First Test

Since the days of the Spanish occupation the flat rice paddies of Central Luzon have been the Philippines' main bread basket and bitterest bone of contention. Generations of Filipino landlords and tenant farmers have battled over how the crops should be divided. Always the result has been the same. From each carnage of broken heads emerged fewer and richer landlords, more and poorer croppers.

Since war's end fierce Hukbalahap gangs have tried, with the same guerrilla tactics they used against the Japs, to enforce ex-President Osmena's decree dividing crops 60-40 in favor of the peasant. But new President Manuel Roxas refused to com promise with revolt. He sent in 5,000 military police, who soon had the "Huks" under control.

Then he appointed a commission to study the real issue. Last week, around an oval table in Manila's fiar Palace, five landlords and ten sharecroppers met with Roxas and two congressmen. In four hours the battle was over, with everybody happy. The landlords offered to give the peasants 70% of the crop, provided they pay all expenses. The peasants preferred to take only 55% if the landlords would provide tools and carabaos.

Law-abiding Filipinos could point with pride to a new president who had shown he would not be pushed around by the lawless Huks. And the Huks, cheering an agreement far better than the one they had fought for, could emerge with no loss of face from swamps and isolated barrios to lay down their arms and go home. The world's youngest republic had passed its first test in democracy.

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