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BUILDERS OF A NATION
In considering the talents and aspirations of this life we find that along with a logical mind and very concrete comprehension of men and things, there is allied the artistic temperament, which led Mr. Kalaw in his first years to choose as his favorite study literature. "Two kinds of men have influenced me, purely literary writers and thinkers," he says. This shows at once in his style; he thinks and also loves good writmg. Clear, at times cut out in vivid strokes and touches not unlike "Gogul" with an abhorrence of the overdrawn, or the bombastic, his style avoided even from the first the errors of much Spanish work. Now he has a simplicity bordering on nudity, a nudity which is always chaste and warmed to life by strokes often fresh as Nature herself. His works are most translatable and for this reason can be pronounced good writing; for all that is weak is weaker, when put into another language. His journalistic career began in Lipa, when as a student he was editor of a juvenile manuscript review. This was most appropriately named "The Voice of Youth." At the Liceo de Manila he wrote on "La Alborada." In his first years course in the "Escuela de Derecho," when Commissioner Palma was one of his professors he invited the young pupil to write on EI Renacimiento. This was as far back as 1903 and he served first as reporter, then as city editor and was afterwards editor in chief. He was on this paper for four years and during this period steadily improved his style as well as his mind by wide reading. As a youth his first models were French and Spanish such as Enrique Gomez Carrillo, Ramon del Valle lnclan and Angel Ganivet. His later models after the study of English masters of modern prose have been Americans and Englishmen of the hour who are living and making history-Bryce, Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt, Elihu Root, many others-