Most Americans have observed individual Filipinos going about their business, as student, taxi driver, domestic servant, gardener, politician or journalist. Their acculturation to the principles and surface manifestations of modern western civilization is increasingly apparent, despite three centuries of indoctrination in Spanish customs and traditions and many centuries more of Arabic and Hindu influences. Indonesian culture survivals are, however, everywhere manifest in their daily life, beliefs, thoughts and actions.

As the tide of Japanese occupation recedes from the Philippines, one of the most unique experiments in modern nation building is being resumed. In a world where the aspirations of colonial peoples offer a major threat to peace and stability, what is happening in the new Commonwealth is of the greatest importance.

The great island of Mindanao—second in size of the Philippine group—is still but little known to the average American and Filipino. Many years of struggle between the Spanish and the followers of Islam made the Christianized people painfully aware of the Moro in the south yet a detailed description of these people still remains to be written. The studies of Saleeby have provided a glimpse of their law, religion and history while various writers have told of the struggle to bring the southern islands under the rule of Spain. The writings of Christie have given us an idea of the pagan peoples adjacent to the Mohammedans. Garvan's intensive study of the Manobo of the Agusan river valley is a classic of description, while the papers of Benedict and the author furnish a rather full picture of the tribes along the Gulf of Davao.

The Moros are those natives of the Philippines who are Mohammedans. They did not give themselves this name, nor do they use it among themselves; but they recognize it when applied to them by others.

Misnomers are often validated by time or history. The ancient Romans took a small community of the Hellenes for the whole population and called them Greeks. A Mediterranean sailor thought the New World was India and called its people Indians. In extreme western Europe the Christian Iberians, in seven bitter centuries, drove their Mohammedanized Berber cousins back to their native Mauretania, and in the process made Mohammedan a synonym for Moro, or Mauretanian. And so, although the appearance of the Iberians two-fifths of the world around in the extreme fringes of eastern Asia in the 16th Century was a remarkable feat, it was not strange that they called the Mohammedans they found here, Moros.

The present war has brought home the fact that even the most elementary freedom, the right to dispose over one's own person, cannot be taken for granted. Despotism backed by military force still rides roughshod over the rights of man. But whereas formerly a conqueror confiscated without hypocrisy the working power of his victims as well as their property, today world opinion forces him to use circumlocution, to pretend to purposes other than those of greed. Thus, labor in the Philippines has been recruited for compulsory services “in the interest of public safety, security and welfare.” And the compulsory nature of that recruitment is disguised by a pretense of voluntary enrollment which deceives few, least of all the victims. Actually, under a recent order in Manila all citizens between the ages of eighteen and fifty were eligible for labor conscription, and in other parts of the country more general enactments have been interpreted as permitting an almost unrestricted use of Filipino labor for the construction of defense works, roads, air fields and air raid shelters, and for other purposes. A false air of respectability has been given to some of these services by persuading leading citizens to lead parades, armed with spades, to the places where the “voluntary” and “patriotic” work was to be performed.

In 1901, three years after the Spaniards had surrendered to American troops in the Philippines, an American school was opened on the island of Leyte. I was the American teacher; the pupils were Filipinos, alert, apprehensive, and curious. Many of them had never gone to school before, had never expected to go to school. Now they were pioneers in an experiment without parallel in history; these young Filipinos were embarking on a system of free education on the American plan and throughout their school years they were going to listen and study and recite in a language that was foreign to them. I put up a piece of black oilcloth from the Chinese tienda—the government-issue blackboards did not arrive in time for the opening of school—and the first words I wrote were “A is for Apple.”

In any appraisal of educational methods and progress in the Philippines, it is wise to bear in mind the fact that the essential purpose of the educational system has been, since 1901, political, rather than cultural. This is not said in any spirit of criticism of the Philippine educational pattern. It is rather simply a recognition of what the Filipinos themselves have recognized in respect to their choice of educational methods and their application of educational principles.

The importance of public health as a factor in national development and progress is too often neglected. Whenever an appraisal is made of progress accomplished during a certain period, the emphasis is on political, cultural and economic aspects of national life, while improvements in health conditions are, as a rule, seen as a result rather than as a cause of the progress.

Fish and fisheries have an importance in the economy of rice eating populations that is difficult for people here to comprehend. Rice is the most important item in the life of such countries. Though not important in bank clearings or financial statistics, fish are the second item in national economy. Although these two keep the common people going and are of primary importance, they have been neglected by politicians and officials, and ignored by western economists and writers. It is therefore no wonder that examination of the fisheries of any part of southeastern Asia or Insulinde shows unsatisfactory conditions in the quantity, quality, and market price of fish during much of the year. Prolonged field studies of the factors involved, especially in the Philippines, show that these conditions are unnecessary.

For centuries farm tenancy has been one of the main sources of misery and discontent in the rural areas of the Philippines. Basically it has been the cause of the agrarian disturbances which have so often seriously threatened the peace and security of the nation. Any insurance of the economic stability and general well-being of the people must therefore depend largely upon its satisfactory solution. This brief study was undertaken primarily to throw more light on the prewar condition of this vexing problem, with the hope that it might serve as background material for a more wisely-planned economy in the postwar reconstruction of the Philippines.

Article III of the Philippine Constitution is the Bill of Rights. It establishes the relationship of the individual to the State and defines the rights of the individual by limiting the lawful powers of the State. It is one of the most important political achievements of the Filipinos.

The concept of a Bill of Rights, as such, is essentially an occidental prod-uct. For a number of centuries in British, French, and American political thought, there has grown the conviction that the rights of the individual must be preserved and safeguarded, not through the authority of an individual, not through membership in a particular group or party, not through reliance upon force of arms, but rather through the accepted processes of declared constitutional law.

THIS special issue on the Philippines has been prepared with the collaboration of the East Indies Institute of America, 15 West 77th Street, New York City, which enlisted the cooperation of its membership to write articles on the Philippines, as indicated in the introduction to the issue.