Shattered Sleep

Year ago last May Manila's torpid police suddenly woke up to the fact that a revolt was brewing. Before they could do anything Manila's communications with the rest of Luzon were cut. For two days there was fighting. Sixty people were killed before a radical group, the Sakdalistas, whose leader Benigno Ramos directed the uprising from his exile in Tokyo, was finally suppressed. Underfed workers and poverty-stricken tenant farmers continued to listen eagerly to Sakdalista and Communist agitators. Recently, however, the signs of discontent seemed to have ebbed.

For several weeks proclamations have been posted in the Islands saying: "News has reached me that another uprising is being planned. . . . All that is a trap set by our enemies. . . . No one should believe it. The Sakdalistas have no other duty than to be peaceful and await my return. . . . I urge the temporary dissolution of the Party. . . . So long as the Party exists, snakes will surely hide behind it, especially at present when it is both rainy and hot. . . . [The Party] will be revived as soon as I return--Benigno Ramos."

On his 58th birthday recently, Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon, who is for practical purposes political dictator of the Islands, released 30 Sakdalistas convicted for their part in the 1935 uprising and issued an executive order raising the minimum pay of laborers hired by the Government to 30 pesos ($15) a month. Last week the National Assembly was considering minimum wage and maximum hour laws aggressively pressed by Philippine Labor.

Because of this peaceful trend, Manila's Mayor Juan Posadas, plump and proud possessor of the title of "Comendador de la Real Orden de Isabel la Catolica" conferred upon him by Spain, paid no attention whatever last week when he received an anonymous letter warning him that Manila would burn the following night. The police went to bed and slept as hard as usual. Suddenly in the early hours of the morning there was an explosion. Then another and another. Just how many bombs went off nobody knew. Five or six unexploded bombs were discovered. One bomb wrecked part of a hotel. Another blew up the chief water-main serving the northern part of the city. Fifteen fires by explosions started in various places. Bombed and burned with a loss of 1,000,000 pesos was Parsons Hardware Co., only a quarter of a mile from the great tinder box of the President's Malacanan Palace. Police with riot guns raced through the city trying by a frantic display of energy to conceal the fact that Benigno Ramos' proclamation had completely lulled their suspicions, that they had taken few precautions against such violence, that they had no idea whether Sakdalistas, Communists or other radicals had sown Manila with explosives.

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