human beings. The larger part of those Natives who are educated do not seem conscious that their development is but another means for European capitalism to strengthen its position and become more favored in the eyes of the people of this country.'

The remedy urged by this party is unity of purpose and action among laborers and farmers in a fight to obtain for the whole island-population political rights, 'which open the way to power and influence in the direction and control of the native land.' The declaration frankly sets forth that, ‘in its aims, the Sarekat Islam holds strictly to the principles and laws of the Mohammedan religion,' and these are said to provide for popular government and economic equality.

If the experience of other colonies is any criterion, Sarekat Islam, or some successor to its principles, will be the dominant Native party of the Dutch Indies during the period of national political development. Every extension of political rights to the people will strengthen it and weaken its opponents, European and Native. Its positive Moslem character will add the driving power of that militant religion to the emotional force of its intense nationalism. Indeed, it is not impossible that this party will become an important factor not only in the politics of Insulinde but of the entire Orient.

VI

In the extension of popular education, as in many other matters, the Dutch have proceeded slowly in Insulinde but are now accelerating their pace. The school system is too complicated to describe in a general article but the trend of its development may be briefly indicated. In 1907 after the Government had realized that it could not afford to give all or

even a large proportion of the children instruction in the 'Inlander' schools, where a first-rate five-year course is offered to about 400,000 pupils, it began to establish large numbers of village, or dessa schools. These institutions are supported partially by the central government, partially by the villages. In each rustic, single-room building the three R's are taught to three classes by one teacher. The course covers three years and instruction is by Native teachers, men who have had five years of general education followed by two or three of normal training. No Dutch or other foreign language is taught, the purpose being to ground the child in his own language and literature and in the subjects which will be of the greatest practical importance to him in life. At present some 500,000 children are in schools of this type, and it is expected that ultimately all of the children not otherwise cared for will receive this sort of education. It is also planned to articulate the dessa schools with the higher grades so that it will be possible for an increasing number of pupils to carry their studies through to any desired goal.

The schools of Insulinde are the expression of a very different theory of education from that which obtains in the Philippines. In the American possession all instruction is in English from the first grade through the university, the avowed purpose of the system being to make English a common national language and to train a whole generation of Filipinos in the principles of Occidental, democratic citizenship. The Dutch-Indian schools for Native children, on the other hand, have been planned to develop the Native culture and personality. Malay languages, customs, music, and dancing are emphasized. In discussing this aspect of their system the most

"To teach the child a foreign language and in a foreign language at the age of five, six, or seven, when he ought to be beginning to think, is to spoil his mind. He cannot think in the foreign tongue. He does not think in his own. What he learns he learns by rote, and later his mental processes do not develop. The first year should be entirely in the native tongue of the child, also the second. Then a small amount of Dutch and gradually more, until toward the end of his seven- or eight-year course he should spend only about ten per cent of his time in studying his own language and further acquiring his own culture. The early years of work in that tongue will have grounded him in its use, in a knowledge of his national traditions, customs, and literature. During this time his mentality and personality will have had a normal development and later he will acquire Dutch more rapidly than if he had begun it at once. In the end he will be both a better Dutch subject and a better Native. But,' the educator added, 'the Natives all want to learn Dutch and wish instruction to be in Dutch from the beginning.'

There is no teaching of civics or other deliberate preparation for citizenship or for a philosophy of life in the Native schools of Insulinde. The more progressive Dutch educators regard this as an ostrich policy, but thus far they have not been able to change it. A quantitative comparison between the educational systems of the Dutch Indies and the Philippines reveals strikingly the really remarkable effort that the latter country is making to train its children. Out of a population of about 11,500,000 Filipinos nearly 1,100,000 children are in the public schools, while of the 47,000,000 inhabitants of the archipelago to the

ucation. It should be added, however, that the Dutch colonies, much against the wishes of the Native inhabitants, expend annually for national defense a sum more than twice as large as the entire Philippine budget, while the Filipinos under American sovereignty are quite free from military or naval burdens. Nor should Americans, who are inclined to believe that the straight and sure road to self-government runs through the schoolhouse, forget that it was the mature judgment of the late Viscount Bryce that in politics, ‘education, that is to say the education given by schools and books, signifies less than we would like to think.'

VII

Not the least interesting of the tasks of the observer in the Netherlands Indies is to study the attitude of various classes of people toward the political and social changes which are almost universally recognized as taking place there. The old-time officials and business men, reacting as the class does everywhere, regard the Volksraad and the movement toward Native education and political development as almost wholly bad. It got under way during the war, when the colonies were left in comparative freedom by the home government, when liberal elements controlled the States-General and a liberal Governor-General ruled in Batavia. Now many Conservatives are very much surprised and extremely indignant that the granting of some rights to the Natives should lead them to demand others. They are just beginning to realize what education and representative councils may lead to, and they are both angry and alarmed. Since the war this element, both in the Indies and in Holland, which did not escape the post-war wave

of reactionary politics, has attempted to bring the colony back into its former leading strings.

This task is proving a difficult one in Insulinde, as in several other parts of the world. It is resisted not only by all of the Natives, but by a large number of resident Dutchmen. In Java one realizes immediately that most of the permanent Dutch population feel very strongly that day-to-day control from the distant home-capital is no longer possible. They wish to rule the colonies from Batavia primarily for the benefit of the colonies. They do not care to have their financial, business, military, and educational policies determined by men at The Hague over whom they can exercise no effective control and who think first of the interests of the mother country. Furthermore, the more liberal members of this group realize that Native progress cannot be checked. On the whole they approve of the liberal developments of the past few years and expect them to be carried forward, although there are different views as to the speed and the ultimate end of the movement.

One interesting aspect of the situation is the attitude of the Eurasians toward Native aspirations. This class occupies a very powerful position in the country, controlling much of its wealth, holding many of the highest official positions, and exhibiting more cohesive force than any other group. In the main the Eurasians oppose the further education and development of the Natives. They do so because they fear them. They realize that they are so completely outnumbered that the rising power of the Malays will be acquired at their expense. Consequently they are more Dutch than the Dutch and resist any movement that may lessen the power of Holland in the islands. Their position in this matter

probably is well founded, for it is apparent that much more actual feeling exists between the Eurasians and the Malays than between either the Dutch and the Natives or the Dutch and the Eurasians.

The views of the Natives are expressed in part in the platforms of Boedi Oetomo and Sarekat Islam, already sketched. They were further set forth not long ago in the Volksraad by one of the leading Javanese Moderates. This member declared that the changes that have occurred during the last generation or two have made it imperative for the Natives to become generally educated and to have a voice in their own Government. The forces which from time immemorial had enabled them to hold society together, to govern themselves locally, and to live economically have been so changed that the people likewise must be changed. In the old days, this Malay said, there was a feeling of local solidarity, respect for local rulers, laws, customs, and institutions. Economically the local groups were more or less self-sufficing; local industry throve and local agriculture was sufficient for the needs of the people. Now, with the advent of roads and railroads, the people move about constantly. The old group-system with all that it implied is breaking down, or has broken down. Nowadays the Chinese and the European trader can come into every village. They can buy up the agricultural products for a song and their manufactured articles drive out Native handiwork. This situation, the speaker declared, can be met only by the education and enfranchisement of the Native. Otherwise he goes under, economically and politically, in the new social and economic environment. As one passes through the crowded Javan countryside with its throngs of depressed, tired-looking brown people,

among whom women are the commonest and most heavily laden packanimals, he realizes that there are realities back of this statement.

The reaction of most Europeans to this strong presentation of the Native case was well expressed to the writer by a distinguished conservative member of the Volksraad who said, speaking of his Malay colleagues: "The Native members are often keen debaters, men possessed of good minds. The trouble with them, as with all Orientals, is lack of precision of thought. They love to talk and argue and fight for the sake of doing these things. They are not unlike ourselves in that respect, save that they do not have minds of precision. They do not think a thing through to its logical conclusion; do not foresee the inevitable consequences of their words and their acts. They are animated by emotion rather than by reason. They want money, education, and development, and they expect the Government to provide all of these things. How the means to the end

they do not say in detail or in a practical way. In the economic development of the islands they have had little share and they exercise little economic influence now. The capital and the direction, the creative energy, are all European or Chinese. The Natives lack this creative energy yet they wish to control politically. The guiding and impelling force, however, must come from the Europeans.'

VIII

From such dissimilar points of view do the Dutch and the Malays regard each other and their common problems; and their attitudes are typical of those of white men and colored, or of advanced and backward peoples, wherever the former rule the latter. The vital fact of the situation in the Dutch

Indies and elsewhere, however, is that the problems of such opposing races are problems that can be solved only by coöperation. The Japanese in Korea and Formosa, the English in India, and the Dutch in the lower Malay Archipelago have come to a realization that permanently hostile subjects will render unprofitable and dangerous the richest province of the most powerful empire, and they are now seeking to substitute consent for force as a basis for their sovereignty in these dominions. They are discovering that the transition is not an easy one.

Yet many of the leaders of the unwilling Oriental subjects of Occidental nations, and of Japan, are beginning to learn that, for the present at least, their masters are necessary to them. They are demanding universal education, better sanitation, higher standards of living generally, and a modern political organization. But even in Java, richest of the far-famed isles of the East, there is not enough economic development to support the social superstructure that the Native leaders would build. Nor has the Malay or the Indian yet demonstrated that he can lay the necessary economic foundation without Occidental aid. In the Philippines, where by far the greatest progress has been made toward a successful adaptation of Western institutions to the uses of an Eastern nation, the people have been relieved of tremendous burdens of government, such as national defense, which other Oriental colonies bear and from which no independent nation can escape. And the Philippines have practically reached the limit of social development possible with their present economic resources.

The hard fact is that the Malays and other tropical and economically backward peoples cannot dispense with the coöperation of more highly developed nations until they become productive

enough to pay for the sort of civilization which they seem determined to acquire. They can, however, insist that meanwhile their relations with more advanced states rest upon a fairer basis than they have in the past, and that steady progress be made toward autonomy or independence, economic and political.

In the political field the present need of Western tutelage is almost equally great, however stridently Native leaders may publicly deny its existence. It arises from the fact that the ancient institutions of these tropical peoples are inadequate to the exigencies of government under modern economic and political conditions. In British and Dutch India, national consciousness has not yet submerged ancient, local, religious, and racial antagonisms, while even in the Philippines there is a possibility that sectional divisions will become dangerous once the pressure of American domination is withdrawn. Further, as the Javan who pleaded his people's cause in the Volksraad clearly recognized, it has become necessary to reorganize Native society upon principles that are, in the main, foreign to the history and the temperament of Oriental races. It is highly significant that from Korea to Turkey the professed goal of the nationalists is selfgovernment of the modern Occidental type- that is, democratic self-government. But experience seems to show that capacity for this type of government comes only from long training, and that it is really successful

only among people who are habitually loyal to law and willing to stand up and fight for their rights under the law. Loyalty to law is not an Oriental concept and the Oriental masses have not yet acquired either the knowledge or the will to resist oppression by their traditional rulers. No Eastern nation, save only Japan, has yet successfully adapted Western political organization to its use.

So, because its old institutions have been destroyed or rendered inadequate to the present needs of its people, the East must tolerate the West yet a little longer within its gates. But it is doing so with an increasing insistence that the position of dominance now held by the West shall be only temporary, and with a hardening determination that it will become the master of its own future.

Will that future unfold under the inspiration of Occidental or of Oriental leadership and ideals? This is the ever present question in the Eastern world. As for Insulinde, every native of 'that magnificent empire which winds about the equator like a garland of emeralds' would say with the Javanese Princess, Kartini:

'New conditions will come into the Javanese world, if not through us, through those who will come after us. Emancipation is in the air; it has been foreordained.' 1

1Three articles, taken from a collection of Princess Kartini's letters, appeared in the Atlantic in November and December 1919, and in January 1920.- THE EDITORS