ABSTRACT
As a people we have been deprived for centuries of responsibility for our destiny. Under the Spaniards, this deprivation was open. They ruled, we obeyed. Under the Americans, while we were ostensibly being prepared for selfgovernment, for self-reliance, we were actually being manoeuvred by means of political and economic pressures to defer to American decisions at the same time that we were being conditioned by our American education to prefer American ways. The result is a people habituated to abdicating control over basic areas of their national life, unaccustomed to coming to grips with reality, prone to escape into fantasies; and a leadership which voluntarily chooses Western solutions for Philippine problems-partly because it is intellectually conditioned to believe in such solutions and partly for personell expediency, since politicians tacitly recognize the danger of displeasing foreign friends.
