896.00–TA/11–651
Memorandum by the Attaché of the Embassy in the Philippines (Ely) to the Ambassador (Cowen)
Subject: Observations on ECA
I spent the entire morning today at a staff meeting in Dr. Renne’s1 office. He had present two men from the Washington Office for a general discussion of the ECA Program in the Philippines as envisioned by Washington upon which they wanted local comment.
Most of the discussion had to do with the so-called “Village Approach” method which seems to be strongly favored by Washington. Dr. Renne’s staff, almost to a man, objected to this concept and I believe correctly. They pointed out the highly centralized operation of the Philippine Government, the difficulty of finding any one man who could be stationed in the village who could do effective work on the widely different problems as for example, health, land problems, tax administration, etc., and also the much more fundamental objection that there were thousands upon thousands of villages and even if a small number of model communities could be set up they would have little impact on the economy as a whole.
Another thing mentioned which troubled me was the suggestion that the ECA should not try to recruit highly specialized employees but should get people with the proper broad, general background. A specific example of what I mean was a remark attributed to Mr. Foster objecting to the employment of an expert solely for work on fiber diseases, referring to Dr. Reinking’s employment for the study of the control of the Mosaic disease in Abaca. I took it upon myself to object to the attitude, pointing out that the Philippines was faced with something which threatened to destroy one of their major export crops which was also a product high on the list of strategic materials in the U.S. and I thought if there was any one thing the ECA ought to do it was to help on that sort of thing.
My observation at this and previous staff meetings at ECA leave me very definitely with the feeling that one of the major weaknesses of the program is the attempt to direct it in too much detail from Washington by people who have little knowledge of actual conditions in the Philippines. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but they seem to regard the country as one with a primitive civilization where they have to start from scratch. They overlook the fact I believe, that the Philippines already has, on paper at least, a fairly good set-up organizationally and particularly, they overlook the fact that the Government is a highly centralized one where local officials have virtually no [Page 1579] authority or money to spend except as authorized in Manila. I think they fail to understand that many of the local representatives of the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture and organizations like that know better than they give them credit for, what ought to be done but are unable to do anything because they get from Manila no money and no moral encouragement or support when they do their duty.
These men in the field given intelligent direction and support, adequate personnel and funds, security in their jobs regardless of whose toes they may tread on, will do a lot better job than people in Washington give them credit for. Victor Heiser, for example, did an outstanding job in health work in the Philippines with personnel who were probably not nearly so well trained basically as those available now but he did it because his people knew they were receiving intelligent and workable instructions, that he would back them up, and that he would reward outstanding service. I believe that the major weakness of the Philippine Government today is a lack, at the top, of men who are regarded by their subordinates as sound either professionally or morally and that that accounts for the low morale and petty corruption of the minor employees of the Government. What can be done in this respect is well illustrated in the case of Magsaysay.
The ECA, I believe, has some very high grade men on their staff, Bell and Gannt in Agriculture, Monk in tax work, Ketchum in Engineering, Taylor in Public Works and others. They know what ought to be done and my own personal opinion, for whatever it is worth, is that Washington would be well advised to pay more attention to them and insist that the Philippine Government pay attention to and take action on their recommendations. We should work from the top down and not from the bottom up. We can build up the finest organization in the world in a village but it will do no good if we then go away and leave them at the mercy of the same incompetent supervision from the top that they now get.
- Dr. Karl Renue had become Chief of the STEM in the Philippines in August of 1951.↩