Manila March

Street cars in Manila stopped suddenly to let crew and passengers run in mad panic one day last week. In mad panic storekeepers bolted their doors. In mad panic constables fled from main streets. In mad panic soldiers on guard at the palace, where President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines was secluded, flourished weapons against the saddest paraders Manila had ever seen. Chanting "Give us Liberty or Give us Death," flaunting the same cry on placards, 235 lepers who are normally cooped up in Manila's San Lazaro Hospital marched through the city's streets, with no one daring to hinder them.

At the palace, where President Quezon continued to be "in conference," the leprous demonstrators orated, presented a petition: "Doctors say leprosy is not contagious. Let us go home! We want our wives and husbands and children. LET us GO HOME. Besides, we want to be paid while we are in the hospital. LET US GO HOME."

Having said their say, the lepers reformed their parade line, decorously marched back to confinement.

Knowing that leprosy is not very contagious, Manila's chief health officials quickly appeared at San Lazaro to placate its inmates. The Philippine Government, they intimated, lacks money to pay institutional lepers immediately. On the other hand, the Government is building regional leprosaria where lepers may live near their kin. As soon as doctors pronounce a leper cured he will be freed. But only one out of 20 lepers may expect to be cured. Therefore, the other 19 had better make the best of confinement. The Government gives them vegetable gardens to tend, occupations to perform, diversions. Children do not inherit leprosy. But they may catch it by associating with their parents. Therefore, scientists have decided that lepers had better not marry.

Exalted by the world-wide attention which they achieved, relaxed by the bold doings of the day, San Lazaro's lepers resumed their repetitious chores and diversions.

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