The Seniors are not all fortunate, the examinations making it necessary for several of them to be classed as members of the graduating class in 1916. And so, from among the scarred veterans, they had to be content with the material they could get for officers to act as committeemen for the various activities previous to graduation. The committees are: MemorialMessrs. Natividad, chairman, Nepomuceno, Clemeñia; Ways and MeansMessrs. Paredes, chairman, Luna, Villanueva; Class Tree-Messrs. Jamison, chairman, Quirino, Padilla; Social-Mr. Montinola, chairman, Miss Legaspi, and Mr. B. Tan. Other officers are: Miss Legaspi, historian, and Mr. Quirino prophet. Felipe Estella, Gaudencio Garcia and Victoriano Yamzon were chosen to battle with the Barrister trio for the Del Pan Debating Cup. The office of orator will be left vacant until the results of the oratorical contest are known. FRESHIES CAPTURE PENNANT Again the unexpected happened the pennant goes to the Freshman class! The Seniors, reserving their strength and anticipating an easy "win" over the green lads, fought hard and desperately; but, to parody one of the speakers in the oratorical contest, the triumph of the Freshman class was inevitable. The following is the result of the contest: SEMI-FINALS ORATORICAL CONTEST Three Seniors, one Junior and two Sophomores, with another Senior as alternate, were the choice of the judges who heard the orations of the various class representatives on the evening of Saturday, November 28, at University Hall. The contestants were introduced by Commissioner Clyde A. DeWitt. The judges were: Hon. Anacleto Diaz, assistant prosecuting attorney, City of Manila; F. Theo. Rogers, assistant editor of the Free Press: Professor Austin Craig, University of the Philippines; W. W. Marquardt, second assistant director of education; and Arsenio Luz, managing editor of El Ideal. The speakers for the final contest follow: Bernabe Aquino, Felipe Estella, Marcelino Montemayor, Paulino Gullas, Lorenzo Campo, and Hilarion Elumba. Hermogenes Concepcion is alternate. Volume I PHILIPPINE LAW JOURNAL JANUARY, 1915 IGNACIO VILLAMOR Number 6 Former Attorney-General; Actual Executive Secretary I. It has ever been a delicate and perilous task for all publicists to treat of a subject requiring an intimate knowledge of the psychology and morphology of a people. It is not sufficient for one to be a fellow-countryman of such a people; certain circumstances are needed which do not always come within the reach of the publicist, especially if he be a foreigner. Father Blas de Plasencia once said that to know the Tagalog dialect one must have "a year of art and three of habitat." Jagor, a German writer of perhaps the highest authority on the Philippines, asserted that even those Spaniards married to natives of the country and identified with native ways failed to understand the customs of their allies, while there was no particle of the life of their affinity which was unknown to the latter. Zúñiga affirms that the Filipinos are the first to laugh at their own prepossessions before the priest, while behind him they would practice religiously all that which they had precisely been laughing at just a moment before. It is not, therefore, passing strange that Father Blancas de San José in spite of being the Tagalog Cicero, according to Spanish writers, did not hesitate in saying that, not to say anything of the intimate life of the natives, but referring only to the Tagalog dialect, "no Spaniard will learn it in all his life, be this as long as that of Adam." It is perhaps because of these considerations that there has not been lacking those who regarded the native as a being with undefinable character. If this happened to the Spaniards, who had the advantage of having resided in the country and of possessing customs somewhat analogous to that of the native, it may be imagined what would happen to foreigners who are not favored with such qualifications. It is, however, an established fact that while nothing of what has been said is false, relatively speaking, yet the same is neither just nor true fundamentally. The native, by reason of his social standing, excessive |