Motored with Doria and Rafael Palma to Los Baños to inspect the College of Agriculture. Excellent plant, interesting animal industry of cattle and pigs. Also good Forestry School. Dean Gonzales and his staff of young professors, had each a Ph.D. degree from an American university. They came from all the different provinces. Palma and I addressed them. The Dean said that, at first, the graduates were all absorbed in the Government service, but that now an increasing number go back to their own lands to apply their scientific training. He added that ten percent of the students came from abroad –Siam, China, Java etc. He believes it is the best college of tropical agriculture to be found in the tropics. All animals, he said, which are brought in from cooler climates degenerate here from anemia. The school has a quinine grove now twenty years old, planted in Bukidnon, and they want machinery to make enough quinine to supply the whole Philippines. Rafael Palma thinks that with the irrigation systems now installed or on the way, the Philippines can eventually be self-supporting in rice.
Palma told me of his ten years service as President of the University. He visited one hundred universities in Europe and forty in America. Very interesting and very able man. He is now in favor of economic planning and opposed a standing army. Says the Filipinos have not yet recovered from their inferiority complex.
Saw ex-Speaker Roxas at the Manila Hotel –he asked me about the purchase of RR bonds. I said I thought better terms could be had, but that was a “penny wise pound foolish” policy. He assented.
Ball at Malacañan Palace for the Assembly. Had a talk with the new Speaker –Montilla– he has a refined face and a good social manner –met a group of of Japanese and talked with them. Quezon was in very good form. I left after the Rigodon. Met High Commissioner in the gardens; he was just putting Ambassador Grew in his motor.
Colin Hoskins tells me of a conversation between the editor of the Herald and “Mike” Elizalde, who is the head of the National Development Co.; Elizalde denounced my appointment as adviser and damned Quezon!!
Doria tells me that Ora Smith says he likes me personally so much that he will have “tears in his eyes” when his articles in the Bulletin “paste me on the wall.”