THE GREAT POETS OF THE PHILIPPINES (SERIES) CARLOS P. ROMULO

THE GREAT POETS OF THE PHILIPPINES (SERIES) 

Carlos P. Romulo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carlos P. Romulo, a former Philippine general, journalist, poet, story writer, diplomat, former resident commissioner to Washington, D.C., former Philippine ambassador to the United States, and former President of the United Nations General Assembly.[1][2]

Carlos Peña RómuloQSC PLH (14 January 1898 – 15 December 1985) was a Filipino diplomat, statesman, soldier, journalist and author. He was a reporter at 16, a newspaper editor by the age of 20, and a publisher at 32. He was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines, a general in the US Army and the Philippine Army, university president, President of the UN General Assembly, was eventually named one of the Philippines' National Artists in Literature, and was the recipient of many other honors and honorary degrees.

Diplomatic career

Rómulo served eight Philippine presidents, from Manuel L. Quezon to Ferdinand Marcos, as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines and as the country’s representative to the United States and to the United Nations. He also served as the Resident Commissioner to the U.S. House of Representatives during the Commonwealth era. In addition, he served also as the Secretary of Education in President Diosdado P. Macapagal’s and President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s Cabinet through 1962 to 1968.[1][2]

United Nations


President of the UN General Assembly
[edit]In his career in the United Nations, Rómulo was a strong advocate of human rights, freedom and decolonization.In 1948 in Paris, France, at the third UN General Assembly, he strongly disagreed with a proposal made by the Sovietdelegation headed by Andrei Vishinsky, who challenged his credentials by insulting him with this quote: "You are just a little man from a little country." In return, Romulo replied, "It is the duty of the little Davids of this world to fling the pebbles of truth in the eyes of the blustering Goliaths and force them to behave!", leaving Vishinsky with nothing left to do but sit down.
He served as the President of the Fourth Session of United Nations General Assembly from 1949–1950, and chairman of the United Nations Security Council.[3] He had served with General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific, was Ambassador to the United States, and became the first non-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Correspondence in 1942. The Pulitzer Prize website says Carlos P. Romulo of Philippine Herald was awarded "For his observations and forecasts of Far Eastern developments during a tour of the trouble centers from Hong Kong to Batavia." He was a candidate for the position of United Nations Secretary-General in 1953, but did not win.

Philippine Presidential Aspiration

Instead, he returned to the Philippines and was a candidate for the nomination as the presidential candidate for theLiberal Party, but lost at the party convention to the incumbent Elpidio Quirino, who ran unsuccessfully for re-election against Ramon Magsaysay. Quirino had agreed to a secret ballot at the convention, but after the convention opened, the president demanded an open roll-call voting, leaving the delegates no choice but supporting Quirino, the candidate of the party machine. Feeling betrayed, Romulo left the Liberal Party and became national campaign manager of Magsaysay, the candidate of the opposing Nacionalista Party who won the election.

Secretary of Foreign Affairs

He served as Resident Commissioner of the Philippines to the United States Congress from 1944 to 1946. He was the signatory for the Philippines to the United Nations Charter when it was founded in 1946. He was the Philippines' Secretary (Minister from 1973 to 1984) of Foreign Affairs under President Elpidio Quirino from 1950 to 1952, under President Diosdado Macapagal from 1963 to 1964 and under President Ferdinand Marcos from 1968 to 1984. In April 1955 he led the Philippines' delegation to the Asian-African Conference at Bandung.
Rómulo, in all, wrote and published 18 books, which included The United (novel), I Walked with Heroes (autobiography), I Saw the Fall of the PhilippinesMother America and I See the Philippines Rise (war-time memoirs).

Death

He died, at 86, in Manila on 15 December 1985 and was buried in the Heroes’ Cemetery (Libingan ng mga Bayani). He was honored as the Philippines’ greatest diplomat in the 20th Century.[citation needed] In 1980, he was extolled by United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim as "Mr. United Nations" for his valuable services to the United Nations and his dedication to freedom and world peace.′

Awards and Recognitions

Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 1952 "For his contribution in international cooperation, in particular on questions on undeveloped areas, and as president for UN's 4th General Assembly" [4]Rómulo is perhaps among the most decorated Filipino in history, which includes 82 honorary degrees from different international institutions and universities and 74 decorations from foreign countries:

Anecdotes from Beth Rómulo through Reader's Digest (June 1989)

At the third UN General Assembly, held in Paris in 1948, the USSR’s deputy foreign minister, Andrei Vishinsky, sneered at Rómulo and challenged his credentials: “You are just a little man from a little country.” “It is the duty of the little Davids of this world,” cried Rómulo, “to fling the pebbles of truth in the eyes of the blustering Goliaths and force them to behave!”
During his meeting with Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito welcomed Gen. Romulo with drinks and cigars, to which the general kindly refused. Their conversation went as follows:
Tito: "Do you drink?" Romulo: "No, I don't." Tito: "Do you smoke?" Romulo: "No, thank you." Tito: "What do you do then?" Romulo: "I etcetera."
At this, Marshal Tito was tickled by his reply and loudly exclaimed around the room, "I etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!"
When the UN official seal, which depicts the world, was being selected, Romy looked it over and demanded, “where is the Philippines?” “It’s too small to include,” explained US Senator Warren Austin, who headed the committee. “If we put in the Philippines it would be no more than a dot.” “I want that dot!” Romy insisted. Today, if you look at the UN seal, you will find a tiny dot between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.[citation needed]
Rómulo was a dapper little man (barely five feet four inches in shoes). When they waded in at Leyte beach in October 1944, and the word went out that General MacArthur was waist deep, one of Romulo's journalist friends cabled, “If MacArthur was in water waist deep, Rómulo must have drowned!”
In later years, Rómulo told another story himself about a meeting with MacArthur and other tall American generals who disparaged his physical stature. "Gentlemen," he declared, "When you say something like that, you make me feel like a dime among nickels."

Books[eBase (1979)

  • I Saw the Fall of The Philippines
  • Mother America
  • My Brother Americans
  • I See The Philippines Rise
  • The United
  • Crusade in Asia (The John Day Company, 1955; about the 1953 presidential election campaign of Ramon Magsaysay)
  • The Meaning of Bandung
  • The Magsaysay Story (with Marvin M. Gray, The John Day Company 1956, updated re-edition by Pocket Books, Special Student Edition, SP-18, December 1957; biography of Ramon Magsaysay, Pocket Books edition updated with an additional chapter on Magsaysay's death)
  • I Walked with Heroes (autobiography)
  • Last Man off Bataan (Romulo's experience during the Japanese Plane bombings.)
  • The Filipino Flag Rises...Alone
  • Im a Filipino

    "I AM A FILIPINO"
    by Carlos P. Romulo

    I am a Filipino – inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such, I must prove equal to a two-fold task – the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future.

    I am sprung from a hardy race – child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries, the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope – hope in the free abundance of the new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

    This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green and purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hollowed spot to me.

    By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof – the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals – the whole of this rich and happy land has been for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them, and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.

    I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes – seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to battle against the alien foe, that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor,

    That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever; the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gregorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit, that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst forth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacanang Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication.

    The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of my dignity as a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousands of years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insigne of my race, and my generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness.

    I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager participant in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I know also that the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shake off the lethargy that has bound its limbs, and start moving where destiny awaits.

    For I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, a being apart from those whose world now trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon shot. For no man and no nation is an island, but a part of the main, and there is no longer any East and West – only individuals and nations making those momentous choices that are the hinges upon which history revolves.

    At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand – a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but not one defeated and lost. For through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality and freedom, my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert or destroy.

    I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and its hall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when they first saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad Pass, of the voices of my people when they sing:

    Land of the morning.
    Child of the sun returning . . .
    Ne’er shall invaders
    Trample thy sacred shore.

    Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heart-strings of sixteen million people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields; out the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-ig and Koronadal; out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga; out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing; out of crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories; out of the crunch of ploughs upturning the earth; out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics; out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:

    I am a Filipino born of freedom, and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my inheritance – for myself and my children’s – forever.

    ___________________
    Carlos Peña Romulo (b. 14 January 1899, Camiling, Tarlac, Philippines - d. 15 December 1985, Manila, Philippines) was a Filipino diplomat, politician, soldier, journalist and author. He was a reporter at 16, a newspaper editor by the age of 20, and a publisher at 32. He is the co-founder of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.

    He was a general in the Philippine army, who together with General Douglas McArthur landed on the shore of Leyte to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese occupation.

    He was the signatory for the Philippines to the United Nations Charter when it was founded in 1946. He was a candidate for the position of United Nations Secretary-General in 1953.

    He died, at 86, in Manila on 15th of December 1985 and was buried the Heroes’ Cemetery (Libingan ng mga Bayani).

    He was honored as the Philippines’ greatest diplomat in the 20th Century. [citation needed] In 1980, he was extolled by United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim as "Mr. United Nations" for his valuable services to the United Nations and his dedication to freedom and world peace.

    The United Nations was established in 1945 (just after World War II), and it had A FILIPINO U.N. Assembly President in 1949.


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