  We review the construction of the effective Lagrangians of the
Veneziano-Yankielowicz (VY) type for two non-supersymmetric theories containing
one Dirac fermion in the two-index antisymmetric or symmetric representation of
the gauge group (orientifold theories). Since these theories are planar
equivalent, at N\to\infty to super Yang-Mill their effective Lagrangians
coincides with the bosonic part of the VY Lagrangian. We depart from the
supersymmetric limit in two ways. First, we consider finite but still large
values of N. Then 1/N effects break supersymmetry. We suggest a minimal
modification of the VY Lagrangian which incorporates these 1/N effects, leading
to a non-vanishing vacuum energy density. We then analyze the spectrum at
finite N. For N=3 the two-index antisymmetric representation (one flavor) is
equivalent to one-flavor QCD. We show that in this case the scalar
quark-antiquark state is heavier than the corresponding pseudoscalar state,
``eta^prime''. Second, we add a small fermion mass term. The fermion mass term
breaks supersymmetry explicitly. The vacuum degeneracy is lifted. The parity
doublets split. We evaluate the splitting. Finally, we include the \theta-angle
and study its implications.
