IN THE HEART OF THE DUTCH EAST INDIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22777, 10 July 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

IN THE HEART OF THE DUTCH EAST INDIES

By E. P. PEARCE

AVE arrived at Sourabaya on New Year's Eve, but much too late to land. One gets a muddled impression of a strange port at night. Everything off the ship seems silent. There are blazes of light in several directions, and a few friendly ships lying at their moorings. A little later you look over the side sec nothing but blackness, lhere is no sign of a port—no lights, no town. The ship has just swung round on the tide, and you are looking at the blackness whence you came.

Although Sourabava is not the State capital it is very definitely the commercial capital of the Dutch J'<ast Indies, and the chief naval base. It is one of the world's great sugar centres, but it has many other irons in the fire. The port area is a highly developed industrial district, containing a na-val dockyard, gun foundry, shipbuilding yards, dry docks and engineering works. Javanese Women and Girls On the way to the hotel we fell to admiring the natives. 'J hey are small, wiry, graceful and energetic people. They' look like Malays, but their dress is rather reminiscent of Hindustan. The men wear a European coat, sarong, shoes but no socks. The women wear a blouse and sarong. Some of the Javanese girls wear coloured handkerchiefs over their heads, while others decorate their hair with flowers, as their Hindu sisters do.

Wkere Three Languages Meet

| Many of the women and girls wear I bracelets, armlets and anklets. They are not as beautiful as Hindu women, as their noses are flat and spreading, and their eyes arc rather far apart. As Hindus visited Java as far back as the first century, and have been going there practically ever since, we must expect to find traces of them. Chinese Penetration At the hotel Europeans, wearing pyjamas only, were sitting on their verandahs. It was not very hot really, but the humidity was excessive—about 90 degrees. One man with whom we talked had his shirt soaked through, and his chin dripped perspiration incessantly. Ho looked as -if ho had just come from a tennis court, but people do not play tennis at such an hour in the tropics. No, he just perspired that way all the time. He explained that the climate did not suit him, and that lie was going home. The white men in some of the shops \vere pathetically slow. A\ ithout realising it, they had allowed the climate to sap three-fourths of their energy. This is not the case with the Dutchmen in big offices. The energy that some of these men display after ten years or so in such a climate is remarkable. In going among the business houses and banks one is struck by the successful penetration of the Chinese. They are the babus of the place, the cashiers and book-keepers, but they talk much less and work harder than their contemporaries in Hindustan. Invari- , ably one finds them next in authority i to the white men. As traders, too, they are unusually successful. They have

absorbed Western ideas of cleanliness and comfort without sacrificing, any of their native ability for making wealth. Practically all the Dutchmen, Chinese and Eurasians speak three languages: Dutch, English and Malay. The wide distribution of American Sims has prompted people here as elsewhere to improve their English. All the bookshops carry a large stock of bocks in English. - " Lunch at the hotel seemed a somewhat .depressing affair. Perhaps the uncomfortable humidity was to blame. There was no laughter, and very little conversation. The barefooted waiters, about two to each guest, seemed even more depressed than the sahibs. Early in the afternoon we started out to* visit a sugar mill. Our route took us through the residential part of the city. The roads were wide, and somo carried electric trams. Tho municipality does not favour walking as an exercise, and therefore seldom provides a pavement. Sugar Cane and Rlcc What a place for colour! How can it be otherwise, with flowers blooming all the year round? But then we crossed a river, and the tone of fchu place went down with a rush. Rivers and railways often provide shocks in this way. Native villages now lined the route. In these places, with their little shopkeepers, fowls, goats and quaint smells, the people aro always just coming out or just going in. These villages are very similar to those in British India. After all, the Dutch East Indies to a Dutchman is just India. At last the open country lay before us, and we began to pass sugar cane and rice fields. A rice field just shooting is a very beautiful sight. The patch of glorious colour stirs you more profoundly than anything else in tho tropics. We arrived at tho sugar mill and were admitted without question,, although it is not always possible for non-Dutch subjects to enter these mills. Sugar is the mainstay of .Tava, and the yearly production is nearly two million tons."What wealth this represents! No wonder that some of the sugar companies have offices fit for a GovernorGeneral. It is recorded that Holland managed to raise £166,000,000 by twelve years of forced culture in Java, at a time when the population was but live million. ' ' Night Scenes Wo returned to town about sundown, and found the whole of the population on the streets. The roads were crowded with cars and cycles—"push-bikes" mostly—only the lowly folk were walking. It was tho monsoon season, and the sky was thick with inky-black nimbus clouds, apparently all ready for a real tropical downpour. Alas, ono cannot take the clouds very seriously in these latitudes. At night we were entertained at the famous Sim pang Club. It was pleasant sitting under tho trees among tho prosperous Dutchmen and their pretty , women. No ono seemed in any hurry i,o dine, possibly because there was very little else to do at night. Dinner is served at this club until midnight. We heard someone mention the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Immediately we thought of Stamford Raffles,' who was Governor of Java during the British administration. What an "In and Out Club" Java was about that time! First the British seized the place but released it later; then the French occupied Batavia only to be driven out * by the British The British do not appear to have left much of an impress anywhere; but their occupation lasted only five years, while tho Dutch have been in possession for over tlireo hundred. We think of Australia, and wonder what that continent would look like had the Dutch worked on it for three hundred years. That will be something to turn over on the way home.