From the Southeast Asian Theater

Manila

These sprawling mass-cities of the East are impossible to capture by the indirect stratagem of words. The sensory mixture is too diversely rich, and too novel for a Westerner’s perception, to be reduced to trim categories. Like all the others, Manila has burst at every seam in the past two decades: from 600,000 before the war to more than two million today: there are people everywhere—you are never alone. Because of the underemployment endemic in Asia, Africa and Latin America, thousands and tens of thousands of them are doing nothing (as a Westerner would define “nothing”); standing about, sitting, laughing (the Filipinos laugh a great deal, with immense charm). shoving, looking, pointing.

JB

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James Burnham

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Manila

These sprawling mass-cities of the East are impossible to capture by the indirect stratagem of words. The sensory mixture is too diversely rich, and too novel for a Westerner’s perception, to be reduced to trim categories. Like all the others, Manila has burst at every seam in the past two decades: from 600,000 before the war to more than two million today: there are people everywhere—you are never alone. Because of the underemployment endemic in Asia, Africa and Latin America, thousands and tens of thousands of them are doing nothing (as a Westerner would define “nothing”); standing about, sitting, laughing (the Filipinos laugh a great deal, with immense charm). shoving, looking, pointing.