Why Carry a Pistol?

The U.S. gave the Philippines something more than political independence: an imitative regard for "the American way." Filipinos take it to mean hustle and enterprise. Their islands are booming. War-battered Manila is largely restored, with gleaming new buildings sprouting up from rubble. Herds of shiny cars weave through the downtown traffic, spin along the wide boulevard around the bay. Filipinos have adopted some other symbols, too: jukeboxes blare U.S. tunes by day and neon signs glow in profusion at night. In the once-gutted Great Eastern Hotel, new robin's-egg-blue elevators shoot up to a cool, spacious ballroom.

The boom has a foundation. Through the islands, hemp and copra production is steeply up; canefields converted to rice and cotton during the war have been turned back to-more profitable sugar; refineries are going full blast; inter-island shipments are heavier than prewar.

New President. The darkest blot on the Philippine idyl is the two-year-old insurrection of the Hukbalahaps* of central Luzon. Although they are led by Communists, most Huks (pronounced hooks) are still (as the Chinese Communists once pretended to be) basically discontented farmers. The main demand of the Huks is for abolition of the absentee landlord system; or, failing that, for enforcement of an already existing rice tenancy law (70% for the tenant, 30% for the landlord). The late President Manuel Roxas refused their demands, unseated seven Congressmen sympathetic to the Huks. The Philippines' fat, hard-driving new President Elpidio Quirino thought he would change all that. For two years no high government official had entered Huk territory without a formidable escort. Quirino made a quick but thorough tour of the disturbed areas, without fanfare and with no other vehicle than his own sleek Packard. In broiling La Paz, he spotted a stooped little man whom he himself, when Secretary of the Interior, had discharged as mayor (for insubordination) twelve years before. From the man's cartridge belt dangled a huge pistol.

"Why are you carrying a pistol?" asked the President.

"I am the ex-mayor," the man said.*

"Didn't I once suspend you for failing to follow government orders?"

The man hung his head, nodded.

"Who is the mayor here now?"

"My nephew."

"Tell your nephew not to allow politics to interfere with his duty to the people, so I won't have to suspend him too."

New Leaf. After surveying the disaffection and devastation in the central Luzon provinces, President Quirino was back in Manila last week. Said he: "I made the trip to learn exactly what the people expect from the government and what they have against it. . .I think they are ready for the government and officials to turn over a new leaf." Quirino ordered the constabulary to withdraw its patrols, not fight unless attacked. To Luis Taruc, the Huk commander, he sent word that he was ready to offer a general amnesty if the Huks would turn in their guns. But lean Communist Luis Taruc was not planning to let the Huks do anything of the kind. He sent word back this week that he was ready for "revolution, if this is the only remaining alternative."

*From Hukbo ng bayan laban sa hapon, meaning People's Army against Japan.

*In one of his movies the late great Comedian W. C. Fields was asked why he talked so loud. "I always talk loud," Fields explained. "I'm the sheriff."

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