Notes

"I AM A FILIPINO"
by Carlos P. Romulo
I am a Filipino – inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such, I must
prove equal to a two-fold task – the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the
task of performing my obligation to the future.
I am sprung from a hardy race – child many generations removed of ancient Malayan
pioneers. Across the centuries, the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned
men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I
see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the
mighty swell of hope – hope in the free abundance of the new land that was to be their
home and their children’s forever.
I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy
of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the
centuries, and its hall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when
they first saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have
resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad Pass, of the voices of my people
when they sing:
Land of the morning.
Child of the sun returning . . .
Ne’er shall invaders
Trample thy sacred shore.
Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heart-strings of sixteen
million people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of
the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields; out the sweat of the
hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-ig and Koronadal; out of the silent endurance of stevedores at
the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga; out of the first cries of
babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing; out of crashing of gears and the
whine of turbines in the factories; out of the crunch of ploughs upturning the earth; out of
the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics; out of the
tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:
I am a Filipino born of freedom, and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added
unto my inheritance – for myself and my children’s – forever.