Before leaving New York for our new foreign assignment, I saw a treasure in the biography section of the 100-year-old bookshop, Argosy Bookstore in downtown Manhattan. The beaming face of “Mr. United Nations,” as he is widely known, is on the book cover as if saying, I would make good company on your next journey. I secured the lone copy like a rare pearl in the ocean. “I Walked with Heroes,” a first edition written by General Carlos P. Romulo, bears his affectionate note to its original owner. He signed, “Rommy, Washington, DC August 16, 1961.”
The memoirs of a precocious boy from Camiling, Tarlac whose unpredictable trajectory from news reporting to a stellar career in diplomacy yet regarded himself as “one of the most forthright and undiplomatic of men,” teem with comical sketches of a bucolic childhood. His accounts as a journalist and eventually newspaper editor was as engrossing as his prolific years as a University of the Philippines professor where he would decades later become president.
Heeding his editor’s prodding to “set my reminiscence in print,” General Romulo redolently narrated events that shaped his life from wartime to peacetime. He recalled with profound humanity his encounters with men and women he regarded as his heroes. He honored his father’s audacity as a soldier during the revolution and revered his integrity as an incorruptible politician. He pompously wrote about President Manuel L. Quezon and was never coy about how he emulated President Quezon’s manners and sartorial elegance. He called President Quezon “the idol of the Philippine youth.” He would eventually become his trusted secretary.
General Douglas MacArthur was his hero in the battlefield, but I gleaned from CPR’s writing how the obscure gallantry and enduring wisdom of women molded him. He valued how his mother “reigned with the discipline of love,” while he praised his first English teacher, Mrs. Hattie Grove, who introduced him to the “magic world of books.” He tenderly wrote about his wife Virginia as “au courant” on world events, who read the newspapers he read and “the gentlest of women, but her way of thinking is sound.”
Romulo the journalist’s unfiltered foretelling of the war in the Far East and how he chronicled the geopolitical landscape during his travels at that time earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Correspondence. He was the first Asian, non-American to receive the prestigious honor in 1942.
It’s heartbreaking to know that his brushes with discrimination over a century ago still happen in our modern world. One incident was when CPR was barred from entering the Manila Army and Navy Club (despite a friend’s invitation) and was told by the Filipino staff, the “American club for Americans don’t want Filipinos in it.” As a new student at Columbia University, he was singled out by classmates because of their differences in skin color and accent. But he eventually earned the respect of his towering peers when his impeccable eloquence at debating competitions propelled their team to victory.
He turned those painful chapters of his life into a lifelong crusade against injustice through his writings and speeches on the floors of the American Congress, in schools and the UN. He genuinely loved our country, a patriot who asserted: “I grew in importance and I grew in years because I was a Filipino. To do my best, to increase and never lessen my country’s pride was the underlying motivation of all I might attempt.”
I believe that CPR’s seminal work in the UN with the quest for peace at its nucleus remains momentous. After reading and rereading his book, I realized that the principles he passionately championed over 80 years ago remain as germane as they are now.
On his stint as the first Asian to become president of the UN General Assembly, I imagine CPR perhaps uncomfortably “perched atop three thick NYC telephone books” as he would describe that “proudest moment of the small man from a small country,” yet confidently addressing representatives from all over the world with his astute insights drawn from the depths of his experience and understanding as a well-read, tactful and brilliant man.
Pre teleprompters and digital devices, I visualize him speaking wittingly behind the iconic UNGA podium, voicing his dignified remarks despite being chided for his height and the smallness of the Philippines. General Romulo believed “Filipinos as a race were always courteous, gentle of speech and friendly, and I was expected to display these characteristics.”
The forbidding consequences of war is a recurring theme in “I Walked…” The dream that CPR declared with certitude at the 1946 San Francisco UN Conference – “Let us make this floor the last battlefield” – seems to have lost its meaning in recent years and months. In a time of ongoing wars and an age when pugnacious trolls rule alternative battlefields in cyberspace, his abiding lesson on how negotiations and resolutions were conducted in the UN rings louder. He said: “Without personal contact there is no hope.”
“I Walked…” is a deeply human story. His was a multiplicity of voices – tender, intelligent, brave, ebullient, always speaking of the truth yet vulnerable, too. In the darkest hours of war, the young Romulo saw how the hands of God work, believing, “Our elders and God had the world in their keeping, so how could events turn other than right?” Later at the UN, while negotiating with diplomats who dissented from his opinions, he saw the “spark of divinity” work under impenetrable circumstances.
Come June 2026, as the Philippines vies for a seat in the Security Council (where CPR served four times as president), it’s compelling to reflect on his unwavering influence that for years echoed in the noble halls of the UN and the world. His ideals on the pursuit for peace, patriotism, hard work and inherent human values of compassion, love and trust in God endure. In a world aching for peace, Carlos P. Romulo’s voice echoes resoundingly once more.