SINGAPORE CONFERENCE

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 13

SINGAPORE CONFERENCE

RAJAH OF SARAWAK INTERESTED Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. SINGAPORE, January 26. (Received January 27, at 1 a.m.) . The Rajah of Sarawak, in whose territory the Miri oilfields are situated, has arrived here in connection with the naval conference. He boarded the H.M.S. Kent. THE BRITISH RAJAH As Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak recently madera donation of £IOO,OOO to the British Government, to be used for the education of the children of colonial Civil servants, we may infer that the finances of his principality are in a flourishing '.condition. His Highness, who is married to the Hon. Sylvia Brett, is the third ruler of his dynasty, since it was founded by Sir James Brooke, and (according to the London ‘Sunday Times ’ the only English Sovereign of an independent, _ though protected) Eastern State. His territory is by no means insignificant. It occupies some 40,000 square miles, (four-fifths the area oi England) of the great island of Borneo, with some half a million of Dyaks, Malays, primitive head-hunting tribesmen, and others, and all this collection is kept in order by the personal influence of the Rajah, with a _ few European assistants, and _ a minute corps of native police. So it has been for three generations. Evidentily the Brooke family has discovered the secret of handling Oriental populations with smoothness and effect. To get some inkling of the way it is done, one must read the attractive pages of ‘ My Life in Sarawak,’ by H.fl. the Rani Margaret, the mother of the present Rajah, who now lives chiefly in Cornwall, and devotes herself to literature and music.