Word: quezon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cleverer politician ever mounted a rostrum than the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth. Most Mestizos (of mixed blood) are constitutionally gifted with political "it." But in the past 30 years Manuel Quezon has given his countrymen an exhibition of straddling, transference and political gymnastics which, if performed on horseback, would make him the wonder of the equestrian world...
...Manuel Quezon was a law student at Santo Tomas University in Manila (oldest under the U. S. flag) when handsome young Emilio Aguinaldo, tired of the evasion of U. S. officials who, he thought, should recognize him as President of the Philippine Provisional Republic, started a revolt to run the none too numerous U. S. expeditionary force out of the Islands. Since the U. S. authorities were chary of all Filipinos at that time, and hence offering no jobs in the Island Government to brown men, Manuel Quezon went into the bush for a while as a major on Aguinaldo...
Successively a provincial governor and Territorial Assemblyman, in 1909 Manuel Quezon made his first trip to Washington as Resident Commissioner. He had no vote in Congress, but he had a voice. That voice soon reached William Atkinson Jones of Warsaw, Va. Representative Jones had been to Manila with the first great Congressional junket in 1905, led by Secretary of War Taft. About the only tangible result of that trip was the betrothal of Representative Nicholas Longworth and Alice Roosevelt. But eight years later, the Democrats took over in Washington and Mr. Jones became Chairman of the House Insular Affairs Committee...
...intervening 19 years Manuel Quezon spent most of his time rocking his political weight back and forth between two positions: whether to demand independence at once or take it when the U. S. was ready to give it. He electioneered alternately on this pair of platforms, depending on the mood of the voters. That Manuel Quezon always picked the right side is testified by the fact that he was the one and only President of the Philippine Senate...
During these busy political years, Manuel Quezon gained a wife, four children, a valuable political ally in the person of Sergio Osmena (now Vice President of the Commonwealth), the Grand Mastery of the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of the Philippine Islands, the presidency of the Nationalista Consolidado Party which runs the Philippines almost as Tammany used to run New York City, the presidency of Manila Railroad Co. and Manila Hotel, a trusteeship in the University of the Philippines and a membership in the Wack Wack Golf Club. He has also earned the esteem of thousands of Nationalist Filipinos...