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March 5, 1936

Reporters who accompanied Quezon on his northern trip said that at the dedication of the Bayambong bridge and in three other speeches, Quezon stated that the opening up of Nueva Viscaya and Isabella was due to my hunting trips there of twenty years ago.

San Juan Lateran “commencement” of the military class and presentation of a gold sword to Colonel Vicente Lim, Professor of Military Science there. Marquee on the lawn in front of the old walls of city. Father Rector spoke in English–complimenting the cadets; he said that most of the leading soldiers in the revolt against Spain had been trained in this Corps “and though I am a Spaniard, I recognize the right of a people to fight for their independence.” This address was made just forty years after the day when the prisons behind those walls had been crammed with Filipinos supposed by the priest-ridden Spanish Government to sympathize with the Insurrectos! I sat next to the Father Rector of Santo Tomas University whom I knew of old. He said he approved of military training in the schools, and disapproved of college athletics because of their semi-professionalism. Bocobo, the President of the University of the Philippines, delivered the address in favour of military training; he commended it as a cure for Filipino slackness, tardiness, and lack of discipline in business as well as in social life. I said to Father Rector (who is Spanish), “He is telling the Filipinos some home truths which neither you nor I could express.” The Father Rector approves greatly of Quezon’s Government and he added: “he understands his own people.”

Saw Unson who, on my enquiry, told me Quezon had said nothing to him as Chairman of the Government Survey Board as to my working with him. I told him Quezon had contemplated turning the whole thing over to me, and when he created the Board instead, he had wanted me to work with them.