STOUT-HEARTED DUTCH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 43, 20 February 1942, Page 4

STOUT-HEARTED DUTCH

In the course of one of his earlier speeches Mr; {Churchill,. ' paying a tribute to the nations fighting alongside Britain, referred to the "stouthearted" Dutch. If it was the right word then to apply to a nation that fights on indomitably, though its native soil lies Under the heavy heel of the enemy, its Tightness is doubly confirmed by the attitude of the Dutch in the defence of their East Indian colonies and the native peoples in their charge against the formidable aggressor, Japan. The Dutch there have seen the enemy sweep on like a flood, overwhelming territory after territory, as the Germans did in Europe in the spring of 1940, when Holland itself fell in a few days, but their motto, like that of Britain in those critical days, is: "No surrender; we fight on, even if we fight alone." That is what Dr. Van Mook, Lieutenant GovernorGeneral of the Dutch East Indies, meant when he said in Sydney, on his way back to his post from America: ,

The Netherlands East Indies will resist the Japanese to the last man and will fight on, even if the position seems hopeless and even if help does not come.

These are no idle words. Civilians and officials in the Dutch East Indies are staying at their posts. There is no evacuation. From the GovernorGeneral and his wife and daughter, says a Batavia message, down to every workaday citizen, they will stay at their posts and every family will stay in its home. Behind this resolution there is an even higher motive than that of resistance to the enemy; the Dutch feel that they have a duty to the teeming millions of Indonesians, the natives of Java and the other islands, to stand by them and not desert them in this supreme crisis and hour of trial. Nor is this the courage of despair. The Dutch are a fighting race and won their independence froni Spain when the

outlook was far darker than it is today. They look forward to the day when retirements will cease and the advance begin, and the Japanese will suffer as the Germans have suffered in the East after all their easy victories in the West. This is the spirit in which wars are won, and the Dutch have already given earnest of their ability to deal blows as well as to take them. They stand today as the nucleus of tough resistance in Asia, as tomorrow they may form the spearhead and base of attack and victory. _____