Philippine Flop

My beloved, you were brave!

In a creek so deep where you sank to

your shoulders You stayed, we hear, for three days or

more And lived for weeks without food and

sleep; How proud we are of the fight you won.

The brave beloved of these minor lyrics is a dead Jap. The song, Chichi Yo Anata Wa Tsuyokatta (Father, You Were Brave), is a sample from a book of songs which the Japs hopefully scattered through the Philippines. Most of the music is plaintive. Most of the lyrics glorify the fanatical beauties of death in battle.

Last week Captain Earl J. Wilson, U.S.M.C. Aviation Correspondent, reported that this particular Jap effort at propaganda-with-music had been a spectacular flop. For one thing, Filipinos have grown used to the buoyant lyrics and 4/4 rhythms of Tin Pan Alley.

In liberated Leyte, where Filipinos have been singing God Bless the Philippines to the tune of Irving Berlin's God Bless America, a soldier troupe performance of Composer Berlin's This Is the Army last week tried out a brand new number in the U.S. idiom: Heaven Watch the Philippines.

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