Borrowed Time

Manuel Roxas, first president of the Philippine Republic, gave a gay party last week to celebrate his own 27th wedding anniversary and the birthday of U.S. Ambassador Emmet O'Neal. Next day he left the cool interior of Malacanan Palace in Manila to keep an engagement at Clark Field, sun-baked U.S. airbase 50 miles northwest.

Dog-tired from the enormous task of piloting his country back from the brink of postwar chaos, Roxas rode around the sprawling installation in 94DEG heat. Then, from the stage of a G.I. theater named for War Hero Colin Kelly, he told 500 U.S. officers of his worries about Communist aggression.

A few moments later, the frail president collapsed, asked to be excused from reviewing the troops. His condition was diagnosed as "acute fatigue." Seven and a half hours later, 56-year-old Manuel Roxas was dead of a heart attack.

A onetime provincial lawyer whose father was killed in a revolt against Spain, Roxas was inaugurated July 4, 1946, the same day the Philippine Republic formally came into being.

Since then national income has risen to twice its prewar level. Encouraging as the recovery strides have been, sober Filipinos realize they are not entirely out of the woods. The government's intensified campaign against Communist-led Hukbala-haps has not yet ended peasant uprisings.

There was plenty left to do for the new president, Elpidio Quirino, 57-year-old son of a Northern Luzon prison warden. Vice President and Foreign Minister Quirino, like his predecessor, was a faithful political disciple of Manuel Quezon, father of Philippine independence. Unlike Roxas, who held the post of food administrator in the Japanese puppet government (but was subsequently cleared of all collaboration charges), Quirino took to the hills during the occupation. His family was not so lucky; his wife and three of their five children died at the hands of the Japanese.

Considered a competent but unspectacular administrator, Quirino (pronounced key-Reno) is expected to hew closely to the Roxas policies.

Quirino has something else in common with his predecessor: heart trouble. Said he: "I myself am living on borrowed time."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.