Panorama. Vol. VIII, No.5 May 1956

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama. Vol. VIII, No.5 May 1956
Issue Date: Vol. VIII (No. 5) May 1956
Year: 1956
Language: English
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extracted text: THE RIZAL BILL MAY 1956 A happy compromise? Germany Today "A man without a slHJdow" Academic Responsibility by Gregorio M. Hernandez SQ CENTAVOS CONTENTS Articles The Rizal Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ben Revilla Rizal and Paine in the Classroom . Fenix Madura Academic Responsibility . Gregorio Hernandez, Jr. Judaism: An Oriental Religion ............... . The Reparations Story . . . . . . . . . . . Efren Sunico Chinatown in America and Asia . . . Ramon Toledo Bell: The Telephone Wizard . . . . . . . Free Worf d New Directions? .... -.......... F. C. Sta. Maria The Pl-US Ec0nomic Road . Senator Jose P. Laqrel Your Eyes ...................... · Free W or Id My Favorite Tree ........... Dr. Vidal A. Tan Exploring the Antartic . . . . . . . . . . . L. P. Kirwan The Filipino Poet . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leonard Casper Germany Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F. Pritt Diliman: · White Collar and T- Shirt ........... . L. Crisologo-Santos Sergio Osmeiia: Living Filipino Greatness ..... . Luis M. Enriquez Eisenstein and the Soviet . . . . . . . . . Six:to D' Asis A Country Without Strikes . . . Alastair Borthwick Fiction The Wives Dominador I. llio Regular Features Are You Word Wise? ......................• Panorama Peek ................... · ......... . Literary Personality - XVII: Franz Kafka ..... . Book Review- The Plague . ; .... Leonard Casper Panorama Quiz ............ ., .... , ............. . In the Beginning .................. • ........ · .. . Philippine Panorama-XVIII: Antipolo ........ : Fun-Orama by Elmer ............ : ....... . 1 5 ~ 1~ H 27 2!:: 27 3c 3t 3-; 3!' 5', 6' 7·1 Tl 86 44 PANORAMA is publish,! monthly by the Community Publi~hers) In<.. I '!86 Herran. Mnnila. Philippines Editor: JAIME LUCAS Business Manager: MRS. C. A. MARAM-AG Subscription cates: In the Philippines, one year PS.00: two years, P9.00. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two years I $7.00 U.S. Single copy 50 centavos. VOL. VIII Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Post Office on Dee. 7, 1955 MANILA, PHILIPPINES M. A y 1956 A happy compromise? lJy BEN REVILLA No. 5 0 NE OF THE most interesting pieces of legislation to pass both chambers of the Congress of the Philippines this session is the. so-cailed watered down version of a bill making the reading of Rizal's novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, compulsory in all public and private colleges in the country. Reportedly authored by Senator Claro M. Recto and sponsored by Senator Jose P. Laurel, the original bill sparked impassioned controversy between the socalled Rizalists on one hand and antiRizalists on the other hand in both legislative houses. The people themselves got so interested in the issue; letters poured in the mailboxes of Congress and newspapers, all purporting to contribute to the discussion of the bill. Necessarily, extraneous matters were dragged into the picture, And to coin a phrase, passions ran high in this controversy. As one medical man pointed out, "in the present conflict, the resulting casualties will not be bodily or somatic. Hence, they are not demonstrable. The injuries will be mental, psychiatric, and, therefore, not discernible by the ordinary means employed." The doctor continued that the mental injuries may be shielded "by the veneer of education, sophistication, and apparent equanimity of those so engaged, notwithstanding, the fact that behind the mask of composure and non-chalance, there may be an inner conflict which is feverishly burning." Actually, there were a few "atavistic combatants" in the conflict. Two members of the Honorable House of Representatives slugged it out for a few minutes during a deliberation; and some reports trickled in the papers about how some people resolved the issue in physical terms. Otherwise, the conflict was essentially intellectual and emotional, with, of course, some inherent physiological compli~ cations or dangers. The doctor 2 pointed out that extreme vehemence, indictment, hate, condemnation, intolerance, were by themselves symptoms of affliction. It was imperative therefore to seek a compromise to the controversial bill. The middleof-the-road legislators prevailed upon the extremists to accept certain amendments designed to make everybody happy. Hence, the bill as unanimously approved by the Senate and passed by the House with three dissenting votes, essentially provides for the inclusion of courses on the life, works and writings of Jose Rizal, particularly his two novels, in the curricula of all schools, colleges and universities, public or private. In the collegiate courses, original or unexpurgated editions of the novels or their English translation shall be used as basic texts. <y HE BOARD of National Education is also author· ized and directed to adopt forthwith measures to implf!ment and carry out the above-mentioned provisions, including the writing and printing of appropriate primers, readers and textbooks. The Board is also entrusted with promulgating rules and regulations, including those of a disciplinary nature, to carry out and enforce the provisions of the Act. PANORAMA TO MY FATHERLAND: Recorded in the history of human sufferings is a cancer of so malignant a character that the ieast touch irritates ·it and awakens in it the sharpest pains. Thus, how many tin1es, when in the midst of modern civilizations I have wished to call thee before me, now to accompany me in memories, now to compare thee with other countries. hath thy dear image presented itself showing a social cancer like to that other! Desiring thy welfare, which is our own, ancl seeking the best treatment, I will do with thee what the ancients did with their sick, exposing them on the steps of the temple so that ever).rone who came to invoke the Divinity might offer them a remedy. And to this end, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully, without discriminations; I will raise a part of the veil that covers the evil, sacrificing to truth everything, even vanity itself, since, as thy son, I am conscious that I also suffer from thy defects and weaknesses. - JosE RIZAL, in his dedication of the Noli (Derbyshire translation). The "compromise clause" of the bill is said to be the "exception of the students for reasons of religious belief stated in a sworn written statement from the requirement of the provision" in the use of unexpurgated editions, but not from taking the course. In other words, a student may use an expurgated edition of Rizal's novels as 11is text in taking the prescribed course so long as he has the affidavit protecting his religious beliefs. The opponents of the original bill, notably Senators Rodrigo, Rosales, and Cuenco, felt that the amended bill was satisfactory and therefore acceptable to the Catholics whose faith they had sought to protect in their vigorous opposiMAY 1956 tions. The proponents of the Rizal bill were happy themselves in that the Act ultimately puts Rizal's works in their proper educational place. The Act also obliges all schools, colleges and universities to keep in their libraries en adequate number of copies of the original and unexpurgated editions of the Noli and the Fili as well as of Rizal's other works and biography - sueh as his "Indolence of Filipinos," ''Letter to the Women of Malolos," and Rafael Palma's The Pride of the Malay Race, if the latter is acceptable to the Board of National Education. As one Catholic partisan in Congress pointed out, Palma's book was worse than Rizal's books, whereupon, one Rizalist 3 said that "worse" be stricken off the record, for it implied that Rizal's books were bad. The Senate wrangling over the Rizal bill, preceded by public heariqgs, is said to be a demonstration of "the highest statesmanship," notwithstanding the frequent "filibusterings" conducted by some members and the "walkout" of the chairman of the committee on education. The House imbroglio was a relatively violent affair, with the Catholic partisans putting up a last-ditch and feverish attempt to kill the amended bill upon their receiving a reported telegram from the bishop brother of one_ of the legislators, which stated that the substitute bill was not satisfactory and that they should insist on an optional reading of Rizal. T HE CONTROVERSY is believed to have aroused a latent anti-clerical movement in the c o u n t r y . Archbishop Rufino J. Santos urged all Catholics to "devote special pray~ ers and sacrifices. . . for the intentions of the 'Church Persecuted.'" An "official prayer" beseeches the Holy Ghost to "guide us through our struggles and trials" and to "enlighten the minds and purify the hearts of our legislators," and implores * the Blessed Virgin to "save our nation." The issue sparked by the deliberations on the Rizal bill is not exactly over, for immediately after the passage of the amended bill, deemed to be a. happy compromise, Senator Recto, who was the most vocal of the congressmen about the activities of the Church in the temporal field, filed a resolution proposing that a resident Filipino cardinal be named by the Holy Father to serve as a liasion between the H'.oly See and the Philippine Catholic Church. The present Papal Nuncio, according to the resolution, is to be made solely a diplomatic representative of the Vatican accredited to the Philippine Republic with no authority, ecclesiastical or otherwise, over the Catholic Church in the Philippines. While Recto's colleagues were generally in accord with the objective of the resolution they felt that there was "no need to make references casting aspersions on any Church dignitary." It is the hope that, in a more temperate atmosphere the basic conflicts between the church and the state which were defined- in this session could be threshed out to the satisfaction of everybody concerned. * * PANORAMA Rizal and Paine In the Classroom By FENIX MADURA There is no danger I N ALL THE discussions on whether Rizal's novels, the Noli and the Fili, should become compulsory r e a d i n g throughout the Philippine school systems, both public and private, one curious 'ilence has b e e n noticeable. Someone should have pointed out that compulsory inclusion of a book in a curriculum for reading d o e s not constitute thought-control unless one assumes that everything in a textbook is taught as absolute truth, beyond challenge, rather than as opinion. If textbooks are being treated that way, then the country needs as many Rizals as it can muster. MAY 1956 Certainly fiction written even by so thoroughly-worshipped a man as Rizal remains fiction: it is not history, though it may have historical fact at its center; besides, the more the characters resemble human beings, the more varied and fallible will be their statements. Even those who glorify still seldom deify Rizal. He is capable of imperfection, and his characters of error. This is a constant truth in fiction and in human life. To call the Noli and Fili "bibles" of Philippine history is an understandable exaggeration. They are, however, what they are: the powerful words of a man reporting his surroundings as, at 5 the time, he saw them. They have, therefore, at least as much right to be read as, let us say, Lincoln's Gettysburg address, Silas Marner or Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality- all of which make moral declarations about man in the general and in the specific. But they must be read, not endured passively; they must be probed, discussed, interpreted. While the reading of a book may be compelled, the particular interpreting of it must not be: for the latter would be thought-control. One may be forced to think, and to think about these matters at hand: but what he will think is largely a matter of the condition of his living mind. Reading implies a cautious, thorough, honest, open mind. Rizal would have been the last man to force his beliefs on others. The independence of one nation from another means nothing unless even maturing minds are also given some degree of independence : children are not the colonies of their parents, nor students the colonies of their teachers. Rizal has a right to be listened to in his country's schools; but so does every student and teacher have the right - and as a reader, the implied duty as well - to engage the ideas of Rizal with his own and those of other thoughtful citizens. Freedom of speech, in the last analysis, will 6 protect the Filipino from any errors of Rizal or of his characters, just as freedom of speech protects him and lets his words be heard. This is the opinion of the author, and any reader has the right to disagree with it, in this country born of independent, heroic thought and action. 0 NE CONSOLATION might be offered those who still consider compulsory use of the book thought-control, or worse - deliberate perversion of the soul. In the free forum of the classroom, truth has a way of prospering. Let us take our example from a book widely used in this country and even formerly part of the freshman curriculum at the state university, Great English and American Essays - particularly the words of Tom Piane who came as close as any man in America to being an anarchist. PANORAMA (Perhaps his nearest rival was Thomas Jefferson who was not at all pleased with the federal, centralized government as established by Washington and Hamilton; and who once said, "That government is best which governs least." The Jeffersonian principle of small-unit, 1oca1 government led directly to the doctrine of state's rights in the South and, indirectly, to their rebellion against North-imposed excise taxes and to the Civil War.) In the selection from Tom Paine's The Rights of Man, used in college, this early American patriot (who also helped provoke the French revolution) tries to distinguish between society and government. Society, according to Paine, is the concentration of individuals in some kind of group living. The family is proof that no man can live as a hermit; society is a joining together of families, out of the "mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man." Individuals unite their special strengths "as naturally as gravitation acts to a center" - nor is this metaphor from the physical universe an accident. "All great laws of society are laws of nature." It must be remembered that, at the time of Paine's writings, the late 18th century when Newton thought he had reduced the universe to a few formulas MAY 1956 suggestive of nature's Great Design, Deism the religion of science was commonplace. For Deists (Paine was one), God existed - remotely - as the Creator of a mechanical universe which He had set in motion, never more to disturb it by providential intervention Nature, therefore, was equiva· lent to God-in-action. Natural law was orderly divine law: such was the sanction Paine found for society. On the other hand, Paine considered government manmade, not natural. Government is an imposition on society, therefore, a burden. Far from being a healthy outgrowth of society, government is often the very source of disorder: "If we look back to the riots and tumults which at va1·ious times have happened in England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the want of a gov7 ernmenl:, but that government was itself the generating cause . . . " Government is a sign of primitiveness in m a n : "The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more it does regulate its own affairs, and govern itself." s OCIETY, BEING a natural inclination, is good; man, being part of the natural order, is basically good: he does not need to be ruled or to rule others; each man is his own king, because the natural order prescribes liberty, equality, and fraternity. On the oth~r_ hand, all government is subversion of these natural rights: such is Paine's implication. A 11 governments restrain liberty through enactment of laws; all governments deny equality; the many are ruled by the few - by a king, a clique, a group of representatives. (Paine always thinks of government as the actual governing body, the administration, not as the source of power, the voters themselves, as in a democracy.) It follows that people would be better off without government-and this is anarchy; and this is what has been read in Philippine government schools! Can it be said, however, that students have been taught to be anarchists? That is doubtful. Reading an anarchist, one may very well see his errors, and thus emerge from the experience educated. In the case of the Paine selection, the weak logic must be clear to every teacher and eventually to every thinking student. Society is good because, Paine assumes, m e n are naturally good. However, if men are so good, and . government is manmade, how does government happen to be, also in his estimation, so evil? The answer, of course, is that Paine has oversimplified the nature of man and his sociopolitical organizations. In the p r o c e s s of straightening out Paine, the reader has a chance to think through the degrees of freedom possible under different forms of government: and not anarchy but democracy automatically will be taught. As long as the public remembers that real reading is thinking, they will not have to be afraid of Rizal's Noli and Fili; and our curricula will be enriched. * * * 8 FAR FROM RIOT AND TUM'ULT "It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same."-Thomas Paine. PANORAMA ./ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITY" By GREGORIO HERNANDEZ, JR. Secretary of Etlucat:on T o MY MIND, the examination of our educational conscience is not only fitting and proper. In the light of the traditional love of our people for true education, it is our inescapable obligation. Simple hard working fathers and mothers of all creeds, who have had few educational advantages, have wished with all the means in their power to give their sons and daughters more opportunities than they themselves enjoyed, in the hope that thereby their children would be better citizens and escape the drudgery of life which has been their lot. They have trusted implicitly all who have been conducting schools whether these schools be pri* Excerpts from a commencement speech delivered at the University of the Philippines. MAY 1956 vate or public. Devoted fathers and mothers and patriotic citizens of every creed and walk of life have willingly borne their share of the yearly increasing tax burden for the schools, in the firm belief that the greater amount of money spent for education, the better must be the citizens of to~ morrow. The idea of mass production transferred to the field of education, has given the very general but wrong impression that the bigger the enrolment the better the school. For a generation, our simple people have entertained the conviction a:nd the hope that education will eventually be the corrective of all social evils, and ultimately the solution of all our problems. For a generation they have felt the assur9 ance that when elementary education became general, our citizens would be much better; and still better would our citizens be when every boy and girl enjoyed the opportunities of a high-school and college education. Have our good simple people been betrayed? I do not wish to be misunderstood as wanting to deprive any boy or girl of whatever class or condition, or creed, of any opportunities for as thorough an education as he or she can assimilate. But I often wonder if people do not rightly suspect that the great majority of our students in high schools, colleges and universities are not mentally endowed to profit much from college education. Could we not frankly say that . of the hundreds of thousands receiving instruction from these schools, only a very small percentage are really capable of a higher education? How many of our high school graduates can qualify for real scholarship? I ask these questions, not because of any desire to indict our educational system, or to point the finger of accusation upori any one of those who have served so well in this system so as to make it firm and stable, but because of my belief and conviction that the greatest value of the diploma lies in its identification with what I call academic responsibility. 10 Academic responsibility is the identification of t he diploma with its intrinsic worth. The symbol of scholarship must represent g e n u i n e merits expressed in disciplined minds, worthwhile ideas, proper sense of values and appreciation of the expanding cultural heritage. If the diploma is to be restored to its pristine luster as a badge of achievement and distinction, it will be largely through deliberate and conscious efforts of those who are charged with the education of our youth to promote and intensify this identity. Nowhere can this be done. with more telling effect than in the university. And I can think of no better way to describe if not to define academic responsibility than by examining the functions of a university. What is the role of the university? Society has established universities to conserve knowledge, ideas and values; to interpret and transmit these to the new generation; to seek t rut h s through scholarly research and to prepare new members for the professions by thorough training in the principles underlying these professions. The history of education bears this out. Within the educational system of a race or people, the accomplishments of the past civilization are preserved; its spiritual life and values are propagated; and its heritage of language, literature, philosophy, PANORAMA and institutions is transmitted to the youth. Whatever the dominant characteristics of any civilization may be - religious, social, aesthetic, political, economic or geographical - each of t h e dominant characteristics will be found reflected in its system of education. All these may be summed up under the expression: a people's philosophy of life. It is clear then that every system of education is an outgrowth of, and an attempt to perpetuate, a specific philosophy of life. J T IS IN recognition of this historical function of the university that our Board of National Education has declared as the objectives of higher education: "To maintain family solidarity, to improve community life, to perpetuate all that is desirable in our national heritage, and to serve the cause of world peace." "Higher education shall be concerned with the conservation, transmission and extemsion of human knowledge, with the preparation of leaders in arts, sciences and the professions, and with the preservation and enrichment of Philippine culture." But if such be the objectives of education in the Philippines, then it is crystal clear that the university is under grave obligation to both parents and society to safeguard the v al u e M;AY 1956 system and the traditional Filipino way of life. Parents who have the natural first duty and right in the education of their children and socie_ty which has created the institution of the school to aid parents in the fulfillment of their obligation look to the university to perpetuate their cherished ideals and traditions. Cert~inly parents and the state have not created the university to overthrow the truths and ideals they hold sacred. Furthermore, if the role of the university is to conserve a nation's culture and to perpetuate its philosophy, then we cannot look upon the students entrusted to us in our universities as mere creatures of the State. They are individuals with multiple capacities: the capacity for sharing the divine life of grace and an eternity in heaven, the capacity to develop intellectually, morally, esthetically, physically and socially. They are citizens of two worlds, the eternal and the temporal. They have to be developed to a full life and to make their way in life. This is the image of the student according to the traditions and beliefs of the Christian culture of the Philippines. We as a people have a common philosophy of life - that we possess truths and ideals which we want perpetuated through our educational system. And I can foresee no greater harm to this country than that 11 our schools send back into the homes children who have lost their respect for the beliefs of their parents, who have lost the appreciation for the spiritual bases of their lives. Now, I hope I will not be accused of violating the principle of the separation of Church and State, if I proclaim, as I do now on t h e s e hallowed grounds, that our philosophy of life in the Philippines will be meaningless unless it is based on solid religious foundation. For in doing so, I am merely stating a fact. It does not require a sociological survey to establish the fact that the vast majority of our people possess a belief in the existence of God, iri the creation of the universe and His Providence. Our people live in the light of eternity - they realize that they are made for ultimate happiness, the attainment of ultimate goodness. They bow their wills before an immutable moral law. Now the principle of separation was never meant to brainwash our people of their traditional heritage. On the contrary, since the principle of separation of Church and State goes hand in hand with the freedom of religious belief, it therefore constitutes· the strongest assurance that these beliefs of our people shall not be extirpated but rather respected by the State. 12 J N THE LIGHT of these considerations on the function and role of. the university, it becomes imperative to consider academic freedom which is the foundation of university life. Academic freedom, like all true freedoms guaranteed in o u r Constitution, must be responsible, if it is not to violate its own essence. Hence, academic responsibility becomes nothing more nor less than the complement and lodestar of academic freedom. It must be responsible in the first place by observing its obligation to teach the truth. This obligation implies that there is truth and that the human mind can attain it. The majority of mankind recognizes that there are absolutes and that these can be discovered. The philosophic fad of relativism that ho l d s that all knowledge is merely an approximation to truth had led to confused thinking. It has £pearheaded the attack on truths fundamental to our way of life. In the second place, academic freedom must be responsible by zealously maintaining a circumspect regard for the immaturity of the student. How many students are s i n n e d against under the guise of false academic freedom, It is easy for a teacher to impose on the immaturity of the student. Outmoded theories - once fads - still are capable of beguiling the PANORAMA immature student. Truth has to be identified as truths; and opinion and theory must be clearly labeled as such. Controversial issues are to be presented to them, but again the principle of the mature influencing the immature must be observed. The exercise by the teacher of mental and moral discipline, of authority over the student is a serious responsibility. The teacher cannot relin · quish this obligation. Academic freedom s h o u 1 d also be responsible, in the third place, by keeping within the boundaries of the field of spe· cialization to which its methods of research are applied. The professor is a unit in the assembly of scholars. As such, his scientific integrity requires that he does not pronounce on things outside the field of his competence. This is especially true in the fields of positive sciences. If these fields do not by their methods of research claim to set values, then they must not attempt to destroy values by their limited treatment of h u m a n situations. They must be· on guard lest they deny values and truths which are beyond the scope of t h e i r competence to determine. But academic freedom reaches its finest fruition when it observes the obligation imMAY 1956 posed upon it by the Filipino way of life. The instructors in our universities are not free to teach doctrines that will overthrow ou.r cherished way of life. This has been the plaint of the communist-tinged fringe of the academic world. While under strict indoctrination from an outside government, they have appealed to academic freedom as a shield to · cover their conspiracy against the society m which they are teaching. The Filipino way of life is grounded mainly on Christian heritage. Hence, those who insist on bringing about the ideas that are the fruit of an age of disbelief and the age of philosophic confusion are doing our society a great harm. Are not the bonds of unity in the country rooted in our religious solidarity? The man who teaches an imported atheism or material· ism is attacking the very foundations of our way of life. I know that there has arisen within the ranks of professional educationists the theory that the school is to change society, to create the truths and value3 of society. This has been the creed of the extreme liberals. This has led to the g r e a t conspiracy against Christian Culture and has led the West to the brink of spiritual bankruptcy in its educational institu13 tions. Operating together with this concept of education as an innovator of society, has been what Professor K a n de 1 has termetl the "cult of Uncertainty," the philosophy of constant change. On this foundation. we had the era of "rootlessness" in the colleges and universities; the denial of a culture worth conserving, w o r t h interpreting, worth handing on the ne·xt generation. This marked the beginning of an era of irresponsibility in the modern history of universities. It is the age of complete and unrestricted freedom. It is the era of unbelief. Yet both Society and the Parents had looked to the University to carry out its primary role as the conserver of culture. FORTUNATELY, however, this liberalistic force of scientism and secularism appears to have spent itself. In America for example, where for a time it held sway.i there is a growing ground-swell of vocal opposition to this form of extreme liberalism. Giving voice to the convictions of millions of parents are the forces of the new conservatism which has dedicated itself to reverence for the history, the traditions, and internal structure of their coun - try. They are reaffirming the natural law which the distinguished and eminent Walter Lippman has termed "the public philosophy." They are asserting that the modern freedoms rest on a philosophy of man wh!ch stems from a religious tradition. These freedoms have been inherited, they say, but we shall lose them if we abandon the ground in which they are rooted. In the battle for the mind and the souls of men, which Communism is waging today even within our shores, we can not afford to oppose this restoration and revival. Unless we bend every effort to stem the surging tide of irreligion and godlessness in which Communism is spawned, it will be the death of democracy as we know it and as we live it. Such a disaster can only be averted if we realize the gravity of tha crises t>esetting our times, and face the challenge to modern education. * * * 14 THE HEADLESS NATION "I think many of the countries in Southeast Asia failed to profit from the experience of the Russian revolution. The Bolsheviks not only retained many of the Czarist leaders, but also imported some cf the technicians from the hated bourgeois countries-and used their leadership until they had trained their own communist leadership." -Philip Hauser. PANORAMA JuOaism: An ~ri~ntal R~li~ion No ecstatic v1s10n THE PECULIAR problem of ancient Jewry, unique in the socio-historical study of religion, can best be understood in comparison with the Indian caste order. For sociologically speaking the Jews were a pariah peopie which, as we know from India, means that they were a iruest people who were ritually, formally or de facto separated from their social surroundings. The differences between Jewish and Indian pariah tribes consist in the (allowing: 1. Jewry was a pariah people ;in a surrounding free of castes. 2. The religious promises to which the ritual segregation of Jewry was moored differed essentially from those of the Indian castes. Conduct conforming to caste standards carried for the Indian pariah castes the premium of a:::cent by way of rebirth in a caste-structured world thought to be eternal and unchangeable. MAY 1956 The maintenance of the caste status quo involved not only the continued position of the individual within the caste, but also the position of the caste in relation to other castes. This conservative attitude was the prerequisite to all salvation, for the world was uxhangeable and had no "history." For the Jew the religious promise was the very opposite. The social order of the world was conceived to have been turned into the opposite of what had been promised for the future, and in the future the world was to be overturned again so that the position of a dominant factor would fall back again to Jewry. The world was conceived as neither eternal nor unchangeable, but rather as having been created. Its present structures were a product of man's activities, above all those of the Jews, and of God's reaction to them. Hence the world was an histor15 ical product destined t<;> give way again to the truly God-ordained order. The whole attitude of ancient Jewry toward life was determined by this conception of a future God-guided political and social revolution. 3. This revolution was to take a spe:ial direction. There existed a highly rational religious ethic of social conduct, free of magic and all forms of irrational quest for salvation. T HE WORLD-HISTORICAL im·portance of Jewish religious development rests above all in the creation and diffusion of the Old Testament. St. Paul preserved and transferred this sacred book of the Jews to Christianity as one of its own. Yet in so doing he eliminated all those aspects of ethic which ritually fixated the characteristic and special position of Jewry as a pariah people. These aspects were not binding upon Christianity because they had been suspended by the Christian redeemer. Without emancipation from the ritual prescriptions of the Torah founding the caste-like segregation of the Jews, the Christian congregation would have remained a small sect comparable to the Essenes and Therapeuts. The Paulinian mission, with the salvation doctrine of Chris16 tianity as its core, found a linkage with the prophetic Jewish doctrine (Isaiah 40-55 ), of the servant of Jahwe who without guilt voluntarily suffers and dies as a redeeming sacrifice . . . After the ninth century B.C., the kings of Mesopotamia resumed their expansionist policy. One, in the tone of dry protocol, reports that he covered the walls of conquered cities with human skins. The Israelite literature preserved from the period, above all the oracles of classical prophecy, bespeak the mad fear caused by these merciless conquerors. The pre-exile prophets from Amos to Jeremiah and Ezekiel appeared to be political demagogues and pamphleteers. It means that the prophets were primarily speakers.· Prophets as writers appear only after the Babylonian exile. Except for the world politics of the g r e a t powers which threatened their homeland and constituted the message of their most impressive oracles, the prophets could not have emerged. Free prophecy developed only with the rising external danger to the country and to the royal power. According to the tradition, Elia had publicly stood up to the King and his prophets, but was forced to flee the country. This held as well for Amos under Jeroboam II. PANORAMA With the decreasing prestige of the Kings and the growing threat to the country, the significance of prophecy again increased. Finally Jahwe commanded Jeremiah, "Go thou into the streets of Jerusalem and speak in public." Most prophets of pre-exile times were ecstatic men, accompanied or preceded by a variety of pathological states and acts. The spirit of the Lord "took" them, Ezekiel smote with his hands, b e a t his loins, and stamped on the ground. Jeremiah was "like a drunken man," and all his bones shook. Their breath failed them. and occasionally they fell un.conscious to the ground, for a time deprived of vision and speech, writhing in cramps. Jeremiah implored his God to absolve him from £peaking; though he did not wish to, he had to say what he felt to be inspired words not coming from himself. A prerequisite was that the ecstatic states were not valued as personal and sacred possessions but that an entirely different meaning was ascribed to them, that of a mission. Q OME OF THE prophets used U the form of divine speech - J ahwe spoke through them directly in the first person - other prophets used the form of reporting about Jahwe's words. Characteristic of t h e typical MAY 1956 dicta of the pre-exile prophets in general is that they have been spoken or chanted, in tremendous emotion. To be sure, one may find occasional verses which were perhaps left deliberately ambiguous, as was well known of the kroisos oracle of the Deplhian Apollo. But this was not the rule. All Greek oracular words known to us were delivered on request. In their tempered form they do not remotely attain the emotional forcefulness of the spontaneous prophetic verses of Amos, Nahum, Isaiah, Zephania and Jeremiah. The great power of rhythm is yet surpassed by the glow of visionary images which are always concrete, telling, striking, concise, exhaustive, often of.unheard-of majesty and fecundity: they belong to the most grandiose productions of world poetry. The typical prophet apparently found himself in a constant state of tension and of oppressive brooding in which even the most banal things of everyday life could become frightening puzzles, since they might somehow be significant. No ecstatic vision was required to put the prophet into this tension state. When the tension dissolved in the flash of meaningful interpretation, coming about as a hearing of the divine voice, then the prophetic word broke forth. - from the translation by Garth and Polsky. 17 The patience of Job The Reparations Story By EFREN SUNICO 0 N THE NINTH of this month, two odd groups - one Filipino, the other Japanese- sat across each other before a glass-topped table in the council of state room in Malacaiiang. They were not exactly the same group who first met some four years ago, after the signing of the Peace Treaty with Japan in San Francisco, to discuss the material reparations Japan was obliged to pay to the Philippines. The dramatic situation was characteristic; two groups representing their respective countries who had earlier fought each other were come to pursue the conflict in the most civilized way possible. The Philippines demanded war damage payments in cash; Japan kept on stalling and evading, always seeking refuge in the article on reparations (no cash, just goods and services) in the San Francisco treaty and in the pronouncements of American statesmen that Japan, 18 if she must be an asset to the Free World, must not be drained of her industrial or ecor:omic resources. Finally. both groups relented, (each group hoping to repre · rent their country's sentiments about the matter) and agreed ta all the details of a reparations agreement w h i c h they i::igned on that last meeting on May 9. Ambassador Fe 1 in o Neri, chairman of the Philippine panel, signed first while S t a t e Minister Tatsunosuke Takasaki signed for the Japanese side. The rest of the negotiators of both governments followed. In effect, Japan bound herrelf to pay the Philippines $550 million in goods, cash, and services and to extend $250 million in economic development loans for 20 years. After the signing and the exchange of notes, Ambassador Neri -remarked that in agreeing to the terms of the agrement the Philippines was aware that PANORAMA they do not provide anything like complete restoration of its lesses and relief of its injury. "The effectiveness of the instruments," he continued, "will depend on the proper measure of good faith that each side shows in carrying out their terms." Speaking immediately after Neri, Minister Takasaki said: 'This agreement is the fruit of good faith on both sides, and besides, it has a sound realistic b3sis. It is my firm belief that the present agreement is the best we coulld ever attain." He then praised the "statesmanship" shown by the Filipino panel. Earlier the day of the signing, the Japanese diplomats visited the tomb of the Filipino Unknown Soldier and said their prayers beneath the flicker of the Eternal Flame of Peace. J MMEDIATELY AFTER the signing ceremonies, copies of the texts were dispatched to the Philippine Senate. The documents were accompanied by President Magsaysay's note of submittal to the upper house urging immediate ratification. Not wishing to take chances, the Senators decided (at this writing) to withhold ratification of the reparations agreement until the Japanese Diet gets around to ratifying it. Expected to follow the ratification of the reparations agreement in the Senate is the ratification of the San Francisco MAY 1956 Peace Treaty and the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Senate has made the peace t r e a t y ratification contingent upon the result of the reparations negotiations. Since 1941, the Philippines and Japan had been technically at war, although hostilities c e a s e d in in 1945, following the liberation of the Philippines and the rubsequent surrender, occupa· t.ion, and restoration as a free nation of Japan. Since 1945, as one writer pointed out, the Philippines had received from Japan: ( 1 ) Ad - interim reparations in thP form of machinery and equipment valued at P24 million under the Potsdam Declaratio:r. and through the defunct Supreme Commander of Allied Powers while Japan was still an occupied country. (2) Real property and sec u r i t i e s in the Philippines, owned by Japanese nationals before the outbreak of World War II, valued at $6 million and cash of over $5 million representing the sale of Japaneseowned property. ( 3) Three million dollars in services rendered in the removal of sunken Japanese war vessels in Philippine waters. Under the recently concluded reparations agreement, the Philippines, as the President pointed out, would receive capital goods, services, and cash as fol19 lows: ( 1) $500 million in capital goods, $30 million in services and $20 million in cash (pesos); ( 2 ) The t o t a 1 of t h e s e amounts or $550 million, shall be paid in the following manner: $250 million in equal annual installments in the first ten years and the balance of $300 million during the remaining ten years or within a shorter period as may be agreed upon between the two countries; ( 3) The $20 million in cash shall be paid in equal installments within five years. This sum shall be made available by deducting from the value of Japanese goods exported to the Philippines in the normal course of trade (other than the reparations d e 1 i v e r i e s ) annual amounts representing the value of Japanese services applied in the processing and manufacture of said goods. T HE PRESIDENT, in endorsing the agreement to the Senate, also said: "Japan has also agreed to facilitate and expedite the extension of longterm loans to the amount of $ 2 5 0 million. Although not strictly partaking of the nature of reparations because of their private and non-governmental character, t he s e loans offer terms more liberal and advantageous than those obtainable outside of this arrangement. For 20 this reason, it is hoped that these loans would assist in the further economic development of the country, particularly in its efforts to meet the need for adequate financing capital, fuller utilization of our nation's resources and the unemployment situation. "Considering the losses and suffering the Philippines sustained as a result of the Pasific War, these terms do not come up to the generally-accepted concept of reparations as compensation for damage done and injury suffered. ''Judged, however, from the point of view of our national interest and viewed in the light of practical realities posed by the political and economic situation obtaining in both countries as well as in their part of the world, I subscribe to the conclusion reached by the Philippine Panel of Negotiators that this settlement is the best that can be obtained under the circumstances." Immediately after the reparations agreement is ratified by the Senate, an advance group of Filipino technical experts headed by National Economic Council Planning Director Cesar Z. Lanuza will leave for Tokyo. Toge·~her with his staff, he will lay the groundwork for the setting up of a reparations mission in the Japanese capital to supervise implementation. Most likely to head the misPANORAMA sion, according to local dopesters, is Ambassador Neri. When the agreement come~ to force, the Philippines has sixty days within which to draw up its first "Schedule" or annual list of items in capital goods and services that she wants. Such a list would be made on the basis of the development projects (agriculture, fishery, electric power, mineral resources, industrial plants, transportation and communication, public works, and others) listed in the reparations agreement. * * * ROMAN HIGHW!A YS "Scholarship means constant, patient learning-eternal seeking. It seldom knows strokes of genuis. It does not grow two ears of corn today where only one grew yesterday. This is not its essential object. It performs whattever it does in long, arid stretches of time and space. The results it comes to arrive slowly and far apart. "Einstein devoted several decades to relativity, as did Michelson to light. Manly of the University of Chicago spent thirty years in the study of the drama, and Kittredge of Harvard invested his hair with the silver of Old English poetry. President Eliot devoted half a century to making the higher school in Cambridge the home of America's most unled, unleading intellectual minority. The demands of genuine scholarship are exacting; its Rome is accessible by many roads, but they are not Roman highways."-Cristino ]amias. * * "UNDERDEVELOPED" ORIENT? "The East is the birthplace of the most notable moral and intellectual leaders of mankind. Great sciences and arts were once nurtured by Oriental minds. Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Asoka, Mohammed, and a great number of other figures who have left a permanent mark on human history, were all Orientals, though not Malay."-Pedro de la Llana. MAY 1956 21 A sociological survey: Chinatown • Ill America and Asia By RAMON TOLEDO G EORGE H. WEIGHTMAN, scholar specializing in Ch i n e s e communities abroad and lecturer at the state university, has gone beyond the usual description of oriental ghettos in host countries and, in the Philippine Sociological Review, has made instead a ccmparative study of their conditions in the U.S. and in Asia. Only in comparatively modern times have the Chinese mastered long-distance migration. They have learned to move, however, in order to take advantage of "striking differences in economic opportunity." I. In the U.S.: Over 90'./c of the America-nChinese have come from the southeast Chinese province of Kwang-tung, particularly Canton its capital. Although the * See "What About Chinese-Filipino Marriages ". Pa11.orama, Jan. 1956. 22 2rea of Kwang-tung is only that of the Philippines, its population is over 40 million. Prior to World \Var II, the poorer western sectors were supported iargely by remittances fr o m overseas emigrants. Add to such a populationpressure the discovery of gold in mid-19th century America, and one can understand why immigration to the Un it e d States tripled between 18601890. At first they were welcomed, to help develop the new. western coast; they were even made special gifts of land grants. The Burlingame T r e a t y of 1 8 6 8 , expecting tremendous trade with China, furthered the entrance of Chinese. However, by 1900, fear of economic competition invoked racial antagonism. When mining and railroading booms settled back to normal and jobs PANORAMA became scarce, rioting and even masacres late in the century resulted. Finally, the Treaty of 1 8 8 0 suspended immigration for ten years and was followed by the Exclusion Act of 1894. To survive as a minority, the Chinese learned to distribute t h e m s e 1 v e s throughout the country. Furthermore, they turned from industry and mining, to non-competitive pursuits, the nu kung, work usualiy done by women in China, such as cooking and washing. Because the Chinese accepted an inferior position, they were tolerated, although they tended to live segregated in ghettos ("Chinatown") in large cities. According to Weightman, "The Chinese ethnic group can be described as the most repressed, withdrawn, and passive minority group in America." THE DISPROPORTIONATE sex ratio (285 males to 100 females, in 1940) causes emotional tensions which help to explain the Chinese concentration on organized prostitution and related vices. From 1924 to 1930, they could not even bring their oriental wives to America: the result has been called the "mutilated family" or the phenomenon of the "married bachelors." Yet an attempt has been made constantly to continue the traditional closeknit Chinese family system, whenever possible. MAY 1956 Each American "Chinatown" passesses at least one Chinese language school (Cantonese, not the national language). Classes are held after the American public schools close in the afternoons. The new generation are likely to speak "Chinglish," but at least their elders are satisfied that the old culture is not being broken all at once. Within their ghettos, every Chinatown has organized its own exclusive "local government," often aimed at keeping peace among the tongs - secret societies which may be guilds, a custom known in Chinese culture over 2000 years. Many of the tcngs, in the past, have been connected with criminal activities, gambling and vice. II. In Southeast Asia: Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia tend to be more varied than those admitted to America: coming from the three provinces of Fukien, Kwangtung and Kwangsi, they represent as many as nine dialect groups. In the past, this has often been the cause of economic rivalry between migrating "tribes." Although historically most of Southeast Asia, at one time or another, were vassals of Chinese empires, southward migration is a recent movement. Previously, their ancestor worship would have made any desertion of graves be considered as unfilial. However, political and 23 economic necessity has succeeded in breaking the hold of such veneration. At present, there must be at least ten million Chinese in Southeast Asia. Thailand (its 194 7 population was 17 million) has over three million; while half of Malaya's five million population are Chinese. The interest of the Chinese has been largely commercial, not political or nationalistic. Yet because of their business success, they have usually managed to exert strong pressure in local politics. During long colonial rule, they acted as middlemen a n d retailers between Westerners and the native population. III. Comparison: Both migrating groups have come from the same general area, where they were subservient to the dominant northern Chinese. In both they lived a p a r t , although assimilation through intermarriage is more c:lmmon in Southeast Asia than in America. (This has been off!Oet, however, through recent nationalistic outbursts among both the Chinese and their host countries). The tongs are more important in Asia than in America; on the mainland, for example, * with the advent of communism, these secret societies function more and more with political overtones. S OCIALLY AND economically the greatest contrasts are evident: in America, the Chinese are passive, withdrawn into non - competitive occupations; however, in Southeast Asia perhaps because of their colonial history it is the native population that tend to be passive, not the Chinese. Especially the Viet N amese have borrowed heavily from Chinese culture; Chinese schools teach not Cantonese, but Kuo yu (modified Mandarin, the Chinese national language). And economically, they are considered a group with frightening means of control. Because their numbers are small and because of their inferior position, Chinese in America are likely to adjust and therefore , t o b e assimliated more quickly; while the gap widens in Asia, despite the fact that racial discrimination does not exist and massacres have not been heard of since the the mid-18th century. The Asian host countries are as puzzled about the future of their guests as the immigrants themselves. * * There is only one way to achieve hapipness on this terrestrial ball, and that is either to have a clear conscience or none at all. -Oa<Jen Nash 24 PANORAMA A BOUT 80 MILLION telephones make conversations across the street, across the nation or around the world possible. The telephone today is a vast improvement over the instrument f o r transmitting speech by wire as invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell in his laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. But the fundamental principle of telephone operation is the same today as it was in 1876. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1848. He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and London. In 1870, he went to Canada with his father, an authority on phon-etics and defective speech. Later, Bell moved to the United States and opened in Boston, in 1872, a school for training teachers and for instruction in the mechanics of speech. MAY 1956 Bell's studies of sound and electricity led him to conceive the correct principle of telephone transmission. While on vacation in Canada, in 1874, he described to his father a form of apparatus consisting of a strip of steel, attached to a membrane which when actuated by the voice would vibrate in front of a magnet. On June 2, 1875, while working on another of his inventions, he heard the twang of a steel spring over an electric wire. It had been transmitted by an undulatory current strong enough to be useful. He gave his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, instructions for making the first Bell telephone. It transmitted speech sounds the next day. Further experiments pr o d u c e d, on March 10, 1876, an instrument that transmitted the first complete sentence, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Bell later stated the theory on which he worked to conceive the correct principle of telephone transmission. "If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sou!ld, I should be able to transmit speech." This concept of the undulatory or wave-shaped current was Bell's great contribution to the art of communication. - Free World. 25 Most of the twenty words given below should be in your reading vocabulary. That is. you should be able to recognize then1, although you niay not be able to define or actually use them in writing. Select the proper defiRition for each .. then turn to page 84 for the correct answers. Fifteen is passing. 1. imbued-(a) to fasten with glue; <JtS' saturated; (c) purplish; (d) saddled. 2. surmise-(a) 9awn; (b) unexpected event; (c) point in soccer; (d) guess:" 3. harbinger-(() forerunner; (b) bird associated with rain; (c) stevedore; ( d) ·musical instrument for mouth. / 4. stultified-(a) put on stilts; (b) rigid; lC) /frustrated; (d) in the manner of stunt men. 5. dowdy-(a) sloven!yY'(b) greeting; (c) gift from bridge; (d) greenish. 6. appeasement-(a) problem child; (b) ~ciliation; (c) cold storage for vegetables; (d) bottom floor. )-purdah-(a) elephant rig; (b) cosmetics for theater; (c) rattan fan; (d) screen or ~ii for Indian women. Ji. bestial-( a) foremostj/1: b) greenhouse for flowers; ( c) brutish; ( d) sundial. 9. retrospect-(a) horoscope; (b) periscope; (c) entrenchment; (d) rtfview. 10. coolant-(a) Chinese laborer; (b) bird of prey; (c) kooling agent; (d)lowland. "'1'( incursion-( a) invasion·'/ (b) excursion; (c) to cut with scalpel; ( d) accrued interest. 26 12. marauding..-(a) fP.male zombies; (b) panther; (c) planting in flowel pots; (d) plundering. / ./.. 13. outpatient-(a) charity case; (b) one treated by hospital but not inmate; (c) impatient; (d) dischjW'ged patient. 14. erroneous--(a) no hits, no runs; (115' mistakeq; (c) air-cooled; (d) shot from a bow. ../ 15. embellishment-( a) ornament; /cb) infected navel; (c) army cantonment; ( d) Egyptian dancers. v 16. pulsate-(a) lightning; (b) thrilled; (c) vibrate; (d) pressure point for first aid. 17. sobriety-(a) high sg.ciety; (b) wide-brimmed hat; (c) pseudonym; ( d) temperance . ./ / 18. relugee-(a) sanctuary; (b) man in flight; (c) conservation of birds; ( d) parolee. v 19. loster-(a) second father; (b) to rear or cherish; (c) quicker than light; (d) multiply or double. 20. figurative-(a) emblematic;/'(b) enigmatic; (c) carved on the wall; ( d) plotted on a slide-rule. PANORAMA With the death of Stalin New Directions? T HE RECENT upheavals in Soviet Russia have set many people wondering: Is communism headed toward new directions? Changes have been numerous and significant, perhaps more so because they seem to fit into a deliberate pattern. It all began with the death of Premier Joseph Stalin in 1953. As predicted, his death quickly launched a struggle for power within the communist hierarchy, punctuated by th'~ usual mock trials and executions. Secret Police Chief Beria's head was among the first to roll. Premier Georgy Malenkov, publicly admitting his "mistake," desce!!ded to a lower rung of the Party ladder. When the confusion subsided, Nikolai Bulganin stood on the spot vacated by Malenkov, and Nikita Khrushchev, Communist Party boss, was grinning beside him. Thus far it was all routine: the Soviet masses, who had never been privy to the secrets of the ruling clique, took the changes almost with indifference. They had seen such upheavals before and had learned MAY 1956 to accept the consequences in silence. This certainly was nothing new. But this time the Soviet peoples were wrong. For with the ascension of Khrushchev and Bulganin to power, many more changes - some downright revolutionary - were in the offing. There would not be mere internal party squabbles there would be important decisions unprecedented since Lenin laid down the rules of communism. Toward the end of February Khrushchev, who by now unmistakably b e c a m e Stalin's heir, called a secret session of the Communist Congress. To such a meeting are summoned the top men of the communist world, in much the same way that the board of dire-ctors of a corporation convene to discuss policies. From here the delegates disperse to their respective countrie.> and provinces to communicate to their wards the decisions made by the governing body. Even this was routine. But the bombshell which was to explode in the Congress and heard around the world was 27 not. At the end of the regular session Khrushchev gathered the delegates (numbering over 1,300) to the Kremlin and gently detonated the bomb. In so many words (to be exact 47,000 - in a speech lasting three hours), Khrushchev told the 20th Soviet Communist Party congress that: ( 1) Stalin, although a good party man and later an indispensable leader, spent the last 10 years of his life in a rampage of murder and se'lf-aggrandizement: ( 2 ) the charge of treason against Marshall Tukbachevsky in 1937 was false and his execution, along with 5,000 other Soviet officers, was unjust; ( 3) Stalin concluded the 1939 pact with Hitler against the advice of his friends, and that he fled Moscow when its fall in German hands became imminent; ( 4) the Soviet dictator had erected memorials to himself all over Russia, and foward the end of his reign suffered fantastic fears; he distrusted all his subordinates whom he feared would . betray him; and ( 5) Stalin had developed a strong anti-Semitism, which resulted in the liquidation of Jewish culture in Russia in the early 40's. A s SOON AS the explosive information leaked out to the press, the downgrading of Stalin really started in earne.>t. Everybody asked: Why did 28 Khrushchev do it? Aren't the Russian leaders afraid that in so destroying Stalin, they themselves would be destroyed? As one of the communist delegates in the meeting reportedly asked Khrushchev, "Why didn't you kill him?" Of course Khrushchev easily explained that he could not have done anything; there was a reign of terror. Tukhachevsky tried to do it in 1937 and where did he end up? In the grave, with thousands of other conspirators who had the courage to oppose the power-mad Stalin. It was clear that the present Soviet rulers had taken an incalculable risk in exposing the mistakes of Russia's idol. Firstly, there was the danger that the people would not believe them. From childhood the masses had been taught to worship the bemustached dictator; they had been brought up in the legend of Russia's strong man and his infallability. Would the words of a handful of men, who were Stalin's mere subordinates, be given credence? It's their word against Stalin's achievements. Secondly, even granting that the people lend credence, there was the possibility that the Soviet people would blame them equally for Stalin's reign of terror. Thirdly, Stalin's death being quite recent, there was the risk that the dictator bad enough followers to resist, by violent means if necessary, PANORAMA any attempt to smear the name of their hero. In fact, in the Russian province of Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, thousands of young men demonstrated, carrying portraits of Stalin on the streets of Tiflis and singing his praises. The police had to intervene to restore order. Evidently the communist rulers had decided to take all these risks after careful thinking. They were prepared to impose these latest Soviet "truths" if need be. And perhaps they were really sincere this time, although a great deal of history rewriting, correcting the old "truths," has to be done. It was quite evident, too, that Khrushchev had feared that the sordid and bloody truth would out sooner or later. If there was any expose to be made, he would be the one to do it. Then perhaps he might expiate before the public eye· his sin of complicity in so doing. T HE MAIN target in the destalinization campaign was the so-called "cult of the individual" which communist theorists deplore. Communism by its nature calls for "collective leadership." According to Marx, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" - meaning a period during which the chosen people's "enlightened leaders" would rule - should follow the overthrow of capitalist government. MAY 1956 Such a dictatorship, however, should be temporary and be the collective responsibility of the Communist Party. It was this principle, presumably, which Comrade Stalin disregarded in entrenching himself into power. Expectedly, the repercussions of the campaign in the satellite countries created momentary confusion. While some of them had suspected Stalin's motives during · his lifetime, they were too afraid or too weak to raise a voice. Now the opportunity came, but it came too suddenly. Most of them could hardly believe it. Others, clinging desperately to the Stalin myth, deliberately refused to believe. In Poland the reaction was swift. Five ministers fell from power; thousands of political prisoners, who were convicted in Stalin's time, were promised amnesty. In Hungary the government acknowledged that the trial of Laszlo Rajk, a longtime communist and Hungarian minister who was hanged in 1949, was a fake. Two other officials execute·d with Rajk were posthumously cleared and five others jailed at the time were released. In Yugoslavia Tito was, of course, vindicated; Titoism was given the brand of decency by the Soviets. In the other satellite countries there were similar, though less drastic, changes. But the destalinization move was defi29 nitely gammg ground. Within the Soviet Union the explosion set off by Khrushchev at the communist congress still reverberates. The effects are not all favorable, of course, but altogether they point to prospects of wholesale reforms. For example, Soviet law procedurl:" which had accepted confessions of the accused as sufficient basis for conviction, was due for rev1s10n. With efficient Communist techniques of persuasion - which included inhuman tortures - Stalin succe·eded in convicting thousands of innocent persons and sending them to their doom. There was suddenly a clamor for humanizing such legal procedures. Another good effect was the dissolution of the Cominform, the worldwide communist propaganda organization which succeeded the Comintern in 1947. In addition, hundreds of political prisoners jailed in Stalin's time have been released. There are prospects that several hundreds more would be rehabilitated. What is perhaps remarkable about all this is that in the meantime Russia's Khrushchev and Bulganin have been successfully prosecuting a Soviet goodwill campaign. Fresh from their triumphant visit of India and Burma, they recently invaded Great Britain, where they tried to win new friendc;. The Russian's English visit was 30 admittedly disappointing, coming as it did after Malenkov's earlier and astoundingly successful tour. But it did serve the Russian's purpose besides icontributing to the easing of European tensions. The Soviets are now talking about the expansion of world trade. They started a vigorous economic offensive that has caught the United States, flatfooted with billions of dollars in military aid for friendly countries. More recently the Soviet Union has announced the reduction of its armed forces by 1,200,000. There is the pattern. And while the free world spends valuable time interpreting the chain of events, Russia is making fast headway in the cold war, or what is left of it. T HE DIFFICULTY for the United States and her allies arises from this peculiar situation. Should the United States take· the Russia's recent maneuverings in complete good faith, she might eventually find herself wrong. Then it would be too late: She might have dropped her guard completely. Herein is a dilemma indeed. For on the other hand if the United States should ignore the new Russian diplomacy and go ahead with her policy of stre.;;sing military preparedness, she might ultimately lose the free (Continued on back cover) PANORAMA A new turn on /The PI-US Economic Road By Senator JOSE P. LAU REL I BELIEVE, THAT as a nation our economy today is on a dead-end street. The bitter conflicts in economic views, t he unseemly recriminations among opposing groups of economic advisers or policymakers are merely reflection of the fundamental fact: our economy cannot move forward because it is on the road that can promise no prosperity. We need, therefore, to make a new turn, as it were. We can not persist in following the present road we are traveling and expect to bring about solutions to our social and economic problems. Recriminations, partisanship, vengefulness, stubbornness will not help us any. The division of the nation - the Filipinos - into mutually hostile camps on the matter of monetary policy will surely not increase our dollar reserves, increase our wealth output, or solve unemployment and bring down living costs. These are economic problems that are impersonal, that admit of no partiMAY 1956 sanship, that are not solved by rancorous debates. Economic laws operate in their own impersonal way regardless of men's w is t f u 1 thoughts, or passionate sentiments, or stubborn biases. Certain economic policies bring inevitable economic results and not "all the king's horses nor all the king's men" will make the results different from those fore-ordained by the nature of the policy or practice. To cite just one instance, a national economy t h a t is dependent mainly upon a few raw material exports for its solvency can never adequately meet the needs of a rapidly growing population. There is no instance on record, in our contemporary world, of a nation which has solved mass poverty and low productive output on the basis of a few raw material exports. To cite another instance, a currency unit that is expensive, or over-valued, has never been an instrrument anywhere of rapid economic progress. At the 31 depth of the Big Depression in the 1930's in the United States, the American Government had to devalue the "almighty" dollar by one-half because the U.S. economy was paralyzed and could not move onward. During comparative debacles in the British and French economies, whe:i both countries had either "to export or die," they devalued thear currencies to stave off impending disaster. I am not here arguing for devaluation of the peso; I am merely pointing out that an over-valued currency has never been known to be an ~nstrument for saving a country from impending economic disaster in the whole history of modern economics. If no nation in the modern world has succeeded in solving grave social and economic problems through persistent dependence upon a few raw material exports, and no nation has employed an over-valued currency to find a way out of economic difficulties, can we expect to be a sui generis among the nations, a superlative genius of a nation which can succeed where all others failed? I am not suggesting here a specific economic policy - not yet, anyway. I am merely pointing out facts of contemporary economic hist or y which we cannot afford to overlook or ignore. .T HE FIRST fact that, I believe, we should consider 32 in a dispassionate study of the nature of our problem is the historical fact that what we call our national ~conomy is really a Philippine-American economy. It is Philippine-American in conception, in composition, in its distribution of rewards, and in its general utility as long as it remained satisfactorily useful to both nations .. This 1 is important to remember, b'ecause if we are to make a decisive turn at this time, if we are to adopt a change, it is necessary that the decision to make a turn must necessarily be also a Philippine-American decision. We would be defoding our_: selves if we believed that we could, as a nation, make a sweeping and decisive unilateral economic turn, at the present time. Nor would it be exactly fair to us if we alone made the decision even if we were in a position to do so. Elementary fairness requires that Amer4:an interests that have long reaped benefits from the PhilippineAmerican economy should actively participate in the decision to make a turn. As a matter of fact, such interests should also participate actively - as some of them, I believe, are so participating - in making a serious and dispassionate study of the nature of our economic dilemmas, with a view to achieving workable solutions to our present difficulties. The recent suggestion made PANORAM~ in Tokyo, for instance, of Eric Johnston, president of the American Motion Pictures Exporters Association, to the effect that America should adopt a policy of giving Jong term development, Joans, in lieu of dollar handouts, to non-communist nations including neutrals, is strong evidence that not a few: Americans have been giving se'fious thought to the problem of nations associated with them in economic activities, princi· pally trade. In our particular case, given the recognition by both farsighted Americans and intelligent Filipinos of the need to make a fresh turn in our existing Philippine-American economy, there should be no insuperable obstacle to what I am advocating here - that we, in fact, make a decisive turn in economic policy and practices. But, I believe, I made it clear in the foregoing that the first prerequisite for making such a new departure is a Philippine-American conference at policy-making level. Let us recall that in the late 1930's and in the early 1940's our Philippine-American economy was colonial in character, but the Filipinos enjoyed much better times than at present, economically speaking. A n d Americans involved in the economy were also making good in those days. Let us, however, also recall MAY 1956 that even in those best years of the Philippine-American economy undercurrents of dissastisfaction over the basic pattern of Philippine-American economic relations were already discernible. In America there was keen anticipation on the part of i;ome powerful economic interest!' of the coming of Pn'Hippille independence in 1946 because obviously, to such interests, the colonial pattern of the Philippine-American economy, characterized by the free entry of Philippine products in the U.S. market and easy entry of Filipino labor in American territory, was not a long-range dedrability. Similarly, there were influential Filipino elements at the time (the late 1930's)-one of them an outstanding participant in the curent Economic Debate - who were rather forlorn about the prospects of Philippine independence, b e c au s e they probably foresaw the grave difficulties which a colonial economy. when it ceased to function satisfactorily would inevitably bring. This was certainly foresight of a sort, on the part of both the American and the Filipino who held contradictory expectations about Philippine independence at the time. THAT A TIME would come demanding a fresh tur_n in Philippine-American economic relations required no un33 u s u a 1 foresight in the late 1930's. All the moves, either unilsterally or jointly proposed or taken by the U.S. and the Philippines since independence were implicit in the major points at issue about Philippine-American economy in the early 1930's. Thus the recent refusal of the U.S. Congre-ss to grant Philippine sugar an ad ditional quota for American dome.>tic consumption was implicit in the support of the Cuban sugar lobby to our campaign for independence in the 1930's. The proposal, only a few weeks ago, cf the federal government to deny American wage scales to Filipino laborers in American Pacific islands was also implicit in the American Fe-derat:on of Labor's contribution of Labor's contribution to the Filipinos' struggle for independ ence. And, on out part, the proposals for the unpegging of the peso from the dollar were- implicit in our demand for full sovereignty on coinage matters, during the fight for independence, and more recently during the negotiations for the LaurelLangley agreement in Washington. Similarly, legislation we have enacted like the Virginia and our refusal to accept farm leaf tobacco import control law surplus products into the Philippines were implicit in our demand, during the drafting of th e Philippine Independence 34 Law th3.t an interim oeriod that will permit the diver;ification ot our ~griculture be provided in the measure. Again, the socalled "no dolhr" barter law Act 1410 was implicit in our demand during the discussions on the Hare-Hawes-Cutting and the· Tydings-McDuffie independence measures for an interim period prior to independence within which to develop new markets for our exp:crts outside cf the United States. The present bitter controversy o v e r economic proposals here, and the acute dilemmas cf our national econmy were anticipated and fore:>een in the 1930's. What has brought about the present confusion and the curre·:it difficulties was that we postponed too long the decision to make a radical turn in F'hiliooine-American economy, a!though we knew all along we would have to make it, willynilly. It is now futile and meaningle·:;s to locate the blame (or postponing the decision t o o long; the sober truth is that• both Americans and Filipinos, may share the blame. The ; im-· portant thing now is to make the turn, and begin doing those things and taking those steps which in those earnest days of the pre-independence period, both Americans and Filipinos said and were resolved they were going to do and to take. During the campaign for independence, we assured our PANORAMA American friends, as well as detractors, that once independe·nt, we would make resolute efforts to learn to stand on our own feet economically; the Americans assured us they would help us learn to stand on our own. We should now begin to carry cut that wise resolve. The long-term developmmit p 1 an suggested by Mr. Eric Johnston should facilitate the carrying out of that resolve; for, as borrowers in the strict business sense· we would not only be getting aid from the U.S. with no strings attached, except punctual payments of installments 2nd interest, and moreover we would be compelled to save for thE' amortization of the loan, and thus learn to stand on our own feet. It would also discharge handsomely America's self-imposed obligation to help us achie\1e economic iindependence, solvency and prosperity. "Diversification of production," as used repeatedly in the long discussions of the HareHawes-Cutting and Tydings-Mc· Duffie· independence measures meant diversification of Philippine agriculture - which meant we would eventually produce farm products we imported from America, like leaf tobacco and butter or margarine - as well as diversification of industrial output - which meant industrialization. The eight year interim period provided for in the MAY 1956 Independence Act of 1934 was put in that law ih order to give the Filipinos the time to "diversify." Well, then, we should now act in earnest, and with a Eingleness of purpose to achieve that diversification of output. A ND IT SHOULD be the same case with our serious resolve in the 1930's to explore new markets for our products outside of the protected U.S. market. The Tydings-McDuffie Law and latE'r the Bell Trade /Act provided in all seriousness for a transition period from independence to complete liquidation of the free trade arrangement which grew between the metropolitan power and the former colony since 1909. We have neglected to act seriously on this and other wise resolves we had made when the certitude of independence was already accepted by both Americans and Filipinos. Any turning we must make now on the Philippine-American econmic road has then to be along the lines of those old resolves on both the American and Filipino sides. There is no reason why the turning could not be made on the basis of those resolves with mutual understanding and sympathy such as have characterized the relationship between the two nations all these years. - Manila Times. 35 YOUR EYEf Take good care of them V OUR EYES are delicate mechanisms and should be given good care although they are equipped with automatic means of protection and cleansing. The lachrymal g 1 a n d s which secrete the slightly salty, antiseptic liquid called tears are nature's means of cleaning and protecting them, but even so, the eyes are often beset with many disorders which need immediate careful treatment. The most common sign of something wrong with your eyes is a redness in certain areas of the eyeballs accompanied with tearfulness ~nd itchiness. This may be due to foreign bodies in the eyes - dust, cinder, loose eyelashes, or, sometimes, fever. Guard against rubbing them even though they smart, to prevent scratching the delicate eye lining and membrane. Irritation may easi36 ly lead to serious infection and injury to the sight. Close your eyes and blink repeatedly to induce the tears to fl.ow freely and wash the irritating body away. Boric acid s o 1 u t i o n dropped into the eyes may help. Warm or cold compresses may be applied to relieve any swelling or discomfort. Foreign bodies in the eye not · removed with above treatment should be removed by a doctor. Sometimes red watery eyes may mean a case of pinkeye, an inflammation of the delicate eyelid and eye lining. This is highly contagious and it is important to isolate and scald wash-cloths and towels used by anyone with this ailment. Hot moist compresses on the affected eye and sponging with boric acid solution will help relieve the irritation. A doctor's advice is necessary for the treatment of persistent cases. Pus discharge from the eyes is a symptom of infection which may be contagious. Sometimes, the edge of the eyelid develops a pimple called a stye. This is an infection of the base of an eyelash, caused by rubbing. Place a warm moist compress on the eye several times a day to relieve the itching and swelling. Prevent rubbing as the infection is likely to spread. If the stye does not disappear with above treatment, a doctor should be consulted. - Free World. PANORAMA MAY 1956 By VIDAL A. TAN President, University of the Philippines THOMAS MERTON says: "A tree by being a tree gives honor and glory to God." All trees in this sense are useful, beautiful. My favorite tree is not a tree but a grass; but from a non-scientific point of view it is'tl tree -with trunk, branches and leaves. It may not be enough of a tree, but it is the tallest grass. Like e·ach person, it has its own "tree-ality." The very name of its stately trunk, CULM, most fittingl,.- describes its individuality. Its slender branches reaching out into the skies and swaying with the wind in suppleness s fl rl. feathery grace, give one the feeling of cool, gentle, urbane dignity, where also lie resilience and strength. 37 As a child I used to watch in the evenings the moving silhouettes of the bamboos reared against dim-lit skies, and my young imagination would see all kinds of familiar forms and shapes. But if these trees gave me the creeps at night, they were my boon companions by day. I would go from cluster to cluster looking for bent twigs, many times the steel-like spines that had fallen on the ground piercing my bare feet. These bent twigs make beautiful cigarette holders and they could be polished golden brown until they look like an old meerschaum. For I loved to smoke secretly when I was a boy, even if today- already past the halfcentury mark- I still have not yet acquired the habit. A poor provincial boy does not have much access to imported toys, but he has a rich field of making his own. Kites - big ones and small ones, of all kinds, shapes and fighting uses - would challenge the patience, resourcefulness and the imagination of any boy. Canes, - what youngster does not love to play with canes? - stilts, toy guns, water pistols, bows and arrows, sledges, drums, flutes, and numerous others can be fashioned out of the bamboo; * 38 and as a boy there was hardly a week that I was not without a wound on my fingers as a result of many delightful hours spent in making toys out of bamboo with no better tool than a kitchen knife. Bamboo has indeed a thousand uses, and more are being discovered everyday. With young bamboo shoots, the Filipino housewife could prepare tempting dishes; and without them, the Chinese cook would be quite unhappy. The bamboo is the most Widely used building material in this country. It is also good material for home industries. Furniture, hats, mats, nails, knick-knacks, water containers, baskets of all shapes and uses are some of the important bamboo products. And daily these products increase in number and amount. But the bamboo piggy banks that used to be cut into the bamboo posts are g r a d u a 11 y disappearing. While the bamboo post is admittedly not the best place for keeping one's savings, still I shall miss it, for to me it suggests other values - Filipino thrift, patience, and trust. Verily the bamboo is a wonderful tree - even though it is not quite a tree. - From Forestry Leaves. * * PANORAMA Exploring the Antartic MAY 1956 From sledge dogs to airplane$ By L. P. KIRWAN A NT ARTICA IS A wide continent of ice and rock embracing the region of the South Pole which had once been the object of sledging expeditions conducted by intrepid British, American, and otheT Europeans during what is known as the Heroic Age, the age of record-breaking land journeys of manpowei: rather than machine power. Today, after the era of privately organized expeditions led _ by great individual leaders like Amundsen (who discovered the South Pole), Shackleton, and Scott, officially sponsored explorations are sent out to Antartica to work out a system of research by means of simultaneous and consecutive expeditions and fixed observatories. This is the new pattern of exploring the Antartic, with a good deal more emphasis on aircraft than on dogs. 39 · The development of the Antartic exploration started in 177 5 when Captain Cook first crossed the Antartic Circle. His main. achievement in the Antartic was to disprove, once and for all, the legend of a rich and fertile land stretching northwards into the temperate zone; an El Dorado which had been the dream of philosophers and geographers ever since the days of Leonardo da Vinci. His reports of the rich fauna that lay waiting in the Southern Ocean drew south more than a hundred sealers, both British and American. It was they, and their owners, who, in the course of their sealing operations, gave the first real impulse to Antartic exploration. One of these sealers, the brig Williams, commanded by Lt. Edward Bransfield, of the British Royal Navy, discovered the Antartic Continent, on January 30, 1820. In the second quarter of the 19th century all this pioneer work of commercial and private enterprise was taken over by governments and navies, Russian, French, and British. After this, from 1845 for nearly thirty years, no ship disturbed the solitude of Antartic waters. The efforts of governments and polar explorers were concentrated in the north, searching for the two ships of Sir John Franklin, lost in -the maze of the Northwest Passage. In 1895, the Sixth Interna40 tional Georgraphical Congress declared the Antartic exploration to be "the greatest piece of geographical exploration still to be undertaken." THE MOST notable expedition at the beginning the 19th century was that of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his ship Discovery. The main objects of Scott's expedition were to determine as far as possible the nature and extent of ·those lands which his ship could reach, and to make a magnetic survey. One of the members of the expedition was a Lt. Edward Shackleton of the Royal Navy Reserve. Within two years of Discovery's return from her last voyage Shackleton was raising funds to take out an Antartic expedition of his own. The equipment he was to take was typical of his fertile and ingenious mind. Siberian or Manchurian ponies were to be used instead of dogs used by Scott in his long sledging journeys. The principal object ()f the expedition was_ no less than the conquest of the South Pole. In a flash, it caught the imagination of the public. It was an adventure which had a special appeal to the spirit of those years, with its unbounded faith in the possibilities of human endeavor. In 1909 Shackleton reached the south Magnetic PANORAMA -~ /,!:!____ ~~~.,.. Pole, and the Union Jack, presented by the Queen, was planted within only a hundred mifes of the Pole itself. But the geographical Poles, both North and South, were not long to remain inviolate. In the autumn of 1909 the news was received in London that the North Pole had been reached by the United States naval officer, Peary. In 1912, Amundsen, a Scandinavian explorer, forestalled by Peary in the north, had succeeded in the south. "The discovery of the South Pole," one of the explorers said, "will not be the end of Antartic exploration. The next work of importance to be done is the determination of the whole coast-line of the Antartic contiMAY 1956 nent, and then a trans-continental journey from sea to sea crossing the Pole."' Consequently, better techniques of polar travel were developed. Most important of these was the introduction of air power. In 1929 Admiral Byrd flew to the South Pole. In 1936 the American aviotor Lincoln Ellsworth was the first to cross the Antartic continent by air. Meanwhile, expeditions like the British Discovery expeditions combined pioneer exploration with increasing scientific research. AFTER the war, larger e~peditions were noted. Light aircraft, especially for reconnaissance, became a familial' sight on the decks of most sh~ps sailing for the A n t a rt 1 c . Tracked snow vehicles, improved rations, lightweight equipment, and longer-range radio greatly increased both the speed of movement, as well as the health and safety of explorers. In 1948 the United States Navy expedition, consisting not of solitary ships but of three fleets with ice-breakers, aircraft carriers, and other vessels, was the largest expedition yet to visit Antartica. It was appropriately named "Operation High-Jump" and in the course of it, Admiral Byrd, the leader, made his second flight to the South Pole. 41 What is the importance of Antartica itself, the ca\lse of all this activity? From a strategic point of view, probably not much, unless it be as a polar training ground or as a safe launching and dropping zone for rockets or the hydrogen bomb. There is, however, one Antartic sea-passage that might prove very useful in time of war. That is the ice-free Drake strait that lies south of Cape Horn and between it and the northern tip of Graham Land. If the Panama Canal were to be put out of action, then Drake Strait would be the only icefree waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Economic prospects in the Antartic are more difficult to prophesy. Comparatively little of the geology of this vast region, equal in area to the United States and Europe together, has yet been thoroughly explored. Exploration has more often than not been in the form of reconnaissance, exploring journeys rather than intensive survey and geological investigation. Mapping by the traditional methods of land survey by sledging parties is far too slow a process for a vast terri* 42 tory. Air survey is the only answer. Economically valuable minerals have already been discovered in the Antartic, including coal, copper, and even silver and gold. So far, neither oilbearing strata nor nuclear ores have been reported. But with so much still to explore, they are a possibility in the ice-free parts. · There is not a doubt, however, of the value of Antartica for scientific research, especially in meteorology. Information about the weather engendered by the Antartic ice-mass is immediately important to the whaling fleets. There are other branches of science for which the Antartic provides the perfect laboratory - such as geophysics and terrestrial magnetism. Finally, there is the sub-glacial geography of the continent itself. Is it, below its enormous and overspilling ice-cap, an archipelago? It is two continents, or only one? A number of methods for sounding through several thousand feet of the cie-cap will be tried out in the next few years. ·They should provide an answer to these questions. - Adapted fro m the Listener. * * PANORAMA 1Janoran1a 1Jeek Photo b11 DERRICK KNIGHT, Shell Photographic Unit, LlnW With five centavos one may reach any part of the countrJ' through the Manila Post Office. I D~ I .. 11-10 W HEN the hospital umt of regimental headqu;:irters moved out of Calacabian to dodge a rumored enemy attack, it headed for Panipiason deep in tpe jungle. The rainy season was just over then, and the jungle trails were still slushy. The message center boys told of slippery paths and ledges that looked down on 44 dizzying abysses on the way to that remote hideout. Yet the unit could have taken the direct, and easier, route to Panipiason by folowing the Calacabian creek; but the doctor, who had the rank of captain, ordered his top medical sergeant to follow the less-travelled paths across the thicklyforested mountains. So, that PANORAMA day, the hospital force and the patients, a score of them mostly suffering from malaria, plodded on their way along steep mountain trails. It was viciously dark in the forest. High overhead the dense foliage of the trees shut out the sun. The poor patients staggered on the way forward, inch by inch, stumbling and slipping and cursing. It was worse than groping in a tunnel. But when they came to T.ugop, a sitio some five hills beyond Calacabian, the tall, wild trees suddenly disappeared. Sunshine wrapped the • tamed hills there. It was June and the mountain rice was just beginning to bear flowers. Grea.t patches of waving green covered the slopes. The bunching pregnant stalks of rice wagged their tongues of whitish ·young flowers and hid the dark of the charred loam of the kaingins. i There were a few scarecrows newly put up, and they looked useless and forsaken over the fields. In the trees bordering the kaingins, she-monkeys with baby-monkeys clustering about them chattered in excited voices like quarreling women. The marchers stopped by at the house of the t;eniente. The teniente's house was a big affair of rough swan wood hidden in the saddle betV{een two summits. It had a commanding view of the lowlands. The MAY 1956 marches asked for water to drink, and the teniente gave them a bunch of ripe bananas and some cooked camotes along with the jar of water. When the sergeant exhorted the group to move on, however, the patients in a body did not like to leave. They murmured that they were too exhausted to go on. Thus it came about that the hospital unit tarried in Tugop that night and the two days and nights following. The teniente of Tugop, !\4iloy by name, offered his house for the hospital unit to stay in. He was helping the guerrilla in a small way, he said. However, he begged not to be asked to leave the house during that evening of the arrival. "Senor doctor," Miloy said to the doctor, "may we stay in one of the sulods only for tonight. Tomorrow we will move to our bakwitan." The teniente did not wish to vacate one of the sleeping rooms of the house that evening because he had a large family, an aggregate of eight children, mostly girls, none of them over ten years old. While he spoke with the doctor, five little tots. in rags jostled in curiously behind him. Miloy was a huge mountaineer, powerfully-built, but very soft-spoken. Hearing his slow, soft speech, it was difficult to imagine him every angry. For then, as his children noisily clustered about 45 him, snuggled in his lap, tugged at his arms, and slid down the mound of unthreshed palay where he squatted, his voice could not shoo them away. It was the stern voice of two women in the sleeping room which peeled the children off their father's side. Miloy had two wives. "Se.fior doctor, we cannot go to our bakwitan tonight because my youngest one is not yet a year old and the night is very cold." And the doctor answered apologetically then that it seemed rude depriving the owner of the comfort of his own house; but then, in those confused and troubled times, it could not be helped. specially because his patients were much wearied and weakened by the day's march up and down the mountains. And Miloy had answered: "That is why, doctor, I told your sargento not to proceed farther this day. It will take a long, long way to see the next house." T HAT first evening, the marchers slept almost as soon as they finished with their hurried supper. Worn out by the day's travel, most everyone did not bother to hang mosquito nets. The patients lay in random order about the main room of the house which was cluttered 46 with bayons of rice, coils of rattan, beeswax, resins and other products the teniente had gathered from the forest. A few even slept without undoing their sleeping packs. In the sleeping room occupied by the teniente's family, the older children wrangled for spaces to sleep in and were spanked by their mothers. Outside in the jungle, the kalaws were taunting one another far into the night. PANORAMA Very early the next morning, Teniente Miloy and one of his wives, an oldish woman quite dignified for a mountaineer, and her own five children went out of the house. They followed one another, as goats do, along a small footpath that led into the widest kaingin around. Later in the morning, the wife who had been left behind, the younger and fairer one, came out of the sleeping room together with her own three children. The young_est was the baby Miloy had re'itred to the night before. The mother cradled the baby in her arms, for it was crying peevishly even as she suckled it to her full breasts. This wife, Magda, became friendly with t'he nurses. She chatted wi!h them freely. In a quite defensive tone, she said that her husband_ had gone to fix a hut in one of the hidden ravines; there they would go in the afternoon; the other wife, whom she called p:ianang, had gone to weed a patch of gabi and at the same time watch over a kaingin for mayas and monkeys. She said for herself: "I also have a kaingin to watch downhill, it covers a whole hill and is planted to a better kind of rice - manongbalay - which is very fragrant. But I cannot leave the house today. My baby has a fever." "Maybe, the baby is disturbed by the many people in MAY 1956 the house," said one of the nurses. "No," returned Magda, "the squawking of kalaws last night frightened this child; it has been crying since then." In its mother's arms, the child wriggled like a hurt worm. There were reddening blotches of mosquito bites on its chubby face and arms. "Don't cry, my child,'' whispered Magda to the baby, "we will have our own place tonight, and those bad half-sisters of yours cannot disturb you." Without being asked about about it, Magda recounted how the teniente had won her. She said she knew that Miloy had already a woman in his house, and she had hated his wooing her. "But I think, he applied a Iumay on me during a wake," she said. "For, after that evening, he said that he would bring me to his house, I just followed him." She paused and looked at the nurses wistfully. "Go on," said one of them. "That time," Magda continued readily, "his house was only a small one, with a small sulod. Manang had newly delivered her third girl then, and so I alone helped him in the kaingins." Then Magda went on to relate that their harvest was great that year. And also several years afterward. She brought good luck to Miloy, she said. Then they built the big house. And because she knew how to read, the concejal made 47 her husband the teniente of the place. When Teniente Miloy and Y ana returned to the house about midafternoon, they carried baskets of washed camotes and arrowroots. Miloy presented them to the doctor. Y ana had some sugar cane for the nurses. "It's a wonder," put in Miloy artlessly, "the root crops do not grow big roots these times. Maybe, just like people, they are scared by the war." Y ana smiled a little at her husband's hint of playfulness, and added: "And I should mention that the diggings made by wild pigs are wide. There seems a lack of things to eat in the jungle." Y ana had put on a clean dress and felt free to be seen with the teniente in a group with the doctor and the nurses. "And yet we have not been able to snare any wild pig," rejoined Miloy in his slow speech. "It would be good to hunt those pigs," put in the doctor pointlessly. "But not this time, though. Because nobody is allowed to fire a gun in the vicinity of the hospital." "There are many wild animals to catch in these hills, doctor," Miloy said, raising his voice a little to buoy up the conversation. "We used to trap them by the balatik. But since the start of the war, with the people from the lowlands and 48 the guerrillas going up and down the mountains, I have not seen any." W HILE Miloy and Y a n a talked with the doctor and the nurses, Magda, who had been trying to put her baby to sleep, came out of the sleeping room with two hands of bananas. She gave them to the nurses, and sidled primly over to Miloy's side opposite Yana. She had put on a clean dress, too. The nurses stopped munching the sugar cane. They could not eat the sugar cane and the bananas at the same time. They noticed that Magda eyed Yana consciously. The teniente told the doctor that one of the kaingins downhill used to be deer country. There used to be a salt lick there, he said. However, now that the lick had been covered by debris from the kaingins, seldom did they notice deer tracks any more. "But I saw deer prints in the kaingin downhill just ab o u t three weeks ago," Magda blurted out loudly. One of the nurses dropped the length of cane she held. Yana looked down on her hands and tried to hide her fingernails that were lined with dirt under them. "It was · deer, no other animal could have snipped the young rice plants clear to the ground. And not along the edge of the clearing but way down in the midPANORAMA die," Magda supported her assertion in a confident tone. "A rat building its nest in one of the stumps can do it, too," wedged in Yana flatly. That balked Magda. Magda turned sharply toward the older woman, but Y ana had moved toward the window to spit. One of the nurses cupped a hand over her mouth to avoid giggling. "I am sure it was a deer, Miloy," Magda. insisted in a pitched tone. She cleared her throat. "I even repaired the fence where it had broken through." And without pausing she continued to say that some years before her husband had caught a buck whose antlers had gotten entangled among rattan vines. She told in detail how her husband had bagged the deer and brought it to town MAY 1956 alive as a present to the conce jal. While Magda was animatedly telling her bit of story, her baby cried loudly in the sleeping room. But even as Y ana tried to distract her, she continued on to talk. Yana, feelin2 uneasy because of Magda's not minding the baby's cries, withdrew from the group and went into the sleeping room. Miloy and his wives and their children moved out of the house to their evacuation hut just before the forest began to darken. The big mountaineer politely took leave from the doctor and led the single file. He and Y ana carried bundles that could have been all their treasured possessions. The bigger children carried small bundles and pots. Magda lingered. 49 "Well, we'll have to go," she told the nurses at last, and went slowly down the ladder. She seemed reluctant to leave the house. The child she hugged close to her breast would not st o p crying. It continually pushed away with its hands and feet the dirty blanket with which the mother was trying to shield it from the wind. Even as they disappeared behind a low rise of ground, the child's hoarse cries could be heard like the loud clamor of the big birds in the darkening forest. That evening, the messengers from the forward CP at Calacabian told that the enemy in the garrison at Sigcay showed no sign of moving to assault the former bivouac. The doctor and everyone felt at ease that night. The next morning, the medics and the patients trudged down to a spring downhill to bath. Miloy came back to the house about midmorning bringing a basket of newly uprooted cassava. There were only five or six people in the house. The house looked very spacious. The hospital pople had moved all of the teniente's things into the sleeping rooms. They had also torn .down the low, sooty walls of the lean-to where the stove was. The main room looked airy, tidy. In one corner, a malaria :eatient, with arms upraised, was silently spinning imaginary threads in the air. 50 By the door, a rifleman was oiling the barrel of his gun. Miloy sat on a bench by a window and looked around. His eyes bulged out of their sockets. This house was not his anymore. To him, it looked bare and unfinished. H IS GAZE rested on a nurse sponge-bathing a patient. The nurse was sponging the patient's back, and perhaps it called to his mind his son, the sick child. Last night Yana had asked Magda that she apply the juice of some warmed herbs on the temples, abdomen and back of the sick boy. Magda had not allowed her. They had growled at each other instead. Miloy had not slept well from the baby's whimpering. He did not mind his wives wrangling; it was not infrequent that they quarreled and made up. He worried about the boy. He would ask the doctor. Sometime later, Yana came hurrying down the trail and quickly up the house. She went to Miloy and whispered something urgent to him. Miloy whispered back to her, his sinewy arms resting awkwardly and uselessly on his lap. When the doctor came, the nurse told him that Magda's little baby had run a very high fever and the three· parents did not know what to do. Miloy and Y ana were come to ask for a remedy. PANORAMA "If you want," said the nurse kindly to Miloy, "take your family back to the house." "Don't," interrupted the doctor, in English, "or the other children will get the fever, too." "Senor doctor," said Miloy diffidently, "I would like to take my family back to the house tonight. I hope you don't mind. A bad wind whipped the child in the ravine last night, I guess." After he had spoken, Miloy looked like he had just put down a cavan of rice from his shoulders to the floor. "Has the child got malaria?" the nurse asked the doctor after Miloy and Yana left. Before night came on that second day, the teniente's wives came back to the house. They were loudly exchanging words as they approached; but in the house, they kept very quiet, as if they had hidden their tongues in the bushes before coming up. Miloy was not with them. The doctor gave the child some medicine. It had stopped crying; but it had a burning fever. The doctor shook his head. Outside in the bushes the hum of the crickets and c i c a d a s boomed. Yana stayed away from Magda. For each time she came near to say something or to ask to hold the baby, Magda muttered words from which Yana recoiled. Magda hugged the baby close to her, whispering unendingly, "My p o or little MAY 1956 child, my poor little child." The nurses hudled together watching the two wives. In the middle of the night, the guards posted some distance from the house brought in Miloy and a scraggly old woman. The old woman was cursing and trembling with fright. "Devil!" she swore. "It felt more than dying to be terrified that way." The soldiers said that they had nearly shot the two coming up the trail because Miloy and the old woman had failed to give the password. Miloy was tight-lipped and haggard. He looked about the house with a defiant mien. J HE OLD WOMAN was a medicine woman. In the dim light, she produced an old bag from the folds of her hempen skirt. From the bag she took out small bottles containing oils. She also had .a bundle of herbs which she gave to Yana to cook under hot ashes. Taking a freshly-laid egg, she exposed it to the smoke of some resins, and then rolled it over the sick child's body, all the while muttering inaudible phrases. Everyone was silent. Afterward, she broke the egg, poured it on a plate and divined the child's sickness from the condition of the white and the yolk. "It's difficult to place the cause of the child's sickness," the, old woman announced at 51 last. "It seems that it has been frightened by wild hens." She shook her head dismally and poked a dirty finger into the yolk of the egg to break it. "You women have been quarreling again," she mocked hollowly. · By the wall away from the circle of light, Yana sat, covering her face with a dirty kerchief. She was crying silently. It was not her fault. Magda always picked a quarrel with her. By right, she was above Magda as the wife of Miloy; but Magda had always been envious, had always been trying to show a superiority, specially when people from the lowlands were around. Now her hostility had caused the worsening of the child's sickness. And Miloy had been very fond of his only son. Poor child, poor Miloy, she wailed. Methodically, the old woman brought mo r e strange things from her bag, and laid them on a mat. She had the child laid on the mat too, and beside it she placed Miloy's sheathed talibon~. The poor child whimpered feebly. It was too weak to even open its eyes. The mosquito bites on its cheeks had turned bluish. Finishing h e r preparations, the old healer stood up straight and then started to recite a long incantation. With the low light, it sounded weird. She began to gesticulate with her arms as 52 if she were beckoning the spirits. Once in a while she stopped to pluck some unse~,n thing from the child's forehead. Her recitation alternately changed tones, so that she sounded like she-monkeys fighting each other. The child looked terribly ill. It lay scarcely breathing, despite the old woman's noises and movements. The old woman became more excited in her motions and she started to skip about the mat. Her blurred shadow on the wall looked grotesque. Magda bowed low over the child, her hands restlessly arranging the dirty blanket and rags that swathed it. Farther away, Miloy squatted in silence. Some of the medits were awake and they watched the proceedings curiously. Those of the patients who were sitting up yawned and complained that they had not slept. The animals in the forest were also waking up. The flapping of wings could be heard. The wind through the gaps on the floor carried a strong mountain scent. Through the chinks of the walls, the eastern sky showed the first signs of dawn. It was while the old woman was dancing that rifle shots broke from the direction of Calacabian. Instantly the big house rumbled with the commotion t h a t developed. The medics who were watching the healing ceremony snuffed out the resin torches: Cries arose PANORAMA from all corners of the suddenly darkened house - from the awakened children, the women, and the patients who were stepped on in the confusion. "The light! The light! Who put out the light?" Miloy shouted. The noncoms were shouting, too, at the top of their vo:ces. The doctor was ordering everyone to stay put and keep calm. "The light! I will cut him who put out the l:ght!" Miloy shouted again, this time in a harsh, desperate voice. He was tramping on the floor. And then the noises in the house subsided abruptly. It was like somebody gagging everyone's throat. The gunfire and mortar shots continued, just from the next hill. But nobody minded. The the bolt of a rifle cracked by the door. And, then, a tense silence. I T w AS ONE of the older children who managed to light a small torch from the embers in the stove. The flame sputtered in the wind that was carrying it away. Miloy was still groping for · his talibong. He could not find it. His children swarmed about him, clinging and crying. Both the wives were now huddled over the child on the mat, their dark immobile shapes blended. They held down on the mat the rags that swathed the child. The medics hurried, leading the patients down to the ground. At first the guerrilla group was terrified that death was coming to them from some five mcuntains away. Then, suddenly, death was there hovering in their midst. And the wives, the women who had been vying with each other, defied and suffered that death would not descend on the house. When the hospital people were all down on the ground, the top sergeant announced that they move. Towards Calacabian, the sky was red, but not with the dawn. Up in the big house, which had suddenly become empty, the mountaineer's family still stayed in their comer. The torch no longer burned. The wives still clutched each other, fast and weeping. The dawn light was shedding on them. The teniente himself had his head buried in his huge hands. He 1 o o k e d very old and strengthless. As the hospital unit marched up the trail in the weak light, the unrestrained wailing of the wives followed behind, climbing the tall trees of the forest. In tl:e kaingins, the heads of mountain rice waved somberly. * "' * MAY 1956 53 Literary Personality - XVII Franz J(afka: The Great Wall of Divinity God-ache gives no rest T HE NOVELS of Czech writer Franz Kafka beat with the frightened heart of man falling through space, the space that separates man and God. The Castle, The Trial, The Metamorphosis: the plunging horror of such work is not the aftermath of tremendous aspiration and failure, as in old legends of winged Icarus. For all his longing, Kafka could never believe, early or late, that man shows any sign (other foan that obsessive longing) of being made in the image of God. He is, rather, a cockroach stung by a procession of black dwarf stars. Twentieth-century minds in more than one country have registered this same sense of isolation and mutilation - though seldom with such deep-frozen, dream-state language. Kafka''> feeling of being a displaced person was special. He was born, in 1883, on the brink of an empire's collapse: Austria-Hungary. He feared the authority of his father and his father's failure to understand him. For Jews like himself, members of a minority, occupations were limited: he was expected to be a prosperous dry-goods wholesaler, in his father's tradition. Instead, he studied law, though he failed to practice that profession also. For awhile he was a minor official in Prague's Workmen's Accident Insurance Company, where he experienced the unmanning effects of bureaucracy so totally exploited in The Trial. His health and his constant sense of inadequacy prevented him from ever marrying, although two times in his brief life he attempted love affairs. Tuberculosis killed him at the age of 41, in 1924. Three years before his death, he begged Max Brod, a university friend, to destroy all his unpublished manuscripts. Perhaps because Kafka himself would not destroy them, Brod refused. 54 PANORAMA Kafka's life seems uneventful, almost immobile. But the threshing that made a turmoil of his daily mind is too well known. H!s loneliness was painful. So often his fiction, following bewildering event>', subsides into silence; the unknown slides and slides, and finally caves in on man. The world is methodical, routinary, but irrational. One novel, The Castle, stops before it is ended; perhaps there is no resolution to its superhumanly human problem. J N KAFKA's conceptual maze, God is unknowable, the unattainable. Grace falls unappreciated on the unasking, is withheld from the patiently suffering. A man who knows no reason for believing that he is not innocent, is haunted by a vague sense of guilt (and may even be executed for unknown crimes, as in The Trial). God spurns him; and yet he is driven, by what phiiosopher Miguel de Unamuno calied "the God-ache," to keep forcing himself on God's attention. The Castle has sometimes been called a contemporary Pilgrim's Progress. A land surveyor named K. (Kafka's characters are typically nameless: the initial identifies this as part of the author's own psychic struggle but, being only an initial, suggests also his willingness to share the experience with anyman) believes he has been hired to work at the Castle. But when he arrives, he is rudely ordered off the premises by a host of strange officials. Inquiring over the telephone when he may come to the Castle, he is told "Never." Yet he tries a dozen strategies to trick his way inside. He is only humiliated, degraded to school janitor. Even the villagers at the Castle's foot become hostile. The most they will permit themselves to do is to tolerate his presence. This pilgrim retro· gresses; the Castle seems to recede. Only his determination remains unchanged. The Trial, on the other hand, might be compared with the Book of Job. Joseph K. is a good man, suddenly arrested for a crime that is never defined. The agents of Divine Justice, if such they are, hardly act like angels. They eat his breakfast, try to steal his clothes . . . Though arrested, he continues to work in his bank until summoned to a filthy room in the slums, where law books are filled with obscene pictures. His reputation is ruined, his health fails: yet he never sees the Supreme Judge excpt as a vague figure in the window. On the night before his 31st birthday, K. is taken to a deserted stone quarry. MAY 19S6 SS "With a flicker as of a light going up, the casements of a window suddenly flew open; a human figure, faint and insubstantial, at that distance and at that height, leaned abruptly far forward and stretched both arms still farther. Who was it? A friend? A good man? Someone who sympathized? Someone who wanted to help? ... Was help at hand? ... Where was the Judge whom he had never seen? Where was the High Court to which he had never penetrated?" But at that moment his throat is cut by a double-edged butcher knife. Unlike Job, he has not been rescued and repaid; so that perhaps K's faith, tested by death itself, is the greater. Kafka's feeling for compassion, man's ironic incompatibility with God his needed guide and succor, never damns divinity and never quite despairs. His faith is whole, in a world of experienced chaos and betrayal. MAX BROD once said that Kafka "Of all believers was the freest from illusions, and among all those who see the world as it is, without illusions, he was the most unshakable believer." Yet, because he believed with his eyes open, he wrote without false sentiment, knowing "that mari's fate is also divine comedy." When he read the opening chapters of The Trial to his friends, they laughed till tears ran down their cheeks and Kafka himself laughed so hard that he had to stop reading. He could not help hoping that God too, behind his tall wall of divinity, sometimes laughs until tears of pity and compassion come. 56 ERRATA The article, "Religious Freedom In Our Schools." by Rep. Carmen Dinglasan-Consing which appeared in the April issue of the Panorama was reprinted with permission from :Philippine Journal of Educatfon. Proper acknowledgment ~ hereby made. · The author of "Othello Comes To Town" which appeared in the same is~ue is Miguel A. Bernad, S.J., not Bernard. PANORAMA 1 OR TOO LONG in the Philippines, the urge for national self-expression having put out the eyes of discrimination, anyone who could manage a rhyme or metaphor has been counted a poet. A physician-surgeon from Antique embalms, in a mimeographed volume called Versimilitude, verse with such titles as "Portia on Str~ptomycin," "June and Diarrhea," or "Inguinal Hernia." A would-be Jose Garcia Villa from Capiz papers the walls of his book with semicolons - an advance on t h e comma, crying "Un-Manila Me" and singing the "his-ness" of his id. A rhetorician from Foreign Affairs is applauded for his "poetic ascents" when, in open assembly but with half-closed eyes, he proclaims: . the cultural conference like this one, called _to listen to each other's national heartbeats and heartthrobs, this con~ ference convened to penetrate on the wings of music into each other's understanding, this cultural congress gathered to sing into beautiful reality the cultural compenetration of Soutlieast Asian peoples . . . Too long has puffery, the discharge of emotion in untempered language, passed for poetry. Often Filipno spokesmen have praised the supersensitivity of their people, made visible they have said in the Filipino's "instinctively graceful" MAY 1956 1lie 1ilipiao Poet: f;'r.ect an~ au~ible By LEONARD CASPER No more cannibalism dancing and "innately poetic soul" brimming with sentiments. Unfortunately, sometimes the alleged sensitivity turns out to be petulance and impulse, rash judgment and unreasoned response exhibiting little range of feeling or depth of consideration: sings of immaturity. The Philippines can afford to be objective in its literary appraisals now, and call hack minds, even in government bureaus, what they are, because honest poets now are erect and audible among them. The struggle to stand up and be counted properly has been confounded, in the past, by the stature of lawyers and business executives who thought their 57 ponderous rhetoric was Whitmanian. They forgot the American's craft at consolidating images, through symbol clusters; they saw only the uncompressed catalog. They forgot his knowledge of the recitative, and themselves sounded like jeepney drivers hawking their destinations. They forgot his imagination which foreshadowed eternity, and looked homeward instead to last century's chauvinism. Amador Daguio's B a ta an Harvest, today, sounds like fizzling plaza fireworks set off by the Psychological Warfare division; Zulueta da Costa's Like the M olave sometimes stirs the animal hackles, but never the cockles of the f u 11 y human heart. Place them end to end: and one can tell Da Costa, and one can tell Whitman: 58 Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, · And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, beetles rolling rolling balls of dung. 0 souls And spirits of the martyred brave, arise! Arise and scour the land! Shed once again Your willing blood! Infuse the vibrant red Into our thin anaemic viens; until We pick up your Promethean tools and, strong, Out of the depthless matrix of your dream And from the silent cliffs of freedom, we Carve out f.orever your marmo. real dream! Until our people are become like the molave, Rising on the hillside, unafraid, Strong of its own fibre; yes, like the molave! The new poets like to be read aloud too, but not without meditation, n o t as declamatory noisemakers. m ISUNDERSTOOD-VILLA (or e.e. cummings) has been a source of unpoetics second on 1 y to misunder~d-Whit man. Strangely, the worst offender has been Villa himself, unable to distinguish between his own sin and his own grace; between doubt hidden in radiant assertion - My most. My most. 0 my lost! 0 my bright, my ineradicable ghost. At whose bright coast God seeks Shelter and is lost is lost. 0 Coast of Brightness. 0 cause of PANORAMA Grief. 0 rose of purest grief. 0 thou in my breast so stark and Holy-bright. 0 thou melancholy Light. Me. Me. Miy perfidy. 0 my most my most. 0 the bright The beautiful the terrible Accost. and soul-cracking conceit disguised as humble conflict with divinityNow I will tell you the Future of God. The future of God is Man. God aspired before and Failed. Jesus was too much God. Since God is moving Towards Man, and Man is moving Towards God-they must meet sometime. 0 but God is always A Failure! That Time is the End of the world. When God And Man do meet-they will Be so bitter they will not speak, So creator resents the possibility of Creator, even while he envies the celestial almighty creativeness.' Despite the luminous cosmological adventuring of a few of Villa's poems, the effect on Philippine poetry of his whole work so far has been predominantly that of disfiguration. Gradually, those who, after his manner, have allied themselves to chrome semi-colons a n d periods 1 Certainly it is no coincidence that the man who described Christ as .. The true dark hero./ He with the three-eyed thunders" has drawn himself three-eyed in a familiar self-portrait. MAY 1956 have discovered that his commas regiment rather than liberate. They are not meant as punctuation, of course. Yet even as emblems of procession-music "measure,'' their effect is an artificial and indiscriminate solemnity, where every word is equally, and therefore w r o n g 1 y , weighed and scrutinized. 2 His latest poetry (supposedly part of a series, although only one appeared months ago in the Sunday Times, followed by the silence of irresponsibility) is a bad imitation of his earliest. Nevertheless, taken at their best, Villa's poems still form the most imposing corpus in this country, simply because they have found a central and reproductive theme: the daily wrestling of God and man for man's soul, and even God's soul; child rejecting parent and wanti:ng to be his own ancestor, progenitor of his own father. Two poets who soon might equal this achievement, if they can find a friend such as Villa found in Laughlin of New Directions, are Bienvenido Santos and Carlos Angeles. The latter's associative imagery is the more startling, yet both have the faculty of giving to the uncommonplace an illusion of simpliicty, through the restraint of 2 Villa's comparison of his comma technique with Seurat's pointillism is superficial. Seurat's points of color, varying in dimension, are hardly as mechanical or unfelt as Villa's rlevice. 59 line and stanza. The peopled situations that they treat seem so everyday as to be anonymous and therefore easily recognizable. But their knowledge about Anyman, revealed with such casual ritual power as if never concealed, therefore has only all the more power, for being irreducibly true - making gasps of awe dawn in the blood. THE UNFAILING quiet shock of these poets suggests major motifs stirring, which nevertheless seem intent on rema1mng partially incoherent until their scattered works are collected as promised. Katha I looks forward to an early collection by Angeles; Santos has had his own volume committed, for over a year, to the Archipelago press which, unfortunately, chose to publish first Agcaoili's indiscriminate anthology and Edilberto Tiempo's antinovel. * As well-disciplined and even more sharply narrated are the poems of Edith Tiempo and Ricaredo Demetilo. Hers are best when bleak with loss - the childhood of innocence; hers are lines of Jacobean vengeance, reminiscent of the Duchess of Malfi.'s dark fire. Demetillo's are more sophisticated, tending • As this is written, the collected poems of both Bienvenido Santos (The Wounded Stag) and of Ricaredo Demetillo ( Uncertain Weather) are publications expected the year's first quarter. 60 to pumiced satire. Both take power from the concentrated scene, the character suddenly ripped from his skin. But for all their educated violence and refined revolt, both have avoided being grounded so far in a vision beyond the sudden scene, the one-act tableau; in a dramatic wisdom, by which human involvements exceeding the mere moment of inception are transported to fulfillment: the full human history in several acts, a rarity anywhere. Compared with the precisions of these others, the new poems of Amador Daguio (since 1950) must be considered calculated risks, lonely expeditions into outer experience whose homeward messages are cryptic, deceptively incomplete, because seemingly without context, as if a later reassuring word were still expected from that distant forerunner. That is, such poems are less narrative, more lyrical, with a recurring quality of personal emotion which yet escapes immediate communication (even while it sidesteps excessive sentimentality) for being masked. Because this poet's response is so personal and so profoundly felt, it must be signaled only indirectly. The images are all venturesome, peripheral, brought captive from the senses' farthest reach; yet systematic and multi-reverberant, evocative .. The reader must sense the PANORAl\llA nature of the contained, by his experience of the container. The demands of such poetry on the writer, lest it sliver into impressionistic fragments as happened so often with the divisible words of Romero Ch. Veloso and Hernando Ocampo, are just as great as on the reader. When he succeeds, Daguio kindles a fragile warmth, like the honeyed shadow of a candle's breath, which seems more humanly usable that felt knowledge arrived at more logically but coldblooded - ly. Daguio's misfortune is. that he has given himself too much to political ghostwriting at a time of intensest maturity. The bread he eats turns out to be his own flesh. Neither he nor the Philippines can afford such cultural suicide. 0 F THE NEWER poets, Alex Hufana is unquestionably the most likely to keep his promise. Recently (even in parts of his kalisud sequence) his imagery has trained itself to co, alesce (eventually - in the retentive imagination - though not immediately), instead of each word, each phrase having its separate sideshow. All this has been achieved, despite the fact that Hufana's poetic energy derives from the conflict of ideas and temporary contrast of symbols. Because the coalescence is earned, not gratuitous; gradual, not prompt: the MAY 1956 development is dramatic. If he can restrain the delight he takes in excessive alliteration and internal rhyme, and put poetic consequence before his own pleasure at play, then paradoxically he might we 11 achieve what after all is never a donnee but a destination, the illusion of personal admission into the object, as in the poetry of Daguio. (The self denied in the act of objectifying experience is always restored when the experience attains universality.) Hufana already has disciplined, without crippling, his sensibility by working extensively in the medium of oneact plays. It is noteworthy that (aside from Daguio, a poet who has already traversed the regions of the short story and theater) the major Filipino poets writing today have tempered their craft by avoiding both the lyrically detached, and the discursive; the romantic abstract, and the essay - in - rhyme. Instead, they devise narrative poems, sensically or dramatically deployed and in imagery resplendent. Narration is often more subtle and difficult than exposition, but also more rewarding since it attempts to recreate in full the immediate human act. The readers' confidence in the writings of these few poets has grown as their dramatic ability has matured, along with their 61 the development of m a j o r themes would be encouraged by an equally mature reading and widespread discussion of the poet's collected thoughts. A few private sources - some still insistent on anonymity - feel that Filipino poet and reader are now trained enough to be left in the same room without cannibalism resulting. Seven patrons and a publisher whose o n 1 y profit was prestige helped Six Filipino Poets into print. The Asia Foundation, without publicity or propaganda, has promoted Katha I, first in a series of annual anfluency in the idiom. Certainly thologies of fiction and poetry. The editorship of Signatures, a rising magazine of verse, has been placed in the custody of Alex Hufana and Rony Diaz, by Dr. Clemente Cancio. In addition, the poets themselves have ceased to be shy long enough to organize public readings of their own work . . . The time may be very near when the educated Filipino will be sensitive to the difference between a politician and a poet. The poets hope so. - from Philippine Studies, P.O. Box 3169, Manila. * * * 62 QUEEN UP A TREE When King George VI of England died, his daughte1 Elizabeth was visiting in Africa, filming the comedy amL violence of animal life. Particularly had she climbed Tree Tops, an observation house built in the top of a sturdy tree, from which she might see intimately but safely the ~tics of elephants, baboons, waterbuck and jungle birds.. While she was aloft, news came that she had succeeded to the throne. Her host wrote that day, "For th~ first time in the history of the world a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess, and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience she climbed down from the tree next day a Queen-God bless her." * PANORAMA m~ Book Review By LEONARD CASPER (9 AMUS' FINEST novel, already fixed permanently in literary annals, is most visible in the light of an article, "Neither Victims nor Executioners," published serially in the French newspaper Combat in the fall of 1946 (evidently while he was still at work on this novel). In this article is presented Camus' minimum working hypothesis: that all mankind must reflect on murder and ask themselves if human life is trifling and if murder, in any form, can ever be considered legitimate. His own answer is No. He· says, "I could no longer hold to any truth which might oblige me, directly or indirectly, to demand a man's life." Camus' argument follows: In this age of anxiety, this century of fear, man has lost confidence in his own goodness. That confidence must be restored: the alternative is total destruction. The tragic thing revealed by man's past actions is that so often he has had good intentions, yet has produced a world of horror. But in that wish for goodness lies hope of salvation. The reason his intentions have· gone astray is that he sought violent means to peaceful ends, and the violence conditioned the peace right out of existence. That is the reason that murder cannot be made illegitimate by any means that risks violence. But that it can be done nonviolently is a belief no more utopian than the beliiefs in progress and future harmony offered by present day capitalistic and Marxian ideologies. And since belief in non-violent means to an end offers what seems to be the logical solution to our present predicament, such a belief is only relatively utopian. A step in the right direction would be an international democracy of all peoples in a parliament that would replace •Albert Camus, The Plague (Knopf: New York, 1948). MAY 1956 63 the unrepresentative, nationalistic, and dictatorial UN setup. The tools are logic and love. Possibly the fate of the world depends on whether or not those who want to be neither victims nor executioners will decide to use those tools . . . \\) ITH CAMUS' serial thoughts in mind, it becomes plain that The Plague is not primarily the story of the French Resistance, the combat underground, during World War II, although many of its ideas must have derived from those experiences. Camus is not praising men who fought a human enemy: it should be evident that there is a vast difference between destroying a dise·ase and killing a man. The enemy in this book is impersonal because it is impersonality; it is no': human because it is inhumanity. The plague is blood-lust- the will to murder or the acceptance of killing; it is the violence that dehumanizes men. In effect, The Plague is at the opposite pole from any work which has sanctified the French Resistance. It is non-partisan, it is everyman's. "Plague" brings exile from uninfected humanity, a separation from man's full possibilities. Even those engaged in combating it are somewhat brutalized by its constant threat and by the exhaustive effort of preventing its spread. In the end the "plague" is not completely expunged but merely becomes dormant. Meanwhile, by realizing that their collective destiny is at stake and by uniting their meager forces, the townspeople have averted total calamity. Dr. Rieux has no thought of deserting his patients; although his wife his outside the city, and although he not only loves her but believes in the importance of love, his sense of common decency keeps him at his work. l:lis example finally convinces Rambert, a foreign journalist, to remain, too; Rambert who once thought that the "public welfare is merely the sum total of the private welfares of each of us," eventually sees the impossibility of enjoying his happiness alone. Tarrou, who left home when he saw his lawyer-father demand the death penalty for an accused man * and who left his fellow agitators when he discovered that they used violent means to change a violent society, finds a cause he can devote himself to, in conscience. He organizes volunteer burial brigades, because he knows that otherwise prisoners will be turned • This theme repeats that of The B_tranger where Camus compares the indifference of a killer toward mankind with the indifference of a aociety toward the killer, once he is caught. 64 PANORAMA to the work, and he doesn't believe in condemning his fellow men to death. THESE "plague"-fighters are deliberately self-effacing; they only do what is necessary; they are not glorified, not madEo· heroic. But if there were a hero in this novel, it would be a simple man like Grand, the source of whose unhappiness has always lain in his inability to communicate hi slave, and who finds expression in the work at hand. Even while the "plague" continues, there are some selfish attempts at escape and profiteering. But there are only two notable exceptions to the pattern of resistance to "plaguEo·." The first is Father Faneloux who preaches that God is allowing the "plague" because mankind has· turned from his devotion; later when an innocent child dies before all their eyes, and Rieux speaks harshly of a religion which accepts the suffering of innccents without question, Paneloux preaches again that unreasonable sufferirng is the only true tes tof faith in God's goodness. Man must choose active fatalism, "total selfsurrender, disdain of our human perosnality" (in the words of Aldous Huxley). As a result of his convictions, Paneloux refuses to summon a. doctor when he contracts "plague," and he dies. The othE'i exception is Cottard who has committed some unnamed crime, but who is left at freedom during the "plague" and consesquently welcomes it. He dreads the impersonality of law and the loneliness of imprisonment; he enjoys the feeling of belonging which a common threat of death for the whole city permits him. Before the "plague," in his loneliness, he attempts suicide; and when the· "plague" wanes and he is hunted once more, he goes berserk. The Plague is a declaration of human faith, documented and dramatized. Much of its power is in the dignity of its presentation which makes the dignity of its theme credible. The rest lies in its logic, its quiet appeal to quotidian minds rapt with the realization that here can be no freedom as long as there are pestilences; and in its faith. The narrator refuses to call Tarrou and the others heroic, because this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good inten(See page 72) MAY 1956 65 "A man without a shadow'' Germany Today By F. PRITT A FEW YEARS ago a British newspaper conducted a short examination of the behavior of German tourists in Britain. It discovered that their behavior was extraordinarily good. The Germans paid their bills with a good grace, were polite to hotel staffa and tipped, and ate their food uncomplainingly. The paper also noted that the German visitors to Britain tried, in conversation and sometimes in hotel registers, to pass themoff as Dutch, Swedish, or swiss - anything, in fact, bqt what they were. The Germans, I believe, are going through an era of national self -consciousness, primarily because they know that the outside world is watching them with all sorts of feelings - with a brotherly and even protective interest, with real admiration but with a suspicion which has never disappeared since the war or even sensibly diminished. Thinking Germans understand this. The editor of one 66 r..ewspaper wrote that this suspicion would go on as long as b3.sic problems remained unsolved. He named three causes of suspicion: west German rearmament, the opening of diplomatic relations with Moscow, and the west German quest for reunification. No one knows what sort of army will be produced in western Germany. True, there is a desire in some quarters to make it "democratic" by abolishing goose-step, jack-boots, and what the Germans call Kadavergehorsamkeit, or obedience up to the very moment that one becomes a corpse. The Germans will have no trouble in dealing with unessentials. Goose-step and steel heel-clickers have gone. Troops can wear civilian clothes off-duty. Officers have been deliberately made to look less formidable by being dressed in a kind of commissionaire's double-breasted jacket. After Chancellor Adenauer came back from Moscow the PANORAMA Speaker of the Bundestag said that "We Germans cannot be tco careful in the sphere of international politics." Germans, he went on, had to live down some memories of Bismarckian psiicies and the Treaty of Rapallo, and not only Nazi excesses in peace and war. This is painfully true. A German historian said that no German should wander at the instinctive western reflex of distrust when Dr. Adenauer came back from Moscow. Prewar Germany sent economic s.nd military experts to Russia, helped to build up its arms industries, acclaimed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, passively watched the ponderous assault on the Mannerheim Line, rubber-stamped the rape of the Baltic states, and tried to bride the Russians with half Poland and Besserabia to wait for their own destruction. M ANY GERMANS still try to explain these things away with talk of the "new order" which could have secured Europe against Bolshevism. But more Germans realise that a second supper with the devil would be dangernus. The failure in Moscow and the deliberate slowing down of the return cf the prisoners from Siberia were pointers. One German newspaper market out as the greatest peril for 1956 the o:i;>· ening cf Russo-German diploMAY 195p ma tic relations - since the Russians believed that in this way they could crystallize the division of Germany into two se·parate states. Self-consciousnes has produced one curious result in the German quest for reunification. Germans have talked a great deal about it, but they have have done virtually nothing to make it easier. Allowing for the obvious fact that Germany cannot be united without the approval of all four ex~occupa tion Powers, German omissions have still been striking. For instance, during a press conference for a "crusade" for reunification, not one German journalist attended. West Germans flocked in record numbers to sunny Spain and Italy but almost none holiday in eastern Germany. East German refugees are still cold-shouldered and mistrusted. In a Bundestag debate on reunificaton only one constructive proopsal was made that more food parcels should be sent to eastern Germany. One German writer warningly asks: "Which kind of German wants reunification the more? The German who believes in moderation, freedom, ar;.d a middle way in politics? Or those Germans on the verges, the left-overs of yesterday and the day before, who look to a future which will bring the nemesis of freedom? 67 It is those Germans who are waiting for the collapse of all forces of moderation, and their hour could come when hope of reunification fades away for ever." A UNIVERSITY profesor pointed out that the outcome of the last war was absolutely conclusive. In 1918 a big majority of Germans thought the result of the war was somehow "unfair" and could be due only to n stab in the back. This time defeat "stood everyone and everything on its head." Admittedly Germans learned quickly to call defeat "the collapse" or Ueberrolung - which suggests overwhelming by vastly superior forces. Today they simply say, "When the Americans came." But defeat did mean gutted towns, semi-starving workers, the blackmarket, and dislocated. families. Even today there are 1,500,000 war cripples, 1,170,000 war widows, and 1,200,000 children who lost at least one parent in the war. From such facts sprang a confusion, even anarchy of mind which was primarily due to utter amazement. This amazement is well expressed by the story of the German general just returned from Russia. He wanted to know about his old comrades, for instance Doenitz. "In Spandau", he was told. Why Spandau? he asked. Be68 cause Doenitz was gaoled as a major war-criminal. "Ah yes," said the general, "and what about Speidel?" He was in Paris, was the answer. "In gaol?" asked the general. No, at N ato headquarters. "Panza Meyer, then?" He was in Canada, was the answer. "With Nata, I assume?" asked the general. No, in gaol. "General Heusinger, then?" He was in Bonn. "And in gaol, too? "No," was the answer, he was the new German chief of staff. "In that case," said the general back frcm Russia, "I shall leave now and book myself a room in the nearest lunatic asylum; since, if what I have just heard is true, I am stark, staring maq." Prisoners returning f r o m Russia have noticed that no one seems to have any time nowadays for conversation or reflection: life consists in a frantic rush after business, profit, and organized pleasure. The truth of this prompted the Federal P re s i d en t Professor Heuss, to urge, in his New Year's message, a real effort to achieve a mental, moral, and intellectual renaissance in Germany which would parallel their economic resurgence. He believed that this could begin in the family, which had suffered most from material want and spiritual decline. A new balance had to be struck betw e e n earning and living. - Adapted from the Listener. PANORAMA Politicians avoid it DilimaH: Wliite collat att~ 1-sliitt By L. CRISOLOGO-SANTOS /) ECAUSE THE Philippine J) government has now released loan-funds for the construction of new on-campus U.P. faculty and employee homes, and at the same time has set aside over 300 off-campus lots for their families, an exploratory study of the Diliman community made late in 1955 may soon have to be revised. Yet the principal question will remain: how well do men who work with their heads get along with those who work with their hands? Writing in the Philippine Sociological Review, Fe Rodriguez Arcinas centered her study on that small fraction of the Quezon City plateau which is the campus part of the University site, bounded by an adobe wall, a wire fence, Balara road and the MWD pipeline. The comMAY 1956 munity itself is a group of residences and boarding houses in a horseshoe shape around the c e n t r a l rectangle of college buildings, dormitories and a golf course. The total population of this community is over 2,500, of which 51:6% are. female, in reversal of the pattern for the entire Philippines, where males have a slight preponderance. Y o u n g people predominate, among University employees of both white collar and T-shirt distinction. Except for a handful of foreign-born residents, husbands and wives are largely Tagalog, with the Visayan group next but far behind. Each ethnic group maintains its own dialect and attitudes, and eats its native foods - pinakbet, bagoong, malunggay. However, most of them 69 uniformly prefer western dress; and virtually everybody knows Tagalog, although the elders still sl::Jw the influence of dialect i!'tonation and pronunciation. Similarly, almost everybody has gone or goes to school, inasmuch as the University offers a kindergarten-to-college degree curriculum, and in the same neighborhood are two private shcools, Ateneo de Manila and the Maryknoll College. While the country's percentage of li· teracy is only 48.8')(-, at Diliman it is 87.8'/{. Of all members of the community, 41 j{ are gainfully employed, women being slightly in the minority. Jobs range from the highest professional occupations to unskilled manual labor. All of them, directly or indirectly, derive from the University. Professionals, (faculty, lawyers, physicians, etc.) account for 8 'i(of the occupations; skilled workers Sj(; unskilled workers 7.4/{; and domestic helpers 12'/c. 'B EFORE LITTLE QUIAPO was replaced by the modern Catholic c h a p e 1, its shop:; showed little University influence. They were dingy, small, crowded and unsanitary. Nevertheless, in conjunction with the University Co-op and Cafeteria, these establishments do 'P750 thousand annual business. In addition, many families have income from boarders or lodgers. 70 Others have poultry or livestock; a few even are farm or piggery owners elsewhere. Fer all these reasons of similarity and because their daily a'.:tivities are located so closely, one might expect less than usual cla£s distinction at Diliman. Yet Fe Rodriguez Arc in as states: Social distance between the extreme classes is, however, considerable. 'fhe lower class members of the community are painfully aware that, socially, they cannot be in the same level with the upper class members who have superior education, expensive clothes, cars, better furnished homes, better food, family prestige, and higher incomes. There has been no instance, at least among the thirty sample families, of intermarriage between the two groups . . . For small children there are almost no distinctions, and ideas of how they are to deal with the children of other famllies are gradually implanted in their minds through the home and other influences. In general, the range of outs :de income commanded parallels that of income derived from the University and helps to set family distinctions. Upper class families (P12,000-P20,000) are mostly those holding important admi:1istrative positions. Families of the middle class (P2,SOOP 12,000) are those of lower professional status and therefore smaller, less comfortable cottages. The lower class (Pl,000PANORAMA MOUNT OLYMPUS At one time the site of the Diliman community's upper stratum was called "Mount Olympus" because it was the abode of the "local gods." Now the U.P. Liberal Arts Building occupies that location. 1"2,000) consists of laborers' families. At the time of the survey, thirty of these lower class families in Area 11 were occupying m2keshift huts or a small, barbed-wire enclosure known as "The Stockade" w h e r e some dwellings had only bare-ground floors. In the Laborers Section, 76 families were cramped ins.de galvanized kamalig (warehouses) once housing U.S. Army records. Meat dishes were rarely served because of prohibitive costs; instead they ate kangkcng and camote shoots, and plenty of rice. Even within this class, fine social distinctions are sometimes made: "Mang Isko's family looks down on Mang Gorio's because the latter's family has only two sets of· clothes per member ar:d their children do not have shoes on at the proper time." On the other hand, because of the absence of high walls and wire fences, neighborhood· feeling is closer than in the average suburb of Quezon City or Manila. MAY 1956 J F THE U.P. faculty enjoy better homes and more privileges than other employees, the discrimination is only an appearance. The University has attempted, by these means, to compensate for relatively low salaries. While unskilled laborers and even skilled clerks are numerous, qualified fa cu 1 t y members are not easy to find. Furthermore, the upper class se!dom intentionally abuse their privileges - often they restrain themselves from exerc1smg them, lest they lose the high regard of the community. The greatest single cause of cleavage between white collar and T-shirt workers is not, in the last analysis, differooces in finances, but differen.ees in intellectual interests. The lower class seldom buy newspapers regularly and are generally indifferent to conc.erts and plays p:-cduced on campus. Nor do the classes have much of common interest to discuss when they meet. Even politicians, at campaign time, avoid Diliman, probably because of their healthy respect for the intellectual level of the residents and "the consequent fear of being put to task on the loose statements which are u n avoid ab 1 e m campaign speeches." Whatever of the new housing plans are finally effected, this intellectual gap will remain unless the more educated mem71 hers attempt to raise their neighbors' level of interest. Nevertheless, when the laborers can come out of their "Stockade" and kamalig, into barracks or tiny Balara-style houses, they should feel returned to dignity and self-respect, and feel less of a different species from the c.dministrator driven hurriedly past in his car, or the intellectual ilustrado walking past but drawn into his own mind and it sproblems. Differences in the community at least will be less visible. THE PLAGUE ... (From page 63) tions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. T ARROU LIVES only for alleviation, working for peace without hope of attaining it and offering himself without illusion: an ascetic's life, or a saint's. The only peace he fip.ds is death. But Rieux allows himself one illusion, hope, seeking to live a man's life through fellowship and finding peace in sym · pathy and service. . . . if there is one thing one can always yearn for and sometimes attain, it is human love To this belief Rieux and Camus cling. Although they know that joy is always imperiled, they know too that a longing for reunion is the answer to man's hope; although men mistrust each other half as if they had the plague, yet people instictively crave human contact. In "Neither Victims nor Executioners" Camus writes, We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture-and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to. do these things because they were sure of themselves and because one cannot appeal to an abstraction, i.e., the representative of an ideology. In The Plague: . . . he knew well that no one can help condemning and it befalls even the victim sometimes to turn executioner . . . . Realizing these facts, nevertheless Camus believes tha~ confidence can and must be restored; and that the attempt at innocence from complicity must be made.* • See also Panorama, Feb. 1955, for Camus' The Rebel. 72 PANORAMA Sergio Osmeiia: Living Filipino Greatness By LUIS M. ENRIQUEZ Dean of the Graduate School St. Paul's College, Dumaguete City FOR MOST people, September 9 will come and go like any other day. But those who seek reassurance that the Filipino people will survive a thousand crises are bound to look for the flame of faith in ·some living great man of the race. A few days ago, on National Heroes' Day, we laid flowers at the mausoleums of our honored dead. Today we should feel the patriotic pulsation of the living even if just to realize that our feet too touch the very ground they tread upon. This is the way we feel about Sergio Osme11a. The quiet optimism of his countenance 'shines above the clouds of doubt and strife. He, too, in his day figured in the thick of political struggles. His name might have been shrouded time and again ~n the obfuscation of partisan politics; but, always, there was that smiling -calmness as if to dare his detractors to do their worst, for he had hitched his spirit not to the opinion of men but to the convicMAY 1956 tions of a clear conscience. Not small in number were those who misunderstood Osmefia or sought to belittle him Thruout our history, bristling as it does with clashes on the battle field and in the arena of political conflict, our concept of greatness has been bcund up in the dramatic and the breathtaking deeds of dash and derring-do. Our picture of a great man is one of a fireeater, a figure of insuperable glamour and magnetism-and for this we are ready to overlook his many peccadilloes - who has the crowd in the hollow of his hand. Thus, the simple and the humble man, the quiet, steady, and unostentatious leader whose work behind the scenes enables those of more histrionic propensities to parade and strut, does not get the appreciation he de.>erves. Belittled, too, is he who, seeing the struggle he is engaged in ready to degenerate into fratricidal disaster lays down his sword, and bids the adversary to mutual coun73 sel for unity against the real foe. Q SMEXA is not leaving m an enormous legacy of political verbiage to remember him by. There is one phrase in politics that can be understood only by knowing his life: unite.cl fwm;. Fer this phrase is said to be of his own coinage and it is expressive of his political ideal. Oftentimes he sac:rificed personal amb'.tion for a united front agaimt the enemies of Philippine freedom. When at any time Osmeiia lays down the sword-and he did it many times-a few friends would cluster around him to whisper· that he should stride on the stage to take a bow together with him whom the crowd acclaimed to the rafters. But he would refuse. He knew that tho "the play's the thing," time would inevitably come when every player must at last ponder life's more lasting values. Greatness is not the flash of the meteor; it is the steady light of a lamp fed with the oil of humility. It may flicker, but it never dies. Greatness is best seeil in rep"Jse and enjoyed in the mellowness of twilight. Osmeiia has greatness in repose which, to the Oriental, is the true greatm: s. Let u~ keep in mind that the Filipino is Oriental underneath his borrcwed garb. 74 Let us render our illustrious dead and the living servitors the honor they deserve. Fighter without peer was Manuel L. Quezon on the battlefield, on the platform of active politic3, in the halls of deliberative bo-. dies, and at conference tables of nations. Seq:~io Osmeiia's role has been that of the quiet steady worker, and it is no less great. If Osmeiia had desired nothing else but personal or partisan victory and sweet vengeance, he had had many chances for them. At one time, in· the late 'twenties', Quezon was ill and wanted to yield the mantle of power to Osmeiia. At last, after years of being the "second man in Rome," he would be the he·adman. But Osmeiia would have r:one of it. He wished the ailing caudillo. whose worth he recognized, to get well and once more yield the supreme power. Meanwhile. Osmeiia was to hold the political forces together. Q SMENA was at h:s fighting best in the Hare-HawesCutting Bill imbroglio of 1932. It even looked as though w:th his forces of oooosition he would be able to· displace the great Quezon. The most aggressive speech of Osmeiia was that which he delivered ·on the· Senate floor, tinctured with a series of yes's hr a common fight, and series of no's against being PANORAMA a partner in insincerity and lust for power. Even the election that gave Quezon victory did not relegate Osmeiia to the shade. Could be be prevailed U')On to join Quezon in a new mission to the States to get another independence law? Never had there been a more graceful acceptance of an old enemy's invitation to join force.;. It looked as if Osmeiia had deserted his own camp. Returning from the States, he guided his men into the coalesced Quezon-Osmeiia fold. After the passage of the uew independence legislation, now famous in Philippine history as the Tydings-McDuffie Law, there was a greater need to lay the foundation of a free Philippines. No task fitted Osmeiia better as vice-president of the Commonwealth than that of Secre tary of Public Instruction. He bent his energies to the solution of educational problems which economic recession at the time and the growing need 3 of the transitory political Lf3 of the nation had rE:'ndered ser ,ou~. The welfare of teachers was nearest to Osmeiia's heart. One afternoon during the 1937 vacation clas~es at Baguio, teachers who lived in tents were taken by surprise by a visit from a benign-looking official. He walked among the tents occup:ed by te3chers and talked MAY 1956 with them on their problems of comfort and accommodation. He suggested ways to promote the cleanliness of the camp. Many teachers thought he was a camp official. It was when he had left that they began telling one another, "It's Osmeiia." Q SMEnA lost the presidency after Liberation. What is important for us to remember with all thE:' significance it is worth is: It was the first time in Philippine politics that an incumbent in office denied himself the advantages that usually accrue to the political party controlling the reins of administration. He eve·,1 refused to campaign for him::elf, much to the disappointment of his friends. Osmeiia simply would not follow the orthodox lines in the mom-moro of partisan politics. He played the game the way he wanted it and he took a graceful exit. There is much truth in what the late veteran political writer, Benito Sakdalan, wrote in a pre-war sketch of o~meiia, that by his example· of forgetting his wounds after many a political defeat and putting himself wholly at the disposal of the victor, Osmeiia had contributed as much to the formation of a truly Philippine democracy as did Quezon himself whose political star never set till his death. It is easy to be moved on the 15 spot by the i:l.ash of a kinetic persopality, and we hasten to carry him on our shoulders in a burst of popular enthusiasm. Even in his moments of temporary setback we are captivated by the drama of his fall, and we conjure for him a flashy comeback. But such moments of emotion have to be sustained on a very high key. Pretty soon soon we seek that moderation which better conforms to the placid motif of our ways. And in the solitude of our contemplation, as we sit in the easy chair to tell hero-worshipping tales to children, it is easy to think of such men as Osmefia. He is the great man to brood over in our quiet moments. We want to identify ourselves with him, for it is easy to attune our£elve·3 to so even-tempered a spirit. - From the Philippine journal of Education, Sept., 1955 76 * * * "SPOKESMAN FOR THE DEAD "I do not mind being killed in war. What will remain of all I love? I am thinking as much of customs, certain intonations that can never be replace~, a certain spiritual light; of luncheons at a Provencal farm upder the olive trees; but of Handel, too . . . As for the material things, what I value is a certain arrangement of these things. Civilization is an invisible boon; it concerns not the things we see but the unseen bonds linking these together in .>ne special way and not otherwise ... Anyhow, if I do come out of it alive, there will be only one problem, I shall set myself: whatt can one, what must one, say to men?" -Antoine de Saint- E:zcupery. * * "Expressionism, says Hermann Bahr, produces life from within. But does not a cow do the same?"-lsnacio Manlapaz. * PANORAMA Death of a taleni By SIXTO D'ASIS "'IA ow THAT THE traffic of ' " culture is free, for a time, to pass in and out of the Iron Curtain - Porgy and Bess appearing in Moscow and Oistrakh sharing his violin with New York-possibly motion pictures too will be exchanged. But it is doubtful if Russia has been able to produce the magnificent spectacles it once did, in the days of Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Talent dies young under totalitarian)sm. In the mid-1920's, shortly after the revolution, Eisenstein was already leading a movement in films which, though silent, were wondrously "symphonic." The Battleship Potemkin, Ten Day That Shook the World: these and others celebrated Communism in a heroic manner, but the approach was poetic rather than naturalistic. The rhythm of sequences and MAY 1956 revolving angles has seldom been approached s i n c e that time. Panoramic sweep and dramatic detail are alternated, in an elaborately creative process of film editing. The resultant stylization has little in common with more recent techniques of documentary films, in which things are pictured exactly as and while they occur. Eisenstein's technique w a s more matured than his subject. Soviet films have usually dealt with the serious subject of revolution on the level of schoolboy heroics; ill-educated audiences, they said, made this necessary. Because Eisenstein's complex mind proved to be too involved in October ( 1928 ), his work was condemned for "bourgeois intellectualism" by the next generat:on. Because of such oppressive criticism, Eisenstein made no outstanding sound film until his 77 Alexander Nevsky (1938). It proved to be an epic preparation for his historical triology, Ivan the Terrible, produced under incredible difficulties in the closing years of World War II. But there was always something epic about Eisenstein himself which made the impossible inevitable. He has been called the film's first considerable theoretician. Constantly his venturesome mind set camera problems which he could not solve, but toward whose solution he penetrated further than any other pioneer. Fascinated by the ranging spirit of Leonardo da Vinci, his personal ambition was to synthesize his theories in a series of ten books on psychology and the film, painting and the film, and so forth; but he died before achieving his ambition. 'if: OGER MANVELL has said, "At the b as is of his thought was the theory of montage, which, at itis simplest, was the axiom that, in editing, one plus one equals not two, but two plus; in other words, that the total effect of a series of shots purposefully placed in sequence is the creation in the audience of an entirely new train of thought and feeling, different from anything that could arise out of those shots seen as a number of separate units." Understandably, he admired Chinese calligraphy, an advance pictorial form of writing. 78 POETRY ON FILM "The siege of Kazan is also a matter of patterned images, like the Iliad portrayed on a Greek vase. The Tsar, the leaderof his people, emerges from his rich tent on the crest of a curving hill, and he stands alone, a dark heroic figure, whilst the line of his officers is ranged in a pattern benneath him. His troops in procression march in a rhythm of moving lines. There is no realism in this portrait of an army, only the order and precision of an artist's mobile composition." -Roger Manvel] on IVAN THE TERRIBLE. Despite the lateness of his sound films, he pioneered the investigation of relationships possible between sound track and picture sequence; and among color, sound and emotion. Only such a man could have produced Ivan the Terrible, during the war, behind the Ural mountains. A triology was intended of this Czar, contemporary of Queen Elizabeth and uniter of Russia. Part two was completed but banned on grounds of misrepresenting the Czar's character: the progressive nature of his statesmanship is overlooked. Consequently, part three was never filmed. The treatment in Ivan is always larger and simpler than actuality, as in Greek tragedy. Theme is more important than PANORAMA narrative m·ovement; human symbolism, than individual characterization. There is no underplaying, as in the newer tradition of realistic cinema; the acting is always on the ·grand scale. Eisenstein was his own set-designer; but he had the music of Prokofiev and the camera of Tisse who had been with him 20 years. ?/t ANVELL remarks how "the symbolism of objects merges into the symbolism of people." For example, "The tolling of varying deep bells recurs through the film, at the coronation, at the wedding ceremony, and at the Tsar's supposed deathbed. Their religious symbolism of sound enriches the Byzantine ikons, and books of the priests, and the painted images on the walls. Life and art combine in the film." In any other country Eisenstein might have achieved his complete genius. In Soviet Russia, between 1929 and 1948 {the year of his death by angina pectoris), he completed only three films, one of which was banned. Like many another Soviet artist, he was forced to make a humiliating public recantation of his work: We forgot that the main thing in art is its ideological content and historical truth. Like a bad foundryman, we light-m:ndedly allow the precious stream of creation to be poured out over sand and beMAY 1956 come dispersed in private unessential side lines . . . A stern and timely warning of the Central Committee stopped us Soviet artists from further movement along this dangerous and fatal way, which leads towards empty creative degradation. The resolution of the Central Committee reminds us with new force that Soviet art has been given one of the most honorable places in the decisive struggle of ideology of our country against the seductive ideology of the bourgeois world. Everything we do must be subordinated to tasks of this struggle. In the second part of Ivan the Terrible we committed a misrepresentation of historical facts which made the film wothless and vicious in the ideological sense . . . The center of our attention is and must be Ivan the builder, Ivan the creator of a new, powerful united Russian power, Ivan the inexorable destroyer of everything that resisted his progressive undertakings . . . The resolution of the Central Committee accusing me of a wrong presentation which disfigures historical truth says that in the film Ivan is presented as "weak and indecisive, somewhat like Hamlet." This is solidly grounded and just. Because his citizenship prevented him from free practical expression of his art, Eisenstein had to concentrate on theory. He has been called the Coleridge of motion picture theory; but Coleridge was never crippled by bureaucratic c om - plaints. 79 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 page 84 for the correct answers. 1. An important figure in a Revolution once said, "T.hat government is best •$ich -governs I.east." He was: A. Li Po Hsung; B. Lenin; o/I'homas Jefferson; D. Robespierre. 2. Besides being novelists, Richard Wright, Andre Gide, Arthur Koestler and Ignazio .,.Silone have in common the fact that all are: A. Italians; B. '6x-Communists; C. buried in Westminster Abbey; D. married to international beauties. 3. Like the pytpon and boa, the burrowing "blind snake" is non-poisonous. Furthermore, it: A.v6ats termites; B. attacks only children; C. ·is not found on islands over a mile square; D. dies alter a three-month cycle. 4. Tin cans containing mail are thrown across coral reefs to the island's strongest swimmer, as a means of delivering mail in: A. Hawaii; B. the Turtle Islands; cJ Tofua, in the Tonga group; D. Matsu. 5. The "Symphony of the Air," title assumed by the Clark Airbase orchestra, originally belonged to the NBC symphony after the retirement of its director whose name is: 4. Richard Wallenstein; B. Xavier Cugat; C. Philip Sousa; D. q?&scanini. 6. The Boxer Rebellion occurred in: A.~adison Square Garden; B. San Francisco's Cow Palace; C. (lfunese seaports; C. Yamasa's Japanese judo school. 7. Many of the musical works of Stravinsky would not h\ive been written were it not for: A. his wealthy mother; a\ the Russian ballets of Diaghilefl; C. his cancerous left leg; D. his early travels in Spain. 8. The most important living Ilocano poet-playwright-short story writer-teacher-civil servant is: A. Manuel Arguilla; B.Amador Daguio; C. Luis Reantaso; D~arling Ramos. 9. A traveling Protestant clergyman but better known for inventing word-charts for over 200 language·3, Asian and African, is: A. Qelso Yap; B. Albert Schweitzer; C. Bernard Inocente; D. "l)f_. Frank Laubach. 1~. The third l~rgest island in the world is: A. Australia; B. Tibet; C/Borneo; D. Java. 80 PANORAMA In the Beginning . .. WHISKEY (A distilled alcoholic liquor) Many people may not believe it, but this word originally meant "water of life," a modification of the Gaelic usigebeatha. MAY 1956 TENNIS (A game in which a ball is driven back and forth with a racket over a net.) From the French word tenez meaning "hold," which the early French players of the indoor game called cut wt1~n they struck the ball, this term is derived. JAYWALKER (One who crosses the street in a heedless manners) In Medieval Latin a gains ("jay") is a simpleton or idiot. The association of the term w}th a person who crosses the street without regard of traffic is obvious. 81 'Pliilippi11e 'Panora1na-XVIIJ M AYTIME FINDS the transient, the itinerant vis i t o r , forsaking the choice vacation spots of summer such as Baguio and Tagaytay (the former now going through the spells of fog and rain, and the latter losing its charm of a breathless Taal vista in low creeping clouds) for a little town on the foothills of the Sierra Madre, 28 kilometers southeast of Manila. Antipolo is a byword on Maytime (along with Santacruzan and Flores de Mayo); and it is a family imbued with tradition that makes it a point to 82 visit the shrine. After praying at the newly rebuilt church before the ancient image of the Lady of Peace and Safe Voyage (Nuestra Senora de Ia Paz y Buen Viaje), the devotee may spend the rest of the day enjoying the various recreation spots, notably Hinulugang Taktak, some five minutes ride from the town. Antipolo is such a popular resort on Maytime; children and the gayer of folk love to chant the ditty, "Tayo na sa Antipolo," and they bring to mind pictures of the young belles and swains in colorful PANORAMA balintawak and barong; they think of the suman ibus eaten with luscious mangoes and the exciting rides to and from Antipolo. The essential thing about Antipolo, of course, is the shrine of the fabulous Lady of Peace and Safe Voyage. The Virgin must have made about 8 sea voyages between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico, and st i 11 takes land trips between Antipolo and Manila. It was Don Juan Nifio de Tabora, newly appointed governor-general by King Philip IV, who brought the Virgin from Acapulco on June 29, 1626. On the voyage to the Philippines, a tempest arose but it ceased immediately after a few supplications were made to the Virgin. A special church was built under the direction of Father Juan Salazar in a sitio near Morang, Rizal. The scene of the first mass is now called Pinag111:isahang Bato. IT w AS observed that often the Virgin would descend from her altar and rest on the flowery branches of the Antipolo tree ( artocarpus incisa) from whence came the appellation of the "Virgin of Antipolo." The bark leaf and twig of the trees were believed to be medicinal and today, one has a hard time finding an Antipolo tree. MAY 1956 The image of the V i r g i n stands five feet. Its robes and jewels are believed worth a quarter of a million pesos. Unbelievers who attempted to rob the Virgin had reportedly met misfortune. The black color of the Image has a historical and legendary explanation. The Jesuit friars opened the Antipolo church to the devotees in 1632. The shrine was damaged during a Chinese rebellion in 1639. In the sacking of the church, the rebels took the Image and threw it into the fire. The Image became black but did not burn out. Seeing this, some Chinese were said to have been converted to the Catholic faith. The church of Antipolo also suffered the disastrous effects of three major ear:thquakes in its lifetime, but its greatest catastrophe happened during the last war. Somehow, the Image was saved from the devastation. A temporary church building was built beside the ruins of the old church after the war, and the traditional worship of the Virgin was resumed. Thousands flock every year on Maytime to Antipolo. In May, 1947, the Image was taken. to Manila for the fiveday festivities in connection with the Golden Sacerdotal of the late Archbishop O'Doherty. A long procession of cars and 83 vehicles bearing the devotees followed the Virgin to and from Manila. s ITUATED ON AN elevation 500 feet above sea level, Antipolo is ten degrees cooler than Manila. All over the town, dancing pavilions and summer villas have sprung up for pilgrims who take time off for fun. The most picturesque is the Hillside View which overlooks Manila. The municipal and provincial government (Rizal), seeing more possibilities for the po-· ARE YOU WORD WISE? Answers 1. (b) saturated. 2. (d) guess. 3. (a) forerunner. 4. (c) frustrated. 5. (a) slovenly. 6. (b) conciliation. 7. (d) screen or veil for Indian women. 8. ( c) brutish. 9. (d) review. 10. (c) cooling agent. 11. (a) invasion. 12. ( d) plundering. 13. ( b) one treated by hospital but not inmate. 14. (b) mistaken. 15. ( a) ornament. 16. ( c) vibrate. * 84 * pular Hinulugang Tak ta k, which has several SO foot waterfalls, decided to develop the place into a regular park. The falls can be reached by a flight of concrete steps and terraces. At the bottom is an auditorium, an establishment renting out bathing suits, and tiendas. With more picnic places around the falls and the town of Antipolo itself, the place may well be the "ideal summer playground" that the town officials and promoters would like Antipolo to be. PANORAMA QUIZ Answers 1. C. Thomas Jefferson. 2. B. ex-Communists. 3. A. eats termites. 4. C. Tofus, in the Tonga group. 5. D. Toscanini. 6. C. Chinese seaports. 7.\3The Russian ballets of ' Diaghileff. 8. B. Amador Daguio. 9. D. Dr. Frank Laubach. 10. C. Borneo. 17. (d) temperance. 18. (b) man in flight. 19. (b) to rear or cherish. 20. (a) emblematic. * PANORAMA -r 'Jun-tJ'tama ~ by Elmer "All in favor of takinrt the Ion;! trail, sa:i,• 'Aye'." A Britisher looks at the Dutch A Country Without Strikes I WENT OVER to Holland to see if there was anything we could learn from them. I think we can learn a thing or two. The big thing, the biggest thing of all, I would say, is that the Dutch work. Their hours are not specially long - forty-eight hours a week is the average - but while they are on the job they fly at it. And they do not have strikes: there has not been a strike of any consequence in Holland since the war. The result is marked. Wages have risen just as they have done everywhere else, but output has risen almost as much. When a few other items are counted, their trade more than balances. As a nation they have money in the bank - in spite of losing Indonesia, in spite of war damage worse than ours, in spite of the floods. 86 By ALSTAIR BORTHWICK PANORAMA So they have money and they are spending it - on roads, for one thing. They make our roads look like cart-tracks. That sounds an exaggeration, but it is not. All their main ·~i ties are linked by roads the like of which we have never seen over here. You can drive from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, or Amsterdam of Utrecht, or Amsterdam to The H a g u e and never drop below sixty the whole way, even at night. In all these roads there is not a single crossing: the crossroads are carried overhead on bridges and if you want to get on to them you peel off along a cloverleaf junction. Cyclists are on separate tracks. There is a double highway, each half of it as wide or wider than a British main road, and a hedge planted down the middle kills the glare of headlamps. You never stop. You just put your foot down. It is the kind of thing we ought to have had on our Great North Road years ago. Then railways : they were partly electrified before the war but that made no difference because the Germans destroyed the whole system before they left. Now they have 95 per cent of their passenger services electrified, and this year it will be 100 per cent. Housing, excellent: they are a bit heavy-handed with design - they were much better at MAY ! YSb the traditional stuff - but the•r houses are good to live in ( ,; tremendous amount of window space) and they have built 400.000 of them. Rents are higher than ours. One point 87 worth nothing is that, although land is precious and they have given up building semi-detached houses for that reason and gone in for flats, they still find the space for big gardens. In fact, in The Hague they are building to the proportion of one of house to two of garden. It is like living in a park. A ND then there is Rotterdam. When the Germans got into Rotterdam they found the Dutch Army defending the bridges there. They thought that would easy, but it was not. Four days later the Dutch Army was still defending the bridges. So the Germans sent up their bombers and bombed a square mile in the city center flat, methodically, street by street, total destruction. and then they said: "If you don't give in, we'll go up tomorrow and bomb another square mile." So the Dutch Army gave in. A square mile in the very heart of Rotterdam was destroyed completely, and for ten years now the Dutch have been building it tip again. They have rebuilt the thing as a whole, the entire shopping, entertainment, and administrative centre of the city. It is nothing like any city you ever saw, bright and "contemporary." Compared with the clutter of most other cities it is good indeed. That brings me to something 88 which I think is important, and goes some way, though not all the way, to explaining Holland's success since the war. The rr.ess left by the war was so colossal, so complete, that any fool could see he had to roll his sleeves up and help to put it right. That is a big part of the reason why the Dutch have worked hard and have not had strikes. There is an organization called the Foundation of Labour, seven men from the employers and seven from the trade unions, and since the war they have "met round a table in a little villa in the Hague and threshed out a joint policy between them. All the decisions they have made have been backed by both sides. There is not any closed shop in Holland, and there is not any demarcation. The Foundation of Labour has, to my mind, been the biggest. single factor in putting the country on its feet. It has shown what industrial peace really can do. The Dutch have established a tradition these past ten years, a tradition not of capital and 1 a b o u r occupying different camps and never meeting except to argue when there is trouble, but the tradition of a joint body getting together and arguing before the trouble starts. - Adapted from the Listener. PANORAMA NEW DIRECTIONS ... (Continued from page 30) world to an economically aggressive Soviet Russia. In other words the question, "Is communism heading towards new directions?" must be answered quickly and accurately. Repeated accusations that Khrushchev and Bulganin are .)n a mere propaganda rampage will certainly not bring the United States closer to the answer. The Free World must compete with the Communists on the latter's ground - in this case economic - if it is to counter the growing attractiveness of Sovietism. It has been laid, with good reason, that the United States must offer more substantial non-military aid to the uncommitted countries if t;he is to win in this fight. Fur-· thermore, she has to demonstrate that in giving such help she is sincerely building. self* confidence among 'the recipient nations, free from unreasonable attachments. It would seem, therefore, that Sovient Russia had taken the moral initiative in the cold war. The United States is on the defensive. Foreign affairs strategists in the White House know this for a fact, although they may not admit it. They are playing a defensive game; the enemy is calling the shots. At any rate, the recent upheavals in the communist world tend to show a more friendly, and definitely less belligerent, Russian Bear. Trade barriers are slowly but steadily crumbling, and contact between East and West is growing. Perhaps Stalin's death was the longneeded but much delayed fuse. Khrushchev's bombsheJl might prove a blessing ·after all. - F. C. Sta. Maria, from the Philippine Journal of Education. * * SOLOMON THE WISE He.re lies the body of Solomon Pease, Under the daisies, under the trees, But Pease is not here, only the pod; Pease shelled out and went home to God. Diliman: White Collar and T-Shirt by Lourdes Crisologo-Santos The Filipino Poet: Erect and Audibll by Leonard Casper BOOK REVIEW FEATURES The Reparations Story (See page 18)