Panorama. Vol. VIII, No.2 February 1956

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama. Vol. VIII, No.2 February 1956
Issue Date: Vol. VIII (No. 2) February 1956
Year: 1956
Language: English
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extracted text: FEBRUAR 1 9 5 6 Middle East Ferment Will it lead the world to war? How to Become a Painter By CESAR LEGASPI I Pierced the Iron Curtain Communism at close range By PETE GROTHE Yesterday's Papers By ARMANDO J. MALAY SQ CENTAVOS CONTENTS ARTICLES Middle East Ferment .......... F. C. Sta. Maria Our Economy: Is It Leading Us to Ruin? ..... Alfredo Montelibano 8 The Bulwark of Vietnamese Art ... Fenix Madura 11 The Vanishing Filipina ...... C. Guerrero Nakpil 15 Fa_ther Delaney: In a Place of Shadows ....... . Jesus Sto. Domingo 18 Middleweight Jinx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Raul Barbero 25 The President's Guideposts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 It Helps Grow Sugar in Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Yesterday's Papers ......... Arrizando ]. Malay ~ How to Eecome a Painter ....... Cesar Legaspi ;J Durable Prima Donna ........... Efren S;_micnEducation and Practical Life . Sen. Jose P. Laurel H:ow Free Is the World Press ................ . Polio Isn't Licked Yet ...................... . A Woman of Asia ................. Free World How I Pierced the Iron Curtain . . . Pete Grothe 7 What to Do in Case of Dogbites .. : . . . . . . . . . . 7 Cupid's Varied Wardrobe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p: FICTION Green Mangoes Amelia L. Lapefia 42 REGULAR FEATURES Are You Word Wise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Book Review-A Fable . . . . . . . Leonard· Casper Literary Personality- XIV: Bienvenido N. Santos Panorama Quiz ............................ . In the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Philippine Panorama XV: Bacolod City . . . . . . . . . 8 Fun-Orama by Elmer ....................... . PANORAMA is published monthly by the Community Publishen Inc., 1986 Herran, Manila, Philippines Editor: JAIME LUCAS Business Manager: MRS. C. A. MARAMAG Subscription rates: In the Philippines, one year PS.DO; two years P9.00. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two yeara $7.00 U.S. Single copy 50 centavos. E ntered as ser ond class m a il m atter at t he Ma n ila P ost Office on Dec. 7, 1955 FEBRUARY 1956 VOL. VIII MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 2 middle cast Ferment The "unless" is decisive I N 1953 IT was Korea, in 1954 Indochina and in 1955 Formosa. This year all signs unmistakably point to the Middle East as the foremost trouble spot. War in this ancient part of the world, as dramatically predicted last month by Israel's Ambassador to the United States Ebba Eban, is "almost inevitable by the summer of this year." Of course the ambassador appended a big "unless"-unless, that is, the West employs "firm, deliberate and speedy action." By that he meant military aid and possible alliance, particularly from the United States which wants to stay out of the melee. As British Prime Minister Anthony Eden flew to Washington for a conference, end of January, the muddled Middle East situation was top item on his agenda. It is a situation, indeed, that may break out into full-scale hostilities anytime. The Middle East, since the end of World War II, has become a complicated chessboard of power politics. The foremost problem as of now is the ArabPalestine dispute which started with the failure of the West to take decisive steps after Israel won over Arab states seven years ago. But against this background of religious hatred, four big powers are playing an undecisive game of power politics. Great Britain on her part has lost much prestige in her oil dispute with Iran and in her ouster from the Suez Canal zone and Sudan. She has left behind millions of resentful peoples who look back to a century of English colonial exploitation. France has not done any better; in fact, probably \Vorse. She lost face not only in Indochina but also among the seething, restless millions of northwest Africa. With a comparatively minor role, the Uni2 ted States seems to be faring quite badly herself.· Identifying her with the white imperialists, the Middle East peoples have learned to dislike the United States and to be suspicious of her motives. The Arabs, in particular, will not forget easily how the U.S.-inspired United Nations partitioned Palestine and drove out more than 400,000 Arab refugees from the Holy Land. They believed then, as they do now, that they have been robbed of their home. (/HE FOURTh protagonisi 1 on the huge chessboard i s Russia. Stripped down to its barest form, Soviet interest in the Middle East is the centuries-long ambition of that Czarist country: to have an outlet into the warm waters of the Mediterrenean. This the Russians would never admit, but it is true. If the ambition has not been realized, it is. merely because it is not yell: time. But the Russians are patient people, and they will wait. And then, too, there is the lure of precious oil. Under the burning sands of the Arab states are locked billions of dollars in wealth. In Saudi Arabia a 1 one, for instance, an American company pays yearly royalty of $250 milli1 Great Britain's oil intere~ were much bigger. PANOR In recent months, the quiescent Middle East situation took a turn for the worse, then gradually advanced to the critical stage. The reason for the latest flare-up was Israel's violation of the 1947 U. N. Palestine truce, whereby the common borders between Israel and the surrounding Arab states (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, among others) was declared a demilitarized zone. In what the Israelis termed as a "retaliatory raid"-but which the U.N. subsequently labelled as "so out of proportion with the provocation" that it cannot be termed as a reprisal raid-56 Syrians and six Israelis were killed. This incident was the signal for a call-to-arms in both camps. First appealin~ to the West for arms, Egypt when denied turned to Soviet Russia. Without much fuss, communist Czechoslovakia gave her the weapons, describing the deal as a purely commercial one. In desperation Israel turned to the Big Three- U. S., Britain and France, but particularly the U.S.-to no avail. The U.S. would not permit an arms race in the tense Middle East. It was in an effort to chan~e this United States stand that Israsli Ambassador Eb a n warned of war this summer unless the West took decisive steps. Thus far, however, the United States is unmoved. DRUARY 1956 The di.fficult position of America in this region springs from her multi-phased commitments with the free and neutral nations of the world. Obviously, she cannot arm Israel without increasing Arab hostility toward herself. Neither can she afford to look on helplessly should the well-armed Egyptians, equipped with Soviet jets, pound the Israelis to pieces. American strategy in the cold war is so tangled, in other words, that it has sometimes set off friend against friend in the name of expediency. It is such momentary confusions and occasionally glaring inconsistencies in American foreign policy that Soviet Russia is quick to take advantage of. In this sense Russia's strategy in the Middle East dispute is simple: to make friends where the Western powers have made enemies. With the discrediting of France. and Britain and the indecision of the United States, such a method is largely effective. I N THE LATEST U. N. Security Council · censure of Israel, the Soviets again exploited their advantage. Attempting to court Arab favor, Russia presented a resolution condemning Israel for its violation of truce terms. In essence the resolution was similar to that of the West, with 3 Line up in the Middle East: Western Alliance and Neutralists D ~;~:f:~~:~:t:~c=cd m ~n11:~c~~s11~,0~s';~;::t.~~dc1, ~ :;;,:~t~:':;iO"' [] ~°:"'unid O ~~i: (11clr1 n,.lrrrd orr Cyprus inditalr flying l11nt !or troop C•rri'1 pl•nH one .exception: it demanded the payment by Israel of indemnity to Syria. The Western resolution was unanimously approved-but only after 'Russia had made known to the Arab world that she favored a more drastic action. In the meantime British efforts in the Holy Land have been concentrated on piecing together whatever she has left of prestige and influence in the region. Inspired by the success of regional defense pacts in Europe, she engineered the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO), linking Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. Known as the Baghdad Pact, the METO has a twofold purpose: ( 1) to put up a barrier against Soviet penetration in the Middle East and ( 2 ) to provide the nucleus of a Middle East defense alliance to which other nations (including the United States) are expected to join. In answer Egypt, which is claiming undisputed leadership in the anti-British Arab world, made a pact with Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Moslem Arabs are understand ab 1 y afraid that tl;ie METO will prewent the recovery of Israel territory which they claim they own, and will perpetuate British dominance in the Middle East. FErlRUARY 1956 Efforts to get uncommitted Jordan into the military alliance resulted in widespread riots and violence in that country. Target of violent demonstrations were U.S. installations and personnel of the local Point Four (counterpart of ICA in the Philippines) office. Violence stopped only after Jordan King Hussein appointed a premier who promised to keep Jordan out of the METO. As usual, the West promptly labelled the riots as communistinspired, as they probably were. Prominent in this many-cornered fight is Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion, leader of the 1,700,000 Jews. Pitting his strength against the 40 million Arabs that surround tiny Israel, he last month exhorted. his followers to greater austerity and sacrifice in the face of impending war. Already heavily taxed, the Israelis were asked by Gurion an additional defense levy of $50 per person. Commented an American diplomat: "It is unrealistic for Israel to hope to match the armies of the 40 million Arabs." Yet Israel wants no war, according to the Israelis; they only want to defend themselves. In nearby Egypt, Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser made a similar declaration of peace. "Egypt does not want a war,'' he said, just as the Committee of Senior Ulema, supreme s council of the Moslems, made a solemn vow to recover the Holy Land. The council, from Cairo's 1,000-year old Al Azhar University, lays down the Moslem law. Presumably the Egyptians will not stop until they will have pursued the "jihad" or holy war to a successful finish. Another aspect of the Middle East ferment is the Cyprus episode. Now a chief British base with the loss of Suez, Cyprus has been boiling with nationalist unrest. The Mediterrenean island, recently reinforced by British paratroopers, may actually spark the Middle East explosion. Here the divided inhabitants are fomenting unrest between Turkey and Greece, with the British in the dangerous crossfire. 0 NE WA y OF viewing the whole situation is to imagine a number of simultaneous bonfires on the Middle East plains, one or more of which may suddenly flare up into a conflagration. The chances are Israel would be in the middle of it. It is patently obviot:s that an arms race in the area will only add fuel to the fires. The United States knows this, but so does Russia. Even the Israelis and Arabs, deep inside them, know this. If the United States should decide to match Soviet armament as she may 6 be forced to do, the prophets of war may yet prove right. Evidently, as saner minds have suggested, the only alternative to the solution by fire in the Middle East is the so1 ution by economic aid. Under this theory the United States may refuse to arm Israel and help her instead in building hydro-electric power on the Jordan river. From a plat_ conceived in the United Nations five years ago Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Israel would share the benefits from a $200million dam to span the Jordan. The electric power would be split four ways, with Jordan getting more than SO percent, Israel 30 to 40 and the balance to Syria and Lebanon. One bright possibility from this aid race-assuming that PANORAMA the Russians would compete, that is - is the raising of the general level of living standards and the resettlement of about 200,000 Palestine Arab refugees, who have poised a constant threat to Middle East peace. That tenuous peace the United States and Britain agreed to preserve in the joint declaration of President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Eden issued last February 2. Among other things they agreed to work for a settlement between Israel and her Arab neighbors, to assist financially in the refugee problem, and, in general, to resolve differences through friendly discussion. - Felixberto C. Sta. Maria from the Philippine Journal of Education. * * * T HE PROGRESSIVE ATTITUDE of considering public health as everybody's business, with special emphasis on projects for the benefit of the young, is now generally established in most countries of the free world. Periodic issues of health stamps in these countries help keep this important citizen-responsibility before the public. Keeping up a twenty-five-year-old tradition of issuing health stamps each year to support camps for boys and girls all over the country, New Zealand printed several denomination sand colors of 'the Boy Scout stamp in 1954. It pictures one of the typical beneficiaries of the fund, a Boy Scout on a hike to Mt. Aspiring, a favorite spot of the country's mountain climbers. On January 26, 1955, India issued eighteen Indian Republic Day commemorative stamps in varied colon and denominations, featuring some of the country's industries and. public welfare projects. Among these is a light brown 6-anna stamp_ showing one of the country's latest nation-wide health projects, malaria control. Like several other Southeast Asian nations, India is wagina; a winning fight aginst this once dreaded disease. A 1953 postage stamp issued by the Royal Kine;dom of Laos features a Lao mother and child. This symbolized the maternal-and-child-care projects then being aided by the French Red Cross organization. The 3-piastre stamp is printed in orane;e and green; two other denominations are 1-piastre-and-fifty-cents in black and orange, and a 3-piastres-and-90-cents in medium brown.-USIS. * FEBRUARY 1956 7 D Our Economy: Is It Leading Us to Ruin? D Against the Philippines' top economic problems past and present administrations have pitted their best b, ains. Here is what the National Economic Council is trying to do for the country By ALFREDO MONTELIBANO EVERY YEAR over 150,000 Filipinos reach the age of employment. Less than half of the number finds jobs, and the other half goes to swell the increasing backlog of the unemployed. goods and services of the whole nation, if expressed in terms of money and distributed equally among all, would mean less than one peso a day for every man, woman and child. There simply is not enough production to assure everyone a good share. Despite all the economic panaceas prescribed all these years, that income has been increasing if at. all at a At least 1.3 million Filipinos or more than 15 per cent of those able and willing to work cannot find jobs. The combined production of 8 PANORAM. pace hardly sufficient to keep up with the growth of population. This then is the main tragedy of our economy-a fast increasing population in the face of almost static production thus aggravating unemployment more and more from year to year. These conditions are not new. We have had them for years. We were aware of these problems from the very beginning of our existence as an independent nation. In 1949 we adopted drastic economic measures in order to improve them. The Central Bank was created, our monetary system was changed, import and exchange controls were instituted, and tax exemption was granted new and necessary industries. A series of economic surveys were undertaken. These drastic measures were all intended to achieve a definite purpose--attainment of real and continuous expansion in production and income and raising the standard of living of the people, by empha;izing industrialization rather than just agriculture, by providing more credit for development, by husbanding our dollar earnings and channeling them more and more to the importation of machinery, necessary industrial materials, and other capital goods. EBRUARY 1956 WHAT WERE the results? In addition to the failure to solve the basic problems of unemployment, underemployment and underproduction, this is what happened in six years of controls. 1) The yearly contribution of agriculture to the national income increased from 40.4 per cent to 43.3 per cent in the past five years. Agriculture still employs over 71 per cent of our working population while manufacturing has jobs for less than 7 per cent. 2) The level of our international reserves has gone down from $375 million in 1930 to only $215 million today, or a net reduction of $142 million. 3) Our importation of industrial machinery, has averaged less than P40 million a year or 4 1/2 per cent of total imports. 4) Many industries have been granted tax exemption as new and necessary industries when they are only assembly or packaging plants which actually make us lose more and more dollars in time. Judged by these results, the system of improved controls and tax exemption has failed miserably. The people entrusted to administer these economic measures failed completely to face the issues squarely. THE QUESTION today: should we eliminate these controls or conti9 nue them? If our decision is to retain controls, as I believe we should, then let us use them positively to cut short the period of sacrifice that our people must undergo. Let us apply such controls to expand our produc-l!ive capacity forgetting all the non-esseD&ials. Our country is underdeveloped. For that very reason it has all the potentials for rapid economic growth. Its population can be its most valuable factor of production, if given the opportunity to apply its energy to the utilization of our potential wealth. If the right kind of industrialization were pursued vigorously the kind that would lead to fuller utilization of our mineral, forest, and agricultural resources rather than the assembly and packaging type of industries, our rate of economic progress will be such that the future of this country would be definitely assured. The National Economic Council is laying down more contructive and better coordinated guiding policies which will institute a framework for a comprehensive national program of economic and social development truly responsive to our needs. The policies are: 1) Our educational system must be revised so as to gear it to the needs of economic development. 10 OUR FUTURE "Everybody knows that Jur country is underdeveoped. For that very rea~on it has all the potentials for rapid economic growth. It is young and it has vigor. It has untold wealth. Its natural and human resources are such that we can be the most prosperous nation in Asia." -A. Montelibano 2) Our banking system mus't be liberalized so as to ensurt! that a far greater proportion c - loans will henceforth go to th financing of new productive i:lvestments. 3) Use our foreign exchang, resources more wisely so that they can provide maximum support to our main economic policy of expanding production 4) The fiscal policy of our government must be geared to promote, not deter, economic development. 5) Much greater investment must be made in the exploitation of our national resources. 6) There must be coordina· ted implementation of all economic policies throughout, from top to bottom, and among al' the different agencies of the government. l 1ANORAMA ot _,I) HAT HAPPENS to free art W under the imposrng shadow of totalitarian politics is too much of daily histo'S:Y to need retelling. Satellite after Russian satellite has pressed its best minds into the service of the super-State, to help propagate the Big Lie, as in Russia itself where composers and painters and dramatists must wake up each morning wondering if that day demands will be made that they r,enounce their souls and the ~roducts _ of their beliefs. In this hour when northern IndoChina has already been invaded by totalitarianism and the 1956 Vietttamese a'r.t Freedom, not anarchy, has served the A nnamite in his portrayal of the past and the present By FENIX MADURA newly recognized government of Vietnam is tense with expectancy of attack, it is past time to examine part of that culture which is at stake. Vietnamese art has had a long history of freedom, not anarchy: it has always had its sources and its self-imposed disciplines. Since 1500, it has reflected Chinese and Indian traditions with their fixed codes prescribing size, color and style even of house and clothes. In the Annamite system of symbols, the piastre has always represented wealth; the tiger, force; flora and fauna, specified elements of the Annamite hier11 archy, signifying the essential unity of that society. Indian architecture is visible in Buddhist temples and pagodas: Chinese, in the imperial tombs w h o s e magnificence sometimes covers acres in area. Such colossal efforts suggest how Annamite building prowess has contributed to originally imported esthetic taste. Frescoes preserved from ancient times feature the swastika, sun-symbol and emblem of royalty introduced by Vedic priests to signify union of spiritual and temporal rule. Similarly, age-old Indian tolerance and even reverence for sacred animals gained a foothold, long ago, in Annamite art. The elephant figures commonly in wallwork and is outnumbered only by dragon likenesses, these latter having been introduced from China where it is a universal symbol On the other hand, tiger images which in China always represent force, have a variety of poses and meanings in Vietnam because the Indians have venerated the tiger as well as the ox. /) UDDHISM HAS become I) thoroughly entrenched in the national art, even though almost 90 % of Vietnam is Roman Catholic. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Annamite art was already at its 12 heights by the late 19th century when French missionaries finally succeeded in propagating Catholicism. Whatever the external faith of the people; they have retained ancient art forms whose force as symbolic. shields against hostile supernatural powers is little short of religious obsession. This appeal of the past is so rigorous that modern sculptors and painters continue to copy their predecessors rather than observe nature directly. In some Annamite pictures, one sees vegetation from China totally unknown in Vietnam. Warriors still are represented with ancient lances; the same inscrutable smile masks centuries of philosophic faces. French masters found it are most impossible to make the Vietnamese depict h u ma n for~, particularly the female: human beings are always shown in a flat, stylized, impersonal manner. It was struggle for the Societe France to introduce even chiaroscuro, the three-dimension molding! of figures, suggesting depth and roundness of form through the arrangement of light and shadow on a flat surface. Consequently, monotonous repetition and garrulousneS!, the tendency to digress shamelessly, are national characteristics of Vietnamese art. Symmetry and perspective are wil P. LIFE-SIZE HEADS The Naga tribes in the hills outside Bengal and Burma have attained a remarkable standard in wood-carving both in the round and in relief. The lifesize human figures which the Nagas erect over their tombs--probably representing mourners - are reminiscent of the much smaller ancestor figures of Nais, an island west of Sumatra. The Nagas are keen head-hunters. In their superstitious belief a year cannot be successful unless at least one human head has been taken. These heads are among their principal models for woodcarvings.-L. Adam. Besides, the people prefer to construct a n e w pagoda rather than repair an old one. Divinities seem pleased, in fact, when materials for new temples are_taken from the old! a CTUALLY, the Annamite's sense of immortality is so negative that it inspires only unemotional religion and keeps his main effort turned, fully absent. Under the influence of Buddhism, group figures usually number, magically, five or seven, never six. Buddhism has also ruled out verisimilitude, since the artist must not be concerned with the temporal or physical even if only to reproduce them realistically. Religious self-denial has also resulted in the complete anonymity of individual artists and schools, so that styles of .Annamite art are almost impossible to classify or analyze thoroughly. Furthermore, even Annamite architecture is impermanent. Although the country has sufficient wood, there seem.s to be a scarcity of bronze and stone. Consequently fire, insects, and of course perennial wars have r:~vaged the nation's buildings. v 1956 quite resignedly, toward his brief, hard and stoic life on the soil. Perhaps this accounts for the excessively horizontal lines on his temples, contrastive with the Western world's upward sweep of gothic lines. The Annamite is not materialistic, not hedonistically bent on worldly pleasure. His horizons are narrow, he looks down calmly; heaven for him is absence, a removal rather than a presence. Even in Annamite paintings, landscapes invariably dominate, though they are stylized and impersonal and inscrutable. On the other hand, the tombs of Chinese mandarins have lasted because of their sumptuousness (often more richly carved and decorated than their official residence during their lifetime) . 13 The best ceramics come from Tonkin. Bronze and brass were used only for cannonballs, but silver and goldwork have always flourished under the prizing eye of women: these form the bulk of wedding gifts and are the ultimate stake at the gaming table. The designs, of course, are ancient, but the patience and skill, the fidelity and delicacy, which after all make beauty pos~ible are individual matters. Other nationalities might not take pleasure in the art of Vietnam, but in any country art should be subject only to personal choice and determination. If Communism tries to subvert such individual care and the workman's esteem for tradition, it will meet a test which has baffled many a previous foreign influence. But Communism, being less humane, may be more successful 14 * * * THE FOUR-INCH egg of the tabon of Palawan is almost all yolk; and, when "salted," is richer and oilier than even the duck's egg. The tabon leaves its egg, covered with sand, on the beaches of Palawan where the sun warms and hatches it without further help from the bird. If a tabon egg is taken home to be hatched, the nestling is discovered to be very combative and temperamental and will never lay eggs itself. Nobody has ever succeeded in domesticating the bird, which is smaller than the native chicken and distinct from the family of domestic fowls. Its flesh,_ though tasty as chicken, is tough to eat. That same toughness perhaps expiains why the tabon, which lays eggs one-fifth its own size, refuses to live long in captivity. Although it has been reported in other islands, it avoids hunters and tamers and human curiosity. * PAl Looking back By CARMEN GUERRERO-NAKPIL 7HE FILIPINO woman (like the Filipino male) travelling abroad is always being taken for a Chinese, a Siamese, an Indonesian, an Indian, a Mexican or a South American. Chinese men find in her eyes the necessary upslant; the Japanese think her correctly small; the Indonesians and other Malays note happily that her skin echoes the gilded ochre of theirs; the people of the Near East insist that she has the dark-eyed seductiveness of their own wo. men; the Latins trace her sanguine grace to their own blood. This variousness is not only physical. Her psyche is just as complicated. For the Filipina is a woman with a past. There have been three men in her life: her Asiatic ancesi:or, the Spanish friar, and the Arnericano. Our knowledge of the pre-Spanish is necessarily limited to the uncertain testimony - characterFEBRUARY 1956 istically tongue-tied about women-of the Chinese chronocles. Women then seemed to enjoy an easy equality with men which was based not on condescension, but on genuine respect. The Penal Code of Kalantiao, which was enforced in the Philippines between 1433 and 1614, for all that it made plain that it was a man's world, was decorously gallant to women, respecting and protecting them with a chivalry that was unknown in the rest of Asia, except possibly Burma. Marriage was monogamic (with the exception of regions where Mohamm£danism had spread) and dissoluble, witJ1 the bridegroom bringing the dowry, in a significant reversal of the Occidental custom. The women were also priestesses and oracles and the wealthy ones were carried around in chairs and shaded from the sun. The ancient Filipina was, as 15 she is now, "the queen of the hom,.e" (Padre Chirino) and of her man. Said Loarca indignantly, "The men love their wives so dearly that in case of a quarrel they take sides with their wives' relatives even against their own fathers and brothers." The Filipina ruled with her husband, whether over sultanate or fishing village, and in the absence of male heirs was given officia] position. On important matters effecting the townspeople, she was always consulted. It must have been with many smug snickers that Juan de Salcedo, of the race of conquistadores, received the whispered information from Rajah Soliman that before he could conclude the pact of alliance he must go and ask his wife. ~ UT HERE a knife-sharp O line must be drawn. For more than 300 years after Magellan, the Spanish friar and the encomendero took the Filipina in hand-a tutelage which was _to produce the shy, diffident, puritanical, tear-stained little women of the late nineteenth century. Fi;:-st, of all, the Spaniard baptized her. Then he gave her the Know ledge of Good and Evil, and, as in Eve's case, she became preoccupied with fig-leaves; in the end Rizal and his nineteenth century con16 temporaries had to go Europe to get a good look at women. & a young girl, she was trained to obey her father and the Senor Cura, to cast her eyes down, to pray the rosary, to be pure, to hide her emotions, to look upon all men as "the devil incarnate." He set the duena to watch over her, and locked her up in colegios where she languished fo.L· years, learning to read a missal, to write enough to sign her name but not enough to communicate with her sweetheart, to embroider a little, to faint at the mention of a beloved name, to sit on a pillow by a shuttered window, to look forward to the joys of the just in Heaven. A young Filipino of the Spanish era could take the veil, drift into spinsterhood, or she could marry, after a long and extremely circumspect courtship, the young man who least offended her parents' sensibilities, and thereafter stay at home in a state of chronic pregnancy. Legally, the Filipino woman during the Spanish regime was classed with infants and idiots, for she could neither enter into contracts without her husband's consent, if married, nor leave her home without her parents' consent before 25, if unmarried. What saved the Filipino woman from being completely efPANORAMA fete and useless, was a persistent industry among the women of the lower classes who could not afford gentility. These were forced by economic necessity to continue their ancient aggressive role. They were weavers, farm workers, hat makers, potters, cigar makers, slipper and wooden shot handicrafters. The married women of the middle class also engaged, without too much loss of responsibility, in trade, running small stores or peddling dry goods. 7 HE NEW man in the Filipina's life, the Americano, with his bold and brash democracy, was a Pygmalion of another persuasion. He told the Filipina, sympathetically, that she was repressed, that she was wasting her talents in the kitchen, that she was too pretty to hide under so nu.ich dry goods. He opened the schools to her, encouraged her to speak her mind, and told her that even greater than virtue was "independence of character." He tantalized her with the ideals of equality and freedom and showed her that life was meant to be fun. They began to play tennis at athletic clubs (though still garbed in sayas and stiff ca1nisas and still addicted to squealing and fainting), to take calisthenics and riding lessons. They developed into assiduous club-women, sponsoring lectures, organizing charities, indulging in volunteer social work. In 1937 the Filipino women achieved political suffrage, after years of passionate lobbying and emotive debating, during which the Filipino male's most persistent argument was that woman suffrage would lower the birth rate. Next, the Filipino women cut their hair and, shyly at first, adopted the western dress. In spite of the raised eyebrows of the Catholic clubs, they joined bathing beauty contests, danced cheek to cheek and discussed sex. The war and the Japanese occupation only deepened the obsession for self-sufficiency. Although the official Japanese attitude was the same kind of subjection Japanese women had been putting up with for centuries, the brief ocupation with all its tragedies and exigencies only proved to the Filipina that she could depend on herself. - Condensed from the Philippines Quarterly. * * * Not by years but disposition is wisdom acquired.-Plautus. FEBRUARY 1956 17 6Jezde,i t:Jda1ee9,' In a Place of Shadows The ~Jory is God's T HE CORTEGE - 15,000 persons in scores of buses and over 800 cars - finally became motionless in the darkening Jesuit cemetery in N ovaliches. A stranger might have thought them gathered for the last rites of a national hero; certainly not of a man whom enemies called an "alien priest."· "There is no eulogy for Father Delaney," said the Jesuit vice-provincial. "Your presence here is his eulogy." Earlier, rluring the principal requiem mass at the U.P. Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice, Archbishop Santos had said, "You are his living crown." It woul<l have been ironic if these thousands had come to pay reverence to a person who had lived and died as selflessly as any man; one who would hang on the cross with Christ but never confuse his own hu18 By JESUS STO. DOMINGO manity with the other's divinity. Those who knew him most dosely came out of respect and even worship for what he had •nilitantly respected and worshipped. A certain glory sometimes surrounded things where Father Delaney moved, but it was not his glory. When he first cam~ to Diliman, "the place of darkness," the state university had a reputation for being godless. Before he left, his critics-in the name of the separation of church and state -were wondering perhaps if 1t were not becoming too godly. When he first came, services were held in a bamboo and sawali chapel. A few weeks before his death, the new concrete Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice was blessed by the CathPANORAMA olic archbishop, who celebrateu the first mass. Although he was often called arrogant, for neither of these achievements did Father Delaney take credit. He shared his love for the Mass with his cougregation: together they planned and, with funds raised through benefit shows, concerts and contributions from the community and commuting students, built their P200,000 chapel. Its circular shape, besides being symbolic of communion, tunctions to allow all churchgoers to be close to the sacnf1ce celebrated at the central altar, under the life-size cross from which hang Christ and a man-he could be a priest in a chasuble, or a common tao in barong Filipino. The students say the ritual prayers aloud together; the design of the church encourages this ingather,ing of hands and hearts. The glory is God's ... T HE VERY human history of the 49-year-old Jesuit began in Ireland where he was born (before its liberation from Great Britain); but he was reared in Brooklyn. He was such a consistent scholar that once his professor adopted his notes as the accepted class textbook. In 1928, the Society of Jesus sent him to the Philippines, accidentally confusing him with FEBRUARY 1956 another priest who was a physicist! Nevertheless, he stayed with the Ateneo until 1931, when he returned to the States. In 1936, Father Delaney went to Rome for study in natural theology, and to Paris for social studies. By 1938, he was preparing all materials for news broadcasts that went out of tha Vatican Radio Station. Father Delaney was the originator of the Institute of Social Order, as well as the First Family Retreat or Cana conference, celebrated in 1943 but later spread throughout the world. He returned to the Philippines in 1945, to the Ateneo on Padre Faura and later to Diliman where he was able to say, "I am an Irishman by birth, an Englishman by nationality, an American by citizenship and a Filipino by choice." For several years Father Delaney attacked the brutal hazing practices of fraternity and sorority members on the state university campus. Instead of asking U.P. Student Catholic Action members to infiltrate the offending groups, he wanted the students to choose between 1heir loyalfaes, since even to infiltrate, he said, one might have to participate in brutality. The initial result was that many, innocent and guilty a1ike, in the :£ratemity group, closed ranks. In 1954, and again in 1955, 19 "God, in his strange ways . . ,, By U.P. Regent CARMEN DINGLASAN-CONSING A S I knelt at the UP Catholic; chapel in reverent tribute to the earthly passage of Rev. Fr. John P. De]Jmey of the Society of Jesus, the thought kept coming back to me about God truly working in many strange ways His wonders to perform. For as I looked about me and at the ·multitude of youthful heads bowed in prayer, I felt that 'here indeed was ample harvest from the patient toil by the once controversial figure of the intensely dedicated priest who braved all odds to fight against what he believed was a dangerously extreme laicism in a seat of learning. He fought for his God. Mly initial impression of Father Delaney, when the overpublicized "religious controversy" was brought to the attention of the board of regents, was touched by a distressing curiosity .. How could any one man create all the reported furor in what was generally considered a sedate educational institution? As a member of the board, I was well aware of the liberal policies of the University, of its careful avoidance of religion in its educational activities. Was the man, perhaps as some quarters flippantly quipped, another Savonarola with a messianic complex come to disturb the even tenor of university life? Oddly enough, a meeting with the controversial priest disclosed him to be another urbanely humble Jesuit, lean of frame, whose most arresting features were dark bushy eyebrows over two of the most kindly looking eyes I've ever encountered. In conversation, however, Father Delaney readily gave indication of the man who had become campus topic number one and a headliner who dared call a spade a spade, who~e logic was forceful, and whose ardor in his work was even more compelling. He was Catholic chaplain at the state university, and while he ministered to his flock, he felt that he could not idly stand by and watch an institution dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge exclude the Author of all Knowledge and Wisdom Himself. As I dictate this little piece by way of comment on the when UPSCA submitted candidates for student elections, with the professed intention of challenging fraternity control of campus politics, Father Delaney was accused of "meddling." Later, summoned before a factfinding committee of the board of regents, he refused to answer questions placed by two of the regents whom he considered biased on the basis of previous investigations. For this reply, and for questioning the right 20 PANORAMA passing of Chaplain Delaney, the inquiry into the charges aired against him before the board is far from concluded and therefore I do not consider myself competent to talk on the merit or lack of merit of the case. One thing seems clear, though, and this that while the University cannot, without violating the fundamental law of the land, prevent students from engaging in the practice of their respective faiths, by the same token it would seem unconscionable for the University to countenance within its halls any teaching directed against a particular religion or sect. For as I understand it, if by liberal policies is meant "hands off" toward religion, it should be hands off and not hands against. Religious tolerance in a free country and practised in its institutions is ane beautiful thing; hostility toward religion is not. History is tritely monotonous in showing that intolerance, one way er another, has never done a country any good, indifference has been shown to be quite as bad, but downright encouragement of anti-religious feeling has led invariably to inevitable godlessness and trouble. I like to think that Father Delaney's mortal passage will help divorce the issue of the so-called religious controversy from whatever varied personal feelings for the m.an responsible authorities and our public may have. If the religious fervor he had aroused was only hysteria or excitement caused by a Savonarola, then those who professed to -have been alarmed by it would have no cause to fear now that Father Delaney has departed. On the other hand, if the militant devotion he had managed to instill endure, then one might well entertain the possibility that Father Delaney could have been only an instrument-a worthy one-of the Author of all knowledge Who, in solicitude over this Christian country, had made these things come to pass. As I watched the young students, old professors and elderly citizens file devoutly toward the communion rail, many in almost tearful farewell to the priest and friend they must have known so well, I found myself wondering if, after all, there was not in all this the hand of Divine Providence. Father Delaney's flock and friends were many; the consecrated Hosts ran short and others had to wait for another mass for their communion. Where I knelt. I prayed.-from the Philippine Collegian. and competence of any government agency to define or limit the scope of religion, some critics called him arrogant. The matter was under quieter discussion byl campus elements concerned, even as news came from Baguio, where Father Delaney had gone to rest after the new chapel's blessing, that he had died of a heart attack, on January 12. FEBRUARY 1956 21 U NTIL THAT news, many had been tempted by the sensational tone sometimes given the controversy by side-issues, to forget the quiet daily work of the chaplain, particularly his dedication to the salvaging of marriages. Of all his publications, perhaps his words on love and courtship are as widely known and discussed as those on the Mass. He was pastor not of intellectuals alone. For the workers in the obrero compound quonsets of the campus there were special Sunday masses, with altar-stone and priest brought right into their midst. UPSCA taught them catechism, how to read and write; and shared food and clothing with them at Christmas. Masses commemorating the dead, and marriage ceremonies for the poor were free; and the simplest bride and groom celebrated the sacrament of their oneness in a chapel warmly decorated. When the son-in-law of a faculty member was killed in Korea, it was the chaplain who comforted the grieving woman. When a law school magna cum laude died in a holiday accident in the American Midwest, it was the chaplain who offered plane fare so that her body could return to the Philippines. When fire razed i:i. sawali duplex in the community, the chaplain made a personal present 22 of a new refrigerator to the victim. Royalties from his dozen books, private gifts, fees for retreats: whatever Father Delaney hacl, including the diminishing strength of his body, was for those whose need was greater than his. Offering the gift of such example, he never had to preach conversion. He was, in fact, the servant of many not of his parish and not even of his faith. Nor will it soon be forgotten that, when Dean Francisco Benitez of the U.P. College of Education, a ranking Mason, died, nevertheless Father Delaney brought his remains into the Catholic chapel and celebrated the full last rites for his soul. It was a controversial matter: as religion in a material world probably always will be. Once, in reply to a regent's charge that he was stirring up religious dissension, the Catholic chaplain asserted that, during ten years of lecturing UPSCAN s and six of administering to his community, " ... no one in all that time has ever heard me say one word derogatory to. critical of, unkind to, carping of any other form of religion, or of any individual because of his religious affiliation." Yet, man of bristling eyebrows, he would have been the last to deny being capable of righteous protest, too, in dePANORAMA fense of godly ways. Not peace on earth, good will to men; but peace on earth to men of good will: he saw a difference. THAT THE difference finally became clear for many another man, once his adversary or undecided spectator, a multitude bore witness, who walked beside him on his last, longest journey. Made solemn by their knowledge, they walked however not in despair for what had been taken, but in gratitude for what had been given. On January 13, the gaunt body of Father Delaney was brought from Loyola Heights to the Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice, on the state university campus. Although there was a * hearse, thousands of students, faculty members, employees and alumni insisted on carrying their dead chaplain in his casket the whole distance. The procession took several hours to cross the two kilometers of muddy, half-repaired road. Taps had been blown for Father Delaney, member of a militant order, at Ateneo; his casket was plain and unadorned, except for a wreath from President Magsaysay. After allnight vigils and several morning masses, the final blessing of the body was solemnized at three in the afternoon: and the cortege left for N ovaliches. In memory of Father Delaney, they tried not to mourn. They tried to believe that wherever he went in the shadows, light would go with him. * * The Serenity of Death These heroes are dead. They died for liberty-they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, unner the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other wars-they are at peace. - In the midst of battles, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. -Robert Green lnaersoll * FEBRUARY 1956 23 l\lm•t of the twenty words given below should be in your rca<ling vocabulary. That i~. you should be able to reco~nize them, althou;.rh you may not be able to define or nctually use them in writing. Select the proper dcfi11ition for each, then turn to page tiO for the correct answers. F1ftcen is passing. 1. 2. 3. 4. s. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 24 deprave-(a) to dispossess; (b) to discover by searching; (c) to corrupt; (d) to disappoint. disperse-(a) to lower by force; (b) to scold severely; (c) to scatter; ( d) to oppose. ghetto-(a) a shrine; (b) a quarter inhabited by Jews; (c) a musical beat; (d) a sculpture. impugn-(a) to indoctrinate; (b) to dominate; (c) to challenge as false; ( d) to decline or refuse. arraign-(a) accuse or charge; (b) to put in a straight line; (c) to determine the line of succession to a throne; (d) to fire. rogue-(a) a witch doctor; (b) an uneven surface; (c) facial makeup; ( d) a rascal or dishonest person. token-(a) a symbol; (b) has been admitted; (c) a magic pole among Indians; (d) a sign of danger. guttural-(a) courageous; (b) pertaining to the Jntcstincs; (c) pertaining to the throat; (d) itchy. ruse--(a) a trick or artifice; (b) misuse; (c) wear-off through constant use; (d) ignition mechanism. guile--(a) suspicion; (b) lever of a machine; (c) a greenish liquid secreted by the liver; (d) cunning or treachery. graven-(a) enclosed within walls; (b) to make more seri01~s; (c) deeply impressed or firmly fixed; (d) a series of graves. ermob/e--(a) to deface or degrade; (b) to dignify or elevate; (c) to confer a lordship on; (d) to magnify. cynic-(a) a hypocrite; (b) a beautiful scenery; (c) a sneering faultfinder; (d) a hopeful person. complaisant-( a) with a liking of jolly company; (b) in addition to; (c) for the common good; (d) disposed to please. cloudburst-(a) a sudden change of emotion; (b) a sudden, heavy rainfall; ( c) uncontrolled sorrow; ( d) a hurricane. schism-(a) an ideology; (b) an elevation on the ground; (c) a division or disunion; (d) a harmful or evil act. lucid-(a) shining or bright; (b) distant; (c) confusing; (d) pertaining to acidic compounds. gnash-(a) an ugly wound; (b) to put in a basket; (c) to pulverize; ( d) to grind the teeth together, especially in pain or anger. mauve-(a) pale bluish-purple; (b) neutral in color; (c) harmless in looks; (d) unsteady. inert-(a) hidden; (b) mysterious; (c) inactive or sluggish; (d) included in. PANORAMA • //AST OCTOBER, when mid~ dleweight boxing champion Carl "Bobo" Olson faced contender "Sugar Ray" Robinson, he had extra reason to be nervous even if the betting odds favored him. For 71 years middleweight champions have met such strange bad luck that they can hardly escape feeling that a jinx goes with the title. Since 1884, when the middleweight division was first set up, there have been slightly over 30 titleholders. Remarkably few of these have died "healthy, wealthy and old," according to sports reporter Martin Abramson. The majority have suffered sometimes tragic, always at least embarrassing, climaxes. One 24-year-old champion was shot in the back. Another died in an accidental · plane crash. Four withered away from rare diseases. One, havFEBRUARY 1956 35 charms included horseshoes By RAUL BARBERO ing killed a woman, was sent to San Quentin penitentiary. Still others fa:iled to survive public disgrace and financial ruin. Even when things go right, sportsmen are a superstitious lot; when tragedies of this sort strike time and again, naturally they begin to talk of a jinx. England's Randy Turpm, for example, who upset Ray Robinson for the crown in London in 1951, could not relax in glory. He feared what Greeks called hubris and the Jews spoke of as the pride that precedes destruction. When he appeared in America for a rematch with Rob:inson, Turpin brought along 35 charms, i.ncluding horseshoes, rabbits' feet, and four-leaf clovers. Nevertheless, not only did Turpin lose the crown, but a 25 few months later the Englishman had a serious auto accident. Then he wasted his fight earnings; shortly afterwards he was involved in a $305,000 lawsuit. It took many months before he was on his feet agam, respected in his career-but only having switched . to another boxing category, lightheavyweight. Eventually Turpin may rebound in as fine fashion as did Rocky Graziano, first suspended for not reporting a bribe and later revealed as a convicted Army deserter, but today a successful TV actor and author. Most champions before him, however, were not so lucky. fl ACK DEMPSEY, champion 1888-91: called Nonpareil (without equal. The heavyweight of the 1920's borrowed the original Dempsey's name and reputation). When boxing was still illegal, he used to fight 30-40 round bouts on "barges, beaches and vacant lots." A man of magnificent strength, suddenly his body wasted away, from a rare circulatory disease, and he died at 37. Norman "Kid McCoy" Selby, 1894-98: his corkscrew punch won him 198 out of 200 fights. But he married too often-ten times-and liked liquor too much. He was sentenced to 24 years at San Quentin for killing a woman one night while 26 drunk. Paroled in seven years, yet he was barred from taverns and fight gyms. In despair, he took an overdose of sleeping pills. Stanley Ketchel, 1908-10: although he spent most of his time in night clubs, he was strong enough to knock down heavyweight Jack Johnson, 45 pound,!; over his own weight. The gun he always carried, however, kept getting him into trouble. Sent to a ranch for a rest cure, he paid too much attention to a cowboy's wife, and was shot dead-at the age of 24. He had hoped to see 30. Billy Papke, 1908: took the crown from Ketchel in a fierce 12 rounds but lost it three months later to the same man. His morale exhausted, Billy put a bullet through his own brain. Harry Creb, 1923-26: the only man ever to beat Gene Tunney. He became champion while half-blind, lost the crown in a few months. In the hosµital having his broken nose repaired, he "died mysteriously under the anesthetic," at 32. Tiger Flowers, 1926: after losing the title, he went to the hospital for minor surgery, died of "status lymphaticus", a condition fatal, according to Abramson, only once in 150,000 cases. Mickey Walker, 1926-31: bankruptcy due to alcohol took him off the sports page, put PANORAMA him on the front page. Only recently, now an artist, has he managed to start a new life. Marcel Cerdan, 1948-49: having finally beat Tony Zale, titleholder for 16 years, the Frenchman lost a year later by dislocating a shoulder muscle in the first round. Returning to New York for a rematch, Cerdan's plan crashed just off Spain; nobody survived. Ray Robinson, 1951-53: king of the welterweights, "Sugar Ray" was considered history's best fighter in that class. Then he joined the middleweight ranks, and the jinx began. No sooner had he won the title, than he lost it again to Turpin. Having regained it once more, he challenged lightheavyweight king Joey Maxim, was easily outpointing him in g long fight when suddenly Robinson collapsed from heat exhaustion. He went into show business for awhile, to recoup his losses; but then the offers became fewer and fewer. Finally he was forced to make a comeback in boxing. Carl "Bobo" Olson, 1953-55: took the title when Robinson retired, but became too cocky. He challenged Archie Moore, light-heavyweight king: and was knocked out. With all the odds in his favor, he faced Robinson, now an ex-tapdancerand lost the title. Whether he can come back or not, as Robinson did, only time and the jinx can say. * * * Impressive 1t(est Rachmaninofl told this story about his boyhood. "When I was a very little fellow,'' he said, "I pfayed at a reception at a Russian count's, and, for an urchin of seven, I flatter myself that I swung through Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata' pretty successfully. "The 'Kreutzer,' you know, has in it several long and impressive rests. W eII, in one of these rests the count's wife, a motherly old lady, leaned forward, patted me on the shoulder, and said: "'Play us something you know, dear.'" * FEBRUARY 1956 27 On January 23, 1956, President Ramon Magsaysay delivered his state-of-the-nation address before a joint session of the Congress on the opening of the third session of the Third Congress. After presenting the accomplishments and problems of his administration, Pres. l\1agsaysay set ten guideposts for Congress to keep in view in its legislative program The President's Guideposts 0 UR PEOPLE have begun the peaceful revolution of uprooting age-old injustices and social evils and of elevating themselves to their true worth and dignity. We must preserve and consolidate our gains and accelerate our forward pace. Our first guidepost is self sufficiency in primary foodstuffs. Blessed with vast expanses of fertile land, we have the basic means to stop recurring food shortages. We must attain selfsufficiency at least in the basic foods. Fortunately we have suc .. ceded in developing some effective incentiv~s to production, such as the maintenance of floor prices in rice and corn 28 and the expansion of credit and marketing facilities. We should now consider the feasibility of extending these incentives to other essential foods. Our second guidepost is the acceleration of land reform. Because land ownership rem£>.ins the greatest incentive to productivity and contentment among our masses, we are speeding up land distribution. The salutary impact of the Land Tenure Reform Act will soon be added to the efforts of the NARRA, the ACCFA, and the Bureau of Lands. Our third guidepost is the establishment of a strong administrative machinery for community development. As we diversify our efforts to stimulate community developPANORAMA ment, the establishment of a coordinating and implementing machinery becomes more urgent. Our fourth guidepost is the fulier utilization of our natural resources in economic development. Our main hope of providing more employment to our people lies in the fuller utilization of our abundant natural resources. It is essential that existing as well as new industries make greater m:e of our available raw materials and develop those than can be produced locally. We should give continued emphasis to industries and enterprises that will utilize more of our available materials and resources, as against those which are largely dependent on imported raw materials. Unless this is done, it well be well high imposible to build a sound economy. Our fifth guidepost is the improvement of monetary and credit management to accelerate economic develooment. The expansion of ~redit facilities coupled with the proper allocation of foreign exchange is an effective stimulus to agricultural and industrial production. There should now be developed an integrated system of economic priorities to govern the extension of credit and the allocation of dollars. Our sixth guidepost is the adoption of educational reforms FEBRUARY 1956 geared to the requirements of scientific and economic progress. We must revitalize our educational system with emphasis on general, scientific, and vocational education. The decreasing emphasis on the natural and physical sciences runs counter to the rapidly developing era of electronics and atomics If we are to participate fully in the blessings of science, we must recast our educational system to train more engineers and scientists. Our seventh guidepost is the need for scientific research as a basis of economic and social development. Fundamental and applied research has long been neglected. In science and scholarship we have largely depended on progress abroad. It is time that we participate seriously in this enterprise, paying particular attention to our needs. It would be desirable to establish an Institute of Economic Development and Research in the University of the Philippines to provide not only our students but also those of neighboring A s i a n countries with the advanced training essential to accelerated development. We should provide inducements for private philanthropy for the benefit of scientific research. One way of doing this is to adopt a far-sighted tax po29 licy on donations and giants for scientific research and investigation. The eight guidepost is the redefinition of the incentives for private enterprise. The insufficiency and timidity of capital, domestic and foreign, has been one of the principal reasons for the delay in our economic development. We should now dissipate the uncertainty in our investment atmosphere and, consistent with the national interest, give to investors the necessary incentives and guarantees. It is part of our efforts to clarify the goals of our econom:c growth and the means with which we seek to attain them. Among them are the economic controls. While we are for their gradual removal, they remain necessary at this stage of our economic development. They must be utilized to assure the most advantageous allocation cf our limited resources and thus maintain monetary and price stability. Our tariff structure should be further studied to give full protection to our vital industries. It would also be advisable to renew the authority granted to the President under Republic Act No. 1196 to increase or reduce tariff rates for at least two more years. Our ninth guidepost is the stabilization of the fiscal position of the government. At the bottom of our slow progress in some areas of public service is the insufficiency of public revenues. Congress should study the following aspects of our fiscal organization with a view to increasing gov* * * 30 THE PRESIDENT SAID"In the rural areas lies the bulk of our national and human resources, the real wealth of our nation. We must gear them to each other and spark the latter into action so as to achieve the expanding production to meet the requirements of national prosperity and security." "We have gone a long way in g1vmg the rural inhabitants the material means to prosperity and improvement. Foremost of these is land. During the last special session Congress enacted Republic Act No. 1400, known as the Land Tenure Reform Law. The Administration has taken the first steps to acquire landed estates for redistribution." PANORAMA ernment revenues: First, the necessity of setting up a tax commission to undertake technical studies of our tax system and recommend improvements. Second, the further raising of the efficiency of our revenue collecting agencies; and, Third, the revision of our tax laws where such revisions are deemed urgent, pending the studies by the tax commission. Our tenth guidepost is the need for raising efficiency in public administration. T he implementation o f sound and well-planned projects often bogs down owing to inefficiency in public administration. We must continue to buttress our administrative units, especially those directly concerned with economic development. We have completed the wage and position classification survey and a project on the improvement of budgeting, accounting, and auditing procedures in the Government. We should now apply the results of these studies to effect economy and efficiency. I have created a Presidential Performance Commission entrusted with the duty of keeping close watch on performance and result in the executive agencies and instrumentalities of the government. Energetic, intelligent, and dedicated service at every level is indispensable to the success of government. I commend these guideposts to your thoughtful consideration in the full confidence that they will give our joint efforts a common unswerving direction. * * * MARKET DAY IN BURMA E VERY FIFTH DAY is bazaar day in the peaceful rural areas of Burma's remote Shan States. In the first early light of day, the Shan and Kachin hill people start down their hills. From their farm homes, scattered through the hills, they travel to the town where the bazaar is being held. Here they sell their farm produce and buy yarns, cloth, Dahs (square-ended machetes), turban-silk, sandals, dried fish, and even gems and spices. Here, too--and of almost equal interest with their shopping-they exchange news of their families, friends, the village, the country and the world. After their morning of brisk trade-and sometimes brisker gossiir-they pack up their purchases and start their trek back up the hills, hoping to reach their farm homes before dark. Although weary when they reach home, these sturdy hill people will be more than ready to make the journey again in just five days.-Free World. FEBRUARY 1956 31 ·---------~--The wonderful atom ..... ----.-....----.. 32 It Helps Grow Sugar in Hawaii HAWAII GREW MORE SUGAR than ever before in 1953 and 1954-because atomic power has been harnessed to study sugar growing as part of America's vast "Atoms for Peace" program. For nine years scientists used the atom in experiments. Eleven different radio isotopes were buried in sugar plant containers, added to fertilizers, and used in various other scientific ways, some of which are pictured on these pages. So encouraging were the results of these tests that the atom's findings were put to work immediately in Hawaii"s sugar cane fields and the record crops of 1953 and 1954 followed. The research was conducted by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, a non-profit organization, and the results were shared by all. One of the most important projects during the long test period was the study of water distribution in cane fields. Radioactive rubidium was added to irrigation water and a Geiger counter checked the rubidium's progress through the irrigation ditches. Thus scientists learned more about the absorption of water by soils and could recommend more effective irrigation plans. In addition to this project, the researchers used the atom in studying how plants acquire energy from natural sources, and just how fertilizers are absorbed by sugar cane plants and at what stages in a plant's growth. Even sugar content can be measured by atomic power-immediately after shredding. This helps planters determine their processing and marketing procedures.-FREE WORLD PANORAMA YESTERDAY'S PAPERS How old is Philippine journalism? • By ARMANDO ]. MALAY I N THE Philippines, the newspaper has had many beginnings. That journalism here has survived is a tribute to the men who have struggled to implant in the country the right of free speech and information. The makings of a newspaper in the country started as early as 1799, or earlier, when there was circulated the "bojas volantes," or flying sheets, telling about some big or exciting event. One issue reported on the Moro campaign and the capture of Sulu pirates. These sheets or "avisos" existed up to 1809, coming out irregularly and sometimes at long intervals between issues. The publishers were anonymous. The first real newspaper came out on August 8, 1811, with the governor general himself, Manuel Fernandez de Folgueras, as editor. It was called "Del Superior Gobierno" and came out weekly. It catered to FEBRUARY 1956 • the peninsulars since it printed news mostly about the home country. Much of the material was reprinted from English gazettes. When no more gazettes were available, the paper closed down on February 7, 1812, promising republication as soon as more British gazettes arrived. But it never made good its promise. T HE FIRST daily in the Philippines was put out on December 1, 1846 by Felipe Lacorte, an engineer turned historian, and Everisto Calderon. Called "La Esperanza, it was mostly filled with long discussions of historical, scientific, and religious subjects. Sometimes it had some fresh news. It was dull, colorless, repressed, and lasted three years. But it had started something. Soon there were the "Diario de Manila," "El Porvenir Filipino", "El Catolico," "Revista Mercantil," "Diario de Avisos," 33 "Correo de Manila," "La Oceania Espanola," and "Diario de Filipinas." The best edited of the papers is the first. The "Diario" started publication in 1848, edited by Don Felipe del Pan, dubbed the ablest journalist of his day. It had a correspondent in Spain, and once spent P3,000 in one month for promotions, to offset the competition offered by the "El Comercio." In 1852, it suspended publication to give way to an offkial gazette, but was soon revived and lived until 1899 when conditions became so turbulent that the editor thought it more prudent to close shop. 0 N APRIL 1, 1887, the "'La Opinion" opened shop, marking the advent of political journalism in the Philippines. Before this time, all the papers had to toe the line drawn by church and state, and operated under the stric~ censorship of a board composed of churchmen and government officials. "La Opinion" edited by Julian de Posa and Jesus Polanco was first to defy till:.Jriars and worked for the ouster of the religious including the archbishop. On its staff was a brilliant writer, the Spaniard Pablo Feced, whose articles written under the pen name of Quiaoquiap irked Rizal and other Filipino intellectuals who wrote 34 articles in reply. The first Filipino to go into journalism in a big way was Pascual Poblete, who, with Baldomero Hazanas, a friendly Spaniard, founded ''El Resumen," only July 1, 1890. The paper became very popular because it catered to the native spirit. Satirical weeklies also cropped up at about this time, which made much of cartoons and verses to twit personages in the community. Among the most prominent of these weeklies were "La Semana Elegante," "Manila Alegre," "Manililla," "El Caneco," and "El Domingo." W ITH THE worsening of political conditions in th~ country, and the growing consciousness of political rights among the people sparked by educated Filipinos in Spain and other countries abroad, there came a need for native expression of aspirations. Thus was born Filipino journals. Most famous was "La Solidaridad," organ of the Filipino community in Madrid. It was first edited by Graciano Lopez Jaena, then by Marcelo H. del Pilar, brilliant lawyer-writer who had fled the country to escape official wrath. Supported by contributions from homeland patriots, the paper flourished, featuring arPANORAMA PRESS CASUALTIES The expropriation of La Prensa and the muz~lin~ of the e'1tire press &n Argentina under Peron, the bam;ii11g of EI Tiempo in Bogota in 1955, the imprisonment of some twenty Turkish journalists by virtue of some highly dubious legislation adopt~d in 1954, the arbitrary arrest or the detention on suspicion of journalists in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Pakistan, and elsewhere; the continuance of Nazi and Fascist measures in the press laws of WEstern Germany and Italy, and also the adoption of laws of authoritarian tinge in certain countries, the abuse of the campaign against "corruptive" writings in Australia especially, and lastly the deliberate use of intimidation in South Africa and elsewhere--these are the heaviest blows dealt to the press during the post-war period. ti cl es by Rizal, J aena, Mariano Ponce, Del Pilar, and other exiles. But "Solidaridad" was for the intellectuals. There was a need for a paper to reach the ordinary man. The Katipunan decided to issue "Kalayaan." The first number was secretly put out by printers of the "Diario de Manila." Its editor was Emilio Jacinto, and among the founders besides Andres Bonifacio was Dr. Pio Valenzuela. There was no second issue. The Katipunan was, about the same time as the release of the first issue, discovered, and the revolt was on. Other Filipino papers took its place. Among them were the "Republica Filipina," issued by Pedro A. Paterno; "La Revolucion," published in J aro, Iloilo; "El Heraldo de la Revolucion," FEBRUARY 1956 which was fiercely nationalistic. The most outstanding was "La lndependencia," which had among its contributors such young but brilliant writers as Rafael and Jose Palma, Leon Ma. Guerrero, Epifania de los Santos, and Cecilio Apostol. L AST OF these patriotic papers was the "El Renacimiento" which was published by Don Martin Ocampo, and continued to keep the fires of nationalism even after the revolution, and when the Americans had taken over. The paper died after a costly libel suit brought against it by Dean C. Worcester, then secretary of interior. Editor at the time was Teodoro M. Kalaw. The American era marked a new phase in Philippine jour35 nalism. The country settled down to peaceful agitation for independence and learned a new craft of government. Among the American soldiers who came were journalists who upon discharge started almost immediately daily newspapers. The first daily was the "Ma~ nila Times," founded by Thomas Cowan, an· Englishman. It passed through many hands and finally was purchased by Alejandro Roces Sr. Contemporaries of the paper included the "Manila Daily Bulletin," the "American," and the "Cable News." Roces discontinued the "Times" which later emerged as the "Tribune," under the TVT publications, with Carlos P. Romulo as its first editor. Other papers under the TVT aegis were the "La Vanguardia," in Spanish, formerly owned by Martin Ocampo, who made it sucessor to his defunct "El Renacimiento"; and "Taliba" in Tagalog. The "Manila Daily Bulletin" started out as a shipping journal but soon became a fullfledged newspaper. The other two American-owned papers emerged to become "Cable News American." When Manuel L. Quezon rose to top eminence as leader of the Filipinos, he felt he needed a paper to speak for his fight for early independence. He assembled a high-powered financial group to found the "Philippines Herald." The first issue came out on August 8, 1920, with Conrado Benitez as editor. * * * 36 Many countries are ahead of the Philippines in efficient use of timber. America converts sawdust into presto log for firewood. In Belgium, even limbs and twigs and waste from matches are converted into wood pulp for the manufacture of hardwood. Sweden soaks lumber in arsenic instead of creosote, thus making pine as durable as oak, with a pleasant arsenic-green color. When water is removed from bark, it serves as fuel. Japan's trees are small and thin, and scarce; yet waste is prevented by using even one-inch pieces in furniture. Thus the Japanese are able to buy Philippine mahongay logs, make their own furniture, and undersell the Philippines abroad! The logging wastes along the Agusan river alone could be converted into thousands of tons of paper yearly. * PANORAMA How to 'Becoine a Painter A noted artist gives a few suggestions on how to smear the canva,'1 By CESAR LEGASPI 0 NCE, I PAINTED with brushes only. With colors and canvas, of course, and planning and sweat. I used raw sienna and black and white. Then, in 1950 or thereabouts, there appeared, with Manansala, incised lines and wiping off colors with rags to leave only a stain. At about the same time, Vic Oteyza started to use sand on his paintings. Hernando Ocampo made color charts, and color lists,- dozens of them. He made them for glazing, for color schemes - in triads, complements and split complements. We started to paint with enamel colors. We used our fingers or sticks or palette knives. Arturo Luz FEBRUARY 1956 37 and I painted with tempera, on wood panels. But these little tricks are not what bring_ on gray hairs. They are not the primary concern in painting. A painting is really what we are and know and live through. It probably begins the day one's mother forgot the feeding time and for a day the world became an unsatisfactory place to live in. It . may even have begun farther back than that, when one's mother got frightened by a horse or a black cat or a shadow.Certainly, the little triumphs and frustrations of puberty play a part too. For ·nhether he likes it or not, a painter puts the whole man into each painting. A painting is what we live through. Once, I drew an ad for an insurance company. It was the picture of an old man in retirement, planting a seedling in his garden. I liked the form. lt stayed in the memory long after it was done. It had the attributes or good design, such as balance and variation, plus emotion. I made a painting out of it. But somehow I didn't like the piece. Something had got lost in the process-maybe there was too little of it, or too much. So I put it away and worked on other things. Meantime, many t hi n g s changed. I got a new job. I acquired a daughter. I moved 38 to another place-way out in the sticks where the air, the configuration of the earth and its colors and the foliage were different. I saw more of the sky and a new view of the city. The people, too, were different. They had large, rough hands and feet, and they covered themselves from neck to waist to ankles with rough, faded, torn clothes. One day I picked up my pencil. The lines came quickly, easily. They were alive, and they fell into place effortlessly. B UT, ONCE started, one begins to think of technique : the trick of transferring thought, mood, or emotion onto canvas. I transferred the drawing onto canvas at once and started coloring. I chose gray-blue, blue-green, white, purple, and a bit of orange. I muted them to help the mood. As I applied the colors, I tried to keep the image whole in my mind. If a color needed cooling, a scumble of blue did it. If it was too cool, an orange or red scumble corrected that. I worked on that painting for two weeks. As I worked, some of the gloom, the failures and unhappiness I had known, half buried in my memory may have started to work also: I liked the piece. The blues and the purples and greens were of the proper intensity or size 01· were in the right place. The PANORAMA lines were of the proper length or thickness . . . That is, however, only one method-simple, direct. One discovers other methods. The old masters started out with an underpainting of earth colors such as siennas or earth greens FEBRUARY 1956 or umbers, with a heavier impasto on the highlights, getting thinner in the shadows. Then they aid it aside for three months, waiting for it to dry thoroughly. Once dry, they started glazing, that is, used paint thinned down with a mix39 ture of L'3 varnish, 1;3 turpentine, and 1/3 oil, applied with a soft camel's hair or sable brush in thin coats, one on top of the other, as they dried ( 24 hours or more) until the right color or effect had been achieved. Here is where they added the brighter colors such as the blues, reds or yellows. Here, if a violet was wanted, a blue or red was laid on first, whichever was lighter. This was allowed to dry thoroughly, and the darker glaze was then applied.-One can see right away •,hat the method is slow, painstaking and complicated. Naturally, they had to paint several pieces simultaneously, else they would have had to sit around twiddling their thumbs during the drying periods. I F ONE IS the impatient type, he paints the whole canvas with one color, say a red, and starts painting into this while still wet, any other color or colors he desires. This ensures unity, at least in color, since the red will mix with the color on top; thus, a blue will be red-blue, an orange red-orange, etc. Or he may try Cezanne's method. Each brush stroke is allowed to remain a small flat area and one can, by slightly changing the tone of the stroke next to it, either towards light vi· dark, achieve modelling; or 40 by alternating a stroke of warm color with a stroke of cool color, achieve vibration. Again, if a change of hue in a given area is wanted, by gradually adding the desired hue to the original coolr mixed, and applying with the same flat brush strokes, a smooth transition is obtained. If the paint is applied in little rounded dots, the result is Pointillism; if in small elongated strokes, Impressionism. In these last three methods, what occurs is that the small isolated strokes are blended, at a distance, by the eye. If one is the really impetuous type, there is nothing like a-la-prima painting. Here one just applies colors with broad dashing strokes, trying to get his effects immediately and never overpainting. This is the simplest method on the face of it, but one must know how to exploit accidental effects. He must be a fast thinker, and of course must know a lot of tricks, with brush, spatula or rag. I have heard of painters who never use white. The theory is exactly like that in watercoloring where the white is provided by the paper (in this case, the canvas) and the colors are thinned down with some medium and applied in thin washes. These methods, however, one discovers gradually as one PANORAMA grows in the art. We all use one or another, or a combination of several. But whatever system we use, the things that we are and know and have been through keep entering into and affecting the work. That is why the things that we are must be added to, enlarged and explored. The whole man must be made a bigger man. -From the AAP Bulletin * * * "You work and work but get nothing • ,, S OME 200 CHINESE fishing junks and shrimp boats recently fled the communist-controlled South China Sea and sought political refuge in Hong Kong waters. Scanty food rations, communist exploitation, and renewed attempts at indoctrination combined to drive the estimated 1000 persons aboard these boats from their homes in the red-controlled M'anshan Islands area about 75 kilometers southwest of H.ong Kong. In seeking a sanctuary in Hong Kong. these simple fishermen told the authorities their tales of woe. Lo Pei-keng, master of a 25-foot shrimper, said that he, his wife and six children had to live on starvation diets as communist food rations were insufficient and it was impossible to obtain food from the market. Chen Hsien-yin, Sl-year-old ji.tnk master, said fishing in communist China is no longer paying as they have to sell their hauls to communist co-operatives at prices, arbitrarily fixed by communist cadres, which are far below average market prices. "You work and work but you get nothing in return. The communists take whatever you get," said aged Liang Kai-wei as he explained that never in his long life has he had so little as he has had since the communists took control of his home island. To his son, Liang Chin-erh, the communist attempts at indoctrination were particularly distasteful. He said that he and his family !-.ad to attend innumerable political sessions dominated by communist cadres who did not even speak in a dialect which they could understand. On hearing the fishermen's tales of harddship, the British authorities in Hong Kong offered the fishermen the opportunity to settle in the Hong Kong area and fish its waters.-Free World. * FEBRUARY 1956 41 IT WAS DARK when they reached the end of the mango orchard. And before them was the olrl r mango tree, its huge trunk looking like a frightened reptile holding its stomach close to the earth. Against the bright line of the palaisdaans behind and 42 the greying orange sky abo·-'P it, its stubbled branches projecting from the huge reptilelike trunk were markedly bare and fat. Rosie slackened her pace and moved the string that held the candles to her wrist. The candles were heavy and long anrl PANORAMA clapped her sidP at ea..:h step !:he took. Slowly, she rubbed the thin red line around her arm where the string had stayed. Rubbing made it itchy. She stopped walking, laid her loaded arm on the trunk of the mango tree near her. She bent; brought the hem of her dress low around her feet and wiped the wetness around her bare legs where the grass have slapped her with their dew-wet blades. Inside her rubber shoes, she tried to wriggle her toes. They felt cold and numb. The dark carpet of rotting mango leaves had oozed its thick moisture i.nto the canvas sides of her shoes. She looked up at Ka Bino. The old man had stopped a few feet away and was watching her. There was silent impatience at the way he kept putting his foot down on the dried twigs that cracked dully under his weight, the lantern swinging gently from his hand and his old eyes narrowed at watching her under the growing darknes!:I. It was the first time she saw Ka Bino behaving that way. He was a very good-natured man, her favorite uncle. In the small hut inside the mango orchard where he lived with Kakang Isiang, his wife, she was always taken in with much eagerness every summer. Cardo, the old couple's only son had growu into a young man and could not find much time to be with them anymore. She was Ka Bino's FEBRUARY 1956 little daughter every summe1. kind of. She always enjoyed the role immensely. So, each summer when Mother becflme only too happy to honor the invitations from the relatives in San Diego, she never failed to vofon'teer to stay with Ka Bino. It was less fun in the orchard and her sisters and brothers, relieved at knowing she had chosen to stay in the place, would then divide themselves among the rest of the relatives who live close to the big river where they may swim and fish through the whole of summer. K A BINO loved and understood her. He only teased her when picking time came in the orchard and she climbed the mango trees because she loved the way it smelled up in the trees whenever the round fruits broke crisply from their twigs at her tugging. He always said the monkeys in the zoo back in the city would gape at the ease With which she climbed the trees and steadied herself on the branches while she arranged the flush-bottomed fruits with black ants crawling on them inside her skirt held open like a sack, at the . manner she slid down the trunks as though it was great fun (although it was really rough, on her seat and calves), hugging the load in her skirt until .-.he felt the ground under her feet. Once, Ka Bino met her while 41 her dangling legs groped for the ground. He laughed so hard that tears stood in his old eyes. She then grew conscious of her faded drawers showing under the loaded skirt held high to her chest. She never failed to bring a basket or a jute sack with her up a tree after that. Of course, tonight was different. Picking time was over a week ago. The last of the kaings covered with spreads of dried banana leaves that used to line the way to the hut had been carted away to the bus station on its way to the city markets. The many people who capie to the orchard and made it look like a happy picnic ground in their daily bargaining tours, then horses and bulls freed from the cartellas and carts standing nearby and munching fallen mango leaves, have ceased coming. There were now only a few green fruits left on the trees, hanging like oversized jades. But they would never have a chance of ripening once the first strong rains caught up with them and shook them until they fell on the ground. Ka Bino's high spirits before the hubbub of the bargaining days had died down, was gone. Especially now that there was the old mango tree. The faithful old mango tree. Ka Bino was clambering clumsily on it, the lantern still in his hand. 44 Rosie walked to the old mango tree. The old man had hung the lantern on a branch. Under the dirty yellow of the unsteady lantern, Ka Bino, seated on the low crouching trunk, looked like PANORAMA an old dwarf sitting on an anthill. Sht had seen pictures of them - matanda sa punso - they were called. They wore kerchiefs with a big knot on their foreheads. Ka Bino had a kerchief with a big knot around his head, too. Quietly, she approached Ka Bino and laid the candles at his feet. The old man bent over the candles and untangled them. He began cutting them at their wicks. Then, like some ancient priest, he stood with a candle in his hand and went to the lantern. T HE NIGHT had s et t 1 e d around them, cool and moist. The flame flickered inside Ka Bino's cupped palm. The old man was holding the candle over the wound where the end of one branch had been sawn off only the morning_ before. He was muttering under his breath, the despicable woman must have taken fancy on his tree, which was not fair at all, not at all. The clear tears of wax falling off from the brimming circle around the unsteady flame splattered into weird patterns of white on the naked wood. On the icic..led wax that had formed, the melted drops glistened slowly, one by one, endlessly. Candles are for the dead and the dying, Elsa had told her once. Under the old tree, one afterFEBRUARY 1956 noon, she met Elsa. The girl who sneaked through the gape between the stakes of thfi! fence. She has always recalled the clearly way Elsa looked at her reclining on the trunk of the old tree; how without saying anything, the girl began pulling at some green mangoes. Elsa came near the tree where she was, laid the bunch she picked on the trunk and climbed her buttocks near it without spilling the mound of very white salt in her hollowed palm. She did not like the sure way Elsa picked the bunch of mangoes; much less the way Elsa looked at her haughtily, almost disapprovingly. S he h a d a strong urge to kick vehemently at the green bunch near her feet but curiosity stopped her. El!!a looked nice sitting less than a meter away from her. Besides, she really wanted to have someone ot talk to; bargaining on the orchard went on and on for days, even weeks. She con~inued biting at her mango and smacking her lips at the taste of sour meat in hermouth without talking to Elsa, although she never took her eyes from the girl. Elsa was brown as she, but Elsa was pretty. Elsa had enormous eyes with long black lashes. Elsa's mouth turning paler at the acrid meat, was small and thin where hers is full and thick. A few times, Elsa would pause from the mango 45 and the mound of very white salt, but that was only to tuck the loose wisps of her curly hair behind her ears. WHEN ELSA flung her second flat seed and reached for ·another mango, she stopped and glared at Rosie, then pulled her hand back to her lap. Rosie looked away trying to appear disinterested. When R o s i e looked again, Elsa was tugging and twisting for her third mango at its stem, staying the bunch with her hand that contained the mound of very white salt. "You live there?" Elsa said tossing her head toward KP. Bino's hut which showed small in the bright afternoon through the 46 spaces between the trunks of the mango trees. "Yes," Rosie said. "Cardo's sister?" Elsa said. "No," Rosie said. ''Niece then?" Elsa said. "Cousin," Rosie said. Elsa fell quiet. Rosie threw the half-finished mango in her hand and watched it shoot straight into a shrub that bent to give it way, momentarily touching with its drooping arms the thick lustily greening weeds near the fence. "Where do you live?" Rosie said. "In that hut near that thicket of bambooes there," Elsa said pointing with a half-naked mango in her hand. PANORAMA Rosie turned her head from where she lay. "You can see it clear from here if you twist your head a little lower," Elsa instructed. "The palaisdaans are beyond the thickets. "You know Cardo?" she said after getting a full view of the hut, the thickets and the fishponds beyond. Elsa nodded chucking her tongue and sw~llowing noisily. "!tang is Ka Bino's katiwala for the palaisdaans. Cardo was my classmate at the Institute." "Oh,'' Rosie said. '"Why?" Elsa said. ··Huh?" Rosie said. "You just said, oh,'' Elsa said mimicking her. "You look familiar,". Rosie said thinking hard. "Yeah, I know,'' she said snapping her fingers, ''I saw your picture pasted inside Cardo's aparador. You were wearing a long white dress." "It was a graduation picture,"' Elsa said smiling and looking suddenly very pleased. The days after that, Elsa came to the old tree every afternoon and while she chatted, she ate green mangoes. She would fit her back against the L of the trunk and a thick upstanding branch of the old tree and face Rosie who lay a little farther away. Most of the time, they or rather Elsa talked of Cardo. Mostly about their FEBRUARY 1956 schooldays together. Sometimes, when they just sat together, Rosie looking at Elsa and Elsa at her, the girl would hug her knees. Once, Rosie tried it and found that it cramped her chest and made it difficult for her to breathe freely that she released her hold and reclined as before on the trunk. E LSA BECAME less and less talkative as May approached its end and as they grew to know and like each other better. There were the afternoons that Elsa would come late, making Rosie almost decide to go to the small hut near the thicket of bamboos. But then, Elsa would come, stepping heaviJy through the gape between the stakes of the fence. her eyes usually swollen and red. Elsa would look around hesitantly as if to make sure that Rosie was alone. No longer sure of herself like she had been when Rosie first met her. Those afternoons, Elsa would be more quiet and shy and would look down each time she caught Rosie staring at her. Elsa would clear her throat then and hug her knees closer, gathering the folds of her loose dress around her feet. But she would always be eating the mangoes Rosie had picked for her as though eating them were the only thing that mattered in the whole world every afternoon Sometimes, Elsa would come41 early, clutching a porcelain cup in her hand. Rosie would join her then because mangoes tasted better with the red salty mixture of tiny shrimps rich with glistening yellow fat with small cuts of pork that was in the cup. "Did you c o m e only to watch?" Ka Bino had lifted his head from the stump. Quietly, she took a candle and lighted it. The cold air around them had grown warm. The smoke of burning candles curled and clouded the yellow gleam of the lantern as the odor of melting wax and fresh wood mingled heavily in the night air. "A fruit tree grows little fruits. Ka Bino, after a woman had been very fond of it?" "A conceiving woman, yes," Ka Bino took an::ithflr candle and held its wick against the shorter lighted one: in his hand. "Cardo would not be very pleased when he sees the olrl mango tree. It is his favorite tree. But it must be done, it must." Ka Bino spoke softly, pressing each word slowly as though he was afraid that he might be misunderstood. Ka Binoo's son had not been home for two summers since the day he went to the city after the old couple suddenly made up their mind to send him to college. Ka Bino never believed in too much schooling. Rosie h::id heard him tell Mother once that he wanted Cardo to grow I 48 brown and strong close to the fishponds and clever with mCJney like he was when he was Cardo's age. So that when one afternoon, he s u d d en 1 y announced that Cardo must go to the city with them at the end of summer. they were very much surprised. Cardo was openly disturbed. w HEN MOTHER came for them as usual a few days before school opened, Ka Bino and Kakang Isiang had long talks with her every afternoon when she came from their relatives near the big river where she had been packing clothes. Mother had no trouble with thE: girls, but with her brothers, Mother had to stay two or three days in order to search for and collect all their dirtied underthings, pants, shirts and socks thrown carelessly all over their room and most of the time wrung dry, mildewed and forgotten near the river. Mother, Ka Bino and Kakang Isiang would sit under the mango tree below the small window of the silid and speak in low tones. They were huddled that way when Cardo came running from the edge of the orchard into the back door. Rosie was in the siIid, her arms full of Cardo's clothel\. She heard him panting when he came. She was sure Mother, Ka Bino and Kakang Isiang never noticed anything. From the mango tree below the PANORAMA small window of the silid, their whispered conversation came uninterrupted. Cardo sat on the edge of his bed where Rosie was folding his clothes into a big rattan travelling bag. Then; without saying anything, he stood up and walked to his aparador which waited open showing one or two empty racks. RosiE: pretended to be very busy with his clothes. When she turned to get more shirts, Cardo took his eyes away; from Elsa's picture which was pasted inside his aparador and hastily gathered the books inside the top drawers in order to pack them. From the intensely warm city for two summers, the old couple had received the same curt and coldly civil reply: they mulilt not expect him to come home as he would spend even the summers at schCJol because it would mean finishing his course at a shorter period and therefore he could return home sooner than they expected him to. "Kakang Isiang would be waiting for us. By this time. supper must be ready." "We have finished but three branches,'' Rosie said. "The rest will not rot tomorrow. We'll finish them all by tomorrow,'' Ka Bino said smiling at her. Rosie blew at her candle and gave it to Ka Bino. She stooc:' up and reached for the lamp while Ka Bino collected all the unused candles on the trunk. R OSIE JUMPED from the trunk. On the moist carpet of the rotting mango leaves, looking up at the huge od mango tree whose many bare b_ranches rose as in suppliance into the empty darkness, Rosie wondered where Elsa could be. The small hut near the bamboo thickets with its nipa shingles hanging loose and about to fall has been empty for two years. But Elsa were there, she knew that there would be. no more green fruits to tug at and share under the old tree. It would take years before the green stems could shoot anew frotn the old trunk and with them, the tiny brownish-green leaves. And then one can never tell if the fruits afterwards would be as good, as fat and as round as before. * * * The highest compact we can make with our fellow is,-Let there be truth between us two forever more. -Ralph Waldo Emerson FEBRUARY 1956 49 Dim Book Review -1-so -·---. -----· -- I a 1ahle * By LEONARD CASPER I I _I a s IF TO take the curse of unpopularity off William Faulkner's latest novel A Fable, his publishers have decorated the cover and section heads with crosses-in single, double and triple arrangements. Even the book jacket hopefully suggests correspondences between the female characters and Magdalene, Martha, and Mary. Yet what may keep this from becoming "a classic during the lifetime of its author" is Faulkner's refusal to commit himself fully to his publisher's willful reading. In many ways, in fact, A Fable is not only fabulous but actually parodies orthodox Christian history. The anonymous corporal who, with twelve apostles, is responsible for the ceasefire among enlisted men on the West European front in the first World War, finally is executed at the age of 33, between two thieves: that is true. And he is resurrected (in a different, if not transfigured form). But the rest of his story is perverse invention. The allegedly Christlike corporal is conceived not by the Holy Ghost but, illegitimately, by a French officer in Asia (who later, as allied commander-in-chief and symbol of caesarism, authorizes his own son's execution). The boy is raised by his half-sisters, the idiot Marya and longsuffering Marthe who becomes a mother to him and brings him to France, eventually to confront his father. Before that moment in the war, however, the young corporal marries an even younger prostitute. His miracu•William Faulkner, A Fable (Random House: New York, 1954) PANORAMA lous power is limited to raising large sums of money, for operations on the blind. The corporal's plan to stop the munitions-makers' and generals' war is betrayed, for coin, by a certafo Polchek who, however, unlike Judas refuses to kill himself in despair. After a "last supper" void of religious significance (the thirteen eat their last meal greedily, gracelessly), the corporal is whisked off to a hilltop where his father, in the role of Satan now, tempts him with the world. Because he refuses, he is shot to death tied to a post. When the post collapses, his head becomes tangled in a crown of barbed wire. Finally, after his flesh has been "resurrected" by a barrage, it is deposited in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. His spirit apparently assumes a new and mutilated body and creates a riot at his father's bier. 1 HERE IS NO ascension, no pentecost, and only rudimentary signs of anyone's conversion. In fact, at least two men of good will whose consciences he has touched commit suicide. Such a parody, in modern times, can be equalled perhaps only by Robert Graves' "history of Christ"--or by Faulkner's own Nobel prize speech (man will prevail beyond ''the last ding dong of doom") which suddenly appears in the mouth of the new Caesar, the French marshal! Nor is it ever clear that the parody is intentional; or, if it w(!re, what service it would perform in the novel's fullest meaning. After nine years of composition, A Fable still falters, largely because it cannot decide whether to use or abuse its Christian elements. The way of their exploitation smacks of the manner of Hollywood-for whom Faulkner has, several times, penned scenarios (such as Land of the Pharaohs) and from two of whose residents Faulkner received the basic idea for A Fable! The geography of influence on the novel's behavior, however, is not limited to Beverly Hills. Not only have American movies and best-sellers capitalized on what some people like to call a modern religious revival, but even literary critics have been affected. The hei::o of Melville's Billy Budd is now a Christ-figure, in standard interpretation, simply because although innocent, he lets FEBRUARY 1956 SJ 52 himself be hanged, without complaint, by his substitute father Captain Vere. The fai=t that Billy is naive and Christ never was; the fact that Christ's death redeemed mankind and Billy's, no one; the fact that Christ suffered as God and man, and Billy as boy alone-these are ignored. In the same mood of secular piosity, another critic reads Jim Conklin, the "tall soldier" in The Red Badge of Courage as a Christ-figure because he is wounded in the side, and his initials are J.C.! More recently, paid readers have tried to make a Christ-figure out of Santiago, in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, largely because his hands are wounded and because as he creeps onto the beach after losing his fish to sharks, the furled sail on his back can be read as a symbol of the cross. 1 INALLY, contemporaries interpreting A Fable as a Christ-story (and therefore failing to see what a religious critic might even consider blasphemy or heresy) have kept hands off. To a literary critic, however, whatever his religion, it should be evident that only thematic and structural weakness has resulted from the author's ambiguous attitude towards his subject: shall I use or abuse? shall I have my cake or eat it? Nor is the novel made inviolable by being called a fable. Even if A Fable dropped its pretensions of being a half-allegorical story of the Passion, it would still rank with only the less successful of Faulkner's novels. The long tale of the racehorse ( 1/8 of the book), published separately as "Notes on a Horse Thief," actually is separable and only delays the story rather than compounds ~s meaning. Further delay results from the too-detailed, nevertheless basically undifferentiated, histories of minor characters; and from the author's love for runaway grammar and multiple juxtapositions of adjectives, which (whatever their usefulness elsewhere) give this particular novel the look of a thesaurus: ("and then the voice, not even raised, murmurous, ventriloquial, sourceless, as though it were not even he but circumambience, the room, the high unsubstanced air itself somewhere about or among the soaring and shadowy cornices ... ") If the personal histories were more selective and the horse-thief intrusion omitted, the dramatic fluctuations PANORAMA between scenes of individuals and the mass, so important as suspense before the corporal himself appears, could emerge with clarity. If the Passion allegory were eliminated, Faulkner would be forced to do what he usually does so well: realize his characters in the human flesh. For almost the first time, his female characters are substanceless; his corporal is a spokesman but seldom a man. Indeed, the appeal of the old marshal, as person, exceeds that of the son! With such changes, the novel's dramatic values would not only endure but prevail: the almost unwitting doom visited on each other by father and son; the tug-ofwar between doughboy and munitions-maker; the clumsy hired death of General Gragnon; the crowd and the corporal's (now almost featureless) buddies. In themselves, these could make a novel the equal of The Sound and the Fury, Absalom! Absalom! or As I Lay Dying. Once Faulkner accused Hemingway of never going out on a limb. He himself has gone out on many-and most have broken beneath his unbalanced, unsteady weight. At least half of Faulkner's novels are minor; A Fable is among them, but for a new reason: the author has mistaken himself for a religious writer; and he considers some topics so sacred that they can be tampered with, without compunction. Faulkner has much to say yet. His family of books demands that somewhere in human flesh he find resurrected values even in that South torn by the Snopes, the Compsons, and the compromising McCaslins. Restlessly, his readers wait. * * * So It ls? A near-sighted man lost his hat in a stro_ng wind. He gave chase. A woman screamed from a nearby farmhouse: "What are you doing there?" "Getting my hat," he replied. "Your hat!" exclaimed the woman. "That's our little black hen you're chasing!" FEBRUARY 1956 53 Lily Pons' quarter-century of singing <Durable 1Jri1na <Donna r; WENTY-FIVE years ago, a 1 small nervous woman in an audition for an opera company presenting "Lucia de Lammermoor" was asked to sing four of the most demanding arias in the repertory. These were the mad scene from "Lucia," the Bell Song from "Lakme," "Je suis Titania," from "Mignon," and "Caro nome," from Rigoletto. Having sung the four anas in her delightful coloratura voice, she was asked to wait while the head of the opera company sent for the president of the Metropolitan Opera Associaton. She stood by, growing more nervous by the minute, until the latter arrived. Then she was asked again to sing all four arias again. "I think it is because I ain so small," this woman recalled. "I weigh only ninety-six pounds. They want to see if I am strong 54 By EFREN SUNICO enough to last through a performance." A few months after, this woman, Miss Lily Pons in the music world, made her debut in the title role of "Lucia de Lammermoor" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. At the 25th anniversary of her debut, Miss Pons sang the four arias of her audition. Today Msss Pons weighs 109, a trifle stout, but she feels she now has more singing strength and better resistance to colds. Miss Pons' stage-fright is famous in musical circles. It takes the form of being violently ill beginnng at 7 a.m. on the day of the performance. She finds that her apprehensiveness before a performance does not diminish with the passPANORAMA Record Team As a musical combination, they smashed attendance records in cities from coast to coast. They have drawn capacity audiences of 23,000 in New York's Lewisohn Stadium; 60,000 in Milwaukee; 27,000 at Hollywood Bowl and the remarkable record they set in Chicago (300,000), which still has people talking. 017 that tour across the continent they played to more than a million people in five concerts. an all-time record in the musical world. ing years. She has tried all kinds of remedies, including psychiatry, without success, and finally accepted it as a condition of performance. Miss Pons calls it "nervosity" and recognizes it as part of 1he artist'.s burden of hypersensitivity. At the Metropolitan Opera House, the soprano met a conductor, Andre Kostelanetz; it was not a characteristic encounter between maestro :and diva - when inevitably sparks fly. What followed the artistic association was a romance that captured the fancy of America. Kostalanetz's courtship was a lengthy one, during which he crossed and recrossed the conFEBRUARY 1956 tinent by plane so often to visit the petite soprano, who was making motion pictures in Hollywood, that U.S. airlines gave him a silver mug as their No. 1 passenger. Once Kostalanetz sent to Miss Pons by plane a 300-lb piano, especially designed and decorated with her favorite motif-the fleur-de-lis. Of course, the diva later married the maestro. Time magazine, devoting its cover and several pages to a lengthy article on the Metropolitan Opera's "coloratura monopoly" remarked: "Since her marriage to Kostelanetz, Pons has become the top attraction at summer concerts in U.S. parks and stadiums. The coloratura voice, which even musical dopes can tell is high-priced, accounts for part of her drawing power, but not all. Andre Kostelanetz is a competent stick-waver, and on records and the radio he plays, not symphonies and not jazz, but the kind of music plain people really like: his arrangments of 'standard' pieces, Victor H;oerbert and such, beautifully done up in balanced brass, reed and string tones, as rich as a lobster Newberg welllaced with sherry. The 300, 000 people they attracted- to Chicago's Grant Park are the biggest crowd ever assembled to hear good music. Says Lily Pons: 'I've been told that only dictators can get crowds like 55 that.' And underlining her husband's part in the partnership, she has trilled: 'A woman who is not happy cannot sing nice.'" overlook its aspects of pure drudgery. "They don't realize," she says, '"what an artist must give up."' Her rules for the good life, vocally speaking, are, like those laid down by Tosi and Mancini centuries ago, of almost monastic austerity. She does not drink or smoke, almost never goes to parties ("you never know what you might catch") and spends her leisure hour<:i in study. r ILY PONS, for all her sucL cessful quarter-century operatic career, does not have any illusions about singing. She feels that eager young newcomers have a tendency to think in terms of the glamour of a prima donna's life and 56 * * Condiments from Cambodia GROWING WILD in Cambodia's back yards and fields are 3 7 varieties of one of the world's most popular seasonings. Cultivation of full-flavored pepper berries was begun qver 100 years ago in Indochina, but only a little before the turn of the century did it become: ari important crop. Today, Cambodia ranks as a leading exporter of pepper, other big producers include India, Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand and Sarawak. Supplying the savory condiment to the consumer market continues to be a case of the demand exceeding the production. Peppercorn growing is still a risky business, although systematized cultivation will cure the situation in time. It requires five years of carefuJ preparation before a pepper plantation yields its first good harvest. The vine-like plants strung to tall poles as they grow need very tender handling. The second World War caused sharp cutbacks, and brought a crushing reduction in pepper crops-and they are still only about a third of the pre-war total. First mention of the pepper plant in Cambodia is in account by Tcheou-Ta-Kouan, a Chinese who visited the kindom in 1925. He described the condiment growing wild in many places. A Dutch traveler named Wusthoff gave a similar story in 1644. At that time Venice and Genoa were the major commercial centers for pepper imported from India's west coast. Early in the 19th century pepper is known to have been cultivated in the Hong Chong area of southern Vietnam. The growers gradually migrated to Cambodia where the soil was very well-suited to the berry's development. The Province of Kampot, near the Gulf of Siam, became the busy center of cultivation for the many black and white pepper varieties served daily on family tables throughout the world.-Free World. PANORAMA Literary PersonalitJ'-XIV f?ie11.oe11.ido ~a11.fos: t~e Patadox ot !lmpeitectio11.'t The smile hangs crooked 1 ONDO IS THE common home of Rafael Palma. Emilio Jacinto, and the greasegun gangs. In the Sulucan slums, near the railroad tracks in Tondo where Bienvenido Santos was born, lived a boy poorer even than himself, who later became a congressman: Macapagal. Another poor but handsome boy pleased Santos by wearing only rubbers to church, because then he seemed not so tall: Rogelio de la Rosa. A few houses away lived a boy named Dy, who eventually found his face on the Philippines Free Press cover as a man of science in the service of the U.S. Army. Still another boy, whose family sold ice-drop in the neighborhood, was studying to be a sculptor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when Santos met him during the war. A former flyweight champion of the Orient was an Antonio Rivera boy-now almost blind and punch drunk. At least two of Santos' boyhood friends won first prizes in the sweepstakes. After winning, they disappeared. Not even their families knew of their whereabouts. The difference is that wherever Santos has gone -America; Albay - he has never really forgotten Sulucan. Many of his most moving stories in two decades (although he continues to say that these subjects are big4 This is the fm.u:teenth of an exclusive Panorama series on leading literary personalities the world over, written by an authority on the subjeot. FEBRUARY 1956 57 58 ger than his talent) have been "A Night in Sulucan,'' "End to Laughter," "And Men Decay," "The Common Theme" and "The Priest." They are the childhood that never leaves a man. "We had a house there," Santos remembers, "a crumbling nipa shack on a river bed. When the water rose, it was fun, but much of the time, it stank with the refuse of the entire neighborhood that floated along with the current. My father coughed his life out in that house. Mother died earlier--of cancer: it was just a little wound in her neck. Daily, just before 1 left for the elementary school in Calle Magdalena, I washed it with lysoI and Mother screamed and clawed at me. Often I cried with her-and I was alone in the world, except for an only brother-Greg-who was 23 years older than I. Greg died in 1948." You Lovely People is dedicated to Greg (as well as to "Aquing,'' his own wife Beatriz.) [ATER SANTOS worked as a messenger for Mrs. Consuelo V. Fonacier, editor of The Woman's Outlook whose office was her house. When she left for the States, the magazine was turned over to Modesto Farolan, boss of the Philippine Herald. Because Farolan was too busy for a woman's magazine, Santos-still in his teens-be~ame everything from publisher to janitor. When the ma~azine died, Farolan made him proofreader for the Herald. At the same time he managed, in 1931, to graduate from the University of the Philippines with a BSE. He joined the 1932 commencement exercises instead, perhaps because of another graduate named Beatriz: "she had her hands full of bouquets and bouquets of all sorts of flowers; and since I had none of my own, and, as a matter of fact, there was nobody there to greet me, I volunteered to hold some of the flowers for her." The following year they were married. The great, human humor of Bienvenido Santos has never been doubted by anyone except himself. He alone knows how much there has been in his life to despair about: that is why the smile hangs crooked sometimes, with a sort of unbelieving hope. He can hardly believe, for example, that You Lovely People has been published. Will it circulate now? Will PANORAMA it be read? He will not be surprised to learn that one critic has already mistaken "the lovely people" for Americans, although this is Santos' finest record of Pinoy life during the war. In 1941, Santos had been sent as a pensionado to the University of Illinos; later he studied creative writing (Columbia) and Basic English (Harvard). After Japan bombed Baguio and Manila, he was asked by the U.S. Office of Education to tour America and lecture on the strengths and stamina of his people. "It was nothing," he says now, "all I did was talk sincerely, all I did was be myself, liking people, warming up easily in company; and I loved my countryme11, the so called Pinoys who were simple and good and trusting once they found you were not a snob simply because you went to college and you didn't have to work like them." Sometimes he stayed on a campus for a week, mingling with anyone who could talk or listen. He thought that he was hard, he felt so lost in loneliness. Yet Americans felt the kindness of his honesty: "they wrote Washington such heart-warming letters, I felt grand, I felt tall, I even felt handsome." Santos felt more at home with such strangers than he did at the Philippine Embassy, run at that time by mestizos who perhaps thought him useful as a front. "I looked like a Filipino, no one else in the Embassy looked like one; and some of them passed themselves off as South Americans and got away with it, what with their fluent Spanish and their looks." · 7 ODAY, A PROFESSOR and ranking official of the Legaspi Colleges in Albay, Santos is constantly made mindful of the price of position: "As a school administrator I am not so happy because I cannot always be good to everybody; and I want to be good to everybody, that is, I am afraid to hurt other people because I am so easily hurt myself." His own history of self-doubt has taught him to bear humanely with others' faults and keep them company until their faith is restored. At Harvard once, when summer covered the grass, I. A. Richards chanted T. S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins to a student group; and FEBRUARY 1956 59 60 later Santos wandered through streets and commons "far beyond midnight, cursing myself, cursing my fate because I could not write, because I dared not write." In a country where even teen-agers like to fatten on the shadows of patron poets' glory, the patience and humility of a man like Bienvenido Santos is heartwarming. Paradoxically, it is probably this very humility, these doubts, this reluctance to consider that he has ever yet achieved perfection which, prodding him with dissatisfaction, convey Santos closer and closer to memorability. * * 1 N AN ATMOSPHERE OF PEACE and quiet about 900 leprosy patients in the south of India are endeavoriniz; to check the ravages of their disease and rebuild their lives. These are the patients at the Lady Willingdon Leprosy Sanatorium, 3 7 miles from the city of Madras. Here, in a scenic setting of green hills and blue skies, leprosy patienis receive free medical treatment in surrounding which tend to reduce the disastrous psychological effects of their disease. Patients from far and near wait at the clinic gate every morning for consultation. After tests, they are treated with sulphone and oil and the latest leprosy drugs. Those requiring surgery or hospitalization are taken ta the Sanatorium's sizeable hospital. Useful work as a key to happiness is stressecl. by the Sanatorium. There is an industrial workshop and a textile branch with handlooms; there is also a 12-acre farm where rice, fruits and vegetables are cultivated. In the workshop, training is given, especially to teen-age patients, in c:arpentry, blacksmith work and other crafts. Inmates who can work are provided bicentives of rice rations, cloth and utility goods from the community store. Patients are taught methods of treatment and encouraged to care for one another. Patients who do not require hospitalization live in houses which they lease for a very nominal fee. Housing and food are free for patients who can not afford to pay. Founded in 1924, the Sanatorium was operated by missionaries until the Indian government assumed charge in 1948. India's aim under the current Five-Year Plan is to provide more and more homes like this ·Sanatorium to care for those unfortunate afflicted with the disease of leprosy. * PANORAMA i~ucatiou. Pttactical By Sen. Jose P. Lam·el If N PRACTICAL terms edu~ cation for us is merelv the making cf a good Filipino and life actually means the solution of economic problems. Given the raison d'etrP. of democratic principles and certain ethical imperatives, the tasks we need to accomplish if we are to build the "University of the Masses" in our country are: ( 1 ) The making of a good Filipino through instruction and training; ( 2) The making of a good "economic man" out of every Filipino; and ( 3) The making of a good "universal FEBRUARY 1956 For the "Cniversity of the Masses" we should first strive to make every Filipino a good Filipino man" out of every citizen of our Republic. To make a good Filipino, we have first to define what by r.ommon consent amongst ourselves is a good Filipino. A good Filipino is one who loves his country and people because he knows its history, because he understands fullv what his country's flag stands for, because he sincerely appreciates what previous generations of Filipinos, including heroes, martyrs and other great and distinguished men, did and achieved in the past as a result of which the present is better than previous times, tomorrow will surely be better than today. Without this feeling of contmuity and steady progress in the life of a nation, no man can be a good man because faith m God itself would become meaningless. We all make etforts at improving our lot and conditions in general, some· times through great sacrifices because we know, by instinct and by the recorded history of mankind, that life in this world ts not an endless treadmill, that backwardness and stagnation are not the permanent status of men and of any country. 61 A good Filipino therefore i~ one who has deep faith in progress through efort, in improvement of everything through study and hard work. A good Filipino is also one who cherishes the boons and riches that a kind and gt::neroU3 Providence has vouchsafed to his nation and homeland because, in the words of Apolinario Mabini, this is "the only Paradise God hath given thet: in this life"; and because the boons and riches of other lands were obviously not meant for the Filipinos' husbanding, sustenance and enjoyment. Cherishing the boons and riches of his homeland, the good Filipino works hard to utilize them, to develop them, to conserve them for future generations of Filipinos, to improve them and augment them if this can be done. This is the meaning of the common phrase "the patrimony of our nation" and of .the other common phrase "development and conservation of our natural resources." A good Filipino protects and preserves the natural resources of his homeland against thoughtless or wasteful utilization, against alienation or loss through pilferage, through unconscionable exploitation by outsiders, or through criminal destruction as when a man deliberately or through carelessness destroys a forest by fire or causes the poisoning of the wa62 ters of a lake teeming with edible fish. Having now defined the indispensable attributes that a good Filipino must have, I may now discuss briefly the kind of instruction and trammg that has to be gven to the young in tte "University of the Masses". A young pupil will not grow up into a good Filipino, loving his homeland and protecting and wisely utilizing the natural resources Providence has endowed his country with, and ready and willing to defend his country against foreign aggression or exploitation ,if he does not know intimately the true history of his race, his nation, his people, his country, and its institutions. 7HE JAPANESE and thP. English, the Americans and the Germans, in fact, all progressive peoples of the world are invariably patriotic, hard-working, efficient, proud of their nationality, honorable, and most of the time prosperous, because from their tender years they are made to study, to know by heart, the history of their race, homeland, institutions, the lives and teachings of their heroes, martyrs and other great men, all the sum total of what is called a nation's culture; in short, they are literally steeped in national pride from childhood. They are also trained very early how to PANORAMA conserve their national wealth, and how to preserve irreplaceable riches for future generations. For instance, pollution of a river or brook is a criminal offense in many states of the Union, reckless and unseasonable killing of game is prohibited in England, and in Japan one cannot cut down a tree in a public forest without planting a new tree to replace it. In England, I have been told, even the spoliation of fine natural scenery is prohibited. This cherishing of one's natural wealth and wise and careful ub'tilization of natural resources is taught to the young in all progressive countries. It is time we also inculcate genuine national pride and faithful cherishing of our natural wealt hinto our young. Needless to say, the curriculum of the "University of the Masses" that I have in mind will contain suitable material and effective methods for inculcating genuine love of country and pride of nation and loving care for our natural resources into all the pupils so they may be expected to grow up to be good Filipinos. After we have succeeded in providing a curriculum and teaching method that can insure the instruction and training of our young into good, patriotic Filipinos, the next task we have to undertake is the making of FEBRUARY 1956 every Filipino into a good "economic man". Economics would not become a problem if every human being produced by himself all that he and his family needed for a comfortable life, and did not have to work for anybody else in order to make a living. Modern society does not permit that kind of a life, and so we have many difficult economic problems. When I say, therefore, that a Filipino must be instructed and trained to be a good "economic man", I merely mean that he must be prepared to earn a decent livelihood under conditions which abound in numerous economic problems but that as he works for a living he also contributes to the solution of those problems. For instance, many of our small farmers, even when they own the land they till, are not good producers, and cannot make a decent livelihood, because they are untaught in good farming science and technology. And one of our serious economic problems is low production per unit of investment in man-hours of labor, in land cultivated, in money spent for seeds, fertilizers and other requirements of production. In other words, most of our workers on the land not only fail to derive comfortable livelihood out of their labors, they also do not contribute to the solution of one of our serious economic problems--under-produc63 tion and inefficient production. They are not good "economic men." How, then, may we instruct and train good "economic men"? In the matter of smallscele farming, we may emulate the Japanese who, on less than two acres of land, can produce three to four times what a Filipino can get from the same piece of land. 7HE JAPANESE do it by using all the scientific know-how that they can acquire or that their government can put at their disposal, by intense cultivation and loving care of the crop, by ceaseless experimentation on how best to coax the soil to give the maximum yield. Incidentally, also a Japanese farmer always cooperates with a neighbor farmer, the community as a whole in turn cooperates with every farmer, and the governrnent, m its own turn, cooperates with all groups engaged in all sorts of economic enterprise. In short, from the mdividual UJ..1 to the whole nation, and from the national government down to the humblest individual, there is coordination, discipline, organization and purpose, all aimed at making every Japanese a good "economic man." In the matter of crafts and industrial production, we may, in instructing and training our young to become good "econo64 mic men," emulate what are called the Folk High Schools of Denmark. In that country, every section or area, or what corresponds to our barrio, has an organized economic life, based on the cooperative principle. Each such section or area h2s one or more Folk High Schools. The curriculum in each school is based on the needs and problems and natural resources of the locality. Tne pupils are first of all made literate-that is, they are taught reading, writing and arithmetic; then they are made into good Danes, through intensive teaching of Danish history, literature, and the achievet ments of the Danish people since ancient times. They are thus sure of growing up into proud and patriot Danes who also cherish the beauties and natural resources of their homeland which, by the way, compared to those that we have in the Philippines, are rather very meager. Then they are trained and taught to become good "econoPANORAMA mic men." They are apprenticed in the cooperative or cooperatives of the locality; sometime;:; a Folk High School itself has a cooperative. If it is a dairy-products locality, the local cooperatives produce dairy products; if it is a fishing locality, the loc;:il cooperatives are either those of fishermen, or of those who preserve fish. The student continues his work in his school, such as studying physical and natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy, literature, etc., but he is also parttime worker in a cooperative. \Vhen he finishes his schooling, he becomes merely a fulltime worker in the cooperative where he has already been apprenticed while a student. Nobody leaves school to face unemployment or frustration. If the student, after finishing in a Folk High School, wants to continue to college, both his academic training and his cooperatives experience have adequately prepared him for college work, and for earning his expenses, even partly, if he has spare time for work. Under such a system of education which is married to economic needs of the people, mass unemployment is seldom, if ever, a problem. The Japanese and the Danes are instructed and trained from early youth to become good "economic men"; it is, I believe, quite feasible for us to adopt, FEBRUARY 1956 subject always to necessary modifications, the system of education that they have evolved and which has produced good Japanese and Danish citizens who are also good Japanese and Danish "economic men." 0 UR THIRD TASK in the "University of the Masses" is the making of each Filipino youth into a good "universal man." Here the matter is relatively simple. All we need to do is select from our existing curricula and methods in our different schools, colleges and universities, public and private, those materials and techniques that are helpful in giving even a humble citizen a good understanding of proper relationship with other peoples, an awareness of the universal values of what is called civilization, and some abiding appreciation of art and science, philosophy, religion and world literature. For the fact of the matter is, if I may say so in all frankness, our present educational system is topsy-turvy in the sense that all along we have been trying to make of the Filipino a good "universal man" but we have neglected to make him first a good Fliipino and a good "economic man." We should now reverse the process so that we can make some progress, so that we may 65 solve our numerous social and economic problems, and so we may stop being a confused and an aimless nation. Let us, through the "University of the Masses" make every Filipino a good Filipino, every Filipino a good "economic man" and then every Filipino also a good "universal man". This is the sum total of education and practical life. 66 * * * Sorry--Right Number I This story was told by a visiting American scientist, a certain Dr. Bartlett, to a Filipino diplomat. It appears that the savant attended a scientific convention in a large city which he was visiting for the first time. Missing accommodation in the official hotel for delegates, he scouted around and finally registered in a hotel downtown. Having washed and dressed for the evening, he stepped out for a movie. The convention was scheduled to start in the morning. Suddenly, coming out of the movie, a devastating truth downed upon him: he had forgotten his hotel address! Worse still, he could not remember even the name of the hotel. After a half hour of fruitless wandering-hoping vaguely that he might hit on the place-he entered a drugstore. Then he began thumbing through the huge telephone directory and systematically calling up all _the listed hotels, from A toZ. "Is Dr. Bartlett registered here?" he would ask. The familiar answer came back: "Sorry, sir, there is no guest here by that name." He must have made more than two dozen calls when he hit upon the right hotel. "Yes, sir, Dr. Bartlett is registered here. But he isn't in right now." "Well, I am Dr. Bartlett,'' he explained. Then adding an embarrassed "thank you," he hung up. But still he didn't know the street and number. So he stepped out of the telephone booth, directory in han!l, and asked the young lady behind the counter .. "Can you tell me where this hotel is?" he asked, pointing at the name in the name in the directory. "Yes," the young lady replied. "Upstairs." * PANORAMA The fallacy of state patronage How FREE rs tlie Wotl~ PRESS? • 0 NLY FOUR out of forty non-totalitarian governments do not restrict freedom of the press in one way or the other. , This fact was established by the International Press Institute's latest study. The tally doe::; not include countries where press freedom is a lost cause. Some of the countries included in the IPI study are traditionally democratic, others have just won their freedom, others are on the verge of die-· tatorship. They all have opposition newspapers which may be subject to varying degrees of pressure from official quarters. The IPI found that dangerous constitutional c 1 a u s e s , stringent penal code provisions and restrictive special laws are all being enforced against newspapers the regime f r o w n s against. In a few countries that are democratic in name rather than in fact, journalists are subject to arbitrary arrest, FEBRUARY 1956 and government-induced mob attacks on newspaper plants are not uncommon. In other countries with a traditionally free press, newspapermen have been intimidated by administrative measures directed against communist subversion. In all countries covered in the study, where there is a constitution, it guarantees the freedom of the press or, in more general terms, freedom of expression. The shortest state· ments, those which merely establish the freedom of the press as a principle, are generally considered the most satisfactory. As soon as the States start elaborating the conditions uEder which the freedom of the press is recognized, then the principle itself is liable to be watered down In some Middle East, countries the constitution specifies that the freedom of the press is guaranteed "within the limits of the law." The implications of such a formula when the 67 law itself is restrictive of freedom, are obvious. It is for the law to obey the principle inscribed in the basic charter, and not vice versa. The laws on security are particularly feared by the press. The Constitution or the Penal Code generally contains measures designed to protect the security of the state and its institutions. It is a bad sign when a government thinks it neces'sary to promulgate a special law. As their aim is to reinforce ordinary legislation laws on security or the defense of the regime are inevitably severe and iead to a stringent control of the press. They often allow the executive to act in an arbitrary way, because most of these laws do not offer the same guarantees of defense as ordinary laws. (? INCE THE war, several ~ laws of this type have been added to the legal arsenal of the democracies to strengthen their defenses against hostile or revolutionary forces. Press laws, as generally understood, do not confine themselves to the conditions of publication. Their main function is the regulation of press offenses. This is the point where the real controversy begins. Some hold that common law should suffice. Others hold that 68 separate legislation is called for owing to the special nature of offenses committed by the oress. Press laws do not neces~arily entail restrictions on the freedom of the press, although in fact they generally do. Economic and political pressures are just as effective as pressures deriving from the law, often more effective, anrl much more insidious. Sometimes in fact they appear in legal guise and, when that happens, it is less the spirit of the law or regulation which is important than the way it is applied. In almost all countries the State accords the press a special status. Australia and Pakistan are among the few countries that do not regard the press as serving the public interest. In most other countries, the State grants the press ail sorts of facilities; reduction of or even exemption from taxes, especially customs duties on the import of paper; transport facilities, subsidies to the national news agencies, etc. The country which goes the greatest length in granting this kind of favor is Italy. Journalists enjoy considerable privileges even in their private capacity. Th:.s solicitude is generally in inverse proportion to the financial strength of a country's press. Precisely because of its weakness, the press might feel PANORAMA indebted or obliged to the government. It knows that all the2e privileges may at any time be withdrawn by the State. In this way, the authorities are in a position to exert indirect pressure. It is the credit of a large number of governments that they make no use of their opportunities for blackmail of this sort. a PART FROM the granting of subsidies and other financial facilities to newspapers by governments, newspapermen themselves may be given bribes and other favors. This practice is rife in Cuba, where the bride goes by the name of botella and usually takes the form of direct payments made to newspapermen to keep them friendly to the government. In addition, they are often awarded fictitious functions and sinecures. The botellas received by certain Havana editors are tantamount to a regular subsidy. It is estimated that the government spends about one million dollars in this way. Havana newspapers receive botellas ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, while individual reporters get from $100 to $300 a month, their salary being barely $100 a month. Similar practices exist to a smaller or greater extent in other countries, perhaps in most countries. And it must be recognized that when public authorities use this kind of pressure to win newspapers to their cause it is not they who are necessarily the villains. The publisher or journalist who accepts bribery, who may even make the overtures, is even more to be despised. In every country of the world, the public authorities canvass the press, or some papers at least. This may take the form from an informal approach to a newspaper editor by a minister on a man-to-man basis, to the sending of regular directives to editorial stafts, who are expected to obey them PUBLIC OPINION Nothing can be more i!llportant for the safeguarding of democratic freedoms, and the freedom of the press in particular, than a watchful public opinion. Silence or indifference is the greatest danger. This has been seen in the Union of South Africa, where the ostracizing of the English· language press by government circles produced hardly any reaction from the general public. FEBRUARY 1956 69 or sale. Between these two extremes there is room for a wide range of intervention: suggestions, recommendations, warnings, instructions, refusals to communicate. Sometimes these directives come ,from a special government information office set up for the purpose. Nothing makes the press more suspicious. The idea of a government information office is too reminiscent of the censorship and methods of press control which prevail in totalitarian states and which obtained during the war even in democratic countries. New forms of government * * pressures have emerged in countries which are democratic by tradition and which have a long history of freedom and of parliamentary life. Such is the case in the Union of South Afr:ca and to a lesser degree eveni in Australia and France. These pressures are all the more disastrous because of their insidious nature. They are often the result of an atmosphere of tension, the consequence of an unhealthy political climate which affects a journalist mainly intellectually; his freedom of expression may suffer just as much as when the pressures are of a more direct kind. Science and Letters 70 "To most scientists writing is a very painful ordeal. Agricultural research papers in particular show some of the best examples of how not to write. Because of stolid adherence to the working outline, the resulting product gives a stilted and rigidly stylized effect. Seldom does it catch a fleeting glimpse of the rare light of imagination and adept use of the difficult tool of prose. This limitation is further enhanced by our necessity to use a borrowed language. While technical terms are frequently necessary in a scientific treatise, authors are inclined unnecessarily to encumber their papers with inelegant expressions that they mistake for technical language, or with intemperate use of scientific hocus-pocus which merely serves to perplex the reader . . . That there is no essential difference between scientific and literary writing is exemplified by Darwin in his Origin of Species. The reason for the sudden popularity of this book has been that it can be read and understood by the average educated man.'' -Leopoldo Uichanco * PANORAMA Some timely pointers ~Volio Isn't Licl~ed Yeti I I rt HE BELIEF that poliomye1 litis (infantile paralysis) is a "rich man's di£ease" and is limited to certain i;i:roups of people is erroneous. It occurs all over the world and any human being is subject to infection caused by three known types of tiny polio viruses, the Brunhilde, the Lansir:g, and the Leon. The degree of poliomyelitis infection varies from a slight form which shows very little or no outward symptom to a severe paralytic stage. Both types develop polio antibodies in the blood which produce im~:nunify against recurrence of the disease. A great majority of the world's population contract the disease without apparent manifestations. The paralytic forms is the exception rather than the rule, and it strikes principally those who have not ;acquired sufficient immunity. FEBRUARY 1956 In less-developed countries where infection is widespread, immunity is acquired by the people at an early age and severe cases are rarely known. The most fr{!quent victims of the paralytic form of polio are residents of progressive areas where high standards of living and hygiene are observed and natural chances of developing immunity early are practically nil. Similarly ,(:hildren who live 1in the country who are less exposed to infection fall easier victims to polio than city youngsters who are conditioned by crowded living. (r HE BIG PROBLEM of doc1 tors was the search for a means of producing immunity in everybody at the earliest possible age. A recent development toward this goal is the Salk polio vaccine, which is now being administered to American children. It is being 71 made available to the free world by the United States and promises a good solution to thb problem. Pclio epidemics usually occur during the summer months in temperate regions, and throughout the year with heaviest incidence during the rainy months in tropical countries. The first symptoms, which appear 10 days after exposure, are temperature, sore throat, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pains, constipation or diarrhea, and ebnormal weakn~ss. In severe cases, these are followed by a 3-to-6-day "preparalytic" phase characterized by flushed face with paleness around the mouth, slight temperature, headaches, and leg and back pains. The paralytic phase sets in, generally, within three days. A recent World Health Orga!lization publication gives the the following advice for polioidected areas: .l . Wash the hands frequently with soap and water. 2. Prote:t food from flies and wash fruit and uncooked vegetables thoroughly. 3. Avoid association with membErs of a family in which a polio case has occurred recently. 4 . Close all unchlorinated swimming pools. 5. Exercise caution in treating cases of fever by consulting a competent doctor. operations for the remov6. Where possible, avoid al cf tonsils and adenoids; and suspend vaccinations or intramuscular inje:;tions of irritant character. * * * 72 Unto Eternity A long-winded attorney was arguing a technical case before one of the judges of the court of first instance. He had rambled on in such a desultory way that it became very difficult to follow his line of thought, and the judge had just yawned very suggestively. With just a trace of sarcasm in his voice, the tiresome attorney ventured to observe: "I sincerely trust that I am not unduly trespassing on the time of this court." "My friend," returned his Honor, "there is a considerable difference between trespassing on time and encroaching upon eternity." * PANORAMA Our nei~hbors 7 0 THE YOUNGSTERS waiting at Rangoon airport, the smiling, gentle lady who stepped from the silver plane was "teacher," home from a trip to the faraway Philippines. To Burma, a land where women have . long led unfettered and useful lives, this was Daw Tha Htet, an honored educator. Daw Tha Htet went to Manila as Burma's only delegate to the Pan-Pacific Conference of Women. There, as always, she made many friends for herself and for Burma. When she flew back home, her plane was hours late, but none of her waiting students would leave without greeting her. "Teacher" is as beloved in her Kamayut school as she is revered for her long career as a Burmese educator. A graduate of Rangoon :University, Daw Tha Htet has her seconoary teachers' certificate. She has taught at the Myome National Girls' School in Rangoon and was senior mistress there for twelve years. When the war came, she taught a small group in her own home, the beginning of her present FEBRUARY 1956 school of 600 boys and girls. At the Daw Tha Htet School, five-year-olds to eighteen-yearolds have classes and many extra activities-music, basketball, football, exercises, games, dancing and exhibitions. But Daw Tha Htet's day never ends with the school's. She is an area president of the Maternal and Infant Welfare Society. This organization receives Burmese government aid and help from the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to provide midwives, midwifery kits, health visitors and sewing machines to rural families. Daw Tha Htet's area covers some 10,000 people. D AW THA HTET has a busy family life, too. She lives with her mother who is eighty-six. Some of her cousins and sisters-in-law teach at her school. Other relatives live near by. Her father was an accountant for the Burma Railways for thirty years and it was he who chose the name she has fulfilled-"Tha" meaning "better'' and "Htet" meaning "sharp." · 73 ~°"" 1 '7'Weeet:t ~ IRON CURTAIN Communism at close range By PETE GROTHE Stanford University MET the tragedy of Communism a few hours ago. I met it intimately when I slipped into the Russia sector of Berlin to watch a mammoth d e mo n st r at i o n staged by the local Communists in honor of two very special guests-Moscow's Nikita Kruschev and Nikolai Bulganin. My friends wrote me off as unspeakably insane for going. And their apprehensions were not without base. In the six months I have lived in this divided city I have learned that the brash young Vopos (East German "people's police") are not averse to bothering us "American warmongers." And yet, I could not conceive of the Kremlin's men being as close as Marx-Engels Platz (East Berlin's answer to Moscow's Red Square) ~nd my being anywhere else. 74 I confess to more than a casual nervousness as I crossed into the East Sector. It was no secret that the Communist police and secret police would be out in record force, with such valuable lives to be protected as those of Kruschev and Bulganin. Nor was my nervousness eased by my first experience after walking past the Brandenburg Gate which divides East and West. A cloudburst cut loose and I ran for the nearest shelter, a small shack in a bombed-out lot. When I reached the shack, I found nine armed Vopos inside. This not being the type of company I like to keep, cloudburst or no cloudburst, I started to look for another shelter. But I didn't get very far. Two of the Vopos motioned me to return to the shack. I wasn't too worried because I didn't think they had recognized me as an American. I was dressed like a German. And I was right; they just wanted to offer me a shelter from the rain. Since it would have aroused suspicion for me to turn down their hospitality, I entered the shack. There sat the green-uniformed Vopos. They'd have had great sport indeed if they'd learned I was an American. My heart thumped in triple time as I hoped for two things: one, that the cloudburst would let i.1.p quickly; and two, that no one would speak to me. I'm at the point where I speak pretty good menu German, but two words would give me away as non-Teutonic. Both my prayers were answered, and I whipped out without so much as an aut wiederseben. Unter den Linden, the street which before World War II was second in Europe only to ~he Champs-Elyses, has been ·completely Sovietized. Between the rubble and the skeletal buildings are such edifices as the Russian embassy, Communist Youth headquarters, and a Communist culture museum. On this day there was .grimly festive air prevalent. O m n i p r e s e n t loudspeakers blared Communist pep songs, and mobs of shabbily dressed marchers formed along the side FEBRUARY' ~95fi streets, readying their red flags, their pictures of Kruschev and Bulganin, and their placards. I reached Marx-Engels Platz at 4 p.m. and planted myself about one-third of the Stanford football field away from the reviewing stand. By 5 p.m. more than 250,000 persons were in the square, and at 5:05 p.m. Kruschev, Bulganin, several other members of Russia's Geneva Conference team. and the top officials of the East German government strode onto the platform. A roar, not commensurate with the huge crowd yet unmistakably enthusiastic, greeted the beaming Communist officials. SQUINT-EYED, bulbous Kruschev, wearing a well-tailored suit, waved his hat to the crowd. Bulganin, attired in a handsome powder blue suit and a clashing green hat, responded to the applause with the carriage of a real showman. My eyes were glued on these two men. Here, standing 30 yards away from me, were the two top leaders of the most bestial world movement that history knows of. Here were the two men whose collective w h\i m (collective by all means!) could precipitate an atomic war which staggers the imagination. Here were the two men who directly guide the lives of 800 million persons and who indirectly affect the destinies of the free world's 75 nearly 2 billion inhabitants. It hardly seemed so. Kruschev looked like a good-natured second vice-commander of a local American Legion post. And Bulganin, with his silver mane and goatee to match and his lpana smile, looked like a Man of Distinction ad. The speeches began, and I listened-first to balding Otto Grotewohl, the harsh-voiced East German prime minister. He talked of peace and freedom and democracy, and of friendship with the Soviet Union. Grotewohl finally finished, and Kruschev, his naked pate oddly reflecting the setting sun, took his place. Kruschev took twice as long as Grotewohl-not because he spoke longer but because his dependence on an interpreter took time. He talked of peace and freedom and democracy, and of friendship with the German People's Democratic Republic. BUT MORE than listening, I was watching. I was watching the faces of the people around me. Why were they here? Because they were devoted Communists? Because they were curious? Because it was the thing to do? Or was it because they didn't dare stay away? I'm sure the answer can be found in all of these things. Perhaps just one in five was ferociously enthusiastic. The others were lukewarm or passive; bun76 dreds left during the speeches. But there was one urgently tragic note in what I saw. The teen-agers and younger children were almost unanimously enthusiastic. I looked down at an ador2 ble blonde girl next to me. She was perhaps 10, with pigtails, a plentifully freckled pug nose, and two huge dimples. She. could have been straight out Hansel und Gretel. But in her hand she clutched a red hammer-and-sickle flag. She wore the coarse blue and white uniform of the Young Pioneers, the Red equivalent of our Cub Scouts and Brownies. Pinned to her dress was a Communist medal. Quietly, not really knowing why, I asked, "Do you like Bulganin?" She seemed startled that anyone could even think of such a question. "Yes." "Why?" "I don't know. I just like him." At this moment, I think, I truly understood the tragedy of Communism for the first time. It's strange how it takes proximity to make a thing real. A suicide three houses down the block is much more vivid to us than 15,000 famine deaths in far-off India. So it was here I had studied the Co;mmunist movement at StanfoJ"d, and abhorred it intellectually. But I never detested it with every ftPANORAMA ber of my body, as I did at this moment when I saw a little blondie with pigtails enthusiastically waving a hammer-andsickle flag. SHE COULD have been born in Paoli, Indiana, or Palo Alto, California. But she wasn't. She was born in East Berlin. And because of this, the Communist Youth (it's almost impossible for a youngster to keep out of • had taken up a good part of her free time. It had allowed her to participate in games and sport, and in some way given her a vague feeling that Communism was responsible for these fine things. She didn't have any reasons for liking Bulganin, but she didn't need any. The enthusiasm was there, and that was all the Communists wanted from a 10-year.old. The sweetsounding reasons would come later. Kruschev finished his speech, and a party functionary gave a ~efinitely anticlimatic talk. .£hen a Communist hymn which no one could afford not to sing, or pretend to sing. A final waving of hands by Kruschev and Bulganin (with special attention to a large group of Communist Youth) and the crowd quickly dispersed. I remained and watched faces as people left. The KVP (East German Army) marched to waiting trucks in a strut almost identical with Hitler's goose step-and I recalled ghosts of the past. Approximately 600 Germans emerged from a church where they had been sheltering against possible disorder. I stayed right there until none remained except two old bums sniping cigarette butts off the square. And I tried to collect my jumbled impressions: The world's foremost despot looking like a mild and minor American Legion official. East German soldiers goosestepping. And a blonde, pigtailed girl waving a Communist flag. A chilling wind rustled down Unter den Linden and fanned out into Marx-Engels Platz. I pulled my collar over my neck, turned around, and headed slowly back to West Berlin. * * * An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, a pessimist looks after your feet. * FEBRUARY 1956 77 78 What to do in case of dogbites T HE DANGEROUS DISEASE known es rabies, or hydrophobia, is en ailment common in many tropical countries. Essentially an animal disease, it is usually transmitted to human beings through the bites of dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats end rats. Dog bites account for about 90% of human cases. The disease is caused by a virus present in the saliva of infected animals which gets into the human blood stream in two ways: an animal bite lacerates the skin, the saliva wets the laceration and introduces the virus into the blood end tissues; or, an infected animal's mouth touches on open cut or wound on the skin of a person end wets it with its saliva. Dogs end other pets can be very easily immunized by injection with anti-rabies serum. That is the only safe way in which to be sure that the animal will not become infected. If you have been bitten by an animal, either rabid or not immunized, steps should be taken immediately to prevent development of the disease. If the bite is neglected long enough for positive symptoms, the disease, in most cases, causes death. Very few people have been known to recover from it in such cases. Here is what you should do: .Clean the bite thoroughly with soap end water end , make it bleed freely. If the wound is severe enough to require stitches, keep the edges open and apply either nitric acid, carbolic acid solution or tincture of iodine; then wash with 70% alcohol while waiting for surgical treatment. As soon as humanly possible after a person has been bitten by a rabid dog, or by one that is not known to be immune, the Pasteur series of anti-rabies injections should be started. The number of daily injections varies from 14 to 25, depending on the potency of the vaccine and th11 health of the patient. The administration of the anti-rabies injections is not entirely without danger and should be done only by doctors trained in its use. Allergic skin manifestations, paralysis or even death may follow if given indiscriminately. PANORAM.. One mark of an educated man is the possession of a reasonable fund of general information. The highly specialized individual, often dubbed an "expert," frequently knows little or nothing outside his own line. Try yourself on the following questions. then turn to the next page for the correct answers. 1. You needn't be an animal lover to know that one of the following words does not properly belong to the list: A. feline; B. supine; C. bovine; D. canine. 2. It's Nature, not Man, that really gets the credit for the principle of the modern radar. One of these suggested it: A. the bee; B. the waterfall; C. the bat,· D. the whale. 3. Illegal execution, usually by hanging, is today known by the name of a Virginia captain who authored a law sanctioning the practice. He was: A. Joseph Hansom; B. William Lynch; C. Ralph Noose; D. Henry Clay. 4. In the United States it's the Congressional Medal of Honor; in Great Brit;:i.in it is the:- A. Medal of Honor; B. Iron Cross; C. King George Cross,· D. Victoria Cross. 5. An English hang_man in the seventeenth century hoisted to their death some of the most notorious criminals of the time and gave name to a modern engineering device: A. derrick; B. crane; C. bulldozer; D. balance. 6. Revolt of the Masses, a controversial book by Teodoro Agoncillo, is a biography of: A. Andres Bonifacio; B. Jose Rizal; C. Apolinario Mabini,· D. Marcelo del Pilar. 7. Of course it isn't complimentary to be compared to a chameleon, because it implies you are: A. pint-sized; B. cowardly; C. greedy; D. inconstant. 8. Did you know that our illiteracy rate in the Philippines has remained practically unchanged in the last fifty years? It is: A. 75%; B. 45%; C. 20%; D. 10%. 9. Jonah in the Bible is always associated with: A. a great famine; B. the crumbling of a high tower,· C. the jawbone of an ass; D. a whale. 10. One of these is liable to be proficient in the bagpipe: 4. a Scotchman; B. a Hindu; C. an Englishman; D. a Scandinavian. ~UARY 1956 79 ARE YOU WORD WISE? ANSWERS 1. ( c) to corrupt 2. (c) to scatter 3. (b) a quarter inhabited by Jews 4. (c) to challenge as false 5. (a) to accuse or charge 6. ( d) a rascal or dishonest person 7. (a) a symbol 8. (c) pertaining to the throat 9. (a) a trick or artifice 10. (d) cunning or treachery 11. ( c) deeply impressed or firmly fixed 12. (b) to dignify or elevate 13. (c) a sneering faultfinder 14. (d) disposed to please 15. {b) a sudden, heavy rainfall 16. (c) a division or disunion 17. (a) shining or bright 18. (d) to grind the teeth together. especially in pai11 or auger 19. (a) pale bluish-purple 20. (c) inactive or sluggish ANSWERS TO PANORAMA QUIZ 1. B. supine 2. C. the bat 3. B. William Lynch ( 1741-1820) 4. D. Victoria Cross 5. A. derrick 6. A. Andres Bonifacio 7. D. inconstant (the chameleon is a lizard that can change colors) 8. B. 45% 9. D. a whale 10. A. a Scotchman * * * 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 this magazine. The essays, which should 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 the contestant is enrolled in the school he is representing. The decision of the editors will be final. PANO In the Beginning . .. ROBOT (machine-made man) From the Slav word robotnik meaning a workingman, comes this modern term. It was first used by the Czech dramatist Karel Capek in whose play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), mechanical men destroy their employers. FEBRUARY 1956 VALENTINE (a token of love sent on St. Valentine's Day) A Christian martyr clubbed to death and then beheaded on Feb. 14, 269 A.D., St. Valentine has long been associated with the mating of birds and the budding romance of early spring. Today the sending pf a love missive on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14) is common practice. CASANOVA (an amorous adventurer and polished intriguer) Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798), an Italian adventurer and writer, was earlier expelled from a seminary for immoral conduct. He led a vicious and sensuous life, leaving behind him memoirs of his loves. 81 Philippine '.Panorama-X'\> BACOLOD CITY: SUGAR BARONS' CAPITAL I T HAS OFTEN been said that the story of Baco-lod is the story of sugar, or vice-versa; and that's quite true. Sixty per cent of the total Philippine sugar output comes from Negros Occidental. Sugar is the product that has built the region and the plush mansions and social levels of the proud capital. The story, however, is said to be coming to its crisis starting this year when Philippine sugar will be subject to gradual tariffs until a time when the rates will be the samp as those charged other sugar-exporting r.ountries. But there is a doubt, even in the face of a fading sugar market, that Bacolod would eventually cease to be the prosperous city it has been. The N egros planters are resourceful people; they can always diversify thei_r production and seek other markets. A good sign of the indestructibility of Bacolod was seen last year when eight whole blocks 82 of the shopping center was totally destroyed. Yet, in less than five months the district was rebuilt, making for a more beauPANORAMA tiful Bacolod. The Montelibano shopping center, built after the fire in another section of the r.ity, occupies 40 hectares of parks, recreation halls, movie houses and shops. Eight wide lanes traverse it and the shopping buildings have broad frontages of wide roofed sidewalks between stores and streets giving the people a place to promenade while shopping at the same time. Bacolod, as capital of Negros Occidental, became so in 1849 by order of Governor-General Claveria acting through Negros I s 1 a n d Governor Valdivieso Morquecho. In 1890 the Island of N egros was divided into two provinces namely: N egros Occidental with Bacolod as capital and Negros Oriental with Dumaguete as head town. The City of Bacolod first came into being as such orily on October 19, 1938 by virtue of Act No. 326 of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. T HE NAME Bacolod originated from the vernacular "Bakolod" meaning stonehilly. The first community that was organized and settled early in 1770 was located on a stonyhill 'Somewhere between what are now known as District of Granada and the Bacolod-Murcia Milling Company site. One Bernardino de los Santos was the first "gobernadorcillo" or "capitan municipal" (a mayor FEBRUARY 1956 today) of the settlement which came to be known as Bacolod. Gobernadorcillo de los Santos known for his religious inclinations had a church built in the locality even before it was called Bacolod. The church was erected on an elevation overlooking the nipa huts and dense cogon countryside all around it. The first parish priest' of the settlement was Fray Julian Gonzaga. In 1787 Moro pirates invaded the Bacolod settlement. The Christian settlers resisted successfully the pirates but many of their houses were burned. They decided to rebuild the settlement but hardly had they begun when the Capitan-Municipal thought of transfering the site towards the coastal plains where trade and commerce could be carried out with settlements from other islands. Thus Bacolod was transferred to the present site. The old site is referred to as "Da-an Banwa" or Old Town. The population of Bacolod rose from 54,000 in 1948 to 101,000 according to the latest census. Social life in the city revolves around an exclusive set whose members - when they are not visiting their extensive landholdings - attend parbes. Historical spots in the city are the Vinther's monument, which the city government erected in memory of Theodore Vinther, one of the American 83 soldiers who sacrificed his life at Bago Bridge during the Liberation Day to save the bridge from destruction by the enemy. The heroic act helped in speeding up the occupation of the city by the American liberation forces, and saved thousands of lives and millions worth of properties of the city residents, This monument is located at the public plaza. The old city hall and the Bacolod Cathedral are also of historical significance. A drive to either the north or south of Bacolod unfolds to the transient rolling vistas of green-carpeted sugar plantations that extend over every inch of ground of both sides of the road. Sugar centrals, with their towering stacks lording it over even rows of blossoming cane add an interesting note to the vista. Another point of interest is the church of the Victorias Milling Co., constructed along modern lines. This church has fascinat~ ing mural designs which are made of broken magnesia, cocacola, and beer bottles. The most fitting name given to Bacolod is "Sugar Barons Capital"; and indeed it is. To a great extent, the barons maintain the sugar economy of the country; they are widely travelled individuals and very influential not only in local politics but in the political activity of the country as well. * * * 84 lht f ilipino Uriting job The Filipinos have their own traditions of poetry in their folklore, in their lan~ua&e, in their dialects. This must be recorded, that is the job of the Filipino writer, to do this. In doins that he sives a pattern of hope and aspiration for the nation, for the people, to advance not merely as a nation of people but as a member of a family of nations, of the human family.-William Faulkner * PANORAMA ~Ult- ()'Z41H4, , , , , , , by Elmer "Ben takes his hobby too seriously, don't you think?" Cupid's Varied Wardrobe In any language, its love! E VERYBODY LOVES A WEDDING--in any language, costume, era or settin~. That is why the "All Nations Women's Group" of Manila, whose meetings always feature interesting cultural programs designed to promote better understanding of national traditions, staged a pageant of colorfr 1 bridal costumes, charming oetrothal rites and symbolic wedding ceremonies. An Indonesian couple wore Sumatran wedding finery and portrayed a post-nuptial rite practiced in many parts of the country, the "Mengindjak Telor." The groom crushed an egg with one foot and the bride knelt to wasn his foot to signify her readiness to give him 86 her gentle care always. Later, they ate from the same plat:P to symbolize "sharing everything through life." An Indian couple, in traditional Bengal costumes, enacted three wedding rites observed, with slight variations, in most sections of their country. First, the groom's arrival at thf'\ bride's home was heralded by the blowing of a sacred conch shell by a bridesmaid. The wedding ceremony started with the bride and groom exchanging garlands under a veil. Ll'\ter, they took seven steps around a sacred fire and ex_. changed wedding rings. The Chinese bride wore the gorgeous red and gold brocades of old China. Fetched from PANORAMA her home in a sedan chair carried by the groom's relatives, she put on a veil to "protect her from evil on her wedding journey." She was greeted by small children throwing fertility rice and firecrackers upon her arrival at the groom's home. There, she served tea and sweetmeats to her "in-laws" who, in turn, gave her individual wedding gifts. The Philippine tableau presented a 19th-century bride in elaborately-embroidered "Maria Clara" gown and her groom in a formal black suit. They enacted a "solicitude" ritual of feeding each other and throwing rice and confetti for good luck. They kissed the hands of their elders for blessing and served cane sugar wine to their guests. THE AMERICAN group portrayed a 19th century wedding where the men of the community got 'together and built a new home for the newlyweds. Neighbors blessed the new home with a wedding feast to which they brought the food and drinks. The bride wore a gown of pink checks and a flower bonnet trailing pink flirtation ribbons. She threw her bouquet to the guests and whoever caught it was believed to be the next bride. The groom carried the bride across the threshold of the new home in a ritual of blessing and a promise to "cherish her forever." The Japanese group demonstrated an elaborate ritual of applying bridal make-up, arranging an intricate coiffure, and adorning the ceremonial gown with charms of matrimony: the red tassel of happiness, the silver chain of prosperity and the white veil to cover the "horns of evil greed, hatred', selfishness and envy believed to be innate in women.•· With her mother and a marriage broker, the bride met the groom in a temple. After the ceremony, days of feasting began including the "San San Kugo" ceremony in which the couple took three sips of sake from a double-spouted cup in a "fidel~ty" rite. · ·~ The Korean "Hoplae ~uul." a wine marriage ceremony, differed slightly from the Japanese in that the couple took four sips, and the groom went to the bride's home for the ceremony. 'l'he English bride and maid, accompamed by a page, wore the rich-colored gowns, tall head-dresses and flowing veils of feudal times in England. Then, custom demanded that a man prove his worth by "bravery in combat, good family lineage, and chivalry to all women" before winning his lady. The group portrayed the 15th century tradition of adding to the wedding dress "something old, something new something borrowed and something blue.'' Years ago in Turkey, the bride and groom were married by proxy, represented by sponsors at the ceremony. Wearing a deep-violet wedding robe over diaphanous pantalets, a red fez trailing the traditional veil, and fabulous jewels, the bride met her groom on the seventh day of feasting, at a wedding breakfast attended only by the family. Dressing for this meeting, the bride helped by her maid enacted the rites of putting on the four Rings of Fortune on the right hand, and of Matrimony on the left. The former were protection from fire, water, earthquake and famine; the latter denoated her virginity, fertility, humility and docility. A jeweled medalion worn on a necklace was a charm for "many sons" and protection from "mo"' ther-in-law" troubles. G YPSY-LIKE colors and dances characterized the three-week we d di n g feast8 of old l!ungary. Thr bride, wearing an exquisitely embroidered and pleated dress and an unusual jeweled headdress, performed the symbolic bridal dances like the "Kendofa" showi!lg. her assuming he~ kitchen duties; and the "Ke1chief' dance in which she donned the shawl of motherhood. Albanian brides were chosen by young men at community dance marathons for their ability to dance long and still be smiling at the end. Stamina was the top qualification of the farm bride. Like brides of other lands, the Albanian bride went through a dressing ritual. She painted her nails and palmiof the hand with henna and put on face make-up for the first time. She wore a voluminous skirt made like pleated pantaloons, topped with a white blouse on which her whole dowry of gold coins was hung.Free World. * * * 88 PANORAMA ~*~~} ~\'{ ~~.· \~~\\•\~ "~'b ... ~ ;s:~ ~\i\, !;i&4~ 'trt~~w ::i'h\~'' ·~'-"' .1({~~\;, approved * by the Director of the Bureau of Public Schools for secondary school libraries as a student's and teacher's reference (March 5, 1955) * by the Director of Private Schools as a general reading material for secondary schools (March 21, 1955) * by Mister Reading Public PANORAMA Magazine of Good Reading DON'T MISS A COPY - SUBSCRIBE NOW Education and Practical Life By Senator JOSE P. LAUREL • Book Review by LEONARD CASPER Features * Fiction * Cartoons • Bulwark of Vietnamese Art (See page 1