Meeting in Manila.

THE BAD NEWS is that Marcos is not listening. He denies that the situation in the Philippines is serious. He refuses to admit that the Communist insurgency in the hinterland is growing, having now spread to nearly all 73 provinces of his country. He discounts estimates that the insurgents number 15,000 or more and are picking up strength. Instead, he says, their numbers are declining, they are "surrendering in droves." The Grand Old Man of Filipino politics, still a national hero to millions of his countrymen, appears tragically to be in danger of losing touch with reality. The insurgent New People's Army is growing steadily; it controls large tracts of territory in the southern islands, and may even, according to U.S. intelligence reports that have surfaced, be strong enough to challenge the Philippine army directly in a few years.

Against such a background, Marcos appears increasingly like the Chinese emperor of old who believed the reports of his messengers that his army was winning one glorious victory after another over the enemy warlord, heedless of the fact that each victory took place nearer to the capital city. The final victor occurred at the very gates of his palace, after which he was promptly deposed by the "defeated" warlord.

If Marcos's refusal to listen is the bad news, then the good news is that the United States is talking. Marcos may be deaf, but Washington is not mute. Senator Laxalt recently paid a visit to Manila, as an emissary of President Reagan, and tried to bring home to a stubbornly optimistic Marcos just how urgent is the situation that he faces. While Marcos did not exactly shoot the messenger, his displeasure with the message was evident. But the Laxalt visit, fortunately, was only the most recent example of a well-conceived and vigorous Administration effort to save the Philippines now, before it is all too painfully obvious to the whole free world the country is in need of salvation.

America's tendency has been to react too late, too little, and too timidly to the political tidal waves that so easily engulf our fragile Third World allies. The time to act is much earlier, when a crisis is still on the back pages and the apocalypse seems a remote possibility. To its credit, the Reagan Administration is doing just that in the Philippines, undertaking a tenacious, long-term effort to save one of our key strategic assets in the Pacific. The Marcos regime is in no danger of imminent collapse--but neither was the Shah in his day. The Administration should keep talking. And Marcos, for his own good and for that of his country, had best begin to listen.