Progress Report

This story was making the rounds in Manila last week: the U.S. Army, discovering that a pipeline from a hilltop gasoline storage tank was being tapped, started running water through the pipes. Within a few hours every bus, jeep and taxi in Manila had sputtered to a stop.

In his cool, white Malacanan palace, Philippine President Manuel Roxas found that story no joke. Last week, he had been forced to make an extraordinary request of his Congress for a special court to deal exclusively with the graft of public officials.

Businessmen who refused to grease official Filipino palms complained that they could not purchase any of the $600 million in U.S.-donated surplus property. Many a postoffice mail sorter called upon business houses for "remembrances," saying, "You know your mail passes through my hands." Said cynical Interior Secretary Jose Zulueta, who saw more of corrupt Manila than of the less civilized but more honest interior: "There is no such thing as honesty nowadays."

Honking & Clashing. Although the graft was perhaps more flagrant than usual, most other signs in the new 7,038-island republic were encouraging. Cabled TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod: "If independence can be made to work in the Orient, it will work here. There is more reconstruction here than in Siam, Burma and Indonesia combined. All night long, air hammers and steam shovels stutter and grunt through Manila's pleasantly cool darkness. In daylight, thousands of new passenger cars and bright orange and yellow buses, but above all jeeps--taxi jeeps, truck jeeps and passenger jeeps--turn downtown Manila into a honking, gear-clashing bedlam of traffic.

"Interisland shipping has been slowly reconstructed, although beef from southernmost Mindanao is still being flown to Manila because of the lack of refrigerator ships. A thousand surplus tractors have helped boost carabao-geared farm production; the Filipinos are now nearly self-sufficient in food. There is no threat of cholera, which daily kills scores in Bangkok ; no plague, which continually ravishes part of China. Three million children, compared to a prewar two million, are back in school. Driving through Mindanao, I was amazed at the number of schools. Communal problems there are small. Said one Mohammedan datu (chieftain): 'We tolerate the Christians.' At the journey's end I realized how few places there are in the Far East where such a trip was possible without the danger of getting shot."

Paring & Balancing. "Fortnight ago,indefatigable President Roxas told the Philippines Congress: 'The clouds of gloom which hovered over us eight months ago have dissipated.. . . This nation is moving courageously and confidently forward on the road to national health.'

"The road ahead is long. The Philippines still have the highest prices outside of China. Copra production, the nation's third biggest export item, is back to prewar level (and the price, at $220 a ton, has shot far above the prewar average of $50), but this year the Filipinos will have to import, instead of export, sugar. Gold production, second biggest cash item, is nil because mines had been badly damaged by looting and demolition. Total exports have shrunk by more than a third, while imports have risen. Although he has pared his budget, Manuel Roxas sees no hope of balancing it without continued U.S. assistance.

"The country will require much more help. The question is, how much help can we render without making the Filipinos too dependent? This is likely to be the only heartily capitalistic country and if we want to prove that capitalism can work in the Orient we've got to give a big shove in the Philippines. Roxas is performing as well as anyone could in such tough conditions.

"If he could only stop that graft."

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