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There would be speeches, flag-raising, planes in the morning sky, and the distant echoes of 21-gun salutes. Crack troops of the battle-seasoned Philippine Army of 40,000, which the U.S. returned to Philippine command June 30—after presenting it with $50 million worth of arms and equipment—would lead the big parade. On the ship-shaped platform, resolutely pointing to the future, General Douglas MacArthur, who had promised to return and did, would speak. Silver-haired Paul McNutt, the retiring U.S. High Commissioner and the first U.S. Ambassador to the Philippine Republic, would read the formal proclamation from President Truman which would transform the Commonwealth into a Republic.
But for the Filipino who cared, the Filipino who both wanted his independence and was afraid of it, the main event would come when small, smart, energetic Manuel Acuna Roxas (rhymes with slow boss), 54, the first President of their first official Republic, would rise and have his say. Then the Filipino flag would come right out in the sky.
This was the man that shrewd Manuel Quezon, the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth,* had trained and picked to succeed him. Roxas had beaten aging President Sergio Osmeña in the election last April. On him the whole moral and physical rehabilitation of the war-devastated islands depended. He would have to give the Republic credit, a face, a mind, perhaps even a heart. He was not exactly starting from scratch, but it would be a long pull.
Land & People. The 7,083 islands of Manuel Roxas' steaming land are part of the off-Asia continental shelf, running 1,120 miles from Chinese Formosa in the north to British and Dutch Borneo in the south. Two seasons (wet and dry) make the islands fertile and the climate debilitating; typhoons, snakes and the islands' strategic position make them dangerous. The brown and purple mountains, the beaches like white teeth, the magic water, the hectic sunsets, and above all, the deep, hushed, lusting green of the jungle make it a lotos-land—except to politicians.
The Filipino citizen is complex. He is an islander but not a seafarer. He is loyal, excitable, bright, fiercely jealous and brave. Eighty percent of him live in raised, thatched, nipa-palm huts. He rises each damp dawn to blow his breakfast fire to life and smoke a rolled "toosh-toosh" (homemade cigar). Every day he faces hours of weary plowing behind his lazy carabao (water buffalo). He beefs about the land still held by the Catholic Church, his taxes, the reformed constabulary, the Chinese who are his shopkeepers, and about his fortunes—which he often hocks for a sensational funeral or wedding.
He is many habits and many peoples—ranging from the G-stringed, pygmy Negritos and the smart, West-dressed Christian Tagalogs of Luzon, the Visayans of the middle islands, to the self-sufficient, sometimes savage Mohammedan Moros of equatorial Mindanao. He speaks a bit of English, a bit of Spanish and Chinese, and a dozen dialects. His work rarely gets him more than 240 pesos ($120) a year. For 400 years he has had foreign masters. If ever he bothers to recall his history, he shrugs.