HOLLAND’S EAST INDIES

Southland Times, Issue 23677, 28 November 1938, Page 16

HOLLAND’S EAST INDIES

JAPAN’S SHADOW IN THE NORTH ALARM STARTS DEFENCE MEASURES To the people of the Netherlands the Japanese Army and its activities in China are of less permanent interest than is the Japanese Navy. This is.not the semi-paternal attitude of an old instructor toward his now grown-up pupil —the Netherlands supplied the first ships and training to raise the Japanese Navy from its sampan and sailing-junk era; rather, it is a feeling of worry and concern, for 10,000 miles away, on the other side of the world from the homeland, Netherland India is a neighbour of the expanding empire of Japan, writes Clair Price in The New York Times. As far as is known, the Japanese Navy at present has no base south of Japan itself, which lies 3000 miles north of the Netherlands Island. In Western navies it is generally considered impracticable for a modern fleet to operate more than 1500 miles from its main base. But when Japan withdrew from the League of Nations she took with her as a souvenir the handsome necklace of the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands. Economically this sea empire of ocean peaks and coral atolls is not worth a great deal; but in a naval sense it constitutes a whole fleet of natural aircraft carriers and submarine depots at permanent moorings. And the United States has decided to set the Philippines free in 1946 and withdraw the United States Navy to its permanent line of defence in Hawaii. SEVEN YEARS’ GRACE The Netherlands have not welcomed these moves. In their view, United States withdrawal from the Philippines opens up the possibility of a Japanese naval base less than 1000 miles from their possessions. Of course, there are many reasons why things should not turn out as badly as that, but naval staffs cannot afford to be optimists. As the Netherlands now reckon it, they have until 1946 to bring their East Indian defences up to a maximum of strength and efficiency, and they are accordingly engaged on a rearmament programme at top speed. The motherland itself is no bigger than Maryland, but the Far Eastern possessions stretch over a vast archipelago, the distances of which are

greater than those from New York to San Francisco. From Polu Weh, at the tip of Sumatra, to Humboldt Bay, on New Guinea, is more than 3000 nautical miles, a fourteen-day journey by the trading steamers of the K.P.M. The possessions include Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, Netherland, New Guinea and lesser islands almost without number. They form the great bulk of Malaysia, straddling the Equator. In area they are sixty times as large as the homeland, and they have seven times as large a population. Java alone has nearly five times as many people as the Netherlands. FABULOUSLY RICH Java is fabulously rich. It has given the motherland in Europe a succession of sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee and rubber millionaires, besides producing on its own account a little of everything, from the Java Man to Mata Hari. It is itself the Netherland Empire. Everything else in the Indies is administratively considered the Outer Districts. Sumatra, next door to it, is more than three times as big as Java—about the area of Sweden—but economically it is far behind Java and, in turn, is itself far ahead of the other major islands. Borneo, producer of oil, is considerably larger than Sumatra. Sumatra is the great rubber producer. Banka, an island lying east of Sumatra, is rich in tin. Netherland New Guinea, an area as big as California, is largely unknown, and in the course of normal events it would probably be the last of the big Netherlands islands to be opened up. But now the Netherlander are exploring it by aeroplane with all possible speed. The whole of the motherland’s varied life—financial, commercial, industrial, social —feels the throb of this rich tropical empire. The big white steamers with Chinese stewards and Malay deckhands which you see in Amsterdam harbour, take thirty days to reach Batavia, the Indies’ capital in Java, but aeroplanes do it in five or six days, three times a week, and it costs less to telephone to Batavia from Amsterdam than it costs to telephone across the Alantic. Everywhere in the motherland are men who have served their ten or twenty years in the old colonial town of Java and who talk of Weltevreden much as New Yorkers talk of Albany, though Weltevreden is the modern end of Batavia, 10,000 miles away. The great Viceroy van Heutz stands permanently on his pedestal in Amsterdam, but one of his ablest young men, Dr Hendrick Colijn, now not far from 70, is today Prime Minister of the motherland. SHIVER OF ALARM The shiver that went up the Netherlanders’ spine when Germany and Japan signed their so-called anti-Comintern Pact, less than two years ago, may accordingly be imagined. Both were powers opposed to the status quo. Both overlooked Netherland territory, one in Europe with a powerful air force and army, the other in the Far East, with one of the most powerful of the world s navies. The motherland had no illusions on the subject of Nazi Germany. The Indies looked with concern upon the mysterious foreign warships v.hich sometimes wandered cautiously and unannounced through lonely island seas where normally only the monthly K.P.M. steamers were ever seen. Briefly, no Netherlander believed then or believes now that anti-Communism was all that was involved in the GermanJapanese Pact. Since then anxieties have steadily risen. The nation’s tradition of inflexible neutrality was rooted in international law. It has taken a severe wrench to adjust it to a world in which law, the League and collective security have unmistakably broken down. The first result of the anti-Comintern Pact was the arrival of a petition signed by j 50,000 civilians in the Indies emphasizing the urgent need of more defences on land, sea and in the air, particularly naval defences. It was followed a few months later by a voluntary defence fund raised in the Indies to help pay for a cruiser to be sent out. The war in China has been more eloquent than either of these. When Japan went seriously into action in China, not far from the Indies, the reluctant Netherlanders in the motherland needed no further convincing. BUILDING A HORNET’S NEST Defence then became merely a question of finding the money and applying it to the best effect and with the utmost speed. Defence expenditure has increased from about £10,000,000 for the financial year 1937 to about £16,000,000 for 1938. These figures include both home and Imperial defence and it is impossible to disentangle the two. But, of this year’s figure, something over £4,000,000 is being devoted to the navy; and it may be taken for granted that practically all of this goes to the Indies, for in reality the Netherlands Navy is the Indies’ Navy. The motherland’s defences look landward and not seaward.

East Indian waters are narrow seas, in many places full of dangerous coral reefs and unpredictable tide-rips and currents. Battleships, being tender as well as expensive, are thus ruled out. The limit of Netherlands naval construction is normally the capacity of the drydock at Surabaya—Booo tons. The navy thus depends cn light cruisers with speeds up to 33 knots, fast motor boats, destroyers, submarines, seaplanes, mine-layer, mine-sweepers and their auxiliary craft. For such light and highly mobile defences the Indies are admirably suited. Many of their waters are so difficult that ’only Netherlands captains know them. They abound in potential submarine depots; and seaplanes can base themselves wherever p tanker can lie up in quiet water. For unwelcome strangers an adequate supply of such forces can make a hornets’ nest of the vast archipelago; and as the Netherlanders see it they have until 1946 to complete their Indies defence forces; perhaps longer, if the Japanese Army remains bogged on the Chinese main- ' land. How long the hornets’ nest could hold out unaided against an overwhelming superiority of strength may be another matter. SINGAPORE WITHOUT TEETH All the naval stir and commotion are coming at present from the coast of China, where the main weight of the t Japanese Navy is moving slowly south, i The British were prevented by the i Washington Treaty from fortifying . Hong Kong, but far down to the south, . nearly 1500 miles below Hong Kong, i their new naval base on Singapore Isi land lies in the very heart of the vast ■ tropical treasure house of the Nether- : land Indies, with Java, Sumatra and • Borneo lying in a huge semi-circle f around it and the little islands of the ; Riou archipelago lying only 10 miles > off Singapore Harbour itself. I Singapore is one of the grandest naval ; positions 1 on tne world’s seas. On its 1 new naval base rests the ultimate de- ■ fence of all the immense British com- ; mitments 'from India to Australia and t New Zealand. It has accordingly been developed as the base of a powerful battle fleet, with a drydock big enough to take the Queen Mary. Bv'- where is j the powerful battle fleet? At the [ moment it seems to be stuck fast 6000 . miles away in European waters; and, ’ tj far, not all of Mr Chamberlain’s j “realistic diplomacy” has succeeded in , freeing it

FATAL ATTRACTION? At the moment, indeed, the Netherlanders profess to fear that, without the powerful battle fleet for which it was intended, Singapore may one day exercise the same fatal attraction as Port Arthur once exercised in somewhat similar circumstances. And the great thing about Singapore, from the point of view of the Netherlands, is that it lies on the very doorstep of Java. It is sg situated that an attacker could hardly approach it without stepping on a Netherland island and so ringing all the alarm bells in The Hague. As matters stand today, every shipyard from Flushing to the Helder which is suitably equipped is working at topspeed on naval construction. The new cruiser de Ruyter has already received a tumultuous welcome on its arrival. at Batavia. The new Tromp is doing its trials and will be off or. its 10,000-mile journey to the other side of the world next year. A new cruiser is being built and the old cruiser Java is being modernized to relieve the older Sumatra.. A replacement programme of submarine construction is under way. More and bigger destroyers are going out. A few months ago crowds, filling the. quays at Flushing, gave a demonstrative bon voyage to four new mine-sweepers as they put out for Java. FORCED OUT OF NEUTRALITY At the same time, the army’s air force is being heavily reinforced. Several dozen Glenn Martin American bombers have already reached army headquarters at Bandoeng, and more are going out. Indeed, if anything more than the war in China were needed to speed up rearmament of the Netherlands, it came last March with the Auschluss. The lightning-like overrunning of Austria, to be followed by the events in Czechoslovakia and at Munich, thoroughly alarmed the Netherlanders, for it brought the methods of the anti-status-quo Powers very close to home. , Geography rather than politics—for the Netherlanders are inflexible neutrals —has forced on them and the British a limited but real community of interests in the Far East as in Europe. As far as Java, Sumatra and Borneo are concerned, a Singapore adequately defended would be a welcome counterpoise to our planned withdrawal from the Philippines in 1946. Whether such a Singapore would have any effect in remote New Guinea seems to be more questionable.