Do your work cheerfully. Thouroughly and well. Owrk badly done is worse than work undone. Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today

Media

Part of Code of ethics submitted to the president of the Philippines

Title: Do your work cheerfully. Thouroughly and well. Owrk badly done is worse than work undone. Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today
Language: English
Source: Code of Ethics submitted to the President of the Philippines
Year: 1940
Rights
Fulltext: and by so doing, thou shalt be honored, and being honored, thou shalt glorify God;" xur. DO YOUR WORK CHEERFULLY, THOROUGHLY, AND WELL. WORK BADLY DONE IS WORSE THAN WORK UNDONE. DO NOT LEAVE FOR TOMORROW WHAT YOU <;AN DO TODAY. A nation of energstic and busy people, a people :working cheerfully and thornughly, all shoulders to the wheel, with muscles swelling, with hearts pounding, a people finding in work the consummation of all their hopes and all their desires, a people who considers a auty well done as its own sufficient rewa.rd, is a nation destined, under , God, to be great and strong. The fom·th precept of" the Duties of the Sons of the Peovle prepared by Bonifacio tells us that: "Calmness, constancy, !'Cason, and faith in all wo1·k and actions cro\vn eve1·y good desire with success." And in the seventh rule of Kativunan Primer prepared by Jacinto, we fi~d the following injunction: "Do not squander thne; lost riches cai~ be recovered; but time lost can not be regained." Rizal exemplified these virtues to no mean degree in his passion for industry, thoroughness and determination to finish any work he , had set out to accomplish. His advice to Madano Ponce in a letter dated June 27, 1888, from London epitolnizes his idealism in this respect: , " The fact that you have had little success in the newspapers does not mean that you may not be of any use as a writer. Not all of us are newspapermen, nor were · horn newspapermen, and not all litera1·y men a1·e newspapermen. I take it that the question of wTiting with more or less literature is a secondary thing; the principal thing is to think and feel straight, work for a goal, and the pen will take charge of transmitting it. The principal thing that should be required of a IF'ilipino of our generation is not to be literary, but to be a good man, a good citizen who may help with his head, with his heart and, if need be, with his arms in the progress of his country. With . the head and with the heart, 'we can and should work always; with the arms, when the moment arrives. Now the principal instrument of the heart and of the head is the pen; others prefer the painter's brush, still others choose the chisel. I prefer the pen. Now, the instrument may not be to us the primal object. Sometimes with a bad one, say the Philippine bolo, great deeds are accomplished. Sometimes with a bad literature great b:uths may be stated." In another letter to Ponce, dated at London, October 12, 1888, he revealed that upon being offered the opportunity to direct ~ newspaper to carry on the Filipino propaganda in Spain, he had to prepa1·e himself by studying day and night in order to be better able -to discharge his new i·esponsibility. H~ said: " Wi~h respect to the newspaper, I am very grateful for your wish, - but I am afready engaged, or somewhat, to manage one. ' Now I am devoting myself night and day to certain studies, for I should not want to manage any paper without ha'ving certain knowledge of the country, its history~ its ad'ministra..tion, because, as I understand, we 'shall have to fight much, and it would be nice to fight and defeat the enemy. For this, I shall have much use for the very rich collection of the British Museum, a collection that is not found anywhere else, for which reason I shall still remain here for a long time. From here it is easy for me to go to Belgium, Sweden and Norway, by way of Holland, Germany and Denmark." · Acco1·ding to a Tagalog parable which Rizal quoted in a letter - written in Europe sometime in October, 1891, "'runay at masama ang p~nahon, paYat allg lupa, mabalang, mabagy6 at inililipad fig haiigin ang tanim, ii.guni at sa kaiiii.gat ay may palos na matutuklasan." (It is true that the weather is bad, the land is ·barren, lhere are many locusts, it is stormy, a;,d' the plants are being c_ arried by the win~; but if. the field is well prepared, an eel\ is usually found in jt.) Rizal also had occasion to quote the English adage, "Do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today," in a letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt dated at Brussels, July 5, 1890, by way of advertence •to the Spanish government to immediately ·effect reforms in the administration 'of tne Philippines before it was too late. P AGE 20 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT . REVIEW SUPPLEMENT Marcelo H. de! Pilar was also a mod<;! of indefatigable energy and industry. Fdrced to seek sanctuary in Spain from 'POiitical ' and i·eligious persecution in his native land, without means and thrown upon the generosity of his friends he rolled up his sleeves and cheerfully. braced himself for the task that was to bring him to an early grave. With indo'mitable courage and tenacity, he. faced every difficulty on his way to carry out his mission of propaganda against the abuse, tyranny and conuption of the Spanish ad- · ministration in the P·hilippi;ies. He never knew the meaning of p~ocrastlnation and he never missed -any opportunity to harass . the enemies of his country with hls stinging wit and lashing satire. According to a biograpber, if all his articles, essays and monographs, whether publislied independently or scattered throughout the newspapers and reviews, were gathered together and published in one collection, "they would "make 'at least five or six volumes in quarto, of 400 pag-es each, and would have no equal in the Philippine bibliography. so far as wealth of local and international infor:rhation and serenity and fea1·lessness in journalistic controversy are concerned." When Edilberto Evangelista arrived in tlie Philippines after finishing the civil engineering course in the Ulllversity of Gh7nt, the revolution was already in progre'ss and he lost no time in offering his services to General Aguinaldo. He plunged into the work assigned to him with such ze;t that he was soon promoted to the rank of General and placed in command of th~ Engineer Corps. In the words of a Spanish writer, "he conceived the daring ente1·prise of converting the defenses of Cavite into a single l'edoubt." He built several trenches in different places but he was not able to carry hi•s plans to completion because he fell heroically at the battle of Zapote Bridge on February 17, 1897. But the trench which he built at Binakayan which was three meters wide !'Ind one kilometer long attesteq, to ,his military engineering skill. The Spanisb Army was repulsed here with great losses on November 9, 1896, and when the f~rtificatio,;_ finally fell into the hands of the enemy after the death of Evangelista, the Spanish general after examining it exclaimed; "I am satisfied; because if I did not conquer it then (referring to the attack of iNovember 9th last), I. understand that it is one of those that would check any army." His death was a great loss to the revolutionary army which suffered terrible reverses thereafter. The !Filipino priests who strove for the secularization of the clergy, which struggle incidentally furllished one of the impelling motivati,ons of the revolution, were characterized by their zeal and enthusiasm in th~ir patriotic work. Worthy of special mention was the initiator of the movement, Dr, Pedro Pelaez. His supreme obsession was the Filipinization of the local clergy and when • he died in the earthquake of June 3, 1863, Dr. Jose Burgos carried on his work. As learned as his predecessor, D1-. . Burgos carried the campaign th1·ough the columns of the La Discusi6n, a newspaper published by the Re.gidor brothers. He disdained half-way measures and in br.inging the issue to public no\ tice he was even accused of injecting politics into a purely ecclesiastical affair. ·The enemies of the cause could not rest easy under the tirade of Dr. Burgos' brilliant logic ·until the Cavite Revolt of 1872 furnished the flimsy excuse for liis execution together with Fath~rs Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora. That these classic examples of Filipino initiative, enterprise and loyalty_ to duty may not lapse into futility, it behooves us present-day Filipinos to cultivate these virtties not only for our personal advancement but for the progress and prosperity of our fatherfand as well. Wjthout the will to work, indu•.stry degenerates into drudgery and is no better than slavery. Only by adopting a correct attitude towards our work and giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the proper fulfillment of our duties shall we be able to give full play to whatever talent is given us and justify our existence in this world. In the words of Emilio Jacinto, "Work is a gift to humanity; because it awakens and gives vigor to intellectual power, will, 'and body, which are indispensable for progress in life." XIV CONTRIBUTE TO THE WELFARE OF YOUR COMMUNITY AND PROMOTE SOCIAL JUSTICE. YOU DO NOT LIVE FOR YOURSELVES AND YOUR FAMILIES A,LONE. YOU ARE A PART OF SOCIETY TO WHICH YOU OWE DEFINITE ~ESPONSIBILITIES. The individual lives not for himself and for his family alone. His life is a community life. He has, therefore, larger interests THE 1J0CAL GOVERNMENT R'EVIEW SUPPLEMENT PAGE 21
pages: 20-21