Panorama

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama
Issue Date: Volume XVII (Issue No. 8) August 1965
Year: 1965
Language: English
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extracted text: Tell ]fout friends about the Panorama, the Philippines’ most versatile, most significant magazine today. (jive them a year’s subscription — NOW! they will appreciate it. Subscription Form ................ 1 year for P8.50 ................2 years for P16.00 ................Foreign subscription: one year $6.00 U.S. Name .................................................................................................... Street .................................................................................................... City or Town.................................. Province .................................. Enclosed is o check/money order for the amount specified above. Please address all checks or money orders in favor of: COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. Invernes St., Sta. Ana, Manila, Philippines FAITH IN DEMOCRACY Democracy is on its trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior from the high way, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny; and the pic ture papers of the European Continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human quality, and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, nobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and refinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to vegetate on sufferance in private cor ners. They will have no general influence . . . Democracy as a whole may undergo self-poisoning. But, on the other hand, democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure . . . The best of us are filled with the contrary vision of a democracy stumbling through every error till its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with beauty. Our better men shall show the way and we shall follow them. — William James in The Individual and Society. VIEWS AND REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILIPPINE SCENE The Message Of Jorge Bocobo Only recently the Honorable Jorge Bocobo died at the approach of his 80th birthday. The Filipinos thereby lost one of their most valued leaders in va rious fields of public service. He devoted the great er part of his life to education in its broadest con cept, for in his active life he served not only as a classroom teacher but also as an academic adminis trator, and not only as a professional school worker but also as a social reformer. He was an enthusiastic participant in religious movements and a . fearless defender of national causes on the higher levels of governmental and political affairs. [The authorized author of the national prayer which the Philippines needed in the .dark days of her struggle for identity and freedom, Bocobo pro vided the spiritual expression of the aspirations of our people. The vigor and sincerity of his convic tions* in matters that he considered important were almost fanatical in their fervor. This was particu larly so in questions which involved deep moral is sues*? "Bocobo was one of the outstanding jurists the Philippines has produced. His chosen field of spe cialization was civil law. In this legal discipline, he was not a mere compiler of judicial decisions or a mechanical annotator of codes and statutes. He was a real legal scientist, a true jurist, expressing his well-studied ideas on the meaning of particular as pects of law and jurisprudence, explaining his cri tical views on specific judicial decisions, and declar 2 Panorama ing his incissive opinions on the evils or advantages of legislative measures. But for the moment this discussion will be con fined to his educational and cultural work. In this field, he served as a classroom law teacher, College of Law dean, U.P. President, and head of our Dep artment of Education. Less than a year after my admission as a student in the College of Law, Professor Bocobo was ap pointed dean of the College. It was then that he started to make known to the law students his ideas on character, his nationalistic convictions, and his dedication to the development of moral values. Eve ry week he posted a one-page essay on the bulletin board of the College entitled Monday Mentor. This was a concise talk on what is expected of the stu dent in the classroom, in college activities, and in the community. The general ideas running through that series of essays centered on the student’s problems in and outside the school. They were an appeal to ideal ism, a stimulus to higher aspirations. They were intended as a guide for the student in serious aca demic efforts. Lucidly written, they attracted stu dents'to the bulletin board in groups eager to read the warm message of our new dean. Among the varied topics discussed, there was an insistent and clear call for devotion to the Mother Land. It was an urge for positive nationalism. This was an overpowering feeling amounting to a pro found passion — almost an obsession — of our Dean. But his approach on the subject was uniquely sin cere. It was not that of a politician or a publicity seeker or a notorious opportunist who uses national ism as a defensive mechanism against a background of anti-nationalist behavior. His approach was that of an intellectual moralist. For he treated the pro August 1965 3 motion and defense of our nation as a moral is sue worthy of the noblest and most unselfish thought and conduct of every true Filipino and of every man who claims himself as a Filipino. For that stand he was greatly admired by some, and attacked, even ridiculed, by others including those who paraded themselves as intellectuals, economists, and high po liticians. It was that strong moral concern he had for his country which made his detractors call him the GDoomy Dean. But he paid absolutely no atten tion to their taunts. For one thing was sure: no one dared accuse him of immorality, peculation, or sus picion of bribery and corruption. At one time when even President Quezon, who was his great friend, expressed disapproval of some stern attitude he had assumed he confided to me his feelings by saying that the President would in time realize that he had been only moved by what he, as Professor, had con sidered his duty. Incidentally, his Monday Mentor was always written in a clear, refined, and facile style. The sim plicity of his phrases and sentences made his essays pleasantly readable. His choice of words made his thoughts appealing. Forty years before the Filipino reading public had come to hear or read the lovely cadences of the famous speeches of Adlai Steven son, Dean Bocobo’s pen had already been producing bewitching prose to the admiration of those who had the chance of reading his literary pieces. He did not need to plagiarize the smooth style and the in cisive ideas of Adlai which have been so irresisti bly enchanting as a temptress to one or more Fili pino four-flushers. The Filipinism of Dean Bocobo was concerned with moral and cultural values, not with superfi cialities. He was not interested in the spectacular for the mere purpose of vain publicity. His interest 4 Panorama as academic head was in the development of the cul ture, the thinking, and the ideals of the Filipino youth. While in some instances his methods were not accepted by others, his objectives were praise worthy, scholarly correct, and above board. We remember his work in encouraging research es and studies in Filipino folk music and dancing without which the now famed Bayanihan Dance troupe would not have perhaps been born. Few seem to recall that the first important faculty committee he organized as University President was the Com mittee on Culture, which was to take charge of a monthly gathering of professors, students, and visi tors to hear a talk by- a group leader on an educa tional or cultural subject. Then to encourage stu dents to acquire excellent behavior and to improve social manners, President Bacobo organized a Cour tesy Committee and a publication known as Cour tesy Appeals. This he adopted in the Department of Education after he had left the U.P. presidency to serve as Secretary of that Department of the national government. The message of Bocobo’s life was one of unpre tentious idealism and courageous adherence to truth, freedom, and justice. He was not without blemish in his record as a toiler in the service of his people, for he was far from being a perfect human being. But the imperfections in his career were not those of a self-seeking, publicity-hankering, and insincere individual striving to put himself on a pinnacle of false pretenses. They were honest mistakes of a selfless teacher and an authentic scholar whose mo ral standards and noble deeds will long remain in our memory. — V. G. Sinco. August 1965 5 The Image Preoccupation It has become fashionable these days to talk about one’s image and to consider it with very great concern. This is not only the case with individuals but also with institutions, political, social, educa tional, and business. Each is interested in present ing a good image before other people; and each is worried about having a poor image to present to the public. What after all is an image? It is no more and no less than an appearance. Of course, it is quite proper to have a good appearance. One should not appear dirty or unshaven before others. An appli cant for a job should be neatly dressed. A lady could be seriously embarrassed today when she goes out to a party dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago. She could be misunderstood by observers. She could be taken for a crank or a candidate for a psy chopathic hospital. The best example of image-worshiping people is the pqlitician. He shines as an example because he is concerned about the impression he makes in al most everything he does outside of the privacy of his home. As a matter of fact, he does not even care about having any kind of privacy in his own home. To win the votes of the poor, he claims that he was born poor and had to suffer the miseries of pover ty. He appears before them in cheap clothing. He eats with them using his bare fingers. He kisses the hands of older people in public in order to ap pear extremely respectful to age. He tries to be spec tacularly courteous to every man and woman, young and old, who are seen around him. He uses all kinds 6 Panorama of publicity stunts the fertility of his imagination could devise, all for the sake of creating an attractive image of himself. Of course, the tricks of the politician are also practiced by persons in other callings or occupations. These are not only to be found among people in bus iness and industry who are engrossed in money making activities. They secure the expert assistance of so-called public relations executives to advertise their services or their products as something indis pensable for building up their public image. A face powder or cream that restores youthful beauty to wilted cheeks is dangled before newspaper readers and radio listeners as a must for improving one’s so cial image. In this country of ours where opportunists may be found in different corners of society, the preoc cupation for an attractive image is nation-wide. For the opportunist must always be ready to appear in the guise of an honest individual who is always moved by vapid reasons for jumping from one camp to another, from one party to another. He may look impeccable to those who do not know him well enough and who judge him only by his fine words and by the publicity he gets for himself from friendly newspapers. But he may in reality be just a smart hypocrite, a clever charlatan, who has suc ceeded in creating an admirable image of himself. If he heads a gambling club, it does not matter much. But if he is the pastor of a church or the president of a university or the secretary of educa tion or the judge of a court, no words could be strong enough to expose and condemn his pretensions, no matter how subtle and refined they may be for he uses them purposely to give him the/ appearance of greatness. A plagiarist is sometimes mistaken for a competent writer; and by employing ghosts, he man August 1965 7 ages to protect his inferior ability with the better product of his hirelings. In Saturday Review of July 3, 1965, Archibald MacLeish criticizing what he considers the present American policy of indifference to outside opinion on action in Vietnam, wrote: “We consider, not what we have to do, but what the world thinks of what we have to do. And the result is preoccupation with the opinion of others, the kind of preoccupation which the advertising in dustry has exploited with such humiliating conse quences. “There is truth in all this, of course, too much truth for comfort. The exploitation of a decent hu man concern for others to bully men and women into buying mouthwash is one of the least lovely things in American life. And the corruption of lan guage which accompanies it is another. Take, for example, the word image, which was once used a word of art employed with rigorous precision by disciplined poets who knew exactly what they meant by it.. It has now become a trade term of the ad vertising agencies used in the muzzy, fuzzy, girlish sort of way to mean what people think of' you — or more precisely what they will think if you don’t use a particular deodorant or a certain soap or the brand of China policy advocated by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Nobody thinks of a man anymore — only of the image of a man. No body thinks of a policy — only of the image of a policy. Sooner or later no one will think of the Re public either — only of the image of the Republic — how the United States would look in a full-page ad.” — V. G. S. 8 Panorama The Parvenu Society Economic development and social uplift, full em ployment, and high wages do not necessarily indi cate national strength. An affluent society, to use a term popularized by Pfofessor Galbraith, may be facing moral bankruptcy. Wealth in abundance may create an arid sense of decency. The pursuit of prosperity often utilizes ruthless methods and fol lows devious routes. It is not unusual to find indi viduals and communities enjoying a life of ease and pleasure in an atmosphere of moral filth. The evo lution of man and society can only be stunted and repressed when the higher ideals of a reflective life are not actively promoted. The highest goal of a socio-economic program of development is not attainable when the chief in centives it holds out to the people are no more than abundance of rice and meat, a car for every family, a surplus of foreign exchange reserves, an ever mounting gross national product, and an escalating per capita income. Not that these are undesirable matters but alone they cannot fully meet man’s exalted aspirations for a life of dignity and humar service. They are necessary for individual and com munity existence and comfort; but they are not the indispensable ingredients of a noble life and spiri tual freedom. To strive for a high standard of living is a legi timate and worthy ambition. But we need to vi sualize what we are after in its true perspective. We should understand the meaning of a high stand ard of living. It is not attained by simply having an income high enough to enable one to own a flashy car and a luxurious home, to dress elegantly accord ing to the latest style, to have servants at our beck August 1965 9 and call, to take trips abroad, to give sumptuous banquets. Not a few in our country today have succeed ed in accumulating enough money to do all these and more. Most of them have the spirit of the par venu. Their sense of values is vulgar and distort ed. The fact that they are rich has made them feel and act as if wealth gives them blank permission to ignore the law and the rules of good behavior. They feel they could buy their way to high public offices. Quite a number of them have actually done so; and the country has been the worse for it. Ram pant delinquency, both juvenile and adult, has been the consequence. The evils of society have proli ferated. Explosion in vice has followed explosion in population; and so a state of readiness for social disintegration looms perceptively over the Philip pine horizon. The best elements of the nation now face this challenge. The preservation of human va lues is at stake. — V. G. Sinco. ACCIDENT An employer’s assistant — bruised, scratched and battered — arrived at the office one hour late. "I fell out of a window,” he explained. His employer asked: “So did that take an hour?” — Harry Hershfidld. 10 PANORAMA ■ The role of a great Filipino patriot MABINI - FIGHTER FOR FREEDOM Apolinario Mabini, a Fili pino, was the first Oriental to present the bold formula of complete and absolute freedom and independence for his people. For him, inde pendence and freedom had to be absolute in order to be cherished by the people. The Spanish colonial re gime was a period character ized by moral, social, and political degeneration, Mabini’s honesty, decency, dig nity, and delicacy provided contrast to the pervading cor ruption in that period. He was* borri on July 23, 1864, in the barrio of Talaga, mu nicipality of Tanauan, pro vince of Batangas. Although his parents were very poor, Mabini was able to finish his secondary course at the San Juan de Letran through a free scholarship obtained in open competition. After wards, he obtained his Ba chelor of Laws degree at the University of Santo Tomas. It is to be recounted that when Mabini was named Prime Minister of the Aguinaldo Cabinet, he did not collect his salary nor spend a single centavo of the pub lic finances. In his. Deca logue, the Batangas sage em phasized the value of honor which he laid stress on in the first commandment: “First. Love God and your honor above all things; God as fountain of all truth, of all justice, and all activity; honor is the only power that will oblige you to be truth ful, just and laborious.” After his graduation from the University of Santo To mas, Mabini worked as de puty clerk in the court of first instance of Manila. Later on, he practised law. Once, while Mabini was un dergoing treatment for his paralysis in Los Banos, a group of soldiers appeared in his cottage and informed him that they were instruct August 1965 11 ed by General Emilio Aguinaldo to bring him to the General’s office in Kawit, Ca vite. Mabini was surprised, but he obeyed the orders of the commander-in-chief of the Filipino rebels who had just returned from Hong Kong in keeping with the agreement in the Pact of Biak-na-Bato. Mabini was offered the position of adviser by Aguinaldo. The Batangas lawyer at first refused, claiming that he was a very sick man. Aguinaldo, then, appealed to his sense of patriotism and Ma bini could no longer ignore the call of duty. Aguinaldo was advised by Mabini that in order to strengthen his government he had to obtain the support of the people. He suggested that a Congress of delegates from different provinces be sum moned to congregate at the Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan, to ratify the Declar ration of Philippine indepen dence of June 12, 1898, and to support the policies of the new and independent govern ment. Aguinaldo followed Mabini’s suggestion and the delegates of the Malolos Con gress were summoned. Agui naldo and the rest of his ca binet transferred the seat of government to Malolos, Bu lacan. Since his arrival in Malo los, the first problem that Mabini had to tackle was the consolidation of Aguinaldo’s rule. When the latter pro claimed Philippine Indepen dence in Kawit, Cavite, on June 12, 1898, he held con trol only over eight Tagalog provinces, which were Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Morong, and Nueva Ecija. Aguinaldo had no jurisdiction over the rest of the regions of the Phil ippines. At that time, Agui naldo had appointed Mabini Prime Minister, and as such, head of the Council of Mi nisters. Mabini was aware that the three most important regions of the Philippines had also declared their independence from Spain under three dif ferent leaders, separated from and independent of each other. During the convention of the Malolos Congress in the church of Barasoain, Malo los, Bulacan, on September 12 Panorama 29, 1898, the Visayan leaders sent Francisco Villanueva as their delegate to propose to Aguinaldo that the Visayas be joined with Luzon and Mindanao to form a strong and united nation which would be powerful enough to resist the Spanish rulers. Aguinaldo, Mabini and other members of Congress approv ed the proposal of Villanue va, Sr.; and for the first time in Philippine history a single juridical entity, a true Phil ippine nation, was born. Mabini continued to fight for his country's freedom even with the coming of the Americans. He had to be car ried from town to town, from battlefield to battle field in a hammock and he never ceased writing letters to generals and other army officials ' encouraging them not to lose heart in fighting. Afterwards, the Americans offered peace negotiations. Pedro Paterno proposed that the Philippines be made a protectorate of the United States. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera proposed that the Philippines be annexed to the United States. But Apolinario Mabini remained firm in his idea of complete and absolute independence for the Philippines. Mabini was captured by the Americans and brought to Manila where he was im prisoned at Fort Santiago. However, after peace reigned in the Philippines, the Am ericans issued in 1901 a gen eral amnesty for war pri soners, and Mabini regained his freedom. He was help less, sick and penniless. Final ly on May 13, 1903, the Sub lime Paralytic succumbed to cholera. Thus ended the life of a ceaseless fighter for Phil ippine freedom, who in spite of his being a paralytic offer ed his talents and labor for the well-being of his country. — By Francisco Villanueva, Jr.,, Sunday Times Magazine, July 25, 1965. When a man is on his knees proposing to a girl, he might as well say his prayers at the same time. — Chicago Daily Tribune. August 1965 13 ■ The case of the natives of Yap shows that mo rality is sometimes dependent on the customs and conditions of a people. THE CURIOUS SEXUAL ETHICS OF THE YAPS The Yanks on Yap are having a hard time trying to decide what to do about Yap morals. Yap is one of the Pacific islands formerly ruled by Japan and now a United State “trusteeship” supervis ed by the Navy. Young naval officers sta tioned on Yap are having woman trouble. Quite im personally, that is. The ques tion is, should the “scanda lous” ethics of this PolynesianMelanesian people be allow ed to continue under the American flag? Or would it be a mistake to impose American morals upon is landers whose traditions and training make them content with a system which, though it seems outrageous to us, is to them highly moral and proper? Take a concrete case. Should premarital sexual re lations be banned? In Yap, a young man does not think of becoming engaged to a girl until she has demonstrat ed conclusively her ability to bear children. She, for her part, will not enter into a compact with a man until he has proved his power to make her pregnant. Child less marriages, therefore, are avoided. The Yaps believe they have good reason for this custom. Forty per cent of Yap women are unable to bear children. This grim fact pro foundly influences Yap mo rality. The man who wants a family wishes to be sure that his mate can give him children. And she wants to be sure about him. Thus promiscuity before marriage is encouraged. The usual fear of society that such promiscuity will result in a large and uncared14 PANORAMA for illegitimate population does not apply in Yap, for the Yap people have been a dying race. The population has decreased steadily during Spanish, German and Japan ese occupation of the sparse ly inhabited isle. A dying race frantically uses any methods or means which may increase the crop of babies. Sages in Yap coun cil chambers instruct young men that their chief duty is to bring into existence a new generation. Both the Japanese and their German predecessors tried to teach continence. But they were suspected of ulterior motives. “They wanted to see us disappear,” an old chief told me. “They wanted the is lands for themselves. And so they got righteous and talked 'morality’ to us." Yap boys and girls begin testing each other before they have reached their teens. For the health of the girl, it is necessary that there should be a pause in this process while she is making the ad justments of puberty. To protect her during this pe riod the girl is sent to the dopal. The dopal is the Women’s House. It is a retreat, a place of refuge, a sort of prison. The men cannot get in and the women cannot get out. Every girl at the beginning of puberty must remain for six or eight months in the dopal until she has reached full womanhood. During this time she must not stir from the vicinity of the do pal. She is a prisoner and an exile. The dopal is merely a dark, damp, poorly-construct ed thatch hut in some for lorn spot. Since men are not allowed near, it depends for repairs upon the women and suffers in consequence, for the women are not house builders. That is man’s work, as woman’s is taro-potato digging. One dopal I saw was on a boggy islet in the midst of a mangrove swamp. I looked at it across a hundred feet of shallow water in which, at intervals, upright pegs were placed. These were to sup port planks to serve as a bridge. But these planks, like the drawbridge of an August 1965 15 ancient castle, were to be laid down only when some one desired to enter who had a right to do so. The women were supposed to stay in the house. If one came out, perhaps to shout an entreaty that some food be sent, she would hide her face behind a screen made of woven palm leaves. Of course, food could be brought in only by women. When the girl has become a woman the mara-fau (neck lace of lemon hibiscus) is placed oh her neck. It is a black knotted cord which hangs down both in front and behind. This marks her as marriageable and she may now return to mixed society. But she is not done with the dopal. Every month she must flee the male and con fine herself for five days or so in the dopal. Of course, the monthly departure of a married woman disrupts the household. During that pe riod, and then only, custom permits the man to cook his own food. But he may not cook for his children. If they are too young to do for them selves, they must go to the dopal where their mother will prepare their food. The man must never, even during his wife's absence, dig taro potato. Such woman’s work would forever disgrace him. He must have some other woman obtain it for him, or go without potatoes until his wife returns. Engagement rarely takes place until relations have been carried on long enough to prove mutually satisfac tory. Even after engagement the girl takes it for granted that her husband-to-be will continue to associate with her girl-friends, and she sees no cause for jealousy in this fact. She exercises equal free dom. Even after marriage, Yap ideas of courtesy require that she should give herself to other men when they re quest it. The philosophy, right or wrong, behind such practices is that any means of increas ing the population are war ranted. Children born out of wed lock are no problem because there are always homes of re latives or friends open to them. The question of their economic support does not arise in a land where cloth 16 Panorama ing and shelter are simple matters, fruit hangs from the trees, and the sea is full of fish. Thus do circumstances alter morals. How geography affects morals is seen in the change that has come over Yap dur ing the last hundred years. In the old days mating was made difficult by a stiff mar riage ceremony. The island was overpopulated and no more children were wanted; every additional mouth meant one more step toward starvation for the tribe. Therefore the moral leaders of the community, the medi cine men, counseled absti nence. Now the picture has changed and “morality” along with it. Marriage has been simplified and consists merely of taking a girl home. The marriage age is usually fourteen or fifteen. If the child bearing ability of the wife has not been proved in advance, or if it fails after marriage, wives may be exchanged, perma nently or temporarily, among relatives or friends in the hope that offspring will re sult from the new combina tion Polygamy is rare. But a man whose brothers die in herits their wives. Thus if there are five brothers and all die but one, he finds him self with five wives. He is expected to keep up a high degree of pregnancy among them. If he loses power, some or all of them are trans ferred to other men. Union between parent and child is forbidden. Also be tween brother and sister; and it is to prevent such union that the young man is ex pected to live in the All Men House, a sort of men’s club, until marriage. However, there are chiefs who favor consanguineous marriage as an aid in repo pulating the island. They point to its success on Eauripik, a small isolated island east of Yap. There, they say, it worked. So alien is this to most human experience, even among wild tribes, that I reserved a doubt on it until I could consult a recognized authority on these islands, an old and respected trader, During Spanish and German August 1965 17 as well as Japanese times he had lived in the islands and is the only foreigner to have made his home for a year on Eauripik. ‘‘I don’t attempt to explain it,” he said, “but it’s true. The people of Eauripik are usually big, strong, healthy people. They almost never become sick. Yet the entire population of 190 people is one family descended from one couple. All marriages are within the family. There is no mixture from the out side. Foreigners do not visit the island. It is off the usual trade routes. All the people look alike. Closest relatives marry. And yet the popula tion is increasing slightly.” Of course, there are many other factors besides consan guinity to be considered. The hardihood of the origi nal stock, the climate, the food supply, possible social restraints, and especially the absence of the white man whose liquors and diseases have brought an unhappy ending to the idyll of many South Sea peoples ... all these things may have offset the effects of bloodrelation ship. One can understand the disquiet of some chiefs who wonder whether dying Yap is wise in keeping this apparently successful method of increase under taboo. There is also taboo upon color-crossing. Marriage with a white man may be consi dered an honor by a Tahi tian maiden. The Yap maiden would consider it a disgrace. “’Black to blhck, white to white, red to red,” so runs the Yap observed proverb. Although sex taboos are lacking where they are most expected, they appear in odd places. The man who is about to go fishing must have nothing to do with his wife for at least twenty-four hours previous. The man who is going to another island (that is, outside the reef which en closes the Yap group) must not co-habit with his wife or anyone else for a month before he leaves, during his absence, or for a month after his return. Violation of this custom is supposed to bring disease and death. Recently three kings of Yap were taken on a visit to Japan. It was assumed that, in common with other tired 18 PANORAMA businessmen, they might un bend their taboos a bit when away from home. But the gay districts of Tokyo and Osaka were viewed by the three kings much as they might have been examined by a deputation of professors of sociology. They were of academic interest only. Pregnancy is the particular object of anxious supersti tion, because the pregnant woman is the potential savior of the race. Not only is she hedged about with rules and rites, but her husband is also. A neighboring chief re fused our offer of some choice bananas. ‘‘I cannot eat them,” he said. “My wife is going to have a child.” “Will what you eat affect your wife?” “Of course. That is old wisdom among the Kanakas.” I asked what foods were forbidden nourishment to an expectant father. ‘‘He must eat little of any thing. Nothing to make un happy stomach. And no ba nanas. No tortoise. No co conuts that have fallen from the tree. And if he, or wife, eats fish1 of many colors, very bad! Baby will be spotted, many colors.” If the child is stillborn, it is the man’s fault. He has somehow broken the routine prescribed for him. He is severely censured, perhaps before the council, for Yap cannot afford to lose babies. There is no prostitution among the Kanakas of Yap. They are scandalized by the practice in the “civilized” world. They say that such things should be matters of free will, not compulsion. The future of Yap morality is in doubt. Will contact with foreign ways bring in “civilized” prostitution? Or will the schools and hospitals of the Navy and the churches of missionaries succeed in tightening up the principles of family morality? Should strict regulations governing domestic affairs be establish ed and enforced? So far the Navy boys have been inclined to take a leaf from the book of other rulers in the South Seas far more experienced than the Ameri cans. It has been the practice of the British, Dutch, and French not to interfere too drastically with native ways. August 1965 19 Where sudden changes in na tive mores have been impos ed the result has too often been the destruction of the native people. There is reason to believe that the situation on Yap will change as time goes on. The education and health programs of the Navy are having their effect. Infant mortality is decreasing and adults live to a greater age. The result is that the popu lation, for the first time in half a century, is growing. If this continues, the wise men of the tribes may change their counsel. In the meantime, this cu rious example of the effect of geography and population upon morals is a phenome non that can be studied to advantage by sociologists, theologians and others con cerned with the motivations of human behavior. — By Willard Price, from Every body’s Digest. WEDDING GIFT The story is being told of a harassed husband how never seemed to be able to please his complain ing wife. On their wedding anniversary she bought him two ties, one green, the other yellow. He thank ed her profusely, but she sighed: “Well, I guess you don’t like my gift.” . . “But, darling, I do. I’m mad about them. As a matter of fact, I’ll prove it to you right now.” He removed the tie he was wearing, put on the yelloyr tie and beamed: “There.’* His wife looked at him sadly and sighed: “Don’t like the green, eh?” — Leonard Lyons. 20 Panorama ■ As the bank is entrusted to hold' and invest your money, it is necessary for you to know well what the bank really is. WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BANKS What is the most impor tant service a bank offers? A bank will safeguard your valuables and do a good bit of your personal bookkeep ing. It will pay interest on your money when you are in the chips and lend you some when you aren’t — maybe. It will pay bills for you and give you a receipt that will stand up in court. It will even help you to buy a house or a car if you aren’t trying to do it on a shoestring. All those services are good but there is another that is even better. Like a family doctor or family lawyer, a bank that has known you a good many years will backstop you in an emergency. It will give you advice on a great variety of financial problems — advice that may not be pleasant but probably will be sound and therefore valuable. The choice of bank, there fore, involves more than walking into the one on the nearest corner. Go into the matter a little more careful ly. If you have never had relations with a bank, get a suggestion from a business man you trust. If you are moving to a new town, get your old banker to recom mend a new bank. A bank is not required by law to accept your account. You may be surprised to find that an old, established bank is pretty exclusive and tends to act like a gentleman’s club. It may insist that you be introduced by a depositor or give several references If this happens, don’t walk off in a huff. There is na turally a close-knit relation ship between a good bank and its customers. So the bank wants to be pretty care ful about people it takes in August 1965 21 — people it may be lending to at some time in the future. Loans are the principal business of a commercial bank. The bulk of a bank’s loans are made to business men, but a great many loans are also made to non-business customers. When you ask for a loan, the bank must make two de cisions — one, are you gen erally a good credit risk, and two, are you going to use the money intelligently so that you probably will be able to pay it back? Since you are asking the bank to let you use the other depositors’ mo ney, don’t be surprised when the bank goes pretty tho roughly into both of those questions. If the bank does not know you well, it will ask some very searching questions about your private affairs. If you have been going se renely along thinking that the amount of your salary, the value of your house, the church and social clubs you belong to were your own pri vate business, get ready to change your mind when you want a loan. The bank will keep the information confi dential. And remember, it is asking the same questions of other customers who want to borrow the money you have on deposit. A bank is a mighty good place to borrow money for this reason: It lends money largely to a select clientele, its customers The amount lost in bad loans is small. Therefore, a good bank does not have to charge high in terest rates to cover large ex pected losses. Other lending agencies that deal with the general public do expect heavy losses and must charge correspondingly high interest rates. A checking account, the most common system of de positing and withdrawing money, is an amazing service when you think about it. If you have such an account, the bank will keep your mo ney safe and pay it to you without a moment’s advance notice. At your direction it will cash a check for one of your out-of-town friends even if he banks in Alaska. If you pay most of your bills by check, the banks au tomatically does most of your 22 Panorama personal bookkeeping and gives you a permanent record. Before you open a check ing account, the bank ob viously will insist on absolute identification or proof that you are you. This means giving references which the bank will check and filling out identification and signa ture cards. A joint account can be tricky. You should under stand its various forms. In one kind, both parties must sign every check. This is a useful device for the man whose wife has only a fuzzy idea of the value of money. In a survivorship account each party may sign checks independently of the other. If the husband should die, the wife could still cash checks without waiting for the will to be probated. Another type of joint ac count is one in which, if one party dies, 50 per cent of the account is sealed until the state is settled. To open a survivorship ac count both husband and wife must appear at the bank in person. This sometimes ir ritates a husband, but the bank wants to be sure that each party fully understands the privileges of the other. The deposit slip is a ne cessary record to keep track of each check or cash sum that goes into your account. When filling out a deposit slip, describe checks merely by writing down the transit number of the bank on which the check^is drawn. This transit number is a hyphenated number appear ing somewhere on the. face of the check, usually the upper right-hand corner. The first part of the transit number identifies the city or state in which the bank is located and the second part identi fies the bank itself. Thus in the number 50-100, 50 stands for the state of New York and 100 for the First Na tional Bank, Binghamton. Under the transit number is a line and below the line another number — a “rout ing” code — which may be omitted on the deposit slip. When you deposit cash to your account, it becomes available to you at once and you can begin writing checks on it immediately. But when you deposit checks written on other banks, the money is not immediately August 1965 23 available. Thus if you depo sit a $100 check made out to you on another bank, say the XYZ Trust Co., you cannot begin to use that money un til your bank has obtained the $100 from the XYZ Trust Co., and has put it in your account. If the XYZ Trust Co. is in your own town, representa tives from it and all the other banks in the city meet every day, usually around 10 A savings account, unlike a checking account, is a time deposit and the bank can make you wait 30 days or more (depending on the bank's rules) before giving you all your money. This notice period is not generally enforced, but it could be in a depression. A safety-deposit box, when rented by husband and wife together, may be closed to one party if the other dies. Read the contract before you sign. You get two keys to your safe-deposit box and it is a good idea to keep them in separate places. If you lose both, the box must be forced open. The trust department of a bank is in the business simply of being trusted by people and corporations. A man often draws his will so that his bank will be execu tor of his estate, thus insur ing that his wife will get ex pert advice. In large banks the trust department performs so many services for individuals and corporations that it may handle more assets than all other departments. There are many other ser vices your bank will provide. It will dock your checking account and buy you a sav ings bond each month. It will sell you traveler’s checks, good almost anywhere in the world. It will collect notes that people owe you. All these services you can get from almost any bank. But there is one service, per haps more valuable than any other, that can be provided only by your own bank. That is sound financial advice and sound financial help when needed. To get it, look ahead. Pick out a good bank at .the start, then stick with it. 24 Panorama Show that you are financially responsible. Repay loans on time. Keep a respectable balance in your checking ac count. Then make it a point to get to know someone in bank. It may take years, but someday perhaps the clerks won’t appear as gimlet-eyed as you thought at first. You may even get a smile from a vice president. When that happens, you will have ac quired an asset well worth having. You will be a valued customer of a good bank. — From The Kiplinger Maga zine. WHISKY FOR THE BLIND A Scottish seaman visiting Helsinki bought a bottle of “real Scotch” whisky. He was about to drink some when a Finnish friend warned him it was probably made of wood alcohol. One sniff con vinced the friend, who told the Scotsman, “Lucky you met me — this stuff would have made you blind,” and started to throw the bottle away. “Stop,” the Scotsman yelled. “Stop, mon, save it — I have a blind brother in Glasglow.” — Herman Wenige. August 1965 25 ■ To attain happiness one should set aside envy and vanity and should rather improve his own talents without comparing himself with others. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS Ambition is not wrong. Success is not undesirable. Possessions are not evil in themselves. But^the idolatry of these things transforms them into poison for the soul. What is wrong today is that men and women are so consumed with the idols of power and money that there is a vacuum left in their souls — no room for ideas and ideals, for the things that really make us human. We have come to compete in a marathon race which brings with it neither peace nor poise but ragged nerves, elevated blood pressures, ul cerated stomachs, insecurityhaunted spirits. To treat this problem, we must understand it. Why is it that so many men and women seem never satisfied with what they have, even though they have enough for lifetime comfort and luxury? The answer is to be found in two places — in some un conscious childhood compul sion or some very conscious competitive comparativeness which ruins inner serenity. Some people think they are competing with their nextdoor neighbor or their busi ness rival, but that is just an illusion. They are really going through life trying to get even with an older or a stronger brother or some re lative to whom they felt in ferior in childhood. There are many actually successful people always eaten away by a vague envy, or an insecure restlessness, driving them on with insa tiable ambition. Why? They do not realize it, but their turbulent and anxious com petitiveness proves, on ana lysis, to be merely a battle with the long-forgotten ghosts of childhood. They are all the time trying to catch up with an older brother or a seemingly omnipotent father. These people sometimes kill themselves to achieve 26 Panorama money and success, not £01 their own sake, but as wea pons of vengeance against those who made them feel weak once upon a time. Mo ney more often than we suspect is the sword and the weapon with which to pay off old scores. The first sense of perspec tive that can come will come if we learn that the excessive ambition, with which we make ourselves unhappy, oftentimes is a needless rem nant from childhood. We no longer have to prove our selves, as we once did, in competition with members of our family circle in child hood. We can come to real ize that many of our goals are merely borrowed goals — then the hectic pursuit for financial' dominance can give way to a wise quest for eco nomic security as one of the valid aims of life. We must also rid ourselves of that competitive compari son which is present in every community in America to day. How many torment themselves and their families because they constantly mea sure themselves by the yard sticks of others! A man may have a home, possessions, a charming fa mily, and yet find all these things ashy to his taste be cause he has been outstripped in the marathon race by some other runners to the golden tape line. It isn’t that he does not possess enough for his walits, but that others possess more. It is the “more” that haunts him,, makes him deprecate himself and deva lue his real achievements. This is the cancer eating away both at Jewish and Christian serenity and hu man perspective. What, then, should we do in order to gain a new perspective in this material istic era? We should define success in wiser terms. Everyone needs status. Everyone requires security. The fulfillment of ambition is good if it is an ambition that does not destroy us or our neighbors. There has to come a time when a man or a woman says: “I am no longer going to be interested in how much power or wealth another man or wo man possesses so long as I can attain sufficient for the dignity and security of my August 1965 37 family and myself. I am go ing to break through this vi cious circle which always asks the question of life in a comparative degree: “ ‘who is bigger’, ‘who is richer’, ‘who has the most?’ ” “I am going to set my goals for myself rather than bor row them from others. I will strive to achieve a ma ture attitude to success which is ambition for growth and accomplishment — real ac complishment rather than spurious, decorative, and vanity-filled acquisition. “I refuse any longer to destroy my peace of mind by striving after wind, and I will judge myself in the scale of goodness and culture as well as in the balance of sil ver and gold.*’ Such a1 man is on the road to true success. He is like the poet who does not eat himself to pieces because his sonnet is not equal to that of Shakespeare. He is like the musician who does not always despise his little fugue because it lacks the filigree magic of Mozart. He is like the poet or mu sician whtT learns to accept himself and to be happy with his own growth from year to year rather than paralyze his talented ear or his gifted pen by numbing contrast with the giants and the im mortals. The man or woman who declares his declaration of in dependence from servitude to his neighbors’ standards and his society’s false values is on the. road to inner peace and character. — By Dr. Joshua Loth Liebman* from an address in CBS. MONEY GAB Some candidates have the gift of gab — but they know money talks, better. 28 PANORAMA ■ The story of the Japanese leaders who commanded the military forces of Japan in the last World War. THE JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS A total of 4,855 Japanese were tried for war crimes in trials held in Japan and va rious areas of Asia where Japanese forces were strand ed at the time of their sur render after their defeat in the second World War. Of these, 927 were sen tenced to death, 399 received life terms, 2,889 lesser prison terms, and 64 were acquitted. The “25 A” class suspects, including Tojo and his exe cuted colleagues, went before the International Tribunal in Tokyo. U.S. Military Coprts in Japan tried 1,344. Most of the rest stood trial before allied military courts outside Japan. The Nether lands tried 995, Britain 865, Australia 777, China 517, France 181, and the Philip pines, 151. Pardons and amnesties steadily reduced the number imprisoned. The Japanese Government was able to an nounce on Dec. 30, 1958 that the last war criminal had been freed, except for a handful still in Communist Chinese jails. The last known Japanese held by Communist China was repa triated in April, 1964. What are Japan’s former war criminals doing today, these men convicted of the most inhuman acts but given a new lease on life by the compassion of their former enemies? They have melted into anomymity. As it was put by an official of the Welfare Ministry charged with keep ing war criminals records: “After they’re released, there’s no reason for us to keep track of them anymore.” But the families of the 1,001 men who died — 927 by execution and 74 from ilb ness in prison — formed an association called the White Chrysanthemum Society that meets about once a year. It is headed by Mrs. Hisako August 1965 29 Yamashita, widow of General Omoyuki Yamashita, known as the “Tiger of Malaya” who conquered Singapore and was tried and executed after the war in the Philip pines. Though most have slipped back unnoticed into the stream of Japanese society, survivors among the “A” Class group have not entire ly been abl.e to escape the public glare. And, indeed, two of them succeeded in making remarkable come backs into the top echelons of Government. Mamoru Shigemitsu, who was Foreign Minister when he signed the surrender for Japan aboard the battleship Missouri in 1945, received a 12-year prison term, the lightest of the sentences met ed out to the 25 Internation al Tribunal Defendants. Pardoned with the signing of the Peace Treaty in 1951, Shigemitsu was elected to the House of Representatives and was again Foreign Mi nister at the time of his death in 1954. Okinori Kaya, a wartime Finance Minister, got 20 years, was released in 1951 and returned to politics, has a major influence in the rul ing Liberal-Democratic Par ty. He topped his comeback by serving as Justice Minis ter, a post he resigned in 1964. Eight of the 25 *‘A” Class men still live today, and ex cept for Kaya, who himself has remained out of the poli tical limelight since resign ing as Justice Minister, they lead quiet, secluded lives. There is 88-year-old Sadao Araki, the crusty, musta chioed ex-general who as wartime Education Minister indoctrinated Japan’s youth in the superiority of the Japanese race. Former Vice-Admiral Takasumi Oka, was chief of the Naval Affairs Bureau. He was paroled out of Sugamo in 1954 along with Araki. Former Admiral Shigetaro Shimada was one of Tojo’s navy ministers and later chief of the Navy General Staff. Koichi Kido who, as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the Emperor’s chief advisor, was one of wartime Japan’s most powerful men. Paroled in 1956. He is now 76. 30 Panorama Another survivor is Kenryo Sato, former commander of the 37th Division and one of Tojo’s top military planners. Sato is 70. Teiichi Suzuki, now 77, was a general who as direc tor of the Planning Board helped map Japan’s wartime policies. Suzuki was released in 1956. Hiroshi Oshima, now 79, was instrumental in bring ing about the Tripartite Axis Alliance. Another big name still liv ing is Henry Pu Yi, puppet Emperor of Japanese-control led Manchuria. Captured by the Russians and turned over to the Communist Chi nese who imprisoned him, Pu Yi was pardoned in 1959 “for having repented and ac knowledged his crimes” so Peking sam, and is now re ported working in a botani cal garden in the Communist Chinese capital. — Kenneth Ishii (AP), condensed from Variety. PEANUT BUTTER 1st student (throwing sandwich emphatically on the floor): “Peanut butter again today. All three of my sandwiches are peanut butter again today. Yesterday they were all peanut butter, the day before, last week, that’s all I had was peanut butter sandwiches in my lunch; I hate peanut butter.” 2nd student: “What’s the matter with your wife, won’t she fix your lunch the way you want it?” Avgust 1965 31 ■ To avoid Communism one should understand its basic principles and ideals rather than make a wholesale condemnation of entire groups who are under public suspicion. HOW TO TELL A COMMUNIST It is extremely difficult to answer the broad ques tion: what is communism? Communism may refer to a political party which in this country is tiny and despised. It may refer to a set of prin ciples, which have had a thousand different exponents from the days of the Essenes to those of the Cominform. It may refer to a general movement, which at various times has embraced very di verse sects. In 1918-20, Russian com munism was a new force in the world, and being new, untested by realities, it had a natural appeal. Since it had replaced Czarist Russia, it might be represented as a liberating force. To be sure, much was heard even then of the crimes and op pressions of the Bolsheviks. They might be excused or palliated, however, as a na tural reaction against the old autocracy or as precautionary in character. For some years after 1918, communism naturally made a strong appeal to young idealists in particular; to youths who believed that the world could be regenerated in happier form. A believer in Russian communism can take no shel ter behind hazy idealism. He is a believer in a police state of the most ruthless character, with a system of secret arrests, dictated con victions, purges and concen tration camps. It is vital in the present situation for us to under stand this. And to under stand it we must have a clear perception of the great dif ference between the theories held by the liberal on the one side, and the Communist on the other. True liberals of all shades of opinion, including ortho 32 Panorama dox Socialist, agree to the fundamental principle that majority rule shall be loyal ly accepted so long as it res pects the basic rights of minorities. The Communist, however, rejects this principle. His party doctrine is Communist rule or general ruin. To him an opposition victory at the polls is simply the signal for corispiracy, sabotage, and secret subversion. As a mi nority, the Communists give no deference to any majority; they reject all the rules of the democratic game; they concoct plots, infiltrate at all weak points, cripple every machine they can touch, and stand ready at any moment to seize power by force. The problem of coping with such elements is there fore simplified. We are not concerned with a movement; we are concerned with a mi litant minority, alien in alle giance. Unceasing vigilance is essential and in certain areas of government activity such as the armed services, State Department, and the agencies concerned with ato mic energy, it is necessary to insist on a security check. But precautions regarding these limited sectors of na tional activity are not diffi cult to take; the records, as sociations and expressed ideas of employes or prospective employes can readily be tested. If we are to have a care ful policing of governmental agencies — and it is certain that those offices and depart ments which deal with na tional security must be po liced — we should at least have the work done with a careful regard to all parts of our Bill of Rights. If we grasp these facts, it is easier to approach the question: how can we deal with the dangerous Commu nists without hurting useful radicals and liberals? It is easier to answer because we can approach it without any sense of panic. One reason why our internal situation is so healthy is that radicals and liberals have been allow ed free scope for expressing their opinions; another rea son is that from 1929 on ward many of their more August 1965 33 valuable ideas were adopted and applied. Repressive activities always defeat their own end. They arouse widespread antago nism, father the extremist doctrines at which they are aimed, and create martyrs and a martyrology — the most powerful known agen cies of propagandism. We need not worry about the Socialist; they are the fiercest opponents of Soviet ideas. We need not worry about the Utopian Commu nists; they can’t but detest the Russian perversion of their ideals. We need not worry about liberals, who are the bulwark of our own system. Repression is an indispen sable part of the Soviet regime; it is not needed in the United States, and is hostile to every American tradition. Precautions against treason we may well take, and we can always punish individual violations of our statutes; but beyond that no arm of the government can afford to go. We may well recall the words of Charles E. Hughes at a time when a sweeping attempt to deny radicals their rights simply because they were radical had carried away the New York Assem bly: ‘‘I count it a most serious mistake to proceed, not against individuals charged with violation of the law, but against masses of our citi zens combined for political action, by denying them the only resource of peaceful government; that is, action by the ballot box and through duly elected repre sentatives in legislative bo dies.” If we restrict the security check to its proper and very narrow areas, and elsewhere guarantee free opinion, free speech, and a free vote, we are safe. — By Allan Nevins, condensed from the New York Times Magazine. In some states it is a crime for a wife to ran sack her husband’s pocket. In my state it is merely a waste of time. — V. N. Fair. 34 PANORAMA ■ The accidental discovery of a common drug which everybody now uses. ASPIRIN: KING OF DRUGS We think of “miracle” drugs in terms of spectacu lar achievements: a life snatched back by penicillin; streptomycin curing infec tious diseases against which medical science was helpless; Aureomycin and Chloromy cetin pulling the fangs of an cient killers. Magnificent though these accomplishments are, the average individual might go through life without requir ing the wonder working of these drugs. But hardly a family goes a week without tapping ,the aspirin bottle. This humble stand-by on the bathroom shelf is ready when children get leg aches in the middle of the night — such aches used to be known as “growing pain6.” Aspirin tides over sister’s toothache until she can get to the dentist; and is taken freely — and safely — when any member of the family gets a cold, flu, or headache. All evidence, in fact, indi cates that it won’t cure any thing. But it offers merciful relief foi*a thousand aches and pains, and thus can pro bably make a stronger claim than any other drug for be ing the miracle drug su preme! For very good reasons, it is the most widely used of all drugs — with a personality of its own and a record un matched elsewhere. It is miraculously cheap and mira culously safe — so nontoxic that it may be taken without medical supervision. Aspirin even has its own built-in alarm system — ears almost always ring before serious trouble from overdosage dev elops. By now, everyone is fami liar with the names of such medical heroes as Jenner, Pasteur, Ehrlich, and Fle ming. Not one in a million could name the discoverers of aspirin. August 1965 35 The story begins at the middle of the last century. At the time, the best way for a chemist to make a name for himself was to discover as many new chemical com pounds as possible. It made no difference whether uses were found for them. Thus, at the end of this period, sulfa was discovered — and allowed to lie idle for decades. In 1853 a German chemiist named von Gerhardt found acetylsalicylic acid — later to be christened aspirin. Until 1899, it remained a useless laboratory curiosity. Then a chemist working for Friedrich Bayer & Company, in Elberfeld, Germany, had a problem. Felix Hoffman’s father suffered from rheuma toid arthritis and couldn’t stand prolonged treatment with salicylate drugs. Would son Felix look around the laboratory for some new sa licylate which might ease his pains? Hoffman asked the help of Heinrich Dreser, head of Bayer’s drug research. With a fortunate hunch, they in vestigated von Gerhardt’s forgotten white powder. They subjected it to all sorts of tests, and finally it looked safe enough to try on old man Hoffman’s rheumatism. It would be stretching the facts to report that he did a jig after swallowing some of the powder. Still, he did feel better. Hoffman and Dreser began to pass their white powder to other peo ple around Elberfeld, and one fact kept cropping up. If a person taking the drug happened to have a headache, the headache dis appeared! Maybe they had an important discovery on their hands! Their white powder at least deserved a name, and tentatively they hit on acetylspiric acid. They trimmed this down further to make the word aspirin — which was pronounceable in all lan guages. Aspirin got off to a slow start. As they should with any new drug, physicians re garded it with suspicion. They wondered what ill ef fects it might have on kid neys, liver, heart, brain. Happily, no ill effects show ed up. They wanted to find whe ther aspirin really relieved 36 PANORAMA pain — or whether people just imagined it. For this job, they tested volunteers to see how much electric current it took to cause pain when applied to teeth. Then they dosed the subjects with aspirin — and tried again. This time, it took consider ably more current to make teeth tingle. Gradually, Bayer started to fill prescriptions for the paper-wrapped white powder, but real mass production didn’t come until 1915 when aspirin first appeared as the now-familiar white tablet. Then scores of other manu facturers in many countries began producing it. Aspirin was a curious drug. It didn’t cure disease, but it erased symptoms of a vast range of illnesses. It drove fever down, dulled pain, stopped headache. There were other curious things about aspirin. Even now, no one knows how it works. And no one knows why it has no effect on nor mal body temperature, but has the ability to reduce fe ver. Apparently, aspirin has some effect on the heat cen ter of the brain — the body’s thermostat. But as yet no one knows its mechanics of action. Because of the drug’s great safety, most suicide attempts fail. With massive doses, most people become horrid ly ill. Physicians wash out their stomachs and they sur vive. One man was thus sav ed after taking 300 pills. It can be used as a gar gle for sore throats, as a paste to relieve soreness from ill-fitting dental plates, as a pill to reduce pain from rheumatism, twisted backs, and other muscular ailments. Id is the most widely used remedy for one of the most common of all human ma ladies — headache. By using thousands of tons of the drug, the public has given a convincing demons tration of its great safety. This isn’t to advise anyone to take large doses on a con tinuous basis — a procedure which might mask symptoms of serious diseases. But used as its makers intend that it should be used, aspirin is in a class by itself — the most versatile drug in the world. — by J. D. Ratcliff from Coronet. August 1965 37 ■ Kennedy did not expect Johnson to accept the post of Vice-President. HOW JOHNSON WAS NOMINATED VICE-PRESIDENT When John F. Kennedy offered the 1960 vice pres idential nomination to Lyn don B. Johnson, he was all but convinced that Johnson would not accept, according to historian Arthur M. Schle singer Jr. Schlesinger’s version of the apparently confused events leading to Johnson’s vice presidential nomination are presented in the historian’s book, “A Thousand Days,” to be published in November. According to Schlesinger, a renowned professor of his tory at Harvard before he took a leave of absence to serve Kennedy as special as sistant to the President, Ken nedy decided to offer John son, then the Senate majority leader, the vice presidential nomination a few hours after his own nomination at the head of the Democratic tic ket. "He decided to do this,” Schlesinger writes, ‘‘because he thought it imperative to restore relations with the Senate leader. News of this offer, Kennedy hoped, would reunite the Democrats, please the older generation of pro fessionals, improve the tic ket’s chances in the south and lay the basis for future collaboration with Johnson. He was certain that there was practically no chance that Johnson would accept.” According to Schlesinger, Kennedy, who referred to Johnson as "the riverboat gambler” in the days preced ing the 1960 Democratic con vention, then made the offer to Johnson whose quick ac ceptance was greeted by Ken nedy with "astonishment” and “considerable baffle ment.” ‘‘You just won’t believe it.” Schlesinger quotes Kennedy as saying to associates. "He wants it!” 38 PANORAMA Schlesinger added: ‘“I didn’t offer the vice presiden cy to him,’ Kennedy told a friend later, ‘I just held it out like this’ — here he simu lated taking an object out of his pocket and holding it close to his body — ‘and he grabbed it’”. Other high points of the Schlesinger book: — On Richard Nixon, Ken nedy’s 1960 opponent: “Ken nedy considered there was no one he resembled less than Nixon. He scorned the way Nixon opened his speeches with the ‘Pat and I greeting. ‘He has no taste,’ Kennedy said with contempt.” — On former President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I could understand it if he played golf all the time with old army friends, but no man is less loyal to his old friends than Eisenhower. He is a terribly cold man. All his golfing pals are rich men he has met since 1945,” Kennedy is quoted as saying. — On Vice President Hu bert Humphrey in the days when they were battling for the Democratic presidential nomination: “Hubert is too intense for the present mood of the people. What they want today is a more boring, monotonous personality — like me.” — Kennedy telling a friend of his plan to name his bro ther as attorney general: “Well, I think I’ll open the front door of the George town house some morning about 2 a.m., look up and down the street and if there’s no one there, I’ll whisper, ‘It’s Bobby.” The late President’s bro ther, now US senator from New York, also is cited for trying to block Johnson’s no mination to the second place on the ticket — a similar ac count of which appears in Theodore H. White’s book, “The Making of the Pres ident — 1964.” In Schlesinger’s account, Robert Kennedy went to Johnson’s hotel suite shortly after his brother had offer ed him the vice presidential nomination and said that his brother "would fully under stand” if Johnson wanted to avoid a floor fight against his selection. If that were the case, (John) Kennedy would wish to make Johnson August 1965 39 chairman of the Democratic national committee. Schlesinger writes: “John son said with great and mournful emotion, ‘I want to be vice president and, if the candidate will have me, I’ll join with him in making a fight for it.’ ” Later, when it became clear that Johnson was to be vice presidential nominee, Schlesinger writes: “Bobby leaned his head against the wall and said . . . ‘My God, this wouldn’t have happened except that we were all too tired last night.”’ — Based on Saturday Review and Newsweek. ROOMER The bachelor roomer called on his girl every night. Finally, the landlady asked him why he didn’t marry. He’d evidently given it a lot of thought, because he replied instantly: “Why, if I married her, where would I go every night? I’d be stuck at home!” — Successful Farming. 40 PANORAMA ■ TUs is the story of the sacrifices of a Filipino wpman who risked her life and possessions to help the revolution against Spanish rule in the Philip pines. THE KATIPUNAN AND TANDANG SORA By 1896 the Katipunan counted a membership o£ some thirty thousand men from various parts of the Tagalog region. Up to the outbreak of the struggle, the Spanish colonial authorities were still unaware of the for midable number of recruits to the Katipunan. They were of the belief that if an uprising of any sort were to break out, it could easily and immediately be quelled, as was done so many times in the past. Bonifacio had taken the greatest precaution to admit into the Katipunan only the men whose courage and lo yalty to the cause of inde pendence had been put to a rigorous test. The Revolu tionary Society followed a rigid pattern in its recruit ment procedure in order to safeguard itself from untime ly discovery by the Spaniards. Recruits had to submit themselves to a series of or deals before they could be come privy to the platform of the Katipunan. Their background, such as family ties, political ideology and educational orientation were scrutinized. They were given stern warning that death was the punishment meted out to traitors. After undergoing the rigid screening, they were put to several tests of valor. Blindfolded, a recruit was led inside a dimly lighted room, eerie in atmosphere. The cover over his eyes re moved, he was made to read aloud the warning inscribed in big, bold letters on the walls of the room: “If you possess strength and bravery, you may pro ceed. “If curiosity has brought you here, depart! August 1965 41 “If you have no control over your bad inclinations, be gone! The doors of the Most Exalted and Most Hon orable Katipunan of the Sons of the Country are forever closed to you.” The recruit then had to take a piece of paper lying on top of a table on which were also found a skull, a re volver and a bolo. He had to read aloud the following questions. “What was the state of af fairs in our country prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores? “What is its present state of affairs? “What will be its future state of affairs?" Previously coached by his Katipunero sponsor, the re cruit had to answer the above questions' in the following manner, as otherwise he would be rejected from mem bership: To the first, he had to an swer that prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, the inha bitants of the country were living in peace and pros perity, carrying on trade re lations with neighboring Asian countries. To the second, he had to reply that the present state of affairs was most deplorable since the Spaniards oppressed and exploited the natives, whom they called “indios,” for their selfish interests. And to the third, he had to say that such a lamentable condition existing in his country could be remedied only by means of an armed rebellion because all pleas for reforms have been rejected by Spain. If the recruit had satisfac torily passed through these preliminary tests, he was fur ther subjected to other or deals in order to test his mo ral and physical endurance, as for instance, blindfolded, his face would be heated be fore a lighted fire. If he showed the least trace of co wardice, he was rejected out right. In mid-August of 1896 the Katipunan which was in its fourth year of existence had its first traitor in the person of Teodoro Patino, a Kati punero of some four months. Hoping perhaps to receive a fat reward from the colonial authorities, Patino revealed to the Spanish curate of Ton42 PANORAMA do that there were around 1,500 armed "indios” in San Mateo poised to attack the Spanish garrison and that the proof of the existence of a revolutionary association could be found in the print ing shop of the "Diario de Manila” where some Katipu nan documents were kept. On that same night of Aug ust 19, a brief search inside the printing establishment led to the discovery by the Tondo curate of the "proof” mentioned by the traitor Patino. Thenceforth the arm of Spanish law moved with re lentless fury. Heavily armed Spanish guards knocked on doors of houses, barged in and arrested anyone whom they suspected of being either an affiliate or a sympathizer of the Katipunan. In the midst of terror and chaos Bonifacio and his men trans ferred the revolutionary headquarters to Caloocan. Katipunero Juan Ramos had offered to Bonifacio the re fuge of his mother’s habita tion in that town some time before. Melchora Aquino was the eighty-four-year-old widow of the one-time cabeza de barangay Fulgencio Ramos. She owned a sizeable tract of land in Caloocan where her ten ants cultivated rice and su garcane and where she kept herself busy at times by look ing after her large poultry and dairy ranch. Melchora was a well-beloved person in her neighborhood. She was slow to anger, quick to sym pathize with the less fortu nate of her countrymen and unselfishly gave financial aid to poor people who approach ed her. The old lady knew that she was imperiling her own life by giving shelter to Bo nifacio and the Katipuneros, but her patriotism enabled her to rise above all fear. She extended to the revolu tionists every possible assis tance within her command, placing at their disposal the rooms in the house and the numerous barns in her plan tation. She supplied them with foodstuffs, unmindful of the great trouble and ex penses incurred. On the eve of the launch ing of the Revolution, Boni facio expressed his fears for her safety. “Grandmother,” he told Melchora, "if the Guardia Civil finds out how August 1965 43 you have helped us, you would surely be arrested and —Bonifacio stopped abrupt ly. He could not go on and say that he feared she might be physically tortured by the Guardia Civil — and killed. They were words too painful to pronounce. But the old woman must have divined his thoughts. ‘‘Son,” answered the brave and noble lady, “I have but a short while to live and I wish to spend it in the ser vice of my oppressed coun try.” Her answer touched Boni facio. Between these two grew a genuine affection, born of rebellion and bound by common cause and com mon peril. A few days after the Kati punan had passed through the dark night of betrayal, Bonifacio called an emer gency meeting of all Katipuneros in and around Caloocan at the estate of Melchora Aquino. More than one thousand Katipuneros arriv ed at the place. Bonifacio, rising to heights of eloquence, delivered an impassioned speech announcing that the hour had struck when history clamored for a com plete severance of ties be tween their oppressed country and Imperial Spain. ‘7 have the unshakable faith that this Revolution shall bring about the libera tion of our beloved Mother land from the oppressive rule of Spain. But at the same time I also realize that we, who are all gathered here, men and women alike, will not live to see the eman cipation of our unfortunate country. For in launching the Revolution, we also sacri fice our own lives in the field of battle. We are there fore sowing the seeds of free dom not so much for our own selves as for our child ren and their descendants, so that one day they may reap the harvest. On to battle then! On to victory! God shall not forsake our coun try!” Before the huge assembly, Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto brought out their cedulas, symbol of Philippine vassa lage to the Spanish crown, and tore these to pieces. The rest did likewise and cried out: “Long live the inde pendence of our Mother land!”* 44 PANORAMA In the midst of the plamor that arose, Bonifacio sought out Melchora Aquino whom he found to be in the com pany of her daughter. Tears fell from the eyes of the old woman. At that very mo ment she was the symbol of the unhappy Philippines. Bonifacio clasped her hand. It was a moment of meaning ful silence. Steeped in emo tion neither could speak a word. But how much there was to tell each other! Jacinto’s arrival broke up the scene. “Don Andres!” said the youth excitedly. “Our vigilance committee has confirmed reports that the Spanish sentries have lo cated our whereabouts!” Bonifacio instinctively looked at Melchora. He held both her hands tightly, as if that were the last time he would ever see her. “Grand mother,” he addressed the old woman slowly and pain fully, “you are no longer safe here. At any hour now the Spaniards may open fire at this place. I shall have my men find out if the roads leading to Novaliches are still clear. If so, you must escape to that place with your family. My men shall accompany you. Travel in disguise. The rest of us shall remain to defend this place. Melchora, her family and their rebel escorts disguised themselves as peddlers on their way to Novaliches. But on the 29th of August, the Guardia Civil caught up with them at Pasong Putik in the barrio of Santa Monica. They were detained in the house of the local cabeza de barangay and the next day Melchora and her Katipunero companions were impri soned in the Bilibid com pound of Manila. News of Melchora’s cap ture reached Bonifacio in the battlefield of San Juan del Monte. Bleeding from a wound inflicted by a bullet on his left thigh, Bonifacio felt a sudden spasm of grief. The old defenseless woman captured! Held prisoner at the mercy of merciless civil guards! But at the moment there was no time for pro longed foreboding as enemy bullets whistled through the air. After three days in prison, Melchora was deported along August 1965 45 with other Katipuneros to the island of Guam by decree of Governor-General Ramon Blanco. How swiftly the arm of Spanish law moved! Many were seized with pity when they saw the frail figure of an eighty-four-yearold woman board the vessel that was to take her far away from her native soil, torn away from her loved ones in the declining years of her life. Melchora accepted her fate as calmly as was humanly possible. The emotions with in her were too profound for tears. She had no regrets, however. She remembered the day that she told Boni facio “I have but a short while to live and I wish to spend it in the service of my oppressed country.” The children, relatives and sympathizers of the old wo man could do nothing by way of rescuing her. Imperial Spain was, as ever, the victor. — By Carmencita H. Acosta, from Woman and Home, July 4, 1965. CHECKS Rich Uncle-. "I’m sorry you don’t like your birthday gift, but I asked you if you preferred large or small checks.” Poor Nephew: "Yeh, but how was I to know you were talking about neckties?” — The Cooperator. 46 Panorama ■ Successful persons sleep but a few hours. YOU'RE SMART TO HAVE INSOMNIA During his days of glory, Napoleon slept not more than four or five hours, at the most, out of the 24. His physical and intellectual ac tivities were prodigious. He would at times ride horse back for ten hours at a stretch, then hold conferences with his staff and dictate in numerable letters until late into the night. Yet he never felt tired or sleepy and a few hours of repose sufficed to “relieve his fatigue.” Heads of large businesses work much harder than do most of their employes. Some stay at their desks long after the office force has left, then attend business meetings un til late in the evening. If they are interested in the business and are making a success of it, they do not complain of being tired. Nor are they as tired after 15 hours of “free labor” as are their stenographers and su bordinates after six or eight hours of routine jobs. There was another side to Napoleon’s story. Later in life, when his dream of world conquest was finally shat tered at Waterloo and he was exiled to a remote island, he completely altered his life time habit in regard to sleep. At St. Helena he found it necessary to devote eight or nine hours to bed instead of the four or five that were previously sufficient, and this at a time when he had changed from a life of phy sical and mental activity to one of sloth and indolence. Does this mean that the more we work the less we should sleep? Psychologists are beginning to think so. In fact, many of them are quite sure that this apparent ly paradoxical theory is cor rect and that insomnia ought |o be cured, not by teaching insomniacs how to sleep, August 1965 47 but by teaching them how to stay awake properly. But, in order for the cure to be effectual, the staying awake must be done under circumstances that absorb the interest of the individual and flatter his ego. Does this mean that ego tistical gratification can take the place of rest? Undoubt edly so. Napoleon/s rever sal of form under conditions of victory and defeat can be adequately explained on no other hypothesis. There is on record the case of a gambler who could go for several days and nights without sleep, provided he was winning. After a heavy loss, or even a session in which his winnings were off set by his losses, he needed ten or twelve hours’ sleep to put him in humor to face reality again. Another case in point is that of a neurotic with a strong inferiority complex who was overwhelmed by sleepiness every time he encountered defeat. After a quarrel, or whenever a discussion in which he took part turned to his disadvan tage, he was obliged to lie down and ‘‘sleep it off.” The old saying that a change of work is as good as a rest was founded on sound psychology. Children “tired” of sitting in a classroom will romp wildly, shout at the top of their lungs, jostle and fight one another, and re turn to their studies “rested.” A businessman who has at tended to the tedious details of his office until five o’clock feels "all in” and goes home ‘‘tired.” He changes his day suit for evening wear, attends a dinner at which he does a good deal of talking, sits for three hours in a stuffy theater and comes back “rested/’ At the end of a “heavy” week this same businessman will gather up his golf out fit and trail for miles in the wake of a small rubber ball. He returns to his office “rest ed,” although he has only exchanged one form of acti vity for another. Of actual “rest” he has had none. Mental rest, then, consists in part of egotistical gratifi cation and in part of a com plete change of mental or physical activity. 48 Panorama Neither physical nor men tal rest of this kind, how ever, is synonymous with sleep. If we admit that the conquering Napoleon, the successful businessman, and the winning gambler were sufficiently rested by being Wcupied with activities that flittered their ego and were of their own choosing, is there any common factor that enabled them to main tain their health with less sleep than is usually thought necessary for the average man? There is such a factor, and it can perhaps be better ex plained by reversing the question and asking if there is not some definite factor that causes most of us to de vote more time to sleep than we .actually need. The an swer to this question is again yes; and that definite factor is monotony. Thomas Edison, in an in terview, once expressed this opinion: Nothing is more dangerous to human efficiency than too much sleep. The average man who sleeps seven or eight or nine hours daily is continually oppressed by las situde. There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all, and the man of the future will spend far less time in bed than the man of the present does, just as the man of the present spends far less time in bed than the man of the past did. In the old days, man went up and down with the sun. A million years from now we won’t go to bed at all. Really, sleep is an absurdity, a bad habit. We can’t sud denly throw off the habit, but we will throw it off even tually. Perhaps Mr. Edison exag gerated a little, but he had faith in his doctrine and practiced what he preached. He reduced his bad habit of sleep to a minimum. The amount of sleep need ed by various individuals is never proportionate to the amount of muscular or men tal effort they expend. Men of intense physical and in tellectual activity, like Fre derick the Great, Schiller, Humboldt, Mirabeau, John Hunter the English surgeon, and Virchow the great Ger man pathologist, flourished August 1965 49 on an average of four or five hours of sleep daily. Every one of these men had a co lorful existence. Their lives were crowded with varied and interesting experiences The real purpose of sleep is restoration of emotional and sensory tone and not elimination of toxins or re pair of waste. It is quite ridiculous to imagine that our bowels or our kidneys or our digestions work better when we are asleep than when we are awake. The exact contrary is true. All these functions are slowed down during sleep, like the rest of the bodily processes. It is a matter of common knowledge that we have more difficulty in digesting heavy food at night than at noon, and that, if a heavy meal is not digested before we go to sleep trouble is likely to en sue. Normally the bowels and kidneys do not move during sleep, and their acti vity is promoted by exercise and being awake, not by rest and sleep. The effect of pro longed sleep is to clog and not to clean the body. The dangers of insomnia have been so widely arid generally exaggerated that the average person becomes little short of panic-stricken when sleeplessness attacks him. Yet the worst insom niacs not only survive, but not uncommonly reach a vi gorous old age. The dangers of excessive sleeping after the age of puberty are rarfr ly heard of; yet they are real, and it is indeed quite possible, as Mr. Edison in sisted, to sleep too much, des pite popular opinion to the contrary. The best way of combat ing a tendency to excessive sleep is not arbitrarily to shorten the hours devoted to oblivion, but gradually to accustom the mind, cons ciously or unconsciously, to act more vigorously and ex pansively. Widening the men tal outlook by increasing the number of interesting con tacts with reality seems, strangely enough, to have the dual effect of prolonging it without injury to the organ ism. The exact number of hours that should be passed in sleep is a question upon which authorities are not unanimous. It is generally 90 Panorama agreed that the healthy new born child sleeps during the entire day and night except when it is being nursed and dressed. This period is gra dually lessened up to the age of ten or twelve years, when the requirements of sound health do not demand more than nine hours out of the 24. There has always been a considerable diversity of opinion in regard to the pro per adult sleeping allowance. Disregarding considerations of sex, mentality, occupation and idiosyncracy, it has here tofore been generally believ ed that in the prime of life seven hours out of the 24 should be given up to sleep, though some individuals do very well on five or six and others seem to require eight or nine to be at their best. Elderly people, unless se nility has produced abnormal drowsiness, find it difficult to sleep as long as those of middle age, and four to six hours is often the maximum that they can endure. Individuals who possess a diversity of interests, or who concentrate intensely on some single field of thought, can maintain their health and realize their nor mal life expectation on much less sleep than these average standards. On the testimony of some who have put a lesser maximum to the proof, a nightly average of four hours’ sleep supplemented by four hours’ rest is sufficient not only for comfortable liv ing but will even leave a mar gin for gain in health. There are few if any in somniacs even among the most afflicted who get less than this amount, although many quite honestly believe they do. All sufferers from insomnia unconsciously exag gerate their trouble, and their statements on the sub ject must taken with many grains of salt. Fear causes both their me mory and their judgment to be unreliable. And yet this fear is entirely uncalled for. Lying awake at night in a comfortable bed is really never a desperately danger ous performance. What is the origin of this obsession that we must sacri fice so considerable a por tion of our short and pre August 1965 51 cious lives to the god of sleep? Popular belief holds that Alfred the Great divided the day into three equal parts and strongly advised that one of these parts be allot ted to sleep. Because he was a good king and an unusual ly wise one, the inference was that, if Alfred said it was, it was so. And for mpre than a millennium the supersti tion has persisted. As a matter of fact, Alfred has been misquoted. What he did say was that onethird of the day should be given to diet, sleep, and exercise — that is, that a man should devote eight hours daily to sleeping and eating and whatever form of exer cise or recreation he prefer red. There is nothing to show that Alfred himself spent even six hours a night in sleep. Ours is the age of the ef ficiency expert. If the ave rage human being can main tain working efficiency on six hours of sleep or less a day, it ought to be known. Two hours a day saved means salvaging a loss of 90 working days of eight hours each per year. — By Dr. Ro bert Kingman from Maga zine Digest. LONE CHICK Lonely baby chick taking a look around the elec tric incubator of unhatched eggs: “Well, it looks as if I’ll be an only child. Mother’s blown a fuse.” — Mrs. L. F. Duncan. 52 PANORAMA ■ Fortune does not always follow the lucky winner in big games. WHAT HAPPENS TO SWEEPSTAKES WINNERS? “Money doesn’t bring hap piness” is not a saying in vented by the rich to keep the poor contented. The cold, grim truth is that peo ple who hopefully buy a sweeptakes or lottery ticket are usually lucky only if they don't win the grand prize. When they do win . . . Roland Steele was only 24 when he won $40,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes, but his fellow-workers in a New York loan company, and re porters who interviewed him, were amazed at his calmness. "I’m going to stick to my job,” he told questioners. “This money isn’t going to change me.” He remained a steady, in dustrious clerk for a few months, but gradually the $40,000 was burning a hole in his pocket. Quite suddenly, he an nounced that he was going back to Alabama, his home State, to settle down. But first, he would have ‘‘one fling.” A month later, Steele lay dead in a New Orleans bar room, stabbed by a hostess. The girl told police she at tacked Steele to save the life of her bartender sweetheart during a drunken brawl. It doesn’t always take drink and debauchery to turn the head of a man showered with sudden riches. Maurice Gold was a nondrinker. When he received $150,000 in a sweep stakes, he was a middle-aged baker in New York. He quits his job and bought a large fruit store. Since he knew nothing of that business, he failed within six months and his creditors collected a large share of his $150,000. “I’ve been a fool,” Gold told his wife. “Why didn’t I stick to the trade I know?” So he invested the rest of his money in a bakery. But, al August 1965 53 though he was a good baker, he had no experience in the business end. Soon he be came bankrupt. Broke, he suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never recover ed. Reality appears to depart from the minds of some "lucky winners” with the ar rival of the check for five figures. Joshua Holder was a 90-cents-a-day dock worker in Trinidad, B.W.I. For a half-day’s pay, Holder bought a sweepstakes ticket which returned him $21,000. He bought a car and hired a chauffeur. He then open ed the front door of his house to his friends and declared that it would never be closed again. Every night, a calpyso or chestra played for their en tertainment, and liquor flow ed freely. Every day Holder ordered his chauffeur to drive him to the bank, where he drew a check. Nine months later the bank mana ger informed Holder that his balance was $25. According to the Trinidad Guardian, the unfortunate man went home and took his own life. He had not believed it pos sible that so much money could come to an end. And he could not face the pros pect, after living like a mil lionaire, of going back to his 90-cents-a-day job. This inability to do simple arithmetic seems to be an ‘‘occupational disease” of sweepstakes winners. It made short work of George Her bert Cuffin of London, Eng. Cuffin, a 50-year-old widower who had married a widow, worked in a cement factory to support his wife and their combined family of 11 child ren. One day, says the De troit Times, he came home followed by cheering mob of friends and hangers-on — he had won $120,000. Sadly, Mrs. Cuffin tells the story of what happened then. "Next day he bought a farm and an eight-room house and a car. He filled the house with servants, but since nei ther he nor I were accustom ed to managing servants, they did no work and I had to work harder than ever. Every morning he would dress like a toff in new clothes and drive off like a business exe cutive, smoking a cigar. 54 PANORAMA “But the only business he did was to cash another check and stand drinks to all the loafers in the city. That, was bad enough, but he took to putting money into every proposition that his new ‘f r i e n d s’ suggested. He bought everything offered to him, at three times the real value. '‘When he was finally told there was no money, George would not believe it. He went down to the bank and accused them of holding out his money on him. When he saw the detailed accounts, he went out on a drinking bout that landed him in the hos pital. In a week he was dead of acute alcoholism. We had to sell the car for enough to bury him. That’s the luck that sweeptakes brought this family.” Windfalls do not have to run into astronomical figures to bring bad luck. James Goodall, a mechanic, won only $6250. But it was enough to enable him to car ry out his lifelong dream — to build a plane of his own design. On its trial flight the plane crashed and Goodall was killed. Similarly, Mrs. Lulu Mae Lane of Delaware, who had needed an operation for years but had put it off until she could afford the best doctors available, decided to use $1000 she won in a 10-cent pool for that purpose. She died on the operating table. Leonard May won $5000 in a sweeptakes and deter mined to take the first "real vacation” of his life. On the first day he went for a swim and was drowned. Hugh O’ Rourke probably never realized how lucky he was, and undoubtedly is still telling sadly of the time he “nearly” won the Irish sweep. It h ap p e n e d this way: O’Rourke bought a ticket under the name of “Butch,” and in due time the New York papers reported that a sweeptakes ticket signed ‘‘Butch” had won twenty thousand dollars. O’Rourke went out and bought seven bottles of Scotch, and invited all his friends to a party. During the evening he and his guests put in long-distance calls to relatives and friends all across the country. “Every August 1965 thing’s on me,” O’Rourke said genially. Next day he discovered that he was the wrong “Butch.” Someone else had used the same pseudonym. But all that O’Rourke was out was the price of seven bottles of Scotch and a cou ple of hundred dollars for phone calls. Women are no more im mune from “tragic good luck” than are men. Jennie Quinoes of Porto Rico was a 22-year-old girl who lived with her parents and eight brothers in a San Juan slum. Somehow, she acquired a ticket in the Madrid lottery, and somehow that ticket won $180,000. Jennie went in person to collect. The entire popula tion of the poor district in which she lived came down to the dock to see her off. She promised to return im mediately and to bring pre sents for everybody. But Jennie did not return immediately. Instead, she toured Europe with an en tourage that a princess might have envied. By the time she reached New York she was 56: being hailed as the ‘‘San Juan Cinderella.” When Jennie finally re turned home, the squalor and lack of chic of her family and neighbors appalled her. She moved into a smart apart ment and refused to have any thing to do with them. Her family was puzzled and hurt; the neighbors were envious and hated her. Jennie soon met someone who suited her. Anthony Montalvo had a "grand man ner.” He kissed her hand, bowed from the waist — and, moreover, he told her, he was very rich and of the Spanish nobility. Jennie married him and they moved to New York. Montalvo’s millions were “tied up in a big deal,” ne cessitating some borrowing from his wife. The millions remained tied up. for a long time, and the borrowings continued until there was very little of Jennie’s money left — so lit tle that they had to move from their swank penthouse apartment into one room in a cheap boarding house. One night some detectives came around and took Montalvo Panorama away. A shocked Jennie learned that he was neither a millionaire nor her hus band. In fact, he was a sales man with two wives living. Broke, and unable to face the family she had scorned, Jennie turned on the gas in her lonely room and died — just ten months after she had been “lucky” enough to win the Madrid lottery. Next best to avoiding the ill luck of wealth by failing to win sweepstakes, declares Hilde Marchant in Picture Post, is the method adopted by George Melville, a Lon don stone mason. A year or so ago Melville was making $25 a week and living with his wife, son, and daughter in a two-roomed flat. Today Melville is still earning $25 a. week and liv ing with his wife, son and daughter in the small tworoomed flat. The only new possession of the family is a bank book with a single en try: ‘‘Credit — $320,000.” Melville won that in a football pool, one of the largest pay-offs on record. Frightened by the size of the prize, he promptly put it in to the bank, hid the bank book, and is trying to forget all about it. “I wish I’d never won it," he says. “But I figure it won’t do us any harm, as long as we don’t touch it. And we aren’t going to.” — From Picture Post and Detroit T imes. MACHIAVELLI FOR VOTERS We must prescribe to all Filipino voters Machia velli’s book. “The Prince”, a compulsory reading in the universities of the West. If we knew this book by heart, we would not be fooled by our leaders, especially by those who parrot integrity and other protestations of goodness for facade. August 1965 57 ■ Motion and activity rather than rest and idleness give us more chances of living longer. THE DANGERS OF LONG REST Bed is popularly supposed to be the safest place in which a person can be. It is supposed to be the obvious place to go when one is sick, as the first step toward re covery. Doctors are assessed by their bedside manner, and bed is not ordered like a pill or a purge, but is assumed to be the basis for all treat ment. And that’s where patients, and doctors too, are wrong. A leading British authority, Dr. R. A. J. Asher, member of the Royal College of Phy sicians, declares: “We should think twice before ordering our patients to bed when they complain and realize that beneath the comfort of the blanket there lurks a host of formidable dangers.” In the British Medical Journal, he points out that hardly any part of the body is immune to the hazards of the bed. In recent years, more and more doctors have been get ting their patients out of bed as soon as possible after operations. Latest report on this post operative management comes from three Chicago doctors at the Loyola University School of Medicine. This group, headed by Dr. Arkell M. Vaugh, studied 100 pa tients who were walking about within two to three days after their operations. There were no deaths or wound disruptions; in fact, the healing process was speed ed up. Early ambulation, as the up-and-about system is called, is being used in surgery cases as a mode of treatment for illness. The British doctor, carrying the idea a step fur ther, suggests avoidance of the bed as a preventative of disease of all types. Lying in bed can create or aggravate lung diseases. The bed can bring on throm bosis— the lethal catastrosphe of clots in the blood. It can 58 Panorama increase the danger of skin trouble and cause disability of muscles, wasting away of bones, kidney trouble, various stomach and intestine ail ments, as well as damage to the nervous system. Going into detail, here are some of the risks that one runs by staying too long in bed: Respiratory system. The maintenance of one position allows secretions to collect in the bronchial passages, en couraging the development of at least one form of pneu monia. Furthermore, in the case of lung trouble, the lack of exercise causes a smaller amount of respiration, pre venting the re-expansion of a collapsed or diseased lung. Blood vessels. The danger here is thrombosis or thrombo-embolism. The absence of leg movements means that the blood in the veins lacks the helpful squeeze from the muscles which normally speeds its flow. One theory is that a blood clot is some times started by damage to the tissues, caused by pro longed weight of the leg on the bed compressing the veins of the calf. ‘‘Thus it may be said,” states Dr. Asher, “that throm bophlebitis (a blood clot plus inflammation of the vein) is the internal counter part of the bedsore. We may one day regard a thrombosis to be as much a sign of nurs ing mismanagement as we do the ordinary bedsore today.” Researchers, significantly found thrombosis in the calf veins of 53 per cent of all the cases of middle-aged and elderly people who had been in bed for a considerable time. Muscles and joints. While in bed, some muscles are contracted and other stretch ed, causing considerable crip pling. Foot drop is the com monest of these muscle and joint ailments; stiffness of the knee joints is probably next. The wasting of the general muscular system re sults in the hobbling, pain ful gait of the convalescent patient. Bones. When bones are not used, the calcium drains from them. This wasting away of the bones can be a serious matter, especially in elderly people. For that rea August 1965 59 son, fractures may take con siderably longer to heal. Kidneys. The drain in cal cium from the bones during bed rest causes a greater amount of calcium in the urine and greater danger of kidney and bladder stones. A worse danger is retention of urine, particularly in males. "Getting a patient out of bed may turn him from an incontinent person to a clean one." Alimentary tract. After a few days in bed, heartburn may be noticed, and consti pation occurs almost inva riably, as a result of lack of muscular movement. Such constipation is most harmful among the aged, and intesti nal obstruction may develop. Nervous system. Particu larly in nervous diseases in volving failure of muscular co-ordination, even a short spell in bed may produce a setback which takes weeks to overcome; and any length of time in bed may leave a pa tient bedridden many years before his time. Mental changes. Finally the demoralizing effect of stay ing in bed causes mental changes. At the start it may produce fuzziness, pettiness, and irritability, and the pa tient may acquire an exag gerated idea of the serious ness of his condition. At a later stage, the patient is overcome by a dismal le thargy and resents any efforts to extract him from his bed. “The end result," says Dr. Asher, "can be a comatose, vegetable existence in which, like a useless but carefully tended plant, the patient lies permanently in a condition of tranquil torpidity.” There are other disadvan tages of staying in bed: the loss of education among children patients; the danger to the lungs from the dust that arises during bed-mak ing. When all this is said, Dr. Asher admits he has painted a gloomy and unfair picture: that it is as bad as all that. There is much comfort and healing in bed, and rest is essential in many illnesses. His object, he emphasizes, has been to disclose the evils of over-doses. Bed rest should be resorted to only when prescribed by the physician and should not be assumed 60 PANORAMA by the patient or his nurse without the doctor’s advice. Dr. Asher tells of being placed in charge of a hospi tal ward, and finding there a woman who had been in bed for 17 years, suffering supposedly from nervous dis ability. She was very upset when he ordered her to get up, but after she had been up for a few days she became a different person. Dr. John Powers, of Co operstown, N.Y., has studied the cases of 100 patients who were encouraged to get up and sit in a chair the first day after major operations. They had fewer complica tions than those operation patients who stayed in bed for 10 to 15 days. Further more, the early-up group was back to work within an ave rage of five weeks, compared to nine weeks for ordinary patients. — From British Me dical Journal. AID TO VIETNAM The New York Journal American expressed hope that Filipino and South Korean troops can be "put to work in Vietnam as fast as planes can get them there." “In an open letter to State Seretary Dean Rusk, Salipada K. Pendatun, speaker of the Philippine house, appealed for an answer for a six-month-old offer of up to 50,000 Filipino volunteers for Viet nam service. . . The Filipinos know how much we are dedicated to freedom. . . they have more reasons arc dedicated to freedom. . . they have more reasons than most to put faith in our objective to keep the nations free. In this world in which a one-time friend often turns out not to be a friend under pressure of communist aggression it is heartening to have South Korea and the Philippines stand up to be counted.” August 1965 61 ■ The uses and purposes of school as against the family. FAMILY AND SCHOOL The fullest aim of educa tion cannot be fulfilled through limited learning on ly in science or technology, or even in exclusively hu manistic or cultural areas. In the pre-highly specialized stages of education, the school’s aim should be to synthesize knowledge of this world's elements with equal depth-proving of spiritual va lues. The* richness of train ing in natural truth should be matched by proportionate training in the theologcial truth for the cultivation of Divine insights and a sound conscience. Can the school cultivate these ends by itself? Tho roughly dedicated as the school may well be to the foundations of society in truth, to the requirement of justice and to the embrace and driving force of love, and the glories of freedom, the school may well be a voice crying in the wilderness. The teachers — the great and distinguished teachers — hold a detached, norma tive, and critical position in society. They cannot enforce the truth; they can teach it well and the students can learn it intellectually. But there is no assurance that the student will live it. Teacher’s influences can readily be neutralized at the heart of the society — the family. Or from the .start, the drive and power of the school may be frustrated by the arm and the milieu, of which the school servant of society — the gov ernment. Likewise the total is a part (especially, is a si lent and frustrated part), may lack understanding or the will to demand comprehen sive learning of the schools, and thereby compound the evils. Schools and teachers are ultimately dependent. The bedrock foundation of all is the family. We often speak 62 Panorama of the school and the family being counterparts, and so they are. But each is an en tity and cannot be confused with the other. Each has its power and responsibilities, but in all they must coordi nate their initiatives. The family presumes an internal unity for the phy sical, moral, social and intel lectual growth of the young sters so that they assume res ponsibility according to their years. The family is the first school for the child’s self-control, emotional ma turing, or the exercise of initiatives, and the achieve ment of a value code. The family provides a background for the child’s achieving knowledge. Atti tudes and motivations are molded within the family circle: attitudes to know ledge, to people, to natural and other projects, to human activity, to personal choices and their effects on others, and to decisions. Above all, the family’s fundamental gift to the child is stability and the solidify ing assurance of love, lack of which education cannot in sure a steady and balanced progress in the child. That seems jtist to absolve the school and the teachers from all responsibility for the outcome of their minis trations! But not quite. The school is the scene of the child’s first prolonged and continuous excursion in the world outside the family circle. The good school is ordered to such discipline and social relations as to favor gradual learning ac cording to the abilities of the pupil. The school should present a comprehensive pro gram with aims that are tes table, and as well have the means in equipment and library to achieve these ends. The school will naturally require favorable conditions for leaning on the part of the student, such as intellectual effort and success, active par ticipation in the learning pro cess, value judgments, self control, initiatives, etc. The school’s function is to arouse and develop these characteris tics in the students also. — By Rev. Augustine Philip, FSC. August 1965 63 ■ Let the voters come out to vote. A PRACTICAL LESSON IN CIVICS A get-out-the-vote contest participated in by the more than 30,000 pupils in 39 Mia mi public schools resulted in the largest number of regis tered voters turning out in any election in the history of the city. The contest idea was sug gested as a practical lesson in civics and to put into real practice the principles of good citizenship as taught in the schools. While the children themselves did not vote, they were allowed a week to line up registered voters and to get the promise of these voters to go to the polls. To prevent the calling by the children becoming a nui sance to the housewife, a round sticker was provided to be placed in a window, and children were warned that they must not approach that home because the owner had already promised to vote. The School Board arrang ed the contest and offered several prizes. 1. A half-holiday to every home room with a 100 per cent record — that is, getting as many people to the polls as there are children in the room. 2. Ten dollars to be spent as the children decide to the home room in each school getting the most voters to the polls. Every voter received a tag reading "I voted today, did you?” After the polls closed at 7 p.m. the children col lected on their promises by going to get the tag and these were turned in at the school the following morning. Teachers are agreed that this was a practical demons tration on the importance of a voter exercising his privi lege to vote on a matter of importance to the city, and a lesson for the children that far surpasses the regular met hod of instruction. — The Progressive Teacher. 64 PANORAMA Attention: All organization bonds 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: Cl) 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. Contents Faith in Democracy ............................................................................... V Views and Reflections on the Philippine Scene ..................... 2 Mabini — Fighter for Freedom....................................................... 11 The Curious Sexual Ethics of the Yaps ........................................ 14 What You Should Know About Bonks ..............................................21 The Secret of Happiness .................................................................... 26 The Japanese War Criminals .......................................................... 29 How to Tell a Communist.................................................................. 32 Aspirin: King off Drugs.................. 35 How Johnson was Nominated Vice-President .......................... 38. The Katipunan and Tandong Sora ............................................... 41 You're Smart to Have Insomnia .................................................. 47 What Hoppens to Sweepstakes Winner....................................... 53 The Danger of Long Rest.................................................................. 58 Family and Schools ............................................................................... fii A Practical Lesson in Civics ......................................................... . 64