Clipping from The Philippines Herald, dated July 18, 1938: CAPTION: “Will not tolerate meddling—The President [Manuel L. Quezon] in his radiocast speech, reiterated his stand on the religious instruction issue, saying that when he vetoed the religious measure just before he left for Japan and China, he did it in order to prevent any meddling in the affairs of the government.”
Will not tolerate meddling.
President Manuel L. Quezon was staying at the Mansion House in Baguio [see ABOVE], recovering from an illness, when he received news from his Executive Secretary Jorge Vargas that war had been declared. In his memoirs, The Good Fight, President Quezon recalls:
Before seven o’clock [in the morning], my valet came again to my bedroom. A woman reporter from the Philippine Herald wanted a statement from me. I took a pen and a piece of paper and wrote these words:
“The zero hour has arrived. I expect every Filipino—man and woman—to do his duty. We have pledged our honor to stand to the last by the United States and we shall not fail her, happen what may.”
That woman reporter was Yay Marking, and she recounts in her book, Where a Country Begins, that night in Baguio when she was awakened by her editor with directives to inform the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor:
President Quezon, in his red satin robe, sitting on one foot with the other dangling out of the bed in the chill Baguio pre-dawn, carefully and quickly wrote out, on a hospital table straddling the bed, his zero-hour statement that the Philippines was under enemy attack. Within a few hours, Japanese planes, after bombing Camp John Hay, were to fly low over Burnham Park. I was to wave to them, thinking they were ours.
The President handed me his statement and waved me to get out of the room and on my way. The last I saw, he was out of bed on his feet tying the sash of his robe with the air of a man on Monday beginning a full and challenging week. Nothing in his manner betrayed more than awareness and purpose. The last words I heard were to his aide. “Get Aurora on the phone.” Not Doña Aurora. Not Aurora Aragon Quezon. Not Mrs. Quezon nor The First Lady. I had never heard her called Aurora before. Somehow it made her very human, very vulnerable and very far away.
I love it when books come together this way.
Official Gazette has published a briefer on the Division of Labor between the Presidential Management Staff, the Executive Office, and the Office of the Cabinet Secretary—which was first headed by Manuel Nieto in 1944, seen above with Manuel L. Quezon when the latter was still Senate President. Quezon at the time had been confined in Johns Hopkins Hospital, and here Nieto shows him letters wishing him a speedy recovery.
Manuel Nieto, the first Secretary to the Cabinet, was, as President Quezon himself thus described: “my inseparable [senior] aide-de-camp.”
“My inseparable aide-de-camp, Colonel Nieto, a strong chap who had many times taken me in his arms like a child whenever I was too sick to go up a staircase, but not sick enough to obey my doctor’s order to stay in bed.” - From The Good Fight, the memoir of Manuel L. Quezon.
Hello, soldier. [Paging My Daguerrotype Boyfriend!]
“Ang pag ibig ko sa iyo ay hindi nag bago kailanman. Ang puso at buhay ko’y iyo lamang. Walang asawa na makakatulad ka sa bait at sa lahat ng bagay. Ang buong kaligayahan ay tinanggap ko sa iyo.” A letter dated October 23, 1934, from President Manuel L. Quezon to his wife Aurora Aragon Quezon, with a postscript to his three children.
The ritual climbing of the stairs—symbolizing the possession of the Malacañan Palace—was a tradition conscientiously began by President Manuel L. Quezon. As he would write in his memoirs:
“From the grandstand, I went through streets crowded with people acclaiming their first President, on to the Palace of Malacañan, the great mansion on the bank of the Pasig River which had been the seat of power of foreign rulers for many decades past. As I stepped out of the presidential car and walked over the marble floor of the entrance hall, and up the wide stairway, I remembered the legend of the mother of Rizal, the great Filipino martyr and hero, who went up those stairs on her knees to seek executive clemency from the cruel Spanish Governor-General Polavieja, that would save her son’s life.”
Quezon wanted the ritual to symbolize that, henceforth, a Filipino chief executive would be governing from Malacañan Palace, one who could walk up the stairs proudly as the leaderof his own people; at the same time, ascending those stairs would be a constant reminder to every president of the portion of the oath of office which pledges justice to every man.
- - - - -
Read more on the history and the legend surrounding the ritual first climbing of the stairs: “The Possession of Malacañan Palace,” on the Presidential Museum and Library website.
![malacanan:
Clipping from The Philippines Herald, dated July 18, 1938: CAPTION: “Will not tolerate meddling—The President [Manuel L. Quezon] in his radiocast speech, reiterated his stand on the religious instruction issue, saying that when he vetoed the religious measure just before he left for Japan and China, he did it in order to prevent any meddling in the affairs of the government.”
Read the speech in the Official Gazette.
Will not tolerate meddling.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8bqxf6xnB1qifq8yo1_1280.jpg)
![malacanan:
President Manuel L. Quezon was staying at the Mansion House in Baguio [see ABOVE], recovering from an illness, when he received news from his Executive Secretary Jorge Vargas that war had been declared. In his memoirs, The Good Fight, President Quezon recalls:
Before seven o’clock [in the morning], my valet came again to my bedroom. A woman reporter from the Philippine Herald wanted a statement from me. I took a pen and a piece of paper and wrote these words:
“The zero hour has arrived. I expect every Filipino—man and woman—to do his duty. We have pledged our honor to stand to the last by the United States and we shall not fail her, happen what may.”
That woman reporter was Yay Marking, and she recounts in her book, Where a Country Begins, that night in Baguio when she was awakened by her editor with directives to inform the President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor:
President Quezon, in his red satin robe, sitting on one foot with the other dangling out of the bed in the chill Baguio pre-dawn, carefully and quickly wrote out, on a hospital table straddling the bed, his zero-hour statement that the Philippines was under enemy attack. Within a few hours, Japanese planes, after bombing Camp John Hay, were to fly low over Burnham Park. I was to wave to them, thinking they were ours.
The President handed me his statement and waved me to get out of the room and on my way. The last I saw, he was out of bed on his feet tying the sash of his robe with the air of a man on Monday beginning a full and challenging week. Nothing in his manner betrayed more than awareness and purpose. The last words I heard were to his aide. “Get Aurora on the phone.” Not Doña Aurora. Not Aurora Aragon Quezon. Not Mrs. Quezon nor The First Lady. I had never heard her called Aurora before. Somehow it made her very human, very vulnerable and very far away.
I love it when books come together this way.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_menecn44cM1qifq8yo1_1280.jpg)
![malacanan:
Official Gazette has published a briefer on the Division of Labor between the Presidential Management Staff, the Executive Office, and the Office of the Cabinet Secretary—which was first headed by Manuel Nieto in 1944, seen above with Manuel L. Quezon when the latter was still Senate President. Quezon at the time had been confined in Johns Hopkins Hospital, and here Nieto shows him letters wishing him a speedy recovery.
Manuel Nieto, the first Secretary to the Cabinet, was, as President Quezon himself thus described: “my inseparable [senior] aide-de-camp.”
“My inseparable aide-de-camp, Colonel Nieto, a strong chap who had many times taken me in his arms like a child whenever I was too sick to go up a staircase, but not sick enough to obey my doctor’s order to stay in bed.” - From The Good Fight, the memoir of Manuel L. Quezon.
Hello, soldier. [Paging My Daguerrotype Boyfriend!]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md3ncpUi7I1qifq8yo1_1280.jpg)
