Thin Line Of Heroes

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 5

Thin Line Of Heroes

[From the “Sydney Morning Herald.”]

PRIVATES in the Philip- -*■ pines armed forces form one of the world’s smallest minority groups. There are 131 of them out of a total of some 42,000 (give or take a colonel or two). The rest are sergeants and corporals (37,000); generals, colonels, majors and captains (3500), and second lieutenants (540). The figures are approximate, and a further breakdown of them would be useful to the scholar (how many generals, for example, equal one second lieutenant?) Unfortunately the information is “classified”—that is to say hushhush. Well it is understandable. 'Walls have ears. Indeed the figures, so far as they go, were overheard by a wall representing the Manila “Bulletin,” and an official Army spokesman refused to comment on them. So it is a safe bet they are right.

One of the few facts of economics, logistics, diplo-

macy and espionage which the non-expert can grasp is that figures like this (or like anything else) can mean one thing to expert A, and the exact opposite to expert B. But neither expert A nor expert B could deny that a private in the Philippines armed forces has a very busy time. The fatigue duties alone must be pretty comprehensive, and could not be better named. And how he must wonder, each morning when the bugler (corporal? sergeant?) sounds Reveille, how many bucks (not dollars; the other kind) are headed his way as they pass rapidly from general to colonel to major and so on down the line! The whole thing casts doubt on one of the “axioms” propounded by Professor C. Northcote Parkinson in evolving his famous law that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” The axiom (so-called) is that an official (or Army officer?) “wants to multiply

subordinates, not rivals.” If this is so, the system has gone wrong somewhere in the Philippines. There are plenty of rivals, but not enough subordinates to go round. Ask any of the 131 privates at the end of a hard day, when their arms are weary with saluting 41,869 superiors!