Panorama

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume XII (Issue No.4) April 1960
Year: 1960
Language: English
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extracted text: THE BARRIO AND THE GOVERNMENT 50 Centavos CONTENTS Articles Man May Be Forced to ^arm in Tropics ........... 2 The Barrio and the Government ................................ Alejandrino G. Hufana 3 Scientists Probe Cliff Dwellings for Lost Secret ... 22 The Filipino Writer in Asia . . . N.V.M. Gonzales 24 The Vernacular Writer . . . Andres Cristobal Cruz 28 A Bridge of Chinese Jade.........Thomas Hefferman 37 The Evil Domain of International Crime ................ Herbert Brean 57 Tail on Man? Never! .................................................... 75 Our Position in Southeast Asia ... O. D. Corpuz 76 Einstein Theory Proved .................................................. 86 Wingate: Strange Genius of Jungle Wars ................ Joseph Stocker 87 Fiction Blood Over the Land .................. Carlos G. Platon 45 Regular Features Book Review: Wheel of the Rimless Spokes........... Leonard Casper 69 Literary Personality LXIII: Andre Schwarz-Bart . 73 PANORAMA is published monthly by the Community Publishers, Inc., Inverness St., Sta. Ana, Manila, Philippines Editor: ALEJANDRINO G. HUFANA Foreign contributing editor: Leonard Casper Art director: NARCISO RODRIGUEZ Business Manager: Mrs. C. A. MARAMAG Subscription rates: In the Philippines, one year P5.0.0; two years P9.00. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two years $7.00 U.S. Single copy 50 centavos. Zell ]four Jrlends about the Panorama, the Philippines’ most versatile, most significant magazine today. /tor a year’s subscription — NOW! they will appreciate it. Subscription Form .................. 1 year for P5.00 ................... 2 years for P9.00 .................. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S. Name ........................................................................................................ Street ........................................................................................................ City or Town .................................. Province ................................. Enclosed is a check/money order for the amount specified above. Please address all checks or money orders in favor of: COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila MAN MA Y BE FORCED TO FARM IN TROPICS New food crops may soon be developed for growing in the hot, rainy climate of the crops. Man soon may be forced to do so, Dr. John E. Cantlon of Michigan State University, believes because of a growing world population. “This is not an easy task,” he said. “The trouble is major grain plants, except rice, are not suitable for largescale farming in the humid tropics. One approach is to domesticate new food plants that will be suitable.” He said that ’’when, for instance, corn is grown in the rainy tropics, it is not in harmony with the climate and cannot retain the soil’s fertility. “Farming for crops sdch as corn means there will be exposed ground during parts of the year. The rain beats down on the bare earth, bleaching nutrients out of the soil. Even many of the current tropical crops such as the yam do not fit into the pattern.” Fertilizers are being used to make up for the loss nutrients, Dr. Cantion said. However, there are definite limitations to the supply of some important substances, such as phosphorus substance, and potassium. “That is why we cannot continue to exploit the world’s farm lands indefinitely at the present pace,” he said. 2 Panorama APRIL 1960 Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Post Offie' on Dee. 7. 1955 VOL. XII MANILA, PHILIPPINES No. 4 Look homeward, angel by Alejandrino G. Hufana ommunii y development are big words. In a country like the Philippines, espe cially, these outcroppings of “so cial amelioration” programs are taken as the solution to backwardness of every in the nation except its As a working program, development is bigger in its scope than its slogan value. Consider that there are 19,000 which are involved in the to determine whether competence can receive benefit from government as sistance. In the recent past, government projects have been established like the ACCFA-F ACOMA, the NARRA and more recently the PACD. Evaluation of their work does not necessarily summarize the big task of government as sistance when it is spread out over these 19,000 rural communi ties. The standard for such pro gress report will be one of com parison. Further back, in the Com monwealth era, and even before it, Philippine administration had recognized the backwardness of these rural areas, and it was taken as the reason for the rise of “ra dicalism,” with emphasis in mind of the Central Luzon uprisings from 1925 to 1935. This backlog of progress led Manuel Quezon to formulate his “social justice” program, and the same situation, in graver form, led the postwar administratiqn t o establish t h e EDCOR. Talks about rural industrial ization have suddenly intensified. This had been presaged since President Quirinos time when there was talk of total economic mobilization. But it took Ramon Magsaysay to come up with a formula for helping the barrios come into their own. It was in his time that indeed the central government implemented its often avowed intention, and home rule was introduced into the Philip pine barrio. Home rule must be qualified before the enthusiasm for it can muddle the issue at the level of definitions. In defining it, Dr. Buenaven tura M. Villanueva, executive sec retary of the Community Deve lopment Research Council, points out in his study The Barrio Peo ple and Barrio Government that competent barrio government is dependent upon at least three factors: “skills and competence in barrio institutions, values and cul tural matrix.” The study also classifies a barrio’s cultural affairs into the “formal” which are main ly political and economic activi * ties and the "informal” which are the personal and inter-per sonal or family practices which are variables set by tradition and by superstition. For the 19,000 barrios to de velop along the community deve lopment plan, they should adopt programs which take these factors into account. In other words, the people can help develop them selves if they take a ready hand as well as demonstrate their effi ciency in managing their own af fairs. Community development is not a new idea in government poli cies. It has operated before through several agencies: the PACD, the NARRA, the ACC FA-F ACOMA—all of which were started on the premise that the national government could be strengthened if it extended to its 4 Panorama lowest possible political unit the principle of barrio home rule. Now, there seems to be a para dox here: barrio home rule is actually decentralization yet local autonomy would help develop the national government’s own cen tral position. This is so because even as these agencies, working on a coordinated scale, allow local autonomy to take effect, their success or failure will reflect on the incumbent administration . . . for its neglect or concern regard ing the implementation of the field projects of these agencies. It is the individual agency’s respon sibility, however, to effect its plans of community development through its humblest agent in the field who provides each and every barrio with the stimulus for self help. The office of the Presidential Assistant on Community Develop ment was created on January 6, 1956, upon President Magsaysay’s Executive Order No. 156 “to im plement the program of commun ity development throughout the Philippines, to carry out effective ly the program of giving the rural population fair and full oppor tunities in the pursuit of a digni fied and abundant life, and to provide effective planning and co ordinating machinery in insuring the success of the above policies.” As a coordinating agency of the government, it aimed to avoid overlapping and duplication of community development goals of various government agencies—a si tuation uncovered by the Com munity Development Planning, a local fact-finding council. This council found out that these gov ernment agencies were running multi-purpose projects towards these goals. CJ * o achieve the necessary co ordination, the PACD upon its establishment undertook the training of Community Develop ment Workers, CDW’s, in short, who would link the PACD office and the barrio people directly. A cursory glance at this initial step indicates a centralization of functions which, though happily streamlined this way, seems final ly destined to follow the usual practice of the government to govern its lower and dispersed political units from an exclusive ly central vantage. In this set-up, the CDW’s act as representatives of the central authority. There is a semblance of decentralization, however. The organizational struc ture of the PACD shows that on the national level it is assisted in its work by an Inter-depart mental Coordination Committee composed of bureau representa tives who are directly connected with rural development activities. On the provincial and municipal levels the pattern is similar, with the local government heads acting as chairmen of their respective Community Development Coun cils, their CD officers as execu April I960 5 tive secretaries thereof, and the representatives of their depart ments as members. Apparently, decentralization courses through these channels that branch out to the f a r f 1 u n g communities to which community development, plans are directed, with the Muni cipal Community Development Council as the last depository of policy formulations being direct ly in contact with rural prob lems. To achieve a nationwide scope of activity, the PACD established community development training centers in strategic points throughout the country, where trainees undergo a recruit curri culum and orientation and be come pledged CDW’s. There used to be eight training cen ters, but they have been closed after one training term to meet with circumstantial difficulties. Only the original Luzon Com munity Development Training Center, novV called Community Development Center, was retained due to its favorable site in Los Banos and to the limitless co operation given it by the U.P. College of Agriculture. Here, the training of CDW continues, in order to assure a steady number of workers who will do the ac tual work of community deve lopment and consequently bring about the envisaged barrio home rule. Since most CDW’s are na tives of the communities to which they are assigned to work, it is expected that stimulation to bar rio self-rule can start much faster in the light of their skills. As of May 1959, these trained workers numbered 1,510 (plus 3 foreigners on specialized training on what is known as “third coun try” extension). They constitute the office and field force that im plements the PACD program which is categorized into: 1 — frants-in-aid projects which contriute to increased production and income, like swine, rabbit, duck and poultry raising, livestock and plant disease control, oyster farm ing, seed and fruit tree dispersal, nursery and gardening, coconut dryer, communal irrigation, pas ture, salt and threshing ground development, and fishing; 2—self help improvement projects which include community centers, foot bridges, communal roads, multi6 Panorama purpose playgrounds and the like; and 3—health and sanitation pro jects, like communal toilets, arte sian wells, garbage disposal sys tems, and others. Grants-in-aid projects originate from the barrio people themselves. The barrio council embodies their petition for a project in a resolu tion which is channeled through the local government councils to the President who in turn relays it to the PACD. This office, with the cooperation of the various government agencies directly en gaged in community development, usually undertakes the launching of a project aided by govern ment assistance in the form of materials, not cash, on the firstcome first-served basis. Self-help improvement projects proceed from the grants-in-aid ap proach. They form a pattern of acceptance by the barrio people that they can do on their own with partial government assist ance. Accordingly, self-help is the next logical step towards barrio improvement, in which barrio and local government resources com bine, the former donating locally available materials and tools, and supplying volunteer labor, the lat ter footing the expenditure for construction equipments and wa ges of operators. The PACD, with the government bureau con cerned, provides processed mate rials, equipment and not locally available technical guidance. By latest accounting in 53 provinces, self-help grants-in-aid projects to tal 12,410 worth PIO,508,139.38 while health and sanitation pro jects are worth P4,946,810.25. It is interesting to note that in all these project-categories barrio share snows no falling below half the total expenditures, and that it is even higher than the shares of the PACD, the local govern ment, and technical agency com bined. This bespeaks well of the capacity of barrio people for self improvement. he Agricultural Credit and •Cooperative Financing Ad ministration (ACCFA) was creat ed by Republic Act No. 821 on August 14, 1952. Its function is to assist small farmers in secur ing credit which they cannot otherwise obtain, except at con ventionally usurious rates from April 1960 7 moneylenders, and to aid them in marketing their products by en couraging them to group tnemselves into cooperative associa tions known in the collective as FACOMA. Thus, the ACCFA evidently aims to raise living standard in the farming areas and, more particularly, to place agri culture on equal economic foot ing with other industries. These aims find implementa tion in a five fold ACCFA-FACOMA program that (1) grants personal loans to qualified small producers actually engaged in ag riculture, thereby promoting pro ducer-controlled and producerowned cooperatives whicn should make for a unified system of pro cessing, storage and marketing of agricultural products; (2) extends financial assistance and other es sential services to the construc tion of facilities for cooperative processing, storage and marketing, as well as for production; (3) fa cilitates placement of FACOMAstored commodities in domestic and foreign commerce so that farmers may be able to profit di rectly through their FACOMA’s, thus checking inefficient distribu tion of agricultural products; (4) encourages .credit institutions to be established in rural areas by enticing private banks with ac cumulated farm produce and with availability of comprehensive pro duction and credit information; and (5) holds privilege of redis counting its qualified indebted ness with the Central Bank, the Development Bank of the Phil ippines (formerly the RFC) and the Philippine National Bank in the pursuance of its authorized activities. The ACCFA carries out its activities through its central office and field personnel who have been trained primarily as co-op organizers. As of 1959, more than a thousand of them were assigned to 512 FACOMA’s covering 51 provinces, 669 towns and 12,464 barrios. Registered with the Secu rities and Exchange Commission and affiliated with the ACCFA, these FACOMA’s have a total membership of 295,187, includ ing 20 federations of co-ops and the Central Cooperative Ex change, a national federation, which are capitalized at P28.6 8 Panorama million, of which P6.1 million has been paid up. Extension of credit services in the form of production, farm im provement, commodity, facility and merchandising loans to FA COMA’s and individual FACO MA members is the basic objec tive of the ACCFA FACOMA program. These loans, as of May 1959, show a cumulative total of P184,185,819, with the pro duction taking up the most, farm improvement the least. The liber ality of credit is mutual—the loans are granted almost without colla teral and loan repayments aver age 85 per cent, the unpaid bal ance of which represents chattel mortgages for carabaos and crops and community storage in FA COMA warehouses. /Certain special operations are conducted by tne ACCFA. There is, for instance, its imple mentation of the congressional price support program for Vir ginia leaf tobacco through short term from the Central Bank, now estimated at P240 million but readily covered up by the actual stock of redried tobacco leaf sold to aromatic cigarette manufacturers. Since 1954, the ACCFA has been buying and re drying tobacco leaf from tobacco co-ops at subsidy prices ranging from P3.60 to P0.80 per kilo in accordance with grades deter mined by its own personnel and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Another ACCFA operation lies in the ramie industry through a Pl6 million contract with the CCE which buys ramie fibers from farmers, processes it in Ja pan then allots it to ramie pro ducers for local distribution. Other operations involve distribu tion of fertilizer and certified seeds which the ACCFA undertakes in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture and Natural Re sources. In 1958, P2,269,420 worth of R.A. 1609 and imported and locally-produced fertilizer was distributed to fanners. By any accounting, these achievements are laudable. Again, as in the PACD set-up, the tend ency to delegate central powers to field representatives must ac count for the ACCFA-FACOMA’s being this active. Recently, April i960 9 however, this agency has been thrown into bad light in the press by the abuse of the same powers. Whether it will redeem itself by the nature of its function in the cooperative system, which in it self is conducive to barrio home rule, remains to be evaluated. ID epublic Act No. 1160 creat'' ed the National Resettle ment and Rehabilitation Admin istration (NARRA) on June 18, 1954. This agency is actually an improved version of two earlier agencies—the National Land Set tlement Administration (NLSA) and the Land Settlement and De velopment Company (LASEDECO)—which were established in 1939 and 1950, respectively, to solve the problem of uneven land distribution in the Philippines. The NARRA has for its pur pose the development of puDlic land suitable for agriculture, homesteading and organized set tlement; the resettlement of fami lies from congestedly tenanted and over-populated areas into sparsely occupied provinces; the survey and subdivision of public lands believed suitable for agri culture into family-size farms of six to ten hectares each; the ex pansion of road and bridge con structions, public health and so cial work, school and agricultural extensions, and of other govern ment services to settlement sites; and the securing of land titles for qualified settlers. Presently, the NARRA main tains a total of 18 settlement pro jects in Bukidnon, Sulu, Lanao, Cotabato, Tarlac, Masbate, Capiz, Negros Occidental, Palawan, Isa bela, Laguna, Negros Oriental, Rizal, Davao and Camarines Sur. A total of 23,201 individuals have been resettled in these areas as of May 1959, and of this num ber, 10,205 are pioneers. Patents approved total 7,338, vesting qual ified settlers with ownership of farm lots originally allocated to them for home-building by raf fles. To these resettled individuals, this new lease on life is an en viable one. They receive assist ance in the control of plant and animal disease, in seed selection, and in the methods of planting root crops and legumes and pro per plowing. Direct aid comes to them in tne form of medicine, seeds and seedlings, farm imple ments, fowls, hogs, carabaos, and the like. To safeguard their health and to guide them along hygienic lines, maternity and child care, nutritional and such cultural education, the govern ment provides the services of experienced physicians, dentists, nurses, midwives and clinic aides. Periodic calls on settlement com munities are made by govern ment experts on agriculture, health and rural living and by education officials who deliver lec tures and conduct barrio seminars. Above all, the NARRA patron 10 Panorama izes the produce of the settlers at current market prices to pro tect them from the aliens who buy their crops at give-away prices. Bodegas are also built and stocked up with sufficient staple crop supply to meet crop failures on settlement sites. With other phases of public service—like help ing build roads to facilitate mar keting of crops at commercial centers, laying out bridges and culverts for purposes of commu nication and irrigation, setting up artesian wells to insure continu ous water supply, and maintain ing and operating lumber mills to provide cheap construction lumber, fuel and fertilizer from sawdust for settlement farms— the NARRA is certainly doing its full share in community develop ment. It shows, among the gov ernment agencies described, the least tendency to being politically exploited. This is due perhaps to the absence in its structure of an elaborately stratified gradation of authority, or to the unlikelihood of extracting from its operations big personal gains. It therefore presents an ideal enterprise, more of actual work than of ways-andmeans, that will redound to the realization of the barrio home rule idea. The facts of achievement shared by the foregoing gov ernment agencies, of course, out weigh the fallible conduct of some individual personnel who di vine in their duties some oppor tunity to subserve themselves. Evaluation of these facts will be more in demand in the light of the "new deal” pledge to the bar rio people by the Office of the President in 1953. For all its sensational appearance in a politi cally charged scene, this deal community development—has tak en up the best available convic tion to give way for the rural areas to assert their capabilities for social and economic advance ment, though they will not in the main turn out to be model villages. True, in social behavior there can be no precise measure ment of result or even of cause. But somehow evaluation of work accomplished may provide the clue, especially when “welfare," as of now, has acquired an oc cupational identity. Such evalua tion is being done at the Com munitv Development Research Council (CDRC). A joint project of the Univer sity of the Philippines and the PACD, the CDRC started work by a memorandum of understand ing drawn by the presidential assistant and the university on August 28, 1957, and which will remain in effect, unless sooner terminated by the contracting par ties, until June 30, 1961. The con,tract obliges its parties "to set up a cooperative endeavor . . . for qualitative evaluation of the methodology employed in the Philippine Community Develop April i960 11 ment Program in order to deter mine better ways and means to increase the effectiveness of the Program; and to create a research organization therefor . . .” Being t hi s organization, the CDRC has explored the commun ity development program and for mulated four broad problem areas which were then made subject of research for 1957-58. The first area relates to PACD operations, an examination of the grants-in-aid and community de velopment training program and the effectiveness in the assign ment of CD workers; the second deals with the different levels of coordination among government agencies engaged in community development, and with how the village power structure receives the impact of community deve lopment work; the third covers the participation of people in the program which includes innova tions and proposals made by CD workers as they go along in their field work, the phases of daily life in the barrio where the CD program is aplied; and the fourth explores “the etiology of rural poverty,” that is, the fac tors—special psychological, econo mic and others—that keep the people from improving their con ditions. These formulations are based at most upon the methods of problem-solution and the ap proaches that can combine ideal and practicality. The researchers cannot afford to be vague where they are committed to the dedica tion that they are finding a way for the upliftment of barrio life, an upliftment, by the way, that is long overdue. Their findings are now utilized as guides in the implementation of the CD pro gram at large. Hlready Congress has formu1 lated a barrio code for the acceleration of community deve lopment based upon a barrio study furnished by the CDRC and copies of which were made available to public schools for class material. Barrio leadership, according to this study, mentioned earlier in this article, is wanting in many respects, chief among which is the problem of founding a bureaucracy in the barrio. There simply are not so many activities to justfy such a system and to keep the barrio busy along this line. Nevertheless, tne study re commends eventual home rule when literacy and competence warrant it, and the most elemen Panorama tary education that can bring this about has a big task at hand. Other completed research pro jects have probed into the prob lem areas which the CDRC has formulated as subject-goals. One study is on rural health practices and conditions in two municipalities in Laguna from which practical corrective mea sures were drawn. Another study is on factors related to the ac ceptance or rejection of innova tions in swine and poultry pro duction in rural areas; a third is on the integration of resources in community development in Batangas; a fourth on some socio economic effects of building bar rio roads. Together with studies in pro gress and in outline form—which promise to be noteworthy in that they aim to examine the dynamics of power in a municipality re ceiving the impact of community development, agricultural innova tions, levels of living among ru ral families, marketing farm pro ducts, leadership competencies in community developed areas, and even the role of the ACCFAFACOMA agency—the completed projects serve as indicators of work done and values or signi ficance attained under the CD program which seems to advance, deleting its defects by sheer mo mentum, allowing no quarter for its detractors to put in a criticism or two. Yet, evaluation does not cost much, considering that, as of June 30, 1959, it only amounted to Pl 19,470.96. This means that of the CDRC peso, 76% goes to re search, 5.1% to supplies and equipment, and 18.9% to admin istration. With this systematic and inten sive evaluation, the CD program may finally become a remedial program, auguring a maturity for home rule in Philippine If the PACD, the ACCFAFACOMA, and the NARRA are the means towards this end, their defects must automatically be overlooked. Keeping in mind the barrio home rule idea, the paradox seems to be that, while the government decentralizes through its delegat ed representatives in the field, the lesser the chance of home rule appears to effect. Whereas, if there is maximum centralization, that is, a liaison between govern ment and community, the people show more response to self-im provement. April 1960 13 lans, any plan, look good on paper. It is, however, not the case when practices are con cerned. The CD worker, for in stance, is trained to initiate dis cussion groups in the barrio in the expectation that these will redound to the understanding by the people of their own prob lems. Understanding makes for half of effective participation in barrio affairs. Ana in most rural areas, such affairs would mean the relationship of tenants and landlords. In this respect, the PACD pro gram is pitifully deficient. It does not give ideological training to its trainees, with the result that the CD worker may be indeed a trouble-shooter as regards scru tinizing the needs of the barrio and placing order for materials here and there. But how can he even discuss the undesirable as pects of subsistence farming or the more elementary evils of ten ancy with the people who live it from tradition ana usage? With out this basic discussion the daily activities and habits of the rural population he serves will remain what they are—social and econo mic variables subject to the exfdoitation and caprices of the andlord caste—as in the begin ning. Accordingly, intentions for lo cal autonomy will be inseparable from agrarian truobles. It will be too much to expect from the PACD that its community work ers behave beyond their techni cal capacity and be land reform ers, too. Neither can the ACCFA and the FACOMAS to which the CD worker is told to turn his barrio group for agricultural help, do full service. The encumbran ces these agencies suffer need not be recited. For one, perhaps the bluntest, they have not realized for the farming groups under their influence any substantial in crease in farm income. This points to the defect in their cooperative system, which is most discernible in the tobacco boom in the Ilocos and the northern reaches of Pangasinan. In our last visit to La Union (where buyers prefer the auality of its leaf to the yield elsewnere), the people benefited by tobacco, wholesale or retail, are not the small producers but the middle men who, expectedly, are Chi nese or mainly Chinese-invested. The farmers instinctively go to these middlemen who pay on the spot and in take-home cash where the FACOMAS would take sev eral weeks to disburse an equal amount, duly receipted. Hence, the government agency is up against private competition that operates without 'tape of any kind; it thus considerably loses what should accrue to its co-op funds. CT he farmers, on the other 1 hand, are not any wiser to the fact that the prosperity they 14 Panorama are experiencing is artificially in duced by artificial demand. Not encouraged by storage facilities FACOMAS should offer, they are attracted to sell even immature leaves outright before the com ing rainfall will wash their crop away. They know that tobacco is good only for six months in a year when the dry season holds for picking. In tum, the middle men buy everything and are quickly rewarded because the farmers are in a hurry and that grading does not matter to them. As a result, most of the choicest leaves are classified at lowest pri ces, mixed clandestinely with a few real low-graders. Meanwhile, the ACCFA and the FACOMAS have plenty to do in improving the level of liv ing of the rural folk. The Magsingal experiment in Ilocos Sur has been cited precisely for its success along this line. (F. Sionil Jose, "The Filipino and His Land"'). But generally, the trou ble with these agencies is they seldom explore possibilities of crop diversification in the areas they operate, their functions fol lowing, if at all, a one-crop eco nomy. This results in idling bet ween planting and harvest, the bodegas empty. If harvest de pends on the outcome of pests and typhoons, the ACCFA and the FACOMAS necessarily rely most of the time on extracurri cular eventualities, such as pri mitive seed selection, unchanged ways of planting, and the tropi cal weather. Rizal did not speak wildly about Filipino indolence. It is a birthright, aggravated by the absence of rural activity in every sphere of living. The ACCFA-FACOMA entitv should be reinvigorated, in which case a training program, as we would wish for the PACD, be followed. As the ICA land tenure advisor to the Philippine pointed out, the ACCFA is one of the logical agencies to cope with detaued training in land tenure, credit and marketing. An ACCFA team should be sent to each 20barrio unit to instruct good farm ing methods at farmer level, con duct barrio meetings—as the PA CD personnel is doing—in which farm education is tied with credit know-how, the local FACOMA instituting pilot projects on the understanding that FACOMA loan funds are to be used for workstock, farm implements, seeds, fertilizers and insecticides. As fur ther encouragement, the FACO MA will have finances readily available to farmers towards the eventual stamping out of middle men who take in as much as 25 to 40 per cent of farm in come in the share tenancy sys tem. (T hese first steps will clear the ground for the farmer’s faith in their activities and will direct the increase of ACCFA borrowers and of agricultural proAPRIL I960 15 duce channeled to FACOMA warehouses. Care must be taken that clean records are kept at the start and must be kept open to the members. One of the great grounds of distrust in the tenant communities is the keeping of books for farm products in secret or by the landlords word of honor which of course can be readily withdrawn come the time when it will work against his interests. It is said only too well that farm tenancy will not disappear. Had historical events indicated that it should, there would be no need for literatures on the subject, all of them enclosing ideas that did move men, who embraced them as ways of life, to do or die. Historical fact is in fallible, especially when it is ap plied to economics. Population pressure alone bears testimony that land cannot just support it. In the hundred years prior to 1940, writes William Vogt in Road to Survival, the world po pulation more than doubled— from 1,000,000,000 to 2,200,000,000. The excess could be partly relieved by industrialization. 1/1 owadays conditions are scarce ly better. And in this situa tion the NARRA has been en visioned to work wonders. By a series of agreements, this agency should have all the coordination it required from the Bureau of Forestry, in matters of timber concessions; from the Bureau of Lands in the adjudication of land claims, contract-survey procedures and transfer of title to settler; from the Bureau of Soils in the classification of land usefulness within reservations sought by the NARRA; from the NAWASA in the matter of water wells for the settlements; from the Depart ment of Public Works in the construction and maintenance of feeder roads in and out of these communities; from the Depart 16 Panorama ment of Health in the establish ment of sanitation centers for the settlers, from the Department of Education in servicing settle ment children with elementary education; from the Bureau of Plant Industry in seed selection, improvement and distribution to settlement farmers; from the Bureau of Agricultural Extension in the development of agricultural productivity and marketing chan nels for farm products; from the ACCFA, PNB and RFC in the extension of credit sendees to these rural sites; from the Land Tenure Administration in the screening of settlers from congest ed estates for NARRA resettle ment; from the local government in terms of police and other in termediate support; and from the PACD in left-off phases of com munity development. Again, these impressive agree ments are not practicable. In a report of the actino land settle ment adviser, the Bureau of For estry and Lands find their rec ords, maps and surveys so inac curate, missing or incomplete that they cannot point to arable tracts to allocate the minimum 10,000 hectares that NARRA seeks to break even with the administration expense of settlement. With 22,000 or more families applying for title only 6,600 titles have been issued, and these on few good land. Crop failures are the result. The nature of the soils on these settlements has not been predetermined, the Bureau of Soils studying soils and classify ing land in several settlements after the settlers were moved in. The Narra has met with se rious difficulties in nearly every other phase of settlement lift’. Fact-finders know that the surface-water pumps it has installed are almost entirely useless. Half the wells it dug—1 to 3 to each settlement against the NAWASA minimum standard of 10 to 20—are dried up. Feeder roads fare no better. They serve only about 10 per cent of the total farm lots most of which can be reached only by power-wagon. An allweather road sometimes connects three or four settlements, but the be negotiated even sled. rest cannot by carabao Public health staffs could not maintain themselves too. The de partment concerned discontinued payment of personnel at 8 settle ments. Only a few clinics, built by the Charity Sweepstakes, are housed in more or less perma nent buildings, though they are pitifully equipped, and in mala rial cases they run short of drugs. If they are adequately supplied refrigeration is still to be wished for the quickly spoiling serums. A brighter side appears in the critical condition of the NARRA settlements. Elementary schools, though proceeding without text books and sufficient schoolhouses to shelter the 14,000 children en rolled, usually manage to dish out education by the strength of their teaching staff which includes teachers with college degrees. Be sides this, the NARRA is justi fiably proud of its 2-centavo charge on seedlings from tis own nurseries against the 10-centavo each for coffee seedlings obtain able elsewhere. One of the more significant failures in the NARRA program is its Land Tenure Administra tion coordination work. The LT A has for its primary function the screening of tenants for NARRA resettlement, for which in its ori ginal efficient farm lots would then be selected by lot for NAR RA settlement sites. The LTA seems not to have favored this idea which must have ended at its office. However, this is little felt in a situation where ineptness is pre valent. It can be pointed out at the very beginning that, anyway, the NARRA is not the redemp tion it could be in the integrated land reform movement. It has re settled, on direct order of the President, only 89 families from the Batanes in January 1958; it has moved a mere percentagesome from the unrest in Central Luzon—to the four projects it has opened at the Lasedeco pioneer projects. The ICA-supplied tools for the farms have been delivered indiscriminately; many, as a re sult, received not enough of the implements. The six-month sub sistence rations the NARRA should furnish the settlements for the production season are charged to the settlers’ account in Manila where all NARRA’s high-salaried employees, about 200 of them, are situated against the 500 in the field force who are cursorily trained. /I t best the NARRA exhibits n haste. In Palawan, where the EDCOR at one time rejected a farm site, the NARRA estab lished the Panacan settlement which involved a million pesos (F. Sionil Jose, "The Filipino and His Land’"). Because of the general aridity of that farm, the amount may just as well be counted as a loss. Other EDCOR pointers should give the NARRA direction, am 18 Panorama ong which are the former’s me thod of screening its settlers with emphasis on ability to work, toge ther with considerations about their age, civil status, and educa tion. Or it should take the cue from the report of the Advisory Committee on Large Estates Prob lems when it examined the defi ciencies of the Bureau of Lands in the administration of landed estates in 1951. The committee recommended a type of adminis tration similar to that of Lasedeco. This is to forestall the un happy situation the homesteader, purchaser, or lessee finds him self in when the awarding en tity leaves him to his own re sources upon acquiring the land, to rise or fall according to his ability. But, as the ICA land tenure advisor said in 1958, the Philip pine land tenure agencies are to be congratulated for the progress they have made in land reform, working as they did under ad verse conditions compared with those which education in this country has overcome. The ten ant-farmer’s average annual in come, it is recalled, is less than 400 pesos, his production per hec tare of staples (rice and corn) has for a half-century remained the same. This constitutes the biggest unsolved land reform problem in 1958 several causes of which are: the large number of share tenants—700,000 more or less; the difficulties in the trans fer of land ownership; congestion in farming areas and reluctance for resettlement; restrictions on farm mechanization. The first of these causes alone is enough to engage government effort for a while. Share ten ancy, predominant in rice-crop areas, is an endeavor of both ten ant and landlord, the former fur nishing the labor, and the latter, the land. Fortunately, Republic Act 1199, known as the Agri cultural Tenancy Act, now pro vides a net 70% for the tenant in the division of the produce. Under the old system his share was 50% though he furnished the labor, workstock, farm im plements, and half the transplant ing expenses. The government, therefore, should attempt to in crease the percentage of tenants receiving the 70% share. Moreover, the government has yet to combat the stranglehold of the lessee, the farm overseer, the tenant-leader, and the rice mer chant on the share-tenant. These middlemen, it is found, take 25 to 40 per cent from the tenant’s income for all kinds of representa tion on the gross yield. And it also has to provide credit and marketing facilities for the tenant who, in the final analysis, is man aged by the landholder on a 5545 sharing arrangement. The landholder has simply advanced to the tenant certain interest laden credit and price-fixed the April 1960 farm commodity with the rice merchant. (T\ ifficulties in the transfer of U land ownership are the offi cial headaches of the Land Ten ure Administration in its task of acquiring large estates and sub dividing and reselling them. For one thing, only a negligible per centage of the 200 big landhold ers with whom it has negotiated have sold portions of their land holdings. This is understandable in this country where land is the surest source of income and pres tige. While its tax is minimal, land is priced so excessively that tenants acquiring them may not be able to repay. All this is due to the absence of systematic farm appraisal based on productive va lue and political influence exert ed on the LT A to buy unclassi fied land at more than its fair market value. Though the mar ket value of land, however, was reasonable, large scale purchases by the government could not still be effected for lack of necessarv funds. Regarding congestion and re luctance for resettlement, the 1948 census shows 60% tenanev in the provinces where farm population pressure is most felt. While the Bureau of Lands maintains that there is no lack of arable public lands, at least for the next 10 to 15 years, for resettling pur poses, many of the tenants are reluctant to migrate from their domicile though this is steadily becoming impossible to live in. Much more, if moved into the new sites, they show signs of complete dependence on the gov ernment for livelihood. Farm mechanization could be the answer to these ills. Yet, it could work both ways—for and against tenant interests. The Ag ricultural Tenancy Act, for ex ample, can give the owner legal basis for evicting tenants in or der to mechanize his land. The application for mechanization is directed to the Secretary of Agri culture and Natural Resources through the Agricultural Ten; ancy Commission which will then investigate the suitability of the land in question for mechanized farming. The Court of Industrial Relations, created by Republic Act 1267, approves or disapproves the application. An executive or der from President Magsaysay restricted this pursuit, however, stating that no tenants can be ejected under any circumstances bv the landowner mechanizing. The order highlights the fallacy of mechanization of overloaded farms. Mechnization in these cases entails large scale transporta tion of tenant familities and land is not readily available for them. Of course this again calls for government action. The govern ment may be forced to negotiate for machinery, fuel, and techni cal advisers with an exporting na tion, since the reasons on the 20 Panorama towards the creation of tenant side of mechanization are hopeful employments heretofore unavail able. The field contacts of the Agricultural Tenancy Commis sion and the Court of the Agra rian Relations may yet argue for the adoption of modern farming methods. Only recodified agrarian laws that the peasantry under stand, together with agricultural and other economic education, can bring this about. Eventual decentralization o f government powers, implemented with a means of honesty in the rural communities, will be one of that progress’ happiest aspects. Huge Seamount Discovered Off African Coast A huge undersea mountain, higher than Califor nia’s Mt. Whitney, has been discovered in the South Atlantic. The formation, termed a seamount by geolo gists, rises 15,980 feet from the ocean floor. Its platform top is 210 feet below the surface of the ocean, with one isolated knob rising to within 120 feet of the surface. Discovered by Columbia University scientists aboard the university research vessel Verna about 550 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, the cone-shaped seamount is some 35 miles across at the base and five miles across at the top. Previously unknown to mariners, the seamount could have proved a menace to mariners, scientists said. A submarine with its sonar not in operation could possibly have rammed the formation before being aware of its existence. ¥ April i960 21 Going deep Sawtdti JLoit Seaet fl n the remote southwest cor£/ ner of Colorado, archeolo gists are digging into the his tory of early cliff-dwelling Indians who flourished for centuries, then mysteriously vanished. The site is Wetherill Mesa, one of the tree-studded, canyon-carved hills in 80-square-mile Mesa Ver de National Park. There, through the joint efforts of the National Park Service and the National Geographic Society, a year’s work in exploring and restoring cliff side ruins has just been com pleted. The first major settlement to be studied and rehabilitated is Long House. Park officials plan eventually to open it as an alter nate attraction for the floods of visitors now literally wearing out the ruins at nearby Chapin Mesa. fl report on what has been learned so far about Mesa Verde Indians appears in the November National Geographic Magazine. The article, by Park Service archeologist Carroll A. Burroughs, reveals a wealth of detail on every day life in stone villages laboriously built into the caves and under sheltering ledges. But still tantalizingly out of reach are the answers to basic questions raised by the findings. From about A.D. 600 to 1100, most Indians living in small farm ing villages on lower elevations moved up into large, compact communities on the mesa top. Why? Equally puzzling is what hap pened next. The Indians moved again in about 1200 to caves that reached deep into canyon walls. The building problems must have been enormous, Burroughs points out. “Just to terrace some of the steeply pitched cave floors must have taken as much work as building a good-sized village on the mesa top.” In all, some 800 ruins have been found—proof of a prodigious investment in time and labor. Yet by 1300 these homes, too, 22 Panorama had been abandoned. Their in habitants moved “right off the pages of history.” «-yor centuries, the vacant setdements of the Mesa Verde remained undisturbed. Then in 1888, ranchers named Wetherill discovered one of the huge cliff villages while chasing stray cattle. Soon stone corridors echoed to the crunch of sightseers’ feet. Souvenir hunters and commercial prospectors scoured the ruins for artifacts. A Swedish archeologist dug into several sites in 1891, and gathered a large and valuable collection destined eventually to wind up in the National Museum at Helsinki, Finland. The end of the treasure hunt came in 1906, when Congress created Mesa Verde National Park to give the area Federal protection. The current Park Service-Na tional Geographic undertaking is a major scientific drive to solve mesa mysteries. The job is expect ed to take five or six years, with still more time needed to evaluate the finds. From bits of pottery, bones, and naimal snares, information on the Indians’ way of life is gradually emerging. Studies of pollen ana soil hint at the kind and extent of farming carried on. Hunting apparently went on steadily to supplement a diet of corn, beans and squash. Of special interest are burial sites uncovered near Long House. “Such dsicoveries,” writes Bur roughs, “will provide new' clues to the customs of the people who once lived here, and may help link them historically with pres ent Southwestern Pueblo Indian tribes.” ¥ ¥ ¥ Good Start MOST of us with average nerves will feel sympathy for the TV announcer doing his first commercial for a new sponsor. With cameras centered on him, the announcer smiled, took a deep draw of the spon sor's cigarette, blew out a ring of smoke and sighed blissfully: “Man, that's real coffee!" ¥ April 1960 23 Dig, man, dig The Filipino Writer in Asia by N. V. M. Gonzales Several well-known people, among them James T. Far rell, have opined that per haps the time has come for books from Asia to come to the fore; Western readers have overlooked them (with the recent exception of Japanese writing); or if they haven’t been overlooked Western readers have asked of the writers from Asia as Western a view of their material as can possibly be presented. This attitude has kept away many able writers in Asia from readers of the West—a. situa tion hardly encouraging in the light of the current need to un derstand the so-called Asian mind. All of which may be well tak en, but the fact of the matter is that writers in Asia know each other even less than Western readers know them individually. Nick Joaquin attests to this shock ing circumstance from his own ejqierience at the International PEN Conference held in Tokyo last year. Not that nothing can be done about it nor that what ought to be done need not be undertaken now; but we in the Philippines find ourselves bur dened with the responsibility of acting out all sorts of roles. Some would have us act as a bridge between East and West, others would have us spearhead a Pan Asian literary awakening of some kind or other. No one has so much as suggested that we write more and publish better books, or that we read more and cultivate a serious appreciation for things that literature brings. We may not be prepared to admit it but there is in Asia a growing community of writers a good half of the civilized world (the Philippines included) do not know anything about. Nor is it a fact that these writers know one another quite well. Who has read the novels of Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan, Ooka, and K. S. Karanth? Who can speak with au thority on the works of Chairil 24 Panorama Anwar and Asrul Sani? Not too long ago, at a Manila cocktail party, a twenty-seven-year-old Chinese novelist happened along, accompanied by an interpreter. Who was she? What things has she written? In English or in Chinese? She was wearing that evening the standard high-col lared, amply-slit costume that Chi nese women wear, and which proved more attractive than any literary performance her physical presence might have suggested to the senators, newspapermen, and serious writers in the company. She was on her way to America, it turned out. There her latest novel was being translated, and may soon be published. She has been writing since she turned nineteen. All these details had to be attested to, however, by a newspaper clipping—which, to my mind, was the least appropriate proof that the situation called for. Japanese publishers, who have made big business of translations from Western literature into Jap anese, have so far as I can ascer tain up till now only one Fili pino in their list. A Japan Quar terly report for 1952-1955 lists only seventeen (17) Chinese au thors and one (1) Philippine author, as having had copyright translations published in that country during the three-year period. On the other hand, a new si tuation has arisen. Carlos Quirino’s work on Ramon Magsaysay finds today as avid readers in Cagayan de Oro as in Seoul, while it may well be R. K. Na rayan, the Indian novelist and creator of Malgudi, who will write the next Magsaysay bio graphy that will be read the world over. "R. M.’s life has a story—a beginning, middle and end!” is how Narayan looks at his delightful commitment. All of which, in any case, has come about neither by accident nor by design, but rather "in the full ness of time.” Magazines, as active galleries of culture, have been of immense help. After Pacific Spec tator’s pioneer interest in serious literature from Asia emerged such reviews as Encounter, Vak, Com ment, and Diliman Review. Also, governments as well as private associations have made a program of exchange of writers possible. Australia, we may well recall, is soon to launch an anthology of Asian writing; and so will Japan. If this is now things are shap ing up, at no time then has the position of the Filipino writer become more promising. He has only to tell the Filipino story as he and his generation know it and be assured of a hearing. He may well take a lead from the writers of an earlier day who plucked the fruits with fingers crude, as a Milton might say, April 1960 25 aware of course that they were guavas and not apples, or that they were perhaps atis and not pears. Several displaced genera tions, though, were out looking for crab apples when coconuts were all over the place. Today, as we might well have done ear lier, the Filipino writer has a les son from American literature to remember when, in Dean Ho wells’ day, he warned a compa triot imitating French symbolist poetrv that a writer doesn’t have a native country for nothing. Force and relevance are the obvious benefits. But how resolve the man'- dilemmas peculiar to our time and place? Strictly on the level of communication, one pressing question is whom must ne reach? Will striving for an audience at home suffice and au tomatically make possible a hear ing abroad? Or, conversely, will a reputation abroad generate a hearing at home, among his own people? There arc indeed a good many delicate questions, whose answers, however tentative, can point to a great number of deli cate possibilities. But, speaking as a mere practitioner and at the same time thinking out my own problems aloud, I’d say this: That I’d work with whatever I have, and say what I feel I have to say in the best way I know at the present time. I’d sidetrack the communication problem entirely, give only a fleeting thought to the audience question; but I’d come to grips, if I might, with something peculiarly Filipino— and the more particular the bet ter. And I’d leave the rest to the devices of art and the grace of God. We begin in 1958, I believe, the Age of Identity. "Who am I?”—an age-old question, of course —but an all-too-important one just the same. The possibility that in a nuclear disaster graveyards and markers will become terribly out of fashion makes for too awesome an inspiration. But on the more positive side, identity devices in due course a system of possibili ties too exciting to miss. "Who am I?” means, actually, “What am I capable of?” And given the willingness to live as bounti ful a life as the gifts of our good earth may provide, the an swer comes readily enough. To carry one’s identity card in the long run means setting up an embassy on behalf of the essen tial unity of man. And this is not a truth too small for a writer to think about. The genius makes of it, as Ta gore did, the center of his ideal ism. From there the import ra diates. Kipling notwithstanding, East and West do meet. They have, in fact, no other alternative but to do so. By 1959, the Fili pino writer ought to have begun in fuller measure his contribution to that inspiring certainty. 26 Panorama Take care lllce/b Swujvuf Caua 9m fiww THE ULCER PATIENT may be wheeled from the operating room straight into new trouble—iron deficiency anemia. It has long been known that the upper gastrointestinal tract has the body’s greatest capacity for iron absorption. When all or part of the stomach is removed, the patient’s ability to maintain an adequate iron supply is reduced, Nu trition Reviews reported. Even when only a small part of the stomach has been removed, there can be difficulty: the entire digestive sys tem may go into an abnormally high-speed cycle. The remaining portion of the stomach has less than an ade quate chance to absorb iron. One reason is that the meal passes swiftly through the stomach, which acts as little more than a temporary culdesac in a continuous passage. Or some patients, bothered by rapid elimination, will tend to cut down on the amount of food they eat. Even iron pills work less effectively on ulcer patients who have undergone surgery. The overly fast workings of the digestive system reduce the effectiveness of iron pills given to persons without stomachs. Normal or near normal utilization of the pills was found to be possible, however, when the patient consumed the pill while lying down. POSTURE, SPEED of the digestive process and the quantity of food intake do not tell the entire story, how ever. Some persons suffering anemia who have undergone stomach excisions are found to eat an entirely adequate amount of iron and show no signs of hasty digestion. Using atomic isotopes of iron as “tracers,” recent in vestigators have found that soma of these patients just do not have the ability to absorb iron from their food. The problem can be met successfully, however, by consuming inorganic iron in a soluble form. Even among persons who have lost, all of their stomach, iron in this form is ade quately assimilated. April 1960 27 Not so bad — The Vernacular Writer by Andres Cristobal Crux The filipino of today is con fronted with the alterna tives that will determine whether he is to be liberated from the enslaving forces of West ern economic colonialism, reli gious intolerance, and alien at tempts at ecnoomic domination. It will be a difficult choice; nevertheless he has to make it enmeshed as he is in a morally corrupt society, his national life threatened both economically and politically. But while his Southeast Asian neighbors are redirecting their dedications towards their own na tional survivals, the Filipino has yet to decide on making the leap from an ancient bondage to a new freedom. Having been alienated from his beginnings, because of his long subservience to the Western ap proach to almost every phase of life, the Filipino is already be ginning to forget that, as an Asian, he has his own system of culture and modes of expressions. He confuses between the West ern approach to art which tena ciously upholds the individual, and the Eastern artist’s belief in the universal; he is at a loss whether to identify himself with the Western artist who would anchor himself to earth in order to express himself to the littlest of details, or with the Eastern artist who goes well beyond him self, reaching out to the inscrut ably unattainable by simply re creating the essential idea Dehind the object. Although it is presumed today that Filipino society and culture were magnanimously guided by both Spanish and American tradi tions, the Filipino people’s basic way of life already enjoyed an 28 Panorama identity of its own in the pre Spanish times. This is evidenced in the country’s literary tradi tion that is rich not only in modes of expressions, but also in the intellectual and spiritual as well as in the aesthetic aspects of its' message and value. ip rom the age of magic incantations, folktales, legends, and ritual songs came a Filipino epoch of epics which reflected the confluences of the Malaya-Orient al cultures in the islands: the Vishayan epics Maragtas, Hinilawod, Eagda, Harayaxv, and Hari sa Bukit; the Mindanao Moro Bantugan, Indarapatraat, Sulayman, Daramoki a Bahay and Bidasari; the Dagoy and Sudsod of the Tagbanwa-Palawan groups; Parang Sabir of Sulu; Biag ni Lam-Ang of the Ilokanos; the Benguet-Ibaloy epics Kabunian and Bendian; the Ifugao Hudhud and Alim. However, because of govern mental and academic neglect and indifference, the oral literatures of the past are dying in the memories of old men and women in the hinterlands and mountains who have received these epics from the past, but who now find no audience to whom to transmit a people’s history and myth. To begin with, our primitive litera ture had no chance against the inroads of Christian indoctrina tion and orientation. Out of this cultural and literary tampering resulted the works of friar-schol ars, and later on, the introduc tion of literary forms evolved from a Spanish-Moorish civiliza tion. Filipino priests wrote their versions of the Passion Play and as the metrical romances in vogue abroad were adapted, there began the period of axvits and corridos, the first comedias or moro-moros that became the forerunners of the karagatan, duplo, zarzuela and the Balagtasan. It was not until the Propaganda Period that Filipino literature’s potential influence upon the thinking of the masses was to be felt. In Plorante at Laura Fran cisco Baltazar (Balagtas) allegor ized the abusive practices of the Spanish friars and civil adminis trators. Dr. Jose P. Rizal’s Noh Me Tangere attempted to “repro duce the conditions of his coun try faithfully and without fear, raising away the veil that hides the evil.’’ Marcelo del Pilar, Ma riano Pon.ce, Antonio Luna, An dres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, and Apolinario Mabini, in words and deeds, generated the begin nings of a national self-awareness that eventually exploded in the violence of the Katipunan. Then came the early American period in the Philippines which was characterized more by pole mics than by significant advances in literature. Taking ideological positions on the current political April 1960 29 issues of the period were Sergio Osmena’s El Nuevo Dia, Rafael Palma’s El Renacimtento, and Pas cual Poblete’s El Grito del Pueblo which, incidentally, were among the first newspapers. Severino (Lola Basyang) Reyes, Ananias Zorilla, and Aurelio Tolentino presented plays, while Cecilio Apostol, Claro M. Recto, Ma nuel Bernabe, and Jesus Balmori experimented successfully in tra ditional verse and prose. Vicente Sotto, the Father of Cebuano writing, Buenaventura Rodriguez, Vicente Rama, Uldarico Alviola, and Piux A. Kabahar are to Cebuano literature what Eriberto Gumban and Mag dalena Jalandoni are to Ilongo literature as Marcelino Crisologo and Leon Pichay are to Ilocano writings. Comparatively speaking, of the six major languages (Ta galog, Cebuano, Ilongo, Ilocano, Bicol, and Samar-Leyte) of a total of 87, Tagalog and Cebuano lit erature are richer. For the contemporary Filipino vernacular writing, one looks to wards the successfully circulated vernacular magazines, the “small magazines’’ and the house-organs come to existence before dead line time for the annual Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, and also in the campus literary pages. In them as in the English publications one finds a hybrid form of writing that finds sus tenance in foreign stereotypes and cliches. Both the Filipino writer in English or the Filipino writer in the vernacular, are faced with the same dilemma of their so ciety: they have become strangers in their own land. J n the past there has been a divisive attitude between the Filipino writer in English and the Filipino writer in the verna cular. It was an attitude of in difference and snobbery. The Fili pino writer in English ignored nis counterpart in the vernacular who in turn, retaliated in equal measure. Incidentally some verna cular writers are under the im * - pression that Filipino writers in English are a class higher. This is a misleading impression for in spite of the fact that some Fili pino writers in English have been published abroad thru literary agents, they are, at best compara ble to the beginner in the verna cular and to the established hack who will never be the artist be cause he has become a literary hustler. Where then is the Filipino ver nacular literature? Or to be speci fic, where is Tagalog literature of the present? J * o the majority of Tagalog writers, the money is in radio commercial translations and ad vertising copies, in radio com mentaries and soap opera. But the pot of gold is in the movies. 30 Panorama Towards this end, a lot of them are bent on attracting the atten tion of movie producers by slant ing their literary output for film ing potentialities. One is in fact, inclined to suspect that almost every Tagalog novelist has adapt ed his writing for movie prospects, forgetting the fact that cinema tographic interpretation of the novel or story is the producer’s and the director’s job. Tnis perni cious practice is further abetted, unwittingly, by the masses whose dictates at the box office ultimate ly decide the type of Tagalog literature in circulation. In the field of poetry the con temporary output is lean as al ways. Tagalog poetry has a world of tradition all its own evolved from the incantations, the salaivikains and bugtongs, the exhor tative verses of the tribal groups, with a characteristic beauty, in telligence, and thought. That it should abound with moralistic and reforming lines, and that it should limit itself to the conven tional metrics is of course to be regretted; and there is little hope for a refreshing change as long as its practitioners refuse or are not able to strike out with experi mental poetry. Fortunately, Ale jandro G. Abadilla, Manuel Prin cipe Bautista, Manuel Car. San tiago, and Gonzalo K. Flores have already attempted innovations in Tagalog poetry, with Abadilla providing the extreme in terms of image and thought, while Eustaquio G. Cabras and Leonar do C. Diokno are doing the same with Cebuano poetry. In the case of the Tagalog es say, the appearance of Aliwan, a LiwayWay Publication weekly may yet provide legitimate out let for its practitioner. It regu larly features Emilio Aguilar Cruz’s Labu-labo (Free for all . . .) and now and then Amado V. Hernandez’s subtly humorous and anecdotal articles. In the past, the late Macario Pineda’s column Sabi ni lngkong Terong in Ilang-Ilang and also the late Jesus A. Arceo’s essays provided thought and charm, while in his Bagong Buhay column Edilberto Parulan wrote on the imponder ables of life. The last known collection of essays in Tagalog is Gemiliano Pineda’s Sanaysay (Es says). The year 1957 saw Tagalog literary rebel Alejandro G. Aba dilla being cited by the Institute of National Language for his con tribution to Tagalog literature as exemplified in his book of poetry Ako Ang Daigdig (I Am the World). Abadilla is a writer who astonishes his better-informed col leagues with his obstinate lack of background on even the writing trends of two decades ago. His reading are mostlly confined to the D.H. Lawrence, Sigmund Freud, and Alberto Moravia school of sex and literature. April 1960 31 The year 1957 also saw the anthology of short stories Maiikling Katha ng 20 Pangunahing Awtor, published by Pangwika Publishing House, the main life line of which is a fortnightly booklet of the latest song hits. As the Abadilla PBPPineda an thology was published “literature wise” it had to contradict itself by selling its authors. Although it had complained about “com mercial writing,” the anthology published several which first saw print in Liwayway. J^ast year Pangwika Publish ing House also published Alejandro G. Abadilla and Genaro Kapulong’s Pagkamulat ni Magdalena which challenges the most Catholic of taste with an ambitiously handled theme of sex and nationalism. The original jac ket design of the book is a bril liant example of ludicrously poor taste in book selling. No sooner was it offered to leading book stores in the city than it was quickly asked to put on another jacket. The book has yet to be reviewed in context for all the recommendatory statements wellmeaning and polite, but less cri tical sympathizers have on the jacket flaps. Last year, the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature prize stories from 1950 to 1955 were published between covers, the Tagalog short stories includ ed, thus providing a particular body of supposedly good writing in the vernacular. Last year also the "Lubas sa Dagang Bisaya” an organization of Cebuano V i s a y a n writers awarded prizes to winners of its first short story contest. The first prize of Pl 50.00 went to Eugenio A. Viacrucis for his Sagib (Sur vivor); the second prize of P75.OO for Fornarina Enemencio’s Ang Kuwintas Nga Manol (Sampaguita Necklace); and the third prize of P50.00 to May Usa Ka Patay nga Punoan (There’s a dead tree trunk) by Diosdado C. Mantalaba. At present, there are only three magazines publishing Cebuano fiction, the Bisaya which has the widest circulation, the Alimyon, and the Silaw. In December of 19 5 7 this writer went on a cultural sojourn in the south to tape Cebuano poetry by the poets themselves, Cebuano songs, recitations and other pieces. The project was a personal one for the library of the Institute of National Lan guage, but it is hoped that a Cebuano group in Manila may yet be interested well enough to sponsor the first public presenta tion of the tape-recorded mate rials. JF here it isn’t plain indiffer ence or ignorance that ham pers the florescence of vernacular writing, other causes just as des 32 Panorama tractive and distractive could be found. The following is indica tive: A few months ago, this year, an editor for an anthology of Tagalog short stories asked a young writer for his piece. This particular young writer wrote the editor asking the kind of au dience the proposed anthology would address itself to so he would know the kind of story he would send. He also asked quite frankly if there was anything to be expected by way of remuneraaon. Why is it? the young writer wrote, that when it comes to money matters we seem to feel shame . . . In less than a week the answer came. The editor was offended and slighted and in so many words expressed the common, but unhappy belief that writers must not expect rewards, and that an thologies of such kind (addressed to students with the blessing per haps of the Textbook Board) do not profit. The young writer sent his piece written as the phrase goes “in blood and sweat and tears.” But it came back with a piece of note, unsigned, from the editor saying that the manu script came too late for the press. This in less than a month and a half-time! Many writers in Tagalog, par ticularly among the elder ones, believe in the myth of the writer as a bohemian, with a lean and hungry look, and as a special kind of person with tendencies of a psychopath. For him a lot of girls must fall, he must more or less hug the bottle as often as possible, and he must be regarded as one blessed with the gift of the gods from Olympus. A crit icism of their work is considered a personal offense and he who offended must suffer the consequences—ostracism and back-stab bing, a prejudice of long standing against the offender’s life and works past and present and in the future. If among Filipino writers in English there have been cliques and coteries of various hue and cry, the worst can be found among writers in Tagalog where there is so much boasting going around, “to much wind,” to use a vernacular image, but very lit tle writing really to be truly proud about. The pride is illegi timate: it merely hints an excuse for having nothing really of worth. Even those who savagely decry against so-called commercial writing are merely rhetorical, nev er aesthetic, nor at the least, art istic about it. Overbearingly disgruntled for no reason at all, the young writers in Tagalog behave like literary juvenile delinquents. By their manuscripts, one can de duce that they are suffering from the wrong impression that to imi April 1960 33 tate this author’s style or that one’s technique, is to assure pub lication. Imitative without know ing why they spend so little time keeping their third eye on their story. Most of the beginning writ ers do not seem to realize that even editors can get fed up with the same themes and subjects and manner of writing. They have a remarkable tendency to be shal low and not even entertaining. When not engaged in bicker ings our so-called established writ ers in Tagalog are either busy with social functions or with the mirror of their achievements. Some of them can be as imma ture and shallow as the young, blindly eager ones because they refuse to grow within, to be in volved in the daily realities of life; or that having had no per sonal crisis or crises they remain emptied, after several accidental writings. That too much generous friendship tends towards cliches in spirit and aims responsible, in turn, for a clique of writing is harmful and should not be over looked. Those who keep on, among the young and the old, are those who labor quietly and slowly and are never bothered if the editor’s frame of mind for the moment reflects a lack of understanding of the recent criteria for effec tive, wholesome and worthwhile writing and also a suspicion of any new style, which is termed “literary writing” when it is just plain old fashioned good writing, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. J n 1958, the Liwayway Pub lications organized and opened a writing workshop in the com pany resthouse in Cabcaben, Mariveles, Bataan for staff members. With the modest opinion that “even so-called popular writing should be written well,” A. C. Fabian, general manager and no velist and the Liwayway writers intended to write several months’ supply of stories so that after a time the writers can take it easy on their own pieces as well as encourage young and new writ ers. Story-wise and reader-wise there is an informally serious dis cussion before or after a story is written. During one of these discussions at the Cabcaben work shop the need for fortifying the skeletal Tagalog short story by effective characterization, dia logue, description was pinpointed. Thereafter, improvements in ver nacular stuff can be expected. The workshop is the only one of its kind in the country, and per haps in the whole Southeast Asia. Comparatively speaking, Filipi no writers are paid higher than writers in Southeast Asia, ex cluding Japan where writers could live on the patronage of their audience. 34 Panorama tj * agalog writing has again earned added lustre by the return of Amado V. Hernandez to a re-invigorated writing. His short stories and his articles hap pily bring a new hope for honestto- goodness, uncluttered writing. His play "Muntinlupa" won the first prize last year in the Palanca Awards. Fortunately, the vernacular comics (and the mo vies) have not claimed him yet for its next votary as it had Clodualdo del Mundo who, in spite of becoming a threat to Mars Ravelo, the undisputed dean of Tagalog comics writers, still main tains a sensible and sensitive cri tical eye. 1958 also saw the founding of the Kilusang Makabansa (Nation alist Movement) headed by Jose Domingo Karasig, an organiza tion advocating patriotic support of Filipino lifeways, and of the Kapatiran ng Mga Alagad ng Pambansang Wikang Pilipino (KAPAWIPI) for the dissemina tion and enrichment of Filipino art and culture with an awe-in spiring ceremony and symbology not unlike that of Freemasonry. The KAPAWIPI was conceived by Jose Joson Santoyo and Lazaro Francisco, both writers of note, the laltter being one of the very few who command respect for un compromised novels with a broad base of social awareness. The year 1957-’58 has served to indicate more positively new trends in vernacular literature. For one thing, vernacular writ ing is coming to terms with the human condition and the social situation; the craft of fiction among vernacular practitioners is slowly being examined in spite of an acute absence of textual cri ticism on the best existing mate rials. Happily for the vernacular writer, he has no critic to worry about, except the board of judges of the Palanca Awards. It remains for the vernacular writer to define, with ethical cons ciousness, human experience ei ther personal or societal from an emotional and intellectual dist ance, controlling it with consum mate artistry and with organic unity. He has to have firm con viction on human folly and wis dom, human stress and strain as he lives and as he works, guided by the one obligation of his crea tive gift: to do what he has to do in terms. most suited to his specific utterance. When the Filipino writer, ei ther in English or in the verna cular finally comes to believe in the potent force of literature, when he preserves with humility and frankness the written hopes and aspirations of his generations and by these learn and live and be free, when he becomes deeply aware of the things within him and without, when in his prose and in his poetry he learns to find, as his countrymen did, the April I960 35 deathless and telling record of the rise of the Filipinos from their beginnings in the love of God, of man, of country, and find these again, Lien and only then can he rededicate himself as an artist and as a Filipino to Art and to Life. ¥ ^ ¥ WiM 7'mA fan Wdl A wine-making plant, complete with storage space for a total of 30,000 gallons of wine, has been found near the famous well of Gibeon, at the modern village el-Jib, Palestine. The 2600-year-old winery, probably the oldest in the world, was discovered when handles from wine jars found in the well suggested further inves tigation. Each handle bore the name and address of the marker of the wine, indicating that ancient Gi beon was a wine industry center. In the course of excavation, 28 unusual small vats were found cut out of limestone bed-rock. Each one has a small opening of about 29 inches in diame ter that could be covered with a stone. Each mea sures about six feet in diameter and averages seven feet, four inches in depth. The scientists decided they had served as cellars for storing and aging the wine. Stoppers for the jars also turned up, but the scient ists were reasonably sure these could not have provided the air-tight seal to keep wine from spoiling. A wine maker at a nearby monastery provided a possible answer. If olive oil is poured on top of wine in a jar or bottle, a seal is provided, he said. The finding of two olive presses on the site confirm ed this answer. ¥ 36 Panorama Not for traffic and pedestrians G, fttifye ojj Chinese by Thomas Heffferman Iith the shrinking of today’s world, there is an inevitable ^/friction of disparate ways of life reacting to one another. This phenomenon has had important effects in the political, ecnoomic, social, and cultural aspects of human existence. The dichotomy is especially crucial in the historical division of the world into East and West, which is becoming less distinct as these two halves have approached closer and closer to interdepend ence. In many ways, however, the joining of these parts is a forced one and can never result in anything permanent, unless a proper disposition and attitude is cultivated by both parties. Essentially, it seems that the first approaches must be made on as basically human a level as possible. Since it is in artistic expression that this quality is to be found, this means of communication must be examined as a possible aid. To test this thesis the examination by a Western nonspecialist of an Eastern work of art could be effective. 37 As 17th century France was the cultural superior of her neigh bors and was imitated by them, so did China shape the aesthetic criteria of her neighbors Korea and Japan. Many examples of Chi nese art testify to ner achievements and indicate as well something of the transcendent appeal of true beauty as a means of effecting a deeper interest in, ana a consequent communication between, one people and another. As an example of the kind of knowldege to be perceived from an object of art it might be of assistance to examine a Chinese vase produced during the Ch’ing Lung period which extends from 1736 to 1795. Carved from a piece of white jade, the vase is exquisitely formed, so delicate and paper-thin that it is translucent. The atten tion to significant detail wnich makes masterpieces out of minutiae is particularly impressive in this piece, but even more immediate is the delicacy of rhythm, a grace of proportion and harmony. At first, the empnasis seems to be most certainly on the flowers, parti cularly on tne central, larger one; and this seems so because of the small scale of the birds as well as because of their subordinate position. The birds are no mere ornamentation, however. They pro vide a subtle contrast. Though both the flowers and the birds are formed so as to look almost real, the flowers give no hint of motion, of a breeze swaying them ever so delicately: they look real, indeed, but only in the sense that a floral display is real—at the same time it is dead. The birds, on the other hand, are bursting with life. The very attitudes and poses are studies of motion. For instance, 38 Panorama the egret on the left side stands with one leg supporting him, the other raised to walk toward the center. The hen in the center is balancing herself on a branch with the aid of her outstretched wings. The rooster on the right is standing so that his body is pointed away from his two companions; his head, however, is turned back to watch the peregrinations of his companions. Thus the two pheasants and the egret themselves are a marvelously balanced tableau in addition to contributing to the unity of the piece at the same time that they provide a contrast. The vase, then, is appealing to eye and, from that point of view, is beautiful. It possesses qualities of proportion, harmony, contrast, and unity, as well as the further refinement of expert craftsmanship evident in its careful chiseling and highly polished surface. Another viewpoint, however, is that, given all the abovementioned qualities, an object cannot be considered beautiful in the fullest sense unless it succeeds in being what it was intended to be. Under this aspect a gorilla is just as beautiful in its own way as a saffron sunset. Accordingly, we must ask the question: how beautiful is this vase as a vase? Beauty is not something appended to a thing after it has al ready been fitted to some purpose. It is rather a quality infusing the being of something that is well made according to its nature. Examining this vase, one has no choice other than to admit the competence—rather more the genius—of its maker. We have seen that the attention of the observer is directed towards the three April 1960 39 lilies, especially the large, central one, by two devices: first, the proportional magnitude of the flowers to the other parts; and sec ond, the directing of the observer's attention toward the central flower by the posturing of the birds. The flowers are the specifically functional parts of the vase because their cuplike shape is adapted to hold the contents, Func tionally speaking, of course, a broken bottle could fulfill this pur pose just as well, but not so beautifully.. The jade flowers are ar ranged so that the natural flowers tcr4>e placed within their cupped shapes would become part of a unified decorative effect. The na tural flowers rise out of the artificial ones which hold and support them. It seems as though the artist were trying to say in a con crete way that all matter is one. Visually, there would be little in dication of which flowers were the craftsman’s creation and which were not. o understand the nature of tools and materials, and to activate them under the touch of a creative imagination is the only way true art can be effected. The process is a combination of intellec tual understanding, spiritual-emotional stimulation, and physical labor. Thus the completion of a work of art in the true sense re quires a co-ordination of all the artist’s faculties. Consequently, be sides being itself, being what it was made to be, an artifact can tell an observer certain thing£ about the maker, and—because the maker is to some extent a product of his time and environment—also about his contemporary and cultural world. Beyond the aesthetic or emo tional appeal, then, art does, or rather should, communicate (whe ther or not it does rests somewhat upon the acuity of the beholder). 40 Panorama Among the various ways it does this is the illustration of religious truth, such as in Western medieval cathedrals, the ancient churches of the Byzantine world, the temples of the ancients such as Harnak. Not only in the religious sphere, however, is this true. A well-delivered political appeal, for example, attracts us because of the mastery of the speakers rhetoric. But the purpose of this rheto rical adornment is purely and simply to gain the auditor’s ear for the content of the statement. So it is with this vase that its raison d’etre is not merely to be beautiful, but to communicate something. I have suggested that the artist may perhaps be demonstrating the unity of matter, but whether or not this is what the artist was at tempting to do is unimportant because any single work can have several valid interpretations. There is jio doubt of the importance of the artistic legacies of the past in helping us to document the story of the past. Civiliza tions far back in time and distance are in part described, and made understandable to us through the still-enduring objects of art pro duced during their sway. In our own contemporary world, this is just as true. Closer contacts between divergent contemporary civil izations and the increasing shrinkage of the size of the globe, make mutual understanding not only desirable but absolutely necessary. To a certain extent, I maintain that art can be a means of pro ducing a sympathetic interest between East and West today, that it can be useful in communicating something of the values and characteristics of a people where another means would fail. Beauty has a magical ability to absorb the interest, attention, and concentration of people. Indeed, that is truly its function—to attract us, not to beauty itself, but to the beautiful thing. Beauty is some quality which makes a truth attractive to us, whether that April i960 41 truth be a religious doctrine, a man, or a vase—all of which can be said to be truthful insofar as they exist. All human beings have had the experience of being so stimulated by a beautiful thing that they are almost compelled to investigate it. We must know more about it. This is the effect that I believe art will have in bringing the East closer to the West and the West closer to the East—a stimulus toward sympathetic understanding of people who are different from one another. The East is so different from the West in its historical deve lopment especially during the past four or five hundred years that one cannot expect too much from this one means, however. Art appeals to all people because, legardless of philosophical, religious, or national differences, the emotional—and to a certain extent the intellectual—response is similar. A Westerner may be captivated by a Chinese jade vase for different reasons than an Easterner would be, but both are unanimous in their appreciation of it. The East erner can see this work of art as part of a living system, whereas a Westerner who is not well versed may not. But for the Western er, Eastern art is a likely starting point. That the Easterner would be as affected by Western art as the Westerner by Eastern seems rather doubtful to me, however, because Western art is not part of a unified system. As materialism grips the minds of a people and transposes its set of values from a spiritual plane to one based more exclusively on worldly con siderations, artistic expression tends to reflect more and more the personal peculiarities of the individual artist, rather than a comm,on body' of truth upon which the society’s soul rests. Western art today has no unanimity. Sculpture and painting and all the rest (except perhaps architecture) are often so highly subjective that they com municate nothing to people. It seems in accordance with the facts to maintain that for many Westerners art has no meaning; it is merely a matter of technique. At best it seems to be an ephemeral expression of a momentary emotion. Perhaps it is closer to the truth to say that rather than being just the result of some artist’s sub jectivity, this characteristic of discreteness is symptomatic of the West’s spiritual ailments. The whole of Western society is basically fragmented and disoriented; it recognizes no higher meaning in human existence than the amount of money one possesses, or the newness of his car, or the Dow-Jones average. This is not true, of course, of individuals, but it is of the society—insofar as it can be considered as a whole. For the reasons stated above, it seems to me that the more the 42 Panorama East accepts our ideas, the less chance there will be for mutual understanding. We must have some things in common, of course, but if they were to accept, as I hope they will not, our ways and our values, whatever spiritual unity their lives possess will be lost. It was Charles Malik, the Lebanese delegate to the UN who stated that the West can hardly expect to benefit the East until it cures its own spiritual ills. I concur with this to the fullest extent. That the East, for self-preservation, must adapt and change some of its age-old ways, is doubtless. But once she loses her spiritual values and motivations, she will be a mere competitor with the West. Today we still have opportunities for meeting on the human plane—because the East is still societally human. The craftsman and the individual artisan still have a place there. The whole man, the man spiritually satisfied in his work, will become less and less common as the factories and the other industrial and economic in fluences of the West displace the old ways and negate the old truths. Should this happen, should the East become torn from its proper antecedents and spliced to Western tradition, a sick hybrid will result—neither one nor the other, and manifesting only what is worst in each tradition. Not to be unduly pessimistic, I am forced to this conclusion because the East can never be, and never should be, another West. If she is forced to abandon her true na ture, she will be even mor# * spiritually frustrated than the West, she will be as spiritually scatterbrained as the West corporately is, and as a result will be even less able to communicate with us (on the human level) than she is today. It is true that Westernism has already made heavy inroads in the East in both its forms—capitalism and Communism. To speak only of the former, it is perhaps axiomatic to say that capitalism has brought both good ana bad. However much the good (or bad) may be, it seems fair to say that East is no closer to the West than she was one hundred years ago. With the foreseeable possibility of a world culture in the next few millenia, there will never be true understanding until both East and West modify. It is not a case of one side being right and the other wrong. It is a case of a necessary partnership in which each must bear equal responsibility. With all our differences, we still have a common participation in the human family. It is often pointed out that in the East the individual does not count for as much as in the West. It seems to me that that statement should be re-examined at least from one aspect. It is not true that the societal solidity which was so much a part of India, April i960 43 China, and Japan was possible only because millions of individuals sacrificed some of their rights for the common good? Is it not true that in the West of the rugged individualist, tne attitude is more likely to be one of competition with every-man-for-himself? The difference to me seems to be that the Easterner is more self-disci plined, not that in reality the individual is less important. As long as the West is forced by its materialistic scale of values to be introverted, to be unable to see anything worthwhile but a mad, self-acquisitive scramble, she will be unable to seek a true identification with her neighbors. When the West is able to truly understand the human values, she will be able to understand the East. Because of its intimate association with the intellectual, emo tional, and spiritual facets of man's being, it seems to me that art is one of the primary means of breaching the gap. Eric Gill in Money and Morals made this statement: “I can tell you the ab solute truth about art in a couple of sentences. Art is skill; it is the deliberate skill of men used in the making of things, and good art is the well making of what needs making.” This statement, it seems to me, would receive wide acceptance in the East than in the West, because the Eastern practice more closely approximates it. When the West understands this principle, more men will make more things deliberately, more men will appreciate the fact that "artistic” is not just another word for "bizarre,” and more men will be able to comprehend the Eastern approach to the little things. Perhaps we will never be able to appreciate as do the Easterners, but or lines of communication will be open. — Humanities. Panorama OD E twice She rose again. This time weeping on the floor. He wanted to kick her in the face, in the belly; he wanted to spit at her. But he felt weak and ne walked voice and to her. But he did away. April i960 45 “Forgive m e, Nonong,” she said. He looked at her in the eyes. They were misty and red against the light. "You’re a bitch?’. he cried, and walked toward the room. He heard her faint foot steps trail behind him and he slammed the door against her. When he woke he felt a rock inside his head. He was hungry. He fumbled for cigarettes in nis pockets and started to smoke. "Marina!” he called from the bed. Everything was still. He rose and went out of the room. Ma rina was asleep on the chair. He walked past her and disappeared into the kitchen. At the cupboard he found a pot of rice and what was left of the dried carabao meat they had the previous night. He started to eat. Arina was still asleep when he left the house for the fields. He stood before the wide expanse of blackish earth and his eyes traveled from where he stood up to w'here the river start ed to run. The field was starting to turn green with tiny blades of palay. Many months ago, the field was wild with talahib and weeds. His father left it to him before he died. “This land is now yours, Ra fael,” the old man said. ‘Take good care of it. Love it as I have always done.” He was in the field wondering Panorama how he could rid the land of weeds when Marina appeared with a bundle of clothes fmm the river. “You work too hard,” he said. “I need money,” she said, “and the Americans at the camp pay well for the cleaning of tneir clothes.” Everyday she was at the river and at sundown he came to her and walked her home. “Your land is full of weeds,” she said, pointing to the field. "Yes, but someday I’ll clean it and grow palay.” “When?” she asked, giggling. “Soon,” he said. “I still have a dozen cavanes of rice from my father’s last harvest.” Summer slipped away and Ra fael turned twenty-five. You are ripe for marriage, his Tiyo Andoy told him. The idea stuck in his mind. That night he saw Ma rina. When the planting season came they got married and set tled at a cottage overlooking the land. He had promised a half dozen cavanes of rice as payment for the cottage. Now it is time to work, he told Marina, and he walked out into the field and started to clean the earth of weeds with his hand. Marina still laundered for the soldiers at the camp and every sundown they walked together home and talked of the land. Soon, he told her, the seeds I sowed will sprout. He imagined Ap»-jl i960 the golden stalks of palay sway ing in the wind and tne sun. He held her hand. “Our children will have plenty to eat,” he said. Oafael stared at the greening field. But now he no longer cared. The birds and the wind could uproot all that grew from the earth and he did not care. “Now, be careful, Marina; the baby is three months inside. My, Rafael must be anxious. What will you name it?” Rafael pushed the door open and looked at them. It was Nana Sabel talking. “Rafael, I was tell ing your wife here to take good care of herself. My, you must be a happy man.” Rafael looked at Marina and she looked away. "Now, look,” Nana Sabel turned to Marina. “Every morn ing you walk with your husband to the field. It’s a good exercise. Besides,” then she rose and spat out of the window her buyo, “besides, won’t you want to see how the palay has grown? I passed by there this morning on my way to the river and saw the beautiful land.” Marina rose from her seat. "Nonong,” she said, as she walked toward the kitchen. “I’ll get your lunch.” She came out of the kitchen with plates in her hand. “Nana Sabel, won’t you join us?” Marina asked. “No, Marina,” she said. “I had already mine.” She turned to Ra fael. “And what will you name the child?” Rafael stared at the rice. “Let’s eat,” he said. “No, no, I must be going,” the old woman said, rising slowly. “Remember, Marina, what I told you. Take carabao milk every morning. And have enough exeicise. My, my, won’t it be a hand some baby?” She closed the door behind her. Rafael ate his lunch in silence. Just a few days ago it was differ ent. When he came hom,e he told Marina everything about the land. He spoke of the palay and how many cavanes of rice they would get from the harvest. And they talked of the baby. “It’s going to be a boy!” Ra fael would guess. “A girl!” Marina would reply. Rafael sorted the meat from the bones of the fish. She sat beside him at the table and he felt her eyes on his face. “Who is the father?” Rafael asked. Marina did not answer. She started to rise but Rafael caught her by the arm and pushed her back to her seat. “Who is the father?” he cried. He drank his water. Then he stared at Marina. She was pale. “Bob,” she said. Her voice was weak. Lfl e remembered Bob, the American soldier at the camp whose clothes Marina laundered. 48 Panorama He was a lanky man with blond hair and blue eyes. He used to come to the cottage in a battered jeep. Whenever he came he had witn him boxes of canned goods and packages of cigarettes. “You’re very kind,” he told the American once. “We Fili pinos will never forget the things you have done for us.” “We are friends,” Bob said. “We must help each other.” Every weekend he came in his jeep. He talked of Rafael’s land. “Your land is very fertile,” he said. “The earth is black and the plants are green.” “Is your land in America fer tile, too?” Marina asked. "I come from New York. You won’t find plantations there, but instead, rows and rows of facto ries and skyscrapers.” He paused and lighted his cigarette. “But America is so darn big, you see, and in the south we have vast spreads of land. We grow cotton and wheat there and many things.” “Is it bigger than our land?” Marina asked. “Gosh, it is! It’s a million times bigger.” ‘That is why I say you’re very kind,” Rafael said meekly. "Your land is so big and you are rich yet you make friends with us. I don’t know how we can repay you.” “Aw, skip it,” Bob said. "W^’re friends and we must live together in peace and friendship.” morning Bob came with a sullen look in his eyes. On his shoulder he carried a big box. “Our troop is leaving for the States tomorrow,” he said. “Here,” laying the big box on the table, “I brought along some canned goods,” he said. “Got cigarettes here, too; yes, sir! Genuine Am erican cigarettes!” He put an arm around Rafael. Rafael looked at him. He was speechless. “By the way,” Bob said, draw ing his arm awav from Rafael, “1 got sortiething here for you.” He went out and came back with a gun. “We call this Caliber 45,” he said. "Here, take it.” Rafael did not rqove. He stared at the gun. “Now, c’mon,” he urged, "keep this; you can shoot the crows and the wild animals that pester your land.” Rafael gripped the gun in his hand. “The bullets are in the box,” Bob said. “Here, I’ll teach you how to use it.” He took the gun from Rafael’s hand and walked to the window. He looked out. Then he raised the gun into the skies and Rafael heard the shrill sound of something break ing echo in the land. The American turned to them. “See?” he said .“Well, guess I’ll be going now.” He patted Rafael at the back and shook Marina’s hand. “I hope to see you again someday, folks,” he said, blink ing an eve. April 1960 49 "You’re very kind,” Rafael said. "You’ll be with us for the rest of our life.” The American waved his hand and they followed him to his jeep with their eyes. The engine roared and the jeep moved with a start. Bob waved his hand again and soon the jeep disap peared into the cloud of dust. II The first rain of the season came at midnight and Rafael woke up to the noise of the river. He looked out the window. The rain was strong. He yawned and stretched his arms and felt the emptiness of the bed. He re membered the nights he and Ma rina shared the bed together. Since that night she told him the baby she bore was not his, he had not touched her; not evin her hand. He could not remem ber how long it had been; two months or so, he guessed. But he was not sure. It seemed to be so long ago, like years and years. There was a time he came home and found her sleeping on the bed and he drove her out of the room with a push. He could still hear her voice, asking to be taken in again. She was afraid to be all alone in the sala, she said, and besides, it was so chilly there. She pleaded. This time he gave her a stronger push at the back and she cried. He felt thirsty. He rose and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, he walked out of the room. It was darker at the sala. His eyes traveled the floor and paused and the dark, sprawling figure of Marina. He snickered and walked into the kitchen. He returned to bed, pulling the blanket to his chin. Outside, the rain continued to fall. Shiv ering with cold, he started to sleep again. The rain was gone and the sun was all over him when he woke i p in the morning. Marina was not in the house. He called her repeatedly and he cursed her name. He looked into the field.In the distance he saw Marina approach in haste as she trailed the narrow path along the pad dies. A native bag dangled from her shoulder. He stared at her belly as she came nearer. It was already big. 50 Panorama She was panting when she ap peared at the door. “Where have you been?” he asked. He sound ed impatient. “To another lover?” He snickered. She stared at the bag in her hand. “To Nana Sabel,” she said. “1 asked for dried meat in ex change for a ganta of rice.” She v.alked and disappeared into the kitchen. That afternoon, he went into the field. The sun was already gone, leaving in the skies only the traces of its golden blaze. He looked at the land and saw the palay wave at the slightest puff of the wind. Along the narrow path that led to tne town a group of boys shouted and screamed as they chased each other. One of them banged against him and he hit the boy at the head with the back of his hand. He fell and cried. Rafael pulled his belt and cursed repeatedly. The children stared at him in fright and start ed to run. It was already dark when he reached the town. He walked along the rugged street, past lit tle stores where young men hud dled and laughed. In the air, he sensed the smell of wine. Soon he disappeared into a dark alley. He appeared again at the other end of the street. He crossed and paused at the stairs of a house. Looking about, he went up and knocked. He heard the faint sound of footsteps and the clatter of bolts. The door swung open and he closed his eyes against the glare of the light. An old woman stood before him. “Is Meding in?” he asked. “Meding!” the old woman called. “Rafael is here.” Her voice trembled softly. “Come in and sit down,” the old woman said. “She will be out soon.” He stared at the door to Me ding’s room. He tried to recall that afternoon he saw her at the river with a group of girls. They were having a picnic, they said. He accompanied them to the town and Meding invited him to her house. She was from the city, she said, and she used to work at a club. She was a dif ferent girl, he told himself once. She laughed a lot and she did not care what was going on out side the house. Sometimes she danced to her songs and the sight April 1960 51 of her whirling around the room made him feel light. “You’re a nice bov, Rafael,” she told him once. “Very nice.” And she danced again. Every evening he came to her and they talked until, midnight. She talked about herself in the city. “I hate it there,” she said, “the city is full of noise. I like it here Rafael; it’s peaceful. Quiet. I’m tired.” She asked about him and there was a time he nearly told her about his wife and the baby. But he held his tongue in fright. He had been wanting to tell someone about it but the fear that the people in the town would know and laugh at him sent a shiver all over him. But Meding knew he was married. She did not care. He heard the opening of a door and he turned around. Me ding appeared. He caught the scent 'of perfume as she ap proached toward him. She sat by his side. She wore a flimsy gown and her face was red. . “That lod woman,” Rafael said, “does she know?” “Yes, honey,” Meding said. “Won’t she tell?” He was cold with fear. "No,” she said, “she won’t.” He felt her hand on his. It vras warm. “And what if she does?” she said, smiling. Soon the midnight birds start ed to call in the hills. They looked at each other. Meding rose from her seat and walked into her room. Rafael trailed behind. She put on the light. It was a small room but neatly decorated. He followed her with his eyes as she dropped herself on the bed. “I’m tired,” she told Rafael. He sat by the bed. He felt her hand on his arm. He gripped her hand. Then he moved his hand from her knees to her thighs. They were soft and warm. “Rafael, honey,” she said, "put out the light.” He returned to the cottage at noon the next day and found Nana Sabel in the sala with Ma rina. When he appeared at the door, Nana Sabel turned to him. "Ah,” she said, “here comes our proud father.” She wiped her mouth w'ith her hand. ‘Why, Ra fael,” she continued, “I’ve never seen you so thin and haggard be fore. Why, you’re growing thin ner everyday.” She rose and spat her louyo out of the window’. “Am I not right, Marina?” Marina looked at her but did not reply. “Why, you should be happy; imagine, two months from now' vou’ll be the proud father of a handsome boy.” She dipped her hand into her pocket and put some more buyo into her mouth. She started to chew. "And the land, my, I saw it this morning and just look at the palay. 1’11 never speak again if you don’t get at least fiftv cavanes of rice this harvest.” Then she turned 52 Panorama to Marina. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Fine,” Marina said. “And the carabao milk? Do you take them every morning?” “Yes,” she said. Rafael knew she was lying. He had not given her any mo ney in the past months and he knew she could not afford a bot tle of milk. Sometimes he won dered where she got the fish and the meat he found at the kitchen. “Good!” Nana Sabel said. “And the exercise? Do you have any exercise?” "Yes,” Marina answered. “Good!” she said again. "These eggs I brought you,” she said, pointing to the native bag on the table, “these eggs, take them every morning.” “Thank you, I will,” Marina said. “Rafael,” she said, turning to him. “Rafael, two months from now you will see vourself and Marina in one piece.” Rafael stared at her. He want ed to scream in anger. Inside him he felt something burn. He felt hot in the face. He did not reply but turned and started for the room. "Rafael,” Nana Sabel called, ‘don’t leave now. What will you name the child? Tell me. Will you name it after you?” Rafael stopped and turned to her. His hand landed suddenly on her face and she twisted and fell to the floor. Marina stood with a start and helped Nana Sabel up. She was silent. Nana Sabel looked at her. She was si lent, too. Ill That month the last rain of the season came in torrents and the days turned more crisp and gray. From the window, Rafael viewed the land. Now the palay bowed to the earth with golden stalks of rice. His Tiyo Andoy had suggested to him that it was time for harvest, but he did not reply. During the past months, he had wished that all the rain in heaven would fall and wash away every grain of rice from the field. He did not care any more. Everyday he locked himself in his room, trying to sleep. He had learned to hate the sun be cause whenever he came, it bared Marina’s bulging belly and he felt a deep agony inside. And so he closed his eyes all day and wished all the time that it were night again. There were many times when he wanted to run to the town and shout to the people all the hatred and loneliness in him; but lie was afraid. He imagined the people talk about him and his wife. Already he felt hot with shame. Every night he went to Meding and they often made love in her room. He had always told himApril 1960 53 self that only Meding mattered to him now. And he wished Ma rina would die. He could start all over again, he said to himself. He could sow the field anew with palay and he and Meding v.-ould sit by the window ana watch it grow. He looked at himself at the mirror. He had grown thin and the tiny lines around the hollows of his eyes had become more de fined. The bones in his cheeks were now starting to show and lie felt afraid. Lately, he had been feeling pain inside his breast and one time he saw blood when he spat at the floor. Outside, he heard the voice of Nana Sabel. She still came to the cottage, only it was much oftener now. He heard the old woman tell Marina that she would come every other hour, lest Marina would give birth to the baby while alone. He lay on the bed again. Then he heard the roar of an engine outside the house and he knitted his brows. He looked down from the window. It was an army jeep. He rushed to the sala. An American appeared at the door. He was dressed in a neatly pressed khaki uniform. Tiny but tons glistened on his shoulders and breast. "Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Keaton. Major Keaton.” Rafael stared at the American. The first impulse he flet was to jump at him, strangle him and spit at him. But he had lost all his strength and he only stared at the American. Inside him, he felt weak. The American fixed his eyes at Marina, then turned to Rafael. “Are you Rafael?” he asked. Ra fael nodded. He walked toward Rafael. “I ’m a friend of Bob’s,” he said. "I have a gift from him.” Then before Rafael could speak, he turned and walked out of the door. He came back with a box. “It’s American wine,” he said, op ening the box. “I hope you’ll like it.” Then he turned to Marina. ‘How are you, Lady?” he asked. Marina merely looked at him. “Fine I hope,” the American said. A few minutes later, he left. At first, Rafael did not like to touch the wine. He had never drank before. One night he took a sip and he felt warm and itchy in the face. But that afternoon, he heard Marina moan and cry in pain and Nana Sabel scamper for the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle and started to drink. Soon he felt hot in the throat, in the bi east, in the stomach. A haze 54 Panorama started to shield his eyes. Marina was screaming now and he heard Nana Sahel’s shrill and trembling voice console her. "It won’t be long now,” the old woman said. "It won’t be long . . .” Until late that evening he heard the groan of Marina. Ra fael drank some more and start ed to laugh and dance around the room. He ran out of the room and through the haze in his eyes he saw Nana Sabel by Marina’s side on the floor. He remembered Meding and he staggered his way to the town. Soon ne was knocking at her door. “Meding!” he cried. His voice was drawling. "Open up! It’s Rafael! Open the door!” Me ding came out of the door. Ra fael stumbled into the house. "You’re drunk!” Meding cried. “Who’s drunk?” he asked. "Here kiss me,” he said, twisting his lips. Meding tried to move away. There was fear in her eyes. Rafael gripped her skirt and pulled her down to the floor. She fell with a thud. “Kiss me, honey,” he said again. Meding turned her face away. "Kiss me!” Rafael shouted. Meding did not move. In rage, Rafael hit her on the head with his hand. Meding cried. Rafael rose abruptly and cursing repeatedly, walked out of the house. He groped his way out of the alley and appeared at the main street where the lights were bright. He looked around. All about him he saw faces and eyes. He laughed and he cursed and staggered his way out of t)wn again. On the way, he vomited twice and he felt a severe pain in his head. He cursed again. He paused at the door. From where ne stood, he heard Marina scream. He entered the cottage and found his way into his room. He laid on the bed. He was feeling better now though the pain was still in his head. He heard Marina scream again and he cupped his ears. Then she be came silent. Rafael imagined her on the floor. Soon, he told himself, Bob’s b;»by will come. The thought made him tremble. He wanted to cry. He rose and went to the locker. He pulled out a gun, then tucked it to his waist. Outside he saw' the field. It was dark. He heard the faint rustle of palay. He stared at the gun in his hand. Then he re membered Bob. He tried to re call that morning he came and April 1960 55 gave the gun. He trembled when Marina screamed. He saw the baby in his mind; blond hair, blue eyes. He imagined the people talk at his back about him, Marina and the baby. He shuddered in fright. He raised the gun to his tem ple. He heard Marina scream again and felt cold sweat on his neck. He looked up. The skies were unmoving and dark. Over the land, the wind was still. ¥ * ¥ 'Jtyod TMxtoi A blush does not betray a sense of shame at the truth, but rather a feeling of shame that we have concealed the truth. This interpretation of a red face was given to the American Psychoanalytic Assn, by Dr. Sandor S. Feldman of the University of Rochester Medical Cen ter, Rochester, N.Y. Blushing can be observed in both sexes and all races. In people of dark skin, the blush does not look red; it makes the skin darker. Blushing occurs in persons who live nude. And persons who were bom blind blush like those with eyesight. The blush is proof that there is a basic tendency for truth, Dr. Feldman said. If truth is hidden, it appears as redness on the face. Children represent the truth and they are not ashamed. They begin to be ashamed and to blush when hypocrisy is imposed upon them and they are taught to conceal the truth. Several decades ago, Dr. Feldman pointed out, women were expected to be bashful and to blush at the slightest violation of etiquette, but when men blushed it was considered a weakness. Today wo men are not expected to blush and when men blush it is considered rather charming. 56 Panorama L&v pay, high penalty The Evil Domain of INTERNATIONAL CRIME by Herbert Brean International crime is the world’s biggest invisible business. In prosperous times like the present, when mo ney is generally plentiful, it flour ishes and feeds off the prosperity of others. Every year it costs the citizens of the world billions of dollars and an unmeasurable amount of suffering, and yet very few people are even aware of how it works and how it affects them. A small carton leaving Ge noa tonight may cause a stickup murder in Chicago next month. A car stolen tomorrow from a driveway in Dallas may almost literally vanish from the face of the earth—until it reap pears in South America, to which it has been smuggled piece by piece and reassembled for profit able sale. The pound note which a London shopper may receive in change at one of the Bond April 1960 57 Street shops this weekend may have been printed last month by a counterfeiter across the Chan nel in Paris. The practitioners of interna tional crime are hardheaded busi nessmen with only one guiding principle: money. Their vast net works are spread throughout the world, and have more ramifica tions and branches than any three international corporations put to gether. The diversity is endless. The products of international crime travel across the oceans, through the skies and across na tional boundaries by ship, plane, truck, pack mule, junk, camel caravan and human messenger. The “product” may be almost anything: not only diamonds and dope and counterfeit money but also pinball machines, cars, con games, financial credits, coffee, 4slaves. Whatever the product and year-old children who are sold as whatever th? means of transport ation, the result is always the same: fast, illegal profits. This article reports on this lit tle-known world and the people who inhabit it. It defines this world, stripping it of the legends (familiar to mystery-story read ers and viewers of the movies and TV) that obscure its true char acter, and reveals the methods and accomplishments of the one group designed to combat inter national crime on an internation al basis—the self-effacing, brilliant organization known as Interpol. fl ne of the many legends sur” rounding international crime is that it is run by one or more super-criminals heading far-flung networks of malefactors with branches in all the principal ci ties. Such organized efficiency does not exist in the criminal world. There are perhaps 12,000 really first-class international cri minals and perhaps 500 times that many who play smaller roles. But when any of these six mil lion-odd culprits work together as a gang, they usually join forces in a temporary and haphazard way. For 30 to combine is un usual, and a gang of 120 work; ing together is a big ring. In any case, when trouble looms their alliances swiftly dissolve. The one exception is the famed Mafia, which is probably the clos est thing to what might be called an “international crime syndi cate.” But even the Mafia is a limited operation in the over-all picture of world crime, for its operations are concentrated al most entirely in the U.S. and Sicily. 58 Many international criminals are professional pickpockets, con men and counterfeiters whose names are familiar entries on the world’s police blotters. .Others are professional "carriers” who, armed with a small library of passports, concentrate on smuggling from country to country. But a sizable number are otherwise respectable businessmen or legitimate airline or shipping company employees —amateurs unable to resist the temptation of an easy profit. To the professionals the world is a strangely restricted place, for there are only certain areas where they care to operate. The Euro pean continent mightily attracts them, but the British Isles do not. The Mediterranean basin is pleasant for them but most of Africa is not. South America’s mountains and broken eastern coastline, the major ports of both U.S. seaboards and certain Asia tic cities are highly attractive, but Australia virtually does not exist for them. Neither do coun tries like the Scandinavian ones and those behind the Iron Cur tain. The Pacific Ocean is re garded mainly as an obstacle cre ated to hinder police pursuit. Within this curiously limited world international criminals are quick to respond to changing conditions. Automobile theft, for example, is now verv profitable and is therefore on t£ie increase, but white slavery has fallen off severely. Improved police proce dures have not only forced inter national criminals to shift con stantly but have also required them to specialize. A good ex ample is the theft of travelers checks, a crime that frequently affects world travelers. Until re cently a continental hotel prowl er (a Hungarian specialty) gained entry to the foreigner’s room and stole his checks while he was out, or a pickpocket (a Spanish specialty) lifted the traveler’s book of checks from his pocket while he gaped at the Eiffel Tower. In either case the thief tried to cash the checks by forgery, a risky procedure in any alert bank or store. April 1960 59 Today this operation has its ■ own production line manned by a succession of specialists. The first specialist is the thief himself for, while he may use the same old methods to get the checks, his assignment ends at that point. He simply sells the checks for 15% of their face value to a sec ond specialist, the middle man of the operation. The middle man turns over the checks for 40% of their face value to a third set of specialists, the “selling gang” which must perform the most difficult part of the opera tion: passing the checks. A trav elers check is, of course, signed once by the owner when he pur chases it and once again when he cashes it. The selling gang has its choice of two methods: 1) it can remove the original sig nature by a delicate chemical op eration and replace it with tne signature of tne criminal who will actually cash the check, or 2) it can employ a skilled forger who will be able to reproduce the original signature under the wary eyes of a bank clerk. The specialization does not end with the cashing of the check. If the check is used as payment for a purchase, the item bought is likely to be something easily disposed of at close to actual cost, such as a camera or a pair of binoculars. Such items are promptly sent out of the country to still another gang which spe cializes in disposing of goods. International crime is not al ways as clearly criminal as this because what is illegal in one country may not necessarily be illegal in another. Anyone en gaged in the narcotics trade in the U.S. is a criminal. But many other countries remain undis turbed about it because they have no narcotics problem of their own. Decent, respectable Turk ish farmers grow acres of poppies under government license to pro duce opium, as legally as Ne braska farmers grow wheat to produce flour. Opium smoking is still legal in parts of India. Ma cedonian women use the drug to flavor pastry. I n some countries international ■ crime is actually encouraged by antiquated or inconsistent laws. Spain, for example, is a “car-poor” country: it produces few automobiles. But because Spain imposes a tariff of 150% on legitimate car imports, smug glers of new or stolen cars have strong financial incentive to op erate there. Spain also imposes a heavy duty on foreign machine parts, even when Spain herself does not manufacture them. As a result an entire turbo-generator once had to be smuggled into the country to complete a vital dam because the legal duty would have been exorbitant. Because Brazil’s tariffs contain many sim ilar inconsistencies, its long coast line plays host to a livley inva 60 Panorama sion of illicit U.S. cigarets, whis ky, nylons and cars. (The smug glers often depart with tons of Brazilian coffee purchased for less than the artificially pegged price, thereby compounding the crime and the profits.) Population shifts sometimes fa vor the international criminal. London, traditionally free of nar cotics problems, is now worried about marijuana, which has shown up among English teen agers since the recent immigra tion of Jamaicans and other Bri tish West Indians who use the drug. The British Isles, however, are a good example of how geo graphy and innate respect for the law can inhibit the international criminal. British traffic in illegal goods is confined to relatively few ports and airfields that are easy to supervise. The British customs service exercises tight supervision over incoming aliens (an average of 2,500 are excluded annually), and its meticulously polite cus toms inspectors are well trained to detect guilt from a traveler’s nervousness, his eye movements and what he does with his hands. While one inspector makes a ca sual examination of luggage, a second may stand by simply to study its owner—and a third who is stationed at the exit may gent ly ask to glance through a coat just as the traveler is leaving. Other countries have been made vulnerable to crime because of their geography. Lebanon, at the eastern end of the Mediterra nean, has been an international trading center since the time of the Phoenicians. Uruguay, tucked in between Brazil and Argen tina, is not only a convenient haven for criminals fleing from its neighbors but is also a handy clearinghouse for cocaine leaving South America and for opium coming in from the Middle East. Whatever the local conditions of geography, 1 a w and police work, one condition for a flour ishing international crime over rides all others: the opportunity for profit. Criminals will go to any lengths and take any risks when this opportunity exists. The French Surete recently broke up a far-flung ring which was ac tually using the military mail service as its means of transporta tion for illegal gold ingots. The gold was shipped, ostensibly as presents from loving wives, to French army officers stationed in Saigon, Indochina. The packages were keyed alphabetically by the initials of the addressees and were purposely mailed with insufficient postage so that they would come to the attention of postal clerks who could recognize them by the initials. The scheme was discov ered only because some packages accidentally fell into the hands of a clerk who was not in on the plot. When he sent them back for additional postage, the return addresses proved to be nonexist ent. But before this happened, April 1960 61 an estimated two tons of gold was smuggled out of France at a profit of more than one bil lion francs. I international traffic in wo■ men is still profitable, but the infamous white slaver of sev eral decades ago is now a victim of technological unemployment caused by increasing feminine sophistication. It is no longer very easy to entice unknowing women into a life of prostitu tion from which there is no es cape, and so the white slaver has been replace by the "theatrical agent” or “tai it scout,” certificate. Then she gets a ticket and traveling expenses. In Bei rut or Aleppo, she goes to work in a nightclub where she may dance, if ^he can stand on her feet, or sing, if she can open her mouth. But her main job soon becomes that of B-girl. She must mingle with the customers, encourage them to drink and, if they request, agree to spend the nignt with them after tne night club has closed. Even more vicious is the en slavement of children in Nigeria. This lucrative trade is carried on near the eastern and western borders where Negro children 4 To get women for the night clubs of Beirut and Aleppo, for example, where oil-rich Arabs come to spend their money, the "agent” advertises in European newspapers for models, dancers or nightclub singers. If a girl answering the aa has a union certificate, she will be free to travel abroad and can be signed up at once; if not, she is quickly taught the rudiments of kicking in the second line of the chorus so that she can qualify for a to 12 years old are kidnaped and sold into Dahomey or the Cameroons to become house or farm servants. Sometimes the child never crosses a border but instead is sold to a local believer in juju who thinks that if he sacrfiices a human being to the god he will grow rich, or that by eating some parts of the slaughtered ana tomy he can rejuvenate himself or prolong his life. The cunent price is £300 ($846) per child. The international criminal 62 Panorama need not be a big operator to make handsome profits. A sailor who wants to taxe a little flier in Indian hemp, from which ma rijuana is made, can buy a 12ounce package in Rangoon for about $4.20. When he gets to an English port he can sell the package for $22 to someone who will come aboard and take the risk of carrying it ashore. If the sailor wants to take that risk himself, he can get $44 for it ashore, a better than 500% profit on his original purchase. Automobiles offer incredible op portunities for profit in some parts of the world. Smuggling cars out of Germany, for example, is a big business, and some 2,000 per sons are listed by police as smug glers. Volkswagens, Opels and Mercedes bring two to three times as much in Greece and Turkey as they do in Germany. In the Middle East the ratio is three to four times as much, in South America it is six to eight times as much. If the car was stolen to begin with, the profit is en ormous. One ingenious thief re cently cabled five car rental agen cies in Zurich and asked each one to deliver a Mercedes to five exclusive hotels on a certain day. The unsuspecting agencies deli vered the hve cars—and by the time the rental period had ex pired the automobiles were long gone. If their ultimate destina tion was South America, each car, worth $2,400 in Germany, could have sold for $19,200. To make his fast dollar the international criminal must ex pose himself not only to the risk of capture but also to the vaga ries of chance, to treachery with in his organization and to sud den sociopolitical changes. Ha vana, for instance, with its big tourist trade, wide-open gambling, flagrant prostitution ana general ly relaxed morality, was for years a convenient home - away - from - home for international criminals. Then Castro took over and fright ened the tourists away, so soon the crime business was bad. Ha vana today is relatively “clean,” not so much through police ef fort as through political upheaval. There are other kinds of risk. A Lebanese flew into Athens from Zurich a few weeks ago, collapsed in the airport and was taken to a hospital where he died. An autopsy revealed the cause of death: coronary throm bosis induced in part by a heavy corset containing 1,500 contra band Swiss watch movements. Another kind of risk was taken by a naturalized Frenchman named Zellingold; who was hired to travel to India with an Olds mobile containing 550 pounds of gold concealed in various com partments. Zellingold and the Olds got to India safely, but then he could not get in touch with the people to whom he was to make delivery. He found him self in a strange country, with an Oldsmobile and a fortune in illicit gold, and nowhere to go. He decided to return home and did — accompanying the car through customs inspections, al ways undetected. Then he con cluded that there was little point in returning the gold to his em ployers. When they learned what had happened they fingered Zel lingold to the police as a gold smuggler and ne was arrested. He confessed everything, naming his employers as gold smuggler^ too, and they in turn were ar rested. P ven the most ingenious technique can go wrong. A French “antique dealer” entered English ports regularly every few weeks for some 30 months, al ways accompanied by a bottle of Scotch whisky (which he osten tatiously declared) and a little girl who carried a big doll. Ac tually both bottle and doll con tained raw French perfume on which Britain sets a heavy duty. The antique dealer developed quite a friendship with the cus toms and immigration men. Then one day he accidentally dropped the whisky bottle on the customs house floor. If the only way to catch inter national criminals were through such accidents, the world would plainly be overrun with vice. Nor will strict and meticulous customs inspections, carefully worded laws or energetic national police work suffice. All such local efforts are vulnerable to the international criminal simply because he never stops moving. If things look bad in one place, he merely folds his tent and slips away, popping up elsewhere with a new variation on his racket. Years ago the ma jor countries of the world decided the only answer was cooperation among themselves. And so a re markable organization called In terpol came into existence. Even though its name stands for International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol is not an international police force, as some Panorama moviemakers have portrayed. Cen tered in a dignified old town house on the rue Paul Valery in the heart of Paris, it is a su percommunications center for the police around the world. While it employs some brilliant police men, not one of them has made an arrest on behalf of Interpol since its founding in 1923. Interpol serves 63 nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America by maintain ing a thorough filing system, op erating a radio transmitter and us ing its members’ collective brains. Each country has at least one veteran police officer as its Inter pol representative. These men meet periodically at Interpol con ventions like one held recently, but normally work in their own countries until an international case comes along. Then they go to work for Interpol. When tne police in Copenhagen, for exam ple, want to check a report that a man they want is in Rio de Janeiro, the Danish Interpol re presentative asks Interpol to check the Interpol man in Brazil and the latter immediately issues the necessary orders. This sounds obvious, but until Intrepol was set up the routine was very dif ferent: the Danish officer asked his foreign ministry to ask the Brazilian embassy in Copenhagen to communicate with its home office in Rio and ask it to ask the police there to check on the presence of the suspect. The lat ter by that time could have reached San Francisco by slow freighter. Interpol’s entire administrative staff, whose job is to locate and cause the arrest of the world’s smartest international crooks wherever they may be, consists of only 59 people. All but 14, who are assigned to operate the Paris radio station or run a spe cial counterfeiting branch at Tne Hague, work at the Paris head quarters. Many of them are vet eran career French policemen lent to Interpol by the French government, which pays their salaries. Interpol gets along on a minuscule annual budget of 600,000 Swiss francs ($138,000). Interpol flashes crime bulletins and “men wanted” information around the world through a net work of 21 radio stations that handle 55,000 police bulletins a year. It also keeps a routine file of international criminals consist ing of 400,000 names (120,000 real names, 280,000 aliases) and an elite file of about 6,000 top criminals. April 1960 65 As it does its job of keeping the various worldwide police departments informed and in touch with each other, Inter pol makes use of the best inves tigative agencies and resources in the world. It calls on the scien tific index systems of the Ger man police, the U.S. Treasury Department’s T-men and Britain’s astonishing crime detection labo ratories wnich specialize in such particulars as poisons, spilled blood and dusts from grasses and weeds. But Interpol also has some unusual resources of its own. One is a quiet, thoughtful po lice officer named Louis Beaulieu, “borrowed” 12 years ago from the Paris police to set up Interpol’s record bureau. Beaulieu worked out his own fingerprint filing system and made other innova tions for the bureau but his great est triumph is his method of pro file analysis. He adapted it from a system of basic terminology for describing people that he had ori ginally learned in police academy. Beaulieu’s problem was to find a way of malting positive identi fication from photographs sent in from perhaps a dozen different countries, in which varying ca mera techniques were used and the subjects were people who changed their appearance as much and as often as possible. Beau lieu divided the numan profile into six zones and subdivided each into two to eight types ac cording to characteristics: jutting or receding chin, sloping fore head, tilt of nose ana the like. His reasoning was simple. While a criminal can change his hair style or may suffer a broken nose or start wearing glasses, he cannot change the entire outline of his face. Beaulieu knew he had to prove his method to his superiors, and he said nothing about it for four years until the right case came along. Algerian police had picked up a young dark-skinned man with a shaved head and had sent photographs of him to In terpol for possible identification. Beaulieu analyzed the profile, set down the proper numerical for mula and went to his files. He found a corresponding set of num bers—together with a photograph of a bushy-haired, mustacnioed man who had a long record as a thief and swindler. There was no apparent resemblance. Neverthe less, Beaulieu showed the picture to his superiors. He was laughed at. Undaunted, he sent back to Algiers for the man’s fingerprints ana compared them with those of the thief. The two sets were identical. “Since then,” Beaulieu says now, “when I say that two photographs show the same per son no one disputes the fact?’ An important part of Inter pol’s job is preventive police work. When a known swindler or jewel thief drops from sight in nis native city tne local police 66 Panorama tell Interpol that he may be on the prowl, and Interpol sends cir culars on him to other areas where he might turn up. When a large international gathering, like a coronation or a religious pilgrimage, is about to take place, Interpol checks on the where abouts of known pickpockets. If they do not appear to be at their home stations, it circularizes them to the police guarding the event. How effective this system can be was strikingly illustrated at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Early raids on suspicious hang outs before the fair opened, a close watch on ports of entry, Interpol’s invaluable circulars and checks with police of other coun tries enabled the Belgian police to scare off or turn back a large number of potential marauders. When the fair opened, a special pickpocket squad was assigned to it with instructions to make a big early roundup for deterrent pur poses. This they did, hauling in an entire gang during the first month. As a result pocket pick ings averaged less than two a day during the entire run of the fair, despite 200,000 to 700,000 daily visitors. | nterpol’s most dramatic func tion is the pursuit of a spe cific criminal across national bor ders. A famous recent case was that of Hans Flecken, a German who was suspected of having killed a 16-year-old girl for the 14,500 marks he allegedly in duced her to steal from her em ployer. The girl’s body was found on a Cologne highway and police began searching for Flecken as “the autobahn murderer.” An inn keeper near the Swiss border re ported seeing a man resembling the fugitive on a bus. German police, through Interpol, imme diately asked the help of police in Switzerland, Austria and Italy, supplying pictures of the wanted man. Flecken soon showed up in Tosens in the Tyrol where he took a pension room under the name of Landmesser. The land lady had seen pictures of “the autobahn murderer” and had her suspicions, but by the time she got around to reporting them to the police, Flecken had fled, tak ing with him a passport stolen from a fellow lodger, Werner Parth. Next day he was glimpsed on another bus near the Italian border, again not in time. Soon he turned up in Florence, still calling himself Landmesser, and there he convinced the represen tative of a German company that he was from the company’s home office in Bonn, had been robbed and needed 5,000 lire. He got it. But the company representa tive grew worried, called th<’ home office that night and learned that Landmesser was not an employee. He called the Ita lian police. A new alert went out all over Italy. April 1960 67 Flecken showed up in Paler mo, Sicily, and used nis Werner Parth passport to register in ano ther pension. The Italian police promptly swooped down—only to find he had moved. But they knew he was in the neighbor hood and, armed with Interpol photos, they began checking all pensions. He was finally found and is now being held in Pa lermo for extradition. Interpol has matched wits with some remarkably ingenious peo ple. One was a forger who tra veled to various cities with what appeared to be a very handsome and expensive valise, impressive ly heavy. No hotel man would suspect its owner of being any thing but well-heeled. Actually the valise was made of plastic and filled with water. When he had papered a town with spur ious checks, the forger emptied the water from the valise in the hotel washbowl, folded it up, tucked it under his coat and walked out without paying his bill. But the uniqueness of his modus operandi proved his un doing, for it made him easy to identify. An Interpol circular caught up with him in Nice. An even greater talent belongs to 77-year-old Attilio Pollastri, a Genoese who is currently in jail. A onetime jewelry faker, Pollas tri branched into counterfeiting, starting first with Spanish coins. At the outbreak of World War I, Pollastri converted to the man ufacture of French and Swiss francs, Italian lire and U.S. dol lars. A fine technician (he once made such perfect 50-lira notes that Italy had to withdraw the entire legitimate issue from cir culation), he did well until he changed to 100-lira notes and was caught. From jail he wrote the Bank of Italy polite sugges tions about how to make their notes more nearly counterfeit proof. He never got a reply, but the Bank of Italy’s 500- and 1,000-lira notes in due time dis played the improvements Pollastri suggested. Of all varieties of internation al crime confronting Interpol, by far the most prevalent is smug gling. It attracts the widest va riety of people, it involves the widest and most incongruous va riety of substances and it has given rise, to some of the gaudiest and most profitable escapades in recent criminal history. — from Life. 68 Panorama Book Review Wheel of the Rimless Spokes By Leonard Casper Boston College Part I * • Louise Cowan, The Fugitive Group: A Literary History (LSU Press: Baton Rouse, 1959): Hyatt H. Wasrgoner, William Faulkner; From Jefferson to the World (University of Kentucky Press: Lexington, 1959) [~ aulkner s longstanding ideological quarrel with himself has I as counterpart the struggle for decision within that other Southern movement, the early Fugitives. Louise Cowan (au thorized by research so thorough that, during their 1956 reunion at Vanderbilt, Fugitives deferred to her knowledge of exact dates and sequences) speaks of the "unity of feeling” snared throughout the twenties, rather than of any group esthetic or social prescriptions. Sometimes Fugitive antagonisms were not only logically irrecon cilable but so intensely personal that they required apology. Ran som and Tate bitterly divided over the admissibility of The Waste Land's counterpoint as poetry. Similarly, Tate and others felt that Donald Davidson should be recognized sole editor of The Fugitive whose burdens, in fact, had already fallen on him, although Ran som preferred to pretend that the magazine was a communal ef fort. Davidson constantly urged the folk epic on men inclined to lyric irony; and later he alone refused to go into self-exile from the South which all felt did not deserve them. Such differences were the calculated risk taken by men of private imagination who abhorred being programmed. Each honed his intellectual edge on the other, to tne limit of nervous endur ance. Beyond that limit there still was mutual charity (when Tate complained about others’ contributions, he was reminded that some of his poems had also been published under protest). In some cases kinship helped, or their common training in classic humanism. The temper of such uneasy discussions—an admittedly special “unity of feeling”—encouraged the formulation of Ransom s extended dualism, Brooks’ theory of paradox, and Warren’s drama April 1960 69 tization of the dialectic negotiation of identity. They were essen tially united also to the extent that their awareness of controlled violence as a principle of evolution reflected the South’s often sub merged "torture of equilibrium,” as Ransom Called it. Perhaps because Faulkner has withheld himself so long from such conversations, he has had to act as his own adversary. Unfor tunately, divisions which in a gipup can be respected as mutual provocations may seem in a single writer unwarranted indecisions. . The clutch of critical books that first ran analogical surveys on . Faulkner’s work nearly ten years ago were satisfied to trace the socio-mythological coordinates of his macrocosmic county. Now Hyatt Waggoner has considered it due time to calculate the hori zons themselves, Faulkner’s metaphysical over-plat. The result is a near-parody of pietistic Scriptural name-dropping and close mis reading. Christ-images abound (only Jason Compson is spared, though his initials are as suggestive as Joe Christmas!). Benjy becomes the “Word swaddled in darkness, ‘unable to speak a word’.” Because Vardaman in As 1 Lay Dying confuses a fisn with his mother, Addie Bundren is designated Redeemer first-class (al though she loves only one of her own children). Midway, after Waggoner realizes that Popeye, in Sanctuary, was born on Christmas Day. he begins to see the possibility that many of these religious parallels so strenuously pursued might be questionable. Although intermittently he continues to confine God with Gavin Stevens; calls Lena Grove a "natural saint”; and, para phrasing Sherwood Anderson’s self-pity, intimates that every man undergoes crucifixion, gradually he defines Faulkner more credibly as a humanist exploiting Christian legend for its dramatic value. (In "Mirrors of Chartres Street” Faulkner referred to the Christian “fairy tale”; more recently, overseas, he undefined Christianity as generalized humanitarianism, uncommitted to creed.) No longer trying to justify what Faulkner apparently never intended, WagS>ner has confirmed the suspicions of those earlier critics who ought that Faulkner’s theological implications were pagan or neoromantically Promethean. Part II ** A dmittedly, certain kinds of critical judgment are difficult to pass on a writer who has declared his personal dissociation •’Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner (eds.), Faulkner in the University (University of 'v'-g:n> w-'‘s: Chadottesv Ik, Olga Vickery. The Novels of William Faulkner’ . A Critical Interpretation (LSU Press: Baton Rouge, 1959): William Faulkner, The Mansion (Random House: New York, 1959). 70 Panorama of art and belief longer and more stubbornly than any Fugitive, as New Critic, has. But the solution surely is not to multiply the ambivalence already in Faulkner by assigning him an organon of meaning whose occasions of absence are thereafter derided. Throughout his term as Writer-in-Residence in Virginia and before a dozen different audiences, Faulkner has disavowed doctrinaire commitments of any kind, claiming he is not even a novelist but a failed poet, driven by his lyric demon, not by ideas. His convic tions, ne would insist, are intuitive and gratuitous, not rationally derived. The Old Testament has been available to him as tall tales of heroes and blackguards; the Passion Week, “a ready-made axe to use, but it was just °ne of several tools." Furthermore, the “ancient virtues” are offered as ethical imperatives not because of their possibly divine origin and sanction but, pragmatically, be cause without them men might feed on one another and neither prevail nor even endure. The formlessness of Faulkner in the University is accidental but appropriate. (Originallv Gwynn and Blotner had arranged their 40,000-foot taped transcript according to subject matter—like ly, a pocketsize work—but later decided to recapture the incoherent, repetitious, often inconsequential spirit of the sessions, almost a parody of plots in Faulkner’s lesser novels.) While trying sin cerely to compensate for years of reticence, Faulkner’s answers are still evasive to the degree that thev describe what was not his intention, rather than what was. They are the words of a man as unwilling as any Fugitive to be programmed. All the more remarkable, therefore, is the patterning of in sights prepared by Olga Vickery who would have been disbelieved had she discovered a canonic consistency in The Novels of Wil liam Faulkner. Each of the major works is presented as its own experiential trial-truth. None is an illustration of received ideas, but each a totally unique and unprepared exploration, a multpile perspective of face in time’s transit, its changes therefore best ap prehended intuitively through the indirect heart and perhaps never comprehended. Certainly language is the most inarticulate means of its expression, as Olga Vickery demonstrates admirably in Mos quitoes and Pylon, usually ignored or patronized. As a conse quence, no dogma is true; and ritual erodes into convention when it is regularized or imposed on, rather than evoked fiom, the in dividual; often the law is the adversary of justice; morality is selfrighteousness clutched by any congregation, since every cnurch to some degree is destructive of pure faith. (Her brilliant explication April 1960 71 of The Fable is particular proof of Faulkner’s neo-romantic revolt against mass action or dicta.) Consummately, Faulkner has unsys tematized his world; and this is what Olga Vickery’s equal skill sees, a rhetorical unpatteming far more indicative than the sim plistic Yoknapatawpha "grand design” offered by Malcolm Cowley. Understanding this, one can explain the necessary deviousness of Faulkner’s successes—the frenetic disorder of reverberators, the sur prise ricochet structures, the interbedded textures—as well as the flaw inherent in such relative failures as The Mansion, an enter tainment for the unquestioning. This latest novel’s difficulties are due not so much to the thirty-odd years between its inception and execution, nor to its narrative complexities (these are superficial: Gavin, Ratliff and Chick’s nearly interchangeable points of view constitute a sanc tioning Over-voice). The difficulties derive from Faulkner’s inde cision about Flem Snopes’ supposedly deserved death for crimes against the supposedly uncorrupt and uncontributing Eula (as well as her daughter Linda) and Mink. Flem is kept gagged so well, despite the babble of other voices allowed, and so many peripheral issues intervene, that his murder seems more contrived than doomed, and less than justified, dramaticallv or morally. Faulkner has admitted a grudging admiration for Flem during his early machiavellian rise from Frenchman’s Bend to Jefferson; respectable now, he is useful only as scapegoat. But by victimizing Flem, Faulkner betrays again his old ambivalence, here expressed by Ratliff’s declaration that no man is evil, they just lack sense. Hyatt Waggoner might argue that this is the ultimate Christian act: to regard even Flem as crucified man. Or is it mere token that in the blur of motion all cats are streaks of gray? — From Southwest Review. * ¥ * Editorially Speaking AN ARTICLE in a medical digest, discussing why doctors refer to themselves as “we,” attributed this statement to Benjamin Frankin: “The editorial ‘we’ traditionally and historically is reserved for the ex clusive use of heads of state, editors and people with tapeworms.” ¥ 72 Panorama Literary Personality LXIII Andre Schwarz-Bart * The 1959 Goncourt Prize novelist was bom in 1928 into the large family of a peddler, a former rabbinical student from Poland. At home Andre learned Yiddish; on the streets of Metz, French. The Nazis ended this attempt at assimilation by cremating his parents. Pretending to be 16, Andre himself joined the Resistance movement. In postwar France, Andre worked in a factory and read de tective stories, until 1946 when Crime and Punishment taught him life’s seriousness could be reached by art. He was sufficiently selfeducated to enter the Sorbonne, but he left after 15 days because his fellow students were too casual. He began to write. So desperate did he become when his work did not go well that he even hoped to catch t.b. from his friend so that he would have more care and leisure. Like most writers, he “wrote in order to clarify my thoughts.” His Jewishness, for which his family perished, did not succor him but it did provide some inner sti mulus. “All the present-day Jews of the West,” he has written, “are not simply the descendants of persecuted individuals, not the descendants of individuals who did not have a passive relationship of victim to executioner but an active relationship.” In his prize winning novel, The Last of the ]ust, a twelfth-century rabbi puts 250 of the faithful to death rather than let them be converted to Christianity. What has made Andre more sensational than earlier Goncourt winners is the number of plagiarism charges now being made against him, even if one kindly critic has said, “If someone bor rows four copper coins and returns a ton of pure gold, is he a thief?” At least a dozen lines of the novel came verbatim from Travels of Benjamin III, a Yiddish classic by Seforim. There are also exact parallels, discovered by a critic named Parinaud, between * Exclusive Panorama feature. April 1960 73 the novel and historical accounts of the extermination camps and with the religious writings of Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, Manes Sperber (also a novelist), and others. The epigraph, attributed to a dead Yiddish poet, really are the words of a living Polish Roman Catholic; the Zionist anthem, “Hatikvah," is hardly the thousands of years old as claimed by the novel. On the other hand, a number of weeklies have defended Andre Schwarz-Bart by saying that he necessarily had to research the Middle Ages, since he could not possibly have any first hand knowledge; and since he was writing fiction, giving credit would have been difficult. The Goncourt judges made their decision be fore the case could be clarified, deliberately, so that the judgment would not be harassed by, to them, extraneous matters. The novel, according to them, is brilliantly written, regardless of who is responsible for each of its parts! Critics today still cannot decide whether a prank or crime has been committed; whether the insertions, so anachronistic, are the product of playful editors or of Andre’s lack of education. The most serious charge has come from Arthur Sandauer who claims that Schwarz-Bart invented his own Middle Ages in such a way that the Jewish martyrs act and talk like Christians. For what purpose? Will Andre Christianize the Jews among his reader ship; or convert Christians to the Jewish faith; or simply become wealthy behind his dark dirty smile? Thinking that no man de serves to be poor forever until he has had the luxury of sinning, many readers anxiously forgive Andre, hoping he will join them in tn,eir own suffering loss of innocence. ¥ ¥ ¥ Deftly Speaking A non-conformist is a person who keeps gloves in the glove compartment. ¥ 74 Panorama Tail on Man? Never! Man’s ancestor never had a tail, and the size of his brain was not a measure of his intelligence. These are two statements, con trary ot the popular conception, reported by a panel discussion at the University of Chicago during celebrations of Darwin’s Centen nial. Dr. L. S. B. Leakey, British anthropologist who recently found the fossil skull of Kenya’s Zinjanthropus, who he believes was the first true man, said no evi dence was ever found to show that any of man’s ancestors ever had a tail. “I doubt that they did,” Dr. Leakey said. "We hope one day to find fossils that will satisfy us completely on this point.” He said that the coccyx, some times referred to as "vestigial tail,” shows that the vertebral column in man simply did not develop into a tail as it did in apes and monkeys. Dr. Leakey also emphasized that not the size but the shape of the brain reflects intel ligence. "Size, except when taken in relation to the total body weight of the creature, is not important at all.” he said. ‘"The Neanderthal man had a larger brain than any other man, ana today, Eskimos have the larg est brain and Japanese the small est, which does not reflect their relative intelligence,” he ex plained. ‘There is no reason to believe at all that because, shall we say, Australopithecus of South Africa had a brain only about the same size as a gorilla, that his ability in the use of his brain was of the same order because he could have had a brain of the same size but of a much greater complexity in its cortex.” The panel also discussed whe ther man’s ancestors ever traveled by overhead locomotion, that is, by swinging from branch to branch. This is called brachiation. Dr. F. Clark Howell, Chicago University anthropologist, said the first detailed study of brachia tion was undertaken this year, that the idea of whether or not man went through a brachiating stage "has been terribly obscured” and that the term itself is com plex and covers, so to speak, a multitude of sins.” The study of brachiation, he said, is crucial to the understand ing of evolution. But brachiation, another scientist pointed out, is generally so poorly defined that some will include as brachiators city’s subway strap hangers. April 1960 75 At last, recognition! Owe w SouiJwtii /ta By 0. Z-* TILTED CRESCENT, of which the horns are Burma at the northwest, and the western half of New Guinea at the lower southeast, defines what the map-makers call Southeast D. Corpus Asia. In this sense, the region is made up of nine independent countries; Burma, Thailand, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malay, Indone sia, and the Philippines, with the latter lying aDout mid-way athwart the imaginary line bet ween the two horns. In addition, some commentators frequently use the term “Southeast Asia” more loosely to include, besides the countries named above, also Pa kistan, India, and Ceylon. For convenience, the more comprehensvie meaning of the latter us age is used in this discussion. It has been fashionable for some time now to say that the Philippines belongs to Southeast Asia, by reason of its geography; therefore, it is urged, our foreign policy should be Asian in orienta tion, both in terms of our rela 76 Panorama tionships with our neighbors and in our outlook upon the non Asian world. We all quite widely accept this point of view in prin ciple. However, there are tnose of our countrymen who are quick to observe that it is one of those nice principles that are custom arily forgotten in practice. They maintain that recent as well as present Philippine foreign poli cies are actually West-oriented rather than Asia-oriented. They further point out the ironical fact, possible perhaps only in the Phil ippines, that the majority parties avoid the slogan “Asia for the Asians” as if it were some awful and dreaded affliction. Thus, in this Asian country, “Asia for the Asians” is perforce a slogan of the political opposition. Why the apparent inconsist ency between the policy we ought to profess and those which we actually practice? We can begin to understand the problems of Philippine policy in Southeast Asia only by understanding the nature ot Southeast Asia itself. Southeast Asia as an area is rich in manpower; it has some oil and tin, and a great deal of rubber. It is, likewise, one of the three areas in the world that periodically produce disorders or threats to the peace in seeming ly calculated fashion—the other two are the Arab Middle East, and the Soviet satellite complex in Eastern Europe. But these characteristics are not our main concern. We are interested primarily in the question, whether the dozen countries which we collectively denote as Southeast Asia possess or share enough common charac teristics or circumstances, besides geographical proximity, that would justify our treating them as a single whole. This is im portant for our analysis because, if it turns out that there is no shared sense of identity among those countries, then we cannot say that the Philippines belongs to a community of states known as Southeast Asia. To say so would have little meaning be cause we cannot belong to a com munity that exists only in name. April 1960 77 6n fact, the countries of the area are similar in at least three important respects: (1) Their national economies are all underdeveloped. (2) With the single exception of Thailand, they all share a common history of cq lonial subjection under western powers. (3) Finally, and almost without exception, t h e twelve countries are all nationalistic in temper and outlook, and have only recently acquired independ ent political status. It remains to find out what these similarities really mean. The underdeveloped economies in Southeast Asia give the dif ferent countries, as it were, a common face. The cities, great urban centers are few and far between. The soil and its pro ducts are more important, support ing the population and earning the foreign exchange. Production methods and implements are gen erally labor-consuming, a condi tion which conceals a great deal of disguised employment. Popu lation pressure bears down heavily on the national product. The eco nomic situation has sociological concomitants. There is a great deal of corruption in politics, and administratvie organization and techniques are notoriously inept and patronage-ridden. The Bandung Conference of 1955, in its final communique, gave primary emphasis to "the urgency of promoting economic development in the Asian-African region.” The participants called for economic cooperation cover ing a long list of measures and actions. These included: techni cal aid to one another, the estab lishment of regional training and research institutes, collective ac tion for stabilizing international commodity prices, trade fairs, ex change of information and of samples, and the establishment of regional banks and insurance com panies. The Asian-African dele gates, nevertheless, stated that: "It is, however, not intended to form a regional bloc.” Needless to say, the coopera tive and collective measures called forth at Bandung have not been undertaken, and there is no in dication yet that they will be undertaken in the near future. One suspects that the communi que as such did not so much express a sense of common inter est, as it was an incident in the temporary gathering together of men who wanted to be nice to each other. For the truth is, that economic relationships, to be meaningful, must be expressed in actual trading and exchange. In this respect, the economies of Southeast Asia, all primarily ag ricultural and raw material ex porting, do not complement each other. There is very little intraregional trade. It must be recalled that production, practices, con sumption behaviors, industrial re 78 Panorama quirements, and trading patterns and outlets were established dur ing the period of each country’s dependency under the West, dur ing which time the dominant country and its economic needs occupied the preferred and pre eminent position. These lastnamed factors, inasmuch as they have been institutionalized, will persist for a long, long time. Fur thermore, it will be noted that two of the critical needs of un derdeveloped economies are capi tal assistance and technical aid, and the countries of Southeast Asia are competitors and rivals, rather than mutual cooperators, in these respects. the sum, the fact that the countries of the area are all in a stage of economic under development has endowed them with similar problems, but that in itself has not proved to be a sufficient force for welding the various countries into the sem blance of an economic commun ity. The shared history of colonial subjection which the Southeast Asian countries (except Thai land) have undergone under the domination of western powers has bequeathed a common me mory and attitude to the former dependencies. This is most evi dent in their readiness to spon sor declarations against the con tinuation or resumption, in any form, of western imperialism. The Philippines, indeed, has consist ently sided with its neighbor countries in this respect, to the extent, we are officially remind ed, of occasionally being on op posite sides with the United States. So far as it goes, the common anti-western imperialism of the SEA countries is an unassailable fact. But it would not do to overburden it, by inferring from it that it makes the countries of the area into a solid regional bloc. An attitude against imper ialism in the past does not itself create common objectives for con structive action or behavior in the present and future. As has been pointed out, no collective action in the form of concrete measures for economic coopera tion and development have been undertaken by the SEA coun tries towards meeting the declared intentions of the Bandung meet ing. One of the most obvious facts of Philippine foreign rela tions is the fundamental differ ence in the way we and our SEA neighbors look at problems of re gional security, diplomacy and trade with Red China, foreign aid, American military assistance, Soviet Russia, and other issues of similar import. It appears clear that the colon ial experience of the Southeast Asian peoples has not up to the present provided a basis for com April I960 79 mon objectives and common ac tion. The main reason for this is the nature of the colonial exper ience. During the period of de pendency, the countries of South east Asia were colonies of differ ent western powers. Burma, Cey lon, India, Pakistan, and Malaya were dependencies of the United Kingdom; Indo-China, of France; Indonesia, of The Netherlands; and the Philippines, of the Unit ed States. What happened then was that the dependencies were practically isolated from each other, and their contacts with the outside world and the outside influences upon them, were limit ed to those of the corresponding western power. In each case, the decisive in fluence upon the dependency came from the culture, institu tions, and decisions of the domi nant country. This is the explana tion for die fact that today the political system in each of the former colonies reflects in vary ing degrees of faithfulness to form and spirit the political institutions and practices of the former poli tical master. In the Philippines, our political vocabulary, electoral practices, system of party govern ment, doctrines on constitutional ism, and theories of administra tive organization were evolved from American principle, practice, and prescription exported to a Filipino situation. The same holds true with equal validity for each of the other SEA countries. But the impact of the colonial experience went far beyond the merely political sphere. The do minant power also exported its own[ language, ideas of education and educational administration, currency, industrial products, and other less tangible aspects of its way of life, such as its movies, fashions, and fads, and, to a greater or less extent, its hier archy of social values. The im pact has proved to be lasting, for, while the formal political con nections have been severed, the other influences, which we may sum up in the term “cultural im perialism,” continue to influence the life of the once dependent country. Thus, during the period of de pendency, the web of pervasive influence woven by the dominant power over and around the sub ject country not only tied them 80 Panorama together into a tight and intimate relationship, but also cut off the latter from any significant asso ciations or contacts with other countries. This is the fundamental explanation for the absence of frequent interaction and associa tion among the SEA countries today. Qt only remains now to deal with the nationalistic temper and the newly independent status of the SEA peoples and states. Like the other two similarities already discussed, the similari ties in temper and status of the countries of SEA today are often supposed to give them a common personality. From our point of view, however, they have not made the individual states of SEA region-conscious. The evidence is obvious, and all around us. There is no regional approach to prob lems which logically require re gional study and action, such as subversion, the overseas Chinese and economic underdevelopment. The SEATO, which is the only organized approach to military preparation and defense in the area, has no less than five non area and non-Asian members (the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, and Aus tralia), and no more than three Asian members (Thailand, Pakis tan, and the Philippines). New Delhi, Jakarta, Manila, Karachi, and Bangkok do not con sult regularly on regional or glob al policies, and are as likely as not to take different sides of in ternational issues and controver sies. Filipino delegates in inter state meetings, moreover, usually find themselves having a choice of separate blocs, depending on the occasion—the American, the Catholic, the Latin, and the Southeast Asian. he truth is that a national istic temper makes a people inner-directed, rather than region al minded. The masses in each of the countries of the area to day are being exhorted more than ever before to look to their na tional past, to emulate their na tional heroes, and, in general, to "think for themselves.” National ism permeates and pervades their respective educational systems, and is being tapped to provide the propulsive psychology for ecoApril 1960 81 nomic and social development. There are variations among the dozen countries in the intensity of their nationalisms. Those whose demands for self-government were satisfied only recently appear to be the more nationalistic, and more inner-directed, than those in which the independence issue had been settled at an earlier time. The existence or absence of a well-established indigenous culture also seems relevant, with those countries being more na tionalistic which have ancient and distinctive cultures of their own. Beneath these variations, how ever, the nationalistic temper is expressed in a self-oriented out look; it emphasizes the "interests of the nation” over divisive group interests in domestic policies, and over distracting involvements in world and regional politics. The self-oriented outlook of na tionalism is a natural condition for the newly independent states of SEA. The change of political status from dependent colony to sovereign state has in each case required major adjustments and confronted the new state with a series of domestic crises. There is mass poverty and economic un derdevelopment in all countries; political corruption, tax evasion, and unassimilated minorities in most; and civil war, subversion, banditry, and serious boundary problems in a few. Each country nas had to face these difficulties practically without appropriate in stitutions, without enough skilled personnel, without adequate ca pital, and without strategic mate rial resources. What, then, can be more natural, than that these * countries should wish to be left alone, in order to apply their un divided attention and energy to their domestic difficulties? Exter nal commitments and relation ships become unnecessary abstrac tions, except when they can be made the means to provide the wherewithal for the solution of domestic problems. has been suggested in the foregoing analysis that similari ties of colonial history, of econo mic underdevelopment, and of na tionalistic temper have not suf ficed to create a Southeast Asian community. It has been shown that similarities among the coun tries of the area serve to divide, as well as to unite, them. The only bases at present that may underlie a sense of community among the peoples of SEA are geographical proximity and a gen eral, but vague, feeling that they are all Asians. Even the geo graphical nearness must be quali fied. Burma, Vietnam, India, and Pakistan are at least as close to Red China, Central Asia, and to West Asia as they are to their SEA neighbors. But geography and the Asian feeling are merely predisposing 82 Panorama factors; they have not produced community interaction. Compared to other distinct regions in world politics, the SEA states do not have the doctrinal and military solidarity of the Soviet eastern European satellites, the emotional fervor that excites the Arabs of the Middle East, the cultural ho mogeneity of Latin-America, or the intense political, economic, and cultural inter relationships within the NATO arc of Europe and America. The countries of SEA may be likened, paradoxically, to big-city neighbors whose relationships are intermittent and haphazard. They are too occupied with their pri vate problems to pay sustained attention to each other, and their individual histories have given them habits, institutions, and in terests that lead to associations outside of the neighborhood. They are all in Southeast Asia, but they are in a geographical area, and not in a political or econo mic community. / * et us now inquire how our analysis of SEA as a whole bears upon the problem of Philip pine political relations in the area. Actually, some implications are obvious. For instance, it is clearly suggested that we must as certain whether the conditions re quisite for sustained and sympa thetic interaction between the Philippines and other SEA coun tries exist. These requisites in clude (a) a mutually shared sense of common interest, reci procally oriented institutions, com plementary economic systems, and adequate information about each other interpreted sympathetically. In addition (b) there must be no commitments outside the area that occupy us so much as to disallow opportunities for engag ing ourselves in area activities and affairs. Finally, (c) our own domestic affairs must be in some degree of order. If they are not, either we will be constrained to wihtdraw from foreign distrac tions in order to solve our domes tic problems, or we enter into relationships with other coun tries in order to secure aid for solving those problems. In the latter case, the commitments re ferred to (b) might crystallize. These requisites apparently do not exist at present. Mutual senti ments and appropriate area insti tutions are not in evidence. The Philippines itself is committed and bound to relationships with the United States covering a broad area of mutual concern. Because of these conditions, we rely for assistance in coping with our ur gent needs not on SEA but on the United States; this reliance reenforces our commitments out side of the area, and orients us away from it. Were we to decide, therefore, on a drastic shift in our foreign policy orientation April 1960 83 from America to Asia, it seems that we would have to maintain a foreign policy from which the necessary conditions do not now exist. The intimacy, strength, and variety of the sentiments, bonds, and chains that tie us tightly to America simply have no counter parts in our relations with our SEA neighbors. So much for our American or ientation. The foreign policy of the Philippines in SEA involves two other aspects, which are not usually considered in popular or partisan discussions. The thought ful reader, however, will require their consideration, or at least their mention. ^he eibst is the problem of v area leadership, the second involves philosophy and foreign policy. There is an indeterminate ness about our position in the hierarchy of influence among the countries of SEA. Our resources constrain us to resign ourselves to a position of less than leadership, but our stature does not allow us to take up the role of a mere follower. This indeterminateness necessarily prevents us from for mulating or adopting forthright area policies and straightforward or consistent area relationships. Equally important, it makes it difficult for our neighbors to in terpret our declarations and ac tions without doubt or suspicion. The task of finding an appro priate political role for ourselves in SEA is further complicated by the different types of leadership found in the area. The late Mag saysay, Nehru, U Nu, and Soekarno represent leader-types that show up our deviation from what seems to be an Asian norm. Lead ership in almost every SEA coun try except the Philippines rests on traditions and institutions which make it possible, if not customary, for the same one man to dominate his country’s politics for a long time. In addition, the contemplative nature that seems common to the leaders of other Asians has been conspicuous for its absence in the crop of post war Filipino leaders. The prob lem of leadership is important, because a country’s voice in for eign affairs is usually that of its national leader. The second problem requires little elaboration. It is related to the fact that the leading SEA countries aside from the Philip pines pursue foreign policies which are rather faithfully and consistently derived from distinct philosophies of humanity and of world politics. These countries are India, Indonesia, Burma, and per haps Ceylon also. It is perhaps no accident that it is the policies of these countries that are usually regarded as expressing the "true" Asian point of view, with the suggestion that the policies of other countries, including that of 84 Panorama the Philippines, do not do so. Lacking a distinct philosophical basis, Philippine foreign policy must derive consistency from nonphilosophical sources, which hap pen to De our “special historic ties with the United States.” This immediately disqualifies us in the eyes of Asian militants from re presenting the spirit and view point of Asia. This is another obstacle that the Philippines must overcome in order to develop poli tical rajjport, and thereby acquire “status, with its neighbors in SEA. Qt appears now that the road that will take us to Southeast Asia, foreign policy-wise, is not a straight and obstacle-free road. Actually, our reasons for wishing to get on that road are of cru cial importance. Essentially, those of us who believe in a South east Asia-oriented policy may be divided into: (a) those who be lieve in that policy because they reject our American orientation; and (b) those who believe that policy because they consciously feel that Philippine interests are best met by our active involve ment in mutual relationships with our neighbors. These two reasons are independent of each other. This discussion’is not an argu ment for the status quo. It does not assume that the present dis unity of Southeast Asia and our ties to the United States are eter nal and unchangeable verities'. Rather, it is an attempt to ex plain why rejection of the condi tions that underlie our present relationships with the United States cannot by itself bring about and sustain a SEA-oriented policy. While that rejection leads us away from old relationships, it does not ver se create new ones ready to band. This discussion is also a pres entation of some important objec tive conditions necessary to a po licy of close and sustained rela tionships with our SEA neigh bors. It is a plea for a return to intellectualism in the analysis of foreign policy. Nothing is more ineffectual than a sentimental ap proach to the politics of nations, in criticism as well as in con duct. ¥ ¥ So Be It The parents of a large brood of children deserve a lot of credit; in fact, they can’t get along without it. April 1960 85 Einstein theory Proved YEAR-LONG TESTS, believed the most precise yet made, have confirmed preliminary results by the same me thod that Einstein's special theory of relativity is correct. The experiments showed no measurable variation in frequency of radio waves radiated by ammonia molecules as the earth moved around the sun during a year. Einstein’s special theory postulated that the velocity of light, 186,000 miles a second, is independent of its frame of reference or of the motion of the light source itself. It also applies to radio waves, which travel at the speed of light. Results of the experiments, conducted at Columbia Uni versity at the suggestion of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Charles H. Townes, are reported in Nature, a British scientific pub lication. His associates found that, at most, less than onethousandth of the earth’s velocity around the sun could af fect the speed of light propagation. High precision of the tests was possible by using two masers. The coined word maser stands for “microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Previous experiments, starting with the classic Michelson-Morley tests, have confirmed Einstein’s theory but not as precisely as the present test. Calculation “How old are you, little boy?” “I don’t know. Mother was 30 when I was born but now she is only 28.” 86 Panorama Atta, old boy! WINGATE: Strange Genius of Jungle Wars by Joseph Stocker In May, 1943, .1 ragged col umn of British soldiers emerged from the Burma jungles and the veil was lifted from one of the best-kept secrets of World War II. For three months these audacious fighters had roamed behind the Japanese lines, wrecking bridges and air fields, blasting ammunition dumps, spreading confusion and panic among the enemy. They nad surmounted incredible hard ships, even subsisting—when their aerial supplies failed—on boiled python meat, elephant steaks and grass soup. The news of their ex ploits, released only when they were safe at their base in India, thrilled the Allied world. Since Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had been having things pretty much their own way throughout Asia and the western Pacific. Now they had been forced to swallow some of their own medicine. It marked a turning point of the war. The man who planned and led that bold thrust into Burma was Orde Charles Wingate, one of the most colorful and contro versial personalities in British mi litary history. He went to war wearing a full beard and a pith helmet, carrying a Bible under his arm and dangling an alarm clock from his little finger. He ate onions in prodigious quan tities, claiming thac they had special health-giving properties. In the rare moments when he rested, he liked to lie naked in his bunk, reading Plato and scratching himself with a stiff toothbrush. He had contempt for most of his fellow officer, refer ring to them as "military apes." Wingate even kept a special grease-stained uniform to wear when meeting VIPs, to show his indifference to them. Me was a slightly built, in1 tense and moody man with thick, shaggy hair and piercing April 1960 87 blue eyes. Bom in India in 1903, he grew up in an environment dominated Dy the Bible. His fa ther, a retired army colonel, be longed to a sternly Puritan branch of English Protestantism. Young Orde Wingate committed large portions of the Bible to me mory; and in later years,/in the quiet of a jungle night, he could be heard reciting Biblical medita tions in his tent. He also liked to use Biblical language in bat tle. Once in Burma ne radioed his subordinate commanders: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” He was given a military edu cation and, after graduating, en tered the Army. His first major assignment, in 1928, was to the Sudan, in northeastern Africa. Bored by this peace-time duty, he staged a one-man expedition in search of a legendary lost oasis. To save money for the hunt, he gave up smoking. He didn’t find the lost oasis, but on a liner tak ing him back to Britain shortly afterward, he found a bride. She was Lorna Patterson, the beautiful daughter of a Ceylon tea planter, and one story—pos sibly apocryphal—has it that she introduced herself to him by say ing, "You are the man I’m go ing to marry.” To which Win gate is supposed to have replied, 'You are right. When?” Two years later (the story goes) she wrote him a letter which con tained one word: "Now.” Wingate was sent next to Pal estine. And it was there that the rebellious pattern of his career began to take shape. The Brit ish authorities were pro-Arab. But Wingate sympathized with the Jews. In their restless strug gle to carve out a homeland, ne saw the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Wingate was only a captain. But with typical brashness he wrote directly to Winston Chur chill to urge that the Jews be armed. The British finally agreed to let him organize "Special Night Squads” of Jews and Brit ish soldiers for a campaign of guerrilla warfare against maraud ing Arabs, who had been fin anced by Axis funds. Wingate saw himself as a mo dern Gideon, commanded by God —like Gideon before him—to "go in this thv might, and thou shalt save Israel.” His tactics even par alleled those of Gideon. Gideon fought by night and so did Win gate. Gideon sent 22,000 men home for cowardice and fought with 300 chosen warriors. Sim ilarly Wingate, instead of using a large force, led 300 carefully trained men against the Arab in surrectionists. In a short time the Arab re volt was broken. Captain Win gate was given a DSO and a promotion—and then recalled from the country • for being too friendly to the Jews. 88 Panorama I n 1940 he wao assigned ano■ ther important mission. It was to retake Ethiopia from the Ita lians, who had bombed the help less natives and toppled Emperor Haile Selassie from his throne. Again he took command of a “Gideon’s force,” this one com prising about 1,800 Sudanese, Ethiopian patriots, British officers and Palestinian non-coms. And again he used Gideon’s tactics of dividing his men into small units for swift guerrilla raids at night. Although vastly outnumbered, Wingate’s half-pint army soon had the Italians in wild retreat. They fell back so quickly that he captured one enemy command post while its field telephone was still functioning. "You speak Italian,” Wingate snapped to a newspaper corres pondent. “Call them up and tell them that a British division. 10,000 strong, is on its way.” The correspondent cranked the phone and conveyed Wingate’s message. "What shall we do? What shall we do?” wailed the Italian who answered at the other end. "If you want my advice,” said the correspondent, “clear out as quick as you can.” The Italians thereupon eva cuated an impregnable position at a vital river crossing and Win gate captured it with a small de tachment. It took him just six months to vanquish Mussolini’s African pro-consuls. When they request ed an honor guard for their sur render, he had to refuse because he didn’t have enough men; and he was reluctant to humiliate a beaten enemy by disclosing the real size of his force. Later, on a white horse, he escorted Haile Selassie through the streets of Addis Ababa back to his throne. But Wingate paid a price for his Ethiopian victory. He had in curred tne disfavor of superior officers by ignoring messages and obeying only those orders with which he agreed. He arrived at General Headquarters in Cairo to find—not a hero’s welcome—but cold indifference and even hos tility. One night in his hotel room, worn out by the months spent in the African bush and deeply depressed, he slit his throat with a rusty Ethiopian knife. He eventually recovered from the wound and from his depression. In 1942, Field Marshal Sir Archibald W a v e 11 summoned Wingate to India. The Japanese had driven the British out of Burma and were getting ready to invade India. Wingate was made a brigadier and given the job of organizing a guerrilla force to go behind tfie enemy lines and sabo tage their invasion preparations. His guerrillas, whom fie called "Chindits” after a mythological Burmese dragon known as the “chintha,” numbered only about 3,000 and had little actual battle April 1960 89 experience. But they were honed to a fine edge by months of training. On February 7, 1943, wearing his familiar pith helmet, Win gate led them into the Burma jungle. He knew that their only security lay in speed, and he or dered that all their waking hours be spent in marching and fight ing. They were forbidden even to shave, for that would waste about ten minutes a day. Supplied by air drops, co-ordi nated by Wingate with a radio mounted on a mule, the guerril las penetrated a full 300 miles behind the enemy’s lines. It was a grueling campaign. Wingate had no field hospital with him and thus had to abandon his sick and wounded. But he effectively harassed the Japanese, probably staved off an invasion of India and, in the end, brought twothirds of his force out of the jungle. This marked the first time that the sorely pressed British lion had turned on its Japanese tormen tors. Orde Wingate became a British hero—a man hailed every where as “the Lawrence of Bur ma.” Winston Churchill sent for Wingate to accompany Churchill to his Quebec confer ence with Franklin D. Roosevelt and other Allied leaders. There Wingate was made a major gen eral and assigned the job of open ing the road from northern Bur ma to the Chinese border so that American and Chinese forces might pour in against the Jap anese. The U. S. Army Air Force was to support Wingate’s jungle fighters. Command of the air ele ment was given to Philip Coch ran, a good-looking young colonel from Erie, Pennsylvania. Coch ran already had gained consider able renown from having inspired the character of Flip Corkin in “Terry and the Pirates,” a comic strip drawn by his friend, Milton Caniff. Wingate originally had thought of using planes to fly supplies to his new army of Chinaits and bring out the sick and wounded. But Cochran came up with a far bolder idea: use gliders to fly in not only supplies, but the Chi.ndits themselves. Wingate was de lighted, although some of his na tive troops had misgivings. “We aren’t afraid to go,” said one Gurkha soldier to a British cap tain, “and we aren’t afraid to fight. But we thought you ought to know—those planes don’t have any motors.” At dusk one day the initial wave of planes and gliders took off for a jungle clearing 165 miles behind the Japanese lines. Win gate, nervously combing his beard, waited beside a radio to hear how they fared. For the first time he was not at the head of his troops. 90 Panorama At 4 a.m. a single word came crackling out of the loudspeaker: "Soyalinx!” It was a prearranged code, meaning disaster. (Soyalink actually was a wartime ersatz sausage which the British hated.) Then, for long hours later, came another code word: “Porksaus age!” This meant that every thing was all right—carry on with the operation. Coon Wingate learned what had happened. The clearing, which had appeared smooth from photos taken by reconnaissance planes, actually was full of holes. Numbers of gliders in the first wave had crashed and 30 men had been killed. But the wreck age was cleared away, the holes were filled and planes and gliders came swooping on in until near April 1960 91 ly 10,000 troops had been moved into the heart of enemy territory. Wingate’s second Burma expe dition was successful beyond all expectations. Enemv supply lines were cut and the Japanese with ered on the vine. One-fifth of their air force in Burma was des troyed. Finally all of northern Burma fell to the invading Allies. Orde Wingate lived long en ough to know that victory was in the making in this, his great est military adventure. Then, on March 24, 1944, he took off in a B-25 bomber for a tour of inspection. The weather was bad. The plane became overdue. Next day its wreckage was found in the Burma jungle. For days Wingate’s death was kept a military secret, lest the news cause his men to lose heart. Then it was announced. ‘With him,” said Winston Churchill, “a bright flame was extinguished.” Wingate’s ambition had been to go back to Palestine after the war and help his Jewish friends win their independence. They won it without him, but the en couragement he had given them, with tactics he had taught them and with military commanders whom he had trained. Thus, in spirit at least, this 20th century Gideon—a man who ranks among the most romantic warriors ever to stride across the world’s stage —finally did lead the forces of Israel to victory. Panorama Attention: All organization heads and members! Help pour club raise funds painlessly... Join the Panorama “Fund-Raising by Subscriptions” plan today! The Panorama Fund-Raising by Subscriptions plan will get you, your friends, and your relatives a year’s sub scription to Panorama. The Panorama is easy to sell. It practically sells itself, which means more money for your organization. The terms of the Panorama Fund-Raising by Sub scriptions plan are as follows: G) Any accredited organization in the Philippines can take advantage of the Plan. (2) The organization will use its facilities to sell sub scriptions to Panorama. (3) For every subscription sold the organization will get Pl.00. The more subscriptions the organization sells, the more money it gets. 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