Sugar Strike

When Tarhata Kiram, flapper Philippine princess, married a Moro chieftain, newspapers printed columns, made sure that the U. S. knew. Last week, other things far more troublous to Governor General Leonard Wood, claimed his attention.

The Governor General, after a second operation for hernia, cabled the government at Washington he was in fine fettle, settled down to fight the strike of sugar workers of which new and disturbing reports came from Bais, Oriental Negros Province.

There not long before, hordes of wiry, brown-skinned Filipinos clambered aboard six locomotives lying idle on the tracks, ran them defiantly out of sight and hearing.

Others, at night, lit torches from their fires, set ablaze piles of sugar cane over wide-stretching fields. All about the district, thousands of tons of cut cane lay spoiling. The Governor General pondered, considered the arrest of strike-leaders, sought for new ways to end the strike.

Meanwhile in the Philippine Supreme Court, the Governor General's fight for the control of the failing Philippine National Bank continued. Year by year, since its organization in 1916, its loans to sugar planters and mills have increased; now, its losses total $40,000,000. General Wood feels that under new control it may prosper.