports, and the like - are broadcast on a noncommercial basis to the kitchen and classroom and office. Uni• versity faculty members travel to extension night classes in widely separated cities. In 1932, a short course in agricultural methods (to coincide with the end of the harvest and the start of the long winter) was 35 instituted for young farmers who would otherwise not have studied beyond high school. EVEN earlier, in 1925, new ground was broken for an industrial relations center where summer conferences for labor have been held annually. Later Michigan, Illinois, Cornell and Harvard followed this example, by devising their own programs for industrial workers. Besides allowing its faculty to perform as consultants on practical questions of all sorts, the University of Wisconsin was the first American university to make room fgr a leading regionalist painter as artist-in-residence. He conducted no classes, but was paid merely to paint at his leisure and to be "at home" to ordinary visitors. The first such artist, John Steuart Curry, stimulted many amateur painters throughout the state to find increased pride and pleasure in their work. Under a similar arrangement, the Pro Arte string quartet has conducted oc;casional music classes and devoted the rest of its time to concert tours. Wisconsin is proud of having the oldest school of journalism and the oldest campus radio station in America; but· it is even prouder of the constant forwardness of its vision. Its public service went on even after World War II, when the normal enrollment of 12,000 was swol36 len to 19,000 with the return of veterans to college. Even this temporary overcrowding did not put nerves on edge, partly because of the physical nature of the campus itself ( 2,000 acres of rolling hills,J forests and lakefront) and part-1 ly because of the quietly effi-' cient temper by now the visible heritage of a university old enough, in 1948, to celebrate its proud centennial. Students and faculty alike have dedicated themselves to what one of their presidents has called "thaL continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alorutthe truth may be found." Because the University of Wii;consin was, from the beginning, devoted to th~ scientific practice of agriculture, it was only natural that campus research always was, combined with the dissemination of knowledge, through bulletins and institutes, beyond the campus. The resultant sense of community sharing has already had its good effect. In· the related field of biochemistry, a university laboratory in 1925 discovered a way to irradiate foodstuffs artificially with vitamin D, spelling the end of rickets. Instead of any single professor's growing rich from this process, the patents became common property and eventually financed an Alumni Research Foundation, faculty housing, etc. PANORAMA Fun for 80c It is almost impossible not to have a good time at the University of Wisconsin. Without leaving the Union building, and with only 80c in his pocket, a student could take his pick recently of an art exhibit, a performance of Girl Crazy by the Wisconsin Players, a dance in soft-lighted Great Hall, a concert by the Marching Band, a community sing a movie (Odd Man Out) or bowling. On Langdon Street, the Greeks were having their final whitetie.&-tails flings before Christmas vacation. 7 HIS is the same unselfish spirit which has sent so many of the law school faculty .to national labor boards, to mediate d i s put e s and resolve strikes. Although politically the stat e sometimes has been tagged with the label of conservative Republicanism, yet the state university has maintained c9nscientiously, the progressive spirit of its earliest professors in unionism, Richard Ely and John R. Commons. The students themselves, through their independent newspaper T he Daily Cardinal, have always MARCH 1955 fought well in defense not only of the special rights of campus residents but the constant, human rights of citizens in the local and state communities. Their high regard for democracy was encouraged when philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn, having come to found an experimental liberal college within the university, suggested the establishment of almost completely self - governing men's dormitories along the shores of Lake Mendota. As a result, there is little ostentation on the campus. Even sorority girls dress in twin sweaters and low heels; and the use of cars on campus, by undergraduates, is severely restricted. The students have found a common substitute for "gold coast parties" in the huge Student U n i o n provided for them at the foot of Bascom Hill. This Union gives them lounges, cafeterias, a ball-room, listening rooms for records, a small movie theater, and a gigantic theater with perfect acoustics for plays and assemblies. Thus the interests of the students can broaden even while they relax; and they are kept together. At the same time, the shops and homes of the capital city are just across the 37 street; and, remarkably, "town and gown" have no quarrels. It is not surprising, in such a state, that recently an ex-for.tball coach left $5,000 to the university for a literary magazine. Rather, among a people generally and earnestly dedicated to "that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found," 'a Joseph McCarthy must be considered a rare and unenvied exception. * * * Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa ... There is a story about a "tough guy" who came to confession. When he had finished his tale, the priest said, "Now recite the Act cf Contrition." "I don't remember it after all these veers," he answered. "Well, then, just tell God in your. own words that you are sorry,_'? the priest told him. Whereupon the poor fellow, ignorant but penitent thump.ed his breast and said loud enough to be heard by all in the neighborhood, "0 God, I'm a helluva sinner!" * H ea/th Hotel The over-cautious visitor, with many imagin11ry diaease1, was registering at the Vista Lodge Hotel. "But ·is this really a healthful place?" he asked the manager for the third time. "We guarantee that, sir," smiled the manager. "LHt month a guest was brought here on a stretcher. After 111 week he ran away without paying his bill." PANORAMA Nobel Prize winner describes the position of the artist in a busy and practical world Man Was Also Here • By WILLIAM FAULKNER BY ARTIST I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him with no other tools and material than the uncommerciable ones of the human spirit; who has tried to carve, - no matter how crudely, on the wall of that final oblivion, in the tongue of the human spirit, 'Kilroy was here.' That is primarily, and I think in its essence, all that we ever tried to do. And I believe we will all agree that we failed. That what we made never quite matched and never will match the shape, the dream of perfection which we inherited and which drove us and will continue to drive us, ever after each failure, until anguish frees us and the hand falls still at last This article is condensed from a speech delivered at a luncheon durin&' the National Book Awards for 196' ceremonies in New York. MARCH 1955 Maybe it's just as well that we are doomed to fail, since, as long as we do fail and the hand continues to hold blood. we will try again; where, if we ever did attain the dream, match the shape, scale that ultimate peak of perfection, nothing would remain but to jump off the other side of it into suicide. Which would not only deprive us of our American right to existence, not only inalien · able but harmless too, since, by our standards, in our culture, the pursuit of art is a peaceful hobby like breeding Dalmatians, it would leave refuse in the form of, at best indigence and at worst downright crime resulting from unexhausted energy, to be scavenged and removed and disposed of. While this way, constantly and steadily occupied by, obsessed with, immersed in trying to do the impossible, always with the failure which we decline to recognize and accept, we stay out 39 of trouble, keep out of the way of practical and busy peop!e who carry the burden of America. S 0 ALL are happy - the giants of industry and commerce, the mampuiators of profit or power of the mass emotions called government, who carry the tremendous load of geopolitical solvency, the two of which conjoined are America; and the harmless breeders of the spotted dogs (un-' harmed, too, protected, immune in the inalienable right to exhibit our dogs to one another for acclaim, and even to the public too; defended in our. right to collect from them at the rate of five or ten dollars for the special signed editions, and even in the thousands to special fai:;.ciers named Picasso or Matisse.) Then something like this happens - like this, here, this afternoon; not just once and not even just once a year. Then that anguished breeder discovers that not only his fellow breeders, who must support their mutual vocation in a sort of mutual desperate defensive coniederation, but other people, people whom he had considered outsiders, also hold that what he is doing is valid. And not only scattered individuals who hold his doings valid, but enough of them to confederate in their turn, for no mutual benefit or profit or defense but simply because they also believe it is not only valid but important that man should write on that wall 'man was here also A.D. 1953 or '54 or '55' and so go on record like this this afternoon. To tell not the individual artist but the world, the time itself, that what he did is valid. That even failure is worthwhile and admirable, provided only that the failure is splendid enough, the dream splendid enough, unattainable enough yet forever valuable enough since it was of perfection. So when this qappens to him (or to one of his fellows; it doesn't matter which one, since all share the validation of the mutual devotion) the thought occurs that perhaps one of the things wrong with our country is success. That there is too much success in it. Success is too easy. In our country a young man can gain it with no more than a little industry. He can gain it so quickly and easily that he has not had time to learn the humility to handle it with, or even to discover, realize, that he will need humility. * * * 40 PANORAMA MARCH 1955 Photo b11 DERRICK KNIGHT, Shell Photo11t"aphU; Uftit, LOtld<m GIVE US THIS DAY ••• Alter the rich stalk yields the golden grains by threshing, the winnower silts rice from chall and piles it into big mounds. From these come the staple lood ol Asia's millions. 41 0 NE OF the Cebuano high !:c3ool boys was boasting that on his firs~ eh-plane flight he had been allowed to put his hands on the· controls. As he s:>oke, his eyes were sc!"llbbed with pleasure and his voice two notes higher than usual. What he did not realize was that his shy classmate. listening so quietly from the edge of the crowd, not only could understand how he felt but already had a pilot's license himself! It was Manolito Ponce. the youngest pilot in the Philippines. Manolito, n ow seventeen years old and a freshman m mechanical engineering at the University of San Carlos, first flew three years ago. In addition, he A wonder-worker like his father, Manolito has learned to respect hard and honest labor P.njoys swimming and water skiing near his father's drydocks in Cebu City harbor. And until lately he was the owner of the fastest motorboat in the province. Although he seems to !':ave the instincts of a bird and loves to soar, whether m the air or over the w;iter, bis oarents trust him because he has been taught responsibility from boy· hood. Once when the Ponce yacht, which also serves as a commercial tugboat, was lost in a ::tor!n, Manolito, then fifteen years o!d. searched all night for it in his motorboat and brought it back safely only in the morning. Ncnc of these achievements has disturbed the young m<;n's balance, because if Manolito is being trained to become a wo:ider-workcr like his father, so has he =.ilso learned his father's respect for hard and honest labor. The senior Manuel Ponce is responsibl~ for the famous man-made i~land, landmark nf Cebu. which was built to its present value of hundreds of thousands of pesos from a.ii initial outlay of P12,000. WHEN ME1nuel Ponce was not much older than his son is now, he had already qualified as a p 1 a n t engineer through correspondence courses. After serving for fourteen years in the Pacific Commercial Company, one of the largest '!ngineering firms in the country, Mr. Ponce and his wife decided to invest their savings in an enterprise: of his own. But when the ·new business, not protected by im:urance, suddenly was gutted by fire, everything was lost except his courage. Again he was offered positions with engineering firms, but again he decided, with encouragement from his wife, to remain indeand destroyed them at the time MARCH 1955 This time he walked the streets of Cebu as a plumber, passing from house to house and asking if anyone had water pumps or other fixtures to be repaired. After six months he was able to buy machine tools and begin the long strugg!e upwards. Although the Japanese used his shops during the war and destroyed them at the time of Liberation, Mr. Ponce had them rebuilt while the rest of the country still lay dazed. All those years he ha4 planned to build his own oachinery plant and drydock on a ''dream island" off Cebu Citv. All he had was P12.000. B~t he knew that if he rented onshore property. any improvements that he made, including the drydock. would revert to the landlord at the end of the lease. Gradually, bucket by buc~et of sand, the island was mad~ at the end of a long causewt1y connecting with the inner harbor. Sometimes the tide washed away a whole day's work Slowly a whaleback hump of stone and sand arched out of the water. Although it was only an islet, really, when the Pl2,00a was gone, job orders began to pour in and the island grew with every profit. Mr. Ponce worked side by side with his men and some times longer shifts than they - sixteen hours a day. Not only did his personal example inspire their own efforts, but th~y enjoyed together his weekly blowouts. Nobody complained, consequently, on those occasions when he and all his men had to work row1d-the-clock, on a rush order. When the 8-hour labor law and the minimum wage law went into effect, lt seemed for a while that the business, as he had organized it, wou~d have to be scuttled. In one three-week period, he lost P21,000. However, after consulting his wife and two children, he decided not to quit. Thereafter, instead of servicing ships which used his drydock facilit~es, he merely rented docking space and let the actual work - the scraping of barnacles. painting, the repair of hulls and propellers - be done by the ships' crews. In that way he was able to keep his most faithful employees, slightly less than one hundred, at his side. 1 ODAY, the Ponces provid~ not only drydock facJities but also factories for the building of ships and airplanes, oil wells, woodworking tools, rice and corn mills, and tin cans. They have even installed sugar centrals in provinces beyond Cebu. Like his son, the senior Ponce finds relaxation through ftyir.g and yachting. Both enjoy ':he sense of liberation that comes at high speed, away from land. Yet Mr. Ponce is a homeloving man, famous for serving visitors weekend luncheons of lechon, crabmeat and chickens, from the Ponce farm outside Cebu City. This is the family tradition to which Manolito belongs. Although he is an only son, he has not been spoiled. Even while he attends the university, he can hardly forget the example of his father - that the training on the drydock and in the shop is an equally important education for the life he will lead. On the job he works shoulder to shoulder with the mechanics. Manolito's sister, Mrs. Rosario Soriaga, is sever.teen years his elder. His birth was the answer to prolonged and anxious prayers. Now that Manolito is a young maf' it is dear that he is the son that the Ponces wanted. PANORAMA 1 HE SOLDIERS and the sanitary inspector climbed the last winding of the trail and soon entered the village. They stopped to smoke under some trees. "Not that I hate to do this job," said the sanitary inspector, "but human elements here are involved. This is wnat the government often overlooks." "This is the first case in this place, isn't it?" inquired the corporal. MARCH 1955 "Yes. Two brothers and a sister. Almost eaten up." This the sarjtary inspector said as if only to himself. "I have never seen lepers," said one of the privates. "Culion must be a dreadful place." "It is not as it used to be any longer. Culion is a complete village, with many conveniences. The inhabitants even intermarry and have children." The sanitary inspector paused. "A leper is always a leper," commented the corporal. "I tell you they are not a p\easant sight," said the sanitary inspector. "Did you say they should have been in Culion long ago? What happened?" asked one of the privates. ''Escaped. They were in the hospital then. Four or five years ago. Nobody knew at first that they were sick except the doctor and the hospital personnel.· The night before the day they were to be transported away, they escaped, somehow having heard of the news of their fate. Nobody knew where they had fled. Subsequent investigations di~ not reveal their hidiqg place. The natives of this village knew where they had gone but nobody betrayf5d them. Sympathy. It was only last month that we found out, but then the disease had already progressed, beyond recovery." g ROM SOMEWHERE in the villages came the teniente del barrio. Like the rest of the male villagers, he wore G-strings. Only a cane topped with nickel showed that he was a repreaentative of the government. He greeted the -sanitary inspector and soldiers, then added, "I think they suspect what is coming to them. But we must get them by persuasion, not by force. They are ready to fight, you see." The soldiers looked at each other. "I told you this was going to happen," mumbled the sanitary inspector. "They have sharpened spears," continued the teniente del barrio. "And battle-axes. They are determined to stay their ground." "Well, then, let us go," said the sanitary inspector. "Let's see what we can do." ''We cannot shoot if they fight," said the soldiers. "We have no orders." "But if you must?" asked the sanitary inspector. "I hate to get into this sort of thing," said the corporal in a strange voice. 46 The group passed through the village climbing the terraces upon which octagonally-shaped brown houses had been built. There was silence in the air, even the children and women standing by their doors to watch the government men as they passed were silent and speechless. A dog barked but was stoned immediately by its master. The house of the lepers was way out of the village. "Even the villagers had to isolate them afterwards," said the sanitary inspector, "in that little hut." ''How do they eat then?" asked one of the privates. "The relatives throw them food," answered the teniente del barrio. "As if they were pigs. Nobody cares to go near them. You see, their faces are almost eaten up, full of sores and pus. Their fingers and toes are no more. They look like thin, bony, bllirless ghosts. Our children are scared of them." gHE SOLDIERS climbed the last terrace outside of the village then stopped as planned. The sanitary inspector and the teniente del barrio proceeded a little farther. Suddenly they also stopped. From a little hut only a little larger than a pig pen came a twanging, vicious sound. "Arrows!" exclaimed the sanitary inspector, jumping with shocked surprise as an arrow whisked by. "They have made bows and arrows!" said the teniente del barrio. From the hut three almost naked bodies, ugly, weird, ghostly, suddenly moved out, huddled together in battle formation, each holding a bow and arrows, a spear and a battle-ax. A pair of arrows followed the first shaft. "They can shoot!" exclaimed the sanitary inspector. "Comrades!" he shouted, holding up his arms. ''We are not going to harm you. Look, I come alone near you. Soldiers are with me, it is true but they are behind and wouldn't do anything to you. I come to help you. Understand me?" M..\RcH 1955 47 The three weird figures of living death held their places suspiciously. "I know what you want to do," said their spokesman, the eldest undoubtedly, his voice a ringing hollow of anger. "You want to bring us once more to the hospital. We don't want any hospital." "We want to cure you. The governor ordered us to get you. You must come with us peacefully," said the sanitary inspector. "We shall die want to go away. place long ago." here," said the spokesman. "We don't They wanted to ~ake us away to a far To this the sanitary inspector had no answer. What could he say? The realization came - I will not be able t<> get them, my mission is useless. Can I tell a lie? "We shall not do that sort of thing," said he. ''When the governor came last month, he heard of you. He even saw you. It is his kind.riess that moved him to send us that you may be cured of your disease." The spokesman of the three raised his spear wildly in defiance. "We shall not go with you. You think you can cure us. Do you think you can cure us?" "We shall cure you," said the sanitary inspector, almost choking. "You cannot cure us," the three said. Then the woman painfully lumbered a little forward as if to show her whole being before all men. Her face was almost a hole, her fingers nothing but stumps. And yet the wonder of it was that she could still hold a spear and a battleax, ready to fight. "We are entirely helpless," cried the other brother. "You see how we are. You cannot take us away. It is painful to move as it is, to live and we know we cannot be cured anymore. Please leave us in peace." "Leave us to die in peace," cried the woman, her voice one nasal tone going out of the eaten-up hollow of her face. 48 PANORAMA g HE SANITARY inspector looked at the teniente del barrio, then at the soldiers. He thought of his duty. What would the doctor say? The governor? Money had already been procured by the .government for the_ transport of these living-dead, doomed ghosts of men whose bodies rotted. Here he was trying to cajole them, invite them, entreat them in the name of kindness and charity. For what? That the law of exiles be obeyed. What must I say? "We have lived here during all our lives," said the spokesman, and now there was a new, almost tender ring in his voice. "Yau, too, have homes. All of you. Yau, too, have been born in the soil you love. We were born here, we grew up here. We lived all these long years here. This is our land, our home. We don't want any other." That struck into the heart of the sanitary inspector. He was young again. He was going to school. He was singing, "'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam . . . " And as if to carry on his point further, like a lawyer pleading his case before a stern, unsmiling judge, the spokesman suddenly flung his weapons away from himself, bared his breast in one wild, dramatic gesture, raised his hands in open pleading. "Shoot us," he said. "It is better for us to die here. We know we shall not live long. Everyday we bear the pain, the smell of our bodies poisons us, we await death that does not come. This is our fate, and we can die without complaint, but we dvn't want to go away from here. If we had wanted to go away we could have gone long ago. What did we do? We escaped. Please tell the governor our wish. We want to be left here. Let him be kind to us." g HE LEPER then looked at the heavens, clear in the morning sunlight. The sanitary inspector unconsciously followed his gaze. Above the clouds an eagle was soaring, calm and majestic. Where was its home? The smell of blooming rice filled the air with sweet, floating peace. Even a leper must have a home in which to die. Suddenly the sanitary inspector moved to the group of soldiers. There was a ring of exasperation in his voice. "Let's go, he said. "Let's go home." He felt sick. The three lepers stood in front of their huts looking at the men who suddenly had gone away, wondering what had happened yet wordless in their surprise. MARCH 1955 49 It was like the passing of a heavy cloud that promised rain - rain that would either flood over the earth and destroy living things, or lend unto creation the sweet, swift bountiful sap of life. This coming of the soldiers and the sanitary inspector, strong-bodied symbols of health and life had filled them witl1 a sense of foreboding and desolation. And yet they had gone leaving behind them the skeletons that waited for death, like the heavy cloud sweeping unto space with all the promise of hope· it once held. There was a sudden loneliness come upon the lepers. They wondered but did not know. They only felt the desolation of the · earth, the helpless striving of puny creation against the power and promise of life gone into the pus and sores of inescapable annihilation. To the three of them the sadness came and they stood speechless and forsaken. Looking back once more, the sanitary inspector felt himself more sick. He thought of his own home. He hastened his steps, feeling the charm of the skies. "We'll say they are not here," he said to no one in particular. "We were told that they are dead. Yes, who would like to transport them away in his truck seeing their sores, and what passengers would ride in that truck again?" 50 * * * On Humor True humor springs not merely fron:i the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but ·in still smiles, which lie far deeper. -Thomas Carlyle • • The sense of humor is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best 1eCUrity against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination. -Richard Milnesa • PANORAMA HUNTING With Bittocula'ts • A fascinating old sport takes a new twist EARLY THIS year 8,000 or more hunters, armed with nothing deadlier than a pair of high - powered b i n o c u 1 a rs tramped the highlands and the plains, the valleys and the mountains of North America to watch birds. They were the members of the National Audobon Society and this ,year they were all out to identify and count the birds that flit across Canada and the United States. Birdwatching as a sport originated with James John Audubon. a slight dreamy-looking sort of a chap, who liked to roam the hills to spot auks and 2nhingas. He passed on to posterity a portfolio filled with pictures of almost every bird on the North American continent from sparrows to shrikes and from cardinals to condors. Birdwatching is bv no means a tame sport. As practiced by the members of the Audubon society, it combines the patience MARCH 1955 required of a water-buffalo hunter, the facile memory of a pokE!r player, the endurance of a tennis player and the hazards met by mountain climbers and explorers. It wouldn't surprise anyone if birders, as devotees of the sport are called, would suddenly take up deep-sea diving just so they could study the feet of sea-gulls. Birdwatching as a pastime for amateurs started on a big scale in December 1900. The birders of the pre - depression year found out that the bird population of North America had diminished. The great auk had become a rarity; passenger pigeons no longer stun the ears. With admirable coordination, the birders worked for protection laws and treaties and got them. Sinct= then, the birds have multiplied almost as fast as the birders. Now, only a handful of birdwatchers are professioanl ornithologists. Most of them 51 are amateurs who get great satisfaction and pleasure in identifying the 700 species found in the United States and Canada. Birders conduct their game on the honor system. Two together must agree on identification. Small groups of birds must be counted exactly And huge flocks estimated to the closest feather. Birders train themselves to do·· this with responsible accuracy by throwing up a handful of rice on a table and estimating the number of grains by the spread and then checking the i r estimate by counting the grains. Artificial devices for luring or flushing birds are considered sporting. Birdwatchers have a whistle which could reproduce the calls of all the commoner birds. Their latest gadget is a plastic ''bird" with a trombone slide that can be made to chirp and whistle like a cardinal or mourn hke a white-throated sparrow. ALTHOUGH birders are known - to have gone to extravagant lengths to prove that a flitting object was really a bowerbird and not a flytail, they can not explaip away satisfactorily their unusual devotion to the sport. They do not have a clear simple motto like the Everest climber: ''Because it is there." They usually murmur something about liking birds since their ·childhood, or about the thrill of hunting without the 52 blood or about the health of the great outdoors. Between the groups, numbering from two to 120 or more, who compose the 500-odd area counts for· the National Audobon Society, there was intense competition for identifying great rarities, counting the greatest number of different species and making the highest count for individual birds. No count was better organized than the one led by Allan Dudley Cruickshak whose profession incidentally is bird photography. He divided his area, Cocoa, Florida, into sections which were assigned to 17 birders. Each .group had to divide the section into subsection which we r e observed weeks ahead on foot, by boat or by car, the birders noting carefully the concentration of birds, their species and feeding habits. If a rare specimen happens along, it is kept within the area by specially constructed feed stations. Then the great day came and Helen Cruickshak and three other ladies walked out on a dike to count anhingas (water turkey). Across their path two alligators were asleep. The determined ladies drove the alligators away and continued on counting. At the day's end, all the Cocoa groups had tallied 167 species, a great improvement over their 1953 record of 14 7 species. PANORAMA I N LOUISIANA'S St. Francisville-Port Hudson area, 12 observers amassed 141 species, an impressive record considering that their total last year was 113. In California, where everything is done in a colossal way, Gray Lodge and Butte Sink Refuges birders counted 786,3 70 birds, mostly waterfowls, with two spotters in a plane contributing huge numbers to the already impressive total. In less temperate places. the birders had difficult problems like the instability of the birds' habits. Birders had to start counting as early as 2: 30 a.m. The wilderness areas did not monopolize the big counts. Right in the middle of New York City. 10 birders counted 4 7 species, including a rarity that had flown ~o America .from Europe. Their count of individuals was 117,700 mostly starlings that live under tne roofs of the tall buildings. Birdwatching is not a spectacular sport. Its devotees play the game silently but the inner glow of pride that a golfer feels when he makes an eagle is shared by the birder when he spots among the buzzards a golden eagle. * * * COMMUTER - one who spends his lite In riding to and from his wife, A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again. -Elwyn Brooks White * * Double Protrams: THE EGYPTIAN-ON THE WATERFRONT THE STUDENT PRINCE-BORN YESTERDAY • MARCH 1955 53 •'htilfi Book Review W/fuTM/futfuT(fufd\tiWNTfi\iimWliWf&IDitP' 1k Wei9ltt ot t!te e'Loss· I By LEONARD CASPER Not all a sailor's burden is m his seabag a FTER THE first World War, it was The Enormous Room which gave fascinated readers of fiction an insight into the life of German prison camps. Since the second World War it has been Three Came Home (the moral breakdown of those interned by the Japanese in the southwest Pacific), The Wooden Horse (repeated, ingenious escapes from Nazi concentration camps), and Stalag 17 (the horseplay that kept prisoners sane and human, despite intrigues that gnawed on their bones). The Weight of the Cross, although written by a young American, three years the victim of Japanese imprisonment in Manila, is unlike any of its brother novels. Rather, it resembles a • Robert O. Bowen. The Weight of the Cron. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1954. 54 work like The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene's "religious thriller" about a Mexican priest during the late persecution of Catholics. It has the author's insight into the hardship of being a Christian, uncloistered. Both books investigate the survival of virtue, on the royal road to everyman's calvary. Bowen's novel offers an unprepossessing chief character: Tom Daley, crazed sailor temporarily in a Cavite psycho ward for assaulting his captain. Tom is a renegade 'Catholic because he cannot dissociate his religion from his overbearing father: his hate has taken him away, to the navy; but that 'is no escape. In a fit, he throws the Old Man, his superior officer, down a companionway and is confined. His only friend is Gaddy, another psycho who has slashed his wrists, in recollection of the strange love triangle in PANORAMA which his sister and her husband have also participated. While these two men are still under medical interrogation, war in the new shape of Japanese bombers comes. The patients are ferried, witP, heavy casualties, across the bay to another Navy ward in the American sector of Manila. After making a break, Tom and Gaddy start for Bataan, guided by Minook, a turncoat Filipino who betrays them and, for doing so, is himself slain by their Japanese captors. g HE COMING of war has legalized Tom's brutal -Oesire to kill. Yet when he shoots Japanese soldiers unnecessarily in escaping from them, he feels that he has committed such evil as can be repaid, ultimately, only by his own death. Although this self-confession makes him feel better, he still denies being a Catholic even when Gaddy, who has been brought up in the same church, reminds him that Catholics have not only consciences but a sense of the necessity of doing penance. When the two are caught again by the Japanese and Tom admits to being a Christian, though it almost costs his life, he wishes at that moment of certainty he might have died. Instead he has to learn to let his suffering serve as his pen:m<:e: on the long, starved marMARCH 1955 ches; at Old Bilibid; and in the crippling work gangs at Port Area. Slowly the weight of the cross lifts from his shoulders. When Pete, a yc;mng Filipino comrade, tries to escape and is killed, it is Tom who buries him, because the boy left him a silver crucifix; and it is Tom who, twice a day for five days, exposes Peti?'s skull for roll call, until Ichiban, an unusually humane Japanese officer, makes the macabre ritual stop. Again, on the docks Tom organizes' his work gang in such a way as to keep the burden off ic:uch sick men as Capt. Jackson, wounded badly through the feet and now trying to pass h!mself off as an ordinary enlisted man. The prisoners are worked _like slaves; but Tom knows how to carry the heaviest load on the bones of his frame, so that muscles are not strained; he develops .the instinct of a rat, in finding protein (fish, soy bean curd, canned meat) to loot, aboard ship; and he has a deeper understanding than the others of the need to suffer. Somehow he survives, even while others begin to totter on legs bloated with beri-beri. When Capt. Jackson finally is shot for looting the enemy's rations, Tom devotes himself again to Gaddy, who having lost his will to endure, seems to be dying from the inside out. The more that Gaddy burrows 55 inside his own brooding mind and ignores the real world, the more of his own strength Tom devotes to him. Their days on the docks end when a steel pier door collapses on Gaddy. Although his life is saved by Tom's quick action, he loses d foot and Tom himself, as a result of his injury, finds one of his own legs shorter than the other. OJ) HILE THEY convalesce ir.. Bilibid, word comes of the return of the American forces. But despite all of Tom's (sometimes crude) efforts to save him, Gaddy withdr2ws farther and farther until he is beyond the reach of human touch. But at least Tom is consoled by the last-minute faith that not Gaddy's soul, but only its hold on life, was diseased. Redeemed by that faith, Tom finds himself liberated from more than one imprisonment; and his own war with God and his father is ended. This modern moral pilgrimage, not so sudden nor so thunderous as the recorded conversion of St. Paul, has the more impact for not being overwritten. The spiritual nature of its conflict saves the novel from surrendering to its more sensational elements. The simplicity of Tom's attitude towards himself, even though sometimes mistaken, makes credible the sureness of his progress towards salvation: too often the modern writer's tour of his hero's tortured mind describes it as a labyrinth, from which any exit seems even superhumanly impossible. Tom is desperate, in the first depths of his rebellion against a world which he misunderstands but which he thinks·misunderstands him. Yet his instinct to rescue - as on the bombed-out ferry - is as strong as, and later stronger than, his urge to kill. It is this grace, remembrance of man, which secretly nourishes and restores him. With such an underlying theme, The Weight of the Cr088 bet:omes not so much a description of the evil in any group of nationals, as a dramatization of any man's wrestling with his own evil self, in the long dark corridors of the soul. * * * 56 The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. * PANORAMA Most of the twenty words given below should be in your reading ·;ocabulary. That is, you Lhould be sble to r!!C1>5nize them, although you may not t.e able to define or &etually use them in writing. Select the proper definition for each, then turn to page 80 for tne correct answers. Fifteen is pass~ng. 1. cache- a) hardened mass; b) munitions depot; c) a hidden store of food or supplies; d) a wasting-away disease. 2. charlatan- a) quack; b) a court entertainer; c) a witch; d) a false religi,;us leader. 3. laconic-a) artistically inclined; b) dalicately carved; c) extremely wordy; d) brief in speech. 4. mirage-a) a misleading appearance or illusion; b) an overcalculation of distance; c) old age; d) a clever mirror device. 5. etutle- a) a lyric poem; b) a study; c) musical accompaniment; d) concluding number. 6. captious- a) hard to please; b) wide; c) watchful; d) jealous. 7. inchoate - a) mentally unbalanced; b) di1pleasing to the ear; c) incomplete ~r- undeveloped; d)"°undecided. 8. impute-a) unclean in dressing; b) unreasonably critical; c) to take back; d) to change or to bla~. 9. indite-a) to amuse by singing; b) to compose; c) to accuse; d) childishly simple. 10. jargon - a) confused, meaningless talk or writing; b) inclination to war; c) rude remark; d) an earthen Yesael. 11. nacre-a) untilled land; lt) petty wrangling; c) a precious souvenir; o) mother-of-pearl. 12. quicksilver-a) any quack medicine; b) mercury; c) a spirited horse; d) a metal alloy. 13. spinet-a) weaving machine; b) a compact upright piano; c) a professional clown; d) a top .• 14. suave-a) clean shaven; b) well-modulated in voice; c) coming in regaler intervals; d) smoothly polite. 15. mzbaltern-a) sl!bordinate; b) a changed person; c) a ~enicr :nedicai student; a) underground caver:i. 16. upbraid- a) to twin1', as hair; b) tQ raise from childhood; c) to blame or scold; d) to praise publicly. 17. perl'licious-a) Ieng-winded; b) planted to fams; c) funny like a clown; d) harmful. 18. incarnato- a) embodied in flesa; b) pure; c) divine; d) . flower-like in appearance. l~. necromancer - a) an orator for· the dead; b) navigator; c) star gazer; d) magician. 20. astute-a) shrewd; b) pointed like a dagger; c) needy; d) convincing. :M:ARCH 1955 57 A mechanical genius that can translate Russian into English in ten seconds flat promises an exciting new possibility in better world understanding Translating Machine 0 NE MAJOR obstacle to the internf!.tionality of science is the diversity of languages, as a result of which half or more of what is published is useless to half or more of the world's scientists, technologists and medical men. The actual proportions so lost are very difficult to estimate statistically, but vary from one branch of science to another and change in the course of time. In chemistry, for instance, German was the leading language until shortly after the First World War, when English took its place. French at one time came second, but after 1914 it ranked only fourth and now Japanese competes 58 with it for fifth place. Nearly seventy y e a rs ago Russian reached fifth place among forty languages, but it is now competing with German for second place. Technical translating is slow, difficult and uncertain. Since nobody can translate what he does not understand, it follows that the translator must be himself a scientist as well as acquainted witl1 the language h3 fs translating trom, and competent as an author in the language he is translating into. .t:specially whe:::e the less common languages and the more recondite specialties of sc1ence are concerned these qualities are PANORAMA rarely fou;.1u in perfect combination. But, from the consumer's point of view, translating is nec.:ssarily expensive. Where an original journal can be bought for the equivalent of perhaps 50 U.S. cents, a translation of a scientific article in . it, made by a specialist, will cost perhaps $50. In other words it is not worth paying to have done unless there are grounds tor supposing it will be worth a hundred times as much as to th~ scientist who wants it as something on the sam~ topic in his own language. The more technical a translation, the less part that the linguist as such and the greater the part that the subject specialist can play in making it a good one. This being so, quite promising experiments have been made in replacing the linguist by eiectronic machines, built on the lines of mathematical computer3. Such machines arc able pe1manently to register sequences of Code patterns of electrical impulses corresponding to the different letters of the alphabet, fed into them by operating a typewriter keyboard. If two equivalent words in different languages have been so registered at the. same time, the "typing'' of one of these at any future time will cause the machine automatically and instantaneously to type out the other. MARCH 1955 J F THAT were all, we should have a mechanical dictionary. It is possible, however, to go considerably further. The machine can be made to type out code letters which indicate how the words fed into it in the language of origin are grammaticaliy modified or inflected. It need not be limited to single words but may be "taught to recognize'' a whole unit phrase in one language and type out the corres;)onding, syntactically quite different, phrase in another language. Though the machine cannot produce by itself an intelligible translation - let alone in good literary style - when a text in one language is "fed" into it, it types out a string of words, aiternative meanings· of homonyms, symbolic letters and odd looking phrases which a specialist in the subject of the text wilI have no difficulty in editin2: and turning into an acceptable rendering, even though he may know nothing at all of tl:e original language. Though it is more likely tu be in handling very out-of-theway languages that such machines might find a possible use the following example so rendered from French into Englisq may be of interest. Here A is the original text, C is what the subject specialist, not knowing French, turned it into. ( v means "vacuous" or ::i.eaningless; me means multiple, plural or dual: S!JI RUSSIAN TO ENGLISH IN 10 SECONDS On January 7 the International Business Machine Corporation, producers of the world's largest electronic calculators, gave the first public demonstration of a new type of translating machine at work. At the demonstration, held in New York, the machine was given various sentences in Russian for translation into Engiish. One of t..'ie sentence·s was: "Myezhdunarodnoye ponyimanyiye yavlyayetsya vazhnim faktorom v ryeshyenyiyi polyityichyeskyix voprosov." Ten seconds later the machine translated in English: "International understanding ccntributes an important factor in the decision of political questions." z means "unspecific"; the sign / denotes the ooint of separation of semantic -elements.) A. 11 n'est pas etonn/ ant de constat/er que Jes hormone/s de croissance ag/issent sur certain/ es sepece/s, alors qu'elles sont in/aper/antes sur d'autre/s, si l'on son~/ e a la grand/e specificite de ces substancejs. B. v not is not/step astonish v of establish v that/ which? v hormone m of growth act m on certain m species m, then that/which? v not operate m on of other m if v one dream/ consider z to v great r:;pecificitv of those substance m. C. It is not surptising to learn that growth hormones may act on certain species while having no effect on others, when one remembers the narrow specificity of these substances. Clearly it is better, if possible, for a scientist to be able to read foreign articles himself than to have to depeni:l 0.1 translations. In the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands. Switzerland and some others. ~o almost everyone has had to learn to do this, but even in these countries few know Russian or Japanese, and elsewhere E:bility to read English, German or French is far from universal. In theory at least, proposals to encourage the use of one particular language, whether natural or artificial, as the medium of scientific communication in all countries have much to. commend them. Science, however, is a branch of culture and it is natural for each country to feel that an efflorescence of its own culture may best be encouraged through the use of its own language;. The problem is a- difficult one and too large to be discussed here. It is ideas, not individual concepts, that have to be translated, and it is tl~e phrase, not the individual word, that is the unit of langua~e. In. point of fact it very seldom happens that an expression in one language has its exact equivalent in another. Their central meanings may or PANORAMA may not be the same, but nearly alway"s the penumbra of meaning is different. In English usage "welding" is differentiated from "soldering," whereas the French word "soudage" cover!f· both. "Concrete" in English and "beton" in French, both mean a mixtur~ of large and small stones and sand stuck together with cement or "climent," is also commonly used as a synonym for "beton." These are rather superficial examples, but others like them - which mav have serious consequences, e"'ven financially - occur in every branch of technica.l i ty. Ideally, to eliminate s u c h misunderstandings, the translator should be so accustomed not only to reading to himself but to reasoning about the technical subject-matter in both languages, that the nuances of the special terms are second nature to him. In very specialized fields, and for the less common languages, that, however, is a counsel of perfection. T!:is means that dictionaries, although dangerous, are a necessity. To make them safe it is essential that they should indicate not only the nearest equivalents of the technical terms, but just how inexact the equivalences are, enabling the translator to introduce some qualifying word or turn of phrase to correct tbe inexactitude of meaning t h a t would otherwise be conveyed. MARCH 1955 The u 1 t i m a t e remedy is standardization of the meanings of technical terms on the basis of definitions agreed upon by the specialists concerned in each language. Unesco is about to publish a classified bibliography of existing authoritative glossaries of this kind in single languages complementary to its Bibliography of Interlingual Sdentific and Technical Dictionarie::1. The latter contains references to about 1,630 such works under nearly 400 subject heads, interconnecting 72 lanr,;uages. Standardization in the full sense mentioned above must inevitably be a slow process. Meanwhile the production of more and better special dictionaries is a matter of urgent international importance. This being so, the policy which Unesco is pursuing is that cf helping and encouraging the international organizations concerned with each field of science and technology to produce dictionaries which shall contain a mixt u re , typographically distinguished, of terms and definitions which are fuily standardized terms which are recommended by th o s e organizations, and terms - including regional variations - wQich fall into neither of these categories but are liable to occur in the technica literature. - Edwin Holmstrom from the UNESCO COURRIER. 6J Literary Personality - III T. S. ££JOT: The Solitary Fire-Watcher Not candles for a coflin, but vilZil lamps and a vision of the Grail J T HAS often been remarked that Mr. Eliot resembles an undertaker rather than one of the half-century's most influential poets, critics, and dramatists. In England where he· now has lived 40 years, having given up his American citizenship, he walks as quickly as possible away from strangers who identify him. He is solemn and solitary. An average day for Eliot begins at eight, with a lOng session of reading o:r writing. After a large but late breakfast of tea, porridge, bacon and eggs, he sets out at noon for the publishing firm of Faber and Faber, where he is an editor. He walks to the bus stop, dressed in a dark blue suit and carrying a tightly rolled umbrella. As the bus moves away with him, he unfolds his London newspaper to the crossword puzzle. He pays no attention to himself and hopes that no one else will, either. Eliot is not interested in himself but only in his writings. Here he ceases to be shy and meets his readers with a hard steady look. Thomas Stearns Eliot was the spoiled seventh child of a St. Louis grocer whose ancestors, from England, had helped found the city's first Unitarian church. His Irish nurse, however, kept taking him to her own, a Catholic, church for services. His nights were spent listening to his father read Dickens to the family. When he reached Harvard at 18, he was so well prepared that he finished the four-year course in three years. Meanwhile, thinking he was too skinny, he took boxing lessons; and compensated· for his physique by mocking his PANORAMA classmates in verse. In Paris for a year, he wrote his first serious poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," about an aging timid man I!leasuring out his life "with coffee spoons," and startled by the thought of all his lost opportunities. When World War I caught him in England, Eliot stayed to teach history, Latin, French, German, arithmetic, drawing and swimming in boys' schools; and to marry a ballet dancer, the daughter of a British artist. After the Armistice he worked for a while in Lloyds Bank, then joined a publishing firm. '\\) ITH HIS sharp sword-tip tongue, he continued to cut caricatures into the graqite of his time's consciousness. His favorite was Apeneck Sweeney among the trees, the brute who forgot to descend from the ape~ and yet passed himself off as a man. Sweeney's vulgar voice, raised with his friends' in drunken revelry, nearly drowned out the "nightingales . . . singing near Th~ Convent of the Sacred Heart . . . " There were many such apenecks in the post-war ruins of Europe, some o: them men so disillusioned by four years of killing that any barroom brawl seemed civilized by comparison. A whole generation felt suddenly lost and old, as impotent .'.lS "Gerontion," the feeble elder waiting for death after dinner, in Eliot's pcem. Only a few, like the poet, had the faith to survive such a war. In 1922, with the help of criticism from Ezra Pound who had also aided Ernest Hemingway, Eliot published his "compressed epic," The Waste Land, the most influential poem of our century. What this long, startling work had to say applied not only to Eliot's own "lost generation" but to all cultured people fast becoming u~civilized because their devotion to their bodies and their factory-cities deprived them of that sense of sin without which no ~ense of grace is possible. Love, perverted, has become lust: the self is absorbed in self. The sickness· of mind after the day's rush of unaimed work in executive suites, the "guilt complex" which psychoanalysis excuses by saying that to will evil for others is commonplace and natural - these are the only remnants left to remind us that the soul itself can be i:orrupted and that the other signs are only symptoms of that deeper disease. The theme of The l-Vaste Land is nO\vhere stated in such bald terms. Rather, being a poem, it depends on a series of parallel images, orchestrated in recurring patterns, so that the meaning grows crystal-clear gradually and more and more forceMARCH 1955 63 ful. It is more than a description of a timeless, sterile condition in man. Many of its images - drawn from St. Augustine, from pre-Christian cults, from Brahma - urge the return to sublimely felt religion, which by giving meaning to suffering brings the peace that passeth understanding. The first critics only sniffed at this poem. Time magazine called it a hoax. But Eliot, realizing that the critics themselves were suffering from th~ sickness of the times, smiled his quiet minister's smile and waited. In an age of growing skepticism, he was confirmed into the High Church of England in 1927, and in the same year became a British subje:::t because the friends he valued most were in that country. C LIOT HAS challenged po~try to be _useful: ~t shc;>uld prevent language from becommg barbaric, too s1mphfied to convey the important human experiences; also, it should be entertaining, it should grip a man's vitals; but above all, it should help man be alert to his inner and outer surroundings. In Ash Wednesday (1930) he retold the mission of the way of the cniss; in his pageant, The Rock ( 1934 ), he stood firmly against the modern heresy of automatic progress and the modern confusion of information _with wisdom; in his long essay, Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, (1938)_, he suggested a Europe united as closely as a small community, through its devotion to Christianity; in his play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), he showed how Thomas Becket made his public doctrines a living private faith, through martyrdom. Eliot's service as fire-warden on the roof of his office buildfog during the war suited his love of solitary meditation. The death of his wife in 194 7, however; left him more alone than he cared to be. Since then he has lived with critic John Hayward who, almost completely paralyzed, manages to get about London in a wheelchair. He continues to dress well, if soberly, to drink claret and to enjoy good cheese. He is his firm's best writer of book jacket blurbs. His friends call him Tom or "Old Possum," and think of him as a man who wrote a "practical" book about cats, for children. He is a devoted Sherlock Holmes fan, but relaxes best with outbursts of practical jokes: exploding cigars, squirting buttonholes and soapy chocolates. He claims to be afraid of high places and cows. 64 PANORAMA Jl LTHOUGH IN 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize and the British Order of Merit, he is considered a critic's critic and a poet's poet, his personal humility and hard labor continue. Even though he has written a handful of successful plays, he still resorts to chalk and blackboard to work out his plots and is never quite sure when the curtain should go up and when down. Because he bears his fellowman's burden of civilization as well as his own, he is not a jolly man. But if his fellowman does not always· sympathize with him to the extent of reassuming his own part of the world's work, yet he does respect Eliot's seriousness. Friends swarm around him so closely that they resent his changes of mind, knowing that they will have to change theirs too. T. S. Eliot himself cares to be neither leader nor prophet to these swarms. His only care is to live out his life as he must, according to his poetic temper and civilized conscience. Meanwhile he tends the fires of humanity, keeping the embers warm but watching out for conflagrations.-L.C. • • • That's Fair Enough! A MONG the Australian bushmen, women lead a life of semi-slavedom. But though life is harder for women than for men, .the division of labor between the two i.1 clearly defined. The male is the hunter and warrior; the gin wields the aigging stick and forages for food. Her "marriage" often takes place at an early age and she may "remarry'' several times. One strange custom which is rigidly observed: no one may look at his mother-in-law nor may she in tum look at him under any circumstances • • MARCH 1955 65 B r u a n m rides the bandwagon • His heart was a sideshow T HERE COULD have been no Barnum and Bailey Circus, no Greatest Show on Earth, if in the mid-nineteenth century there had not been, just off every American main street, a musewn of living and dead curiosities, -minstrei shows in the music-halls, and the red and gold wagons of the miniature traveling circus. P. T. Barnum proved that he was a master showman by knowing when to jump on the bandwagon, grab hold of the reins, and keep the crowds rolling in the direction they had chosen. A newspaperman once called Barnum the Napoleon of Public Caterers. He never failed to amuse the unsophisticated masses of his day, who were beginning to thicken the populations at the frontier but who continued to feel restless, although they thought they had settled 66 down. The people wanted variety. Barnum gave them Feejee mermaids, General Tom Thumb the midget, the Bearded Lady, and the Campagnolian Bell Ringers. If Barnum had been in politics, he would have become ·a second Andrew Jackson, the backwoods President with a 'coonskin cap. The lower-half millions loved his hoaxes. They were no different from the visitors at his Museum who willingly followed the sign· "to the Egress' - and found themselves in the street. In the minds of many small-town prudes, the theater was still a snake pit to trap young girls. Yet many of these same citizens sat as =spellbound in Barnum's version of Uncle Tom's Cabin as if they had attended a sermon. Since these were Victorian times, he purged eve n Shakespeare's PANORAMA plays when he staged them. But he felt more at home with the elephants. IN NEW YORK City, Barnum's Museum, with its six hundred thousand curiosities, became a national institution. Visitors could watch living serpents being fed, or have their fortunes told, or wonder at the model of Niagara Falls. Even ex-mayors came to measure the three-foot five-inch ankles of the 619-pound, giant. The crowds enjoyed the faked exhibits as well as the honest ones. Nobody blinked at the so-called nurse of George Washington; the famous Wooly Horse, supposedly captured by the California explorer, John , Royalty at the Circus Fremont; and later the white elephants of· Siam, whose· whitewash kept fading! Barnum's most spectacular triumph was his presentation of the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, to America. From the moment of her landing, thousands of people thronged in her wake. Her carriage could hardly move through the :;treets. Once when she dropped a peachstone from her balcony, a street fight started. One spectator charged twenty-five cents to kiss the outside of what was declared one of her gloves, and fifty cents the inside. Tickets for her first concert were auctioned off at $225. Soon, coats, cigars, oysters, everything was being named after her. Even Barnum had never seen Jenny Lind before she landed. But he played on Until the death cf her husoand, Queen Victoria of Great Britain constantly attended the theater. She enjoyed everything from opera to lion-tamers. In 1887, year c.f her golden jubilee, she left Windr;or Castle three times to see circus performances in London. popular sentiment by publicizing her beauty, her generosity and her goodness. As he toured the country with his prima donna, he lectured alternate nights on intemperance. Barnum made SS for every one that Jenny Lind was given. But ' no one begrudged hi s lion's share. Edward VII was just as unashamed of the pleasure he took. Writing of him, a novelist ·said, "When he laughs, he laughs from the tip of his beard to his bald head, and he laughs all round his neck." Only the new Queen Elizabeth quietly tries to keep her feelings to herself. Instead of the Royal Box, she · prefars ~o sit at least four rows back, so that she can slip in and out of the exit when she likes. MARCH 1955 When his museum exhibitions seemed to tire the people, Bar67 num introduced melodrama, variety acts, and finally minstrel shows already made famous by such premium fans as President Lincoln. Barnum had his Ethiopian Serenaders, singing and dancing black-faced comedians. In contrast to the theater of the times, m i n st re I shows seemed completely spontaneous and topical. But because there were no women in the casts and because the horrors of Civil War made the mistrel shows too unreal to bear, even Barnum could not save them. He looked around for a new bandwagon to ride. F OR YEARS there had been little menageries a n d bands of itinerant acrobats on the Eastern coast. One man, Hackaliah Bailey, lived off the receipts of his famous elephant Old Bet. She became so wellloved that Bailey used to travel at night, to avoid giving a free show en route. But whenever they learned that Old Bet was coming, the !armers lined the night road with huge bonfires. Sometimes the menageries and acrobatic troupes traveled together, but it was long before they actually merged into a single show and began to transport their own tents. For just as long, they were forced to call themselves "moral and educational exhibitions... The final stage was 11ot reached u.-itil just 68 before Barnums' time: the merger with hor:::e shows. Thereafter, rings were introduced, with bareback riding and trick horsemanship, and the circus had earned the right to its name. To the usual bears, wolves, and monkeys at last ostriches were added, nine feet tall, and polar bears, and elephants. The conditions of the circus suited frontier democracy. Everyone who could beg or borrow the price of admission was welcome to the performance. Debutantes and chambermaids sat side by side. These were the conditions that P. T. Barnum inherited; and he made the most of them. Nothing in the mid-1800's could rival his Grand Colossal Museum and Menagerie. Besides the choicest freaks from his first Museum, the master showman had chartered a ship and sent abroad for his own animals. It was a landmark in circus history when his ten elephants, new arrivals from Ceylon, paraded down Broadway harnessed in pairs to a gilded chariot. The crowd of thousands barely let them through, to pass in review before the hotel balcony where smiling Jenny Lind was watching. Barnum was ready to make a small town bandwagon be the start of The Greatest Show on Earth - Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey. PANORAMA THE STORY OF THE LINOTYPE * THE All the printed pages produced by the world were Ottmar Mergenthaler's epitaphs when he died 0 N JULY 3, 1886, a grimy, hirsute, 36-year old German sat before a tall, unwieldylooking machine of tubes, molds and levers with a wide black keyboard and started tapping away. The machine -came ayve and after a moment of anxious gestation gave birth to a thin metal slug. Whitelaw Reid, the publisher of the New York Tribune, eagerly picked up the still burning slug, juggled it excitedly in his hands to allow it to cool off, and then examined it carefully. "Ottmar," he cried, ''you've done it! A line o' type!" Thus the machine which took Ottmar Mergenthaler ten years to build was christened and f9rmally introduced to the world of printers and publi:;hers. Printers and fypesetters were distressed by the invention. It was a job-killer, they said. Thousands of men would be thrown out of work. They were, however, mistaken because instead of killing jobs, Mergenthaler's machine created thousands of new oportunities and opened the mind of the world Before the era of the linotype, printing and publishing were costly enterprises that required the employment of thousands of men. They worked in huge buildings that housed immense racks of typecases. A press could print 25,000 newspapers an hour but typesetting was still the tedious business that Butenberg had devised - picking letters from typecases, one at a time, forming words, then sentences. The process was so slow that even the richest newspapers were limited to eight pages. Books and magazines were thin and expensive, and even in the United States only 76 public libraries had more than 300 books. STORY OF THE LINOTYPE * THE STORY MARcH 1955 69 THE STORY OF THE LINOTYPE * THE T HE FIRST typesetting machine was patented m 1882 but it was so imperfect and costly that it was never used. But it made the need for such a machine felt and mechanical geniuses started working. Mark Twain supported the construction of a mechanical typesetter and lost a fortune. This machine had 18,000 parts and cost S 1,500,00. Only the inventor could operate it. His assistants could not even start the monster. Most inventors tried to build a machine that would do the work of a printer - that is, selecting single letters and forming them into words. Merger.thaler who had never seen a printing shop before had the advantage of an open mind. He would never have thought, however, of building the linotype had he not met James 0. Clephane. They met in 1876 when Mergenthaler was working in a Baitimore tool shop. Clephane was a: court stenographer who was obsessed with the idea of an engine that could- reproduce court records cheaply and ra· pidly. Clephane outlined to Mergenthaler a machine that would impress letters on papier-mache making a mold which could cast a bar of type. Mergenthaler dismissed the idea as impractical. The impressions would be uneven and the metal would stick to the mold. But Clephane was insistent and Mergenthaler built the machine for him. The defects that Mergenthaler foresaw were the prime faults of this first linotype. By this time both Clephane and Mergenthaler, were hot with the idea. Clephane persuaded several businessmen to back up Mergenthaler's experiments. For two years, Mergenthaler labored over the machine. The problem of a satisfactory mold persisted. Then one evening while he was on a train bound for Wasliington to attend a meeting of his financiers, whose faith in him by this time had run low, the answer came to him. Instead of papier-mache he would use hard-metal molds STORY OF THE LINOTYPE * THE STORY 70 PANOJtAMA OF THE LINOTYPE * THE STORY OF THE brought into quick contact with molten metal. For two years he worked on the machine. Publishers of the New York Tribune and Washington Post came to inspect his plans. They were impressed. People started buying stock in his company. Then on July 3, 1886, after 10 years of hard work, Mergenthaler operated the first successf ul typesetting machine. It is a contraption with 90 typewriter-like keys that are connected to a tube filled with tiny molds of letters. The molds or matrices are released when the keys are pressed and they fall into a canal where the words are formed. Then molten lead flows beneath them and a cast is made. A device lifts the matrices and restores them to their pr~per places, leaving the canal empty for another line of, type. w HEN THE printing shops started to use the machine, the laborers refused to work. Installations were delayed by strikes. But after several months they realized that their retaliation was useless. A printing boom began. More men were hired at higher wages and more printing was made possible. The circulation of books, magazines an d newspapers mounted. After · Mergenthaler produced his machine, u:s. newspapers were pr i n ti n g 3,600,000 copies daily. Mergenthaler, however, saw imperfections in his invention. He wanted to rework the machine. He ordered a halt to the sales until he could build an engine that is more efficient and durable. The principal stockholders ruled against him and he threatened to resign. Clephane was able to arrange a compromise which made it possible for the iRventor to retain his royalty rights and open a shop of his own to perfect the machine. In 1889, , an almost wearproof and faster linotype was finished. This he sold to the company untler a new contract. The stubborn perfectionism of Mergenthaler affected the sales of the linotype. His machine was costly and only the LINOTYPE * THE STORY OF THE LINOTY MARCH 1955 71 THE STORY OF THE LINOTYPE * THE wealthy printers could afford it. The company was headed for bankruptcy w he n Philip T. Dodge, the president, came up with a suggestion. Why not lease the machines? That did it. Even small publishers and owners of small-town newspapers were able to use the linotype. Royalties began to flow into Mergenthaler's pocket. ,. T HE LEASING of linotypes made possible the publication of family magazines and journals devoted to specialized subjects. Book publishers were able to print, aside from textb o o ks and classics, popular works. Libraries multiplied and the literacy rate of the United States rose steadily. Factories to manufacture the machine were established in England and Germany. Sales agencies in almost all capitals of the world were set up. Today, the Mergenthaler Linotype plant ln Brooklyn, N.Y. turns out matrices and keyboards in nearly 1000 laiaguages. Mergenthaler is remembered today for this monumental machine but he was also the inventor of threshing and basketweaving machines. Mergenthaler was dissatisfied with the linotype although it was shown that the original,. 75,000 machines turned out by his company have operated for twenty years without a breakdown. He insisted on working and reworking on plans for a still better and more rapid one, until one day he contracted pleurisy. Tuberculosis · followed and in 1899 he died. All the printed pages produced by the world were bis epitaphs. * * * Lau~hter 72 The most useless day of all is that in which we have not laughed. -Sebastian Chamlorr • PANORAMA ,,'/ SUCCESSFUL METHOD of converting sunlight into electrical energy has been perfected in Dayton, Ohio by the Wright Air Development Center, research laboratories sponsored by the federal government. The new solar generator is a miniature unit capable of supplying enough current to i-un an electric clock. The voltage can be increased to t,Jnlimited quantities by increasing the unit's size and connecting a number of generators in relays, laboratory officials say. For example, the conversion powers of this type of generator are so great that a waferthin slab of crystal measuring 4 feet by 15 feet, resting on the roof of a house, will operate all the house electric lights, stove, refrigerator and other electric appliances, 24 hours a day. The secret of the new device is the use of cadmium sulfide, a yellow powder used as a pigment in paint. When this material is processed into crystal form, it permits a direct conversion of sunlight into electrical impulses. The crystal used in the first model is about the size of a lump of sugar, but it need be only wafer-thin to work efficiently. Attached to the opposite ends of the crystal are electrodes, or terminals. One, made of silver, is the positive electrode. The other, made of indium, a soft metal normally used as an alMARCH 1955 It hss been done, at last loy in some types of bearings, is the negative electrode. A wire that runs from the positive electrode to a motor or battery and back to the negative electrode forms the circuit. This simple device is the solar generator - an invention which scientists have been attempting for many centuries. In actual use, light striking the crystal-electrode surface induces a direct-current electrical potential which is carried by means of the electrodes themselves. If the electrodes are connected to a motor or some other electrical device, the current will flow to the device as though it were produced by an electric generator. The device is, in fact, an electric generator driven by sunlight.-( USIS) 73 Two monarchs, whose enmity does not go beyond a friendly joust of the intellect, share the world's smallest realm - the checkerboard 1wo JKings and 64 Jquares R LTHOUGH WE know that games played on a series of squares date back to very ancient times, for we find the m illustrated in Theban paintings made during the reign of Rameses the Third, and also in Greek and Roman frescoes, the gam~ of chess itself is not as old as many people imagine. It was from a game first played in India before the fifth century A.D. in which four p!ayers used a pattern of 64 squares, that chess, as we know it today, was evolved. From India chess was introduced into Persia in the 6th century during the reign of Chosroes the First and immediately became extremely popular. In "Shahname" (The Book of Kings) a history of Persia written in ve;·se ·by the celebrated poet Firdousi, there are two chapters describing and praisinz the ~ame. While new cultural current:: were taking chess from India to 74 China and later to Korea and Japan in the East, and from fran to Russia and Scandinavia in the West, the Arabs co~ quered Persia and were quick to adopt the game. So it was under the banners of Islam that the noble game was introduced first into Spain from where it spread to all the Mediterranean countric::: of Eurooe. · Tow:2rd~ the XIIIth century when it had conquered practically the whole of Europe, the game o! ches3 acquired its present form, and it is from this period that the beginning:; of a vast flood of writing exclusively about c!1css can be dated. The oldest known European manuscript on the subject, that of Jacobus de Cessole which was written around 1200 A.D., contains just a few references to the game. The writing of books on the subject of chess which' h as progressively increased down the centuries was reall}' inaugurated by two other manuPANORAMll scripts - that of King Alfonso of Castille ( 1252-1284 ), now kept in Madrid, and the celebrated work known as the "Bonus Socius" (circa 1286) the principal copy of which is now preserved in Florence. - Today there are more than 20,000 works on chess. There are also many others like the already mentioned Bo o k of Kings and Rabelais' "Pantagruel" which along with other similar celebrated works either make lengthy references to chess or devote entire chapters to it. Such an abundant production clearly illustrates the richness and variety of the game. As chess enthusiasts know full well the 20,000 books already published are like a drop of water in the ocean of chess science and literally millions of books could be w.ritten - and perhaps will be - before human beings will have exhausted all the questions relative to the theory and practice of the art and sci- . ence of chess. Today s eve r a 1 hundred monthly reviews not only publish news of the chess world but in particular give accounts of recent games between famous players and make known new developments in theoretical chess research, all of which provides fascinating material for students of the game. As a matter of fact these games reflect very accurateiy 'MARCH 1955 the characters, temperaments and personalities of the famous players and they also express the artistic and social trends of the times in which they are played. Chess has had its classical, romantic and modern schools and our own times have produced theorists of impressionist, cubist and surrealist chess. )T IS thus easy to see how enthusiasm has led so many chess lovers to make collections of ancient and contemporary books. The first systematic study on this question was the work of Dr. A. van der Linde. This first-rate player produced the first, and already very complete, bibliography on works published up to his time ( Geschichte und Literatur des Schachspiels, Berlin, 1874 ). In addition to the Rimington Wilson collection and of his own, van der Linde refers to several other large chess libraries of the middle 19th century. Van der Linde's own collection was bought in 1876 by the Royal Library at the Hague for the sum of 3,000 florins, the equivalent of $1,200 at present values. The collection of Rimington Wilson (2,310 volumes) included, in addition to printed works and incunabula, many extremely valuable manuscripts. One of these was a copy of the Cessoles manuscript, referred to 75 above, dating from 1466. This library was put up for auction in London in 1928 and Bernard Quaritch, a firm dealing in ancient books, acquired most of the works. Vida's poem, tran'lated into English verse by Oliver Goldsmith - a manuscript written entirely in the English author's hand - was sold for $700. The largest of all chess libraries was that of John Griswold-White, a lawyer of Cleveland, in the United States who died in 1928 at the age of 83. He spent more than 60 years assembling a collection of 12,000 volumes which included some items of inestimable worth on the game of chess. He bequeathed his collection to the city of Cleveland which now, therefore, possesses the largest public chess library in the world. Other . public libraries which came into existence in a similar way include that of Princeton University in the United States which was founded on the collection oi 2,000 volumes--some of them extremely rare-which formed the collection of E. B. Cook, and that of the Municipal Library of Grenoble, France, which, since 1856 has possessed a fine collection inherited from Frederic Alliey. The most remarkable of existing private chess libraries is undoubtedly that of a Dutchman, Dr. Niemeyer, of Wasse76 naar, near the Hague. Among its 4,000 volumes is a first edition of Damiano's treatise of which only three copies now exist as well as a first edition ( 17 49) of Philidore's famous work, "L' Analyse," the first really rational work on chess. Although, in addition to his mother tongue, M. Niemeyer speaks E n g 1 i s h, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin and several other languages, he still Reeds the help 'Of a translator in order to read some of his books for they include texts in many Slav languages, in Arabic, Yiddish, Chinese, Japanese, Icelandic, as well as in such dialects as Telegu, Urdu and many others. To be able to replay all the moves in a game it is not necessary to know the language in which the book describing the game is published. Chess notation is international, and so it is easy for a player in any country to follow the performances of champions of other nationalities. Dr. Niemeyer's library, however, is only one part of his chess collections. He has many varied and precious items which evoke the history of chess, prints, engravings, autographs and chess sets. Before the outbreak of the Second World War· two other chess libraries were often referred to - those of Harold Folk and Albrecht Buschke. PANORAMA The first of these collectors disappeared during the conflict, aRd the seco,nd is now living in New York.. The author of this article has a library compri:ting more than 1,600 works. J OME collections of chessmen and chess sets have great historic importance. The Bibliotheque N ationale in Paris, for instance, possesses a few chessmen from the ivory set given to Charlemagne by the Emperor of Byzantium. Visitors to one Paris museum, the Musee de Cluny, can admire a magnificent chessboard of cedar with chessmen carved in quartz and mounted on silvergilt which were offered to St. Louis by the Prince of the Bedouins. These ancient chess sets command high prices. One single Mozarabic chessman dating from the 10th century was purchased by the American Art Galleries, New York, for $7,000 in 1927. Today the most famous collections are those of Mr. Liddell, in New York and of M. J. Maunoury, in Paris. Chess is an international game which because of its system of notation enables enthusiasts in all countries to follow its development throughout the world. It is also international because it has spread to every continent creating links between Europe and the remote islands of the Pacific and between equatorial forests and polar regions, and today it provides an example of one of the few cultural activities in which broad understanding and friendly rivalry prevails. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) includes practically every country in the world. At its congress, held in Copenhagen in 1950, its president Kolke Regard, could rightly say: "We may hold different political conceptions, but in our international chess activities we are not subject to any political prejudices. Between the chess players of the world there also exists a deep friendship that is completely free from all political conceptions and ideologies. We are convinced that in reality the same friendship exists between all men. "We hope that the leaders of all countries will realise that the greatest desire of their people is for peace in their own time and security for future generations, and that the leaders can meet in the same spirit as that which presides at the meetings of players and organizers of chess games." -Francois Le Lionnais, from the Unesco Courrier. * * • Envy is a pain of mind that successful men cause their neighbors. --Onasander MARCH 1955 77 I I ! 78 ~~ 7~ ';tue ----~-----... how quickly passeth away the iiory of the world! 7 HE MORE A MAN is at one within himself, and becometh single in heart, so much the more end higher things doth he without labor understand; for that he receiveth the light of the understanding fr_om above. A pure, sincere,· and stable spirit is not distracted in a multitude of works; for that it worketh ell to the honour of God, and inwardly striveth to be at rest from all self-seeking. Who hindereth and troubleth thee mere than the unmortified affections of thine own heart? A good and devout man disposeth within himself beforehand his work which he is to do before the world. Neither do they draw him according to the desires of a simple inclination, but he himself ordereth them according to the decision of right reason. Who hath a harder struggle than he that leboureth to conquer himself? This ought to be our endeavour, to conquer ourselves, and daily to wax stronger than ourselves, and to make progress for good. An· perfection in this life hath some imperfection bound up with it; and no knowledge of ours is without some darkness. An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning; yet learning is not to be blamed, nor the mere knowledge of any thing whatsoever, for knowledge is good, considered in itself, and ordained by G.:>d; but a good consience and a virtuous life are always to be preferred before it. But because many endeavour rather to know than to live well; therefore they are often deceived, and reap either none, or scanty fruit. 0, if men bestowed as much labour in the rooting out of vices, and planting of virtues as they do in moving of questions, there would never be so great evils and scandals in the world, nor so much looseness in religious houses. Truly, when the day of judgment cometh, we shall not be examined what we have read, but what we have done; not how well we have spoken, but how religiously we have lived. Tell me, where are now all these Masters and ·Doctors, with whom thou wast well acquainted whilst they lived and flourished m learning? Now other possess their livings, and perhaps de scarce ever think of them. In their lifetime they seemed to be somewhat, but now the;-:: are not spoken of. 0, how quickly passeth away the glory of the world! -from The Imitation ol Christ by THOMAS A. KEMPIS (15th century) PANORAMA One mark of an educated man is the possession of a Te1111onable fund af general information. The highly speeialized individual, often dubbed an "e.xpert," frequently knaws nothing outside of his own field. Try yourself on tbe following questions, then turn to the next page for the correct ansv...,rs. 1. With a population of over three million, the largest city in South America is: A.' Buenos Aires; B. Sao Paulo; C. Rio de Janeiro; D. Panama City. 2._ Who is Max Steiner? He is: A. a famous communist author; B. a Hollywood musical director; C. the Jireatest American athlete; D. a German religious leader. 3. Ii you wanted information about a rare species of oird which you captured in your last hunting trip, you should consult: A. a d~atologist; B. an ethnographer; C. an entomologist; D. an ornithologist. 4. To relieve local cement shortage, the Philippine government recently opened a cement factory 'at: A. Daraga, Albay; B. Bacnotan, La Union; C. Ozamis City; D. Batangas, Batangas. 5. You have no doubt heard of the Nobel Prizes. These were established by Alfred B. Nobel, who was: A. an Ene,lish steel magnate; B. an Austrian multi-millionaire; C./a Swedish inventor of the dynamite; D. an American industrialist. 6. Any sports fan would tell you that the man who held the world's heavyweight champion~ip the longesi: was: A. Joe Louis; B. Jim Corbett; C. Jack Dempsey; D. Primo Carnera. 7. According to Biblical history, Noah's ark rested on Mount Araral; after the deluge. Ararak is located in: A. India; B. TurkP.y· C. Italy; D. Central America. 8. Center of a raging controversy between the Philippine secretaries of labor and agriculture is: A. the Japanese reparations question; B. the Margate system of rice planting; C. the minimum wage law; D. unionism in the country. 9. Mystic, poet, and painter, this eighteenth-century writer was also occasionally insane: A. Edgar Allan Poe; B. George Bernard Shaw; C. William Bli:J.ke; D. Leigh Hunt. 10. The Philippines has accepted an invitation to attend the forthcoming Asian conference to be held at Bandung, in: A. Ceylon; B. India; C. Indonesia; D. British Malaya. MARCH 1955 79 ARE YOU WORLD WISE? Answers 1. c) a hidden store of food or supplies 2. a) quack 3. d) brief in speech 4. a) a misleadine appearance or illusion 5. b) a study 6. a) hard to please 7. c) incomplete or undeveloped 8. d) to charge or blame 9. b) to compose 10. a) confused, meaningless talk or writing 11. d) mother-of-pearl 12. b) mercury 13. b) a compact upright piano 14. d) amoothly ·polite 15 .. 11) subordinate 16. c) to blame or acold 17. d) harmful ANSWERS TO PANORAMA QUIZ 1. A. Buenos Aires (also the ninth largest city in the world) 2. B. a Hollywood musical director 3. D. an ornithologist 4. B. Bacnotan, La Union 5. C. a Swedish inventor of the dynamite (who lived in 18331896) 6. A. J0e Louis (who held the title fer 12 yean: 1937 to 1949; Yacated it) 7. B. Turkey 8. C. the minimum wage law 9. C. William Blake ( 1757-1827) 10. C. Indoneaia 18. a) embodied in flesh 19. d) magician 20. a) shrewd • • • 80 ATTENTION:_ HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS The PANORAMA will give a prize of PlO for the best and PS for the next best essay on any problem of national or international significance. The best essay will be published in thi5 magazine. The essays, which sheuld not be less than 300 words, should not exceed 500 words. Entries must be typewritten, double-spaced on 8 x 11 bond paper and must be accompanied by a statement from the principal that t-he ccntestant is enrolled in the school he is representing. The decision of the editon will be final. PANORAMA,. In the Beginning?. . . SANDWICH (two11icesofbread with meat, flesh, cheese or the like between them) The fourth Earl of Sandwich ( 17181792) was said to have wrapped up snack for the gambling table in order to save time on his meals. The name has stuck to the present. PROTEIN (nitrogenous organic compounds necessary for animal life processes) From the Greek word proteios meaning "first" comes protein, which was formerly thought to be the main substance in all organic bodies. MACADAMIZE (to pave a road with successive layers of broken atoMI) After J. L. McAdam (1756-1863), Scottish inventor, this process of road building bas been named. MAllCB 1955 81 'Philippine 'Panorama-IV 82 7 OURISTS FIND Zamboanga a combination Waikiki Beach, Dewey Boulevard, a Hollywood movie studio lot, a Mexican hill town and a miniature .l\1:ecca. Those who come to stay find the peninsula an adventure in gold prospecting, lum'Jer concessions, coconut haciendas, fish corrals, or an ideal spot in which to ensco:lce a bungalow for gracious living. Over the whole ZambOanga peninsula, which lies just uutside the typhoon belt and rises like a jutting arm of green out of the blue Sulu Sea, the winds blow all day, smelling of seaweeds and mountain trees. In the forest, the walin~-waling and the moth orchids bloom profusely. / Moro vintas with multicolored sails flirt with the horizon like mammoth nosegays while ~a-~lls swoop into the se:i. At nightfall, fishermen's flares glow over the sleepy bays. Somewhere in the distance the PANO~ plaintive sou:i.d of the dalingdaling or the b::-ass agong fl.oats hauntingly in the dark. Zamboanga's population of over 400,000 is an international melange of both Christian and Mohammedan Filipinos, Chinese, Malayans, Indians, Swiss, English, Germans, Spaniards, and Americans, and their halfbreed offspring. The pure pagans (,notably · Subanos, or Indios de Monte) make up the rest of the motley inhabitants of the peninsula. The Mohammedan Filipinos, or Moros, so called by SpaniR.rds after the Moors, live uphill, along the river coasts, and on the sea. They represent some of the most fearless tribal groups in the Philippines. Sinewy, b::onzed by sun and rain, and quick tempered, they are the residue of generations of men who for more than three pundred years laid waste the -waters and coastal towns of Luzon and Visayas with their_ ruthless piracy and halted the complete encroachment of Spain in the South. 7 HE MOROS are gaudy dressers: tight or loose trousers of green, yellow, blue, purple, and flashy prints, black or deeply colored blouses, gay belts, scarves, turbar.s, scarlet fez, and shiny buyuans around their waists. Indeed, they are aifficient attraction in themselves to curious tourists who MARCH 1955 find in their str~mge ways and colorful attire something of the enigmatic, dark, pa;,sionate and beautiful soul of Asia. Mindanao pearls are part of Zamboanga's attractions. Moro peddlers will tell you that nowhere in the world but in far Zamboanga can om: hnd such pearl, so delicate to the touch, so perfect, and bluish white as milk. And then there is the black ornamental coral. Black coral in the hands of Moro je-: welers is turned into rings, pendants, brooches and bracelets. Most of the Christian Filipinos composed of native Zamboangueiios, Visayans, Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Bicolanos and a sprinkling of naturalized foreigners, populate the a re a s along the coasts and ·make up the bulk of the population. The Zamboangueiios, in general, particularly those who live in Zamboanga city, speak the picturesque chabacano, a gay mixture of Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan and Moro. Musical to ordinary ears but irritating to Spanish purists, it embodies in its nuances and accents, the whole history of Zamboanga from the days of the great Moro pirates, the plunderers of Corralat, to the Spaniah conquest. Zamboanga City, palm-fringed, spilled over with sunshine and brushed by temporar.t winds, lies surrounded by the quiet waters of Basilan Stra1t. White sandy beaches gird its 83 undulating coasts. Picturesque Moro villages huddle along the shorelinti. The culture of old Spain, t:1e New World, and the fiery hordes of Islam mingle here. On its streets walk the suave Amt:ricano, the Spanish mestizo and the red-fezzed Moro. Civilization and wilderness merge, too, in the curio shops where the visitor is lost in a tangle of black coral and delicate pearls; in au airfield, a golf course, tennis courts, a natural sw~mming pool and in beaches and hillsides where one may loll and soak m the sun. Boulevards, clean and white, stretch into the sea or wind among ricefields and coconut groves, orchards and shadows, into the silent mountains. From the heart of the city rise hanging gardens, water-lily pools, fountains and shrubs which flaunt brilliant prints over the sober walls of buildings. Moro piracy, though less frequent, continued unabated until the coming of the Americans. On May 23, 1899, the Zamboangueiios, inspired by the revolution which had stirred Luzon, successfully wrested control of the province from the Spanish forces. Dissensions among the various revolutionary leaders, however, weakened their cause and facilitated the occupation of Zamboanga by the Americans on November 16, 1899. 84 Under the American regime, Zamboanga's dusty .-oads expanded mto wide, well-naved boulevards and the whe~ls of modern civilization began to roll over them. The sea-side where Moro vintas docked with their catch for the market$ be-. came a modern pier. ;Fainted residential houses, hitherto unknown in the region, sprang up along the shady streets; hospitals and schools were introduced. Zamboanga became a model town. On February 26, 1937, it became a chartered city. I N PREWAR days, tourist ships used to anchor at Zamboanga and pour hundreds of round-the-world travelers on its shore. Now again, southern cruises have been revived and Filipinos and foreigners alike visit the south. Zamboanga offers a number of tourist spotS and memories to cherish. There is Campo Islam, a pic-turesque camp as colorful as the tassel of a fez. The camp is, in truth, a IVIoro \•illage. a valiant remnant of the past, ar, echo of Corrala4 his unceasin[! plunders and his deep hatred for the Spaniards. San Ramon Penal Farm was established by the Spaniards as a "presidio y colonia agricola." In the outlying areas surrounding the prison site, the prisoneros de confianza planted coconut trees and underneath the trees they cultivated pineapples, papayas, com and vegetables. There is Fort Pilar - a landmark rich in history. It is as much Spanish as it is Moro, American, Japanese, and Filipino. It is a legend also, and the faith of many generations is sculptured lovingly in the image of the Virgin of Pilar on one of its mossy walls. Today the fort is silent, brooding in shadows and memories. A part of the barracks, close to the fort, is choked with tall grass tended by sea-winds. Another part houses the public library and the city high school. Jeepneys now run through the ancient streets once sentried by scouts of the U.S. army. But the image of the Holy Virgin of Pilar remains, like a light in a deserted place, still drawing weekly pilgrims who find solace and faith in the flowers and in burning candles which they lay lovingly at her feet. MAR::H 1955 p ERHAPS one of the most beautiful spots in the Philippines is the Pasonanca Park in Zamboanga. The park is one whole series of big and small hills which look up or down at one another, ribboned by clean gravel roads hedged high with red hibiscus and tall caballero trees. Pools of waterJilies and lotus and high sprinkling fountains dot the well-kept grass. Blue mountains rise almost beside the roadways, and overhead the tall trees are hung with wild orchids. Thicket of bamboo close in on the little m o u n t a in pathways which brar.ch beside the roads dark with shadows. The swimming pool is Pasonanca's greatest attraction. Going down a flight of white stone steps, one meets it like a beautiful scarf of blue velvet. The visitor leaves Zamboanga but the beauties of the city will remain with him wherever he may go. The Moro with his picturesque attire will beckon to him and he will hear the sound of the going in the night, see the bright red fez and turban in his dreams, the naked Moro boys diving for coins at the pier. And best of all he will hear again the string-band playing the haunting tune: No te vayas, no te vayas de Zamboanga ..• -Toribia Mano, from The Philippines Quarterly. as ' / "Jet«--()'tatlt4, • , •• , , by Etm., "-'\.."The1~ aeronautics graduates are a little too obvious, don't :vou think?" 86 PANO~ 1lftf HEN the British landed, 1,950 Pampangans volunteered for service. The insistent preaching and frightening invectives hurled by Spanish friars at the English ("criminal infidels") drew more volunteers, bringing the total of the Spanish force to 4,871. They were armed with muskets, long lances, bolos, short swords and bows and arrows. Later, two -companies of Spanish civilians were added to the army but they only stayed on the walls to watch the natives march to meet the enemy, cursing all the while at the cowardice of their comradee-in-arms and at the barbarity of the British. The whole force was put under the command of the ~arquis of Vi· llamediana, an elegant gentleman who liked, besides flashing Ills sword in the sun and shoutlni .. Aribba!" to stay behind his advancing troops, believing no MARcH 1955 (PART II) In the first installment of this extended article on an obscure chapter in Philippine history, the preparation for the invasion of Manila by the British was recounted. T!ie principal characters and personages that influenced the tide of action were made to enter and speak their liner.. This is the second to the last installme~ on the. Bri· tiah Occupation of Manila. doubt that he was a devil of a fellow. 1 HE ADMIRAL that brought the British warships to Manila was Walter Cornish, an overbearing, impatient, blunt man who rose to prominence as captain of the 54-gun frigate Guernsey, which in 17 43, sank a Spanish privateer off Cape Gatt, almost within r:ange of the Spanish shore batteries. In 1754, he met and destroyed the Corsairs of Barbary coast. In 17 56, he was given command 87 of the Stirling Castle, a fleet frigate with a c::ew of 480 convicts and sent to the West Indies to rescue the beleaguered Britishers. In 1761, he was sent to India to destroy the French forts at Pondicherri and Mahe Rfter which he went to Bombay to refit for foe. Manila expedition. His naval rise was rapid: lieutenant in 1742, captain in 17 43, rear admiral (white) in 1749, rear admiral (red) in 1761, rear admiral (blue) in 1762 and baronet in 1766. He died in October 1770, seven years after his Manila victory, at a watering-place in England. In temperament and character, the commander of the troops of the expedition was almost the opposite of Cornish. General William Draper, born in 1721, was the son of the collector of customs at Bristol, England. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He joined the service of the East India Company as a minor officer. In 1760, he became a lieutenant-colonel, sent to Belle-Isle which he conquered quickly and ··thus earned a promotion to Brigadier General. He had planned the Philippine campaign as early as 1759 when he went to Canton, China, presumably for his health but really to collect data on the fortifications and defenses of Manila. The naval force of the Eng88 lish was composed of the warand troopships Norfolk, Elizabeth, Grafton, Seashore, Argo, Falrr.ouih, Panther, Lenox, and Weymouth and the storeships Osterly, Stephen, and South.sea Castle. with a complement of seamen and marines. The military force undet Draper was the 79th regiment, composed mostly of veterans of ~te's Indian campaigns, a company of 30 Madras assistants, 600 Sepoys, two companies of French deserters, 250convicts, 400 Lascars and 550 sailors and marines-all in all 2,300 men. JHE British task force sailed from Madras on August 1, 1762. Cornish sent Commodore Tiddeman, his second-in-command ahead to ·the Dutch port of Malacca to scout for news. Here the fleet took on a cargo of rattan which the Lascars made into gabions. The frigate Seahorse under Captain Grant arrived at the entrance of Manila Bay, 81> chored near Mariveles and di~ patched a longboat to reconnoiter Corregidor. Grant landed with three men and asked the fishermen they saw questions about the Acapulco galleon. The alcalde of Corregidor became suspicious. He was hospitable to the strangers and gladly answered their question but as soon as they had departed he sent several men to MaPANOUM4 .l1ila to tell the ~eneral of the civil guards about the visit. A galley was immediately ordered to sea by the Governor11eneral to warn the captain of the galleon. Earlier, some Armenian merchants had warned the Governor-General that the British were preparing an expedition in Madras against Manila. To show his consternation, the Governor-General ordered the imprisonment of the alcalde for not having guards at Mariveles. The Seahorse left on September 14 to join the main fleet which was waiting 200 miles out. The fleet hove in sight of Luzon on September 19 but contrary winds delayed its landing until September 22. The fleet of thirteen ships entered Manila Bay on the evening of September 23 in a semicircle that extended from Cavite to the middle of Manila Bay. It was a cloudy evening with a typhoon forming in the .southwe:>t. The officials of Manila in spite of the warnings thought it was a fleet of trading junks P .nd Captain Fernando Alcala was sent to meet them. He was detained on board and sent to the city the next morning with two British officers who demanded the surrender of the city. The Governor-General in a letter to the King reported ·that the "city was suffocated with consternation at the approaching conflict" but he was determined "to protect for His Catholic Majesty the City and the Islands under his care and was prepared to sacrifice all in the defense of religion and the honor of the Spanish arms." In the meantime, Comish and Draper had been studying the beachheads of Manila on the flagship Norfolk. Malate was chosen the place of landing. The landing was made in three divisions -- the right flank was put under the command of Major More, the center under General Draper and the left under Colonel Monson. Three field piece3 and a howitzer were fixed in the longboats and the naval division was led by Captains Parker, Brereton and Kempenfeldt. All the frigates cove•·ed the operations with gunfire. (To be concluded) , • Manila's Beggars How charity is abused • The New Bell Trade Act • Daring Young Man on Wings ·" •' 1 l1anolito can·t wait to grow up Book Review by Leonard Casper * Fiction * Cartoons What's Wrong With Our Education? By JAMES w. DUNNILf