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I SAW THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES

MOTHER AMERICA

MY BROTHER AMERICANS

I SEE THE PHILIPPINES RISE

THE UNITED

Crusade in Asia

PHILIPPINE VICTORY

Carlos P. Romulo

The John Day Company New York

Copyright 1955 by Carlos P. Romulo

All rights reserved. This kok, or parts thereof, must
not k reproduced in any form without permission,
hbkhed by The John Day Company, 62 West 45th
Street, New York 36, N.Y, and on the same day in
Canada by Longmans, Green b Company, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-7318

Second Impression

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO VIRGINIA

who gave me the balance and determination needed
in critical moments when I was forced to make
decisions that were far-reaching and that might have
cost us much, and who stood by me as helpmeet and
comrade-in-arms once those decisions were made.

6114396

Foreword

OF THIS I am convinced-
Communism never wins in any land, , , ,
When a government is clean, competent, honorable,
and representative of the wishes and needs of the people,
when it is the peopk, Communism doesn't have the gkst
of a chance,

Only when a government becomes corrupt and graft-
ridden and morally diseased is Communism able to sM
in through the back door to assume arrogant control

It appears never as the victor, but as a scavenger and
a f taster upon corpses, and it can survive only where it
finds food to live on-in a country where Democracy has
died!

Crusade in Asia

Chapter I

THIS was the day we had waited and prayed and fought
for in the Philippines, It was the Fourth of July, 1946.

We had chosen it as our Independence Day because it
was America's, in honor of the country that for half a
century had trained us in the ways of democracy and had
fought with us the nightmare battle against Japan. It was
a final gesture of gratitude toward a mother nation that
had treated us with courtesy and that today was deliver-
ing the gift of freedom to a small country on the western
rim of Asia.

After this day we would no longer be the Philippine
Commonwealth. We would be an independent nation-
the first in Asia to reach that longed-for goal since the war.

Over two hundred thousand people were gathered on
the Luneta in the heart of Manila to watch the first Inde-
pendence Day ceremonies and hear our new nation s first
President, Manuel Roxas, take his oath of office. It seemed
to me that everyone I had ever known and the entire his-
tory of my country were in that parklike setting. There
were people from all over the Islands and from America,
there were our Filipino representatives and American
leaders flown over from Washington. There were men

3

and women and children who to me, personally, were the
story of my life relatives, neighbors, old friends. There
were men I had gone to school with, worked with in
newspaper days, worked with in legislative halls in Ma-
nila and Washington, fought beside in the Battle of the
Philippines.

Above all, for me, there was my wife Virginia, from
whom I had been separated by war.

In the crowd could be seen many left maimed, blinded,
or scarred. There were men who wore with pride the tat-
tered uniforms they had worn as veterans of the Revolu-
tion against Spain, or on Bataan or Corregidor, and others,
mostly women, in the sombre attire of mourning.

But every face wore the look of hope, too much for the
heart to hold.

This was our day. After this, we would be free.

Paul V. McNutt, speaking for America, read the procla-
mation of Philippine Independence, signed by Harry S.
Truman, President of the United States. General Douglas
MacArthur was given an ovation equal to the one given
President Roxas. His eagle look did not change, but it was
apparent he was greatly moved. He too had waited and
worked and fought for this day. The blueprint for it had
been drawn when his father, General Arthur MacArthur,
as our military governor, had instituted in the Philippines
the writ of habeas corpus, one of the cornerstones of the
Bill of Rights. The groundwork had been laid when Fil-
American forces fought with MacArthur, the son, to hold
the Philippines. I watched him as he stood, head up,
hand to forehead, looking over the crowded Luneta as
calmly as he had stood out on the bared rock of Corregi-

4

dor to count the Japanese planes overhead, and I thought:
"A great man! Nothing can ever tear him down!"

His comment on the day would be made to me later.
"Carlos, America buried imperialism here today!'*

Roxas was speaking. Listening to him, I thought of
Manuel Luis Quezon, our leader in the fight for inde-
pendence, who had not lived to see this day of culmina-
tion. Quezon had died in exile in the United States as
President of the Philippine Commonwealth, in 1944, while
our country was still held by the Japanese. At his death
Vice President Sergio Osmena, scholarly, serious, and a
splendid statesman, had automatically become President.
Now Roxas, elected in November, 1945, was solemnly
voicing the words that made him the first President of the
Philippine nation, and in him we had a worthy successor
to all the other Filipino leaders who had helped our coun-
try on its way to freedom.

Roxas had taken an active and aggressive part in politics
in Manila before the war. He had served as a brigadier
general in the United States Army with MacArthur on
Corregidor. I had come to know him in those endless days
and nights when, to escape the tunnel for a breath of
fresh air, we had sat out on rocks overlooking the bay and
talked above the crash of bombs about the future of the
Philippines, when war ended and our side had won for
we had been certain even then that democracy would be
victor. We had made great plans on that shattered rock
for the future of a country undergoing as terrible an or-
deal as any country has ever known, and survived.

Quezon had been rescued from the Rock. MacArthur
had been forced to leave. Roxas had been ordered to re-

5

main and face the Japanese. He resisted every attempt on
their part to make him an official. He had used the excuse
that he had once had tuberculosis.

Certainly on this day he looked like a man in the prime
of life. I listened to him pledging himself to the service of
his country and knew that all those plans he had made
under bombings would come to reality, and that the
Philippines was coming of age under the guiding hand o
a great and worthy leader.

He had a fine grasp of all the country's needs, and they
were many and pressing. Directly after his election he had
gone to the United States, and in Washington, before the
board of the Export and Import Bank, he had answered
for two hours the questions fired at him on the economic
status of the Philippines. I had been amazed at the able
way he had answered them all. As a result, Filipino pres-
tige had been enhanced in the eyes of the hard-headed
American financiers and economists, and it was clear that
this man, who before becoming President had been able
to secure additional aid from the United States, was the
man among men who would be able to pull the Philip-
pines out of the postwar morass.

It was indeed a morass. I looked around the Luneta at
our great beautiful city, mellowed by antiquity, scarred
by war. Wherever one looked was rubble and devastation.
Many of our magnificent churches, centuries old, our
costly modern buildings, our beautiful homes, that had
helped to make the city of Manila famed around the
earth as "the Pearl of the Orient," had been blasted into
dust fay Japanese bombs.

But everywhere, on the face of the people, on the face
of the land, was a look of newness and hope.

Over on Bataan, trees grew again in soil that had been
soaked with American and Filipino blood. Corregidor
shone in the sun, a mighty rampart rising out of Manila
Bay, with no reminder there of the tunnels within where
Filipino and American soldiers had huddled together in a
miasma of gangrene, dysentery, and slime. Manila Bay
dimpled in the sun, showing no trace of the liquid death
showered down from the planes of the Rising Sun. Peace
had returned to the Philippines, and with it the long-
pledged boon of freedom, and if there were invisible
wounds on our land and its people, they were like our
honored dead; they were with us, but apparent only to our
inner eyes.

Otherwise, flowers bloomed on the Luneta, voices broke
with cheering, speeches were made, and bands played,
while the two flags, Filipino and American, waved to-
gether for the last time over Philippine soil.

There was too much for the eye to see, the heart to
hold. I thought back over the long struggle that had
brought us to this day. Deep in the Filipino soul is the
passion for freedom. Conflict and war had written no new
chapters in our history. They are our heritage. Ours has
been a history of struggle from earliest times, and always
the struggle was an assertion of passionate faith in the
principle that all men are born free.

That is why we have understood America. That is why
we fought against, and with, America.

In ages beyond the ken of history the Filipinos had
fought in this faith, and always against fearful odds. There

7

had been the unyielding struggle against Imperial Spain,
then against the conqueror America, then with America
against the aggressor Japan. The struggle had heightened
within the swift-moving first half of the twentieth century,
and the goal had come nearer, and still we had fought on,
in legislative halls and around diplomatic tables, and al-
ways for freedom. We had developed great leaders, and
lost them, and others had sprung to take their place. We
had been given the best advice, care, and guidance Amer-
ica could give. And then, with the end in sight, we had
been forced to fight again in the field against a juggernaut
Japan that had found our little country the single victim
of its aggression which would not be conquered, and
which alone, in all Asia, had stood side by side with
America.

I looked out over the crowd and thought with a full
heart: A nation of heroes, and of heroines, who never
stopped fighting!

Blinking, I looked up into the sky. It was as clear as it
had been the morning after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
when from the balcony of the Herald building I had
stood with Cela, the newspaper's office cat, pressing wor-
riedly between my feet as the first Japanese planes roared
down in perfect formation over Manila. The day before,
they had bombed Camp John Hay and Clark Field, and
our planes-our beautiful American planes-had been
caught like sitting pigeons on the ground.

I felt my throat thicken. I can still get sick with the
hopeless despair we had known in those days as the Fil-
Americans had fought back without planes, without guns
ammunition, food, or medical care against an enemy that

8

had poured death down over us from this sky without
ceasing. How the Japanese had hated us, their fellow
Orientals who had sided with the white men! They had
made us pay, then and after. I felt again that illness of
despair in the midst of the cheering and the speeches and
the brave new hopes, and for a moment fought for con-
trol, telling myself it was over, all over there was no
shadow on our sky. ...

I did not know

No one knew. No one on the Luneta on this brave day
could have dreamed that within two years our good Roxas
would be dead and that we of the Philippines would be
launched on our fourth fight for freedom, the most terri-
fying of all because it would be a war of intangibility,
waged against shadows.

On this day I would have said anyone was crazy who
hinted that such a Christian and democratic country as
ours could ever be infested with an ideology crawling
toward us from the other side of Asia. Communism was a
word that belonged in Russia. Russia had been an ally
on our side in the war. The war was over, we had earned
our independence, and what hold could any Russian
ideology have on the minds of free men!

Years after this day I would still be scoffing at any sug-
gestion of a serious Communistic infiltration in the Philip-
pines. In this, I was not alone. By the time we stopped
scoffing, it was almost too late.

For despite the fact that as a Filipino delegate to the
United Nations in San Francisco I had seen the Russian
delegates in action and been made uneasy by their
truculence, still I saw no reason to fear Russia. We had

9

no concept at this time of Russian power. We had no
premonition then that in so short a time China mighty
China was to fall under the hammer and sickle, and that
once again the shadow of aggression would be cast over
the Philippines.

We had not known, when in San Francisco we wrote
the Charter of the United Nations, that an atom bomb
had been created. We wrote that charter on the basis of
conventional armament. When the bomb exploded at
Hiroshima it made obsolete many of the plans of the
United Nations.

All this, like the death of Roxas, lay in the future. We
did not know what lay ahead on July 4, 1946. We were
certain only that the line we planned to follow would be
in the American way.

With paralyzing suddenness that way would open be-
fore us and reveal both bitterness and glory. Within the
next few swift-moving years we were to relive in the
Philippines the entire history of America. The pictures of
Washington and Lincoln that hung on our schoolroom
walls would be replaced with pictures of Quezon, who
was to us our George Washington, and of the man we
would find for our own Abraham Lincoln, of and for the
people, when the need came.

We would have, also, our Harding and Dougherty, our
Teapot Dome. Yes, we were to relive America's story in
complete detail, even to our own Alger Hiss. But on this
day of independence there was no shadow on our sky. Yet
we did know that what lay ahead would not be easy.
It is difficult for any country that has been dependent

10

to stand alone. In the Philippines we were assuming inde-
pendence on the heels of a devastating war.

Around us our beautiful capital lay in ruins. Seventy
per cent of Manila was wreckage. Our public buildings
and our records were destroyed. Business had ebbed to
the vanishing point, and down at the bottom of Manila
Bay lay our country's millions the gold and silver coinage
we ourselves had sunk there after burning the paper
money, to keep it from the hands of the Japanese during
the siege of the Philippines.

Even worse than the stripping of our resources was the
moral trauma that follows war. To survive, men had been
forced to kill, maraud, steal, he, slink about by night and
hide in the hills by day. Families had been broken up or
completely destroyed. Children had been trained to steal,
lie, and conceal to save their own or their parents' lives.
For a time, morality had almost been blasted out of ex-
istence by the enemy fire.

Now guns were forbidden by law, but it still seemed
that almost everyone went armed, some for purposes of
defense, but many for offense. Many of the bands of de-
fenders who had fought against the Japanese were refus-
ing to turn in their arms. They had come to like their
bandit existence, and we had no idea how many were
still hiding out in the hills.

To reestablish law and order in the Philippines would
be in itself a task for giants. And this was only a small
part of the work that must go into the making of a work-
ing independence.

I looked out over the ruins of our great beautiful city
and at faces scarred with war and shining with hope, and

11

thought of the struggle and poverty and disappointment
that must lie ahead. No, it would not be easy. It would
mean one more fight by our tiny nation.

Only this time it would be different. This time we
would be free!

There was a silence all over the park and everyone was
on his feet. The sky clouded and a light rain began to fall.
I saw MacArthur standing with his hand in snappy mili-
tary salute. Then we were all watching the American flag
come down slowly from its place against the sky, and in its
stead, slowly, rose the flag of the Philippines. All around us
in that crowded park there was the sound of weeping,
and I do not think there was a face in all that crowd-
American or Malayan that was not touched by emotion.

Slowly and at the same pace the two flags were mov-
ing, the red-white-and-blue with its stripes and stars
coming down, the red-white-and-blue with its sun and
three stars rising; and just as it reached the top, by one of
those odd tricks of tropical weather the rain stopped as
suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, the sun burst
through the clouds at the exact moment the flag stopped
its upward climb, and there it flung itself out in a sudden
blaze of color the flag of the Republic of the Philippines
against a brightly shining sky.

This was farewell to America in the Philippines. This
was hail and farewell to a flag we Filipinos had fought to
hold over tibe Philippines, and many had died defending
it against the Japanese. This was our reward. This was the
symbol of freedom-the abdication of one proud flag for
another. The Filipino flag against the sky marked the end
of the long dream that had obsessed our lives, and the

12

lives before us of our fathers, and grandfathers, and who
could say how many more?

I was seeing the Philippines rise again, and this time,
truly free.

It was one of history's significant moments. Freedom
had come to a little Oriental country on the rim of Asia.
It had been handed down to us from Runnymede by the
Magna Charta of 1215; from Philadelphia's Declaration of
Independence in 1776; from the walls of the Bastille in
Paris in 1789; from the bloodied field of Gettysburg in
1863 where first the immortal words were spoken: "Gov-
ernment of the people, by the people, and for the peo-
ple . . ."

Now these words became part of Asia.

We had earned them at Bataan, a few miles away, at
Corregidor, standing stalwart in the bay. The Filipinos
had won them in battle; with these words, we were as-
suming the role of a democratic independent nation in the
Far East.

I knew in that first moment when our flag stood alone
against the Philippine sky that this was the beginning of
freedom in all Asia. It was on its way, nothing could stop
it from this moment on. And it was the pebble that re-
leased the avalanche; a few years later, Indonesia would
be set free by the Netherlands, and India by Mother Eng-
land, and what can follow but Indochina British Malaya
Africa?

It is inevitable.

In the face of these changes, now may be the time to
tell the story of the Philippines' fourth and most recent

13

fight for freedom, and of the defenses thrown up by one
of the tiniest countries in Asia when it learned that the
democracy it had won was about to die. And again, I am
writing in the disliked first person because to me the strug-
gle against Communism has been a personal story, and I
can tell it in no other way.

I am often asked what I was thinking in that moment
when the Filipino flag was raised over the Luneta.

There were many things to think about and remember.
I remembered my father, and the days when I was a small
boy and he an anonymous guerrilla, hiding out to fight
the hated Americans who were bent on conquering our
land. I remembered the way I had quivered with childish
hatred at learning that my gentle grandfather had been
given the "water cure' 7 by American soldiers. I remem-
bered my own determination as a boy to hate Americans
and all things American forever, and how individual
friendships among the soldier-conquerors had won my
heart, and turned my mind to American history and
ideals. I had gone to school in the United States, which
became my second home. I had served as MacArthur's
aide in World War II. I had every reason to revere and
respect the power of America.

At this time I was Resident Commissioner of the Philip-
pines, living in Washington with my family. I would be
the last Commissioner. My job ended automatically with
the raising of the Filipino flag. We had flown from Wash-
ington to attend today's ceremonies and on our way our
plane had stopped at Guam. There we delayed our flight
for a few minutes to listen on the radio to the awesome
broadcast of the Bikini atom bomb tests. The sound of the

14

blast was shocking to me for many reasons, and I knew it
would create fear and hatred throughout the world. It
was the voice of America with America's terrible potenti-
alities for destruction.

Now I watched the Filipino flag fluttering against the
blue Manila sky. There was no sound, no threat, in that
spectacle. And I thought: "Here is the flying emblem of
the imponderable power that makes America invincible.
One thousand years from now, the raising of this flag will
be remembered, and not the trial blast at Bikini/'

That night there was a dance in Malacanan Palace, the
White House of the Philippines, and the festivities did
not end until the small hours. It had been a long and
wonderful day, and when we returned to our rooms in
the Manila Hotel I was emotionally spent. The hotel had
been our finest. Social life had centered here. The Mac-
Arthurs had lived in its penthouse before Pearl Harbor.
General Homma lived there during the Japanese occupa-
tion. The American flag had been torn from its roof and
the flag of the Rising Sun had flown there as we had
watched bitterly and helplessly from Corregidor. It had
been the scene of room-to-room fighting when we retook
Manila. Now those years were over, but the hotel still
wore the marks of war, and much of the plumbing and
many walls were gone. One section had been hastily re-
paired to house the foreign delegates, and the room
where my wife and I were stayinghaving no home any
more in this city that was homehad been hurriedly
boarded up along one wall to hide the chasm left by shell-
fire.

I took one last look over the city that was still awake.

15

Bursts of fireworks still were seen and heard In the streets
and down along the bay. It was a day one hated to have
end; for my part, I had waited for it since boyhood.

Somewhere down in that nightbound city, in the sub-
urbs, was a spread of ashes that once had been our beauti-
ful home. I had seen the twisted rubble that were the
skeletal remains of the newspaper office and the radio sta-
tions where I had once presided. Everything I possessed
of worldly goods had been wiped out when the Japanese
attacked; all by direct hits.

Nevertheless, I knew myself to be singularly blessed by
God. The fact that not so much as a stick of furniture or a
fragment of type remained was as nothing beside the
miracle of having all my family together. We had gone
separate and terrible ways during the three-and-a-half
years of the Japanese occupation, and there had been
many times when I had feared I would never find my wife
and four sons again. In turn they had feared for me, a man
with a Japanese price on his head. But the prayers had
been answered and we were together.

I had chosen to live in Washington as Resident Com-
missioner, instead of staying on in Manila to run for the
Vice Presidency as Osmena had wished. I felt I could
serve my country best on the international front.

Later, Roxas also asked me to be his Vice President.
He sent my personal physician as his confidential emissary
to see me in Washington and to ask me to run. Again, I re-
fused. If I had accepted then, I would have become
President of the Philippines less than two years after this
first Independence Day.

But this, too, lay in the future, and that night I was

16

filled with exultation and content. I knew that over the
rubble of Manila new beauty and traditions would grow.
We were beginning over again my country and its peo-
ple.

The next morning I was appointed the Philippines 7 first
permanent delegate to the United Nations. A few days
later I flew back to the United States to continue the fight
for international security on the world front.

With Roxas at the helm, the future of the Philippine
Republic was secure.

17

Chapter II

AT first all went well.

President Roxas had his problems, These are to be ex-
pected in a country trying out new wings. In the United
States I read of them without apprehension. Roxas was
capable of handling them all.

There was first the sense of release and let-down that
followed the three-and-a-half years of privation and suf-
fering that had been the Filipino's share of World War
II This, added to the moral laxity born of war, gave way
to many a reckless attitude toward the future. Some who
received compensation for their ruined businesses or
homes did not use the money at once to build again. In-
stead, they launched on a brief orgy of enjoying the good
food, clothing, luxuries, and recreations that had not been
theirs for so long a time. The after-effect was, of course,
poverty again and bitterness.

Certainly this was improvident of people who had suf-
fered so much, but they can hardly be blamed,

Roxas handled their problems with a sure, firm hand.

Matters of housing and employment and nutrition were
dealt with one at a time. Meantime, other and more dan-
gerous problems came to light.

18

The explosion of the atom bomb at Hiroshima ended
the war in the Pacific, and with it the great war push
stopped. As a result, planes, trucks, guns, material of
every kind, millions of dollars worth of uninventoried
goods, were lying about the country, ready for greedy
hands. America had no more need for this uncounted
treasure. No wonder the cupidity of certain politicians
was aroused!

Manuel Roxas nipped their plans in the bud. For a time
the war materiel remained virtually untouched, mountains
of it, millions in treasure, unwanted, waiting. . . .

There was a more serious problem. No one knew then
how serious it would be. But in this same year., 1946, that
gave us our independence, Communism first showed its
face boldly in the Philippines, only then we did not rec-
ognize it fully as the enemy it would prove to be. We
thought of it first as an annoying disturber of the peace.

To understand the movement and the way it grew we
must go back before the days of the occupation, when
Americans and Filipinos suffered together in the Philip-
pines under the Japanese heel.

Then we must go back farther than that, to the days
before the war. Looking backward, I can see now how
small the movement was in the beginning and how few
were in at its birth. And we know now that there are al-
ways these few, and one leader who begins it all. Recog-
nized, they can be stopped in time.

To our credit, we did recognize our first Communists,
and we did stop them. But not soon enough, and not per-
manently. They found the crevice in our democratic
armor. They crept in, and this is the story of their slow,

19

remorseless crawling into the very heart o our nation, up
to the very doors of our municipal halls. A few reached
the inside.

That was when our new nation tottered. That is when
we almost went underl

But I must tell it all slowly and carefully, because even
now I am bewildered by the way such coups can be
brought about and the means by which serious-minded
men can be duped and even be made accessories to the
crime of Communism.

The Communist attack when it was launched would be
world-wide. I was to see it in action in Geneva, in the
United States, and in the Philippines. Now, by the ad-
vantage of hindsight, I am able to see clearly the appar-
ently innocent way it began in the Philippines long
before Pearl Harbor, long before Bataan.

In Manila, as everywhere else, the attack w%s launched
upon and later by our bright young men, those to whom
we were giving the best our country had to offer by way
of education and opportunity, and from whom we had
every reason to expect the best in return.

The net was first spread in Manila several years before
the war on a purely social basis by a few of our brightest
young men. One was Dr. Vicente Lava of the University
of the Philippines. The other was Luis Taruc, then only a
high school student and later to become our Number One
Communist and public enemy to the peace of the Philip-
pines. Others were labor leaders such as Crisanto Evan-
gelista and Guillermo Capadocia,

Lava was an instructor and Taruc a pupil, but they
were friends. They were more than that, we know now.

20

They were fellow travelers. Lava was a chemistry profes-
sor, a Ph.D., graduated from Columbia University in New
York. There he had been an avid reader of the writings of
Marx and Lenin and other radical leaders. Make no mis-
take, he was a brilliant man.

The young Taruc was also an ardent student of Marx
and the rest, and Lava, his teacher in Communist ideas,
later would serve as his advisor. Lava helped write the
Communistic articles and pamphlets with which Taruc
showered the Philippines, until Lava died of tuberculosis
during the war. He left many pupils to carry on with the
leader Taruc.

But in the early days of their association their objective
was the usual Communist aim to collect followers. Their
target was the intelligentsia.

In those days before the war I was publishing news-
papers anc 1 I knew what was going on in Manila, or
thought I did. I knew that these two and their friends
were organizing parties, apparently literary, which were
given in the homes of leading Manila newspapermen and
writers. Several of my editors were lured into playing host
to these affairs. Literature was discussed and poetry read,
and a pleasant time was had by all. Certainly the gather-
ings seemed innocent enough.

We would learn later that these parties were organized
so that Taruc and Lava might observe and study and
select young men who might be diverted into helping
form Communist cells.

So, under our very eyes, cells were formed and Com-
munism was launched in our Christian land, and we did
not know.

21

This was the secret pattern the Communists were fol-
lowing everywhere in the world. Aim for the young, the
potential leaders, the cream of our youth! Aim for the
good-looking, educated, intelligent, the starry-eyed!

This is still Communism's aim today: world youth, and
the corruption of that youth! And, wherever possible, the
indoctrination of children!

I no longer wonder why young people fall for the
Soviet propaganda. It is carefully chosen to meet their
growing demands. Youth has no defenses against its subtle
flattery and its promises. The young people who fall for
Communism have been led into its trap by the stars in
their own eyes. They are to be pitied and understood and
protected, and, if possible, saved.

Why do they fall?

I know because I have seen the Communist plan put
into action. I have watched the spreading of the net from
Moscow to Manila, over Europe, over Asia. And in every
place I have seen it catch up youngsters who are under-
privileged and have reason to protest, and others who are
well provided for and have brilliant careers ahead. Many
are well intentioned, but before they know it, they walk
the path to treason.

Why?

They are flattered.

Let us take one of these young men, an Alger Hiss of
any country, and try to see without prejudice what lure
Communism has to offer that can turn him against his
own country and its government, and even his own par-
ents. What is its power?

Let us study this young man of Manila, or New York.

22

He is, let us say, neither prosperous nor poor, but be-
longs to the half -world of the partially privileged. He has
read Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and he knows
that the world is changing.

He is told that this is his chance as an intellectual to
help move forward the evolution of human freedom.

He looks back over history and sees how the world has
advanced, from feudalism and the divine right of kings
and through imperialism into democracy. He is told that
this grand new movement risen out of Russia is destined
to sweep the world, and that by joining he can insure him-
self a place of prominence and power on the ground floor,
in the brave new world to be.

He is excited by these promises and by the cops-and-
robbers fascination of belonging to the subversive and
strange and new.

He sees in Communism all the glamour of the verboten,
and youth does not like being denied anything. He likes
being different, and he likes to feel that his strength is
pitted against the fuddy-duddy and antiquated. He loves
argument for its own sake because he is young, and Com-
munism lends itself ideally to controversy, to dialectics
and to sophistry, and it serves as a bit between the teeth
of the ardent young recruit. He has probably come under
its spell while in college, where he who argues longest
and loudest is the campus hero, and the bright young
man, fed on arguments supplied by pamphlets and news-
papers from Moscow, finds himself dazzled by his own
oratory and trapped by his own sophistry. The fad be-
comes an obsession. He believes, because he must believe,
in order to argue well. In time he is regarded by his f el-

23

low students with the respect paid to a student of Marx;
he is marked as one of the intelligentsia; and he inspires
more than a little fear. Proselyting begins for him in ear-
nest, and he is sent from group to group, arguing and
convincing. He achieves fame beyond the campus, and he
finds that other young groups of radicals know of him and
are eager to hear him speak.

So, with little effort, he has achieved a heady fame. He
is on the bright brave new non-greedy anti-capitalistic
side, and he is head and shoulders above all the poor
boobs who believe in the old stupidities. He is the campus
radical. He is its Marxian.

As long as he lives, he will wear the brand of Commu-
nism. He may not care, in the beginning. It may be a long
time before he begins to care, and then it may be too late.

Often enough his talk has been all sound and fury and
part of the emotional upheaval of youth. Our bright
young man may have in his heart none of the intent to
destroy that will justify the suspicions he will have to
contend against the rest of his life. He may drop his Com-
munistic front when he finds himself out in the world and
faced with the sobering need to earn an average living,
and the inner need to live as an average man. Or he may
find too late that he cannot. He is dedicated to Moscow.

Flattery served to bring him into the Red fold.

There may have graduated with him another young stu-
dent who has also won high honors, who has taken no
part in the noisy discussions, and upon whose diploma no
marks indicate the courses he has taken in treachery and
treason. These are not on the curricula. But he is the truly
dangerous recruit. He will not waste time in talk. He is

24

prepared to act He has his orders and he will carry them
out in secrecy, and what he does will never be known, ex-
cept in Moscow.

Another and more surprising type of recruit to Commu-
nism is the man, and woman, of the privileged class,
known as the Park Avenue Pink, These are wealthy per-
sons who contribute to dubious causes on the roseate side.
They are the inheritors of their wealth and lack the sober-
ing realistic influence of having earned it themselves. That
there is a social responsibility to wealth is attested to by
the many libraries, hospitals, and charitable endowments
set up by the very rich. The donors to the dubious causes,
however, are the rich and guilt-ridden who have been
convinced by Communist propagandists that Communism
only will bring about equality and enhance the dignity of
the individual.

This is also the lure the Communist propaganda holds
for the economically depressed. It promises to the frus-
trated, the well-intentioned, and the would-be big shot,
personal importance, equality, and a place in the sun. If
they only knew! If they could only see Communism in
action!

Communism does not elevate. It debases. It does not
recognize the dignity of the individual. It does not recog-
nize the individual. All is for the state. It not only arrests
human freedom, it abolishes it, by enslaving body and
mind.

By way of illustration, watch a Vishinsky, a Malik, a
Gromyko in action as I watched them at first hand in the
United Nations. You cannot help but pity them and share
their fear. Under the iron exterior an automaton is jerk-

25

ing to wires pulled in Moscow. They do not dare to think
for themselves. To think might result in error. Error would
mean liquidation. They are fanatics working for a fanatic
state.

If any other United Nations delegate makes an error,
he faces the disapproval of his country. They face death.

We had an incident in the United Nations when a dele-
gate complained that his motion had been "disposed of."
Later he complained again, because the Russian inter-
preter had interpreted the words "disposed of" as "liqui-
dated." The poor interpreter was not to blame. That was
the word he knew best. It was indicative of the Russian
point of view that was to raise an impassable barrier be-
tween the Soviet delegates and the other delegates who
were struggling to achieve world peace.

Communism is being sold to the young as the newest
step forward in the evolution of human freedom. That is
error. Tragic error. The step leads down.

While the seeds of Communism were being secretly
sown in the Philippines, I first became aware of the dan-
gers of Communism on the international front. It was
while the United Nations was being founded in San
Francisco in 1945. The war was still going on. The Philip-
pines was still a Commonwealth. I was there almost on
sufferance, as chief delegate of the Philippines, which was
not yet an independent nation. Mine was a very small
voice; nevertheless, I was determined to make it heard in
behalf of democracy, and I was led to believe that the
delegates might welcome what I had to say.

26

I would soon learn that this was true with one notable
exception: Russia.

Let me state at once that I went to San Francisco with
the friendliest attitude toward Russia. I had admired that
country since my university days, when as a student at
Columbia in New York I had taken an intensive course in
radical literature under the popular Professor Vladimir
Simkhovitch, recently retired from Columbia, who is one
of our most effective anti-Communists. I had read the
teachings of Marx, I had read Turgenev and Gorky and
other great dramatic writers of Russia, and I had mem-
orized much of Leo Tolstoi, whose books I often quoted
in my debates. I had followed the story of Kerensky and
considered the Soviet program one of the greatest experi-
ments in history. With the rest of the world I had admired
the Russians as fighters in World War II and the colossal
effort made in their defense of Stalingrad. I had resented
the attacks made against the Russians while they were our
allies in that war, and I, a Catholic, had even resented
the attacks made by my Church, which sounded the first
warnings against the Soviet. I felt the Church was being
narrow-minded and fanatic in its attitude.

Up to this time I had never met any Russians, but
through my studies of their history and literature I felt
that I knew them well.

So it was that I arrived in San Francisco with an open
mind.

I will admit now that my friendly attitude got a bad
jolt on opening day.

The United Nations organizational conference began
with no opening prayer.

27

At this time I was still Resident Commissioner of the
Philippines, and accustomed to hearing an opening prayer
every day in the Lower House of Congress in Washing-
ton. This seemed an abrupt and inauspicious beginning,
Here were the representatives of fifty nations gathered to-
gether in the hope of achieving unity to maintain peace.
Why not open so significant a meeting with prayer?

I discussed the matter with several delegates from
South America. We agreed it was a serious omission.
Three of the Latin Americans and myself as spokesman
went into a private consultation with the late Edward R.
Stettinius, Jr., then Secretary of State and Chairman of
the American delegation. He was in charge of all ar-
rangements, since America was the host nation.

I have the most pleasant memories of Stettinius at San
Francisco. His was a charming and gentlemanly person-
ality. But he was outmatched by arrogance. He answered
with obvious regret our question as to why there had been
no prayer.

"I too am disturbed that there is no opening prayer,"
he said. "I believe and the United States delegation be-
lieves that we should have one. But the Russian delegates
are against us in this matter and we do not want to start
off our conference with a procedural wrangle. We want
concord and harmony. So I ask you, please, do not insist
upon an opening prayer."

What could we do! We had to yield to the whim of
Russia. It would be the first of many such yieldings.

Then I felt my first doubts. The first day of the con-
ference had only begun and already America had given

28

in, and in a matter basic and paramount. We were to
make this a godless conference.

By whose orders?

Stalin's.

Nevertheless, when I began my first speech at San
Francisco with the words, "Let us make this floor our last
battlefield," I believed with all my being that it would be
so.

A caucus of the chief delegates was held two days be-
fore the opening conference. It was carefully staged, by
the Russians.

Delegates were milling about the hall, not having as yet
been assigned to their seats, and talking in small groups
in low voices. Then into the conference room rushed a
whirlwind that swept the other delegates aside as if they
were dust. It was Vyacheslav Molotov, chief delegate of
Soviet Russia, surrounded by his bodyguards and making
his presence known.

There was a rush of photographers all around this tu-
multuous personage. Everything else was forgotten as
Molotov, with the determination of an army tank proceed-
ing over a battlefield, made his way to the head table,
where he took his seat as if by divine right and sat, under
a spatter of flash bulbs, staring around him, arrogant,
contemptuous, unsmiling.

There for the first time I saw the real Russia, and my
impression was that this was no dignitary come in the role
of peacemaker. This was the way a gangster-killer would
make his appearance in some infamous dive. Molotov's
swaggering entrance had pushed aside all dignity and

29

courtesy. I found myself thinking, So this is Russian real-
ism! This is the new Russia!

I was badly shocked.

No sooner was the meeting called to order than Molo-
tov had the floor.

Now, in all international conferences it is the accepted
custom that the chairman of the delegation of the host
nation acts as presiding officer. Molotov, machine-gun-
ning his demands in the voice of authority, demanded that
the ban be put on that custom. Instead of the United
States being left in the chair, Molotov wanted five chair-
men, the heads of delegations of the Big Five, to serve in
turn, alternating alphabetically.

This was a direct slap in the face of international cour-
tesy and obviously aimed at the United States.

I could only be reminded of the comic strip "Keeping
Up With The Joneses." Here was Russia, who always be-
fore had been the losing nation, defeated even by little
Japan, at last placed on the winning side. Having helped
in victory, Russia was now all too obviously planning to
arrange peace on its own terms, and without the ability
or training to understand the simplest forms of interna-
tional courtesy, or the needs or desires of any other na-
tion.

Exequiel Padilla, Foreign Minister of Mexico, a man
of distinguished appearance and a remarkably fine
speaker, was one of those who opposed Molotov in this
surprise move, and his protest was made in beautiful,
flowing language. This was something the Russian dele-
gate could not comprehend. No sooner had Padilla taken
his seat than Molotov was again on his feet claiming in

30

the most discourteous tone that the "memorized speech"
of the delegate from Mexico did not hold.

This was not only an insult, it was an obvious falsehood.
Padilla had had no chance to memorize or prepare a
speech, for how could anyone have foreseen that such a
startling issue would come up? Molotov himself had raised
it. Here was a twisting of the truth that left an opponent
helpless.

So this was the new Russian doctrine! Bulldoze and be-
wilder, from the start.

At this point I was not only shocked, but, to put it
bluntly, I was scared.

I had not intended to speak. I was a nobody the Phil-
ippines was not yet independent. But I was so disturbed
I asked for the floor and declared myself as siding with
Padilla.

Molotov did not even take the trouble to answer me.
He sat back in his chair studying me with silent contempt.

I sat meekly under that basilisk stare repeating to my-
self the words Stettinius had impressed upon us in pri-
vate: "Concord and harmony." We were to maintain those
at the Peace Conference, no matter what the cost.

Molotov won, of course. The delegates of half a hun-
dred nationsthe entire conference yielded to Molotov
because we were in San Francisco in the interests of peace,
and we did not want to blast all chances of peace at the
start.

More frightening experiences were to follow. From that
day on through the next eight years, from 1945 to 1953,
I would follow my course in the United Nations from San
Francisco through London, New York, Geneva, and Paris

31

with the sense of treading on dynamite. Mine was the role
of the gnat buzzing about the head of the Russian bear,
and I could not escape the role. I could not be silent
against the sound of treachery and insolence, and I was
fated to oppose each of the Russian delegates in turn, from
Molotov to the late Mr. Vishinsky, finding them always
cut from the same Moscow pattern ruthless, incompre-
hensible to the honest and well-intentioned, and dedicated
to the goal of beating down all who opposed.

My San Francisco headquarters was in the St. Francis
Hotel, where the Russian delegation was also staying. I
think it was the day after the caucus that I was ap-
proached in the lobby by a young man who spoke perfect
English and who invited me into the bar for a drink. He
explained he was attached to the Russian delegation and
he was interested in knowing if I planned to attend a party
Molotov was giving in the hotel; he knew I had been in-
vited. He pressed me to attend, and I promised to g%J
could not help but be curious about meeting Molotov at
first hand.

The young Russian talked of the Filipinos and the fight
we had put up on Bataan. He seemed to know a great deal
about us. He had read my book, I Sato the Fall of the
Philippines. He had many questions to ask. I recall the
first: "Isn't it true that the Americans practically aban-
doned you in the Philippines?"

I said quickly, "Not abandoned! They were outnum-
bered."

He mentioned the blacked-out spaces in my book where
certain words and passages had been deleted. I pointed

32

out that the book had been published in wartime when
there must always be strict censorship and the War De-
partment had used caution.

"Probably," he remarked carelessly, "those were refer-
ences to the brown men fighting against the whites which
the Americans did not want revealed."

The talk made me a little uneasy, but I assured him that
he was wrong and that the deleted statements were of a
nature that would not have been a help to our war effort,
for which purpose the book had been written.

It was always "we," I noticed, when he spoke. He did
not seem to think of himself as an entity and it was always
a mass conviction that he voiced, as if he had no opinions
of his own. Suspicion dawned in me that he had been
appointed by the Russian delegation to serve as liaison
officer with our Philippine delegation. He did not admit
this, then or later, but all his conversation pointed that
way.

I excused myself and got away, determined to avoid
him from then on. Unfortunately, I had happened to men-
tion that I always rose early, and he had instantly re-
marked that he too was an early riser. Every morning
after this, for a week, he was in the coffee shop when I
entered, hovering about, and making every excuse to join
me at my table.

I began to recognize a recurrent theme in our con-
versations. It was the hatred of Russia for America. He
would pursue the racial problems at every turn. The
Negro's lot was always at the tip of his tongue and it was
his answer to all pro-American argument. "Those poor
people," he would say. "Do you not pity them?"

33

Then he would drop in a remark like this: "Of course
the United States isn't really giving you Filipinos your
independence. They're just playing along with the Cuban
sugar interests."

And he would make the suggestion I was to have im-
pressed upon me by every Russian I met in the United
Nations in the succeeding years; "You Filipinos belong on
our side. You belong with Asia, not with the Americans."

One morning he dropped a casual remark: "Since you
are planning to vote for the admission of Argentina . . ."

These words alarmed me. The question of Argentina's
membership had become a controversial item, exploited
by the Soviet delegation in its drive to secure membership
for the Ukraine. I said hastily that I had not yet received
instructions from my government, and I left him. This
time I determined to get rid of him for good, and had my
breakfast brought to my room, explaining to him when we
met that I was holding early-morning conferences and
would no longer go down to the breakfast room.

But in looking back over the points he had brought up
in our conversations I realized I had been permitted an
advance glimpse of the long-range Russian objective.

I warned my Filipino fellow delegates: "Be careful of
that young man. Beyond doubt he has been assigned to
our delegation to try to win us to Russia's side."

Directly after I showed my coldness to the young Rus-
sian I spoke in session at the United Nations. As I sat
down, Molotov demanded the floor. Pointing at me, he
demanded bitterly: "What is the Philippine delegate doing
here? And the delegate from India? These two countries
are not independent and they should not be here."

34

From that hour on we were adversaries.

That did not prevent him from inviting me to his
parties, which were the most splendid given in the United
Nations. Never have I seen such luxury as was displayed
at the first party given by Molotov in the St. Francis
Hotel. The entire conference was crowded into the largest
ballroom, where tables were covered with the most costly
delicacies, and I was particularly impressed by an enor-
mous flag in colored caviar. The hammer-and-sickle was
made of red caviar; it was an object of mouth-watering
beauty.

Molotov proved to be the most affable of hosts. Urbane,
bland, well-mannered, he moved about with a word for
everyone. What a change from the juggernaut of the ses-
sions!

As the conference wore on I noticed that Molotov gave
private dinners to each of the delegations in turn, and that
he scrupulously attended the parties given by all the other
delegates. Also, whenever a chief delegate spoke, Molotov
was the first to reach his side with congratulations.

Those who say the Russians are not diplomats are
wrong. They know where it is effective to show courtesy
and when it will make a sounder impression to behave like
gangsters.

Their lavish entertaining in San Francisco brought to
mind a memory of a Rotary Convention I had attended in
Cleveland long before the war. At that convention every-
one yielded before the delegate from Japan, who was both
friendly and firm in purpose, and who had arrived with
two large trunks filled with the most exquisite gifts fans,
kimonos, fancy shirts for the United States delegates.

35

These he had dealt out to the United States delegates with
a lavish hand, and that night he had come to my room and
his first words to me in private were a contemptuous at-
tack on the United States.

The Russians were playing the same game. They drew
the spotlight on themselves and flattered the American
delegates with lavish affairs. In private they never missed
an opportunity to belittle America. Their attempts to poi-
son minds showed them to be no friends of the United
States.

I parried their insults against America too many times.
After a time they gave me up as hopeless.

But they were royally entertained in San Francisco.
They were shown everything. Docks, shipyards, industries
of every kind all were opened up before the Soviets.

I told my friends Charles Wheeler, former president of
Rotary International, and Fred Stevenot, once president
of the Bank of America: "Why are the important places
of defense being shown to the Russians? Look out for
them. They are going to be your worst enemies."

But the best parties given in San Francisco in those
days of the founding of the United Nations were given in
honor of the delegates from Russia.

Again, I warned the members of my own delegation:
"These Russians are not here for a peace conference. They
are here to perfect and promote their blueprint of con-
quest. Watch between their words for the outHne of that
blueprint. It will be similar to the one followed by Japan/ 7

I would be proven right. In every country Russia has
attacked, she has followed the pattern attempted by the

36

Rising Sun. I left San Francisco firmly convinced that
sooner or later there would be a rift between the Soviet
Union and the United States.

My admiration for Russia was gone. It had been re-
placed by the darkest suspicions. What I had seen and
heard in San Francisco had made me positive that while
the plan of the Rising Sun had failed, Russia had taken it
over, determined this time to make it work. It was clearly
a global plan to be put into effect all at once on many
fronts.

The attack was launched before we knew.

We attained our independence the year after the found-
ing of the United Nations, and shortly after I again took
temporary leave of my duties in the United Nations and
returned to the Philippines at the request of President
Roxas to campaign for the approval of the Philippine
Trade Act, which was to be voted on in a national plebi-
scite.

This is the Bell Act, the law governing economic rela-
tions between the United States and the Philippines. It
sets increasing tariffs on mutual exchange of raw materials
from the Philippines and manufactured goods from the
United States, from 1954 to 1974, when full tariffs are
supposed to apply. Such a measure could be enforced only
after its approval by the Filipino people in a plebiscite.

Roxas wanted me to go about the country with him and
help explain the Trade Act to our people and ask them to
support it. It was during this tour of my homeland that I
learned that Communism in the Philippines no longer

37

consisted of a few submerged and scattered cells sending
up bubbles here and there in the national consciousness.
Within the brief time I had been away, Communism had
not only made a bold appearance in our Christian re-
public. It was definitely on the rise.

38

Chapter III

ROXAS as President had proved to be all we had hoped
for: an honest and able executive with a fine grasp of the
moral and economic problems facing the Philippines. He
had accomplished so much in so short a time, and won the
loyalty of such a large percentage of the people, that one
found it hard to believe a secret cancer had begun to
nibble at the heart of the Philippines.

All Roxas had accomplished or was trying to do met
with opposition from the new force rising in the land-the
Communists.

Now they were attacking the Philippine Trade Act. It
was not perfect, we knew, but it was the best we could get
at the time, and Roxas felt the people might understand it
better if I campaigned to explain its workings.

Traveling over the Philippines making speeches, I found
the people were buoyant and confident, and praise of
Roxas was heard everywhere. And still, carping voices
were heard. Roxas and his splendid supporters worked
under a running fire of disapproval. The Trade Act had
come under the fire of the Communists; they had served,
then, to bring me home.

Right away, I shared the barrage of Red hatred. It

39

seemed that the worst they could say of me was that I was
pro- American. AH sorts of charges were made against me,
some of them strange indeed to a man who had worked
all his life with one purpose always in mind: the freeing of
his country.

Now we had that freedom, and I was being vilified for
being grateful to the great friendly nation that had volun-
tarily set us free!

In the United Nations I had argued against the Com-
munists. Now I was actually fighting them for the first
time in my own country. It seemed inconceivable that
they had been able to take so firm and secret a grasp on
the Philippines, and in so brief a time.

As I have said, there had been a few red bubbles rising
here and there to the surface, even before the war. One
group in the province of Pampanga had even succeeded
in electing a Communist mayor (who, by the way, had
been educated in the United States and at one time was
employed in. the post office in Chicago).

We must not forget the significant fact that this move-
ment began in and was limited then to Pampanga, a
province of huge land holdings, where the tenant farmers
were so mistreated by some of their wealthy absentee
landlords that many were still paying off the debts of their
great-great-grandfathers, increased by the centuries, which
they could never hope to pay off in their lifetime but must
pass on to enslave their sons.

The leader of these pioneer subversives was one Pedro
Abad Santos, who started as a convinced Socialist.

When the war broke out these men became guerrillas

40

and fought heroically and long against the Japanese. Dur-
ing the war Pedro Abad Santos died.

After the war a new crop of leaders rose in their ranks.
One was outstanding the labor leader Crisanto Evan-
gelista, a printer by trade who had organized the Printers'
Union in the Philippines. He had visited Moscow and been
indoctrinated there with Communism. Another was the
fiery Luis Tame, no longer a student organizing "literary
parties."

As soon as the war ended and the elections were held,
Luis Taruc entered the arena as a full-fledged politician
under the hammer-and-sickle. He was the only Commu-
nist candidate to win a seat in our Lower House.

Communism had been outlawed as seditious in the Phil-
ippines while Manuel L. Quezon was still President of the
Commonwealth. Acting on the fact that Communism was
an outlaw party, the house members voted to deprive
Taruc of his seat. Thus ousted, Taruc made no more ef-
forts to fight in the open. He left Manila and fled to the
hills. There he joined the guerrillas, who were already
causing disorder in the province. He was joined, in his
self-imposed exile, by his friend and advisor, the former
university professor, Dr. Vicente Lava.

Now they were organizing the bands of guerrillas into
a Red Army of the Philippines. These were the Huks, and
they were already laying their plans to take over a coun-
try struggling to rise above ruin.

The scope of their plans was not yet apparent. We
could only see that there was trouble. There were sporadic
outbursts and attempts to intimidate, and a great deal of
scurrilous talk. There were also threats, and these became

41

louder as the campaign for the Trade Act went on and
the approaching plebiscite promised victory for our side.

The night before the general vote was to be taken, a
huge mass meeting was held in the Plaza Miranda in
Manila. I believe about one hundred thousand people at-
tended to hear the two speakers for the Trade ActPresi-
dent Roxas and myself. 1 spoke first, then President Roxas
made his speech and sat down, and just as I was shaking
his hand to congratulate him a bomb exploded on the
grandstand. The photographer standing before us to take
our picture absorbed most of the bomb fragments; poor
fellow, his life saved ours. Another man standing four feet
away was killed.

In the confusion we saw a man running through the
crowd. He was caught by police. We learned he was a
Communist, a barber named Guillen. He had occupied a
seat directly under the grandstand and from there he had
tossed the bomb.

At the time the most important fact to us all was that
Roxas had been saved.

About five o'clock the next morning a weeping woman
knocked at the door of my room in the Manila Hotel. I
recognized her as the wife of Amado V. Hernandez, a
brilliant young poet, writer, and orator, in the vernacular,
who before the war had edited the Tagalog language
newspaper Mabuhay. He had been a regular attendant
at the "literary parties" and had given several in his own
home.

He was a man I liked very much and in whom I had
implicit faith. After the war, when I had no newspaper
work for him in fact no newspaper he had asked me to

recommend him to a position with the U.S. Army in the
Philippines. This I did gladly, and he was employed as a
translator of Tagalog in Press Relations. Then while in
the United States I had heard with surprise that he was
no longer with the army, but was running for Councilman
in Manila.

People began asking me if I had heard any of his
speeches. "They're downright subversive/' I was told. "The
man must be a Communist."

Amado Hernandez was the last person I would have ex-
pected to fall for Kremlin propaganda, and I lost no op-
portunity to say so, to everyone who mentioned his name.
So for the past year I had defended him, from my distant
post in the United States.

Now his wife was at my door, weeping. The barber
Guillen who had thrown the bomb at the rally had con-
fessed he had been urged into the act by Amado Hernan-
dez.

She told me that her husband had been arrested and
that the fiscal, as we call the district attorney, had refused
both men bail. She believed in his innocence, and she con-
vinced me. Also, he was a former employee and fellow
worker and I had trusted him implicitly for years.

So I telephoned the fiscal. He was not pleased at being
roused so early. He was less pleased when he learned
what I wanted. In fact, he sounded shocked.

"General, don't you know the man's a Communist?" he
said.

I said I knew nothing of the sort. And I added, "I have
just come from America where a man is held innocent un-
til he is proven guilty. We have also been trained in that

43

belie! I believe Hernandez is innocent, and I hope you
will see your way clear to allow him to go out on bail."

Hernandez was set free. Guillen remained in jail. The
case came to trial and Hernandez was acquitted. Guillen,
the scapegoat for Moscow ideology, was executed.

I was to meet again with Hernandez.

Meantime, the plebiscite had come and gone, and the
Trade Act had been approved by an overwhelming ma-
jority.

I returned to New York and the United Nations, pleased
with the results of the campaign and with all that was be-
ing accomplished in the Philippines and thanking God that
Roxas had been spared. In spite of all the postwar diffi-
culties, he had assumed a normal leadership. He was re-
storing the government agencies, he had reopened the
courts, and was rebuilding the roads and areas wrecked by
the Japanese in their final orgy of murder and destruction,
But beyond all, he had reunited a people who had been
divided during the war between the collaborators and the
pro-Americans. Of all the ugly tasks Roxas had to face,
this had been the worst, built as it was on bitterness and
suspicion.

In New York one of my pleasanter duties as permanent
delegate to the United Nations was entertaining visitors
from the Philippines. One day a surprising visitor arrived
at our Philippine Mission offices. It was Hernandez, only
now he had achieved another metamorphosis and was a
labor leader. He told me that he had been sent to the
United States to study its labor conditions and that his
trip was being financed by the Filipino labor unions.

His had been an eventful journey from Manila. Evi-

44

dently American Intelligence had reports concerning him,
for in Honolulu he was detained for questioning by the
immigration authorities, Directly after being released he
called a press conference and gave out statements that
made shocking headlines around the world. He charged
that American immigration authorities had abused and
humiliated him because he was a Filipino., and that there
was no freedom to be found in the United States.

While I regretted this incident I could not understand
it, and I did not learn until later that he proceeded to
San Francisco and had a visit with Harry Bridges, the
labor leader long accused of Communist affiliations.

I received him in New York as I would any visitor from
home: took him to the sessions, was photographed with
him, and autographed the photograph as a souvenir of his
visit.

He did not leave New York.

It seemed that everywhere one turned, there was Her-
nandez, and always as the inseparable companion of a
temporary member of our Philippine Mission to the
United Nations. I had chosen this young fellow out of
many university students in Manila for his potentialities
of leadership, his intelligence, his liberal views and fine
appearance. He was one of the brightest of our young
men. He gave every promise of a brilliant career in the
service of our country, and I had determined to help him
as much as was in my power.

Let us call him Roberto.

Apparently, these two met in New York as strangers.
When I learned that they lived at the same hotel, I

45

thought that since both were strangers in a new land, it
was natural that they should become companions.

When a man has four sons of his own he likes to think
of himself as understanding of youth. Whenever Roberto
carne into our office to ask for one of his temporary assign-
mentshe was not a regular member of my staff he al-
ways carried a copy of the Daily Worker. I decided he had
a right to read at first hand the writings of the leftists if
only to know how to argue against them, Of his frequently
voiced anti-religious views I thought leniently: He is
young!

(Alger Hiss was also young. So young, and so unas-
suming, that I gave him no importance during the found-
ing of the United Nations, I do not remember Hiss as
having played a conspicuous role at San Francisco.)

As time went on I placed additional semiofficial respon-
sibilities on Roberto. He became my trusted aide. Life in
the United Nations can be hectic. With six committees
meeting all at once no single individual can attend to all.
I often sent representatives from the Philippine Mission
to vote according to my instructions, and Roberto with
his swift and easy way of summing up situations became
my favorite messenger to carry these instructions.

Several incidents displeased me, but he could explain
them away. Once he told me he planned to attend a con-
troversial political meeting. I told him that the members
or friends of members of a diplomatic corps are not sup-
posed to attend the partisan political affairs of another
country. He seemed to agree with me. Later I learned he
had been at the meeting.

Again, I thought: He is young.

46

I gave him more responsibilities as the need arose.

Then came sessions in Europe Rome, London, Geneva,
and Paris. Roberto was indispensable over there. Also who
should be with us, hovering around the Assembly in Paris,
but Hernandez! He seemed to have forgotten all about
his assignment to study labor conditions in the United
States. Here he was as an unrecognized attendant to the
United Nations, living in the same hotel with Roberto, and
being seen with him everywhere.

As long as Roberto's work did not suffer it seemed none
of my business. It was pleasant that the boy had a friend
from his own country on this side of the world.

While we were in Paris a case came up in the General
Assembly. Jan Papanek of Czechoslovakia, who had be-
come persona non grata with the Communists in his own
country and had taken political refuge in the United
States, was a candidate for the Administrative Board. He
had served on the Board before, and as I knew him per-
sonally and admired him for his ability, I pledged myself
to Papanek and instructed Roberto to tell the member
who was to represent me in the committee that he was
to vote for Papanek. My instructions were specific.

Several days later, chatting in a group in the lobby, I
expressed myself as sorry that Papanek had not been
elected. Someone said bitterly, "Why are you sorry, since
you did not vote for him?" I was indignant. "Certainly I
voted for Papanek! I gave specific instructions . . "

Roberto took my scolding with his usual calm. "I mis-
understood you."

He could not have misunderstood. I can see that now,

47

and much else. At the time I felt that 1 had unwittingly
double-crossed a fine man black-listed by the Soviets.

This was particularly annoying to me, since by this time
I had foisted upon me in the General Assembly the role of
principal antagonist of the Communist delegates. I knew
that in the Papanek matter I had lost out to the Commu-
nists, and I blamed my own stupidity in failing to make
myself understood. It did not occur to me to blame Ro-
berto., who was so willing and intelligent, and so young.

Some time after this, he decided to return to Manila.
I gladly assisted him to a responsible post and I said
good-bye to him with perfect faith in his integrity and his
chances for advancement. With him, back to Manila, went
his inseparable companion, Hernandez,

I shall say no more of Hernandez. He will not figure
again in this account of what was taking place in the Phil-
ippines, beyond the fact that at present he is in prison,
serving time for sedition. But I am only trying to show
how segments that at the time seemed very small and
unimportant were being cleverly fitted together until
there appeared all at once before our unbelieving eyes
the completed pattern. Under our very noses, too close
for us to see, was the pattern Moscow was pushing to-
gether with such devilish exactitude in the Philippines.

Certainly we did not suspect the place in the pattern
reserved for the so-young and so-willing Roberto. Every
report from the Philippines told of the good work he was
doing in Manila.

But while I remained unaware of what was being
worked out in my own country, the role of Russia in the
United Nations had become only too clear. The organiza-

48

tion of the Freedom of Information Conference under the
auspices of the United Nations in Geneva in 1948 brought
out new and surprising facets of the Soviet character.

It was there Russia showed her true colors for the first
time, not only to the conference, but to the world.

At Geneva we saw the Russians not as the surly boors
of the United Nations, but as suave masters of diplomacy.
Sixty-four nations were represented, including some, such
as Albania, Austria, and Switzerland, which were not
members of the United Nations. Despite the great size of
the gathering it was in this conference that we succeeded
in getting unanimous votes, and for the surprising reason
that the famed Russian "Nfet" was conspicuous by its ab-
sence. This I believe was because Ambassador Alexander
Bogomolov, the chief Soviet delegate and one of their
ablest diplomats, wanted to convince the world that Rus-
sians did not always take the contrary stand; that they
could be amiable and reasonable.

But it soon became apparent that this amiability and
reasonableness was reserved for matters non-essential to
foreign policy, and that in all matters pertaining to the
United States they were adamant as ever. Their iron pur-
pose was veiled under a show of courtesy, but it was there.
Bogomolov knew all the old tricks of the magician and the
defense attorney and the diplomat, of making important
issues seem unimportant and trivial issues appear of over-
whelming importance. In lobby or salon or bar the Rus-
sians were relaxed and friendly, but once on the floor or
in the chair and an issue arose that really mattered then
they were fanatics. It was as if a signal were given and
masks donned again.

49

A great deal of Bogomolov's success at Geneva, socially
and otherwise, was due to his charming wife, who spoke
English well and acted as his secretary and interpreter
and hostess. She was as intelligent as she was attractive
and was, of all things, a civil engineer! She had made
many friends for Russia before the conference at Geneva
ended.

So while in the United Nations we had been repelled by
the arrogance and aloofness of the Russian delegates, in
Geneva we were struck by their friendliness. They were
leaning backwards to be friendly and make friends, and
on every hand delegates of other nations could be heard
remarking, "Say, the Russians aren't such bad fellows!
Not stubborn at all, once you get to know them!"

My own suspicions, roused at San Francisco, were slow
to die. I cannot believe in these national overnight sea
changes. Has the soul of Nazi Germany been changed? Or
the ancient spirit of Japan?

So at Geneva, amidst all the smiling and bowing and
handshaking, I still found myself wondering, is this ac-
tually the new Russia? Can we believe in this expansive
mood?

Every minute of their waking hours the Russians were
at work winning friends. I noticed as the days went on
that they were not only winning friends for their side, they
were winning friends away from the West. This was an
unmistakable peace offensive they were conducting in the
guise of congeniality and conviviality.

Their campaign had one curious result. Heretofore in
international conferences the Great Powers had paid little

50

attention to the small nations. In this, the Western world
had erred.

In San Francisco for the first time the small nations
had been given consideration and the right to speak, and
for this, and for only this, we can thank the Soviet.

One of the most revered members of the United Na-
tions, respected even by Molotov and Vishinsky, was
Joseph Bech, a truly great leader who was chairman of die
delegation from Luxembourg. He told us how he had
represented Luxembourg as its Prime Minister at the
Treaty of Versailles, and in the presence of Wilson and
Clemenceau was pleading the cause of his small country,
when a representative of one of the larger powers asked:
"Where is this country of yours? I can't see it on the map."

And Bech had answered smartly: "Of course you can't
see it, because it is under your thumb."

I know how he felt, because when the design for the
United Nations emblem was drawn at Lake Success, the
world map centering the design did not show the Philip-
pines at all. I protested, and the designer protested back.

"If we put the Philippines on, it will show no bigger
than a pinpoint," he argued.

I said, "Put the pinpoint there,"

And it is there, and you see it only if you look with care,
but the fact that we are on the map means a great deal to
our small nation.

No matter how small the country, it not only has its
rights, but may have great importance; how and when, no
one can foresee. The lad with his finger in the dike was
only a very small boy, but according to the legend, he
saved his country from inundation. That can be taken as

51

a modern parable. Consider Greece after World War II,
when so-called guerrillas from Albania and other puppet
states infiltrated there, indoctrinated the citizens with
Communism and succeeded in turning Greek against
Greek, Greece was rapidly changing into another puppet
state.

Russia's main objective there was one that had always
been denied Russia to go through Greece and use it as
their outlet into the Mediterranean, This Soviet plan
would have snipped Europe in two and denied the West-
ern powers the right to the Suez Canal. It would have
turned Europe over to the Soviet.

America stopped that plan. General James Van Fleet
was sent there with American military strategists to help
train the Greek patriots, who held their little land against
the Soviets.

Eight million resisting Greeks prevented the carrying
out of this plan even as they had prevented during the
Second World War the planned meeting of Hitler's and
Mussolini's troops in their country. Greece by its delaying
action made it possible for Eisenhower to land in Africa
and later in Anzio.

In the Philippines, the delaying action of four precious
months in Bataan and Corregidor gave Australia and the
Pacific Coast time to prepare; this according to the state-
ment of Chief of Staff Marshall.

These are two small countries that played important
roles in the democratic defense in World War II.

The United States, England, and France, conscious of
their own, powers, had always before ignored the opinions
o the tinier nations. Here were the Russians, deferring to

52

us and paying us the attention that had never before been
ours, and this, by contrast, did us a great deal of good. It
was beyond the realization of many of the delegates of the
previously ignored countries that this good was being
done out of the hatred Russia bore the great Western
powers, and Russia's determination to belittle the United
States, England, and France.

Even though the Russians were by this time well aware
of my pronounced antagonism, they still tried to win me
because I belonged with the smaller nations. When I was
fighting for Philippine reparations in the Far Eastern
Commission in Washington and was obliged to make
statements not too favorable to America, the Russian dele-
gates always paid me congratulatory visits later to com-
mend my statements; the effect was always that I made a
point of softening my comments at the next session.

At Geneva I was nominated for the presidency of the
Freedom of Information Conference, whereupon the Rus-
sians immediately backed another man, the delegate from
India. They must have felt I was a strong candidate, be-
cause the day before the election one of their delegates
came to tell me in emphatic terms that they would sup-
port me. I had been so certain they were against me that
I doubted this pledge, so after the election, I asked to
have the votes counted. I knew every country that had
been pledged to me, and by the count I was able to tell
that I had definitely not received the Russian vote.

However, the offer had been made in the friendliest
fashion, and everything the Russians did at Geneva was
done with every appearance of courtesy and charm.

As before, I was invited to their parties and to the af-

53

fairs given by their satellites, where the customary Soviet
propaganda was passed around with the boundless supply
of liquor and the excellent Russian foods. Pamphlets were
handed out, or motion pictures shown, displaying all that
was being accomplished under Soviet rule in Poland or
Czechoslovakia or some other puppet land, and every-
thing they did was well done.

It seemed to me they were always giving parties or at-
tending parties. Our dour Russians had become the play-
boys of the conference. They were everywhere; they
mixed with everyone.

I noticed also in Geneva that as a rule the American
delegates spent much of their time together. Evenings, in
restaurants, they would be seen dining together, a tight
band of compatriots in a foreign land. At the time it struck
me that they would learn more and give a better impres-
sion if they mixed more with the other nationalities, as the
Russians were doing.

One evening in Geneva a dinner was given in my honor
by the delegate of Lebanon. I happened to glance toward
the door and saw my aide, Major Cesar B. Jimenez, and
my son Gregorio standing there. By the expression of
shock on their faces I knew something terrible had hap-
pened. They hurried to me, and one whispered, "We have
had a phone call from Washington," My first thought was
of my wife, then one of them whispered, "President Roxas
has just died."

I had to excuse myself to my hosts and withdraw, trem-
bling with an emotion composed of both relief, since
Virginia was safe, and utter despair.

Once again, and in a time of dreadful need, the Philip-

54

pines was left leaderless. We had had a great leader in
Quezon. He died in the critical time when we were trying
to recapture the Philippines. Now, only two years after we
had become independent and made Roxas our President,
he was dead. Elpidio Quirino, Vice President, took the
oath of office.

The death of Manuel Roxas was symbolic. He was
speaking at Clark Field, an American Army air base in the
Philippines. He completed his speech with the dramatic
promise that the Philippines was ready to throw all its
forces behind America in the fight against Communism.
Just as he finished making this pledge, he collapsed.

He was picked up by American doctors and carried to
an American hospital on the field. There he died, on Amer-
ican soil in the Philippines.

In this most critical time in our country's history, we
had lost our greatest leader. What followed was inevitable
graft, corruption, and the resultant scandals that ruin
the faith of a people.

55

Chapter IV

ELPIDIQ QUIRINO'S administration was to last six
years and it would be blamed for many of the ills that al-
most ended democracy in the Philippines. This is unjust.
No single individual can be blamed for all that happened
to us in the postwar period which we had hoped would
be dedicated to peace and rebuilding.

He became President when Roxas died, on April 15,
1948. Within a few months our fledgling republic was
riven with scandals and hatreds that threatened our very
lives, while the world watched with bewilderment and
horror, and even the Filipinos themselves failed to under-
stand how this debacle had been brought about and what
was being done to them.

Quirino had fallen heir to evils centuries old.

The effects of moral disintegration had been manifest
when President Sergio Osmena returned to the liberated
Philippines in 1944 and hopefully assumed leadership over
a people who had been forced by three-and-a-half years
of war and resistance into ways antithetical to four hun-
dred years of Christian education and forty years of train-
ing in democracy.

The wise guidance of Osmena and the firm wisdom of

56

Roxas had served temporarily to quell the danger and
promise a resumption of normalcy. But the dignified Os-
mena had not chosen to campaign when his time came up
for election, and as a result, Roxas was elected. When
Roxas died, Quirino came to power. Quirino proved help-
less as situation after situation arose that needed stamping
out there and then, and thus these dangers were permitted
to spread and create greater evil.

Only a few months after Quirino took office the tides of
democracy, which had been rising so gloriously in our is-
lands, turned and began ebbing in the opposite direction.

To understand the danger we must look at the Philip-
pines not as a small segment of democracy in the Far
East, but as a part of that vast, mysterious, and ancient
continent of Asia.

Asia had been in a state of revolution for centuries.

From the beginning of this century up to the shock at-
tack at Pearl Harbor, the larger part of this vast continent
was changing from a picturesque legendary area of silken-
clad rajas and geishas, elephants and cherry blossoms,
into a seething cauldron of revolt that covered half the
world.

The spirit of revolution stemmed from the common root
of the basic human urge for release from alien domina-
tion. Let us admit at once that in the case of Asia this
meant freedom from the domination of the European,
which is to say the White Man. This urge had been voiced
in Asia in many ways, mostly in acts of violence. The Tai-
ping rebellion in China, the Sepoy mutiny in India, the
succeeding waves of minor revolts and uprisings all over
the mainland, and, not the least in the preceding cen-

57

tury, the Filipino's successful revolt against Spain, all
these had been protests against the domination of the
alien White.

So the beginning of the twentieth century found Asia
boiling with resentment, but the might of European su-
periority in weapons held down the cover, and acts of
protest were in the main confined to sporadic outbursts of
violence. The strength of the movement grew with a wider
diffusion of the ideals and ideas of liberation, and the
growing passion for release.

For the next forty years that passion swelled to the
breaking point; revolution in Asia became no longer a
series of isolated outbreaks, but a vast, widespread, and
inexorable human movement. The Boxer uprising was a
foreshadowing of events to come, which for the first time
imposed its bitter truths on all the Western world, not
only on a single imperial power. The Russo-Japanese war
of 1904-1905 proved to the Asian that he could meet and
defeat the European, and that by the simple expedient of
making himself proficient in the use of the European's
arms. It is no accident that the demand for freedom,
which has been called the nationalist upsurge of Asia,
gained momentum in the years following the Russo-Japa-
nese war*

These forty years saw the complete fruition of that
dream. Gandhi carried a Christlike doctrine to India's
millions that resulted in the "revolution of love/' In In-
donesia's great Isles of Spice, Sukarno, Sjahrir, and Hatta
preached to the millions the rebirth of a new Sri-Visayan
empire built on the broadest basis of freedom and equal-
ity. China's starveling hordes were aroused by Sun Yat-sen

58

to a new awareness of their rights as human beings. While
in Japan, ruthless and ambitious leaders were harnessing
a new and terrible machine, the technology of the West,
to the greed of an empire-minded and conquest-inspired
people.

All these either aimed directly at the elimination of the
White Man as the ruler of Asia, or, like Sun, built upon
the natural and legitimate urge for freedom the founda-
tions for a new economic order, which in the end proved
to be no order, and scarcely economic.

The result, in the vast hinterland of Asia, was the trans-
formation of a great reservoir of mankindone billion
human beings from the legendary area of mystery, phi-
losophy, and glamour into a seething mass of newly aware
and grimly struggling humanity, aware from its top
through its lowest levels of powerful new forces which
were speedily dissolving the ancient creed of man's su-
periority to man.

Here then, in Asia, was a positive trend toward a West-
ern democracy which the nations of the West either ig-
nored or were meeting in differing ways. The colonial
powers of Europe wavered between open resistance and a
policy of inertia, some chancellories apparently waiting
for the hypothetical meeting of irresistible force with im-
movable body.

The trend was given impetus by new ideals of the social
relationships imported from the West; by improvements
of communications and transportation; by the acquisition
and knowledge of the White Man's weapons; by the assim-
ilation on the part of the Eastern peoples of the technolog-
ical sciences of the West; by the defeat of White Russia at

59

the hands of the Japanese; and, not least of all, by the
democratic example set during these forty years by Amer-
ica in the Philippines.

Out of this change a new and menacing force leveled
against white supremacy began spreading between the
Urals and the Pacific. While European powers hesitated
before it, or staged demonstrations of violence that in turn
bred violence, America met the force head-on in the Phil-
ippine Commonwealth in characteristic American fashion,
and conquered it there, not with counterforce, not with
the paternalistic assumption of the "white man's burden,"
but with a cooperative way of living in which the burdens
and rewards were shared with all the people, and where
freedom and responsibility were synonymous terms.

During the first part of this century democracy in its
purest form was being fostered in the Philippines, and the
burdens of state and of economy were shared there by
devoted Americans and devoted Filipinos.

Technically, the Philippines became a possession of the
United States in 1900 and retained that status until 1935,
when by the operation of the Tydings-McDuffie Act it
became the Philippine Commonwealth, with Manuel Que-
zon as first President and with increased autonomous
powers. This status was to be held for ten years, or until
1945, when the basic condition of a "stable government"
as outlined in the Jones Act of 1916 would be fully at-
tained, and full independence proclaimed.

So in 1900, before the Russo-Japanese war and in no
way influenced by it, the United States of America, find-
ing itself with an Asian possession on its hands for the first
time, had ignored the examples of the imperialistic, col-

60

onizing European countries in Asia and begun its own
novel program for democracy in the Philippines.

The crusade was composed of two complementary parts.
The basis was political self-ride. The second part, that of
political and economic preparation, was to serve as safe-
guard against the dangers of immaturity when independ-
ence came.

This was total rejection of the European approach to
the Asian as "the white man's burden." The American at-
titude from the beginning was that the "burden" which
was to be admitted was a responsibility to be shared,
and that the relationship between East and West was not
and could never be that of master and slave, but was
based on the duty of power in being to extend its strength
to power latent.

Its roots were in the American declaration of the equal-
ity of man before his Creator and of his endowment in
the eyes of all other men with the "inalienable rights."
Stemming from these roots was the concept that it is the
inescapable duty of the stronger man to assist his weaker
equal before God in establishing and maintaining those
rights.

For the next forty years, in successive stages, America
maintained unbroken its course in assisting the Filipino
people to attain democracy in its most comprehensive
sense, carrying out to the full the pledge made by President
Woodrow Wilson, "no backward step shall be taken."
Politically and economically (more rapidly in the former
field it is true) the Filipinos were progressing toward
complete sovereignty; they had almost attained their goal.

While this lesson of democracy was being taught in the

61

Philippines, while America was gradually strengthening
the Philippines against the day it would release its last
hold on our Islands and wish us well in our great adven-
ture in freedom, elsewhere in Asia the ruling powers still
clung to the vestiges of their domination.

Their attention was diverted toward Europe by World
War II.

Then Japan rose on the crest of the great revolutionary
wave moving over Asia Japan, the little country that by
defying and defeating great White Russia back in 1904
had been the first to show Asia that the White Man was
not Superman; that he too could be made to suffer im-
prisonment and shame, to shed tears, suffer, and die.
Japan now, temporarily, rose to hideous power.
In World War II Japan confirmed the findings of the
Russo-Japanese war, holding the mightiest Western na-
tions in the shadow of Pacific defeat for more than three
years.

The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was followed by the
conquest of the Philippines, then by the three-and-a-half
years of Japanese occupation. Americans and Filipinos
who had fought together now suffered together, but this
was no supine yielding to superior forces. The Filipino re-
sistance movement is accorded in history a place no
lower than those allotted to France, Belgium, and Poland.
In our Isknds, as in those European countries, the "under-
ground 77 was not confined to a few die-hard resistants. It
was national. It affected all strata of the population. The
very children took part in the fight that seemed unending,
that inevitably brought with it a transformation in values'
that temporarily made wrong seem right, and black, if

62

not white, at least appear to be a very light shade of gray.

Then America rallied to the liberation of the captive
Philippines and there followed months of devastating
fighting within the land, and the equally devastating re-
treat by the Japanese as they were pushed back into the
sea, burning, raping, looting, killing, laying waste the
areas of their retreat with a hatred doubled in intensity
because we, the Asian Filipinos, had fought against the
Japanese who were also Asian.

Conquest, resistance, and victory these filled the years
wherein the Filipinos knew little except terror, suffering,
and deprivation in every form. Small wonder that when
freedom came we as a people were ill prepared for the
newer and more incomprehensible problems that were to
come with victory.

On August 15, 1945, the Japanese emperor formally an-
nounced to his people that in the interests of peace he
would act to end the conflict, which, as Hiroshima and
Nagasaki and the combined invading spearheads of Mac-
Arthur, Nimitz, and Halsey made plain, was almost over.
The power which had threatened to engulf all Asia, with
undercurrents of a subsequent bid for world empire, lay
prostrate.

Not only Japan was supine, but all Asia lay prostrate in
the aftermath of war. The whole region was in ruins, and
only the spirit of revolt burned on with small, flickering
flames in a vast area of devastation.

And Japan, the loser what did defeat mean to Japan?

In the three-and-a-half years between Pearl Harbor and
Hiroshima the Japanese had succeeded in removing from
other Asian minds any lingering doubts there may have

63

been of the Asian's capacity to meet and overcome his
erstwhile European overlords. Japan almost won the war,
and she won what victories she had under a powerful
slogan: "Asia for the Asians."

But Japan prostituted the leadership which she nearly
achieved by inordinate greed. Her slogan was only super-
ficially "Asia for the Asians." In effect and in substance,
the propaganda trumpets of the Hoo Doo Bu had blared
out the gospel of "Asia for the Japanese." She had wooed
us all, from the Philippines to the Urals, with the flattering
refrain, <c We are your fellow Asians. Join us in driving the
White Man into the sea!"

Asia, freedom-loving, quick to recognize the new threat
of overlordship in another form, had repelled the advance
of Japan and joined with the West to destroy her.

During that period of war the Asian learned his own
strength. Over the tramping of Japanese army boots there
had been heard a consistent deeper cry of "Asia for the
Asians." Asia spoke with one voice, as long as Asians faced
the common danger. For a time they had but one objec-
tive, the overthrow of an arrogant aggressor.

When Japan collapsed, the unity of Asia began to fall
apart, lacking as it did the cement of a common threat. In
the place of that unity there began a diversity of regional
aspirations, but in one sense they still shared the same
objective, which was, as before, freedom from alien rule.

So the Asian's centuries-old determination to be free of
foreign domination was strengthened by war and the de-
feat of Japan. With the aggressor Japan out of the way,
surely the White Man could be forced out of the Far East,
even by a weakened and depleted Asia!

64

This became the postwar Oriental dream.

There was one country in the Orient that had no part
in this dream. In the ruined Philippines, one year after
Japan surrendered, we saw the birth of the Philippine Re-
public. Behind us lay three-and-a-half years of social and
moral devastation. Ahead lay years of struggle and eco-
nomic insecurity. But the enlightened policy of the United
States was carrying through the planned transition of a
dependent people to national sovereignty and full inde-
pendence, an independence, furthermore, the security of
which was to be insured by a continuing policy of eco-
nomic cooperation. Our freedom had been achieved in a
spirit of full understanding and mutual cooperation.

Therefore, we had no quarrel with the White Man in
the Philippines. Physically, economically, and spiritually,
our losses were beyond calculation, but the future was on
our side. Our victory in the war was a moral one, we had
sided with democracy and democracy was the winner.
America was our co-partner and friend.

In other parts of Asia the transition to freedom was not
so peacefully achieved. From the Arabian Sea to the
Straits of Sunda freedom would be obtained only after
bitter struggles, around the conference tables and even in
the open fields of war.

So we must realize that while Japan lost in its blueprint
of war, it was the winner in its attack against the White
Man in Asia. Long after the Emperor gave his dignified
signal of withdrawal, the fight against white domination
went on in other parts of Asia.

The fighting did not stop in Indonesia, where a reluc-
tant Netherlands refused to give up her richest possession.

65

In Indochina the war-bom passion to end alien rule
turned the people there against the French. Throughout
the entire mainland of southeast Asia the fires lighted by
the Rising Sun burned on and the fight for freedom con-
tinued to rage in lands ravaged by war, with their com-
munications and age-old social orders in ruins, with all the
old values lost, and all passion spent save the indestructi-
ble urge for release from alien rule. Which, in Asia, means
"against white supremacy/'

Then into these leaderless and chaotic areas of desola-
tion, hunger, and death, a newer and louder voice took
up the cry of: "Asia for the Asians." It came out of Mos-
cow and it threatened to shake the world.

To the underprivileged man of Asia who had never
known what it meant to go to bed with a full belly, Com-
munism promised food and the right not to be bound to
foreign rulers a will-o'-the-wisp Paradise to be won only
by yielding the freedom he did not possess to a Soviet
scheme for world conquest. He did not know that Russia
planned to conquer his side of the world. Ideology meant
nothing to the common man of Asia, who in fact had for
countless centuries possessed a far better ideology of
ethics and morals than anything that had originated in
Moscow. He knew only that his stomach had hunger, that
his wife lay dead of hunger, that his children died cov-
ered with sores and eaten by flies because he had no food
to give them. He knew that for him there was work with-
out sufficient returns to maintain life, an existence without
hope; cruelties, indignities, and debasement, and never
a chance of Justice.

For these he blamed the White Man.

66

To such starvelings the preachings of Marx were with-
out meaning. All that mattered was a fistful of rice, a bowl
of tea, the right to live. Give that ragged skeleton a gun
and tell him, "Fight! Fight for your country and its for-
eign overlords!" and what would he answer?

Why should he fight for white men!

But he would fight for a change. Any change.

That is the litany of those who have lost faith in the
governments of the lands they live in. "Any change is bet-
ter than this."

This was the cry in China. In Indonesia. In Indochina.

This was the cry of the starving and it was not heard in
London, Paris, the Hague. But it was heard in Moscow.

Moscow offered guns, and fed hatred. It does not matter
to the oppressed whether the heel that holds it down is
white or brown. It will be hated. The heel of the hated
autocrat was on China, Indonesia, and Indochina, and to
the haters Communism offered guns and the pledge that
was lip service only: "Here is your chance at equality,
our fellow Orientals. Here is your chance to drive out the
White Man and be free and equal and well fed and self-
respecting, like other men. . . ."

No, Communism did not express the longings of Asia.
It served only to fill a vacuum. The leaders of the teeming
millions of the Far East knew only one purpose to drive
the White Man out of Asia. On this, the Communists
built their schemes for infiltration. They gave guns and
advice to those who had lost faith. They gave them the
cry:

"Asia for the Asians!"

With the same cry, Japan had launched her blueprint

67

of aggression, and had been halted only when she reached
the Philippines.

Now Moscow was launching the same world- wide blue-
print on the same cry, and once more, following Japan's
example, the Russian campaign was headed straight for
the Philippines.

By 1948 that campaign was well launched in every part
of the world. The hate slogan of "Asia for the Asians" was
not only being shouted in the ears of the Orientals, but in
the United Nations it was being carefully voiced over
cocktails and vodka and cups of steaming Russian tea.
This was the year Roxas died and trouble really started in
the Philippines; and in the General Assembly in Paris,
where we went in session after Geneva, the Russian dele-
gates were bold in letting their demands be known, not
to their fellow delegates alone, but to all the listening
world.

In Paris, in the Palais de Chaillot that September, with
the shadow of war all over the world because of the Ber-
lin blockade, the world saw how arrogant the new Russia
could be. Here was none of the sweetness and light that
had made notable the session at Geneva. Here for the first
time we saw the belligerent Vishinsky and found him all
out for aggression. Here was my first encounter with
Vishinsky, and I may say we met head-on.

Vishinsky proved to be a dialectician and undef eatable
in debate. Master of sophism, and of cynicism, he knew
every trick and could twist any argument his way. In all
his debates with me he showed a particular arrogance; it

68

was plain that he had me pigeon-holed with the capital-
ists.

When I was elected chairman of the Ad Hoc Political
and Security Committee, a committee that brought out
the duplicity of the Russians as never before, I was ap-
palled as agreements were made only to be disavowed the
next day as if they had never been.

On the night before my committee was to vote on the
admission of Ceylon to membership, one Polish-Soviet
member of the committee actually signed an agreement
with us and on the following day voted against us. Upon
being shown the paper in the presence of witnesses he
blandly denied ever having signed it. We were helpless.

How could we hold our own against such people? Re-
ligion, which exercises restraint in others, was lacking in
the Russians and their satellites. Their religion was a fa-
natical creed set in Moscow, and no amount of reason nor
appeals to decency could change them. They were un-
bending iron men, merciless as Nazis; they believed in
their Moscow-set policies, and they were out to convince
or kiU.

In Paris for the first time I became certain that the
Russians were inimical to world peace and that it was im-
possible for any of us among the democracies to come to
terms with them.

All we could hope to do in the United Nations was to
play a delaying game and try to keep murder out of the
world a little while longer, with the hope that the miracle
of peace might eventually be achieved.

In the year after this I became President of the General
Assembly, and the afternoon of my inauguration Vishin-

69

sky held a press conference to announce that Russia had
broken the monopoly of the atom bomb.

This terrifying bit of news was given out with delib-
erate intent, to show that the United States had better
understand that Russia was not to be bulldozed by threats
of the atom bomb, because she had it too!

The newsmen came to me to report this shocking news
and I could only think back to my first impressions in San
Francisco, when I had first suspected that Russia was the
enemy of freedom and democracy. Now I knew that my
first impressions had been right. It was after this that I
turned all my efforts to help bring the Big Five together
to an understanding and control of the atom bomb.

But as always, in private, the Russian delegates con-
tinued to exercise dignity and charm. At private affairs
Vishinsky displayed manners worthy of a Russian aristo-
crat of the days of the Czars.

He liked to crack little jokes, and some were very witty.
He paid compliments and made friends.

I recall one dinner I gave in New York for the Foreign
Ministers attending the General Assembly sessions.
Grover Whalen, who was then Chairman of the Mayor's
Committee, offered a toast:

"To President and Mrs. Romulo, who have won the
hearts of seven million New Yorkers."

Instantly, Vishinsky was on his feet with a glass up-
raised: "And to seven million New Yorkers, add one Rus-
sian!"

One night I invited him to the opera. Manon Lescaut
was sung, and Vishinsky hummed every aria under his

70

breath. It was easy to see that he loved music. He told me
he played the violin.

His own social affairs were delightful and no expense
was spared. I remember a dinner he gave at his headquar-
ters on Park Avenue when Henri Spaak o Belgium and I
were guests of honor. All the Russian and satellite dele-
gates were there, about fourteen in all. Every effort was
made by these charming people to please us, and still, no
opportunity was missed to press home the Communist
creed. These men were playing a desperate game and the
rules were not to be forgotten for an instant. They cre-
ated opportunities to get me alone to renew the subtle and
by this time familiar approach:

"Since we are also Orientals . . ."

They were drumming that slogan on all the world fronts
by this time. Hour after hour, on the far side of the Pa-
cific, the Russian radio was sounding this formula in every
Asian dialect into the listening ears of Asia: "We of Rus-
sia are your fellow Orientals. Join with us and drive out
the hated White Man."

This was their propaganda cry in Paris and Geneva y
Washington and New York, Tokyo, Manila, Shanghai.
Russia was out to convince Asia that the colonial iniqui-
ties committed by the British, French, and Dutch were
responsible for all the ills in the Far East, and that the
Americans, because they also were white men, were no
better than the hated colonial powers. But the Russians
promised that once they were firmly linked to the Orien-
tal peoples, they would treat them with the respect and
consideration due their fellow Orientals. . . .

I could not take this propaganda seriously. I could not

71

imagine its being listened to with any respect in the Phil-
ippines. First, the Russians were not Orientals. These men
were not like any Orientals I had ever known. The Rus-
sians do not think like Asians, or talk like them, or share
their moral or religious creeds. And certainly they have
nothing in common with the Filipinos, whose ancient cul-
ture is European, with a modern culture superimposed
that came to us from America.

But to the frightened masses of Asia, who knew no dif-
ference between one race or another, who knew only
white or brown, the Russian claim to kinship served to
lull their suspicions of the Soviet and inflame their hatred
against all whites. The Russian radio kept pounding this
policy over the troubled Asian areas by night and by day
in an insidious hate campaign calculated to turn Asia over
to Russia and insure an easy Communist victory.

And because the Asian had learned hate and fear, he
believed!

Behind the Russian argument was every scrawny native
that was ever kicked by a booted white in the Orient;
every twisted skeleton in rags that died of hunger before
the doors of the white overlords; every native, no matter
how intelligent or well-bred, who was refused entrance to
a club or dining room in his own land; every sign that
once stood in the public parks in Shanghai: "Chinese and
not allowed!"

Such incidents were thrown by Asia into the Commu-
nist balance.

AH this was driving a wedge between the East and
West and making understanding and friendship impos-

72

sible between the two sides of the world. All this was
being incorporated into the blueprint of Russia.

In Washington, as a representative on the Far Eastern
Commission, I came into intimate contact for the first time
with Russia's open truculence, arrogance, and insolence as
shown toward all matters pertaining to America. This
Commission had been set up amongst the nations that had
fought Japan in order to help guide MacArthur in his task
of democratizing the Japanese. In these meetings, called
in the hope of achieving understanding, every statement
concerning the United States brought forth words and ex-
pressions of utter contempt from the Russians. There were
only eleven of us and we were in close contact, so I saw
the Russian mind at very close range; Gromyko first, Malik
next, then Panyushkin, and alternate delegates who were
generals and admirals.

In San Francisco I had guessed at the dim outlines of
the Communist blueprint. Now I saw it clearly outlined,
and I knew my worst suspicions had been justified. Not
only the United States, but all the Western powers were
looked down upon by the Soviet state with arrogance and
contempt.

It was clear that these people had but one aimto sub-
merge the United States.

That was all Russia needed. The other powers would
collapse with America.

These arrogant and ruthless delegates filled me with a
growing fear. They represented a country bent on world
conquest.

On the other side of the world, their insidious and per-
sistent campaign of hatred against the White Man was

73

calculated to turn Asia over to Russia and insure an easy
Communist victory in the Far East.

After that as once planned in Berlin, and also in Tokyo
after that, the world!

So this was the Russian blueprint. Out in the open at
last, and perfectly clear.

The hate-borne plan was far advanced by 1949. In the
middle of that year, China, our neighbor and friend for
many centuries, fell to the Communists.

74

Chapter V

THIS year of 1949 was the most critical in Philippine
postwar history.

All the reports coming out of my country were of graft
and corruption and of ugly flare-ups among the Filipinos
themselves. In Geneva, Rome, Athens, New Delhi, Ja-
karta, New York, Washington, London, Rio de Janeiro,
and Paris, I read these stories and felt sick at heart. Our
little nation had just come into its own, and in this short
time had become a byword. Everywhere I went I was
questioned, jokingly or cynically, until even the friendliest
queries became bitter to hear. Our shirring hour had been
turned into a nightmare.

How, and by whom? Had American teachings in the
Philippines been wasted, or had we, the Filipinos, been
unworthy of the responsibility of being a free people?

On what had become almost commuting trips across the
world I studied the new problems in my country. There
was no hiding the fact that the Philippines was in a bad
way. The country was a powder keg, brimming with ha-
tred, and at any moment it might explode.

I wondered about our new President. Was he powerful
enough to keep the lid clamped down?

75

Quirino was a man of whom I had known very little,
but he had been generous to me, retaining me in the
position of Chief Delegate to the United Nations and giv-
ing me other and equally exacting posts as the months
went by. I questioned friends who were wise in politics
about him, and was answered with shrugged shoulders:

"Quirino? Oh, a fine man. But . . ."

And in the beginning the explanation would be given
reluctantly: "Too many relatives has this man Quirino.
And also, too many friends . . /'

The talk grew stronger. It became increasingly clear
that while a few were getting very rich in the Philippines,
the majority of the citizens were growing steadily poorer.
The promised new roads, schools, buildings of every kind
-where were they? While on the other hand, the newly
rich were said to be standing very close to the walls of
Malacanan, the historic palace in Manila where our presi-
dents dwell.

Personally, I believe Quirino to be an honest man. In
fact, there has never been the slightest breath of scandal
about his private life.

It was plain that friendship or kinship, and not true
merit, had placed many in high places where they did not
belong. It was only rumored at first that some of these
were using their exalted positions as looting posts, for
which the people paid. And there was loot on every hand
to be had for the taking in the Philippines for those who
had the power to take it, even if they lacked the right.

On each trip home I grew more bewildered. How had
we managed to get into such a mess, and in so short a
time? Why were the Filipinos, who had fought to a man

76

for their freedom, now fighting amongst themselves after
having won that freedom?

To those who criticized from afar it was not easy to
explain that while the Philippines had been launched into
independence in an extravagant love feast of good wishes
and good will, actually our little country was operating
under handicaps that would have ruined a far larger,
richer, and more experienced nation.

Even the task of the shift in leadership was a difficult
one.

A nation owes its greatness in large measure to its great
men, and we had been fortunate in our leaders. It was
tragic that we lost our two greatest in times of crisis when
they were most needed. The prophet of the modern Fili-
pino struggle for nationhood was and still is the late Man-
uel Luis Quezon. He was the revolutionary leader par
excellence, and more than that, he was the man the people
trusted as their champion when the struggle moved from
the battlefield to the debating floor.

Quezon dominated the Philippine scene from the days
of the Revolution of 1900 to the middle of the Second
World War when he died in 1944. His patriotism and his
devotion to the people and to the nation will always be
beyond question. But the very intensity of Quezon's pa-
triotism and his consciousness of his own worth and his
own loyalty moved him to construct in the Philippine po-
litical scene an edifice in which loyalty was primarily to
the political party, which in his hands had become the
powerful weapon that brought independence to his coun-
try. Quezon built his party around himself and chose his

77

own aides, whom he trained to succeed him and help
guide the nation. Among these was Manuel Roxas.

The loyalty Quezon stood for was a personal loyalty,
since he identified himself with the true interests of the
nation. To this identification he gave everything at the
last, his health and his life. But it was not an institutional
loyalty, and it was bound to be weakened in any case
with the passing of Quezon.

When his death occurred in the midst of a destructive
enemy occupation, the weakness of the political structure
was revealed. It took place at a time when the iron rule of
Japanese military power was clamped down over the
archipelago, and particularly on our political institutions.
During that time only the men Quezon had taught and
trained in the inadequate concept of individual loyalty re-
mained to lead.

That they led patriotically and in most cases self-sacri-
ficingly is beyond question. But that their very training
was for loyalty to a personality and to a concept of leader-
ship rather than to the democratic principle of the people's
innermost feelings and convictions, later events were to
prove only too well.

For throughout the occupation it was the Filipinos
themselves who resisted the enemy. It was the people who
gave their fullest proof of loyalty to democracy, and the
people who remained steadfast to the principles given to
them by America, while the leaders, perhaps with a more
farsighted outlook, or with the hope of protecting their
people from further atrocities-since if they protested they
would be replaced-did not go along with the people in
and out of resistance. It was the people, rather than the

78

leaders, who gave the most convincing proof of their de-
votion to the basic tenets of democracy and their readi-
ness to sacrifice allas many did in support of these
tenets, and who saw in the American internees at Santo
Tomas, in Bilibid and in Los Banos, and the American
refugees they hid and protected, living symbols of democ-
racy under trial. It was the people of the Philippines who
flung themselves and all they possessed into the struggle
against the invaders, while their counterparts in Asia, the
people of Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, and others, were,
to put it mildly, at least indifferent to the invading Japa-
nese and their activities.

It is not difficult to trace this devotion on the Filipinos'
part to the democratic principle, insofar as that principle
is based on the freedom of the individual, which is some-
thing the Japanese conquerer rejected from the start.
There is no place in the Japanese code of Bushido for the
rights of the individual. But in the Philippines this pride
in self goes far back far beyond the better-trained and
the more cultured outlook of the modern leaders to the
libertarian ideals of the Filipino rebels who first chal-
lenged Spanish power.

Before the turn of the century, Jose Rizal, the man who
was to be hailed as the voice of Filipino freedom, wrote
a novel which in its sphere and within its orientation had
all the impact of Rousseau's Le Contrat Social and Thomas
Paine's The Age of Reason. This book was titled The
Reign of Greed, and in it the author sounded a call against
social corruption which was to be echoed in the memora-
ble "Cry of Balintawak" this actually was the defiant act
of tearing up the Spanish tax papers at the town of Balin-

79

tawak a cry which to the Filipino has all the significance
of the shot the Concord farmers fired "where the arched
bridge spans the flood."
That cry overthrew Spain in the Philippines.
The devotion to the freedom that is democracy goes
back then in the Philippines to Rizal; to Andres Bonifacio,
who led the first embattled revolt against the corrupt and
tyrannical Spanish regime; to Aguinaldo, who consoli-
dated the revolution against the United States that had
taken us over from Spain. It also goes back to the de-
voted "Thousand"the one thousand American teachers
who came to the Philippines on the transport Thomas at
the turn of the centurywho came not only to teach, but
to learn from the people with whom they had cast their
lot. The Thomasites worked and lived with the Filipinos
as the Filipinos themselves worked and lived. They taught,
not by carping and by critical precept, but by living, ar-
duous, and ardent example.

From Rizal to the Thomasites, all had worked hard to
plant the seeds of democracy at the base of our social
pyramid. The seeds struck root, not alone among the
leaders at the top, but amongst the people. So when the
great test came to the Philippines and the Japanese in-
vaders imprisoned the nation for three-and-a-half terrible
years, it was the people imbued with the basic ideals of
democracy who resisted, and who during the process of
resistance developed new and younger leaders, with new
concepts of leadership, and with an approach to the real
problems of these trying times that was entirely new.
It was also during the years of the resistance that old

80

and new, aged and young, met in opposition and failed to
understand one another.

So the war had ended, leaving behind whatever had
been attained in building a democracy in the Philippines
founded on the major premise of the rights of the indi-
vidual, and leaving the country itself, like all the rest of
the Asian mainland, in the shambles of general overthrow.
In the Philippines the very force of the resistance move-
ment, which had spent itself in the effort to preserve the
essence of this democracy in captivity, had served to
weaken its bases by weakening the factor without which
this true democracy can neither be conceived nor endure:
the factor of orderly, lawful process.

Youth was in the saddle now, having learned its own
importance in war. Youth was made restless by the mun-
dane necessity of earning a living after the excitement of
war.

For three-and-a-half years our young men had carried
on warfare against a ruthless enemy. To deceive and kill
in order to survive was a lesson they had learned only too
well and during the most impressionable period of their
lives. They were accustomed to live without restriction or
authority and by jungle law.

To a generation of young Filipinos, who, like their
maquis counterparts in Western Europe, had cut their
teeth on commando knives and been weaned on the bitter
pabulum of hatred, it was right and praiseworthy to take
from the invader and to kill in the taking. The beneficent
influence of the Catholic Church in which the vast major-
ity of these youths had been raised softened the harsher
aspects of this new outlook on life, but it could not alter

81

the essential demands of the exigency of that life. The in-
vader with his zonathe zones designated by the Japa-
nese wherein every Filipino male became a prisoner his
night searches, his roundups and torture sessions and mass
executions, was lawful prey. The Filipino's arms were the
arms of the guerrillas until American guns began pouring
into the country. His rice was the food of a starving, op-
pressed but by no means defeated people. He knew no
process of law, therefore process of law was shelved on
both sides.

On this note the war ended, and the guns had not long
been stilled on the last Philippine fighting fronts along
the Shimbu line east of Manila, in the steep ridge lands of
the Santa Fe, in the jungles of Mindanao when democ-
racy in the Philippines began to show the first symptoms
of postcombat disease.

Philippine democracy, the strongest and the healthiest
democracy on the western side of the Pacific, had been
dealt a body blow. It had been attacked in its most vital
elements, of which the major ingredients are first the in-
dividual's concept of his obligation to his neighbor, and
secondly, those processes of law which experience has
evolved through the centuries to enforce this obligation,
and which the Filipinos had inherited ready-made from
the Constitution and the underlying principles of the
United States.

To make the situation after the surrender even more
dangerous, there were not lacking in the Philippines self-
seeking men, who cannot be classified exclusively by race,
who saw in the moral dissolution spawned by the war-

82

born disregard for law and order a means for their own
enrichment.

There was plenty of material with which to advance
their plans. The postwar country lay lush and ready for
the miasmatic growth of corruption. In the midst of chaos,
the newly born Philippine Republic was trying to put
into working order an honest, fair, and efficient form of
government.

The position of the country and the government could
hardly have been worse. The Japanese invader had been
destroyed, but in the last vicious struggle for survival and
in sheer wanton vengeance he had destroyed much of the
country's resources. Public buildings were rubble heaps,
money was gone, records were burned or lost, schools had
vanished, and the roads of which we had been so justly
proud were at best tracks of smashed asphalt and at worst
rutted lanes under tangled jungle growth.

Saddest of all, the morale of the people was at a record
low.

They were discouraged and poor, and all around them
was plenty.

The island of Luzon was a vast warehouse containing
the greatest store of military supplies and armaments ever
brought together, once destined for the maintenance of
the mightiest army ever assembled. General MacArthur
had planned a major invasion of Japan from our shores,
and the sudden collapse of Japan had left billions of dol-
lars' worth of food, military equipment, and construction
materials, not to mention arms and ammunition, stored in
a chain of warehouses stretching the length of the archi-
pelago.

83

This vast reservoir of goods could not as a matter of
practical operation be returned to the United States.
Much of it, if not all, could be of use in rebuilding the
shattered economy of the new Republic of the Philippines,
which celebrated its first birthday less than eleven months
after the surrender.

f A policy, basically wise, was established by the United
States: all this war surplus was to be handed over to the
government of the Philippines. Sales to private individuals
would be conducted by the government and the proceeds
were to serve as the base for the economic program of the
new Republic.

On paper the plan was excellent. With any sort of law
and order prevailing, with any means of curbing the greed
of the unscrupulous, it would have worked, and the new
nation would have been off to a splendid start. Unfortu-
nately, before the plan could be put into effect, the
schemes of less scrupulous people moved faster. Cupidity
was aroused by this unexampled massing of wealth and
sources for more wealth, and it was abetted by the nation-
wide lapse from essential moral values engendered by the
years of resistance against a foe who knew neither morals
nor law. Actually, the enormous surplus stores had been
left abandoned under the most tenuous of regulations,
which were enforced poorly or not at all by venal officials,
both American and Filipino. There was wealth for the
taking by all who could gain access to the surplus stores
and many did, by connivance from both sides.

Thus, the barriers were let down for the most flagrant
grabbing and grafting in what was actually national prop-
erty, and the result was the widely publicized and infa-

84

mous "surplus scandals." The "smart money boys" (and
there were girls among them, too, who got their share! )
were those who during the war had done the least toward
resisting the enemy, but they had managed to retain the
keys to social friendship and to political influence. They
knew they had but little time. They knew that the people's
basic awareness of their rights and their perhaps violent
reaction to those who would rob them of their heritage
could not be long held down or delayed. So the greedy
ones worked fast, and the result was an unprecedented
wave of prosperity for the few. Mansions and palaces
sprang up as if by magic from the ruins of the occupation
and war. Expensive cars rolled down streets and roads still
marred with combat shellfire that no money could be
found to repair, although for other purposes money flowed
in an apparently endless stream. We had the equivalent of
the mink coats, champagne briberies, and five percenters!
And always the trail led to high places in the government
and in politics, because it was there that the source of the
easy concessions of favored deals in surplus property
could be found.

When it is remembered that these stores were to have
been used as the foundations in the rebuilding of the
country's economic structure, it is apparent how great was
the disaster and how heavy were the handicaps placed on
the Philippines and the great mass of its people, who had
asked only for opportunity to return to their fields and
sow and harvest there and rebuild their shattered huts.

Now this dream was changed by the mirage of sudden
wealth. Why slave under the hot sun behind a sweating
carabao when others were making fortunes overnight?

85

To another degree, but under the same principle, the
United States had experienced a similar nightmare in
the lush months of the 1928-1929 boom, when work was
at a discount while fortunes could be made gambling on
margin. It had taken a world-shaking depression to jolt
the American people back to the sobering realization that
citizens can live and prosper only by putting something
into a country before they attempt to take anything out
of it

It would take the Filipinos seven years and the threat
of revolution before they would finally test and find want-
ing the "get-rich-quick" way of life.

Considering the vast amount of wealth involved, and
the debacle and confusion in the postwar Philippines, the
wonder is not that there was graft and malversation of
goods and funds, but that there was not more.

But the surplus scandal was only one aspect of the gen-
eral moral collapse. It marked the beginning of a reign
of greed and graftand the start of the weakening of pop-
ular faith in the government.

The honest and devoted political leaders were forced
back before the onslaught of the forces of greed. Fortunes
continued to mushroom overnight by the operation of the
most flagrant graft and incompetence in government
levels, both low and high. Inevitably, this infected the
thinking of the people. Their faith turned to a general dis-
trust of the government as it existed, and then, inevitably,
it turned to a dangerous public distrust of the values of
that democracy which the Filipino people had been taught
to trust and to fight for since the days of Jos6 Rizal.

For how could a citizen be expected to believe in a

86

representative government when the man lie had helped
elect to represent him in Congress was named as one who
accepted bribes, and whose relatives were growing richer
at every tick of the clock?

Every letdown in the honor and strength of the govern-
ment was matched by a weakening of faith in democracy.
Certainly the Filipinos, if they were not quite ready to
abandon democracy as a way of life, were ready to discard
a government which was giving increasing daily evidence
of its incapacity to maintain the essence of the democratic
processes, to deal honestly with its people, and to fulfill
its most important function of protecting its people from
abuse.

This was their mood in that dangerous year 1949 when
China f eU.

Elsewhere in Asia, where democracy had never existed
or where it had died, Communism had taken over.

In the Philippines, democracy started on its slow and
agonizing death. Here was the chance the secret enemy
within had wanted. Perfectly synchronized with the gov-
ernmental curve of graft and corruption in our struggling
new Republic was the Communists* rise to power.

Their big chance came with the so-called "dirty elec-
tion 'of '49.

The "reign of greed" which Rizal had used as a lever
to loosen entrenched tyranny in 1898 could have taken les-
sons from the reign of greed which the monstrous parody
on free elections perpetrated in 1949. In this year Quirino
came up for election, having become president before not
by election but by the death of Roxas. In the national elec-
tion which will be remembered by us as the "crooked" or

87

"dirty" election, a President, a Vice President, senators,
representatives, and scores of other officials were "chosen"
by fraudulent practices that wrote a new record of sordid-
ness into the history of politics.

Intimidation and fraud would be proven later, and one
asks, do such exposes hurt or help? The answer is they
must be made. The sore must be opened to be cleansed.
The intimidation was obvious at the time. The Huks
wanted the Liberal Party to stay in power. In every sec-
tion of the archipelago hired gangsters armed with tommy
guns and rifles taken from United States army supplies
patrolled the streets and guarded the polls, firing into the
air at intervals to frighten away those who were not mem-
bers of the Liberal Party. Thousands of would-be voters
were terrified and stayed in their homes: they did not
vote. Others tried and were driven back. Many hundreds
were killed.

But the Liberals cast their votes to the last man and
beyond that. In Negros and in Lanao, two provinces in the
south, there were more votes cast than there were reg-
istered voters.

We made a sour joke about these election returns: "Ob-
viously, even the bees and birds and the cadavers in the
cemeteries voted." But the grimness of the jest was indica-
tive of the moral breakdown in the government to which
had been entrusted the maintenance of a bitterly won
democracy.

It would take too long to recount the whole story of
that swindling of the people in the "dirty election" of 1949
that gave the "get-rich-quick boys" around Quirino their
biggest chance at the great national robbery. It is sufficient

here to affirm, with all the evidence needed and more to
support the statement, if necessary, that a regime which
had countenanced, and in some ways abetted, the whole-
sale rape of the nation's economic resources in the im-
mediate postwar years was perpetuated in power by the
most flagrant abuse of elections, and by the most callous
and contemptuous disregard of the people's rights, aspira-
tions, and hopes.

The Huks controlled that election, which almost suc-
ceeded in turning the Philippines over to the Soviets. This
bald prostitution of the popular ballot; the deliberate
misuse of governmental facilities by the Quirino regime
and its power-greedy supporters, in and out of office; the
shameless stuffing of ballot boxes and the recruitment of
the heavily-armed goon squads to intimidate and if neces-
sary assault would-be voters all this had but one objec-
tive, to place in the hands of the perpetrators of this
monstrous plot what amounted to virtually complete con-
trol of the wealth of the Philippines and of property be-
longing to the Filipino people.

For half a century we had waited for the privilege of
casting our votes as free citizens of an independent na-
tion. The election of 1949 robbed us of that right and
desecrated popular suffrage that meant so much to us.

The faith of the people was undermined. So this was
democracy!

The result was growing hatred and distrust by the
people against the government in power. Every fraudulent
vote cast in the "dirty election" added to the lengthening
shadow of Communism falling across the Philippines.

89

Chapter VI

RAPID strides carried the Filipinos from freedom into
terrorism.

The "dirty election" of 1949 opened the country to graft;
graft opened the country to the Communists. It was as
simple as that.

Directly following the election, the "get-rich-quick lads"
were embarked on the campaign of looting which spared
nothing remotely available through government or politi-
cal connections. There was nothing left when they finished
gathering the riches which governmental influence at best,
and active corruption at worst, placed at their disposal

The excess wealth lying about uncounted, plus lack of
moral authority, combined to bring about this wholesale
looting of the nation. The major perpetrators were out to
get as much as they could while there was anything left
to grab, and those who became the overnight millionaires
were the closest to those in the high places. The common
people were left with nothing.

All departments of the government permitted the most
brazen examples of nepotism and of favoritism and the
most flagrant abuse of the public trust Relatives of high
officials trafficked openly in favors, in licenses for imports

90

on which the lifeblood of the nation's trade depended,
and in the property placed at the disposal of the Philippine
government by the United States.

The effect of such widespread corruption on the treas-
ury was only what could have been expected. Trust funds
were looted. Teachers' salaries remained unpaid for
months. Even postal funds were not safe.

There were many sincere, honest, patriotic men in the
government. They were helpless, but not silenced. The
major leaders of the opposition Dr. Jose P. Laurel, Claro
M. Recto, Eulogio "Amang" Rodriguez, the venerable
president of the senate, and Vice President Fernando Lo-
pez of the Liberal Party, and many others missed no op-
portunity to expose and attack the administration. Senator
Lorenzo Taiiada of the Citizens" Party played an im-
portant role in assailing the Quirino regime for its cor-
ruption.

Fortunately for the Filipinos, we have developed a press
which is one of the freest in the world. A rigid libel law
never operated to prevent the harshest exposures of cor-
ruption. The evils of the government were constantly held
up before the public. The weekly magazine, Philippines
Free Press, was in the forefront of this campaign.

In Washington, I read in the newspapers and in the
Readers Digest and Saturday Evening Post and other
magazines, exposes of the corruption and graft in the Phil-
ippines, and I had no answers for those whose questioning
became acute, for they were based on facts I knew to be
true. Letters I received from relatives and friends at home
corroborated the published exposes and let me know the
truth behind the propaganda sent me from Malacanan.

91

No one was being spared by the crusaders, as scandal after
scandal was aired.

Among the worst examples of graft and corruption was
the Chinese Immigration Scandal. We have a law in the
Philippines limiting the entry of Chinese immigrants. Un-
beknown to the people, each member of the Congress and
Senate is "entitled" to grant entry to five Chinese. Nat-
urally, with the troubles in China pressing at their heels,
Chinese were very anxious to enter the Philippines, and
it was discovered that some of the wealthy could be per-
suaded to pass as much as one hundred thousand pesos
"under the counter" for the privilege. Five times that sum
amounted to half a million pesos each for our solons.

No wonder our politicians were getting rich!

This racket was exposed by Vice President Lopez
shortly after the 1949 election. He was a member of the
party in power, but he had the honesty and courage to
admit it could be wrong.

The next exposure concerned the Maria Cristina hydro-
electric power installation to be built by the government.
The project had been farmed out without bids to an Ital-
ian contractor. This too was exposed by Lopez, and as a
result the contract was canceled, bids were ordered, and
the contract was given to Westinghouse.

Under the original contract the people would have lost
a great deal.

Other scandals burst around Malacanan like fireworks.

It was public knowledge that the Bureau of Customs
was riddled with graft. Merchants were substituting the
payment of duty with bribes. It was cheaper that way and

92

the only way goods could be handled; without the palm-
greasing there would be loss, damage, and delay.

The Import Control Commission was shot through with
corruption. A businessman had to grease certain official
palms to get his license to import and keep them greased
to bring goods in or ship them out.

Then there was the scandal over the Philippine Na-
tional Bank, an official of which with influence in high
places had been given a loan of more than three million
pesos without collateral!

The evils of the government were constantly held up
before the public. But between exposure and remedy a
wide gulf remained. It was plain that certain people very
close to the administration kept on receiving millions.

One result became more noticeable: the definite fall in
the people's confidence in the government. It was now
that the swelling force that was Communism entered the
gap which lay between a people's faith and their loss of
faith. It was this evil year of 1949 and its "dirty election"
that brought the Communists out in the open in the Phil-
ippines and started them on their rise to power.

The Huks or "HMB" were the military spearhead of
the Communist forces in our country. These were the
members of the Hukbalahap, or, to give the organization
its full formal designation, the "Hukbong Magpapalaya
ng Bayan," or "Army of Liberation of the People/* Its
origins were in the embryonic Communist Party of the
Philippines which had been organized in the early thirties
by Pedro Abad Santos and his aides.

During the Japanese invasion the Huk elements had
organized under that name into the most effective guer-

93

rilla units operating against the invaders. But the story
of the Huk movement goes far back beyond World War II,
and it was always based on the precept of hatred of the
existing government.

It began in the early '20's in the poorly populated areas
of Central Luzon, where a few wealthy and often absentee
landlords paid no attention to the agrarian unrest amongst
the people, who had too little land to support their needs
and no one to represent them. The government had made
half-hearted attempts to provide bits of land that would
in turn furnish a living for those in need, but the efforts
never matured, and as a result deeper resentment was
born. The mutterings of protest were turned by the Soviet
converts into arguments in favor of Communism, and out
of the individual desire for a bit of land to call one's own
came a group desire to take all the land and redistribute
it according to Communistic dictates; in other words
here was the first talk of revolution.

When Japan struck in 1941, the Huks had organized
into fighting groups.

World War II and its resultant upheaval helped spread
the Red propaganda, for where, the leaders demanded,
was American aid, and how had democracy helped the
Filipino? Nothing could be done to offset such a move-
ment then, for everyone was busy fighting the Japanese,
and it must be admitted that among the most valiant were
the Huks, the scattered Communists organized now under
that name into a large, although diffused, military force.

But they were fighting against Japan, not for democ-
racy.

The end of the war found the Huks a large, powerful

94

and discontented group, well armed with American guns
and other armament that had been smuggled into the
country by submarine during the war, or taken by the
Huks from the Japanese they had captured. Along with
this armament went enough ammunition to see them
through any war they might devise.

They were on their own now and out in the open. They
had never been friendly with the other guerrilla groups
who had fought for democracy. There had always been
between the two factions that tension which bespoke the
real objective of the Huks, the establishment of a Soviet
Communist regime in the Philippines.

Their new leaders were Luis Taruc, the supreme Huk
who had been forced out of politics in Manila as a Com-
munist, and his principal aides, Casto Alejandrino, Gui-
Uermo Capadocia, Balgos and others. None of these was
ever avowedly "Soviet Communist." They were always
"agrarian reformers," bent on getting the poor "tao" his
bit of land and his place in the sun, and they never ad-
mitted that their military units operated along lines tested
and approved by their Comintern masters, and that the
orders they mouthed or published in their pamphlets and
periodic "press releases'* were cliches which were the de-
mands of the moment from the party line in Moscow.

The question is often asked how a movement like that
of the Huks, which was essentially Communist in motiva-
tion and indoctrination, could prosper in a country in
which eighty per cent of the population are Catholic. The
answer is simple. The "hard core" of the movement, the
indoctrinated and dedicated leaders, had learned their
lessons in excellent schools for Communism (some in the

95

very shadow of the Kremlin). These "experts" never made
the mistake of introducing the atheistic angle into the
propaganda they were infiltrating into the peasant masses
of Central Luzon, although this was a region tailored for
Communism through generations of absentee landlordism
of feudal rule by religious orders and subsequently by
owners of the vast estates formerly owned by the orders.
But never once did the Huk leaders admit, to Luzon or
to the outer world, that they were Soviet-propelled. They
were simply the saviors of a simple and oppressed people
no more.

This was how they won the attention and raised the
ebbing hopes of the people who had expected so much
when war ended and were given little or nothing. The
scandals in the government, the betrayal of the public
vote in the "dirty election, 7 ' were tools the Communists
used with Kremlin-taught skill to bring themselves to
power. The Huks were exploiting and magnifying every-
thing, and spreading propaganda by printed word and
from mouth to mouth to inflame the people against a
political regime which was failing them, and which the
Huks cited as the failure of democracy.

Now they were organizing against the government men
who had fought for democracy and who had been ready
to die that this very government might survive!

It was a familiar pattern. This was the way it had been
done in China. This was the pattern that had betrayed
China so that in this very year China fell.

The Huks formed themselves into bandit bands. They
were joined by a lost generation of young men who had

96

been taught to rob and kill in war that change might come
to better their land and there had been no change.

They were joined, too, by a scattering of criminals who
had fled under sentence or been released by the Japanese
during the invasion. Rapists, killers, lawbreakers of every
kind were to be found in the Red forces organized by the
Huks to harry, subdue, or argue the bewildered peasants
into meek acceptance of the rapidly advancing Red au-
thority.

So the Huks succeeded in subduing the people where
the Japanese had failed. Aided and abetted by their great-
est ally, corruption in high places, which brought increas-
ing conviction to the people that their government was not
worth defending, the Huks continued to grow in strength
and numbers, under the protection of die people, who
began providing food and protection for the Huks, not
through fear, but because of their own despair.

Actually, the military force of the Huks was never over-
whelming. On Luzon their estimated strength at its height
consisted of twenty thousand well-armed men, and Mag-
saysay was later to estimate the all-over organization at
sixty thousand. Out of a population of twenty-one million
this is not a large number, but Red conquest never starts
with large numbers. We had seen the Red stain spread
over White Russia and had learned not to underestimate
the power of the minority.

The real danger was the mood of the people. The
strength of the Huk movement around Manila lay in the
tacit, sometimes active, and always willing support given
the Huks by nearly two hundred thousand peasants in the
teeming rice fields of Central Luzon.

97

The Huk leaders were far too clever and too well
trained in the finesse of infiltration to attempt open revolt
by all the peasants. They worked rather by indirection.
They organized the peasantry in supply sections, as their
prototypes had done in China. They trained eligible men
in simple governmental duties and maneuvered them into
state positions, so that it was not long before practically
every important town in Luzon, not excluding Manila,
had literally a "standby government," ready to take over
when the Red uprising began the functions of mayor and
local councils and to supplant the official police forces;
ready, in short, to assume the functions of government
with full control of all communication facilities, from the
wire telegraph to the radio.

By 1950 the Huks had reached the height of power and
were moving at will about the land, spreading through
many islands, and even into the remote southern regions.
Corruption in the government reached an all-time high,
and the prestige of the government sank to its all-time
low. Government credit had reached the vanishing point,
there were rumors of the collapse of the peso, and bitter-
est of all to remember was the two billion dollars given
to the people by America with which to aid and bring to
maturity the fledgling Republic; gone, along with the last
of our own resources, into the maw of government-pro-
tected greed. In cities and in the country the Red ter-
rorists roamed at will, equipped by this time with the
bounteous supply of ammunition laid up in our country
against the invasion of Japan, and which had been per-
mitted by crooked dealings to faU almost entirely into
their hands. It is needlessly laboring a point to suggest

98

that the Huks were being supplied with Red arms from
the Asian mainland by junk or submarine. They needed no
such help from their Soviet masters. Munitions that but
for criminal neglect in high places would have been safely
stored in the government arsenals were by this time stored
in inaccessible hoards in the jungles and hills of Luzon.
To the bitter end the "hard core" recalcitrants among the
Huks would not surrender their American arms because
they knew they possessed an almost inexhaustible supply
of American ammunition to fit those arms.

All over the archipelago were panic and the fearful
wait that precedes change. The countryside was deserted
and in the barrios the huts stood empty and desolate.
Farmers no longer farmed. The rice crops lay waste, and
the people were hungry. The villagers fled to the cities.
In Manila the Politburo set up its headquarters in fine
Communist tradition, with the Huk leaders in charge, and
were laying definite plans to take first Malacanan and the
President, then the entire city. In Manila there was terror
in the streets and there were areas where people dared
not venture by night for fear of the marauding bands of
Huks. The Huks had a well-publicized plan: a member-
ship of two million in another year and then they would
possess the Philippines!

Democracy in the Philippines was on its deathbed, and
the Communist-Huk forces were preparing for the coup
de grace.

All this was known to the regular forces of the govern-
ment. At this stage even the most lackadaisical "high
brass" of the armed forces admitted that they expected
the worst. President Quirino was under heavy guard and

99

in constant fear of his life. It was only a question of time
until the Huks took over.

The question may be asked that everyone was asking
then: "Why does not someone stop them? Why are they
not stopped in time?"

And the answer to that is that by the time such a move-
ment reaches its climax there is no one left strong enough
to protest.

What had happened to our constabulary, of which we
had been so justly proud? And where was our army that
had fought so long and ably against the Japanese? Why
hadn't they stopped the Huks in their tracks, in the be-
ginning? Why weren't they stopping them now?

The story of what had happened to our police and to
our soldiers is one other of the tragic chapters in this
history of a dying democracy. The sad truth is that by this
time the people hated and feared the soldiers and the
police even more than they did the Huks.

A few days before the attaining of our independence
the Philippines received the command of thirty-seven
thousand officers and men, turned over to it by the United
States. This was the Armed Forces of the Republic, orig-
inally organized into about seventeen thousand members
of the army, navy, and air force which had training and
routine peacetime missions under the Department of Na-
tional Defense, and twenty thousand members of the
constabulary, our national police force, under the author-
ity of the Department of the Interior.

The police force was entrusted with the mission of re-
storing peace and order. The Huks came under their
jurisdiction in the beginning, since the first activities of

100

the Huks consisted of murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping,
extortion, and other crimes that were obviously problems
for the police.

The Huks were too well organized and too well armed
to be cowed by our postwar constabulary, which was, to
be frank, a hastily organized and ineffective group with
little or no training in police work, so different from the
efficient prewar constabulary force. The municipal police
were helpless, and their attempts to subdue the Huks were
futile.

The people gave little support to the local police hi
their abortive attempts to establish law and order. They
were too disapproving of their government to want to
help any more in any way.

So by this year 1950 the government officials had every
reason to be alarmed. At first they had blandly regarded
the disturbance as the settling-down process. Now they
belatedly recognized at last the Huk movement for what
it was a carefully planned all-over plot to seize national
power.

Obviously, this threat was no longer a scattering of
desperate incidents fit only for police blotters. It was a
national menace, and only the army could protect the
Filipinos now provided it was not too late.

President Quirino issued stern orders to the army:
"Clean out the Huks!"

And the Philippine Army, whose men had displayed
battlefield capacity that had made them the equal of any
fighting men in the world, lay down on the job. They, too,
had been allowed to drift in the general letdown of the
Republic. Here too was influence, nepotism, greed. Offi-

101

cers were activated and deactivated without any regard
to their ability or their service records, but rather to their
family and political connections and above all to their
"services" to the party entrenched in power in Malacanan
and the regime which ruled it.

Periodic "campaigns" were launched against the "dissi-
dents," as the Huks were known, but these were farcical
maneuvers in which a few troops would announce weeks
in advance their next objective, and on that occasion
would deploy at the base of specified hills and there fire
a few hundred rounds of expensive ammunition ( the army
did not have as great a supply of ammunition as did the
Huks) into the jungle where they were sure to hurt no
one. Then they would retire, with great tales of Huk dead.

Even when the target was not announced in advance,
someone always knew, and the Huks were warned in ad-
vance.

It soon became plain that the army was not interested
in bringing the Huks to heel. Battlewise officers, trained
and experienced in combat and willing to put up an ear-
nest fight to save the country, were deliberately side-
tracked by political manipulators, while units they had
trained to fight most effectively were broken up and dis-
tributed among other formations.

Only four year before, the little Republic of the Phil-
ippines had started out so bravely as the frontier of
democracy in the Far East. We were to have been the
"show window" of democracy in Asia.

Now the blueprint of aggression had been fitted over
the Philippines from within with the aid of a weak, inept,
and graft-ridden government. This year of 1950 found the

102

country helplessly facing revolution, with the Hub ready
to take over when the Republic fell.

And still it was in this same year that Filipino soldiers
were fighting and dying in the effort to preserve democ-
racy on the blood-drenched ridges of Korea, and the Phil-
ippine Republic was making every effort to fulfill its
obligations to the democratic concept in the international
field.

On the world front every effort was being made to
establish the peace that had been won by war. But there
was no peace in Korea, China, Malaya, and Indochina.
There was no peace in the Philippines.

In this year President Quirino asked me to interrupt my
battlings with Andrei Vishinsky in the United Nations to
organize and serve as Chief Delegate of the Philippines to
the first Southeast Asia Conference in the Philippines.
Seven nations met at Baguio, our summer resort India,
Thailand, Ceylon, Pakistan, Australia, Indonesia, the Phil-
ippines. I went from door to door in Washington in the
attempt to find help in the movement to unite Asia; I was
cold-shouldered. No one in Washington seemed to see any
importance then in such a meeting of minds in Asia. Sev-
eral American leaders said, "It's impractical. It can't be
done."

In four more years those very men would be working
frantically against time in a belated effort to achieve a
similar organization among the few Asian nations that
remained free.

If only we had succeeded then! Indochina would have
been saved.

On my trips across the Pacific I caught increasingly dis-

103

turbing glimpses of what was going on in the Philippines,
so when in this same year President Quirino asked me to
return to Manila as his Secretary of Foreign Affairs, I
readily accepted the portfolio. My battles with Vishinsky
in the United Nations had made me so aware of the Soviet
danger that I welcomed the chance to help fight Commu-
nism on the home front.

104

Chapter VII

THE many battles against the chromium-plated "realism*
of the Russian delegates to the United Nations might
have prepared me for the danger of challenging en-
trenched Communism in the Philippines. Unfortunately,
this was not so. I was not prepared for the advances they
had made, and the open way they were flaunting their in-
tentions and their ability to carry them out.

Even the atrocities committed by the Japanese had not
prepared me for the atrocities Filipinos were perpetrating
on their brother Filipinos under the Red flag. The Red
propagandists had done a thorough job of splitting the Re-
public. Filipinos who had not been subdued by terrorism
had been wooed by pledges of protection or future priv-
ileges, once the Huks took over. Beyond these was the
dead sea of the lethargic who had ceased to care.

It seemed inconceivable to me that men who had fought
side by side on Bataan and Corregidor could have been
turned into enemies tearing at one another's throats, and
in so short a time. But that is the power of Communism.
It knows how to blank out all reason and leave only ha-
tred. It knows how to twist and befoul All this had been
done without actual Russian intervention. It was not

105

needed. The Filipino disciples o the Red terror were do-
ing a superb job.

The Communists had a Black List of those they in-
tended to kill as being enemies of the Huk ideal. President
Quirino and Vice President Lopez led the list as the arch
opponents of Communism within the Philippines, and I
learned that mine was the honor of being number three
on the list because I had been one of the chief antagonists
of Vishinsky in the United Nations.

It was not the first time I had been on such a list. In
the tunnel on Corregidor I had listened to the Japanese
broadcasts proclaiming a price on my head because of
the work I was doing on the "Voice of Freedom/' broad-
casting to the captive mainland from the tunnel. This
time, my brother Filipinos had put me on the death list.

I drove through a Manila still in ruins and under threat
of siege, to the Palace which was also alerted and under
heavy guard. President Quirino was virtually a prisoner
behind the tall walls of Malacanan. He and his staff were
drilled to escape the palace by secret ways in case of at-
tack. Out in the middle of Manila Bay his yacht rocked
at anchor under heavy guard. He had been warned not to
board it, as the Huks had planned an attack with small
craft if he did, with the intent of capturing the yacht and
taking the President prisoner.

Every day the threat of eruption grew in Manila. The
police and soldiers and palace guards were trying to keep
down trouble, but their attempts seemed half-hearted and
no one knew what might happen at any moment. It was
like the hours after Pearl Harbor when we had gone about
our affairs always with an eye on the skies to see if the

106

Japanese were about to attack. Now people went about
their business nervously, and night life, that had been a
joyous matter in prewar Manila, consisted of brief visits
to restaurants or homes, because everyone was anxious to
get in before curfew. Yes, we had curfew; after six you
could not drive out of the city at all.

By day, at stated points of entry into the city, incomers
were searched to make certain they were not carrying
arms, but this was futile protection since Manila was a
common storehouse of arms and ammunition.

The city was crowded with refugees, and all around us
was poverty and despair. The word "Huks" had become
one to inspire fear.

I drove into the country, through areas laid waste by
the Huk marauders, where crops had been reaped or
burned and livestock driven off to feed their armies. From
the ash heaps that had been homes, burned by the Huks,
the villagers and farmers had fled into the cities, creat-
ing the growing problem of destitution that was just one
more terrible problem our dying Republic had to face. The
peasants I spoke to were destitute, or they were protect-
ing, and therefore being protected by, the Huks.

That was the answer. The Huks made promises or
spread terror. There was no compromise. Accept Commu-
nism or die!

And the government these people had expected to serve
as their protector and their shield lacked the will and the
strength now to keep them alive. Graft had sucked away
its power. Corruption had rotted away its strength. Every
fine house built on pilfered gains stolen from the people,
every bribe taken by officials high or low, every jewel and

107

imported car flaunted by the newly rich, was fuel added
to the holocaust that was consuming our Republic.

The grafters could pretend to ignore the fact that their
hands were stained with blood. The Huks knew exactly
what they were doing, and did it with a sadism that had
the archipelago cowering in fear. With increasing inso-
lence they continued to sweep through the islands burn-
ing and pillaging, kidnapping, robbing, raping, killing. No
crime was too great or too small, or too wickedly senseless.
Nothing the Japanese had done to us was as senselessly
cruel.

In the capital of my own province of Tarlac they
swarmed down on the hospital one night and killed over
fifty nurses and their patients. From some of the nurses
they removed the eyes.

Of all the acts of this reign of terror the most senseless
was the murder of Dona Aurora Quezon, the widow of
our martyred President, Manuel Quezon. The day before,
she had invited me to ride with the family in motorcade
to Baler, where a monument to her dead husband was to
be unveiled. It hurt me to say no to this gentle friend but
I was leaving the next day on a rush trip to the United
States.

In Honolulu, the next day, I picked up a newspaper be-
tween planes and saw the headline: MRS. QUEZON AM-
BUSHED.

She and her daughter Maria Aurora, and Felipe Buen-
camino III who was the husband of her other daughter,
and Ponciano Bernardo who was the Mayor of Quezon
City, good people all, had been surrounded on the road
and blasted out of existence by a band of Huks.

108

That was all we have ever learned about the mass mur-
der, that it had been planned and committed by Huks.
We have never learned the reason for the killings, and
there may have been no reason. There are many guesses,
to be sure. Some think the Huks had been told President
Quirino was to be in the car. Others are convinced the act
was committed by men who hated the very memory of
Quezon because he had emblematized for us democracy,
while others believe that the Huk killers had hoped the
death of almost all the late President's family might bring
about a division of lands in Arayat and Pampanga, where
the Quezons had holdings.

We shall probably never know the truth.

I read the story of the ambush on the airfield at Hono-
lulu and remembered the bravery and the goodness of
Aurora Quezon in the tunnel on Corregidor where she had
lived underground with her President-husband during the
siege of the Philippines. I remembered her after one of
the many air raids that had blasted the Rock, walking
down the tunnels that smelled of gangrene and human
filth, and bending over the wounded American and Fili-
pino boys who lay on their stretchers in the fetid gloom.
She had a sweet smile and an encouraging word for each
one, before she would turn away to hide the tears. Later,
after escaping from the Rock by submarine with her Presi-
dent-husband and her children, she had seen her husband
die for democracy, and still later, she had seen the birth
of the Philippine Republic.

Now she had been butchered on a country road, the
innocent victim of the Huk gangsters who were deter-
mined to destroy the Republic for which her husband had

109

lived, and had given his life. She who had never taken
part in politics had joined him in martyrdom.

The memory of Quezon holds for Filipinos all that the
memory of George Washington holds for the Americans,
and his birthday is celebrated by us as a national holiday.
In Manila there is also a large parade. Let me give one
example of the way the Huks had infiltrated into every
echelon of the government, no matter how high. One
Quezon Day, President Quirino and his highest dignitaries
with a full display of military brass were reviewing the
parade from the grandstand, when suddenly, no one knew
how, we all found ourselves passing pamphlets from hand
to hand. Looking at them, we burst into excited talk.

Who had started passing out the leaflets?

We never found out.

They were Huk propaganda pamphlets carrying printed
charges against the Quirino administration and the Con-
stitution, and naming names and listing all the govern-
ment scandals from the National Bank Scandal on down.
Many of those in the group around the President read
their names on the Huk list.

We never learned who smuggled the pamphlets into the
reviewing stand, but it must have been one of us in the
President's own inner circle.

Wherever one turned, there were Communists. They
wore many faces and took many forms, but under the sur-
face was the deadly determination of the Moscow-trained.

I have written of Roberto, the bright young man I had
selected from many students in Manila to work with me
on temporary assignment in the Philippine Mission in New
York. He had been with me in New Delhi, Geneva, Rome,

110

Paris and other cities, and later had asked to be returned
to Manila. Now as Secretary of Foreign Affairs I was glad
to have him again under my jurisdiction, and versed as he
was in foreign affairs, he proved to be of the utmost use-
fulness, although his position was still unofficial. He was
bright and willing and had a wide grasp of all the prob-
lems that faced our department, and before long, as ear-
lier, he became my valued unofficial aide. He was
indispensable during the Southeast Asia Conference at
Baguio. Equally indispensable was another young man I
will call Manuel, a friend of Roberto, whom he had
brought to my office, very strongly recommending him as
a valuable assistant I might find especially useful on my
official trips abroad.

Both had been with me at Baguio during the Southeast
Asia Conference of 1950, alert, intelligent, at home in my
private office, glancing over all dispatches, reading all let-
ters, moving at will in and out of the Mansion House near
the Presidential Palace, and meeting all the plenipotenti-
aries and the ambassadors of the countries struggling to
uphold freedom in the Far East. I had big plans for both
these bright young men.

One afternoon as I was preparing for an official trip to
Washington, with Manuel scheduled to accompany me, I
received two callers in my office in the Department of
Foreign Affairs. One was from Central Intelligence and
the other from the National Bureau of Investigation, the
Filipino equivalent of the F.B.I. They spoke to me secretly
and with great solemnity.

"General, do you know that you have two Communists
in your Department of Foreign Affairs?"

Ill

They named Roberto and Manuel.

I was indignant. I sputtered denialsone young man
had been with me in the United Nations, both at the
Baguio Southeast Asia Conference!

Then their dossiers were shown to me. I read and had
nothing more to say. I had regarded these young men as
sons and had given them every opportunity, every respon-
sibility and trust that would aid them in their advance.
And they belonged on the side that was undermining free-
dom's last chance of survival in our country.

It was another Hiss case.

How I had been duped! I looked back over their records
and remembered Roberto and his friendships and opinions
along the way, recognizing, now that it was too late, the
influences that had flattered and lured him into siding
with the Communists. The agents were waiting to hear
what I had to say, but I had no suggestions to make. There
were no excuses to be made, neither for the two as plot-
ters, nor for myself for having unwittingly aided them in
their plans for the great betrayal. I could only shake my
head stupidly, and say, "Do with them what must be
done."

That was my first personal indication of what was going
on all around us. The Reds were everywhere, at the next
table, in the next room, at the desk next to mine. There
was no time left in which to ask: How has this happened!
How has this advanced so far!

We were too close to the Asian mainland to feel any
sense of security. We knew what was going on there.

I went to the United States that year on a hurried trip
to receive a Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard Uni-

112

versity, along with the then U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Acheson. In my speech of acceptance I warned that the
cold war in Asia was leading up to an explosion, possibly,
I said, in Korea.

One week later North Korea attacked the South Ko-
reans.

If you had asked me two years before, as many did, if
the Philippines could ever turn Communist, I would have
given a pitying and superior smile and answered proudly,
"Never!" In fact, I gave that answer, many times. Turn
Red, our Christian Land, that had been trained in demo-
cratic ideals and had fought to uphold those ideals from
Corregidor to the hills in our farthest provinces? Never in
a thousand years!

But it almost happened.

To find the explanation one had only to look at the
fallen giant that was China. According to the Red com-
muniques, the Chinese masses had rushed gladly into the
embracing Soviet arms. This is always the Soviet story,
and it is always based on the same Red lie. The Chinese
had not embraced Communism. They did not regard the
Soviet as their saviors. They had been starved, beaten, and
betrayed into the Red net.

Not by the Reds! By brother Chinese!

I looked back to the China I had seen before the war.
On that trip, circling through Southeast Asia, I had seen
democracy in its last flickerings of life. It was not Com-
munism that had won in China. It was loss of faith that
lost China to Communism.

The Chinese had in Chiang Kai-shek a great leader,
honest and sincere and a Christian. But like other leaders

113

in other lands he had about him those who exploited him
and who bartered China in exchange for wealth and lux-
ury. China, too, had its overly rich, its grafters, its experts
in corruption.

Before the war I had traveled the Burma Road. I had
seen American materials landed in Rangoon, and by the
time they reached their destination at the end of the road
only one fifth remained. The rest had been lost along the
way in the greasing of palms.

This had been struggling China, where a handful in
power could speculate and enrich themselves and the
common people were ignored, where nothing was done
for the people, where their chance at life, and their way
of living was never improved. The poor men of China
lived as they had lived for centuries, fed by poverty, mis-
ery, hunger, and disease.

Then into China, as into other lands equally depressed,
had come this new promise, this new hope that gave them
the feeling they too might be regarded as human. Com-
munism was a new power, if untried, and why fight for
the old that had given nothing and taken all? Why fight
to retain squalor and misery? Why fight to retain a gov-
ernment that had become meaningless, in which the peo-
ple could hold no faith?

So reasoned China, and the poor tired soldier of China
threw away his gun made in America and said: "Let the
new order take over. I will fight no more/'

Communism had usurped victory in China. It had not
won. To the starvelings there the ideology of Marx was
nothing compared to the fistful of rice that can keep a
man alive for another day. Communism did not express

114

his longings. It was not his religion. His only thought was
for change, any change that offered the last dim hope o
staying alive.

"Change!" had been the last cry of China. "Any change
will be better than this/'

On that cry it had gone down.

That was the cry of the starving and it had been heard
in Moscow. This was the echo the thunder of China, fall-
ing.

Now in my own country I heard on every hand the de-
mand for change. I heard the Kremlin propaganda
quoted as gospel by those who did not know but who
were ready to believe anything to escape present reality,
and I saw that what had happened in China was taking
place in my own country. The Red invaders were in our
midst and preparing to take over.

Who was supporting them? Wherever one looked the
signs pointed straight to Malacanan, to the very heart of
our government in which the people had placed all their
hopes, only to lose them.

What had happened in China was being repeated one
year later in the Philippines.

It is important to stress again that what was under-
mining democracy in the Philippines was not fear of the
Huks and belief in the Huk propaganda, but collapse of
the people's faith in the government they had hoped for
and fought for. Here was the independence they had
wanted, and what did it mean to them! Nothing but
greater poverty, and lowering suspicion. But on the other
hand there were the Huks, and they could be understood.
They at least did not hide their aims. Even as bandits,

115

they were understandable. They were out to get while
they could. But the Filipinos saw in the new government
only another form of banditry that worked under cover
of authority and that gave to the privileged few while
pretending to be for the masses.

This was a return to the old days under Spain!

The Filipinos had revolted against Spain. They were
revolting now. This was revolutionthe peasant's refusal
to till the land, the policeman's refusal to quell the Red
disturbances, the soldier's refusal to try to subdue the
Huks. Their attitude was the attitude the Chinese had
taken at last toward the Red invasion. "What dijff erence
can it make to us? And either way, nothing can be worse.
Any change will be better than this. . . ."

And all over the Islands this was heard, and people who
had disapproved of the Huks and who were not active
in the movement were now helping the Huks under the
gathering volume of that cry. Our people had fought for
change, and there was no change, save for the worse:
graft and corruption they had not had before. They would
not fight again. Men who had fought like tigers on Bataan
and Corregidor and who were still in uniform, when out
on foray under Presidential orders made token challenge
by firing a few shots into the air against the Huks who,
forewarned, were always elsewhere. The Huks, killers and
sadists, were in power. They could excuse their worst
crimes with their printed leaflets that pointed out crimes
committed under the shadow of Malacanan: "See, the
Government has done worse!"

And to these charges there were no answers to be made.

Here was the same deadly inertia that had betrayed

116

other countries to Communism, spreading among the
people, sapping their last feeble protests an inertia born
of the conviction that their government was not worth
saving.

It was in this crisis that casually and almost as if by
chance the man appeared who was to save democracy and
the Philippine Republic.

Truly, the times had found the man.

117

Chapter VIII

RAMON MAGSAYSAY is as little like a human prod-
igy as it is possible for a man to be. In this year of 1950,
he was forty-three years old, and from a political point of
view, he was virtually unknown. There was nothing out-
standing about him, he was by no means cultured, he was
not brilliant. His manners and his ways were those of the
native Filipino. He did not smoke, gamble, or drink. He
could speak in the native dialects which had been his as
a child

He is pure Malayan. His father was a Tagalog, his
mother Ilocano. His name, Magsaysay, is from the Taga-
log, and means "to tell a story."

He was born on August 31, 1907, at Iba in the granite
hills of Zambales, the second of eight children of Exequiel
Magsaysay and Perf ecta del Fierro Magsaysay. The father
taught carpentry in the school of their small town. This in
itself was a step upward for a Filipino of the barrios and
an illustration of that characteristic which the Filipino
alone possesses among all the peoples of Asia: that urge
to progress which imbues all levels of the Filipino people
and which defies the age-old Asian concept that a son
must not rise above the social level of his father.

118

The young Ram6n lived the life of any simple lad of
the barrios. He was trained in hard labor. His hard-work-
ing father wakened his sons at six every morning and
when not in school they worked on the farm. The boy
learned how to plow and how to swing a sledge in the
smithy. He came to know and revere the land. From his
parents he learned religion and honesty, the last to an al-
most painful degree. So honest was his father, that he was
dismissed from the school for flunking the son of the super-
intendent of schools! This was when Ramon was ten. As a
result the family were obliged to move to Castillejos, an-
other village about thirty miles away. Ramon walked
twenty-two kilometers a day to attend the high school at
Zambales Academy in San Narciso, where he was gradu-
ated as salutatorian.

His later scholastic record was less outstanding. He
would laugh years later, when his far-from-good school
records were brought to light during a tense part of his
career. He would always be a man of deeds, not words.
He was to laugh also at his lack of training in social finesse,
and to report gleefully after his first visit to Malacanan
how dismayed he had been by the array of table silver,
and how he had no idea which fork to use. But he at-
tended school when he could, enrolling at the University
of the Philippines at the age of twenty, starting with a
liberal-arts course but soon switching to mechanical engi-
neering; then he dropped out, and later worked his way
through the Jose Rizal College, with a part-time job with
a transportation company. He was graduated in 1932 with
a degree of Bachelor of Science in Commerce.

His real interest at this time was cars. His father had

119

acquired an automobile while the boy was still at home,
and Ramon had shown a natural aptitude for keeping it
in running order. His father has said he took that car apart
and put it together again every day.

Magsaysay was working for a bus concern one year after
graduation when he married pretty Luz Banzon of Ba-
taan province, the daughter of a well-to-do family also
engaged in the passenger-bus business. Mrs. Magsaysay
has said Ramon helped win her family's esteem with the
excellent care he took of the family car.

By the time the Japanese attacked the Philippines,
Ramon Magsaysay was well advanced in a steadily devel-
oping business career. He was branch manager of a
transportation company, running a fleet of one hundred
and fifty buses. His married life was happy. He was the
father of two daughters and a son.

His public life may be said to have begun in war.

It is of no small significance that when war opened two
courses to Magsaysay, he chose the direct but dangerous
way. In those early days of the Japanese occupation, when
General Homma's armies came thundering down on Ma-
nila with their antiquated motor transport, a man in Mag-
saysay's position, with a considerable amount of motor
transport under his control and a great deal of mechanical
"know-how," might have stayed on in Manila and gained
greatly for himself both in security and in material wealth
by joining the enemy, thereby following the example set
by so many others who had far less to gain from the Jap-
anese.

The way Magsaysay chose promised nothing but im-

120

mediate danger to himself and incalculable hardship to a
young family. It was the dedicated way of democracy.

He turned his fleet of cars over to the United States
Army and enlisted as a volunteer with the Thirty-first In-
fantry Division. He fought until Bataan fell, then he
helped organize the Western Luzon Guerrilla Forces, and
headed ten thousand men. For three years he fought and
starved in the Luzon hills with a Japanese price on his
head.

In January, 1945, after United States troops invaded
Luzon, Magsaysay's guerrillas secured the Zambales coast
and made it possible for American soldiers to land in that
area unopposed. Thousands of American lives were saved.

General MacArthur by this time had heard a great deal
about the exploits of guerrilla leader Ramon Magsaysay.
One month after the landings on the coast he appointed
Magsaysay Military Governor of Zambales. One year later
Magsaysay turned over the province, which he had ad-
ministered with exemplary efficiency, to the Philippine
Commonwealth Government and took off his uniform.

He did not return to his business career. The war had
taught him he had the ability to lead. Philippine inde-
pendence was only a few months away. He entered poli-
tics. In April, 1946, he was elected Representative of
Zambales -by the biggest majority in the history of that
province.

In Manila he was one of one hundred and two Con-
gressmen. I met him first when he was a member of a
large group welcoming me home. I was impressed by his
open frankness and friendly manner and by his reputation
for absolute honesty, a trait that by this time had attracted

121

the attention of certain political writers. He was repeat-
edly mentioned in newspaper lists as one of the ten best
Congressmen. He was re-elected in 1949, serving during
both terms as chairman of the Committee on National
Defense. As a former guerrilla officer he was greatly inter-
ested in the veteran's affairs, and was sent on a two-man
mission to Washington to work for veterans' benefits. He
stayed in Washington for several months and as a result
of his efforts the Filipino veterans were included in some
of the benefits.

Magsaysay learned a great deal in Washington. He
liked the American way of life and made many friends. He
also established good contacts in the Pentagon. Everyone
seemed to like him.

By the fall of 1950, when the armed Communist upris-
ing led by the Huks reached the stage where we could
truly say, "This is revolution," sober conferences were held
in Malacanan as to what could be done to save the Philip-
pines. President Quirino, beset by dread of the violent
spearheads thrusting from every direction against the duly
constituted government, and heeding at last the growing
clamor of the people for a change, looked hurriedly about
for a man to accept the post of Secretary of National De-
fense, with a directive to put an end to the Huk menace.

The post was vacant because of a controversy. After
Quirino admitted that the army could not stop the upris-
ing, Defense Secretary Ruperto Kangleon had requested
that certain weaknesses in the high command be replaced.
Quirino had refused and Kangleon resigned in fury. Now
a man was needed to take his place.

122

Many leaders and groups came forward with sugges-
tions.

The members of Congress remembered Magsaysay's
war record and honesty and recommended him. Senator
Tomas Cabili went to the President to urge Magsaysay's
appointment.

There is an American group in Manila, the Joint United
States Military Assistance Group (known as the JUS-
MAG), which is assigned as a military mission to aid and
advise the Philippine government on defense problems.
Major General Leland Hobbs of the mission, who had
been with General MacArthur in Japan and who, there-
fore, had an inside knowledge of the Magsaysay success
in guerrilla warfare, also was among those who believed
that Ram6n Magsaysay should be put in charge of the
anti-Huk offensive.

All these and many more saw possibilities in this new-
comer to the political field; I am proud to say I was among
them. Together they convinced President Quirino that
Magsaysay was the ideal candidate.

Always eager for action, Magsaysay was most certain
of all that he was the man for the job, so when the Presi-
dent sent for him to sound out his views, Magsaysay was
ready with a plan to control the Huks. The President ap-
proved both the plan and the man, and he appointed
Ramon Magsaysay, a man few people knew, as Secretary
of National Defense.

Magsaysay accepted the portfolio and resigned from
Congress. That was in September.

Then a tornado started.

He found the Philippine military organization in a state

123

bordering on demoralization. Conditions were deplorable
in the Department of Defense and worse in the uniformed
forces. The latter especially had been weakened by the al-
most complete infiltration of political influence and ma-
chination. Officers openly intrigued for promotion and
plush assignments, and it was a slogan that merit had
given way to "puIT in army circles. The enlisted men went
about their duties in a lackadaisical manner that reflected
the indifference of the higher echelons to the security
problems threatening the nation. The army that had
fought so courageously against Japan wasn't interested in
fighting the newer enemy composed of Filipinos, misled
and mainly ignorant, but fanatically convinced of the jus-
tice of their mission to overthrow the democratic govern-
ment and supplant it with one based on the Soviet style.
By no stretch of the imagination can we conceive that
there were traitor Communists or fellow travelers in the
armed forces of the Philippines, or even in positions of
influence. The real traitor in the army, as elsewhere, was
national inertia. The service was riddled with the debili-
tating influence of favoritism and politics, and this was
inevitably reflected in the "campaigns" conducted against
the well-armed and dedicated followers of Taruc, Lava,
Alejandrino, Capadocia, Balgos, and the other convert
leaders to Communism. The constabulary having proved
ineffectual, the job had been turned over to the army,
which had proved equally futile, making no more effort
than had the police to meet these dangerous groups at
close combat. On the other hand, soldiers were helping
themselves to private property, such as cattle, chickens,
and food, under the guise of conducting the <c anti-Huk

124

campaign," while the campaign itself had deteriorated
into a few shots fired into the jungle, here and there and
now and then.

This was all that was being done to protect the Philip-
pines against a revolutionary movement that threatened
to take over the government any day and any hour. No
wonder the people had lost faith in their once-respected
army, which had failed them, along with everything else
they had trusted!

Magsaysay got right to work on a twenty-four-hours-a-
day job. He was no office man. His swivel chair stood
empty; he was out in the field. First he had to make the
army believe in itself and imbue it with respect for this
vital offensive, then the people had to be made to respect
and trust in the army again and stop tolerating and pro-
tecting the Huks which they had come to believe was the
lesser of two evils. This meant readjusting all around: the
soldiers to the honor code and the spirit of service, and
the people to regarding the soldiers as their friends and
protectors, rather than their oppressors.

He began with a reorganization of the army that set
the "deadwood" high brass shaking in their boots. A gov-
ernment shakedown placed the ineffective constabulary
directly under the armed forces, and then shrank it down
in size to about seven thousand officers and men. The re-
mainder were absorbed into the army. The campaign for
the restoration of peace and order was transferred directly
to the armed forces under the direction of Magsaysay.

As systematically as once he had stripped down recalci-
trant cars to discover their troubles, this ex-garage me-
chanic proceeded to strip down the newly reorganized

125

army and put it together again in working order. First, he
took the armed forces out of politics. He cleaned out the
"deadwood" by rooting out all the incompetents who had
won their stripes through favoritism. He promoted those
officers who were actually making an effort to fight the
Huks (he could not demote those who didn't, though he
longed to) , and he went on sweeping aside army brass in
a way that caused panic in the upper echelons. He was
referred to by certain officers as "That ignorant guerrilla."

A committee of generals protested his wholesale army
shifts. "You are kicking out too many officers and men.
You will demoralize the army!" To which he replied: 1
don't care. If they are bad I will demoralize them some
more/' He ferreted out those officers who, although not
out-and-out Communists, were serving as liaison links
with the dissident forces and who had been sending secret
warnings to the Huks when the army was about to launch
one of its halfhearted attacks.

This snipped the lifeline between the army and the
Huks. But the people remained to be convinced of the
army's sincerity. They still had ways of getting informa-
tion to the Huks, and means for keeping them subsidized.

It was going to be a big fight, and Magsaysay needed
money to carry it through. We had no money in the Phil-
ippines. I used to look out over Manila Bay and estimate
how much of our good silver and gold lay under its waters,
tossed overboard in our attempt to help balance the scales
for democracy. We needed it now as badly as we had
needed it in the days when we were fighting Japan.

Magsaysay asked President Quirino to send me, as
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, to Washington to ask for

126

money, and to arouse America to the fact that the cancer
of Communism was eating away the Philippines* last
chance of survival as a democratic nation.

In Washington I laid our plans before General George
Marshall, Secretary of Defense, and he wired General
Hobbs, who flew from Manila to Washington to back up
my arguments. If we waited for a Congressional appropri-
ation it would be too late; the momentum of our offensive
against the Huks would be lost.

General Marshall consulted the Chiefs of Staff, the Na-
tional Security Council, and President Truman, and ten
million dollars was taken from the Defense Department
and given to Magsaysay to use as he saw fit.

The United States Government knew that every penny
of that money would be honestly spent.

It was given us, in this year 1950, by the United States
to help us fight the new enemy, Communism, in the Phil-
ippines, and to counter the attacks against "United States
imperialism" by Soviet propaganda on the Far Eastern
front.

Once more, Filipinos and Americans were fighting to-
gether. There was no glory in this defense on the Asian
battle line. It was a grubby struggle to root out an octopus
ideology that had fastened itself on the minds of millions.

Just the same, it was war, and I do not suppose the av-
erage American, tending his garden after work hours,
knew of the all-out struggle his country was subsidizing in
the Philippines to protect his right to tend his bit of
ground.

The ten million dollars sparked the all-out offensive
against the Huks; nevertheless, our fight against Commu-

127

Bism was costing the Filipinos one-third of our national
government spending. This was a cruel penalty leveled by
Communism against a struggling and impoverished young
nation. The Huks were making it almost impossible for
the Philippines to survive as a republic, and only a man
with the energy and honesty of Ramon Magsaysay was
capable of saving the Philippines at this late hour.

With a rebuilt and revitalized army of forty thousand
troops, Magsaysay went out after the Huks in the same
violent fashion he had gone after the Japanese, and with
an energy and determination that surpassed their own. In
olive drab, and with only four hours sleep a night, he was
in action everywhere and anywhere, stirring up trouble
for the enemy or for the recalcitrant in his own forces
wherever he appeared.

To make certain that his army reforms were carried out,
Magsaysay made personal post inspections, ducking about
in surprise visits from one army outpost to another in a
C-47 or army car, or even by carabao cart in hills where
no car could go. At one post Magsaysay and his aide sur-
prised a sleepy sergeant who had been left alone to guard
an ammunition and supply dump. They detained the man
and took him before the commandant.

"We might have been Huks/' Magsaysay pointed out,
removing the officer then and there and relieving him of
his command.

He was as quick to praise. On the battlefield, there on
the spot, he gave out promotions and decorations. The
soldiers began to realize this was a new deal, that merit
would be recognized. Also, this new leader was one of
their own kind. He spoke to them in their own tongues. In

128

English or native dialects, he could make himself under-
stood in pungent and direct prose. His bravery was, of
course, legendary; now he led many a sortie into the jun-
gle, showing an utter disregard for his own safety, and
exposing himself to the enemy as fearlessly as he had to
the Japanese. With his guerrilla knowledge he was able to
ferret out the Huks' jungle hideouts and lead the way. He
could counter every Huk guerrilla tactic with better guer-
rilla tactics, and he struck swiftly and hard at the Huk
concentrations with small but well-armed mobile units,
giving the rebels no time to rest, reorganize, and replenish
their stocks of arms and provisions.

Actually, this was the sort of life he loved. This was the
kind of war he understood. He was no armchair general.
He had fought and suffered as a guerrilla, and he knew
how the guerrillas were living and how they fought.

He also knew the men he was leading. He was one of
them. Whenever trouble started he was with them, out in
the hills and jungles, leading the way, eating, bivouacking,
talking with the men. He imbued them or rather re-im-
bued them, for many of them had fought against the Japa-
nese in the three-and-a-half years of resistancewith the
will to attack, to attack, and always to attack.

There were no more of the desultory "demonstrations"
and token attacks the firing of a few aimless rounds of ar-
tillerywhich had permitted the Huk movement to exist
and grow.

Officers and men had formed the habit of returning
from such forays with impressive accounts of the large
numbers of Huks left dead on the field. We had a saying
in the Philippines that if only half the number of Huks

129

had been killed that the army laid claim to having killed,
only a very small proportion of the Filipino population
would be left alive!

Magsaysay arrested this fiction by providing his com-
manding officers with cameras and ordering them to take
photographs of the dead Communists killed in action, as
direct proof that they were really dead.

He posted awards for Huks dead or alive, demanding
proof of identity, and persuaded President Quirino to sus-
pend the writ of habeas corpus for all prisoners reported
to be Huks. He put a price of one hundred thousand pesos
on Luis Taruc's head, and that "Huk supremo" at once
ducked under cover in the hills where, surrounded by
faithful Communists and protected by the citizenry, he
continued to be a thorn in the government's side long
after other Huk leaders had been captured or slain.

Every soldier fighting on the side of democracy was like
a son to Magsaysay. He watched over his men and lis-
tened to their stories. Every enlisted man who killed a
Huk received from him a personal letter of commendation
and a one-stripe promotion.

His very presence among the men was helping to whip
the army into an efficient fighting machine. Morale soared.
The men were taking pride in being part of the Philippine
Army, in their uniforms and arms and bearing a pride
that had been lost since the war.

They loved him, even when he curtailed certain priv-
ileges they had been led to regard as a soldier's preroga-
tive. It had been their privilege to help themselves freely
to eggs and chickens and other farm produce to supple-
ment army chow, and without the consent of the owners.

130

Magsaysay heard of many such misdeeds in many villages,
and sent for the complainants. If such charges were
proved the miscreants were punished in the presence of
the villagers.

This made a great impression on the people who had
been complaining that the army was no better than the
Huks.

The army continued to gain in integrity and determina-
tion, and the people who had lost faith in their armed
forces and the government it represented began to expe-
rience a revival of faith. People began citing this new in-
tegrity and saying, "Here is justice!" which was a way of
saying, "Here is a changing government in which we may
be able to believe again."

And just as in proportion to the rise of graft and cor-
ruption in the government, Communism had grown, so
now in proportion to the revival of justice the people be-
gan gradually to lessen their support of the Huks.

It was Magsaysay's first impulse to wipe out all the
enemy, down to the last man. Even though they were Fili-
pinos, they were Moscow-inspired and, hence, traitors, and
he wanted to see every Communist in the Philippines ex-
terminated, if necessary, with a violence to match their
own.

The tactics used against the Huks were not always or-
thodox. They could not be. The Huks were not fighting
along the accepted conventional lines. They were fighting
guerrilla warfare outside the lines of military law, and
they were not bound by any of the legal, constitutional,
and moral laws which handicapped the army. To keep the
subjugated areas under control the Huks were committing

131

more criminal acts than everextortion, kidnapping
torture, and always murder. The army could not re-
taliate in kind. On the other hand, every Huk captured
clamored with full knowledge of the legal and constitu-
tional code for his "rights," which, in all honor, had to be
given him. So the democratic side was handicapped in
many ways by the very force of its democracy; a handicap
that has not been missing in history from countries other
than our own.

Freedom always gives an unfair advantage to those who
fight against freedom. That is its greatest handicap, and its
greatest power.

Despite this disadvantage, the anti-Huk campaign was
carried on in full force in the affected areas, which were
principally in the islands of Luzon and Panay. The core
of the Red infection was in the central plains of Luzon,
where the province of Pampanga, with its heavy burden
of absentee landlordism, had offered the greatest breeding
areas to the Communist cause. Half of the Philippines'
twenty-one million people are concentrated on the island
of Luzon.

The Huks had organized Central Luzon into ten re-
gional, and one city, commands. Magsaysay and his ad-
visors worked out a plan whereby the population of the
endangered areas were to be protected by garrisons, then
the enemy regional commands were to be attacked one
by one.

The people, who were learning to trust in the govern-
ment again, responded to this plan by flocking back to the
barrios and homes from which they had been driven by
the Huks, to take up their lives again under the protection

132

of the army garrisons. There was a disadvantage to this
plan that made itself apparent almost at once. So many of
the people flocked for protection back into the barrios
and towns, and so many soldiers were required to protect
them, that only a greatly reduced number of troops were
left to carry on the offensive against the Huks. Also it was
clear that a great many Huks were mixing freely with the
civilians, hearing everything that was being planned and
learning about the army's proposed attacks before they
were made. The enemy was as elusive and hard to catch
as before. Sorties were sent out to encampments from
which all the Huks had vanished as if by magic. The
troops were wild for action now, but where could action
be found!

The people were still shielding the enemy within, in
mortal fear of that enemy. The Huks had demonstrated
how cruel they could be. It is not easy to persuade fright-
ened people to talk.

The Huks had their carefully organised intelligence
service, run by terror. The democratic side had none, and
never was one more needed and for a better cause. But
the organization of such a service would require funds to
subsidize information, so the anti-Huk campaign was
threatened at its very start. A curious incident routed it
into the right way.

On Magsaysay's first day in office as Defense Secretary
he received a message from a man he did not know, ask-
ing him to come alone and unarmed to a midnight ren-
dezvous in a nipa hut in one of the slum sections of
Manila. Magsaysay made inquiries and was told that the
man was a well-known Huk and he was strongly advised

133

not to take the risk. But there was a certain cops-and-
robbers appeal in the challenge for Magsaysay, and at
midnight he set out alone and without a gun, following
his instincts down some of the darkest and loneliest alleys
in the city to keep the secret tryst.

For several hours he sat talking with the Huk in the
palm-frond hut. The man was nervous and seemed to be
expecting others; Magsaysay had no illusions as to what
they were. But the expected visitors did not arrive and
Magsaysay took advantage of the time to argue and plead
with the Huk the dangers of the Red side and the triumph
that would come with siding with democracy.

He made a strong impression on the Huk, as he had
with so many others; as he would with so many more.
When he left, the Huk asked if he would come again,
alone.

Several times, alone, unarmed, at midnight, Magsaysay
visited the hut in the slums and on each visit he won the
trust of the Huk a little more. Once he asked Magsaysay
to give him money. He was poor; he wanted to buy a car.
Without a word of rebuke, Magsaysay gave him the
money.

He had made a convert and a friend. The Huk told him
that on that first midnight a jeepload of Huk triggermen
had been due to arrive at the nipa hut and kill Magsaysay.
He had served as decoy. It had been carefully planned.
Something had gone wrong, and the Huks did not appear.

Then, thoroughly impressed by Magsaysay's courage
and honesty, he exposed to him the details of the Philip-
pine Communist Party's Politburo which had set up its
headquarters in the very heart of Manila and was openly

134

threatening to seize the capital Everyone knew that the
top Huk members, the most dangerous of the enemy, were
living secretly in the city, but no one knew who they were
or where they were hiding.

Magsaysay's Huk friend told him to assign men to fol-
low a twelve-year-old girl. Under the guise of a vendor of
meats and vegetables she went boldly through the streets
at regular hours, leaving food and secret messages with
the Huk leaders in hiding.

The girl was followed and the lairs of the Huk leaders
located and surrounded. As a result the twelve top mem-
bers of the Communist Politburo were captured, tried,
convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment or death. Those
who escaped fled to the hills. All the members were even-
tually captured with the exception of one who was later
killed in battle with an army unit that had been sent to
take him dead or alive.

The fall of the Politburo exposed the Communist plans
to the last detail. It was Magsaysay's first victory over the
enemy, and it produced definite results. Not only were
other Huks persuaded to talk, but the new channels of
information opened called for a rapid shift in plans. Up to
this time the directive had been to exterminate the entire
enemy force. But the first Huk won over by Magsaysay to
the democratic side was convincing proof that the Huks
need not be regarded as a total loss to democracy. Mag-
saysay became certain that many could be salvaged.

So the plan was changed from all-out destruction of the
enemy to the destruction of enemy leadership. The new
directive called for larger striking forces and a relentless
drive against the enemy groups, the disrupting of enemy

135

communication sources of information and supplies and
the destruction of their hiding places, and the intensifica-
tion of military intelligence and psychological warfare.

The unconventional Huks were being attacked along
unconventional lines.

Magsaysay's methods were as bold as they were unor-
thodox. The Huks had infiltrated; our men counterinfil-
trated. The Huks had spy schools in the hills. Magsaysay
organized spy schools. The Huks wore many disguises,
such as women's clothing. Our soldiers on occasion dressed
as women.

A great deal of the action against the Huks followed
the conventional lines of warfare, but there were methods
used in scouting, patrol, and attack which were guerrilla
ways, learned in a tough school by guerrilla-leader Mag-
saysay. An increasing amount was done with the full un-
derstanding and cooperation of the citizens, who gained in
courage as their trust in the army was renewed. As a re-
sult, barrios and towns were screened for spies with grati-
fying results, and ambush parties were sent out to cover
enemy trails on tips reported by the growing intelligence.
Magsaysay was fighting the Huks with their own best
weapons by infiltrating the Huk forces with his own
agents, winning the trust of the people who had been
shielding them, making friends with the families of Huks,
and promising them security from the Huks if they re-
fused to protect and provide for them any more.

Then to every Huk who surrendered he pledged am-
nesty, restored citizenship, and a job; in other words, a
new chance at a new life.

136

Huks began surrendering. Magsaysay talked to tibem,
man to man. They became his friends.

He made friends of other Huks who had been captured.
Some of these he persuaded to rejoin their outfits and
serve as his secret agents inside the Red lines. Others he
organized into anti-Huk brigades who fought as staunchly
against their former allies as they had fought beside them.
Not one of these men ever let Magsaysay down.

With a commando force made up entirely of ex-Huks
he invaded the mountain sanctuaries of Huk Command
Number Six on the Island of Panay, which was under the
command of the high-ranking Red leader, Guiflermo Ca-
padocia. The enemy was powerfully entrenched in these
hills where they had set up a Soviet stronghold and had
even built so-called Stalin Universities and other Soviet
training schools. Our forces captured and killed Capadocia
and scattered his commune into small ineffectual bands
that were forced to skulk like animals in the hills.

Taruc, too, was in hiding, under the protection of a
shrinking number of followers. Tame still was a power to
reckon with and was feared. Otherwise the Red forces
were dwindling rapidly. Lava, who had trained Tame,
was dead.

The Huks retaliated against the Magsaysay success by
raiding his home town. After the men were killed every
woman and child the Huks could lay their hands upon be-
came the bloody victim of massacre. Magsaysay was ter-
ribly aroused*

Even so, he could be temperate. When one of the Huks
who had taken part in the atrocity was captured, Magsay-
say might understandably have had him shot as "trying to

137

escape." But he sent for the man and they talked together
for a long time. Finally he let him go with the encourag-
ing words, "I think you can become a good citizen and
I'm going to give you a chance to prove it."

AU that Magsaysay was doing was winning back the
tried hearts of a proud people who had thought them-
selves betrayed. Magsaysay had implicit faith in the peo-
ple. "We can't win this war without them/' he often said.

He was winning friends on every side, and at the same
time, in proof of his high success, the man Magsaysay was
making enemies. Do not think all he was doing met with
approval in all circles I His wiping out of the weak army
brass and his unconcern for the rights of "pull" and nepo-
tism and power-in-office were interfering with certain
well-made plans. Some of the powerfully entrenched were
watching with growing dismay the sweeping tactics of
this unpolished diamond from the barrios. Some of the
"get-rich-quick lads" were interrupted in their getting, and
they rightly laid the blame on the new Minister of De-
fense whose defensive tactics were uncovering some very
strange situations. There were those who were openly
jealous and disturbed by his quick rise to power. There
were those who did not care which party got in so long as
their own pockets were well lined, and since Magsaysay's
democratic campaign was interfering with their quick-
profits campaign, they found it easy to blame and to hate
Magsaysay.

Had he been willing to pull his punches in these crucial
years of 1950-1951, a great deal of misbegotten wealth
might have found its way into the pockets of Magsaysay's
olive drabs. We know of the many tempting offers made

138

him under the guise of proffered "gifts." Chinese visas,
campaign donations, booty from the depleted treasury
chest of a looted nationall might have been his.

His sense of honesty remained adamant. He once said
that if his own father broke the law he would put him in
jail.

One evening he strode into Malacanan and interrupted
a state dinner with a request to speak at once to President
Quirino. He had with him a trembling officer and two
large bags containing one hundred and fifty thousand
pesos. The officer had uncovered a secret ammunition
cache and been advised to forget it, and to aid his lapse
in memory he had been offered the bribe. The officer had
taken the money and brought it to Magsaysay, who
wanted him praised and rewarded on the spot.

Poor President Quirino! He had to commend the officer
and promote him from captain to major, between courses.

Justice had returned to the Philippines, tempered with
Christian mercy.

Justice which comes straight from the heart, even the
simplest can understand.

Within a few months after the little-known Ramon
Magsaysay had become head of defense in the Philip-
pines, he had won more than the unswerving loyalty of
the armed forces. He had behind him the faith and the
almost solid support of the Filipino people.

It was the start of the turning back to democracy.

139

Chapter IX

WITHIN a year Magsaysay had reduced the Huk rebel-
lion from a major national threat to a movement of insig-
nificant proportions; more of a nuisance than a real menace
to the security and stability of the Philippine Republic.
The Huks continued to retreat, to yield, to break up.

Again one could walk in the streets of Manila and drive
through the roads of Luzon without fear.

The armed forces still had enough to keep them oc-
cupied. Along with the job of administering the new
farm movement, which I will later describe in detail, the
troops were kept busy collecting loose firearms, supervis-
ing civilian guards, screening town officials for Huk influ-
ence, training and aiding the constabulary, guarding the
crops and stock of the farmers from any stray Huks, and
supervising elections.

The election assignment was due directly to Magsaysay.
The "dirty election" of 1949 had done incalculable harm
to national morale and turned thousands of citizens pro-
Huk who had never before harbored any Communist
ideas.

Now the election of 1951 was coming up and the rally-

140

ing cry of the politicos-in-power was once again, "Bullets
instead of ballots." Again the goons were hired and guns
oiled to keep the people away from the polls.

The Presidency was not at stake this year, but control
of the Senate was the issue. The fight would be bitter; for
the "dirty election" was fresh in all minds, and on every
side one heard people saying ominously that a repeat ver-
sion of the terrorism of 1949 would bring on revolution.
The people had found voice again and the popular clamor
grew until President Quirino was obliged to promise to
prevent intimidation. Magsaysay was the natural choice
to be put in charge of the election.

Magsaysay had an announcement ready. This election,
he promised, would be known as the "clean election/* It
would be an erasure of the blot from 1949.

He knew, when he made that promise, that he was risk-
ing his political future. His challenge to the hirelings was
a direct challenge to the powers who hired them, and
among these, some were those in power who were steeped
in graft and spoils and would disapprove of any change.
In certain instances he was defying the very ones who had
helped him to his present position of power. But his loy-
alty went beyond them to the people who were joining
in the fight to preserve democracy and were entitled to
every right democracy had to give.

He knew he was expressing the will of the people when
he promised the "clean election." Then, to guarantee its
cleanliness he ordered out his troops.

He called out other surprise defenders along with the
soldiers. He drew on the manpower of the students and

141

the educators. Teachers served as polling clerks without
pay. ROTC cadets served as election guards. Soldiers pro-
tected the ballot boxes. Other soldiers guarded the voters
to and from their homes, forestalling as much as possible
the intimidation and bloodshed that had made the 1949
election a world-wide scandal

The senatorial election was not entirely free of blood-
shed. Most of the fighting took place before the election
was held. Before the polls were opened ninety-six people
were dead, among them several of the candidates for elec-
tion, and more than a hundred had been kidnapped. But
these atrocities did not go unpunished as before. In one
town where a pre-election killing occurred, Magsaysay
ordered the entire police force arrested and charged with
murder. In another town a candidate was kidnapped;
Magsaysay jailed the mayor.

As a result, election day, when it arrived, was almost
an anticlimax. The hired gangsters had turned back their
guns to their politico bosses and nearly all had disap-
peared. Four million Filipinos made their way in almost
complete safety to the polling places and on a mighty
wave of enthusiasm voted the anti-Quirino candidates into
all the contested seats and control of the Senate.

Out of these four million, twenty-one lost their lives on
the day of the "clean election." In the "dirty election"
many hundreds had been killed.

The "clean election" turned the full force of public at-
tention on Magsaysay. People began saying, "Here is a
man who knows how to get things done I Here is a
leader "

These comments did not go unheard in the upper eche-

142

Ions of those in power. Then Magsaysay really headed for
a stone wall of opposition and resentment with his
EDCOR Project, the movement to return the Huks to the
land without reprisal.

This project in a way came out of the human labora-
tories he had established in Manila in the effort to under-
stand the Huk problem in its entirety, not as a military
problem alone, but as a human one.

These bureaus were started shortly after he had become
Secretary of Defense and had won the first Huks to the
democratic side simply by talking with them and finding
out why they had turned Huks, and how they could be
turned away from Communism and back to democracy.

Dead, the Huks presented no problem. Alive, they had
answers to give, and he wanted to hear what they were.
He was willing to hear.

Always, even in his relatively subordinate capacity of a
minister of the cabinet, Magsaysay had in mind the fact
that these Huks he was fighting were his own people-
misguided, hostile to all his principles, yet his own. In a
national crisis he had been forced to use the mailed fist,
but now the crisis was ebbing and there was time to don
the velvet glove. These wholesale killings were against
his conscience and against the nation's; besides, he was
becoming more and more convinced that bullets were not
the answer. The government was proving it could destroy
all its enemies, but was it not more politic, as well as
Christian, to give those enemies a chance to redeem them-
selves in normal society?

So the warfare with guns and guerrilla tactics changed
wherever possible to psychological warfare, with ideas

143

that went deeper than bullets, aimed directly at the Huks
and indirectly at the whole Filipino nation.

The arsenals of the new attack were the offices of the
human-relations bureau in Manila, where kindness and
understanding were the ammunition issued, and a friendly
word and a proffered cigarette were found to carry as
potent a power as a tommy gun aimed at the human
heart.

In these bureaus army officers trained in interrogation
questioned the Huk prisoners and persuaded them to
speak. There was no brain-washing, no cross-examination,
no threats or force. Prisoner and officer sat down together
and the prisoner was permitted to air his grievances with-
out fear.

As a rule the captive Huks were eager to talk. They
were burning to bring out the old grievances that had
driven them into the hills.

The explanations they gave were simple, but they are
the stories of human beings, and they must be studied by
those who would know how a democratic people can be
turned to Communism.

One by one the same reasons came from the embittered
ones: Because they had not found the democratic justice
and freedom they had hoped and fought for during the
long war against the Japanese. Because they had been
given reason to distrust men who to them represented the
government.

Magsaysay retold their stories in turn in Cabinet meet-
ings in explanation of the way Communists are made. He
told of the Filipino who deserted his village to fight in the
hills with the Huks because of the justice of the peace

144

who had refused to grant justice. In this man's case, his
daughter had been employed as a servant in the house-
hold of the mayor. The girl was made pregnant and the
father believed that the mayor was guilty. He went with
his oldest son to the mayor's house to bring his daughter
home, but the mayor refused to let her go, and when
father and son protested, the mayor sent for the justice
of the peace who took them both off to jail At the end of
the week they were released only to learn that the daugh-
ter was dead. They were told she had committed suicide.
They were also ordered to get out of town. They did.
They joined the Huks in the hills, not because the Com-
munist ideology meant anything to them, but because
their own authorities had failed them.

The Huks had their ears to the ground. They knew how
to handle such cases.

They learned of them when they came into the barrios
by night to see their families and get supplies. A commit-
tee would call on the troubled man. "Join, us," they would
urge, "and we will get justice for you. You can get it in
no other way under this crooked government/'

So a crude justice would be performed, and from that
time on the avenged one was an outlaw. He was a Com-
munist. A Huk. Ideology had had nothing to do with
bringing him into the Red fold.

Here is a form of injustice that was cited many times:
The poor tao Juan de la Cruz as we call the John Doe
of the Philippines has as a rule no padrino, no sponsor to
explain matters to him and for him. He is usually a poor
countryman with scant knowledge and great fear of the
Government. He may have a small favor to ask of that

145

Government; his children, perhaps, are ill. The village
herb doctor has said they are very ill. The tao walks a
long distance from the farm to the town and the Govern-
ment halls are large and frightening, and he feels very
much alone speaking his humble request to the first man
he sees behind a desk. The man, some minor official, often
unscrupulous, looks down his nose at this barefooted sup-
plicant and demands "payment" in advance. The poor tao
does not know this is an unnecessary and illegal tip. He
digs into his ragged pocket, unties his rag of handker-
chief, and turns the sum over without suspicion, only to be
sent from desk to desk, from office to office, perhaps from
building to building, where other unscrupulous minor of-
ficials in turn demand tribute from the pitiful sum he has
brought along.

He finds himself at last standing with trembling legs
in the doorway of the dispensary in the City Hall. An-
other man glares at him over a desk. "What do you want?"
He explains once more that his children are sick. The
next question shocks him. "How much money have you?"
He gives the last of the peso, the one hundred centavos
he had tied into the handkerchief before leaving home,
and says anxiously, "I have no more," The "official," who
is often only the receptionist, may take it with sarcastic
grumbling, then ask contemptuously, "What is wrong
with your children?"

Now to the Filipino of the poorer levels there are only
three illnesses fever, a stomach trouble, and skin disease.
The poor tao mutters that his children have fever. The
official knows that this man comes from a malaria belt, so
he hands him a bottle of quinine pills and waves him

146

away. The man trudges home and gives Ids children the
quinine; no one has prepared him for the chills which
follow. He concludes his children have been poisoned
and by his own Government, and he goes back a thousand
years, back to the primitive, and sends for the herb doc-
tor, who can always say that a child has been bewitched
when it dies.

He has no money left with which to bury this child
and he sits grieving and miserable in his hut that night
beside his dead. And men come. They are Huks. They
understand. They, too, have known bitterness. And they
tell him, "It is the Government that has done this to
you/'

He knows the Government does not pay for funerals.
But the Huks have money. They will see that his child has
a decent burial. And after this has been done he learns
that now he, too, is a Huk, not a fighter in the hills, for he
cannot leave his family, but a Huk of the town, where he
will gather information for the Huk groups and help to
collect food for them.

The tao would tell this story in the bureaus with hope-
lessness and remembered bitterness, and say, "I needed
help and was not given help. But the Huks knew and
came to my aid/'

The petty grafters who betrayed their government when
they betrayed this humble father were guiltier than the
Huks, for they were placed in what should have been po-
sitions of trust. They failed the tao and themselves when
they failed democracy. These are the men who should
wear the Communist brand!

147

It was clear that many of the Huks were criminals who
had been made so by injustice. Some had avenged harm
done to their wives and children. MJany had taken action
for injustices perpetrated against themselves by rich and
heartless landlords.

In the remote barrios of the Philippines, feudal rights
are as strong as they were in Spanish days. One Huk who
had been a respectable tenant fanner told of his daugh-
ter, engaged to be married, who was violated by the owner
of their land. When the father protested he was ordered
off the land which he and his people had farmed for gen-
erations. He told the young man his daughter had been
about to marry, and together they waylaid the landlord
and killed him. Now they were both murderers and where
could they go into hiding save into the hills with the
Huks?

What had Soviet ideology to do with their conversion
to Communism!

It became apparent that the majority of the Huk com-
plaints came out of injustices concerning the land.

Our land laws in the Philippines came down to us from
Spanish times. Great areas of farming land are owned by
absentee landlords who farm them out to generations of
tenant farmers and accept the yield of their crops in re-
turn. Also due to these ancient grants the authenticity of
land titles is uncertain, so that a poor tao can farm his bit
of land for generations and never be sure it is his.

For example, one Huk told of buying and clearing a
patch of jungle and making it into good rice land after
years of back-breaking labor. He cut the trees and pulled

148

the stumps and planted the shoots and watched them
grow. He built a nipa hut for his family with his own
hands. He did not know that his land title was worthless
and that a wealthy man in a nearby town was the actual
owner of his farm. But the rich man knew, and when the
rice was ready to reap he claimed the land and the house
and the crop, and the farmer was turned out with his
family to wander the roads. Robbed of the land he had
paid and toiled for and the crops he had sown, homeless
and embittered, where could he turn now but to the
Huks? So another convert to Communism had joined the
ranks.

It was learned that thousands of Huks had once been
tenant farmers who might have toiled from boyhood to
the end of their lives on land they could never own, farm-
ing the bits of land their fathers before them had rented
and farmed, and struggling without hope to pay off the
debts acquired by those fathers generations before. A
rich landlord had allotted a bit of land to the man's grand-
father, and had kindly thrown in a carabao and a plow;
the grandfather had understood he could pay for this loan
as the crops ripened. Now, a hundred years later, a man
might gather three sacks of rice from that land, and carry
it before bis landlord, who would claim two. When the
tenant farmer complained he could not feed his family on
one sackful, and wanted to know why his year's work was
so poorly rewarded, he was told the interest on the ancient
loan was increasing and not decreasing with the years.
Then he would return to his nipa hut knowing the debt
could never be paid, that his family would never have

149

enough to eat, and that no matter how long or how hard
he labored, the land, and the fruits of that land, could
never be his.

What was this but slavery!

And the Huks who heard of his bitterness and came to
his house by night agreed that this was indeed slavery,
and that a man was a fool to work for another when he
might live the free life in the hills. . . . Join the Huks, and
some day all the land would be theirs!

An avalanche of such pent-up injustices kept pouring
across the desks of the human-relations bureaus. The Huks
had so many stories to relate, and all were heard. Injustices
had driven men from the farms into the Huk-ridden hills,
and others had fled the city for like reasons. In Manila, at
this time, a workingman had to work hard to earn a dollar
a day with which to buy food for his family food that
cost three times as much as it would in New York! The
Filipino income per capita was under two hundred dollars
per year, which was less than ten per cent of that in the
United States.

Added grist for the Communist mill were the promises
made and broken by the Filipino government itself. The
Quirino administration had promised to enforce the mini-
mum wage and initiate land reform. The United States
had pledged more aid to the Philippines provided these
reforms were made, and had even given us an advance on
the promised sum. But nothing had been done about start-
ing the reforms, and no one knew where the money had
been spent.

All this was fodder for the Communist propagandists,

150

and what could be said by way of denial when the lack of
concern around Malacanan was apparent to all!

People who have been deprived of land, food, justice,
hope and pride, medical care for their families, education
for their children, can at last hope only for change. When
there is no change, they are prey for the Communist
propagandists.

This was true in the Philippines. It is always true every-
where.

As a result of the studies made in the human-relations
bureaus, Magsaysay came to believe that land was a fun-
damental power in solving the problem of Communism;
that many Huks were not Communists by conviction: they
were farmers who could no longer make a living on the
land tenure, or who had never been permitted to own
their land, or who had worked in the hopeless attempt to
rid the land of debt and own it, or who had owned land
and lost it through debt, or who had it taken from them
by unjust means.

Here was something he could understand.

He himself was a man of the people, which is to say,
of the land. He knew that love for the land. He realized
why these men were fighting: for a place of their own!
This had been the basic drive behind the threatened rev-
olution.

He knew then that Communism could never be de-
feated with guns.

Acting on this conviction, Magsaysay brought into be-
ing a new approach to the Huk problem. He struck at the
very heart of the evil that made the Huks possible when

151

he launched the project EDCOR the army-backed Eco-
nomic Development Corps whose purpose was to provide
'land for the landless."

This was a direct counterattack to the Communist claim
that the Huks were "agrarian reformers/'

On his travels in the south, Magsaysay had seen great
tracts of wasteland lying unclaimed on the underpopu-
lated island of Mindanao. Now he urged the development
of the Mindanao resettlement program. He wheedled
large tracts of land on the southern island, and certain
promises, out of President Quirino, Then he began his
campaign to rehabilitate the Huks.

Word was broadcast to the Huks that to all who sur-
rendered and showed a sincere desire to lead a peaceful
life the government would give transportation for them-
selves and their families and such possessions as they
could carry, as well as seeds, farm equipment, stock, a
government-built cottage, and twenty-five acres of virgin
soil on the island of Mindanao. This land they themselves
could break and tend, to be theirs and their children's in
perpetuity.

A miracle was worked.

The Huks began pouring into the garrisons by the
hundreds to lay down their arms. Men who had been
living in the hills like hunted animals, robbing and pillag-
ing to eat, heard over the makeshift radios of the chance
to live, without fear, with one's family again, to walk
without fear into a town, to wake and sleep without fear
of arrest, imprisonment, or death, and most of all,
to be a landowner: Who would not surrender on such
terms!

152

To those who capitulated it was explained that while
the Republic was fully capable of stamping out the last
enemy in its midst, it preferred taking the Christian way,
and therefore all who were wiping to live on working
terms with the government could expect all the coopera-
tion and aid the government could give.

With some of these who surrendered, Magsaysay con-
ducted a daring experiment. He handed them back their
guns and sent them on commando raids to bring in more
Huks. Of the others, hundreds were transported south and
established on the new land settlement at Mindanao.

There had been other Filipino land resettlement pro-
grams in the past. They had been left in the hands of the
politicians. The moving of large groups of farm families
from the crowded, Communist-breeding regions of Cen-
tral Luzon to the untapped regions of Mindanao had been
an administration project for some time. But in keeping
with the usual inertia of the administration to the people's
needs, little had come of it but complications and added
discontent. The LASEDECO (Land Settlement and De-
velopment Corporation, a government project) was inept,
inefficient, and in many ways subservient to vested inter-
ests far different from the needy displaced farmers. As a
result groups of migrants were dumped on vacant land
and left there, with no provision made to enable them to
make a living or even to live. Somehow vast areas of rich
knd found their way into the hands of absentee landlords
with the Bright connections."

The unhealthy pattern of Central Luzon had been re-
peated in the "promised land" of Mindanao.

Actually, the new project was not a job for the army,

153

but Magsaysay did not hesitate to take it over. His role
as Secretary of Defense was purely military, but since the
politicians had failed, he would see what his soldiers could
do. Magsaysay's EDCOR camps, established and managed
under army supervision and his personal control, took
charge of the former Huks and their families as they ar-
rived on the big island. The newcomers' lands were al-
lotted to them under army supervision. Then, recalling
the false titles that had lost so many their land in the past,
Magsaysay saw to it that the land registry office shortened
its red tape and gave the tiller of the land his title free
and clear within a reasonable time. Formerly, it had taken
a title many years, often ten or fifteen, to go through the
registry office. A Filipino could work a farm all that time
and not be certain it was his own.

Now a land title could be cleared within two years.
This was a radical improvement,

Magsaysay was as active in resettling the Huks as he
had been in fighting them. If short cuts had to be taken,
he took them. He once wanted to buy some war-surplus
Quonset huts to use as schoolhouses, but the politician-
profiteer-owner was holding them for an inflationary price.
Magsaysay collected some of his former guerrillas, raided
the Quonset dump, and made off with one hundred and
forty huts. Later he paid the owner what Magsaysay knew
he had paid for the huts in the first place twenty-five
cents for each building.

The Mindanao settlement proved a successful venture
in land reform. It showed that such reform was vital to
Philippine security. As word of its success spread through
the outposts of the Huk command, Huks began pouring

154

by the thousands into the garrisoned towns to offer their
arms in exchange for the new and law-abiding life at
Mindanao.

EDCOR has, literally, given the chance at new living
to thousands of Huks who were willing to resume a life
of peace and usefulness within the law, and who are to-
day reaping bountiful harvests on their own farms which
are for many the realization of the dreams of a lifetime.

The Philippines is fortunate in possessing large empty
tracts of fertile land which are being portioned out
among more and more land-hungry people, including
many former Huks. The EDCOR project figures in a re-
port of United Nations experts on community develop-
ment who toured South and Southeast Asia last year. It is
the most successful project in the Philippines today.

Magsaysay had been right. The simple art of under-
standing had proved more powerful than bullets in con-
quering the Huks.

As he said in a speech before the State Department in
Washington: "We have to destroy the raw materials of
the Communists, in other words, give land to the landless.
The alternative is to use more ammunition to loll more
Huks. I prefer to convert them."

One American official said after hearing that speech
that Magsaysay had given us all a lesson not only in
shrewdness but in Christianity.

It was a lesson that ended the revolution in the Philip-
pines.

In the United States, where I had been returned by
President Quirino at the beginning of 1952 with the port-

155

folio of Ambassador to Washington added to my role as
permanent delegate to the United Nations, I received dis-
turbing reports of the growing tension between Quirino
and Magsaysay. The political duckling that Quirino had
nourished was developing into an eagle.

The reports grew more disturbing through the year and
into 1953. Magsaysay increased in stature and success.
The President commented more than once, "This man
Magsaysay is getting too ambitious."

Magsaysay was ambitious. He knew there were many
gaps in his political knowledge. But he was willing to
learn. He had an open mind and would listen to many
people and to all sides.

He made speeches in behalf of the Mindanao project
and land reform, and they were simple, pungent speeches
that drove straight to the hearts of the people.

He would say things like this: "I am proud to be a Fili-
pino. We are a great people. With the right leadership and
with the guidance and assistance of the United States this
country can grow to be the head of a family of democratic
nations in this part of the globe."

All that he was saying and doing was in behalf of the
psychological warfare that was regaining the confidence
of the people in their democracy. It was his contribution
to the information sources being thrown open to the peo-
ple by way of speeches, pamphlets, loyalty meetings,
broadcasts, conferences, and rallies.

Everything was being done to win the great mass of the
people completely away from the dangerous trend that
had threatened for a time to wrest freedom from one of
the few countries in Asia that was still free.

156

One of the strongest arguments for freedom was the
success of the new settlements in Mindanao. That achieve-
ment won for Magsaysay a great deal of attention, both at
home and abroad. He received honors and citations. The
newspapermen liked him, and liked what he was doing.
They wrote a great deal about him, and it was mostly
praise. The newspapers of Manila were backing him in
whatever he might do next.

He had the loyalty of the army, which had been re-
vitalized as officers and men realized that their immediate
chief was a man who could be trusted to protect them
against evil, political, unmilitary influences, and who had
driven favoritism out of the army so that promotions and
activation were based again on merit and honor, and not
on political pull. Officers could, and did, successfully defy
impositions by political leaders, petty and national. The
rank and file of the army were now convinced that their
Secretary of Defense Magsaysay could be hard and in-
flexible, but that he infinitely preferred to be lenient, and
he was always fair. To him, the Armed Forces was an in-
strument for the maintenance of the security of the na-
tion, and he saw to it that it was given every care.

He had sent the army into action as a guardian of the
people's most sacred right the right of the free ballot,
because he had seen that the forces of the government had
to be committed against the forces of greed who were
plotting to rob the people of their right to choose freely:
he had so committed them.

The results of Magsaysay's brief tenure as Secretary of
National Defense were far-reaching. First was the definite
dissolution, temporary perhaps, but none the less decisive,

157

of the Huks as a direct menace. Second, was the return of
a sense of security among the people, and with it a re-
generation of the people's belief that the government
could be trusted and that democracy could survive. They
had found in him an outstanding leader, who, having come
from the masses, exercised his leadership by virtue of
possessing the faith and confidence of the masses.

When the masses as in this case were Filipinos, tra-
ditionally steeped in the essence of individual liberty,
which is the basic ideal of true democracy, then their com-
bined, unwavering, spontaneously given faith is a force
for a real man to count on and for the enemies of free-
dom to fear.

Wherever he went crowds began gathering and cheer-
ing: "Mabuhay Magsaysay !" ("Long life, Magsaysay");
while the muttering against the government, which had
not improved or changed its ways, grew more angry, and
because anger must have a victim, it centered on the cen-
tral figure of the government, which was President Qui-
rino.

The "get-rich-quick boys" around the President chose a
victim in their turn. Someone had to take the blame for
the awakening of the people. They blamed Magsaysay.

So on the negative side the Magsaysay success in be-
half of his Republic concentrated against him all of the
forces of greed, of evil influence, of political intrigue,
whose hitherto uninterrupted progress toward complete
seizure of the national wealth Magsaysay's policies and
decisive actions had so effectively stopped.

So it was that in 1953 Magsaysay and the people on one

158

hand, and, on the other, the administration and the forces
behind it forces of political influence against the best
interests of the people came into sharp and direct con-
flict. The Quirino regime which Magsaysay and his re-
juvenated armies had saved from overthrow turned
against him. For weeks, all he had accomplished was sub-
jected to withering, relentless attack. Less and less fre-
quently was he consulted as a member of the Cabinet
More and more frequently was he ignored and slighted.

The new settlements at Mindanao came under the ug-
liest barrage of criticism. They were called foolish and
unnecessary by many top politicos, while Quirino had
held all along that the Huks deserved bullets, not gifts
of land. Everything Magsaysay had accomplished was
belittled. Now that the danger of Communism was abated,
the crooks close to power lifted their voices against the
man who had done the most toward stopping that danger.

Meanwhile, as if in compensation, Magsaysay's popu-
larity continued to grow with the common people and
with all who had the real interests of the country at heart.

Quirino was disturbed by the soaring popularity of
Magsaysay. The President was about to run for re-elec-
tion. But now he was told that to the cry, "Long life to
Magsaysay," people were beginning to add a new phrase,
and were shouting, "Long life to our next president, Mag-
saysayl"

This was a situation no president about to run again
could approve. The coldness grew between the two men.
Magsaysay was pressing his land-reform measures which
he felt were the answer to the claims of Communism.

159

Quirino belittled the reforms and snubbed Magsaysay
deliberately on various occasions.

The break between the President and his Secretary of
Defense was absolute.

That February Magsaysay resigned.

160

Chapter X

IN Washington, this April of 1953, 1 received an urgent
call from Manila. President Quirino wanted me home at
once for consultation.

I had an idea what he wanted of me, and I spent many
a sleepless night before leaving. From Washington and
the United Nations I had a wide view of what was hap-
pening to the free world. The Red danger was growing
stronger every day. The threat of Communism was every-
where, even here in the United States. Next door, in Gua-
temala, the angry Red clouds were gathering rapidly, in
the year 1953.

The Red wave had been halted in the Philippines. Was
that a temporary setback to Russia? One knew the Com-
munists would not give up that easily. And now that Mag-
saysay had resigned, we heard that graft was shooting up
with renewed vigor around Malacanan. The forces of
greed that had been stopped for a time were on the ram-
page again, determined to get all they could before the
last of the booty was gone. The upsurge of corruption as
always would be accompanied by the upsurge of Com-
munism. That pair were bedfellows.

Some word of all these developments, so vital in import

161

to the survival of Western democracy in Asia, and, by im-
plication, o such critical significance to the United States,
was filtering through the news screen to the front pages
in the United States. I use the word "screen" not to imply
censorship, but to indicate that the voluminous reports
from Korea, from Indochina, from Europe, as well as the
mass of domestic material normal in a Presidential election
year, practically monopolized the American newspapers.
Because Magsaysay, with his clear, effective program
against the active Communist threat, had attained the
stature of a new and dramatic Asian figure, he had re-
ceived a great deal of world-wide publicity. The Ameri-
can people had been made increasingly aware of what
was happening to their wartime ally on the other side of
the Pacific. But, purely as news, the reports of the graft-
ridden regime in Manila could not be expected to
compete with the high drama of Korea, or with the breath-
taking developments in the Republican and Democratic
parties here at home in America.

But to me, serving in Washington as the Philippine Am-
bassador, and in the United Nations as the permanent
delegate of the Philippines, all that I read in public and
private reports, and the concern I detected in the Presi-
dent's voice over the trans-Pacific radiophone as he or-
dered me home, were deeply disturbing.

My position at this time was not the most enviable. As
Ambassador to the United States and as the United Na-
tions delegate I was in theory representing my country.
But in both instances, formally and as a matter of official
record, I was a representative of my government in short,
of the existing administration of President Quirino.

162

Though removed by ten thousand miles from the actual
scenes of the disturbances, I was both de facto and de
jure a part of the regime that was causing the dis-
turbances. Yet without a specific order from Manila there
was nothing I could do save carry out my official duties
with as brave a face as I could wear under the circum-
stances. I was hungry for action, and willing to do any-
thing that would help put an end to the dangerous
situation left by the withdrawal of Magsaysay.

Elementary tenets of ordinary loyalty had precluded
any action on my part inimical to the administration until
I was able to see for myself and determine for myself that
there would be justification for my taking action. What
that action might be, I had no way of blowing. Mean-
while, in the United States I had no choice. I had to up-
hold my country's position before the world, no matter
what my private misgivings might be.

The call from Manila I knew would open the way to
change. It would bring on a crisis in my personal life if I
learned that all that was rumored was true.

And still, I dreaded that change. As far as my own
private affairs were concerned, I had every reason to be
happy in the United States, which had been my second
home since my university years. My wife had made over
the Embassy in Washington into a home of great comfort
and beauty. She had brought from Manila paintings, fur-
niture, and furnishings of every kind, all made in the
Philippines, so that our Embassy was a bit of Filipino
culture here in America. Our two younger sons were with
us in Washington, attending school, while the two older
boys were in Manila, launching careers of their own. We

163

had many friends in the United States and our lives were
again happy as in Manila before the war.

The refurbishing and refurnishing of the Embassy had
just been completed when the call came, and also, I had
just received, in addition to my other duties, the ambassa-
dorships to Mexico and Cuba, and I was preparing to set
up embassies in these countries and commute to my vari-
ous posts by plane.

The diplomatic and United Nations posts and all the
good fortune that had come to my family and to me since
Bataan fell were sources of great happiness and satisfac-
tion, and it was with a heavy heart that I suspended work
in the United Nations in New York and in the Washington
Embassy and halted the plans for the embassies in Ha-
vana and Mexico City.

With the greatest reluctance I interrupted the work in
the United Nations. There I felt that I was not only fight-
ing Communism, but I was voicing the aspirations of
millions of voiceless Asians. Whenever an Asian problem
came up I found myself debating against Vishinsky. It
must have been an effective struggle, because when re-
cently I had been nominated by the United States Gov-
ernment as Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Vishinsky had announced that he was under specific or-
ders from his own government to veto my name as often
as it came up, and he served notice on the United States
chief delegate not to submit my name any more as it
would be useless. In a way, I had considered this a vic-
tory.

Other plans of vital importance to the Philippines were
interrupted by the summons home at this particular time.

164

Let it not be forgotten that the problems besetting the
Philippines in the United States were by no means minor.
The gravest was the approach of the application of the
terms of the Bell Act, when American tariffs on Philippine
goods would begin to be imposed. The Quirino admin-
istration had done nothing literally nothing despite my
insistent requests, toward preparing for the renegotiating
of the Act, which is in effect the extant treaty of trade
and commerce between the two nations. All the negotia-
tions had been left in my hands, and my departure from
Washington at this time would leave the whole issue
hanging in the air.

Evidently what was rushing me home was far more
serious, at least from President Quirino's point of view.

I knew that what he wanted of me had something to
do with the coming election. He wanted to be re-elected
President. But this year he was faced by an opponent who
evidently had the love and trust of the people his own
former Secretary of Defense, Ramon Magsaysay.

When Magsaysay, a Liberal like Quirino, resigned as
Secretary of Defense on February 28, he bolted the Lib-
eral Party to run against Quirino on the Nationalist Party
ticket. There had been two possible candidates in the
latter party, Dr. Jose Laurel and Claro M. Recto, a bril-
liant dialectician. Laurel had opposed Quirino for the
Presidency in the "dirty election/' Both these candidates
had withdrawn in favor of the popular Ramon Magsaysay,
and on April 12 Magsaysay had been nominated Nation-
alist candidate for the Presidency.

This was real opposition for Quirino. This was why he

165

wanted me home. He had an idea I might be able to help
him defeat Magsaysay.

Magsaysay had, of course, deserted our party in order
to run for election. Like Quirino, and formerly Magsaysay,
I belonged to the Liberals. Naturally, I wanted to fight
on my party's side, if a fight would be necessary, and I
feared it would be. But would I want to fight for my
party if it harbored people unfavorable to the good of my
country, and at the same time fight against the man who
had been the biggest single force against Communism that
we had ever had in the Philippines?

I left the United States with a heavy heart.

My oldest son Carlos, known as Mike, met me at the
Manila Airport to drive me to our new home in the sub-
urbs where the two oldest boys were living. Mike had
just set up law practice in Manila.

Four months before, as a Christmas gift, I had sent him
a Ford from the United States. I wanted to know why he
had not come to meet me in the new car.

Mike scowled. "It's still in customs. I'd have to grease
palms to get it out, and I made up my mind I wouldn't
pay graft. So they still have the car."

I knew then that the worst I had heard was true. If they
would dare do this to my son, a practicing attorney whose
father was in the government, what were they doing to
those who had no voice at all, no means with which to
protest?

That was only the first glimpse. Wherever I went I
heard sneering, ugly words against the government. Little
boys playing in the streets warned one another against
cheating saying, "Don't Quirino me."

166

This, from the mouths of children, against the head of
the State!

The sense of hatred was everywhere. I came in for my
share as a member of the government. This was a differ-
ent country. These were a divided people. I was a stranger
in a country that was strange to me.

Physically, Manila had improved since my last visit
home. The city, eighty per cent of which had been ruined
by the Japanese, was rebuilding; the American war dam-
age claims had helped in that. The Spanish walled city
was still in rubble and the beautiful ancient churches
were gone, but the other sections had been improved in
the rebuilding. The new buildings were modern and hand-
some structures, and the streets had been widened. Out
of ruin had come new advantages and greater beauty for
the capital of the Philippines.

But tension was in the streets. It hung like fog over
Manila, the "Pearl of the Orient."

I learned that the President was always surrounded by
bodyguards; tanks guarded the Palace.

I spoke to an old man in charge of a toll gate. He was
respectable and dignified, as are our old men of the Phil-
ippines. Out of curiosity I asked him, "What do you think
of President Quirino?"

He spat into the dust at his feet. "That "

He spoke in Ilocano. It was an insulting word in the
President's own dialect! That a Filipino should speak in
such a way of the head of the State was as incomprehensi-
ble to me as it was shocking. Filipinos are not like that!
Courtesy and respect are absorbed with their mother's
milk. Only when they have lost all respect for that which

167

they have revered, or when Communism takes possession
of their minds, do they change.

The whole horrible picture became clear in a very few
days. The approaching election was racing the Filipinos
toward civil war. If the evil regime continued and without
the restraining hand of Magsaysay, Communism would be
revived and would take over.

The angry mutterings were audible to anyone willing to
listen. The anger centered upon one word: Change!

The cry for change was everywhere. But it was not
heard in the muted halls of Malacanan or on the com-
fortable Presidential yacht, the Apo, idling on the waters
of Manila Bay.

On the first day of May, President Quirino and I had
a long talk aboard the Apo where he had invited me for
dinner. The President was worried, and he was frank in
stating his worries. He had called me back from the
United States, he said, because he wanted to run again
for President of the Philippines and to win, and he knew
he had a formidable opponent in Magsaysay.

I told the President as frankly, since he wanted my
opinion, that I thought his decision to run a second time
was inadvisable in view of the temper of the people. They
wanted change. They wanted a new leader.

They were asking for Magsaysay-

The President pointed out that Magsaysay was no
longer a Liberal and was therefore against our party. He
wanted the Liberal Party to remain in power. To help it
stay there he had recalled me to the Philippines. He
thought I could help him if I ran with him on the Liberal
Party ticket as candidate for Senator.

168

The President pointed out that I had many friends.
Many Filipinos trusted in my word. He was certain that
with my help he could defeat Magsaysay.

I wondered if the President had forgotten that he was
able to be aboard this yacht again without fear of being
captured by the Huks only because of Magsaysay. The
President's life, like the lives of all the Filipino people,
had been made safer and more free by the man who had
just bolted from the Liberal Party to run against him in
the coming election of 1953.

We all owed much to Magsaysay.

I told the President what I honestly thoughtthat he
should not seek the nomination. I told him to follow the
example of ex-President Truman. I emphasized to him
that I felt for the good of the country he should not seek
re-election.

My mind may have been made up even then. I had
been home only a few days, but already I had been forced
to the conclusion that the leadership of the Liberal Party >
which had been in control of the government since 1946
when independence began, had so deteriorated, so de-
generated into a virtual dictatorship of vested, graft-rid-
den, corruption-inipelled interests, that a complete change
of leadership was essential if we were to secure a demo-
cratic government capable of safeguarding the rights, the
liberties, and the heritage of the Filipino people.

The President switched to another method of approach.
He told me he wanted to continue the fight against Com-
munism and to round out his economic development pro-
gram, and he wanted me to help him with both jobs. He

169

became emotional as he pleaded with me not to let him
down. He was, he said, a sick man.

I answered him point for point. I argued that we who
had worked with him all these years were prepared by
experience and background to carry out all projected
plans. I told him the people demanded change and that
it was dangerous not to listen. I repeated: "Mr. President,
in your own as well as in the nation's interest, you must
not insist upon another nomination/'

He stood up. "You want to be President!" he charged
me.

I reminded him that I had come to Manila at his in-
sistent request, that I was content in Washington, and
that to enter politics was farthest from my thoughts.

But his attitude changed. He said slowly and calmly:
"I will withdraw in your favor if you run."

On that astonishing note the interview ended.

The following day he sent for me at Malacanan.

Nothing in his attitude hinted at our talk of the night
before on the yacht. On the contrary, he made it appear
that we were meeting for the first time since my return
from Washington.

"I want you to head our Senatorial ticket," he said
urgently. "You can lead our campaign to victory."

He seemed to think the matter was settled.

I refused to commit myself. By this time I was ex-
tremely puzzled.

During the next few days our home in the suburbs was
the scene of many political conferences and of many silent
wrestlings with my own conscience. This house in the Ma-
nila suburb of Makati, where I was staying with my two

170

oldest sons, was a new home we had built since the libera-
tion, for not a stick of furniture nor a plank had remained
of our old home after the Japanese bombers did their
work. The new house we named "Kasiyahan," which is
the Tagalog word for "contentment." But there was little
contentment in it for me these days.

The President, who had gone to vacation at Baguio,
must have read in the papers that a Romulo-for-President
movement was mushrooming in the provinces, and he sent
for me again.

I asked Congressman Jose J. Roy to drive to Baguio
with me. But when we reached the mountain resort,
Quirino had departed for his seaside hide-away at Poro
Point, and left word we were to follow him there.

At the Point I was amazed when Quirino opened the
conversation by recalling our conference on board the
Apo, which I thought he had completely forgotten. He
told Congressman Roy he was willing to withdraw in my
favor if I chose to run. "But I want to be nominated first,"
he told us. "You can see I am not a well man. After my
nomination I may have to go to the United States for
medical attention. Then, I will designate Romulo as the
candidate."

This sounded like a simple plan. But Roy, a veteran
politician, was cautious. "In that case, Mr. President, Gen-
eral Romulo would not be the convention's candidate but
your personal candidate/' he argued. And to me he whis-
pered, "It won't work."

Quirino then took up his previous refrain. It was im-
perative that I head the senatorial ticket of the Liberal
Party. Once I was elected, he would see to it that I was

171

made president of the Senate. And he asked me, "What is
your decision?"

I told him that I would abide by the decision of the
convention.

I added that once a decision was made on my part, I
would not go behind his back; I would announce it to him
face to face. In fact, he would be the first to know.

After we left the President, reporters asked him the re-
sults of our discussion. Quirino is fond of wisecracking.
He said, "I told Romulo he could run for any position,
from town councilor to President."

The reporters took him seriously. The result was stories
published in all Manila papers headed: QUIRINO GIVES
ROMUX.O THE GREEN SIGNAL which were displayed on front
pages in Manila in banner headlines.

More telegrams, urging me to run for the Presidency,
poured in from all over the country.

Quirino left his vacation hide-away and flew back to
Manila. He told reporters who met him at the airport: "I
will ship that s.o.b. back to Washington and make him
pack up." When the reporters asked, "Who will take Rom-
ulo's place?" he answered, "Anyone can take his place."

The time for decision had come. I had promised Quirino
not to go behind his back. Now I asked for an appoint-
ment to see him on the following afternoon, May 14.

That night, alone in my room in the house at Makati, on
the portable typewriter that goes with me everywhere, I
typed out my resignation.

I had not arrived at this momentous decision alone.
With no effort on my part, a way had opened for me.

172

A few days after my return to Manila, while I was still
dazed by Quirino's attitude, the change I found in the
people, and their violent demand for a more constructive
change, a small newspaper in an obscure island had come
out with a headline ROMULO FOR PRESIDENT. The accom-
panying article stated that a club had been formed under
that name.

The following day I began to receive hundreds of tele-
grams begging me to remain in the Philippines and run
for the Presidency. Romulo-f or-President clubs sprang up
all over the provinces. Quirino's jesting comment gave
them impetus.

The movement snowballed before I fully realized what
was happening. A group of Senators and Congressmen an-
nounced their intention to back me, and headquarters
were set up in the Manila Hotel. Still I was undecided
and I could not tell my would-be sponsors whether or not
I would accept the honor of candidacy. Even the matter
of my resignation from my government posts remained in
the air until the night before.

The night before I wrote out my resignation I had
radio-telephoned Virginia in Washington. Her reaction
was instantaneous. "If you are going to resign and retire
and have a little rest fine! But if you are goipg to resign
and enter politics, please don't!"

I told her I had made up my mind. Her voice was
gentle and understanding from ten thousand miles away.
"Very well, then, if you have decided what you want to
do, whatever it is will be all right with me."

I hung up thinking of her and the two youngsters asleep
in the Embassy over there; we seemed very far apart.

173

What I faced might put an end to much of the happiness
and comfort in our lives, and put an end also to the power
for good that had been given to me.

That night I had a long talk with the two older boys.
My sons are all frank to a painful degree in letting me
know what is in their minds. When I hinted that I might
resign, and worse still, run for the Presidency, they both
declared emphatically that I was crazy.

I remembered again the beautiful Embassy in Wash-
ington, the United Nations buildings in New York, the
new ambassadorships in Havana and Mexico City, and the
even more influential life of a Senator, and I privately
agreed with the boys I would be crazy to throw all this
away for a precarious future.

Gregorio, who is a university professor of economics
and is conservative, pointed out that I would be wasting
all the years of struggle in exchange for an illusion. Mike
was even more realistic. Both lads had fought as boy-
guerrillas through the Japanese occupation; they had gone
to school in Manila; they had stayed in touch with the
mood of their generation and their country. Mike, attack-
ing the problem as an attorney, pointed out certain ob-
stacles in my way in crisp logic.

"In the first place, you're completely out of touch with
the Philippines/' he said. "You've spent the years since
the war in the United States and you have no idea
what the people over here are thinking."

I argued that democratic people thought the same way
the world over and that I had found people in the Philip-
pines and in America much the same.

But Mike wasn't listening. "You haven't a chance to be

174

President. You have no party behind you and you have
no money. Why, it would take five million pesos at least
to put over a fight like that, and where are you going to
raise that much money!"

Then the boys softened a little. They pointed out the
difficult postwar years and the struggle to redeem the
losses suffered in war, the lecture tours and the writing,
the long struggle on behalf of the Philippines in the leg-
islative halls of Washington and around the conference
tables of the United Nations. And they wound up by say-
ing:

"You have world prestige, Dad, and you've won it the
hard way. Why risk it all in a dirty political fight?"

At that time I really had no idea how dirty a political
campaign can be, and how unfeeling and even brutal
people can become when blinded by partisanship. But I
told my boys that no matter what the consequences, my
mind was made up. Even defeat would have its compen-
sation in the thrill that goes with fighting for a cause in
which one passionately believes.

"I realize the odds are stacked against me/' I said, <f but
remember this: I have come back to Manila at a time that
is crucial for our people. Here is a chance for me to serve
at home. I don't want it said after I have passed away that
you are the sons of a man who shirked his responsibility as
a Filipino and who, instead of staying with his people at
a time when he was most needed, preferred to go back to
Washington, to live comfortably, write books, and make
money. I will fight with all that is in me. If the people
choose otherwise, no one can ever say that I turned my
back on them/'

175

They saw it was useless to argue with me, and the fol-
lowing afternoon they went with me to Malacaiian.

It was 5:15 when we left the campaign headquarters at
the Manila Hotel, and drove to the Palace. I was grateful
to have my sons with me on this day, which was one of
the most crucial of my life.

The May sun sparkled over Manila and over Corregi-
dor in the bay. On another day in another May, eleven
years before, Corregidor had fallen. I was in Australia
with General MacArthur on that tragic day.

This day seemed as sad to me. It was as if the personal
sacrifice I was about to make was part of the long defeat
and betrayal that we Filipinos had been made to suffer
since achieving freedom.

The ugly metal shapes of tanks were deployed around
Malacanan.

Inside the Palace I said good-bye to my sons and left
them in the corridor outside the President's room with the
request that they wait for me; I would not be long. Then
I went in to meet the President, alone.

In everything I did I was trying to give an example of
political maturity worthy of our new Republic. Nothing I
was doing at this time was easy. It had not been an easy
matter to decide to make this sacrifice. It was not easy to
meet my President, face to face as I met him now, and
give him the letter I took from my pocket and handed
him in silence a letter, let me say, that had literally been
written in prayer and tears.

It is not easy to meet with the President of one's coun-
try and break with him.

I might have sent that letter to him by messenger or

176

by mail. It would have been easier for us both. But such
an act would not have been politically mature. Too many
attacks and counterattacks had marred our brief period of
self-government. I had made my decision, and I was going
to show my fellow Filipinos that a public official who
breaks with his leader can do it in an honorable and digni-
fied way.

President Quirino had an appointment to make a
speech, but he read my letter of resignation through. Then
he said, "Hominy, this is the most severe indictment
against my administration . . ." He stopped in the middle
of the sentence, picked up a napkin from a tray left on a
table, and wiped his face with it. He seemed distraught
He dropped the letter onto the desk and went to his
bedroom. A little later he came back, took up the letter
again and put it into his pocket. He had nothing more to
say.

I thanked him for all the personal considerations he had
shown me and told him I would always be grateful, and
I offered my hand. At first he hesitated then took it re-
luctantly, saying, "I accept your resignation. Immedi-
ately."

I told him, "Mr. President, my first attack against you
will be made over the radio tonight at nine o'clock."

Then I hurried out to tell the boys and to telephone
Virginia.

My letter of resignation to His Excellency Elpidio
Quirino, President of the Philippines, written on May 14,
1953, reads, in part, as follows:

177

DEAR MB. PBESIDENT:

On board the Apo on May 1, the evening following my
return to Manila at your behest, you spoke to me frankly
about the reasons why you have decided to seek the nomi-
nation of our party for the second term. I informed you
then that in my considered opinion it would be desirable
in the national interest that you reconsider your decision
to seek another term.

This statement . . . rests upon the sober, impersonal
conviction which I have reached that a change in leader-
ship would not only be a good thing for the country at
this time, but is indeed an essential condition for our fu-
ture progress.

It also rests upon the equally sober realization that our
people profoundly desire such a change.

Our people today are weary and confused. If they are
not demoralized, it is because of the inherent spiritual
power and the unshakable faith -which has distinguished
them throughout the ages, through whfch they have al-
ways been able to recruit renewed strength of purpose to
overcome the mightiest obstacles to thfiir progress.

Despite the restoration of a degree of economic sta-
bility, economic difficulties among oui masses have been
mounting. Economic inequalities have become more no-
ticeable. These, with their natural concomitants political
confusion, social decay and above all, a noticeably grow-
ing lack of public confidence in government have created
a situation of grave national peril that is unprecedented in
our history, and that has brought deep concern to all
thinking men who have been witnesses of these phenom-
ena.

It has not been easy for me, Mr. President, to reach the
conclusion that has been forced on me by factors and
stresses visible to so many of our countrymen, that our
people are in a deep discontent under a burden of woes
and grievances.

178

These considerations have compelled me to the conclu-
sion that the time has come for a salutary and necessary
change in the leadership of our national life one which
will remove from the palate of our people the stale taste
of promises unfulfilled, or failures, and will provide the
people with fresh resolve and inspiration, based on a re-
invigorated faith in government.

And here lies the crux of the present specific political
situation, the implication of which candor compels me to
note for your consideration. It cannot have escaped you
that bitter feelings have been engendered: and it is my
conviction, shared by many, that a supreme gesture by
you a gesture not so much of self-abnegation as of a
vision that rises above the level of the moderately en-
lightenedwould act to dissolve these feelings in a solvent
of national good will and understanding, and would avert
consequences which you would be the first to deplore.

Such an act on your part, all circumstances considered,
would shine as an act of enlightened statesmanship and
patriotism, would constitute a heartening recognition of
our democracy's inherent capacity for renewal, and would
establish you in a position of high moral leadership and
influence 'which no mere political effort could give.

I have addressed this letter to you in complete candor,
out of a sense of patriotic duty. To tell you the unvar-
nished truth is, I believe, the highest form of service that
I can render the party now. .What happens to me per-
sonally is a matter of little consequence. It is the future
of our country that is paramount. On this, I am certain,
we agree.

I am cognizant of the fact that by suggesting, as I do
now, that you forbear, in the national interest, from seek-
ing nomination or election for another term, I am creating
a situation in which you may feel that I no longer am
capable of that complete meeting of minds which would
make my continuance as your Ambassador to the United

179

States, and Permanent Delegate to the United Nations,
possible.

For this reason I hereby have the honor to place in your
hands my resignation from both posts.

Sincerely yours,

CARLOS P. ROMULO

When I left the President's room after tendering my
resignation I found my sons waiting in the corridor. They
took one look at my face, then Mike was pumping my
hand and Greg was pounding my shoulder.

"We didn't think you'd do itl We're proud of you, Dad!"

We walked out of the Palace shoulder to shoulder-
three free men.

The world seemed to have slipped off my back; a bur-
den of years. For the first time in years I had the feeling
that now I could do something to serve the very soul of
my country. No matter what happened to me, what I did
would be done for the people of the Philippines.

The first thing to do was get to a telephone and call
Virginia in Washington. It was past six in the evening
in Manila, which is past six in the morning in Washing-
ton. The two youngest boys, Dick and Bobby, were still
sleeping but Virginia was awake and waiting for my call.
I told her: "Pack everything and get out. Do not let any-
one order you out of the Embassy!"

Evidently Bobby had been wakened, and I heard him
running into her room and clamoring to speak. I heard her
say, "Bobby, your father has resigned," then to me,
"Bobby wants to speak to you/' I could picture him,
tousle-headed and in his pajamas, and imagine the grin on
his face as he took up the phone.

180

Bobby yelled, "Congratulations, Mister Private Citi-
zen!"

Due to the extravagant kindnesses paid me both in
America and the Philippines, I had just been awarded my
twenty-seventh university degree, and the numerous rib-
bons and medals while sacred to me are often the subject
of hilarity with my boys, so many there are, but I consider
Bobby's words my finest citation.

After hanging up I went directly to the headquarters in
the Manila Hotel. The place was filled with men who were
my proffered sponsors all eager to know what had taken
place in the Palace. I told them, "The die is cast/' There
was exultation, and they crowded around me, Senators
and Congressmen among them, exclaiming, "Our Candi-
date! Now we have a candidate!"

I was giving up much that I had worked hard for and
valued for the right to enter the turgid and turbulent
political sea.

I was the perfect novice. I had never been in politics.
I had been a newspaperman when circumstances had
catapulted me into the army; another change, and I had
landed in the diplomatic world. But I had never known
political life at close range. My activities when I cam-
paigned in behalf of the Bell Act when the bomb had
been thrown had until this time been my only contact
with politics.

It seemed perfectly simple to me. I believed that all
I had to do was to give people the truth; they would
understand.

As for the men who were around me in that moment,
pledging their loyalty, I would remember kter that it

181

seems a universal law in politics that he who most loudly
protests his loyalty will be the first to turn.

I may have had some inkling then, for once the hand-
shaking was over I told them, "I don't know how many
of you will stick by me, but I am in this fight to the bitter
end."

Virginia was wasting no time in Washington after our
trans-Pacific conversation ended. She and the two boys
were packed and out of the Embassy within twenty-four
hours.

At nine o'clock that evening I read my letter of resig-
nation to President Quirino on a national broadcast. I may
say that an entire nation was shocked. Now there was no
backing out.

One week later Virginia and the two younger boys
arrived in Manila. By that time, I was off campaigning
on the island of Mindanao.

Meanwhile Ramon Magsaysay was well launched on
his own campaign.

I did not know M&gsaysay very well, but I had the
highest regard for his sincerity, his energy, and his integ-
rity. I realized what a daring thing he had done in taking
a stand against Quirino. He was risking everything, even his
life. So deeply hated was he by the racketeers that it was
rumored they would go to any length to stop him, and
also, there were the crooks in power who would let
nothing stand in their way. He had no money with which
to carry on his campaign, and now that he had resigned
as Secretary of Defense he had no income at all, no power
in his hands.

182

If lie lost, he would lose everything.

Apparently he was facing the future with cheerfulness
and good humor. He and his pretty wife Luz and the
three small children had moved into a small house in the
suburbs, together with a small zoo of family pets, which
included eight tiny deer. There was no furniture at first,
but M&gsaysay had the love of many people, and many
came to him bringing gifts of pieces of furniture, rice,
vegetables, fruits, and fowl. In return, the Magsaysays
welcomed all who came and fed them. Hospitality is a
Filipino tradition. One heard of the Magsaysay household
as running over with good cheer.

From this haven he conducted his campaign, which was
to, and for, the people. The big smiling man in the Fili-
pino shirt and slacks was driving around the country,
walking through rice paddies and terraced vegetable gar-
dens, holding long, neighborly conversations in the di-
alects that were the speech of his childhood.

Two arguments kept me from offering my services to
Magsaysay. As I say, I did not know him, but I knew that
he was not well read, he had little knowledge of any
country outside his own he could not, it was said, name
many of the heads of other countries. His relative inex-
perience in the larger aspects of the government and in
world affairs at a time when the exigencies of the inter-
national situation faced a country so strategically placed
as the Philippines made me doubt Magsaysay, not for
his ability, but for his lack of experience.

He had the faith of the people. Was this enough?

He had proved himself a great policeman and a splen-
did soldier. But as political head? As President?

183

There were many who felt he was not seasoned enough,
not experienced enough, to lead the Republic. Not know-
ing Magsaysay, but knowing of his limitations, I agreed
with them, and said so publicly.

This appraisal, together with a natural and understand-
able feeling of loyalty to the party with which I had been
affiliated since the days of the late President Roxas, de-
cided me against supporting M'agsaysay and led me in-
stead to seek the nomination of the Liberal Party,
Quirino's own party.

There were others willing and eager to run against
Quirino. We knew that he had evidence against them all
which he was planning to use if they offered their names.
One had accepted a bribe, another was mixed up in a
building deal, and so on. Against me, he had nothing,

I determined to challenge him. I knew what it would
mean to me if I lost. It was no easy decision to make.

But even if I lost, the very fact that someone had dared
challenge him would weaken his power.

The important need was to change the leadership. To
change the leadership meant to dethrone Quirino. He con-
trolled the powerful Liberal Party. The only chance of
breaking that control was to run against him.

Also, not being of the stuff of angels, my own personal
ambitions were involved. Beyond all else I longed to be
President of the Philippines. President Osmena had
wanted me to run as his Vice President; I had declined.
I could have run as Vice President with Roxas, when he
also had asked me; and then, when Roxas died but all
that was water under the bridge. Quirino had run in my
place, and it was he who had become President by virtue

184

of disaster. He had piled disaster upon disaster, not be-
cause lie was evil, for Quirino lias no evil in Mm, but
because lie had not been strong enough to deny the rights
of corruption to those who were close to him.

I firmly believed that owing to my years of experience
in the United States, which had given us its concept of
our democracy, and the years of experience in the United
Nations, I would be able to give the Philippines an intelli-
gent and honest government. I had served under four
presidents and felt that I had been through the mill.
Patriotism had its part in my decision; I was being forced
into it by circumstances, not by politics.

I had returned to the Philippines at Quirino's request
because it was my duty. A sense of duty had compelled
me to leave him, and now, to challenge him.

With only ten days left before the national convention
of the Liberal Party would select its candidate, I an-
nounced that I would seek the nomination against Quirino.

Now I had to get support, to try to swing the party be-
hind me and win delegates to my side. I was the under-
dog and all the odds were against me.

There was much to be done in the next few days.

185

Chapter XI

IT was a strange campaign,

I was joined by Fernando Lopez, the Vice President
under Quirino, a distinguished public servant who was
one of the few in the higher echelons of the Liberal re-
gime to divorce himself completely from the machinations
and the intrigues of the high-party brass. By joining me
he abandoned and publicly condemned the tempting
promises of high-party patronage.

One by one, I challenged the delegates. They were
fearful. Intelligence was reporting all my movements to
Quirino. I visited them by night in their homes, and it
always seemed to be raining on those nights. A few re-
fused to see me; they were afraid. But of eight hundred
and eighty-six delegates to the convention, six hundred
and forty-four gave me their pledges. I had the over-
whelming majority!

By day I was making speeches. Senator Cabili went
about with me day and night. The Senator, a seasoned
campaigner, was amused, I think, by my fervor and inex-
perience. I was stumping the city and its environs in my
own behalf wherever the delegates were, without thought
for proper meals or sleep.

186

At the same time I was making every effort to insure
a fair deal for myself at the convention of May 24. 1 knew
that certain of Quirino's supporters, among whom were
several relatives, would apply steam-roller tactics, I called
these men his "Storm Troopers," and coined a slogan:
"Quirino has foisted upon the people a Government of
relatives, by relatives, and for relatives."

In the Philippines, a Presidential convention nominates
either by secret ballot or viua-voce vote. Obviously, the
latter would assure Quirino's nomination. The delegates
would hardly dare defy him openly, since they were
carefully chosen by Liberal leaders, and many of them
held appointive posts subject to Presidential pleasure.
That was why I had polled the delegates in secret, and
why Senator Cabili was seeking approval of rules in the
convention which would call for a secret vote.

That also was why I had dared risk competing against
Quirino with so short a time in which to prepare. If a
secret vote were taken I would win, and the secret vote
is a democratic procedure. If Quirino refused to accept
a secret-ballot rule, he would sustain his first moral defeat
in the eyes of the people. That would be the first step
toward a change of leadership which I now regarded as
essential. It would in itself make my efforts worth while.

All this was undertaken in ten days.

When I entered the convention hall for the Liberal
Party convention, I was given a standing ovation that
brought tears to my eyes. I shook hands with each dele-
gate. The majority were for me. They had pledged their
word.

Quirino was not there. He was a sick man, under med-

187

ical care in the Palace. The thought crossed my mind then
that Quirino had already been President for six years and
that if he had the good of the country at heart he would
have deferred. I think he might have deferred if only
those close to him who were getting richer all the time
had not persuaded him to run again.

The hall was jammed with delegates. The Quirino group
had used army planes to bring delegates from all the
provinces. Two hotels in Manila had been set aside in
which to entertain them.

What chance had I against such organized power!

I looked them over and recognized those who had
hired the gunmen to keep the people from the polls in
the "dirty election" of 1949, and who had grown rich at
the expense of the Republic. They were making no at-
tempt to hide their feelings toward me.

What followed was picturesquely described in blow-by-
blow accounts over the radio and in the press. Senator
Tomas Cabili skillfully and forcefully argued on the floor
for an open vote. He was ably seconded by Congressman
Jose J. Roy of Tarlac. But a proposal for a voice vote was
steamrollered, with every kind of palpable intimidation of
delegates, by the opposition, led by two of Quirino's
brothers one the governor of a province, the other a ty-
coon. Under this bludgeoning, a docile gathering sub-
mitted.

At two o'clock in the afternoon direct from the Palace
the unprecedented order was given for an open vote!

I knew then when the open vote was ordered and the
two brothers of Quirino were among the canvassers that
my chances were gone.

188

I stared about me, from face to face at men I had
been certain were for me wlio liad given me their prom-
ises of support, and even been the first to urge me to run
against Quirino.

Their faces were turned away. The shock of dismay and
despair was deep, but through it came a sense of gloating.
This proved that Quirino was afraid! The delegates were
not to blame. They dared not vote for anyone but Quirino
under the pitiless publicity of the open vote that he and
his henchmen had ordered.

This moment of both triumph and despair was the time
to strike. Senator Cabili claimed the floor as soon as the
vote was taken, with the majority, of course, pro-Quirino.
I stood up and left the convention hall. "This is the great-
est injustice," Senator Cabili began. "If you cannot give
justice to men of your own party, how can you give j'ustice
to the people?"

He prophesied then that although President Quirino
had won the nomination he would lose the election. Then
he, Congressman Roy, Senator Lorenzo Sumulong, highly
regarded for his ability and integrity, and others walked
out of the convention hall, and a powerful section of the
Liberal Party went with us, including Vice President
Fernando Lopez, who as a result was subsequently to
lose his own bid for renomination on the Liberal ticket.

Later events were to uphold Senator Cabilf s forecast
that this challenge to the Quirino regime on the secret-
ballot rule and my bolting the convention and the party
were moral blows to the Quirino program that would
eventually contribute to his ignominious defeat and the
almost complete collapse of the Liberal Party. These two

189

incidents were eye-openers to the people. They showed
that no regime was sacrosanct; that a man could he chal-
lenged, no matter how high or entrenched his position.

Now we were left on the outside, with no party or
organization of our own. But it was not too late to make
one last fight for the change which, after all, was my main
objective. The logical result of the events of that conven-
tion day was the founding, that very night, of a new party
of our own, the Democratic Party, with its sole purpose
the defeat of the Quirino regime. One week later I drew
up its platform, and on its ticket I continued the campaign
for the Presidency of the Philippines. My original reasons
for seeking the nomination still held good, although now
I would of necessity have to count on votes drafted from
both parties.

We all worked hard, with a sense of righteousness to
sustain us. And as the new party's campaign manager, we
chose Congressman Raul Leuterio, for twelve years Floor
Leader of the majority party in the House, a master po-
litical tactician.

This was my first campaign. For two months I cam-
paigned in Luzon, the Visayas, Mindanao. I did what
Magsaysay was doing, I went to the barrios, to the Fili-
pino people. It was out in these places in the Philippines
that I saw a Philippines I had never known before, and
it was here that I saw the dangerous workings of Com-
munism in its beginnings at the edges of a country, driving
its way toward its heart. I realized what inroads into the
thought of the people had been made by the Huks, who
as we knew so well by this time were the organized Com-

190

munists. The seeds of poison had been well planted. The
first crop had been shorn, but the roots remained.

Bitterness toward the Quirino regime, toward the gov-
ernment, which to the people was democracy this kept
alive the deep and secret roots. People were still remem-
bering, in their hearts, that the Huks had promised jus-
tice where the government gave none. They had asked
for change. What next, if there were no change?

This I learned in the barrios, and also I learned that I
was splitting the Presidential vote. The people who came
to my meetings were the people who had attended the
meetings of Magsaysay, and afterward many would come
to me and say that while before they had been for Mag-
saysay, now they would vote for me. They told me of
Magsaysay clubs being disbanded and Romulo clubs be-
ing formed.

It became increasingly clear that far from destroying
Quirino I was strengthening him by weakening his op-
ponent. This was reviving hope in the remaining Huks.

My purpose had been to change leadership and fight
Communism. I found I was not doing that by insisting
upon my candidacy.

It was time to stop and think things over.

This was a poor man's campaign I was conducting. I
had spent all my reserves, built up by writing and lectur-
ing in the years since Bataan. My wife had reason to be
indignant: "See, you worked and slaved and it is all
going!'* I told her, "Tm not afraid of financial ruin. What
I am afraid of is the perpetuation of an administration
that will ruin our country."

As always, she saw things my way.

191

During the last two weeks of the campaign I was prac-
tically penniless. I was driving from barrio to barrio, often
with barely enough money to get me to the next town.
This I told to the country people, and they began bringing
money, two centavos, perhaps, or five. In the province of
Quezon, formerly Tayabas (renamed because Quezon
was born there), I was speaking in one small town and
found myself without means to buy gasoline to go on to
the next, where I was scheduled to speak. I told the audi-
ence, and they dug down into their pockets and came up
with thirty-two pesos, enough to send me on to the neigh-
boring province.

But it was not lack of funds that first made me consider
withdrawing from the race. I might have carried on. There
were certain willing supporters to be counted on who
did not want me to stop.

Again I had to make a decision that was not an easy
one. It was based upon cold calculation. It took into con-
sideration only the final results to the Filipino people.

It was plain by this time that both Miagsaysay and I
would be defeated and as a fatal result the Quirino forces
would remain in power. Corruption would return full
blast, the same conditions would generate again, and the
Huks, with Miagsaysay powerless to stop them, would rise
again. Another four years of graft and corruption could
result only in revolution, which in this case would be Com-
munism.

Magsaysay had shown that he knew how Communists
can be fought. He had recognized the fact that to kill
Communism the navel string had to be cut between the
Huks and the people. The splendid job he had done as

192

Secretary of Defense had put the Huks under control.
Many had been killed, thousands had been forced to sur-
render, others had voluntarily given up their arms. But
the basic conditions Magsaysay had not been able to cor-
rect, because he lacked the power.

He had been able to establish the semblance of law
and order, but the roots of disturbance were still there,
and what were these roots but the misery and oppression
felt by the people, while the Huks, quiescent, were wait-
ing, still in hiding, in scattered groups. Luis Tanic, their
leader, was still at large.

Now, if Magsaysay remained cut off from all authority,
it would not take long for the Huks to assume control.

The powers in office had blocked Magsaysay's every
effort. He had been obliged to resign as Secretary of De-
fense to run for the principles he thought were right.

If Quirino won, Miagsaysay would be permanently out
of the way. He would be a man without a job and without
power. The Philippines would be left undefended, with-
out order or law. And Quirino was winning. My campaign
was helping him win.

To supplant the Quirino administration, one of us, either
Magsaysay or myself, would have to win. To win, one
of us, either he or I, would have to give way.

Midway in my own campaign, I pondered all that Mag-
saysay had done and all he was doing, and tried to evalu-
ate impersonally the man who was fighting the shoestring
campaign to become President of the Philippines.

Without money or power behind him, Magsaysay had
gone directly to the people. He was one of the people. He
was native and when had we had a great native leader

193

in our part of Asia? Our other Filipino leaders, as one
looked back, tad a preponderance of foreign blood, which
is to say, none had been pure Malayan. The Spanish fore-
bears of Quezon, and of Roxas, had left their dominant
characteristics on both these men. The Chinese blood of
Osmena marked his dignified, scholarly mien. Quirino
was part Spanish and part Chinese. All had been accus-
tomed to money and luxury. But Magsaysay was Malayan.
He was of the land and of the people. He went about
among them hatless, wearing his shirt outside his trousers
as the Filipino wears his shirt, for coolness and comfort,
sharing his problems and theirs, making jokes. He knew
how to take a joke on himself and turn it into an asset.

When Quirino's supporters had circulated photostatic
copies of Magsaysay's record in the University of the Phil-
ippines, showing that Magsaysay had flunked practically
all his subjects and been obliged to leave school, the
people were delighted. "See!" they chuckled. "He is not
perfect. He is one of us."

He had no fluency of speech. He was not an orator. The
people did not mind. Many a Filipino said to me with de-
light, "See, Magsaysay cannot speak easily; he is like me,
he cannot express what he feels."

In his speeches, this diamond in the rough would tell
with amusement of his first ventures into government
halls, and how the rugs in Malacanan were so beautiful
that on his first visits he had not believed they were to
be stepped on, so he walked carefully around them. His
office, when he was in an office, had always been open to
all who came, and sometimes when talking he slipped off

194

his shoes and put his feet up on his desk, because he could
talk better that way.

And the people laughed at such things, and because he
did them, they loved Magsaysay.

All he had was the love of the people. I had wondered,
was that enough?

Evidently Magsaysay thought it was. He had staked his
future, his family's security, and even his own life, on the
faith of the people. He had given up his powerful position
for the chance to help these troubled people who had
been the first to cheer him in the streets in their mutual
Ilocano or Tagalog as their future President. That cry
had come from the pavements and the dusty roads, from
rice paddies, from the doorways of nipa huts and small
shops all over the Philippines. It was not a weak cry. It
had force in it, and the threat of violence if left unheeded.

Leaders are never created. In an emergency, in the
moment critical, they appear for good or evil, as leaders
of the people. It is that irrefutable logic of the masses,
which to the sophisticated may seem senseless and stupid,
but which in the end is nearly always shown to be right,
that which creates the media in which these men appear.
The intuition of the people runs on direct lines toward
human betterment. That was proven in France when men
fought with sticks at the Bastille against the trained sol-
diers of King Louis, and in America's thirteen Colonies
when the teabags were emptied into Boston Harbor. How
the effete British sneered at Washington's ragged masses!
How the French aristocrats fanned their noses as they
drove through the silent watchful mobs in Paris! And in
the Philippines we, too, had given proof of the righteous

195

intuition of the masses when, in a critical moment in our
liistory, the uncultured plebeian Andres Bonifacio had
urged the people into tearing up on a historic midnight
the cedulasthe poll-tax receiptsan act of defiance
against Spain that launched our Revolution. That simple
gesture on the part of the unarmed and oppressed Filipino
people had been the first move for freedom against Spain
Spain, that had then the most powerful army in the
world!

Here in another critical moment another such man was
needed and there were many who thought they saw him
in Magsaysay.

Senator Laurel, the unquestioned Nationalist Party
leader, when he had nominated Ramon Magsaysay as the
candidate for the Presidency at the national convention,
compared him to our revolutionary leader Bonifacio. Lau-
rel, whose selflessness and humility have won my respect
and admiration, said that day of Magsaysay:

"I wasn't looking for a wise man or a sage. I was look-
ing for an honest man with guts."

Laurel and Recto, the two leaders of the Nationalists,
were to have been the party candidates. They had de-
ferred in favor of Magsaysay.

I was to defer likewise, two months later, in the very
midst of my campaign.

It was the most difficult decision I have ever made.
Withdrawal was in a way defeat. It put me back where I
had started, with nothing left. As I say, I might have
campaigned on, but I thought it fairer to change leader-
ship by helping Miagsaysay.

It meant a real sacrifice, material as well as moral, for

196

me to withdraw from the race. I had to think not only
of myself and my family but of the many notable men
who had risked everything to throw in their lot with mine.
The Philippine political system of parties, of party loyal-
ties and of party rewards, is closely patterned on the
American system. I would not be the only one left on the
outside, without a future or a source of income.

But as against my personal inclinations, which were to
continue the fight to the end no matter how bitter, was
the main consideration: that the leadership of my country
had to be changed if freedom were to survive.

For that reason I deferred in favor of Magsaysay.

When I returned to my home after making the an-
nouncement of withdrawal it was like entering a place
of mourning. The rooms were filled with weeping people.
Many spoke to me with reproach and tears. "General, why
did you abandon us? We risked everything to help you.
It is not fair/'

I felt worse than anyone there.

The next day my car was stopped in the middle of Taft
Avenue by a crowd of students. Their young faces were
hurt, reproachful. "General, why did you do this to us?
Why did you let us down?"

I had to find a way to explain. As always, my only
medium was the platform. I wanted to tell everyone why
I had given way to Magsaysay, and why I felt he was the
man to meet this crisis between Communism and demo-
cratic freedom. To me, personally, my first opinion that
Ramon Magsaysay lacked something of the experience
in the international field which the times demanded, had
been overbalanced by his intense integrity, his command-

197

ing personality, his deep sense of obligation to the cause
of the people, and his sense of humility, which enabled
him to seek and to accept honestly proffered advice. These
more than compensated for his lack of political experience.

A proposal was made and accepted to unite the two
opposition parties, the Nationalist and the Democratic,
in a coalition which would preserve the identity of both
parties while uniting their resources in the campaign for
clean government.

Then I found another decision had to be made. I was
offered the post of national campaign manager for the
coalition! Magsaysay was waiting for an answer.

It did not take me long to decide. I said, "I'm already
in this up to my belt; I might as well go in up to my neck."

Upon accepting the post, however, I specified that if
we won I would "ask nothing, expect nothing, accept
nothing" in the way of emolument, of patronage, of high
office, or high appointment from the new administration.
If, for example, Magsaysay were elected and I were given
back the ambassadorship in Washington which meant so
much to me, the opposition could point to it and say, "Alt,
there was the bribe!"

So I stipulated that I was to take nothing in the event
of victory, a pledge I have scrupulously kept.

At this stage, the Presidential campaign of 1953 entered
into its most historic phase.

It was our feeling and our conviction, MJagsaysay's and
mine, that every voter in the Philippines, every citizen,
and every citizen's wife and dependent in the country
should be spoken to directly, and have the privilege of
hearing from the most qualified of spokesmen in the cain-

198

paign what his rights were, what his obligations were,
and what dangers he and his fellow citizens faced if he
forgot his rights and failed in his obligations.

In other words, we would appeal directly to the people.

This was a chapter we and those with us in the coali-
tion personally were prepared to write for the general
history of man's struggle for freedom.

It must not be forgotten that the Nationalist-Democratic
coalition, as headed by Magsaysay, had for its goal some-
thing which transcended mere political ambition and a
desire to occupy the highest civil office in the land. This
answer to the cry for a change in leadership came from
the conviction that democracy in the Philippines was all
but mortally ill, and that only a drastic reversal of trends
of living and of governmental concepts could save it

To carry this message to the large urban centers was
relatively simple. It offered no greater complications than
the procurement of permits for public meetings often in
itself a difficult task buying time on the radio, and secur-
ing adequate press coverage. Therefore, it was no problem
to deliver our message to the people of Manila and all
the larger cities and towns. Our basic difficulty was to
reach the overwhelming majority of the Filipino electorate
who work and live out their lives in the rural regions,
in the barrios distant from the pobladonthe adminis-
trative and governmental and political center of their
community, which in the majority of cases was under the
control of officials favorable to the Quirino administration
and hostile to our side.

Traveling between Manila and the important island
areas of the archipelago was no problem with the splendid

199

and ably operated air service afforded by the Philippine
Airlines, and, for candidates who could afford chartered
planes, with the network of landing fields left in the Phil-
ippines by the American liberating forces and expanded
by a wise commercial air policy. It was only after we
reached the provinces that the difficulties began.

Magsaysay was never averse to trouble. He went out to
meet it. He was the first Filipino candidate to break
through the old custom of addressing only large crowds
in the provincial capitals and the commercial centers and
to embark on a campaign of barrio-hopping. No village
was too small, none too far away for his personal atten-
tion. By motor car, by jeep, by canoe or vinta& small
sail boat by horse-drawn vehicle, and more often than
not on foot, Magsaysay and his aides and the newspaper-
men assigned to follow this unique Presidential campaign
launched on a hectic existence.

As national campaign manager of the coalition I felt
it my duty to follow my leader into the hinterland. To
explain all that we wanted to explain to the Filipino
people we had to plunge beyond the ordinary metro-
politan campaign areas and strike at the very roots of
the popular vote the deepest-grass growing roots of the
Filipino population.

And so in that hot and rainy July of 1953, for the first
time in our Filipino history, a Presidential candidate and
his chief aide his campaign manager struck out by sepa-
rate paths but with the same heartfelt purpose into the far-
thest, poorest, and loneliest regions of the Philippines.

200

Chapter XII

I HAD thought I knew the Philippines.

But what does the average New Yorker know of the
Louisiana sharecropper, or the farmer tilling the stubborn
soil of Oklahoma or northern Idaho?

While campaigning for Magsaysay I discovered my own
country. For the first time I met with all strata of my
own people.

I had known the surface Philippines all my life. I had
seen the dead level of poverty, but from afar, as one look-
ing through the wrong end of the telescope. In Manila,
a center of civilization, one saw poverty, to be sure, but
overbalancing it was the wonderful ease and the luxury.
In Manila, as in all old cities, one is inured to squalor,
and antiquity gives to poverty the protective coloration
of the picturesque.

In my own town of Camiling I had seen something of
poverty, but nothing compared to what I found farther
inland.

During the war I had seen and personally experienced
much of privation and suffering. But that had been war-
time. It was not daily living.

Now for the next five months-July, August, September,
October, November spent in campaigning for Magsaysay,

201

I would eat, sleep, and live with and learn to know and
understand the underprivileged people of the Philippines.
We were taking the fight against Communism, both do-
mestic and international, directly to the people, and we
were received and welcomed by the people in the peasant
huts of split bamboo poles standing above the mud or
in little nipa homes where the earthen floors turned to
muddy pools during the rainy season.

It seemed to me it was always raining.

In the rainy season which is summer you roll up your
jeans, and take off your shoes, and are grateful for zuecos,
the wooden clogs the peasants wear. And even worse than
the rain was the dusty season when mouth, ears and nos-
trils, skin and hair, caked with grime. Speaking mostly out-
of-doors, in the village plaza or in rented lots, I was always
hoarse, always in fear that my voice would stop. Always
wet and hot, or dry and hot, I wound up my speeches
feeling the perspiration rolling down my legs and my
voice hoarsening.

We flew from island to island, but on the trips into the
interior we often rode on jolting oil trucks over the roads
that were little better than jungle trails until they gave
out completely. Sometimes we stopped at a bridge that
had been washed out, or consisted merely of two bamboo
poles, and leaving the truck we would trudge on for miles
to our destination, or to a place where another truck
waited to carry us on.

Slogging on foot over a muddy jungle trail in a steam-
ing forest, one looked forward to journey's end. The trip
could terminate only in the shack of a peasant, huddled
on the floor under a leaky roof by the light of a guttering

202

candle or small oil lamp, around a fire of carabao dung,
sharing by use of the fingers the family dish of boiled
rice with a sprinkle of salt, with the added delicacies per-
haps of crude molasses or a dried salted fish, caught in
the nearby river. For the night ahead there loomed the
prospect of broken sleep in this crowded hut, where per-
haps fourteen persons shared a room, not counting the
family's meagre supply of livestock pigs, goats, and a
few chickens, stirring, snorting and rooting beneath one's
head under the thfn bamboo floor.

So the Filipino in the remote barrios had lived for cen-
turies. So he was living still, in this year 1953.

I thought we had experienced misery in the tunnel of
Corregidor and on Bataan. As I said before, that was war.
It had prepared me for hardships, but nothing like this.
Here were people who spent their lives in a perpetual
tunnel.

I was with people who have never known what break-
fast is, who work hard for two meals a day. I was with
other people who have never known the luxmy of two
daily meals, who subsist on one. I was in huts where
little bundles of odoriferous rags that were children lay on
wet earth, with bloated bellies and skin diseases, dying
without medical care.

I slept with these people, sharing their bedding. To
carry with us our own blankets and pillows would have
been as great an offense as to carry our own food. Poor as
these people were, they had their pride, their natural
courtesy. They wanted to give all they had. So I slept on
pillows filthy and smelling, too tired to care. I dipped my
hands in the common rice bowl.

203

In one hut we sat down with the family to a meal that
consisted of the usual rice and a small boney fish. The
grandmother of the family took mouthfuls of the fish,
worked them with her toothless gums, and spat out the
hones. The handful of chewed fish she gave to me. "This/*
she said, in the tenderest way, "I do only for my children."

What could I do?

We were among people who had never seen a news-
paper, many, in fact, had never seen a bit of paper. With
rueful memories of the Waldorf-Astoria, and armed with
an elementary corncob stick to drive away the persistent
pigs, I retired behind bamboo hedges. I learned to do
without bathing and to wait for a river, or rain.

Before joining with Magsaysay I had made fun of his
crusade for artesian wells. Now I saw for myself what
wells could mean to these people, of whom eighty out
of every hundred were drinkingas had their forefathers
since time immemorial the polluted water which made
them ill. Bathing was done in rivers, the women washed
the clothing white as snow in the rivers, and I marvelled,
seeing the struggle at first hand, how their longing for
cleanliness could survive.

Magsaysay was promising schools to the people, if he
won. I visited the country schools. Some had roofs but
no walls, others no roofs at all, and in many places the
children studied sitting on the ground, or in the mud
if it rained.

I thought back over the recent history of these our
people. How I had worshiped our leaders and rejoiced in
their forward planning! How I had idealized Quezon, the
father of social justice! The minimum wage, the labor

204

laws, the public health measures that had been hailed
in turn as steps toward a higher civilization, all had been
without meaning to the masses in the hinterland far from
the centers of progress, these people living from hand to
mouth and surviving on food that often was not fit for
human consumption. The steps forward had meant noth-
ing to them.

The only communication these countrymen of mine had
with the government was when they went fearfully into
the towns to pay their taxes, or when the soldiers came
and took their chickens and eggs, and threatened them if
they asked for payment.

This was government to these people. It gave nothing.
It demanded all they had.

I was among people, untouched by the anti-Huk cam-
paign, who were losing faith because there was nothing
for them to hope for and trust in, and who would do any-
thing for change. Everywhere, even in the remote barrios,
I heard the echo of the cry that had opened the breach
to Communism. "We want change new names, new faces
in our government."

All that I saw and heard made me fearful. This was the
sort of talk that had carried Communism to power in other
lands. I had no doubt it would be as effective here if there
were no change, if Quirino stayed in power.

Quirino, safe in the dignity and comfort of Malacafian,
was referring to our grassroots campaign as "vulgar." Not
for him the handshaking with soil-stained farmers and
their toil-worn wives and the kissing of their rag-wrapped
babies. Magsaysay had no such inhibitions. He may have
started into the hinterlands with the idea that a vote was

205

a vote. But he knew now, and we all knew, that he was
getting more than votes. He was winning these people
to whom he had the courtesy to speak directly, not as a
leader to his followers but as equal to equal, of his plans
to alleviate their lot. The sadness of that lot this campaign
tour had brought home to him, and to all of us who were
following his way.

It required physical stamina to carry our message
around the islands. Senator Cabili, that veteran cam-
paigner, kept a wary eye on me, the tenderfoot and
amateur. I knew he was watching me and I was deter-
mined not to show weakness. When he slept on a floor, I
slept there; when he ate with fingers smeared in rice, mo-
lasses and fish, I ate the same food; when he pushed along
wet trails, I was at his heels. Nothing in the war had been
worse than this but I would not admit that to him. One
day he looked at me and laughed. "I take off my hat to
you, Rommy. You're a good trouper."

Once we were penetrating the most impassable region
in Mindanao, along roads overgrown with jungle, when
we were warned about the trail ahead. Other travelers
had been ambushed, robbed, and killed there by bandits
the day before. My friend and companion, Senator Cabili,
told our anxious friends they were not to worry. "In fact,"
Senator Cabili added, "Romulo and I will outtalk the
bandits and they will wind up by lending us money."

We went on, and nothing happened to us.

We were crossing one river when the motor of our boat
died and we tossed about without food or water in that
little boat for eighteen hours. Airplanes were out hunting
us, but we did not know that.

206

It took us eight hours to cross Sarangani Bay by canoe.
That was followed by four-and-a-half hours on a pony,
then a two-hour walk through rice paddies steaming in
the sun. On reaching the barrio I talked for three more
hours, out-of-doors, in the sun.

All this to reach three hundred votes!

After such an ordeal I was anxious to know what im-
pression I had made, and after the election I looked up
the returns from that village. Two hundred and ninety-
nine people had voted on our side. I still wonder what
son-of-a-gun failed to appreciate my efforts!

On another trip to another far-off barrio we were cross-
ing a bay when the motor of our boat stopped, started
again, and died. Senator Cabili was philosophical. He
slept. I fumed. We had not eaten breakfast and I was
hungry. Finally the boatman got the motor started and
we were off again. Senator Cabili woke up. He knew the
country, and he realized the boatman had somehow
turned the boat around. We were heading for the
open sea. Cabili headed us back toward the island we
were to visit. The motor promptly died again.

Finally the motor sputtered to life and we were off
again, but towards the opposite shore, away from the
island.

"Hey," I shouted to the boatman, "we're going the
wrong way!"

He explained, **I know of a place on the other side
where we can get some eggs."

"Eggs!" I spluttered as if I had been offered the most
flagrant insult. We were carrying the message of democ-
racy to the hinterlands, and this fellow was thinking of

207

eggs! "People are waiting for us over there, and you are
willing to keep them waiting to get something to eat. Turn
the boat back!"

Senator Cabili opened one sardonic eye and closed it
again. It was my first temper outburst of the campaign,
and it was due solely to hunger.

As we neared the barrio we could see its one street
stirring with life. Boys pushed out small boats and rowed
out to meet us, cheering as they escorted us to shore. As
I staggered wearily onto the beach women pressed for-
ward to kiss our hands, then, in this tiny out-of-the-way
barrio on this lonely island, like the Pied Piper, I was
paraded down the single street and paraded back again.
I was cheered and questioned and deferred to and paid
every honor, given every courtesy, every show of defer-
ence, everything, in fact, except food. These people had
come from their jungle farms to see and to question, and
every hand had to be shaken at least twice and every
question must be answered, and it was not until eleven
o'clock at night that we sat down to our first meal of the
dayboiled rice, heavy unleavened bread, and coffee that
tasted like tea. They were giving us their best, but by that
time I was too hungry to eat.

After the feast there were more questions to be an-
swered. It was late before I crawled into my corner of
the hut and tried to sleep, and could not. This was the
end of a very long journey, and I was hungry, unbathed,
and tired. I was looking forward to morning and to break-
fast and for some reason the thought of the eggs I had
scorned obsessed me. I became convinced that in the
morning there would be eggs. I lay awake thinking of

208

them and scratching and morning came and breakfast
was the remains of the meal of the night before, only
this time the rice and bread were cold, and only the
coffee, weaker than ever, had been heated over.

While I was munching, a name popped into my mind.
Somewhere on this forested island lived a man I had
known in Manila "Ponfi" Ponferrada, one of my best
friends and staunch supporters. I recaUed that he owned
a plantation, and that he possessed livestock. Best of all,
I had heard him speak of his modern conveniences.

The villagers sent a courier on ahead, and we were
rushed off in a rickety truck with hard board seats that
cracked the vertabrae at every jounce. We arrived at the
plantation and were welcomed by my friend and his wife.
A steer had been killed and was being barbecued, and
meantime I took a bath, my first complete bath in two
weeks, in a small room that had no lights, but a real tub.
The water had been warmed in tin gasoline cans, and I
lay back in the tub and groped for the soap in the dark
and poured warm water over my blissful self with a coco-
nut shell, and sniffed the smell of the barbecuing beef.

I knew then I was no trouper. But I didn't mind, I
had succeeded in fooling Senator Cabili!

To many of us who were carrying the campaign of
information into the remote islands the truism of Filipino
hospitality had been a matter of academic knowledge.
Now we learned it was very real indeed. There were hard-
ships, but these were more than compensated for by the
warmth of the welcome, and above all, the close attention
our efforts drew from these, our people. We, who had all

209

the cause for gratitude to them, were outdone in our grati-
tude by these simple citizens of the Philippines, who felt
that they were learning from us, that we were bringing
to them a message which vindicated their basic faith in
their own rights which is their faith in democracy-the
deep-rooted conviction of the man of the land that while
man is bom to labor, he is also born with the right to
stand on his own feet, to seek opportunity for advance-
ment for himself and his family, and, in that search for
equality, to be afforded equal rights.

Never, in any of the hundreds of university classes I
have faced, in any of the hundreds of audiences I have
lectured before, have I encountered such wholehearted
attention from old and young alike, such receptivity to
ideas, such keenness of penetration to the heart of the
matter as in the humble barrios of my country people.

Often I would find my audience waiting in the open
plaza, sitting on the ground. Many had come from far
awayin antique cars and trucks they came from two
hundred miles away and were hungry and tired, but they
sat patiently, courteously, eager to hear. They wanted
long speeches, and often if I began to speak in dialect
their shouts would interrupt joyously, "English! English!"
They wanted to hear the message of democracy in Eng-
lish, first because they understood English and were proud
of the fact, and second because they knew I had carried
the message of the Philippines to the United States in
English, and they wanted to hear what America had
heard.

There was so much they wanted to hear. There were
so many questions about the government. So much had

210

been promised them; so much had gone wrong. They were
bursting to tell all that was in their hearts, but first, be-
cause courtesy is never wanting, they would hear all I
had to say. Even then, the Filipino will understate what
he feels. The American, with generations of authority be-
hind him, can call the man in the White House any name
he likes, but the Filipino is more courteous, or more re-
pressed. Gradually and carefully he may admit, "Perhaps
the man in power is doing his best, but I think there
should be a change. . . ."

When Filipinos become Huks the traditions fall away;
the courtesy is lost.

As I had said in my letter of resignation to Quirino, these
people were weary and confused. Still, they were thought-
ful. They wanted above all to do what was right.

I have known many people in many lands. Some have
been given a great deal, and others less, but I have never
seen people who possess so little as my countrymen, and
who give so much. We were welcomed everywhere, we
were given the best the people had, and if we were not
careful, they would go into debt to give us better than
they had. Again and again, everywhere we went I was
impressed by their hospitality, their fight for cleanliness
and a decent living, their unfailing politeness. This is in-
bred. No matter how hot the sun, a man removes his hat
and he bows when you meet. Voices are never raised.

In the home, no matter how poor, the family live in
gentleness and dignity. The family is the heart of life, a
protective unit. The home is sacred. The father is patri-
arch of the clan and the mother matriarch, and the chil-

211

dren, entering the house, kiss the hands of their elders,
not in subservience, but in respect and love.

The children grow, but the respect and the communion
remain. The family stays together. The son becomes a
man, but there is no thought of his setting out on his own,
not while there is work for him at home, and food for
him there. He will remain with his family until he marries
and starts a home of his own.

Perhaps he is fortunate enough to go as a student to
M'anila. He studies and learns much, and returns home
for vacation, but not to flaunt his learning or strut his
superiority before his elders. In the tienda, or village store,
he may show off his brilliance, but not at home. There
he gets into his farm clothes at once and is out feeding
the pigs and goats and chickens, aware that his knowl-
edge may save this farm for the family, and that his
parents may have mortgaged it, and even sold the family
carabao, to procure this education for him. For this he
respects and reveres them, and he will not show them
how much he has learned, and if they are wrong about
some things, he will not let them know.

At six o'clock in the evening Angelus rings in the village
church. In the rice fields the farmer stops his carabao and
removes his hat and bows his head to pray. The woman
washing clothing in the river crosses her wet arms over
her breast and prays. The children stop their play and
run to their grandfather, and group around him in the
last rays of the sun; old and young, they pray together.

On this campaign for Magsaysay I saw on a wide scale
the beautiful side of my country and its people.

As I have said, I have known people in many lands,

212

but on this campaign I found myself most of all deeply
in love with my own people. Magsaysay had been right
in saying that they have in them the capacity for great-
ness. Better still is their sweetness and gentleness that
comes straight from the heart, which can be found only
in a people essentially good.

The purely physical hardships of the campaign were
not all we had to contend with. An administration which
had insured easy living and comparative wealth for hun-
dreds of thousands of its minor henchmen, not to mention
the prerogatives of the higher echelons of the regime,
rallied for a desperate defense under our heavy fire. The
people were being wakened to the facts and the effect
was noticeable. It was only to be expected, therefore,
that despite pious utterances from Manila, every device
of the rougher style of politics should be brought to bear
against our campaign. Paid terrorists, well armed and
often masquerading as "temporary police" with quasi-
official status, were always present at any meetings held
by M&gsaysay and his campaigners. Sent ostensibly to
"maintain order," in reality to foment disorder, they were
a constant menace. President Quirino and his immediate
lieutenants may have been sincere when they gave the
promise of clean campaigning and clean elections, but
obviously they could not control their henchmen in the
interior, where we were thwarted and threatened at every
turn.

This became standard procedure: I would go to the
mayor for a permit to speak; he, holding a post owed
to the Quirino forces, would refuse that permit. The open

213

plaza was unfortunately "not available." (Someone else
had been granted a permit several days before.) Or if
a permit were granted, there would be no available hall.
Owners of vacant lots were afraid to rent their sites, even
for a night. So ways were closed to us by all the pressure
of which a powerful regime is capable.

But nearly always we found a way.

In the town of Janiuay the mayor not only refused me
a permit to speak but promised to run me out of town
if I tried. We were denied the right to the plaza. An
owner of the usual privately-owned lot was found and
coerced into renting it to us. The meeting was a great
success.

After it ended I made a beeline for the mayor's house.
He opened the door in person. He was dressing for dinner
and in the act of pulling on his trousers. When he saw
me he dropped them. I explained with as much dignity as
I could that I realized he had been within his rights to
deny me permission to speak in the town's park. Still,
since he was the town's foremost citizen and I a visitor,
it was my duty to pay my respects!

We had a fine chat. I regretted I was unable to accept
his invitation to dinner!

Our worst troubles were in provinces like western
Negros (Negros Occidental) where the Liberal Party re-
gime was so firmly entrenched that in preceding elections
the opposition had not wasted time on a candidate for
governor.

Bacolod, the heart of the Liberal stronghold in Negros,
was the scene of an incident which proved to be one of
the turning points in the campaign.

214

By this time our meetings had ceased to be political
rallies and had turned in many cases into scenes of open
scrimmage. The immense Magsaysay appeal had launched
a trenchant counterattack against the rough-tactic poli-
tics of the regime. Time and again the invading forces of
fully-armed goons, carrying enough firepower to stage
another enemy invasion, were shoved back from Mag-
saysay's platforms by former resistance fighters who had
never cowered before the Japanese and saw no reason
why they should fear hired political gangsters. Now the
goons were resorting to the trick of infiltrating the meet-
ings and firing into the air dozens of bursts from the
Thompson submachine guns with which they were amply
provided.

It was like the old Japanese firecracker trick, designed
to scare, not to kill, but it served its purpose, which was
to instill fear and break up our meetings.

Under these conditions I went to Bacolod with the
intention of holding a meeting in the Quirino stronghold.

The governor of the province, a Quirino man, issued
warnings that I was not to be allowed to speak. It was
important that a meeting be held in Bacolod. In the
"dirty election" of 1949, mobs of hired gunmen had pa-
trolled its streets, firing into the air to keep people inside
their homes. As a result it was in Bacolod that "even
the birds and bees" had voted for Quirino.

Before leaving for the place I was warned that the
goons were rallying in full force, that I would not be
allowed to speak, and that if I did I would not leave the
place alive.

Of course the plaza was "not available," and the right

215

to speak in the plaza was refused. After much trouble a
vacant lot was rented for the night.

Bacolod is a large town and boasts an airport. When
I stepped from the plane a letter was handed me. It was
in Spanish. Get out of here as fast as you can. If you
dare to speak we will shoot you.

I drove to the house of a man who is every inch a
gentleman, Dr. Antonio Lizores, my host. Another letter
was sent there. If you speak tonight in the lot you have
rented you will go out of Bacolod feet first.

My host begged me not to attempt the speech. But I
have had experience with anonymous notes. I assured
my friends, "If they really plan to shoot me, they wouldn't
write about it. They would go ahead and shoot" Privately,
I hoped this was the right deduction.

Another meeting was to be held early that evening at
Cadiz, a town sixty miles away. I decided to drive there
and open that meeting, then drive back to Bacolod to
be the last speaker of the evening.

Four of us two candidates, a driver, and myself drove
back from Cadiz that evening. In the dark the lights flared
over a large tree felled across the road. We all got out
to push it back and bullets sang around us. Someone yelled,
"We're ambushed!"

Somehow we got into the car and around the tree. The
glass of the car windows has been shattered but no one
was hurt.

I returned to my host's house and had dinner. I did
not want to alarm him so I did not mention what had
happened, but I did not enjoy that meal. The radio was
on, and the voices of the first speakers were coming from

216

the lot where I must soon appear, interrupted by the
sounds of disturbance.

The gangsters were making so much noise, shooting
in the air, yelling and giving catcalls, that no one could
hear what the Senator-speakers were saying.

My host was urging me not to go, I must say I was not
eager to attend the meeting. But the broadcast over the
radio was a national hook-up, and people all over the
Philippines were listening to these sounds of intimidation.
A brutal fear was being sent over the air to all the islands.

Bacolod was a key city, here was a key situation. The
fear would be strengthened if I did not appear that night.
The Magsaysay constituents would not dare appear at the
Bacolod polls at election time if this meeting failed.

So I went.

The crowd was remarkable for its size, considering the
official attitude to our cause and the amount of intimida-
tion being used. At least twenty thousand people were
standing in the open air, trying to hear a Senator whose
speech was being interrupted by loud catcalls. When I
reached the edge of the crowd a tremendous cheer
drowned out the jeers; the people had given up hope of
my arrival. I was picked up and tilted onto shoulders and
rushed to the platform, and then and there, blinking
against the blinding lights, I surveyed the crowd. Nearly
all the faces were welcoming, and so friendly, but there
was also the uneasiness of fear, and it was not hard to
see why. I am not a brave man, and with quivering knees
and a quaking heart I counted, scattered at strategic
points in the crowd, between twenty-five or thirty men
wearing brown shirts, looking in fact like Hitler men, and

217

gripping the business end of Tommy-guns, while on the
stage, pressing closely about to protect me, were about
ten members of the local constabulary.

Instantly I felt that the police, not the gunmen, were
the more dangerous, because the gunmen would aim for
me while the constabulary shooting back would have to
aim at the gunmen scattered through the crowd. The re-
sult would be massacre.

I asked the sergeant in charge to order the men off
the platform. They moved back, and I thought they left.

The Senator finished his speech amid many interrup-
tions and I was introduced. As I took my place before
the loud-speaker I glanced around. Four of the constabu-
lary were still on the platform. I spoke my first words di-
rectly into the microphone:

"I don't want these soldiers up here. Ask them to leave
the platform. I don't need any protection."

After tliey had taken new positions behind the plat-
form, I began to speak. I talked to the people of Bacolod.
I told them how, before and after arriving in their town,
I had been threatened, but I had remembered Bataan and
Corregidor when we had all fought together for democ-
racy, and that since arriving in Bacolod I had seen no
signs of the democracy we had fought for. Then I pointed
one at a time to the brown-shirted men with the Tommy-
guns,

"Youl" I said, "And you! Leave this meeting. You have
no business here."

Anger makes one temporarily brave. I knew that at any
moment I might turn tail and run for my life. No one

218

knew if these hoodlums were bluffing. But I had to find
out.

This was not only a crisis in the fight for democracy.
It was a golden opportunity to expose a brutal bluff and
calm down an intimidated people. The microphone before
me was open to all the Philippines. Every word and every
sound made by me or by the crowd before me would be
heard by our entire nation. Such an opportunity might
never come again.

So I stood my ground, while the goons raised their guns
one by one and cocked them slowly, with menacing looks
leveled over the barrels. I carried the mike forward, to
the very edge of the platform. Again I ordered the goons
to leave.

Some fired into the air in answer, but a few of the
bullets seemed very close. Screams and shouts came from
every side over the rattle of the guns. To say that I was
frightened is the understatement of the year. But I heard
myself shouting in a voice louder than any other.

I was shouting to the goons, "Shoot if you have to, but
shoot me!" Then to the people, "Don't run! Keep your
ground! These cowards don't dare fire/' And again to the
hoodlums, "Go ahead if you dare, shoot me!"

And there was silence on the field. All over the islands,
wherever radios exist, there was nothing then but silence.
The gangsters were silent, and that silence, those who
listened over the air told me later, held the greatest in-
tensity of the night and it was felt in every remote comer
of the Philippines. Not another shot was fired. I waited.
No one moved. Nothing happened. Then I spoke, to all
listening everywhere:

219

"People of the Philippines, do you hear this? They don't
dare shoot! Don't be afraid any more. Go out on election
day. Vote!"

I stood watching the gunmen slink one by one out of
the crowd, and then I made the speech of my life. By the
time I finished the crowd was enormous.

People who had not dared attend, but who had been
listening over the radio, had come running.

As soon as I returned to my host's house there was a
telephone call from Virginia in Manila. My wife had been
listening. Her voice shook, but she made a joke of things.
"Do you have to be so brave? Don't forget you have a
family." And a wire came from a Manila editor: "Wonder-
ful, but don't do it too often."

Newspapers in the Philippines and the United States
praised the "act of courage." It had nothing to do with
courage. Courage is spontaneous. This was not. I had
thought it all out and had prepared for it, and I had been
frightened every moment. When I was carried onto the
platform on those shoulders I was shaking so I could
hardly hold on. When I carried the microphone to the
platform's edge my knees were wobbling so hard I had to
use it as a crutch. But out of some hidden resource I mar-
shaled enough strength to carry me through and I know
that given the same circumstances, I would be able to do
it again.

The incident at Bacolod was a windfall to the news-
papers. It was given editorial comment throughout the
Philippines, and carried by news agencies all over the
United States. It focused attention on the goon tactics
being used against the Magsaysay campaign.

220

The result was a surge of interest as American pub-
lishers saw a story in the making, and a convergence on
Manila of two score of the ablest American correspond-
ents.

It is true that most of these were trained reporters of
war who came down from the Korea battlefields in the
expectation of seeing an election that would actually be
another war. But by the time they arrived the Filipinos
had been so aroused by the exposure of terrorism that
the terrorists had gone underground. Even the highest
levels of the administration had wakened to the conclu-
sion that rough stuff in politics was a thing of the past.
The results gave additional force to the already all but un-
controllable popular swing toward Magsaysay.

It is to the credit of President Quirino and his immedi-
ate subordinates that the foreign correspondents were
afforded every facility for travel and observation. Needless
to say, none of their dispatches was censored, since there
is no censorship in the Philippines.

Attempts to win the election by any means did not
cease. Plans were laid for wholesale fraud at the polls,
after the ballot-counting. The Quirino administration con-
tinued to transfer to key election centers the provincial
treasurers and provincial constabulary commanders
known for their allegiance to the regime; for in the Phil-
ippines, it is the provincial treasurer who controls the re-
turn of the ballot boxes, and the commander who controls
the constabulary troops whose duty it is to guard the polls.

In the "clean election" of 1951, Magsaysay had called
on the troops to insure safety to voters and an honest
ballot.

221

Now the people became apprehensive that Quirino
might, as Commander-in-Chief, call on the uniformed
men to insure his own re-election. If this happened, a
civil war would result. But the armed forces stood loyally
by their individual oath of allegiance to uphold the Con-
stitution of the Philippines, including the right to a free
election. Our soldiers protected the people in that right
and proved further that in times of crisis the people could
depend on them.

The Filipinos and the world had wakened to danger.
Someone in the lower echelons of the regime in power
had gone too far, and the people, grasping the full sig-
nificance of the struggle to preserve their way of life,
were thoroughly aroused.

It is, I believe, partly due to this awakening that the
election when it took place was one of the cleanest and
most orderly ever held in the Philippines.

222

Chapter XIII

THREE million Filipinos, from city, barrio, and farm,
from factory and mine, from school and store, rolled
Ramon Magsaysay into the Presidency on November 10,
1953, on a tide that proved irresistible.

There was no violence on the scale expected, nor any-
thing near it. In Cavite, where political passions normally
run at fever heat, nine persons were killed in a shooting
affray which bore a closer resemblance to an ancient
vendetta than to a political clash. The Chicago Tribune in
commenting on this incident noted trenchantly in an edi-
torial that the casualty list of nine in an election where
some five million voted was "slightly under par for Ken-
tucky/'

Unprecedentedly for an election campaign in the Phil-
ippines, this one had organized within seven months the
greatest mobilization of the citizenry in our political his-
tory. Only seven months before, "The Guy," as Magsaysay
was affectionately known, had announced his intention to
run against organized power. The Filipinos had not only
proven themselves aware of the great issue involved, but
they had rallied to numerous active "movements," sparked
and promoted by citizens who had come to believe that

223

the obligation of a citizen transcends the mere act of
marking and depositing a ballot.

His first direct supporters, including men who had
fought at his side against the Japanese, had sparked the
formation of the "Magsaysay for President Movement/'
The young and virile Ram6n Magsaysay, with his splendid
fighting record, had naturally made his strongest appeal
to the youth. His personality, intensely Filipino in every
way, appealed to all. Within a matter of weeks the whole
archipelago, from the Bashi Channel to the Sulu Sea, was
dotted with MPM Clubs. The women played almost as
decisive a role, and in their Women's Magsaysay for Presi-
dent Movement, led by Mrs. Pacita Madrigal Warns, soon
rivaled the stronger sex in the extent and intensity of their
campaigning. The Namf rel ( National Movement for Free
Elections, organized by public-spirited civic leaders be-
fore the 1951 elections, when Magsaysay had first
emerged as defender of the people's right to freedom in
elections) lent the weight of its prestige to such an extent
that the Liberal Party chieftains branded it as an opposi-
tion movement. The press was overwhelmingly for a clean
and fair election. The radio, in all its elements, and this
included the government-owned and -operated stations,
gave free access where it did not openly support us.

Senator Laurel had aided when he yielded the chance
for the candidacy. He might have had the nomination,
and with an even better chance of ultimate victory, since
at the time of the Nationalist Convention he was far better
known than Magsaysay.

Victory had been assured when we halted the three-

224

cornered race and joined the Democratic to the Nation-
alist Party in the coalition.

All these factors contributed the landslide vote for
Magsaysay, but, of course, the major factor was the man's
dynamic and convincing personality and his record for
courage and honesty, which had won the love and trust
of the Filipino people.

He was perfectly confident on that Tuesday, our elec-
tion day. So, we were told, was Quirino. A few hours of
the early returns showed how misplaced was Quirino's
confidence.

The Philippine press and radio performed a major
miracle and for the first time the results of the election
were made known in Manila on Wednesday, November
11. So decisive were the earliest reports that Speaker Eu-
genio Perez, President of the Liberal Party, conceded the
election that very day.

Two days later, President Quirino followed suit.

Magsaysay was victor in what he has described cor-
rectly as "the most truly democratic election ever held
in Asia. ?>

He had paved the way for this victory when he gave
the Filipinos their "clean election" of 1951.

Now he held the fruits of that victory. Five million two
hundred thousand Filipinos, women and men, had reg-
istered for this free election. Of these more than three
million had voted for Magsaysay.

Philippine democracy had risen from its sickbed, re-
vitalized and all but whole.

Still there was a vestige of anxiety left in the minds of
some of our friends overseas, and, if the truth be told, of

225

some of our compatriots at home. Bearing in mind the
flood of political excoriation, the bitterness of the cam-
paign, the scars it must have left, and the fact that one
million five hundred thousand Filipinos had voted
staunchly for Quirino, the question remained: could Mag-
saysay assume the leadership of the people in an atmos-
phere of peace, or would there be tension and potential
conflict?

The question was complicated by the opening measures
taken by the President-elect. Directly after his election
Magsaysay withdrew from the public eye. Closeted with
friends and trusted advisers he began plotting his course
for a clean-up of the government and for the carrying out
of his most important election pledges. He appointed
committees to inquire into every phase of governmental
activity, from finances to the administration of justice.
His investigators probed into the workings of the so-called
government corporations, through which the government
controlled procurement and distribution of vital com-
modities, managed public services, and sought to handle
the problem of providing for the landless masses.

When these investigators brought out the facts and situ-
ations which demonstrated the shaky position of the whole
government, the resentments and animosities bred by
the bitter campaign were given new life and new point.

During these weeks of pre-inaugural seclusion the
President-to-be was mapping the future of the Philippines.

More than half a million people turned out to see Mag-
saysay inaugurated on the Luneta at high noon of Decem-
ber 30. The inauguration of "The Guy" was marked with
"timetable precision," "austerity/' and "simplicity/'

226

There had been some unease as to post-election reper-
cussions. It proved groundless. As the grandstands filled,
Ramon M&gsaysay with his aides and an escort of honor
drove to Malacanan Palace. Outgoing President Quirino
received him in his study, embraced his young successor,
and insisted that the new President try sitting in his
official desk chair "for size/* The meeting was symbolical
of the newly-won unity of the people. The two left the
Palace with their arms over each other's shoulders and,
escorted by cavalry, drove slowly to the Luneta.

President Quirino was reported to have been reluctant
to take this ride because he feared the crowds along the
route might jeer him. But the slow progress of the Presi-
dential car was made to resounding cheers, from the
Palace to the grandstand on the Luneta.

The two Presidents left the car together and received
the Presidential salute of twenty-one guns as army bands
played the greetings for a commander-in-chief and our
national anthem. Then they shook hands, ex-President
Quirino returned to the car, and, escorted by his own
guard of honor and cheered to the echo on every side, he
drove away to his little farm in Novaliches perhaps to
contemplate the twists and turns of history. His stalwart
successor, stripped of all the carefully prearranged secur-
ity measures, was carried to the platform on the shoulders
of his people.

This was the highest demonstration as far as political
struggle was concerned of political maturity. The hand
of good will was extended from either side. No adherents
of he defeated party were forced to flee the country. No
lists of proscription were issued. There were no exiles, no

227

coups, no reprisals nothing but the enthusiasm and pride
of a people united in the flame of political conflict.

The inaugural address of the new President was only
twenty minutes long, but every word carried weight. A
tall, powerful, essentially Asian figure, M&gsaysay towered
over many on the platform, wearing the simple attire the
majority of his listeners wore a plain barong-tagalog, or
native shirt, and gray trousers.

In that brief talk he pledged his program: social jus-
tice for all; land for the landless; protection of individual
rights and the welfare of the common man; and selfless
service in the interests of the people.

"We will run this government by deeds, not speeches,"
promised Magsaysay.

He voiced then, and stressed later in his State of the
Nation message to Congress on January 25, 1954, his deep
concern for the well-being of the farmer. "There are too
many laws in too many books/' he said. And he pointed
out that what was needed was a "single, concise and easily
understood farm tenancy code."

Then, undaunted by the formidable task before him
of raising a nation's standard of living through accelerated
economic development, he exclaimed, "For this young and
vigorous nation of ours, nothing is impossible!"

Many millions of Filipinos, listening on the Luneta or
in their homes, knew that the very fact that President
Magsaysay had been given the power to stand on that
platform and voice such words proved they were true.

Magsaysay made, and kept, his pledge of austerity. That
night a long-standing tradition was broken. No inaugural
ball was held at Malacanan. Instead, the Magsaysays

228

dined en famille in the Palace; their guests were five in-
timate friends.

On January 1, the first day of the New Year and Mag-
saysay's first day in office, the President had the doors of
Malacanan thrown open for the people, so that those
"who own this place, can see what it looks like." He said
that M&lacanan, the seat of centuries of regal splendor,
would be known henceforth as Malacanang, to conform
with the native pronunciation. As for himself, he preferred
being addressed plainly as "Mr. Magsaysay" instead of
the formal "Mr. President/'

Subsequently, he instructed Malacanang officials to
charge to his salary all expenses incurred by his personal
guests at the Palace, or on board the Presidential yacht,
the Pagasa, or in the President's out-of-town residence,
such as the Guest House at Baguio.

He had large problems to solve for a new and vigorous
democracy. One required immediate attention: the reasons
behind the threatened decay of that democracy.

He had learned the answer in his fight against the Com-
munists. Graft, corruption in high places, fraudulent elec-
tions, nepotism had spawned the Red brigades. He
proceeded to take the lid off government affairs and let
the people see how they worked. He promised that his
administration's policy with officials charged with cor-
ruption would be "prosecution, not persecution/'

By declaring his own personal assets, he set the example
for government officials and employees to do the same;
he was, in effect, implementing the "morality in govern-
ment" injunction of his State of the Nation message. He
ordered his Cabinet members to give up their teaching

229

jobs and other sidelines so that they could devote full
attention to their departments. He announced that all gifts
made to himself or to his family, except those given by a
few old and intimate friends, would be turned over to
charity; this led to the establishment of what is now-
known as the "Ram6n Miagsaysay Welfare Fund/'

The new President put into immediate effect his plan
to make unannounced and surprise visits to various parts
of the country, explaining that he wanted to see living
conditions as they were from day to day, not "dressed up'"
for his benefit as they would be if his visits were known
beforehand. Also, he wanted to spare government officials
and the people the burden and expense of preparing
elaborate receptions. His only purpose in making these
provincial trips was to get work done, which was best
accomplished without fanfare.

In his first three months in office, Magsaysay visited
many villages and towns, including many remote and in-
accessible communities where no President had ever set
foot before. He conferred with local officials and talked
with the people, and his first questions were invariably
about the people: Did they have artesian wells? Were they
afflicted with disease? Were there adequate schools for
the children? Did they have good roads and a steady
means of earning a livelihood?

So he studied at first hand the problems and needs of
each locality, including the enforcement of the laws and
the ways in which the government could help solve the
difficulties.

Speaking before a huge throng at the Obando Com-
munity Plaza on February 11, Magsaysay said that it was

230

his desire to improve conditions for all the Filipino people,
particularly those living in the rural areas. He made active
demonstration o this in many towns, such as in Obando,
and in San Luis, Pampanga, when he approved on the
spot the release of funds to improve the waterworks sys-
tems of the barrios.

No previous President had noted or cared if the people
had pure water or not. Magsaysay saw and felt with the
eyes and heart of the common man, and he was the first
to take an interest. Only twenty per cent of the Filipinos
were drinking potable water; the other eighty per cent
drank it polluted.

Magsaysay made a promise: "An artesian well for every
barrio!" Three hundred million pesos, which we did not
have, were needed for this project; it would be a cheap
price to pay for the health of a nation.

From January 1, Magsaysay's first day in office, to Feb-
ruary 15, sixty artesian wells were constructed in prov-
inces, municipalities, and barrios. Popular support for
the undertaking was launched through the Liberty Wells
Association, created by public-spirited citizens as a tribute
to President Magsaysay. By March 10 it had received
contributions and pledges amounting to almost $500,000.
The slogan of the association is an ancient Chinese prov-
erb: "God will bless those who dig wells, build bridges
and construct roads."

In the United States, two good friends of the Philip-
pines, ex-Ambassador Myron Cowen and Major General
Leland Hobbs, organized an association called the Com-
mittee for Philippine Action for Development, Reconstruc-

231

tion and Education (COMPADRE) to help collect funds
for M'agsaysay's artesian well project.

To channel into constructive outlets the explosive un-
rest that had been generated in the country, Miagsaysay
formulated and put into effect, on March 21, 1954, a five-
year-plan of economic and social development, to be
based on our own national resources.

This plan for the future was designed to raise living
standards for the Filipinos as rapidly as democratic proc-
esses and the inertia of centuries would allow. It was a
frontal attack on poverty, hunger, and disease the ancient
enemies of economic and social progress in such under-
developed countries as the Philippines.

He listed as its most important aims the re-establishment
of the people's confidence in the government, reduction
of unemployment, increase of production, improvement of
living conditions in the barrios, and the destruction of
the last vestiges of the Communist-led Hukbalahap move-
ment.

The Philippines was suffering from disadvantages com-
mon to all underdeveloped countries-~meagerness of
domestic savings, unstable income from primary products,
and an inadequacy of investment capital and technical
know-how.

The plan, therefore, was a modest one, which stressed
the role of private Filipino enterprise and tempered the
unrealistic dream of inpourings of riches from interna-
tional or other external sources. There could be no
more wild dreams. We had been taught a frightening
lesson in reality in the Philippines, and like the Americans
after the "big crash" of 1929, we had to realize that from

232

tins time on we would have to stand on our own feet and
any future we had must be of our own making.

Foremost among the many problems facing our under-
developed land was the need to find more jobs. To this
end the plan led to the establishment of power, communi-
cation, transport and credit services, and new basic indus-
tries, thereby creating in the first year 260,000 new jobs,
and 360,000 each year thereafter.

A two-hundred-million-peso public-works program was
launched, with an initial fifty million pesos to be spent the
first year. The plan called for the concrete surfacing of
five of the country's vital highway networks and for the
improvement and construction of roads, streets, and
bridges. Later, over fifteen million pesos was released for
this fund.

Plans began for the construction of new schools.

The land reform movement which had held Magsaysay's
deep personal interest, and which had been the cause of
his first serious disagreement with the Quirino regime,
was an important part of the general plan for economic
development. With all the resources of the government
behind it, the movement included the opening of new
settlements for the landless, fair land-reform laws, meth-
ods for increasing productivity in agriculture, rural co-
operatives, flood control and multi-purpose river projects,
extensive courses for farmers, more effective marketing
facilities, and diversification of the economy through the
creation of light industries based on local materials.

The total first-year investment contemplated under the
five-year-plan is only 631,000,000 pesos, or $315,500,000.
It will levy a tax to the limit of our public and private

233

resources. Whatever private savings and domestic capital
exist must be tapped in support of the plan; more than
a third will have to come from bank loans and private
borrowing. The Executive Secretary of the United Nations
Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East has
pointed out the Asian dilemma: "To curtail the economic
development program or to incur budgetary deficit." De-
spite that threat, our plan for the future has all our hopes.
Against it are the hazards of shifting market prices and
changes in trade. Our need from the outside is the guar-
antee of stable returns, international assistance in fi-
nancing, and the good will of the world.

Balancing these in support of the plan is the Filipino
desire for a better and safer life, and our dream of inde-
pendence. That dream is now active. Any threat to it now
must come, not from inside the Philippines, but from the
outside, by invasion.

The human dream ends with this a family together at
sundown, fed, sheltered, without fear. It was kept in mind
in outlining the five-year plan.

The clean-up in government played a strong role in the
plan. Graft, nepotism, preference in government are the
filth that Communism feeds upon. Magsaysay said point-
edly: "Our people in government have not been com-
pletely aroused out of their apathy. Many are still as
listless, indifferent and inefficient as before. They don't
seem to realize that a change has come that now they are
expected to render their utmost service with missionary
zeal and personal sacrifice."

Those who failed to realize this met with unpleasant
surprises. The President demanded the resignation of a

234

director of the bureau of private schools who had failed
to act quickly to stop the progress of veritable diploma
mills; he suspended a mayor in Negros Occidental who
was indicted in court on four counts of falsification of
public documents; and he dismissed a foreign-affairs of-
ficer who had been negligent

With the full weight of authority he launched the final
all-out attack on the remaining Communist Huts. It was
a campaign of justice tempered with mercy, the same
policy he had maintained as Secretary of Defense.

He began by throwing the government's forces against
the die-hard Huks, while at the same time enlarging his
program to raise living conditions in the barrios and de-
veloping the "land for the landless" program two move-
ments calculated to expose the emptiness of the Red
propaganda. Moreover, he left the door open to individ-
ual surrenders by the Huk rank and file, with the condi-
tion that those facing charges must stand trial, while those
without criminal records would be given an opportunity
to live peaceful and productive lives.

Ten days after becoming President, Magsaysay extended
executive pardons to twenty-five prisoners lodged in the
Mksbate provincial jail and ordered their immediate re-
settlement on Burias Island.

He had the provincial commander there allocate six
hectares of land to each prisoner and help him settle.
Food and clothing were provided for the men and their
families.

He had personally interviewed these prisoners. He said
of them: "These people were starving. Their families were
hungry. All they knew was that they had to have some-

235

thing to eat. These people are the most inflammable ma-
terial for the spread of Communism in our country!"

On that same January tenth that these prisoners were
set free, Magsaysay inspected the progress of a reclama-
tion project involving several thousand hectares of rich
rice lands in San Luis, Pampanga, the home town of the
Huk leader Luis Tame. This project had been abandoned
for eight years due to dissident activities. Pampanga was
the last stronghold of the Huks. Taruc was still hiding
somewhere in the province.

President M'agsaysay called upon the army to send engi-
neer task forces to clear the barrios and build roads in
order to encourage tenant-farmers-turned-Huk to return
to their homes. The soldiers worked day and night, string-
ing wires, digging artesian wells, and clearing the barrios
of treacherous talahib growths.

Seventeen days later, Lieutenant General Jesus Vargas,
AFP Chief of Staff, announced that the reclamation proj-
ect in San Luis was almost finished and that he expected
a turnover of 3,200 hectares of land to LASEDECO for
redistribution to the landless.

It was democracy's final offer to the disbelieving.

The majority of the last of the Huks were the embit-
tered and disillusioned, and these as they took faith again
came down to the barrios bringing their guns, turning
them in, along with all the nirvana promises of Commu-
nism, for the actuality of real land under one's feet and
the chance at normal freedom.

Those who continued to hide found their waistlines and
their chances of survival slimming. The people, recharged
with democratic fervor and holding new faith in their

236

government and in Magsaysay, no longer continued to
give the Huks food or to help hide them when the soldiers
came. Faced with destitution or capture, many more rebels
gave in.

On May 17, 1954, Huk-Supremo Luis Tame, who since
1945 had been the Communist leader of the Hukbalahap
rebels and the symbol of Red rebellion in the Philippines,
came alone out of a morass in Pampanga and surrendered.
For almost a decade he had kept the Philippines in con-
stant threat of revolution. A price of fifty thousand dollars
had been on his head. Now he was a thin, tired, worn-
looking ex-rebel, cut away on every side from the cause
that had failed him, and glad to give in.

Taruc's surrender was a final triumph for Democracy,
and for President Magsaysay. Many times since becoming
President, Magsaysay had tried to negotiate with Taruc
and bring him to the point of surrender. Something had
always gone wrong. But Taruc had found himself at jour-
ney's end, a stray fox hiding out in the Candaba swamp in
the province of Pampanga, with his followers killed or
captured or having deserted in favor of the democratic
side. He who had whipped up the masses was now ignored
by the masses. There was no more discontent on which he
could feed the people. They would no longer protect him.
The army had him surrounded. Rather than be lolled,
Taruc surrendered.

As I write this, Taruc has received a sentence of twelve
years for rebellion, a sentence that has been protested as
too lenient by President Magsaysay. The charge of rebel-
lion covers and supersedes all other crimes, such as pillage
and murder. The President holds that Taruc should be

237

tried individually on each of these grounds, and as a result
the Department of Justice has ordered the prosecuting
fiscal to file new charges that cannot be considered double
jeopardy against Taruc. Whatever the outcome, it is not
the results of his trial but the surrender of Taruc that is
the victory.

His surrender marked the final collapse of internal sub-
version in the Philippines.

A small percentage of Huks are still hiding in the hills.
Among these are some who were felons under long sen-
tence, or prisoners awaiting trial who were set free by
the Japanese when Japan invaded. These do not wish to
stand trial. They remain at large.

At present, Communism in the Philippines has shrunk
to less than two thousand outlaw Huks, with a remainder
of Huk sympathizers estimated at thirty-two thousand.
This is not too high a percentage, out of a population of
nearly twenty-one million!

Democracy had won over Communism less by armed
force than by the emotional pressure exerted by a united
nation. Material, moral, and spiritual aid from America
helped the Filipino people in their fight for freedom. From
their own inner resources they drew the conviction that
assured victory. That conviction was fostered and directed
by a man with an understanding of the human dream.

Magsaysay has said: "Communism is an idea you cannot
kill with sword or gun. When a man with an empty belly
works in a rice paddy on land which is not his, always in
debt and with his children hungry when a man in that
position hears someone say, 'Land belongs to the man
who works it, come to us and we will give it to you/ then

238

something happens to that man. It is as if a cool wind
blew through a hell on earth/'

The fight for complete democracy is never ending, no
matter how free the land. Our conflict in the Philippines
is not completely over. But the beacon light of democracy
that came perilously close to being totally extinguished
has been rekindled, and it has brightened the face of Asia.

It flared to life with the free election that made Ramon
Magsaysay President of the Philippines. That was far
from being a merely domestic victory. It engendered new
faith in sections of Asia where the people were wearied
by war, poverty, and oppression, and where millions were
ready to bend under the hammer-and-sicHe. American
press response to our election wanned our hearts, but even
more satisfying has been the renewal of enthusiasm for
democracy in other parts of Asia than our own.

The Philippines were to be "Democracy's show win-
dow" in the Orient.

That window looks two ways. Geographically and spir-
itually, the Philippines lie halfway between America and
the Far East. We can see both sides. We saw what Com-
munism had done in neighboring lands and denied it the
right to take over ours. We have refused diplomatic rela-
tions with Russia. The Red ideal has no place in our show
window. It took tremendous effort on our part, but the
window shines.

On March 10, 1954, President Magsaysay issued a state-
ment clarifying our foreign policy with reference to Asia.

"The Philippine Government," he said, "stands for the
right of self-determination and independence of all Asian
nations; for closer cultural and economic relations and

239

mutual cooperation with freedom-loving Asian countries as
a group and within the framework of the Charter of the
United Nations; and for the proposition that a return to
colonialism, of which the last vestiges are now disappear-
ing from Asia, shall not be tolerated in any form."

In an earlier statement, on February 22, he had said he
saw nothing incompatible between friendship and sym-
pathy for Asian neighbors and the continuation of a cor-
dial relationship with the United States. He said then,
"There is no conflict of principles, ideals or methods be-
tween those concepts."

No matter what happens next to our world, to us in the
Philippines, or to our President M'agsaysay, we can never
forget that in a dark and dangerous time he served as
the symbol of democracy to the Far East. Magsaysay had
been in the forefront of four great Filipino struggles that
were of importance to all Asia, which is to say, to the
whole world: the fight against Japanese invasion, the fight
against Communist domination, the effort to raise living
standards for a people, and the fight for clean democratic
government.

He gave the world its first locally achieved victory over
international Communism. He not only subdued the Huks;
he rehabilitated. He drove fear and distrust from the
country and with the lifting of fear the economic situa-
tion improved; he healed the rift in a people that had been
skilfully divided by the weight of Red propaganda; he
helped restore the Republic and prevented our slipping
into chaos.

To the Filipinos, Ramon Magsaysay is our Abraham
Lincoln, our leader risen from and for the masses. To the

240

rest of Asia lie has assumed even larger stature. There are
millions in areas dark with oppression who are beginning
to look to Magsaysay as the true Asian, the new leader, who
may yet emerge as the new and true leader of all Asia.

The start and advance of the five-year plan I watched
from the other side of the world. I did not attend the
M&gsaysay inauguration. I had pledged myself, if he won,
to accept no titles, no honors. Three days after his election
I returned to the United States to make a new beginning
and a new living. I told our new President I would serve
my country in Washington, without portfolio or title and
without salary. That is why I spend most of my time in
Washington, no longer representative of the Philippines
in the United States, but as the President's special, per-
sonal, unsalaried envoy.

Up to the time I write, since returning from the Phil-
ippines I have spoken in nearly six-hundred American
cities.

Once before, in 1942 after Corregidor fell, I toured the
United States and spoke to Americans of the danger in
the Pacific. I had been sent to the United States by Gen-
eral Douglas MacArthur to alert America. I talked then
to hundreds of thousands of Americans of the Filipino
fight to hold the Philippines to the side of democracy.
The battle word then was: "Remember Bataanf

Again, twelve years later, I am back in the United States
on the same desperate mission, calling attention once
more to the struggle in the Pacific where democracy is
going from defeat to defeat, and where its strength, its
prestige, and its very security are steadily weakening

241

under the onslaught of an enemy far greater and more
determined on destruction than was Japan.

Again I am reporting to Americans the Filipinos* con-
tinuing fight to hold the democratic lines against aggres-
sion, giving, as an example of hope and courage, our own
victory over Communism inside the Philippines.

There are times I meet with an American who says,
"But what has all that fighting over there to do with me?
'Asia for the Asians!' What have I to do with anything
that concerns the other side of the Pacific?"

For this American I have but one answer. "Take a look
at the map, my friend!"

242

Chapter XIV

VIEWED from the Pacific side the world seems to fall
in half like a split apple: rimming one side is Asia, and the
other, America. Study the map of Asia, its red-stained
areas and those that are still free, and it is easy to see that
the free world's line of defense lies on Asia's side of the
Pacific.

The pattern of Soviet conquest is very clear. The chain
of defense is equally so. Starting at the Aleutians, it is the
holding line between American freedom and Soviet
power.

Trace it southward on tie map, through Japan, Korea,
Formosa, Okinawa, Guam, and the Philippines. The Phil-
ippines are as a scattering of pinpoints. The United States
is much larger and Russia many times larger-large
enough to swallow up the world.

Russia is doing just that. Already, it has swallowed up
two-thirds of our world.

And still, our pinpoint archipelago has held the line
against Communism. Not once, but twice has the Philip-
pines resisted nations bent on conquest, and each time suc-
ceeded in upsetting the time schedules set by aggressors
far stronger and better-armed: Japan and Russia.

243

The inarch of conquest has twice led southward, follow-
ing the Pacific line of defense. Japan, bent on world con-
quest, was the first to attempt to break the chain, link by
link, starting in China. From China the conquerors could
go north and south, through Japan and then Formosa,
down to the Philippines. After the Philippines the way
would be open to Australia and New Zealand the last
links in the semicircle that shields the American hemi-
sphere.

That chain can hold only as long as its weakest link
can hold. While we cannot say which is the weakest link,
we do know that in all of Southeast Asia the Philippines is
America's only proven ally America's only proven friend.
Aiming to make its conquest doubly certain, Japan struck
at the strongest link, the Philippines, thus revealing its
blueprint of conquest. Though conquered we continued
to fight, and eventually saw the defeat of Japan. Then,
from the same direction, we were threatened again.

Russia took over the Japanese blueprint of conquest,
following it at every step. Since the ultimate objective of
Soviet Communism is world domination, the Communists,
too, first invaded China. Having done this, they struck
through Korea. But there they were halted and pushed
back.

Remember, however, that the Japanese, six months be-
fore Pearl Harbor, occupied Indochina. They were aware
of the strategic value of the territory; they knew that
from there they could branch out in every direction for
further conquests.

But of even greater importance is the fact that Indo-
china is the rice bowl of Southeast Asia. In the Philip-

244

pines before the war we imported much rice from Saigon.
Just as Japan had needed rice for its soldiers and its citi-
zens, so Communist China now needs rice to feed its hun-
gry people. To succeed in China, the Communists must
have rice. If the Communists can control Indochina and
help fill the millions of empty Chinese stomachs, they can
control not only China, but other Asian countries where
hunger is Communism's strong ally.

Japan tried to accomplish this, and failed. Russia, fol-
lowing the Japanese blueprint in every detail, is deter-
mined not to fail.

Japan tried to integrate China, Manchuria, and Korea
into the Japanese economy, and failed. Russia is assem-
bling the pattern now, and achieving victory after victory.
North Korea, the industrial zone of Korea, has been con-
quered. Manchuria, next on the blueprint, is the industrial
zone of China.

The basic strategy of Soviet Russia now is to integrate
Manchuria, the industrial zone of China, and North Korea,
the industrial zone of Korea, with Soviet economy. Be-
yond these lie Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines. If
Russia succeeds, the challenge to America's industrial
power will be very serious indeed.

The United Nations stopped the Communists in Korea,
so they went into Indochina.

The importance of Korea was that it revealed to the
world the blueprint of Communism. It was Russia's first
decisive action after the conquest of China. It showed the
way Russian aggression has followed Japan's at every step.
The pattern is still incomplete, still developing, yet it fol-
lows irrevocably the objective outlined by Nikolai Lenin

245

when lie wrote: "The road to London and Paris is through
Peiping and Calcutta/' This means Russia plans to con-
quer Asia first, then Europe, then America. "And tomor-
row the world."

Japan had used brute force. Russia, employing typically
Communistic tactics in its attempt to conquer the Philip-
pines, also struck energetically, but from within, using the
softening-up process that prepares the ground for the
seeds of Communism. Unlike Japan, Russia had help from
within the Philippines, where the Communist ally inside
the gates was our people's loss of faith in the government.

Under the tutelage of Communist leaders, the Huks
were softening up the Philippines so that after Korea was
conquered, the Philippines would be ripe and ready to
fall.

But instead of succumbing, we upset the time schedule
of Soviet aggression. When we crushed the Huk rebellion
in the Philippines we helped to arrest the forward march
of the Soviet to world supremacy halfway between Rus-
sia and the American mainland. Russia's infiltration tactics
succeeded elsewhere, but not in the Philippines.

The blueprint of aggression was stopped for the second
time in the Philippines. The Communists had failed to
count on one obstacle, which is the Filipino's passion for
freedom.

In the crisis, it was not so much the force of arms that
helped us hold the line. It was, rather, the restoration of
faith in our own government, the realization that part of
the Communist plan for world conquest was the encour-
agement and support of the Huk uprising, the turning of
brother against brother, the weakening of the government

246

and of the people's faith in the government, that the Com-
munists might take over. They carried out this plan up to
the last move.

The plan was to bring about the collapse of the Philip-
pines through internal dissension rather than by military
attack. We were being pushed relentlessly from political
conflict into civil war, and then into revolution. That was
the way the Communists were conquering in other parts
of Asia.

It almost worked. Filipino was turned against Filipino
as Chinese had been turned against Chinese, Korean
against Korean, Greek against Greek. That is the Soviet
strategy, the way Russia wins. Russia has developed to
the nth degree the success formula of all despots: "Divide
and rule."

In a succession of bloodless victories, Soviet Russia is
winning her objectives now in rapid-fire fashion. The vic-
tory in Indochina is Russia's greatest since the Communist
victory in China.

The Communists conquered at the Geneva Conference.
They succeeded in forcing France, one of the great West-
ern powers, to sue for peace on Communist terms. The
Geneva Conference made Communist China a major
power in international affairs and recognized in Southeast
Asia a new and powerful Communist state.

How was Communism able to win in Indochina? By
the refusal of France to cut the bonds of colonialism, an
act which alone could have converted an embittered col-
ony into a loyal ally, as the United States had made of
the Philippines a loyal ally by making it free. As a result,
Vietnam was partitioned by the Geneva Agreement and

247

the Red Star mounted higher; there could be no other
outcome.

If, as is not unlikely, all Vietnam goes Communist,
Laos and Cambodia, its neighbors, cannot long remain
free. And next door lie endangered Thailand, and Burma,
Indonesia, and Malaya all of these already infiltrated by
scheming Communists.

The most shocking part of the tremendous Communist
victory in Asia is this: in all these victories not one Rus-
sian soldier has been killed.

To date one hundred and forty-two thousand American
boys were casualties in Korea killed, wounded, and miss-
ing. They fought not merely to save that unhappy land,
but to hold the defense line of the Pacific. They fought
in Korea in order that their brothers may not have to
fight in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.

Chinese have been killed, and Koreans, and Filipinos,
and Vietnamese. But not Russians! Russia fights by proxy
and wins by proxy; the honors and the booty are Russia's
alone.

Again with an eye on the map, let us consider the man-
power that has fallen or may yet fall to Russia.

The Chinese and Koreans have fought Russia's war,
while Russia's own tremendous manpower reserve remains
untouched. Why should Russians fight! Russia has more
than one billion people in Asia ready to fight its wars one
thousand million to send to death against the free world.

If Russia conquers all Asia and forces all Asia to fight
for her, what will the tally be? Who will help Freedom
fight its battles in Asia?

As the figures stand now, the forces of Freedom include

248

twenty-one million Filipinos, eighteen million Thailanders,
and eighty million Pakistani, One hundred nineteen mil-
lion in all. That is all we can count on at this time,

There are eighty million Japanese. I cannot with any
conviction list them on the side of Freedom. They would
be a powerful addition to our side, but how can we be-
lieve that an ancient imperialism like Japan has been
democratized after seven short years of military occupa-
tion! Democracy has been imposed upon them since the
end of World War II, yet one wonders whether they could
have changed so much since then.

Suppose Japan had won and Tojo had been sent to
Washington, instead of MacArthur to Tokyo, and the Jap-
anese army of occupation were in control in every state
and city of the Union. Can any American believe that in
seven years he would have forgotten the tenets of the
Declaration of Independence, the principles of the Con-
stitution, the teachings of Washington, Jefferson, and
Lincoln, and the ways of life to which he has been accus-
tomed, and instead has come to believe in the divinity of
the Emperor and in the entire fabric of feudal doctrine
and custom that has sustained Japanese life for centuries?
I do not think that any people can change so much in
seven years. Why then do we expect the Japanese to
change so suddenly, with his ancient civilization and his
traditions set deep in antiquity?

When we discussed with John Foster Dulles in 1950
the issues of the Japanese Peace Treaty, the Philippine
Government proposed that a system of education be es-
tablished in Japan, under United Nations auspices, with
emphasis on the teaching of the precepts of freedom and

249

democracy. Mor. Dulles rejected this proposal Today,
Japan's leadership is divided between the Tojo-minded
Zaibatsu and the new Communists and the people do not
know enough of democracy to remember the lessons of
the first or to understand the perils of the second. They
cannot resist the insidious propaganda being skilfully
piped into their country from Russia.

No, I do not list the Japanese on the side of democracy.
What have we left, then, in Asia? To repeat, one hundred
and nineteen million Thailanders, Pakistani, and Filipinos.

These are all we can count on to stand against four
hundred sixty million Chinese, and behind these is the
untouched reservoir of two hundred million Russians.

The population of the United States is one hundred
sixty million.

We must face the fact that the democratic forces are
snowed under by Red numbers. We must realize also that
Russia's actual attack against the free world is just begin-
ning.

Japan had as its excuse for transgression the need for
more living space. Japan's war was waged with the aid
of hatred of the White Imperialist. Actually, Japan won
its war, having won its point; the white man has been
driven from Asia.

Russia's aim is deadlier: it is the physical and spiritual
domination of the world.

The Filipinos, because they sided with freedom and
democracy, were made to suffer brutalities and devasta-
tion by the Japanese. Yet that was only a foretaste of
what Communism will do to the freedom-loving Filipinos
if not stopped in time.

250

We know what is going on next door, inside Commu-
nist China. From unimpeachable sources we learn how
Christian Chinese are being made to suffer in a land where
no Christian church is left standing. We know of the
systematic brutalization of young girls by party members,
to break down their "bourgeois" training, and of the
*l)rain-washings" given older people to rid their minds
of the last vestiges of freedom and democracy.

Those who fail to conform are publicly executed. The
young people are forced to stand by, watching, while
the objectors are shot, Russian fashion, in the back of the
head. It is not uncommon to see indoctrinated children
dance and jeer before their "non-conforming" fathers and
mothers while their parents* brains are blown out.

That is why the Soviets "permit" mothers to work, that
the children may be crammed with Communist propa-
ganda when safely away from the "softening" influences
of home. Brutalize the babies and there will be no "soft-
ness," no "unreality" in the Communist hordes overrun-
ning the future world.

This is the Communist dream. It has no place in a
world of free men.

Twice, with our blood, we have held the Philippines.
We defied Japan, we refused to yield to Communism. We
are just ending our struggle against the Communist at-
tack from within that was far more dangerous than the
struggle that ended on Leyte.

We know this is not the end. When the full sweep of
Communist aggression is carried out, we will again be
in Russia's way. Now is the time to prepare, with all that

251

is left of the free world, to hold every line against Soviet
Russia that can possibly be held.

In my extensive travels around the United States I have
noticed everywhere the unmistakable symptoms of panic.
It is paradoxical and dangerous that the most powerful
country in the world should give way to hysteria, for the
hysterical are too easily stampeded through fear. That
is the way Russia conquered in other lands by stampede
and by terrorism. They have now added a new element to
their strategy conquest by proxy. This is terrorism with
finesse. When they have set all the rest of the world fight-
ing, brother against brother, nation against nation, the
Russians can sit back to wait for easy global victory. Then,
perhaps, we shall see the iron-faced ones smile!

The Russian leaders are not only dedicated; they are
cunning. Russia will fight to the last Korean, the last Chi-
nese, the last Vietnamese, the last Filipino, and, if it has
its way, to the last American.

Materialism! Realism! Despotism! These are the banner
words of the Red Messiah.

Still, in the United States, I hear the blind-in-heart ob-
jecting: "So what! Why should we concern ourselves with
anything going on in Asia? Why should we try to make
friends over there? Let the Asians fight for Asia."

Americans should concern themselves because this may
be Freedoms and Democracy's last crusade. To fail to
understand this may result in turning Asia over to Soviet
Russia.

The question is now: Will America stand by and see
turned over to Russia all of Asia, with its terrifying po-
tential, its teeming millions, its inexhaustible resources,

252

its important raw materials? Can any American believe
that his country can maintain its national security without
allies, when a dozen bombs dropped tomorrow at certain
vital areas can immobilize America? For a long time
America was snugly protected on either side by the Pa-
cific and the Atlantic oceans. But the oceans no longer
afford protection against submarine and guided air power.

The isolationist is as the turtle in his shell, and the
simile is doubly appropriate because the turtle is also
slow to comprehend when he has been left helplessly
kicking on his back.

Against a master Russia, swollen with the tremendous
accrual of Asian manpower and material, can America
survive?

Every American must already know the answer in his
own heart. Lose Asia to Russia and America is lost!

253

Chapter XV

THE situation in Asia is not hopeless. There still remains
the great reservoir of the neutral or uncommitted peoples
of Asia. These comprise approximately three hundred
sixty million people of India, eighteen million Burmese,
eighty million Indonesians, and eight million Ceylonese,

It is dangerous to oversimplify and to regard these un-
committed Asian countries as lost, in ideology if not in
a military sense, to Communism, and thereby to be writ-
ten off as a total loss to the free world,

In the face of all the "alienation of allies" talk, it is im-
portant to remember that the uncommitted peoples of
Asia, while not actual allies of the United States, are still
non-Communist countries, They have shown their pro-
found hunger for peace. It is upon this longing for peace
that Americans should build an understanding with the
Asian peoples that will work for peace. The understanding
must come from both sides of the Pacific if it is to be an
effective force against Communism,

There are millions of the uncommitted in Asia who will
side with democracy if America can gain their faith once
more. They need the assurance of America's good will and
an understanding of their aims and ideals that were so

254

long ignored by the Western powers. Because that as-
surance has been withheld, they are not actively com-
mitted to our side.

How can they be committed to our side? Asia is flaring
all over with little Tiot wars/' They end in temporary
truces only to flare again. The cease-fire in Indochina went
into effect on August 3, 1954, How long will it last?

There is trouble in British Malaya and Korea, and rum-
blings in Burma, India, and Indonesia.

Only in the Philippines are we mopping up the last of
the Huk Communists. Our '"hot war" is over. Why has this
not happened elsewhere? Why have not Asian countries
taken an equally firm stand against Communism?

The encouraging answer is that in countries such as
Thailand, whose freedom was long respected, and the
Philippines, to which independence was freely given,
Communism has not been able to assume control. In other
countries, where independence has been denied, or has
been promised and then withheld, the Communists were
able to capture the nationalist movement and use it for
their own ends. Communism rode to power on the band-
wagon of the so-called "national liberation movement."

To understand this we must consider honestly the rela-
tionship between America and Asia and the tragic lack of
understanding on both sides of the Pacific.

I have given the side of the neutral Asian. He has been
taught by Communist propaganda to bracket the Ameri-
can with all the other white overlords he has hated so
bitterly and so long. Now he is no longer helpless; he
thinks this is his chance to affiliate with a great and grow-
ing power, the Soviet Union, which is pledged to drive

255

away colonial imperialism in Asia. He blinds himself to
the Communist danger in order that he may have his
revenge against the hated European imperialism.

On the other side of the Pacific is another and equally
dangerous form of blindness. Many times, in the United
States, I have found myself shouting a message of warn-
ing that few seem prepared to heed, and I have been
made to feel as helpless as on those days in Manila when
we shook our puny fists at the death-dealing bombers
overhead that carried the emblem of the Rising Sun.

Everywhere, in a victorious, easygoing, and contented
country, I heard Americans say of Asia: "That's on the
other side of the world! Let the Asians do the fighting."

But Asia is no longer on the other side of the world.
Russia is no longer made ineffective by distance, not with
the new missiles; not while Russian guns are being
shipped into countries next door to the Panama Canal;
not while Communist infiltration is being skilfully prac-
ticed within the United States!

All my life I have been commuting between the United
States and the Philippines. It was a long journey by boat
when I was a youth going to school in America, Every
year the distance has shortened, until now I commute by
air, deciding in advance on breakfast in San Francisco
one day and dinner the next day in my home in Manila,
or dinner in San Francisco and breakfast a day later in
Manila. Asia is no longer far away.

Still, in the United States, I have heard bitter comment:
"Why should we send our boys to fight in Indochina? We
aren't fighting any battles for Asians!"

America, child of revolution, seeing its revolutionary

256

inheritance handed on to Asia, cannot see it lost by de-
fault to Soviet Russia.

And on Asia's side there are questions asked that have
not been answered. No one has taken the trouble to ex-
plain to the Asian what the real American policy is. He,
too, hears the cry, "Save Asia." And he asks: From whom?
For what? In whose interests? By what means? He is not
going to offer up his poor life to save Asia from Commu-
nism, so that colonialism shall remain on his shoulders.

No one has told the Asian that the fight to hold Indo-
china was not a salvage operation for French colonial
interests, but for freedom. For that matter, the American
has not been told that, either.

America is on the defensive in Asia and misunderstand-
ing is deepening between Asia and America because of
errors made in dealing with Asia since World War II. As
one example, the cry to save Indochina was always, "Aid
France/ 7 Why? Because France is a key power in the
Western Alliance. It occurred to nobody that a far better
reason to save Indochina was, and is, to save the peoples
of Indochina for freedom!

How can Asians not believe the Communist propaganda
when America is placed in the unfortunate and unworthy
position of upholding the colonial interests of its Western
European allies? The clear line against imperialism of all
stripes, whether Western or Russian, was not drawn in
time. Now it may be too late.

There was the earlier example of the Indonesian strug-
gle for independence. Everybody recognizes that this
great nation of eighty million people would not have won
its independence if the United States had not exerted

257

pressure on the Dutch to set it free. Why, then, is Indo-
nesia not siding whole-heartedly with America in the cur-
rent cold war?

Part of the answer is to be found in the equivocal
attitude of America at the beginning of the Indonesian
struggle for freedom. America had been reluctant to dis-
please the Dutch and to "weaken" the Netherlands as a
member of NATO. In statement after statement in the
Security Council I helped to champion the Indonesian
cause as a representative of the Philippines. In private
conversations with high American officials and in speeches
before American audiences I warned that America's re-
luctance to support the Indonesian struggle was a betrayal
of America's own revolutionary past and that America
would be judged, in Asian eyes, by the company of the
colonial powers which it preferred to keep. When, after
much vacillation and spilling of blood in Indonesia, the
United States eventually pressured the Dutch into re-
linquishing their hold on Indonesia, it was too late. By
that time, the Indonesian people had begun to distrust
America. Their minds had been poisoned by doubts while
they waited and hoped, for meantime, Dutch soldiers,
wearing uniforms made in America and using arms made
in America, were carrying on a so-called "police action"
against the Indonesian people.

If, in the beginning, the attitude of America toward
Indonesia had been on the pattern of its generous attitude
toward the Philippines, eighty million Indonesians would
be with us today, committed on the side of the free world.
If, in the beginning, the United States had stipulated that
there would be a general liquidation of the colonial system

258

in Asia, this would have sealed the trust of the Asian
peoples.

America stands at the crossroads in Asia. On one hand
is the American ideal, sprung from its revolutionary tra-
ditions, its record of liberating and recognizing the inde-
pendence of the Philippines. On the other hand, political
expediency inclined the United States to moderate its
sympathy for the peoples of Asia and Africa so as not to
alienate its Western allies, which include of course the
colonial powers.

The commitments assumed by the United States under
NATO made it no easy matter for America to support the
colonial interests of its European allies and at the same
time keep faith with Asia. The situation brought on a
dangerous dilemma, made even more so by the Commu-
nist pretense that Russia is the only true foe of Western
imperialism and the only true champion of the subject
peoples. Millions in Asia and Africa have been subjected
to such propaganda. If they were swayed by these argu-
ments, it is not because they feared the new and little-
known Communist imperialism the less, but because they
hated more the centuries-old White imperialism they
know too well. The recent talk of "aiding" the French in
Indochina only gave support to the Communist claims.

We must bear in mind that the word "democracy" does
not necessarily strike a responsive chord in the heart of
every Asian. The pattern of Asian society from time im-
memorial has been, as a rule, authoritarian rather than
democratic. Therefore we should not expect the great
bulk of the Asian peoples to be filled with a passion for
democracy, particularly since the Communists have clev-

259

erly taken over the term "democracy" by calling their
dictatorial regimes "popular democracies." The fact is that
democracy in the Western sense, based on the funda-
mental principle of the rights and freedom of the indi-
vidual, has gained a foothold in only a few countries in
Asia. The Philippines is one of these.

Since the surrender of Japan, the story of Asia is that
of a continent struggling valiantly and without too much
success to recover from a war foisted upon it by power-
greedy aggressors. Asia was laid waste by Japan and left
too prostrate and weak to resist or even to recognize the
advance of a newer, more ruthless, and infinitely better-
equipped aggressor looming in the West.

Even today the greater part of Asia seems unaware of
the far more dangerous overlordship of Russia. The fact is
that the Asian has been rendered deaf and blind to the
Communist menace by his determination that the White
Man shall not rule again. That determination has also
been nourished by Communist propaganda.

It is this lack of awareness in Asia of the Communist
danger this apparent tendency to discount its signifi-
cance compared to the domination of the white European
from which Asia has just emerged that presents the great-
est danger today to freedom. It can be ascribed to the
fact that the war, which produced its great partisan and
military leaders in Asia, did not bring a new concept of
leadership into being except in one country. The prewar
leaders of Asia wrote a shining page of history, but they
are still rehashing today the anti-colonial lessons they
used to preach with such tremendous effect, and the les-
sons are outdated.

260

The exception to the over-all Asian picture is in the
Philippines, where the conditions under which independ-
ence was achieved made it possible to shift emphasis from
the struggle against the overlordship of the white man to
the problems which a people, relieved of the necessity to
fight anew for its political freedom, faced with the advent
of that freedom.

If this American-Philippine method of instilling democ-
racy at the lower levels had been followed in Japan, for
example, who can say that Asia today would not be a
freer continent, with a better awareness of the promise
and the dangers of the future?

The new Russian propaganda centered on the so-called
"peace offensive" makes it more urgent that the West,
particularly the United States, continue to give assistance
to the underdeveloped countries on a basis of self -help and
mutual respect, and not as a special favor with political
strings attached, nor as a disguised vestige of colonial im-
perialism.

Ever since the Atlantic Charter, which gave the false
hope to Asia that it might benefit thereby, was signed
at the beginning of World War II, I have been advocating
a Charter for the Pacific based on a similar pattern. This
became all the more necessary after Winston Churchill,
one of the two co-authors of the Atlantic Charter, made it
painfully clear to the non-self-governing peoples of Asia
and Africa that the bright promise of that historical docu-
ment was not meant for them. As a result, I outlined the
blueprint for a Pacific charter in my book, Mother Amer-
ica, published before the founding of the United Nations.
If such a pattern had been followed, much of the misun-

261

derstanding and confusion that has proved a fatal barrier
to world peace might have been avoided.

The picture in Asia has changed radically since the At-
lantic Charter was signed. But in view of what Churchill
said, the changes took place in spite, and not because, of
the Atlantic Charter. It became obvious that we should
have a charter of freedom for the countries rimming the
Pacific if the area was to be saved for democracy.

More than once has the olive branch of understanding
been proffered across the Pacific by the Philippines, the
meeting place for half a century between East and West.

In 1949 the Philippine Government proposed that the
United States boldly assume leadership in establishing a
defensive system for Southeast Asia in the same way that
NATO already guaranteed the security of Western Eu-
rope. The suggestion was lightly passed over.

Despite America's indifference we insisted on our plan,
and in 1950, at Baguio, our mountain capital, a conference
which I had the privilege of organizing and over which I
presided, was held, with official representatives of Aus-
tralia, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, and
the Philippines. The meeting closed with the adoption of
this principle: "That in the consideration of the special
problems of South and Southeast Asia the point of view of
the peoples of this area be prominently kept in mind, by
any conference dealing with such problems, so that better
understanding and cordial relations may subsist between
the countries in the region and other countries of the
world." This conference was virtually unnoticed by the
American press.

262

Western leaders now recall rather wistfully that these
appeals were voiced some time ago by peoples who longed
to be understood by the greatest democracy in the world,
but who went unheard. The plea was heard instead by
Soviet Russia, which had plans of its own.

Five-power military talks between America, Great
Britain, France, New Zealand, and Australia were held in
1952, 1953, and 1954 to discuss the defense of Asia against
Communism. Why were Pakistan, the Philippines, and
Thailand, the three Asian nations now in alliance with the
West, not asked to join the discussions? Surely it would
have been useful to invite to the meeting Lieutenant Gen-
eral Jesus Vargas, able and courageous Filipino field com-
mander under President Mkgsaysay, who successfully
fought the Communists in the field. None of those in the
discussions actually fought them in the field as General
Vargas did. Yet when the United States insisted on in-
cluding the Philippines and Thailand in the talks, and
Great Britain refused, America gave in. On what grounds
we were excluded and denied the right to speak, we were
never told.

But here, again, even in this relatively minor incident,
we see the kind of dangerous blunder the United States
is almost always certain to make so long as it permits its
own Asian policy to be made in London or Paris instead
of basing it courageously on its own historic traditions of
liberty and on the pattern that it so wisely set in the
Philippines.

To get closer to the heart of Asia, America must use its
own heart more. The peoples of Asia will respond with

263

understanding and sympathy to the freedom-loving, the
generous-hearted, the deeply humane America of Wash-
ington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt;
on the other hand, nothing will more surely repel them
than an America that carelessly allows its escutcheon to be
blemished by the sins of its European allies.

Furthermore, it cannot be overemphasized that in the
recent past the judgment on Asian questions as well as
the Asian policy formulated by some of America's allies
have proved disastrous.

Let us review the events that led to and followed the
Manchurian conflict of 1931. It will be recalled that after
a suitable incident had been started by Japan, the latter
immediately undertook a major campaign for the conquest
of Manchuria. The League of Nations dispatched the Lyt-
ton Commission in the hope of finding a peaceful solution.
But the conquest of Manchuria was completed before the
arrival of the Commission.

The United States, though not a member of the League,
gave full support to the organization in its effort to end
the conflict. Public opinion in the United States was vir-
tually unanimous in denouncing the Japanese action as an
act of aggression, and Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson
based his policy on the system of collective security which
rested on the League Covenant and on the Paris Peace
Pact of 1928.

The Lytton Commission, however, thought differently.
It made all sorts of excuses for the Japanese aggression,
including the statement that "in Manchuria there are many
features without an exact parallel in other parts of the

264

world." While advocating an autonomous regime for Man-
churia, it concurred in Japan's claim that Manchuria was
its "life-line," and expressed concern that Japanese legiti-
mate interests there would be safeguarded.

The Lytton Commission, of course, reflected the policy
of Great Britain, which at that time had an alliance with
Japan. Its action gave grounds for the belief that General
Tanaka spoke the truth way back in 1927 when he said
that Japan had sounded out the European powers and had
secured from them the pledge of a free hand in Man-
churia.

Thus, in Manchuria, started the chain of Japanese
expansionism and aggression which in 1941, ten years
later, culminated in the Japanese aggression against
Southeast Asia.

What does this bit of history teach us? A great deal, if
we are willing to learn. Substitute Korea and Indochina
for Manchuria, and Communist China and Soviet Russia
for Japan in this context the other protagonists are the
same and the parallelism becomes startling indeed. New
Lyttons we now have to placate the aggressor and to rec-
ognize the fruits of aggression. How can anyone believe
that the results will be different this time and that the
United Nations, by appeasing Communist China, will reap
peace where the League of Nations reaped only the con-
tinuation of Japanese aggression?

If Secretary Stimson were still living, one wonders what
he would say to the Lord Lyttons of today. Though Stim-
son is dead, the perceptive intelligence which enabled
him to tag aggression and to oppose it from the beginning

265

has not vanished. His spirit lives in those who have the
courage to affirm the truth and to stand by the principles
and purposes of the United Nations despite the induce-
ments of political expediency and a false peace.
America should beware of the Lord Lyttons of 1955!

266

Chapter XVI

WE cannot overestimate the power of words. Communism
has been planted all over the world by words care-
fully scattered, like evil seeds. The bitterness and resent-
ment sown against the White Man are apparent in the
Red harvest. Russian guns and Russian soldiers did not
conquer. The real victor has been the power of the ex-
pressed Communist dream superimposed on fear, or rather
the false presentation of that dream, since once it is ac-
cepted, it changes to nightmare. This we had to remem-
ber in planning a charter for the Pacific.

In Asia we had dreamed and hoped for such a charter
since the Atlantic Charter was signed, when many of us
were still under the Japanese heel. Since a charter is made
up only of words, certain key words would be of para-
mount importance,

Japan then, and Russia now, had the magic-word hate-
formula in: "Asia for the Asians!" In each case this was
translated by these two aggressor nations to mean in turn
"Asia for the Japanese," and "Asia for the Russians."

We needed a word powerful enough to turn the edge
of the hate slogan. In the Philippines we have such a word.
It was given us by America with the pledge of independ-

267

ence, half a century ago. It gained the full force of its
power when we achieved that freedom. It was, and can be
again, the strongest ally of the West in the Far East. It is
the word "independence/' which means the right to be
free. That word enabled us to meet and defeat Commu-
nism in the Philippines.

Freedom, independence, democracy, were once synony-
mous terms in the Asian mind. They can be made so
again, when mutual understanding is achieved between
Asia and America. The Asian will believe in democracy
again when he has proof that it is democracy and not
White Imperialism under another name.

It was this not-altogether-unfounded suspicion that gave
the Japanese cry of "Asia for the Asians" the power to
launch the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was this same cry
that Molotov and Chou En-lai voiced again in Geneva,
and which turned more of Asia over to the Communists.

I also used that slogan, back in 1945 in San Francisco,
during the founding of the United Nations. I used it then
because I was fighting for democracy and for peace, and it
was plain that the key struggle in the newly-founded
United Nations would be that of imperialism versus inde-
pendence in Asia. The right place to fight out this ancient
contest was on the floor of the San Francisco Opera House.
It was of utmost importance that the Charter should reg-
ister the triumphant ideal of independence over colonial-
ism. For this reason I determined to fight for the inclusion
of the word "independence" in the chapter concerning
non-self-governing territories in the United Nations
Charter.

There were protests from the representatives of the

268

colonial powers. Britain, France, and the Netherlands
wanted the word "self-government" used instead. They
claimed it had the same meaning as the word "independ-
ence."

But as an Asian I knew these two words could never
hold the same meaning in the Asian mind. At that time
India, Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Phil-
ippines were still bound to the metropolitan countries and
hoped to be set free. The peoples of these countries were
still looking trustfully to America as the one great Western
nation capable of understanding their longings.

The people of the metropolitan countries, the Ameri-
cans, British, French, and Dutch, enjoyed independence
and seemingly took their freedom for granted. To explain
to their representatives at the founding Conference of the
United Nations the needs and longings of what had always
been considered only as a mass of dark, mysterious, in-
scrutable, and voiceless people, and in particular to focus
American attention upon the importance of including in
the Charter that one word, "independence," I too found
the "Asia for the Asians" slogan advantageous and made
full use of it at every opportunity during the founding of
the United Nations.

Against the representatives of the colonial powers I
argued that the term "self-government" did not fully ex-
press the hopes of the Asians, since self-government is
only the stage that prepares the way for independence,
and therefore the wording in the Charter must include
both self-government and independence.

The contest was long and at times embittered, but I
could not yield because I was deeply convinced of the

269

need for the concept and reality of independence. In the
effort to secure its inclusion I freely admitted many of
the benefits and advantages that colonialism had given the
people it rules, but that the time of colonialism had ended,
just as the divine rule of kings had ended, and that in the
evolution of humanity the right of any country to possess
another had reached its end, and that the poorest govern-
ment is better than a government that is not one's own.

The final fight for the inclusion of the word "independ-
ence" took place in the Trusteeship Committee. After I
had won my debate with Lord Cranborne of the United
Kingdom and left the floor, Harold Stassen sent over a
penciled note: Congratulations. We are proud of you.

Present among the observers that day was the late Dr.
Hamilton Holt, who had been at the Versailles Confer-
ence as advisor to President Wilson, and was at the time
president of Rollins College in Florida. He introduced
himself and offered an honorary degree from the college
"for what you have accomplished here today/*

The word "independence" is in the Charter of the
United Nations. It is only a word, and it may not seem
important to men who have lived all their lives as free
men. But to millions in Asia, that word held then and
holds still the hope of the eventual recognition of every
human right. The slogan of "Asia for the Asians" had
served its purpose in helping to secure that word for the
Charter.

I used it the rest of that year to aid my fight for inde-
pendence in Asia. The slogan served my purpose in Wash-
ington and in New York, on the floor of the Assembly,

270

on lecture platforms, in interviews all over the United
States, and in magazine articles and books.

In an article in Colliers entitled "Asia Must Be Free,"
I argued that Asia must be recognized as belonging to the
Asians in the same way that America had established the
Monroe Doctrine as a hands-off policy for the Western
hemisphere.

All this was in 1945 the year of the founding of the
United Nations.

I might have used that slogan again, five years later,
when in 1950 as Secretary of Foreign Affairs I was one of
the architects of foreign policy for the Philippines. I might
have made it the central theme of our policy. But by that
time nearly all the Asian nations held by the Western
powers had been given their freedom and the slogan no
longer had much meaning. I felt that to use it again at
such a late date would place an obstruction on the United
Nations struggle for world peace. Racial barriers are road-
blocks in the way of democracy.

So instead of the "Asia for Asians" slogan I emphasized
"nationalism," since that is the key word of Communism,
By doing this we stole the thunder of the Reds.

The slogan now, as used by Molotov, Chou En-lai or
other Communist representatives, can only be translated
to mean "Asia for the Communists." It has a sinister con-
notation on their lips.

But the power of the word "independence" has grown,
and today it is more important than ever before.

This was amply demonstrated at the time of the signing
in September, 1954, of the Southeast Asia Collective De-
fense Treaty, otherwise known as the Manila Pact, and its

271

accompanying fulfillment of our long chream, the Pacific
Charter.

For twelve years, many Asians and many Americans
( among the latter the late Wendell Willkie ) had pressed
the need for an agreement or Pacific Charter, to serve as
defense against our common enemy in the Pacific. Noth-
ing was done.

Now in April, 1954, came the evil news of Indochina
and the fall of Dienbienphu. The Western powers knew at
last, having been shown by the triumphant Communist
representatives at the Geneva Conference, that the Com-
munist tide in China could not be rolled back without
launching World War III.

The time for defense had passed. All this time, the West
had been on the defensive. The need now was to counter-
attack. The immediate need was to draw the line against
Communism in the Far East, to stay Russia in its jugger-
naut advance toward the Pacific defense line.

Now was the time to draw the line in Asia marking the
peril point: declaring that on this line democracy would
fight, and that any incident or threat beyond the line by
Soviet Russia would be considered an act of aggression
against the forces of democracy. There was a moral right
to draw this line in the Orient.

The meeting at Baguio in 1950, and subsequent meet-
ings among Asian leaders, had given proof that there was
in South and Southeast Asia an awareness of this need
and a strong preference for the principles and institutions
of freedom and democracy, as well as a tremendous reser-
voir of good will for the United States. It was to this

272

reservoir of good will and faith in democracy that the
West turned during the Geneva crisis.

Early in April, 1954, Secretary of State Dulles proposed
to President Magsaysay that a joint declaration be made
by the United States of America and interested powers in
Southeast Asia to serve notice on Soviet Russia that they
were in unity and to give warning that any further aggres-
sion in that region would not be tolerated. This was vir-
tually an acceptance by America four years later of the
proposal sent from Baguio in 1950.

As special envoy of the President of the Philippines in
Washington I was requested to transmit this proposal to
my government. I radiophoned President Magsaysay and
he agreed to sign a joint declaration. Here was our chance
to ask for the Asian equivalent of the Atlantic Charter
that had been for so long our hope in Asia.

The Filipinos knew the effect such a charter would have
in other parts of Asia. We knew that in the minds of all
Asians the problem of Indochina and all other invaded
lands, in sum, the problem of all Asia, presented not a
test of American military effectiveness, but a far more
serious test of the American faith in freedom and de-
mocracy.

The Asian reservoir of good will and faith in democ-
racy will not be kept filled by a show of military power.
It has been clearly demonstrated that military power does
not impress Asians that it can, indeed, impress them in
a negative way.

What can impress the Asian peoples is a readiness to
keep in mind their point of view. That point of view is,
basically, the desire to maintain their independence, to

273

assist others in achieving independence, and to preserve
peace in their own countries, their own continent, and
throughout the world.

This had to be considered in planning a Charter for the
Pacific.

It would have to be made clear that the nations sign-
ing such a charter were for the freedom and independence
of all peoples, including those of Asia. After all the fight-
ing, the sacrifices, the lives lost, and the promises made
this pledge had not been made good. America still stood
among the uncommitted. America, as the largest and most
powerful of the democratic nations, held highest rank
among the uncommitted in the eyes of Asia. This was a
misunderstanding that had to be cleared away before such
a charter could be made effective.

All this was in President Magsaysay's mind when Sec-
retary of State Dulles made the formal proposal that a
joint declaration to guarantee the security of Southeast
Asia be made. President Magsaysay's reply, therefore, to
the American representative was to the effect that while
the Filipinos were willing to join in making such a decla-
ration, the declaration should be the Asian equivalent of
the Atlantic Charter. "What you are proposing," he said,
"is not a political plan to cleave to in defiance of Com-
munism."

He said this not because he had any reservation against
signing, but because, as a successful fighter against Com-
munism, he knew that the only way to defeat Communism
in Asia or anywhere else was to give the people something
to fight for, not merely to fight against.

On April 17, in another trans-Pacific radiophone conver-

274

sation, President Magsaysay instructed me in Washington
to inform die State Department that the Philippines was
willing to join in a declaration to be issued by like-minded
states as a warning against further Communist aggression
in Southeast Asia, provided the declaration contained "an
affirmation of the rights of all peoples to freedom and in-
dependence."

In a press statement issued that same day by President
Magsaysay and released simultaneously in Manila and in
Washington, he emphasized that "the joint declaration, to
have maximum effectiveness, should approach as closely
as possible the guarantees of the Atlantic Charter/* and
said in conclusion, "it should be the Asian equivalent of
the Atlantic Charter."

So for the first time in history an Asian head of state
proposed a Charter for the Pacific similar to the Atlantic
Charter, and this proposal I duly transmitted to the State
Department.

Four days later, on April 21, I took advantage of an
invitation of the National Press Club of Washington to
address its members and to appeal to the American peo-
ple to support the stand taken by the President of the Phil-
ippines. My speech is reprinted at the end of this book.
In this speech I emphasized the need to fire the imagina-
tion of the people of Asia with such a charter in order to
convince them that America was not supporting colonial-
ism but was for the freedom of the peoples of Asia.

After this speech, which was inserted in the Congres-
sional Record and made the subject of an address on the
floor of the United States Senate by Senator Thye of Min-
nesota, I carried the proposal across the continent on a

275

speaking tour. I stressed the need of such a charter at the
commencement exercises of Rockhurst College in Kansas
City, where I was co-speaker with ex-President Truman
and was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. In
Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle, where I also received
degrees, I stressed the need of the Pacific Charter, and at
Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where I spoke on the
spot where Lincoln once spoke, and sat in his chair. Speak-
ing of the Charter for the Pacific on that spot, I felt his
presence.

These speeches attracted attention and a great deal of
editorial comment. They became the subject of a "debate'*
on the floor of the United States House of Representatives
on June 9 when Congressman John W. McCormack of
Massachusetts, Democratic minority floor leader, heartily
endorsed the Idea. His "opponent," the Republican Con-
gressman Walter H. Judd of Minnesota, who is consid-
ered one of the outstanding American experts on Far
Eastern affairs, supported McCormack, so what began
ostensibly as a debate ended as a two-party endorsement
of the Pacific Charter.

Senator Lehman of New York and Senator Kennedy of
Massachusetts and others took up the cause of the Charter,
so in ways both public and official, opinion in the United
States was being turned to the Pacific Charter.

It was at this time when the Geneva Conference was
proving to be a major Communist victory that Secretary
Dulles proposed the holding of the SEATO Conference
in Mianila.

This title, standing for the Southeast Asia Treaty Or-
ganization, is a misnomer, and gave the Communists ad-

276

ditional ammunition for the steady critical fire they poured
on all our plans. To label the conference as Southeast
Asian is misleading, since the United States, England,
New Zealand, Australia, and France were represented, and
none of these countries are in Southeast Asia. It is far
more accurate to call it the Manila Conference, and the
resulting treaty the Manila Pact.

Plans for the Manila Conference went ahead, and this
seemed an opportune time to ask the United States to
implement our Mutual Defense Treaty. The United States-
Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty was between the two
countries and had nothing to do with the Manila Pact.
It is a military treaty which I had negotiated in 1951
when I was Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and signed in
Washington. It is a guarantee that any attack on the
Philippines would be considered a threat to the security
of the United States and that in such an event the United
States would act "in accordance with its constitutional
processes."

This treaty, however, had never been properly imple-
mented, and on May 25, 1954, as the result of a conference
that I had with President Eisenhower on April 30, 1954,
on instructions from Manila, President Magsaysay and
Charles E. Wilson, the United States Secretary of Defense,
agreed on the creation of a joint Philippine-United States
council to implement this important agreement. Thus, two
meetings were held in Mianila in September.

On September 4, two days before tie opening of the
conference, the council met in Manila for the first time.
It was composed of Secretary of State Dulles for the
United States and Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs

277

and Vice President Carlos P. Garcia. They discussed the
responsibilities and obligations of their respective coun-
tries in case of aggression and implemented the 1951 Mu-
tual Defense Treaty.

It was in this council meeting, which was entirely sep-
arate from the Manila Conference two days away, that
Secretary Dulles made the historic statement that was by
far the most far-reaching and important one uttered dur-
ing the meetings in Manila.

Our Mutual Defense Treaty reads that an attack on one
country will be considered an attack on the security of the
other, and each will act in accordance with its "constitu-
tional processes/' Certain objectors had interpreted this
as a watered-down version of the NATO provision,
wherein it is stated that an attack on one country shall be
considered an attack on all and shall bring about an imme-
diate counterattack. Other critics had pointed out that,
the NATO nations all being white, Americans were quite
willing to act automatically in their mutual defense, while
a threat to an Asian country would be treated "in accord-
ance with constitutional processes/' implying a slower
process of deciding on retaliation and counterattack.

Some United States Senators had fought the NATO
commitment on the ground that it was a usurpation of the
power of Congress to declare war. So when our Mutual
Defense Treaty was negotiated, much later, the State De-
partment, fearing the same opposition, replaced the
NATO concept of "automatic" counterattack with the
milder term "constitutional processes."

This might have been a bitter disappointment to the
Filipino group supporting the NATO wording. Instead it

278

became the greatest triumph of the two meetings, for Sec-
retary Dulles had to make the special, historic announce-
ment that an attack on the Philippines by an aggressor
would bring about an "automatic" counterattack by the
United States.

This was the important word we wanted. It made no
difference that it was not in our Mutual Defense Treaty,
The statement had been made in open council by the rep-
resentative of the United States. It was formalized in an
exchange of notes between the two governments. It placed
our Mtatual Defense Treaty on the same level with the
North Atlantic Treaty.

Incidentally, it gave strength to President Magsaysay's
position with the Filipino people and showed them how
wise they had been to stay on democracy's side.

That one word again a single wordoutweighed many
guns.

So when the Manila Conference opened two days later,
to last four days (September 6-9), our delegates did not
have to insist upon the NATO type of treaty with its con-
cept of "automatic" counterattacks. We had been pledged
that word, in advance, by America.

This was the way we had dreamed it, since the first
attack was made by Japan. Here in Manila representatives
of the great Western powers and three of Southeastern
Asia were sitting together and discussing their common
danger and planning the long-hoped-for Charter of the
Pacific. Here were the Asian and the Western leaders
working together over the blueprint for democracy, not
in military alliance, but as the guardians of a freedom in
which every representative played his role in equal part-

279

nership. Here was our pinpoint country of the Philippines
able to voice all that it had learned through the long fight
and the bitter sacrifice, and here was the United States
sitting besides us as partner, advisor, and friend. Here was
our reward this equality and the right to speak on equal
terms which the Filipinos had won by fighting for de-
mocracy. We had reached the Manila Conference by way
of the Death March on Bataan and the tunnel of Corre-
gidor. For this, many generations of Filipinos had sac-
rificed, suffered, died.

I looked at leaders, white and brown, working together
on the blueprint for democracy and imagined the war
lords Malenkov and Molotov, Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-
tung watching from the outside and ignored. What a tri-
umph for freedom this Charter!

Here is the first draft of the Pacific Charter as proposed
by President Miagsaysay:

The Foreign Ministers of Southeast Asia and of the
United States

Desiring to establish a firm basis for common action to
maintain peace and security in Southeast Asia, in ac-
cordance with the purposes and principles of the United
Nations,

Convinced that common action to this end, in order to
be worthy and effective, must be inspired by the loftiest
principles of justice and liberty,

Do hereby proclaim the adherence of their respective
governments and peoples to the following principles:

FIRST, they uphold the principle of self-rule and the
right of peoples to self-government and independence;

SECOND, they are prepared to continue taking effective
practical measures to ensure the progress of peoples
towards self-rule and independence;

280

THIRD, they desire to collaborate fully with each other
and with other countries of this region in the economic,
social and cultural fields in order to bring about higher
living standards, economic progress and social security;

FOURTH, they are determined to act jointly and severally
to repel by every means within their power any attempt
to subvert the freedom or to destroy the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of the free and independent states of
Southeast Asia.

This is the Philippine conception of a Charter for the
Pacific, first announced publicly by President Magsaysay,
on April 17, 1954, introduced by me in various parts of
the United States on a lecture tour, supported now in the
Manila Conference by Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philip-
pines, and eventually hammered there into a shape ac-
ceptable to all, with the cooperation of the "colonial"
powers, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom, with
the United States and New Zealand acting as mediators.

The final text of the Pacific Charter is as follows:

The Delegates of the United States, Great Britain,
France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand and
the Philippines,

Desiring to establish a firm basis for common action to
maintain peace and security in Southeast Asia, and the
Southwest Pacific,

Convinced that common action to this end, in order
to be worthy and effective, must be inspired by the highest
principles of justice and liberty,

Do hereby Proclaim:

FIRST, in accordance with provisions of the United
Nations Charter, they uphold the principle of equal rights
and self-determination of peoples, and they will earnestly
strive by every peaceful means to promote self-govern-

281

ment and to secure independence of all countries whose
peoples desire it and are able to undertake its responsi-
bilities;

SECOND, they are each prepared to continue taking
effective practical measures to insure conditions favorable
to the orderly achievement of the foregoing purposes in
accordance with their constitutional procedures;

THIRD, they will continue to cooperate in economic,
social and cultural fields in order to promote higher living
standards, economic progress and social well-being in this
region;

FOURTH, as declared in the Southeast Asia Collective
Defense Treaty, they are determined to prevent or counter
by appropriate means any attempt in the treaty area to
subvert their freedom or to destroy their sovereignty or
territorial rights.

This is the Pacific Charter, a historic document which
by pledging the colonial powers to withdrawal and to the
granting of freedom to peoples not self-governing is the
final and clinching repudiation of Communist charges
against the West. Made after a decade of constant Com-
munist aggression and constant retreat on the part of the
ebbing forces of democracy, it is really the first diplomatic
offensive taken against Communism in Asia. It is the most
devastating answer that has been given to the Commu-
nistic lies by the free world.

This Charter if faithfully carried out will defeat Com-
munism in Asia because its elements are hope, under-
standing, and faith elements that are certain death to the
Communist ideal.

The Manila Pact for mutual defense to halt aggression,
which was drawn up in Manila, approved and signed by

282

the eight nations, was based on mutual defense, economic
cooperation and the moral principles laid down in the Pa-
cific Charter. (See the end of the book for a copy of the
treaty. ) Its foundation is the Pacific Charter.

The Manila Pact was the third of the regional collec-
tive-security agreements concluded since World War II.
Hie first two, NATO and the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro,
were made between states in Europe and the two Ameri-
cas which had been linked for two centuries by tradition,
culture, and history.

There were no such ties between the European world
and Asia. Beyond our fifty-often turbulent-years of the
American rule in the Philippines, we who met in Manila
had no common bonds. We were drawn together by an
unsentimental sense of mutual danger to our freedom and
our lives. So the Mianila Pact is an advance over NATO
and Rio.

We were piecing out the pattern for freedom in Manila.
Freedom from fear. Freedom from want. Freedom from
the Communist terror. Freedom from aggression, in any
form, by any country. Guarantees were made in good
faith, by eight separate and dissimilar countries, that an
offense against one be considered an offense to all.

This in sum is the purpose of the Manila Pact, which,
together with the Pacific Charter, was the beginning of
democracy's counterattack against Communism.

Our conference was not without recognition from Mos-
cow. All through the days that the Treaty and the Pact
were being discussed in Manila, an intensive bombard-
ment was being carried on by the Communists against
Quemoy, an island seventy miles off the Chinese main-

283

land. Evidently it was intended as preparation for an at-
tack on Formosa. This was typical Communist timing,
calculated to intimidate sucli countries as Thailand and
the Philippines which lie in the path of Communist aggres-
sion in Southeast Asia.

In exactly the same fashion the Communists had timed
the fall of Dienbienphu with the Geneva Conference. It
was calculated to intimidate the delegates there, and it
did. As a result, Communist China took over the Confer-
ence with high hand, and the thoroughly cowed demo-
cratic forces were forced to sue for a dubious peace. The
Indochina truce signed in July was Russia's greatest vic-
tory. Gains present and future for the Communists were
piled up at Geneva. It is impossible to know how much
harm was done there to the side of freedom.

When a political conference is being held and a military
operation is being carried out at the same time, democ-
racy is likely to be left voiceless. That was the way it had
been done in Geneva. But in Manila we stood our ground.

Publication of the Manila Pact in the world press
brought a screech of protest from the Soviet Foreign
Ministry. On September 14 official criticism of the Manila
defense agreement was broadcast over the Moscow radio.

I should like to quote that statement in full but it is
many thousands of words too long. Faithful followers of
the Communist line and viewers and listeners on radio
and television who have heard the Soviet line for years
will know its arguments in advance and judge its claims
according to their own beliefs. For my part, it affects ine
as Vishinsky's statements did on a day we convened in the
United Nations with a wild hope of achieving a peace

284

pledge from Russia, and heard instead a series of prattling
remarks about the Russians being the only "true lovers of
peace/' It was unbelievable, that speech by Vishinsky in
the hours when we were facing what seemed to be certain
war. The text of the Moscow statement is equally unbe-
lievable. We of the democracies and the Communists face
two ways. We cannot see things the same way.

Among other charges, the Communists said the Manila
Conference was in itself an act of aggression. (Russia con-
siders anything that strengthens the aims of peace an
aggression against Russia.) The Manila Pact, according
to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, served "to aggravate the
international situation" and was a "menace to die security
of Communist China."

The conference, it was charged, had been organized
"on the initiative and under the pressure of the U.S.A.,
and under the pretext of defending the countries of South-
east Asia against Communism/' Under this pretext, "in-
tensive preparations have been made for the forming of a
new aggressive military bloc in that area/' We of the
Philippines only wish that part were true! No proviso has
been made to back the Manila Pact with arms.

The Soviet diatribe filled seven columns of fine print in
the New York Times. It bksted the "United States-in-
itiated" Pact as an aggressive military bloc directed against
"all the countries of Asia in general and against China in
particular." It wound up with the stern admonition:

The Soviet Government cannot consider the conference
in Manila and the signing of the treaty on the defense of
Southeast Asia otherwise than actions directed against
the interests of security in Asia and the Far East and at

285

the same time against the interests of freedom and na-
tional independence of the peoples of Asia.

States-initiators of the creation of the mentioned new
military bloc in the area of Southeast Asia and the Pacific
take upon themselves the entire responsibility for actions
which are in gross contradiction to the tasks of strengthen-
ing peace.

In the sharp repartee brought on between Russia and
the United States by the signing of the Pact, Secretary of
State Dulles had the final word. In his report on the Treaty
to the American people he termed the Communist charges
as "tragically revealing of their ambitions."

Both the Manila Pact and the Pacific Charter are in
themselves a refutation of Soviet Russia's accusations
which are based, as always, on the most plausible and yet
palpable lies.

To begin with, Pact and Charter were not "initiated"
primarily by the United States. The Asians who signed
were not the dupes of a group of conniving Western pow-
ers determined to "perpetuate colonialism in Asia/' as the
Communists claim is the purpose of the Manila Treaty.

In 1950, during the Southeast Asia Conference at
Baguio, an important principle had been established when
the nations meeting there passed the unanimous resolution
that when matters relating to Asia were discussed by the
Big Powers, the Asian nations concerned should be con-
sulted.

It was at Baguio that we first proposed, and were dis-
appointed in not achieving, a pact for the Pacific, and a
pledge of democracy for Asia. Now, four years later, the

286

precepts implanted at Bagnio provided the basis of the
Manila Conference.

In Manila, in 1954, Asians with new equality and with
equal voice conferred and signed a Treaty and a Charter
with representatives of the United States, the United
Kingdom, and France; so far had we advanced along the
way of democracy. This meeting showed our fellow Asians
that the way to equality is not by sitting with crossed feet
contemplating tibe lotus.

Against the Communist lie that the Treaty was planned
to perpetuate colonialism, we need point only to the prin-
ciples in the Pacific Charter providing for self-determina-
tion and for economic progress as the means to defeat
Communism.

Refuting the "act of aggression" claims made by the
Communists against the Manila Pact are its palpable
truths. It is defensive in purpose, aimed only at actual
aggression, and provides for action to be taken against
subversive action.

But of even greater importance than the Manila Treaty
is the Pacific Charter. Before the Conference was held in
Manila, certain neutral leaders in Asia referred contemp-
tuously to Thailand, Pakistan, and the Philippines as mere
"puppets" of the colonial powers, and prophesied that we
would let these powers dictate to us in the conference
since we lacked the "courage and guts" to speak for our-
selves and for Asia. The conference itself was referred to
as a hocus-pocus device intended to perpetuate colonial-
ism in Asia under the mask of good will, and these charges,
Communist-inspired, had cast a great deal of doubt over

287

the areas containing the millions of "uncommitted" peo-
ples of Asia who are still neutral.

In answer to these charges, the Pacific Charter offered
by President M&gsaysay was like a flag of freedom being
raised again over ground considered lost, and it is in many
ways most significant in Asian minds than the Treaty
itself.

The Asian delegates had firm ideas of what they consid-
ered to be right and necessary, and were not slow in mak-
ing their wishes known. The original draft of the Preamble
of the Treaty read that the signatures of the representa-
tives were desired "to strengthen the fabric of peace."
The Filipinos insisted that two more words be inserted, so
that the line read "the fabric of peace and freedom." They
also insisted that a new article be inserted to pledge all
the signatories to the "freedom and independence of the
peoples of Asia."

These are our victories in the Manila Conference words
written by Filipinos in their own blood. "Freedom . . .
self-determinationindependence."

These gains proved to the rest of Asia that we are not
puppets. We had asserted ourselves in the conference.
We had shown that the Western powers were not dicta-
torial but that they came to Manila with open minds. They
had shown their belief, and had underwritten that belief,
that to fight Communism successfully, all colonialism
must come to an end. So on the flag hoisted at Manila by
President M'agsaysay we can read those tremendously im-
portant words: Freedom . . . independence . . . self -deter-
mination.

These words we can point out to the so-called neutrals,

288

the "uncommitted," and to the Communists, who have
refused to believe that White Men would ever underwrite
such promises in Asia.

We can say, too: Such things are not achieved by sit-
ting back with folded arms! Equality can be won only by
those who are willing to stand on their feet and face as
equals their fellow men. We in the Philippines earned the
right to be equal and free when we defeated Communism
and stayed on democracy's side, and we sat face to face
with the great white powers in Manila.

289

Chapter XVII

AS I write this I am again in the United States, and I
find that many Americans believe the world crisis to be
over. For the first time since the Japanese invaded Man-
churia almost a quarter century ago, there are no war
headlines in the American press that directly concern
America. To many this seems a time to relax and enjoy
peace.

It may be wise to remember that the Communists never
relax. They plan best and prepare most between wars.

Now is the time to perfect the political, economic, and
military plan to counterattack Communism, if democracy
is to be saved.

A vital point in the political phase of such a plan is that
the United States must win, or in certain cases retain, the
friendship of the non-Communist peoples of Europe, Asia,
and South America that are not already bound to the
United States by treaties of mutual defense and security.

The imperative need now is to commit them irrevocably
to the side of democracy, that America may not be left
as its own final outpost, beleaguered by a relentless enemy
that will leave America powerless, no matter how many
defenses from within she may devise.

290

The proffers of friendship I have cited from Asia to
America should convince the Americans that there is no
reason for cynicism or despair in attacking the problem of
the "uncommitted" peoples of Asia. The Asian signatories
of the Pacific Charter have given proof of the way their
peoples feel

The great enemy to peace in Asia which in time must
mean world peace is not Communism. It is colonial im-
perialism. The free Asian countries and those which won
independence since World War II Thailand, India, the
Philippines, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, Indonesia, and
South Korea are not committed to Communism. On the
contrary, all are fighting Communism from within.

The Manila Pact and the Pacific Charter place three
of these Asian countries on democracy's side. These should
prove to millions of resentful and reluctant Asians that
democracy has taken its final stand against imperialism
in any form, and that the last vestiges of colonialism will
go. Millions of Asians who have been on the verge of ac-
cepting Communism, hitherto unknown to them, over the
colonialism which they have known and hated, now have
proof that democracy is really democracy, and that
Communism is only the hated colonialism in a new and
more terrible form. With others, the reluctance is still due
to the belief, which only the activation of the Pacific
Charter can remove, that to side with the United States is
to side with colonialism.

Another reason behind the reluctance of many of these
peoples to commit themselves is that they believe that if
they side with either the United States or Soviet Russia
they will be pushing the world toward World War III.

291

My explanation of Nehru's refusal to place India on the
side of the democracies is this: The Indians know that
America will never attack them, and that America is in
fact incapable of a sneak attack. But they cannot be sure
of such restraint on the part of Soviet Russia, which is
India's next-door neighbor. One of the grim advantages
of a dictatorship such as Russia is that the dictator can
order a sneak attack at midnight and another country is
ruined permanently by morning. No democratic leader
has such power.

The same explanation may apply to Burma, Ceylon,
and Indonesia. They, too, are part of the neutral wall
standing between the democracies and Soviet aggression.

It was a disappointment to many, including myself, that
the Manila Pact did not provide for more definite military
planning to repel Communist aggression. It expressed de-
termination to resist aggression in the treaty area, but it
created no military machinery with which to repel such
aggression ( despite the blatant accusations by Russia that
that had been done!). I should like to see specified units
kept on the alert by the free nations to deal at any time
with Communist acts of aggression in Asia, and impetus
given the program for training native armies in Asian
countries to defend their countries from Communist attack
either from outside or from within.

Added to Communist armed aggression, and a far
greater danger, is the Communist policy in support of the
promotion of international trade, and of participating in
the United Nations programs of economic and technical
aid to help raise the standards of living of the underde-
veloped countries. The competition for the minds of the

292

Asian peoples now definitely includes a competition for
their stomachs, their desire for material well-being.

It would not entail too great a sacrifice on democracy's
side to make the hideously depressed areas of Southeast
Asia an economic show window for the world, as the
Philippines was made a political show window for Asia
by the United States. I realize this seems like a harsh
suggestion to offer America, which finds itself surrounded
everywhere by starving faces and outstretched palms. But
to develop key countries about to yield to Communism
because they are poverty-ridden and starving; to loan
them economic and agricultural experts; to enable them
to have power plants and agricultural machines instead
of guns this is a small price for democracy to pay in
exchange for the peace and freedom of Asia.

There is another major point in the plan to stop the
Communist advance that needs to be mentioned. The
Communist campaign of hatred for all whites has had
much success. But when in Manila white leaders and
brown sat together and with equal voice worked out the
Pacific Charter and the Manila Pact, much of the poison
in that hate was drawn.

More was drawn by the unanimous decision of the
United States Supreme Court holding that segregation in
schools, due to color, was unconstitutional. That decision
has had a galvanizing effect in Asia and Africa.

The propaganda against white supremacy had provided
Communism with its strongest ammunition. Always, when
a Russian delegate spoke in the United Nations concern-
ing the American claim to democracy, the opening attack
was a sneering, "But what about their Negro problem?

293

How can you say America believes in freedom and equal-
ity when Negroes are discriminated against?" This argu-
ment has been weakened by the anti-segregation verdict
Once more the democratic, the Christian, word had proved
more powerful than any bomb. It is a telling example of
the way America can successfully wage its own crusade
against Communism.

America has every right and need to repel Communist
aggression, from the outside or from within. She has also
the moral right and the need to quell hysteria within her
own boundaries, and not to replace vigilance with panic.

The hysteria of fear against Communism has been en-
gendered, first, by politics, since it serves the purpose of
a few politicians to appear before their constituents as
fighters against Communism; and second, by business, be-
cause it serves certain business elements to blame every
slump and strike on Communism. Either method makes
for misunderstanding and panic.

These were the tactics that served Hitler and his inner
circle when they persecuted the Jews, with resulting na-
tional distrust and demoralization inside Germany, and of
neighbor turned against neighbor.

Panic has nothing to do with a cautious and effective
defense against Communism. To fail to recognize the
insidious disease of Communism does not make it less
dangerous, but to accentuate panic and distrust doesn't
either.

America does need, however, to sell a recognition of
her own greatness to Americans and to the rest of the
world. It is inconceivable that the greatest nation in the
world today should have sold itself short to so many. All

294

over the world there is criticism, skilfully leveled against
America by the Communists and their sympathizers, and
no answers are given and no defense is made. Her nearest
neighbors are being fed the poison of hatred and con-
tempt for America. America, grand-master of advertising,
is not trying hard enough to sell itself.

Only the blind will say that America has no need to
propagandize itself, since it is the world's most powerful
nation. America has made of advertising a science, an art,
and a tremendous source of private wealth. Why not use
some of that talent on America? Why not brief American
tourists before they visit other countries, as American
boys were briefed before entering foreign countries, dur-
ing the war? Why not give official recognition to the
power of good will that can put an end to the cheap Com-
munist propaganda being directed so carefully, so steadily,
to such countries as Mexico and Guatemala, next door to
the United States? Why not pipeline some of America's
great power to develop respect and good will into Asia?

When Fil- Americans were trapped like rats in the tun-
nel on Corregidor, our dying President Quezon sent a final
command from that tunnel to our soldiers fighting on
Bataan.

"You must hold, and hold, and hold."

I have heard those words in my own mind many times
since then. The Philippines was conquered by Japan, but
the Filipinos did not cease to fight. The Philippines was
infiltrated by Russian agents and Russian propaganda, but
the Filipinos held.

295

We fought our fight from the inside. Russian invasion
may next come to us from the outside, if other countries
fall. In that dread event, once more, we will try to hold.
Can we, if the rest of Asia goes?

I am not decrying the danger. I have stood too close to
the Communist threat to want one iota of vigilance to
relax. Democracy must be every minute on the alert.

This we have learned from the Filipino fight for free-
domthat we can fight Communism and preserve democ-
racy only where the citizens of the country possess two
attributes: vigilance and the willingness to sacrifice.

When a nation is alert, when it has men ready to come
forward to meet danger in the moment of need then only
can a country remain free.

I have written this story of a new and tiny struggling
Republic^ victory over Communism because it offers
the best evidence so far of what can be done to fight
Communism from within. Ours was a fight waged and
won by the people themselves. Not with guns, planes, or
atom bombs, but with free ballots and with faith in free-
dom was Communist infiltration and subversion stopped
in the Philippines.

Which is to say, by democracy!

Our fight against Communism which ended with the
surrender of Huk Supremo Luis Taruc has in it certain
basic lessons which may be applied for use against Com-
munism in any country in the world. Yes, even in America,
where Americans do not need to be resold democracy! It
is not new to them. They have possessed it since 1776.
But faith in democracy must be continually fed, and the

296

spirit of democracy kept in constant action, if Communism
is to be stopped in its attempt to take the world.

Before the Filipinos defied Communism they had to be
recharged with faith in democracy, which had been lost
to them by postwar confusion and greed.

When our government was weak and incompetent and
graft-ridden, the people lost faith. They protected Tarac.
They found excuses for Communism.

When the government changed and the Filipinos
elected their own President, and were made to realize that
intelligence and honesty had taken public office, from that
day on they refused to hide Taruc. They turned against
Communism. They fought for democracy.

The final victories of our crusade are the Manila Pact
and the Pacific Charter.

These are the basic elements of that crusade;
Cut the navel cord that joins the subversive groups to
the masses and the subversives cannot exist. Clean out
graft and incompetence from the government-the filth
Communism feeds upon and Communism cannot survive.
Try it elsewhere in Asia in Europe in America. It
will work anywhere. It will be as effective on a world
scale as it was in the Philippines.

People will fight for freedom when they have a stake
in that freedom.

So before military alliances are formed between nations,
the people themselves must first be inspired with the
principles for which they are to fight

One United States Congressman said to me when I was
President of the United Nations General Assembly:
"You can't fight Communism with words."

No, not perhaps with mere words. But by building faith
through the enunciation of certain unassailable moral
principles, it can be done.

We saw it done in the Philippines!

298

Afterword

THIS I envision for Asia:

A mighty continent that has found its soul at last, after
a period of revolutionary upheaval.

Having broken the mold of its ancient civilization, it is
feverishly at work to fashion a new way of thinking and
living for its numerous children in the atomic age.

Rejecting both the materialism that would utterly
change its basic spiritual drive and the anachronism that
would throw it back to a lost and jor gotten age, Am faces
the future sure of itself, unafraid,

Asia will decide the course which human history uM
take in the next millennium.

Asia will cast the deciding vote between freedom aid
Communism.

It is for America of the present day to decide whether
Asia will be a partner or an enemy in the great task that
lies ahead for all the human race.

299

Appendix A

In the speech made before the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C., on April 21, 1954, General Romulo said
in part:

President Magsaysay won fame among our people as a
jhter for the freedom and security of his country, first against
the Japanese invaders and later against the Huis, Therefore,
as President, he may be expected to be uncompromising in
the pursuit of these objectives. Nevertheless, when he says,
as he does in his latest statement on the Indochina situation,
that the political element of that problem is of great concern
to the Philippines as an Asian nation, he does so not out of
mental reservation but out of a clear understanding of the
basic issues that are involved in the conflict

The conflict in Southeast Asia involves not merely rich lands
and strategic territories. It involves human beings and their
God-given aspirations to a better life in larger freedom, Presi-
dent Magsaysay, therefore, recognizes that Philippine partici-
pation in any joint action against the Communist threat in
Indochina must have as powerful a justification as the relent-
less campaign which is being pursued at home under his
personal direction against the internal enemies of the country's
freedom and security. If, as may eventually be necessary, such
joint action should require direct military cooperation, then
it must be made clear to the Filipino people that such action

301

is being undertaken not merely against something but for
something, namely, the right of the Indochinese peoples to
freedom and independence.

The tradition and history of the Filipino people would re-
quire this political motivation as a necessary precondition for
the united action that is contemplated in Southeast Asia. I
think it is true to say that this would be equally true of the
American people, whose own traditions of liberty cannot al-
low them to ignore the fundamental right of self-determination
which lies at the heart of the Indochina conflict.

It has been said that there is need for an Asian equivalent
of NATO in Europe. The comparison is based on what appear
to be considerations of a strictly military character. President
Magsaysay has made what is undoubtedly a most pertinent
observation regarding this proposal. While recognizing the
importance of arrangements that might be made to insure the
military security of the region, he has introduced the political
element which alone can give meaning to any security arrange-
ments in Southeast Asia. Instead of invoking NATO, he has
gone somewhat farther back in history to invoke the Atlantic
Charter. He is thus the first statesman to refer to a document
which enshrined the ideals of the Allied Powers of World War
II and to insist that those ideals be made applicable to Asia.

The four freedoms which were guaranteed under the At-
lantic Charter are not a dead letter. In the context of the
struggle in Asia they possess startling relevance. This is especi-
ally true when it is recalled that Winston Churchill had made
it plain that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to Asia. It is
fitting that the head of state of the first Asian country to
achieve freedom after World War II should invoke the prin-
ciples of the Atlantic Charter as the pillars which must support
and sustain the contemplated united action of the free states
of Asia and Europe against Communism. In effect, what Presi-
dent Magsaysay is saying to America and to the West is this:
"In order to defend Southeast Asia against the Communist
menace, we need not only the armaments and the manpower

302

which could be established under a Pacific NATO, but also
the principles and the faith which can only be aroused by the
reiteration of the four freedoms of the Atlantic Charter."

I stress these two statements on a burning international
topic of the day because it shows Ramon Magsaysay in a new
light and it throws into bold relief what the new look in the
Philippines really is. Here is a man of the people, one who
sprung from the masses, who, with his native intuition and
unalloyed patriotism, senses an imminent danger to his country.
He did not pussyfoot. He acted. He knows that his country
cannot be secure with the forces of Communism on the ram-
page in Asia. And as one of the first truly Asian leaders, he is
of pure Malayan stock, elected overwhelmingly in an uncon-
taminated popular election, he strikes at the root of the Asian
revolution and speaking for the masses whence he came
proposes the equivalent of the Atlantic Charter for Asia.

You once had a President here in Washington who also
came from the people, who took over at a critical time, when
the head of the Nation had to be an expert in international
affairs as well as in domestic problems. Your history readings
will tell you that that man, in his study just up the street, was
not highly regarded by the so-called cultured statesmen of
the day because he came from the people. Yet America was
saved, at home and abroad, by that man, who applied to his
task the great touchstone of what the people wanted and of
what he as a man of the people knew that the people wanted.
Abraham Lincoln did not govern by what was accepted as the
book of government. Lincoln fought and led the fight against
disunion because he saw the danger to the Nation and to the
people in disunion. He saved America.

On a smaller stage, yet one just as significant, Magsaysay
is fighting for the salvation of his people. The issue as he sees
it is not the danger of disunion, or only partly that It is the
disrupting influence of international Communism that Mag-
saysay sees as the great problem, the major threat to his people
because he has fought the Communists and he knows what

303

they want, and what their program means. His devotion to the
basic principle of serving the people is closely linked with his
conviction that Communism constitutes the greatest threat to
the people. As he sees the problem in an unorthodox way, so
he tackles his solutions. Like Lincoln, or should I say, after
the manner of Lincoln, he is not governing by the book. He
writes his own book, and in doing so he gives democracy a
deeper meaning, a stronger implementation.

304

Appendix B

THE SOUTHEAST ASIA COLLECTIVE DEFENSE TBEATY

The Parties to this Treaty,

Recognizing the sovereign equality of all the Parties,

Reiterating their faith in the purposes and principles set
forth in the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to
live in peace with all peoples and all governments,

Reaffirming that, in accordance with the Charter of the
United Nations, they uphold the principle of equal rights and
self-determination of peoples, and declaring that they will
earnestly strive by every peaceful means to promote self-
government and to secure the independence of all countries
whose peoples desire it and are able to undertake its respon-
sibilities,

Desiring to strengthen the fabric of peace and freedom and
to uphold the principles of democracy, individual liberty and
the rule of law, and to promote the economic well-being
and development of all peoples in the treaty area,

Intending to declare publicly and formally their sense of
unity, so that any potential aggressor will appreciate that the
Parties stand together in the area, and

Desiring further to coordinate their efforts for collective
defense for the preservation of peace and security,

Therefore agree as follows:

305

ARTICLE I

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the
United Nations, to settle any international disputes in which
they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner
that international peace and security and justice are not en-
dangered, and to refrain in their international relations from
the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the
purposes of the United Nations.

ARTICLE II

In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this
Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of con-
tinuous and effective self-help and mutual aid will maintain
and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist
armed attack and to prevent and counter subversive activities
directed from without against their territorial integrity and
political stability.

ARTICLE III

The Parties undertake to strengthen their free institutions
and to cooperate with one another in the further development
of economic measures, including technical assistance, designed
both to promote economic progress and social well-being and
to further the individual and collective efforts of governments
toward these ends.

ARTICLE IV

L Each Party recognizes that aggression by means of armed
attack in the treaty area against any of the Parties or against
any State or territory which the Parties by unanimous agree-
ment may hereafter designate, would endanger its own peace
and safety, and agrees that it will in that event act to meet the
common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.

306

Measures taken under this paragraph shall be immediately
reported to the Security Council of the United Nations.

2. If, in the opinion of any of the Parties, the inviolability
or the integrity of the territory or the sovereignty or political
independence of any Party in the treaty area or of any other
State or territory to which the provisions of paragraph 1 of
this Article from time to time apply is threatened in any way
other than by armed attack or is affected or threatened by any
fact or situation which might endanger the peace of the area,
the Parties shall consult immediately in order to agree on the
measures which should be taken for the common defense.

3. It is understood that no action on the territory of any
State designated by unanimous agreement under paragraph
1 of this Article or on any territory so designated shall be
taken except at the invitation or with the consent of the
government concerned.

ARTICLE v

The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of
them shall be represented, to consider matters concerning the
implementation of this Treaty. The Council shall provide for
consultation with regard to military and any other planning
as the situation obtaining in the treaty area may from time to
time require. The Council shall be so organized as to be able
to meet at any time.

ARTICLE VI

This Treaty does not affect and shall not be interpreted as
affecting in any way the rights and obligations of any of the
Parties under the Charter of the United Nations or the respon-
sibility of the United Nations for the maintenance of inter-
national peace and security. Each Party declares that none of
the international engagements now in force between it and
any other of the Parties or any third party is in conflict with

307

the provisions of this Treaty, and undertakes not to enter into
any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.

ARTICLE VII

Any other State in a position to further the objectives of
this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the area may,
by unanimous agreement of the Parties, be invited to accede
to this Treaty. Any State so invited may become a Party to
the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the
Government of the Republic of the Philippines. The Govern-
ment of the Republic of the Philippines shall inform each of
the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession.

ARTICLE VIII

As used in this Treaty, the "treaty area" is the general area
of Southeast Asia, including also the entire territories of the
Asian Parties, and the general area of the Southwest Pacific
not including the Pacific area north of 21 degrees 30 minutes
north latitude. The Parties may, by unanimous agreement,
amend this Article to include within the treaty area the
territory of any State acceding to this Treaty in accordance
with Article VII or otherwise to change the treaty area.

ARTICLE IX

1. This Treaty shall be deposited in the archives of the
Government of the Republic of the Philippines. Duly certified
copies thereof shall be transmitted by that government to the
other signatories.

2. The Treaty shall be ratified and its provisions carried
out by the Parties in accordance with their respective con-
stitutional processes. The instruments of ratification shall be
deposited as soon as possible with the Government of the

308

Republic of the Philippines, which shall notify all of the other
signatories of such deposit.

3. The Treaty shall enter into force between the States
which have ratified it as soon as the instruments of ratification
of a majority of the signatories shall have been deposited, and
shall come into effect with respect to each other State on the
date of the deposit of its instrument of ratification.

ARTICLE X

This Treaty shall remain in force indefinitely, but any
Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of
denunciation has been given to the Government of the Re-
public of the Philippines, which shall inform the Governments
of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denuncia-
tion.

ARTICLE XI

The English text of this Treaty is binding on the Parties,
but when the Parties have agreed to the French text thereof
and have so notified the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines, the French text shall be equally authentic and
binding on the Parties.

UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The United States of America in executing the present
Treaty does so with the understanding that its recognition
of the effect of aggression and armed attack and its agreement
with reference thereto in Article IV, paragraph 1, apply only
to communist aggression but affirms that in the event of other
aggression or armed attack it will consult under the provisions
of Article IV, paragraph 2.

In witness whereof, the undersigned Plenipotentiaries have
signed this Treaty.

Done at Manila, this eighth day of September, 1954.

309

this

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