Out of Exile

Citation preview

WITHDRAWN a

LEWISTON,

MAINE

Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/outofexile0000soet

OUT

O tee axis

SOETAN SJAHRIR

Out of Exile The greater part of this book is based upon letters by

Soetan Sjabrir rewritten and edited in Dutch by

MARIA

DUCHATEAU-SJAHRIR

Translated, with an introduction, by CHARLES

WOLF,

Lao £

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5

JR.

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An Asia Book THE

JOHN NEW

DAY

COMPANY

YORK

COPYRIGHT,

1949,

BY

THE

JOHN

DAY

COMPANY

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Published on the same day in the Dominion of Canada by Longmans, Green and Company, Toronto.

MANUFACTURED

IN

THE

UNITED

STATES

OF

AMERICA

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

GLOSSARY

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BY

CHARLES

UNFAMILIAR

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INTRODUCTION

1 THE AUTHOR: Il the summer of 1934, Soetan Sjahrir languished in a

Java prison; a political “criminal” at twenty-five years of age. His “crime” had been the leadership of an organization that advocated widespread education for Indonesians. Thirteen years later Sjahrir took a seat at the Security Council of the United Nations at Lake Success to present the case of the embattled Indonesian Republic

against Dutch military action in Java and Sumatra. He came as the first representative of a “nonsovereign” colonial people to proclaim his people’s right to independence before the Council, and to ask that body’s protection from colonial domination so that his country might be free to work out its own destiny. Sjahrir’s presentation before the Council was eloquent and effective. It began with the story of a people and an area with a recorded history of more than one thousand years—a history that was singularly unfamiliar to the ears of his listeners. The islands of the Indies had their golden periods under the Shriviyaya and Shailendra empires before the tenth century, and finally under the empire of Madjapahit in the fourteenth century stretching from Papua in the east through the Indonesian archipelago to Madagascar in the west. In the undefined rhythm of history, the political and economic expansion of the West came at a period of decline in the formerly rich and powerful empire of the Indies. Portugal first extended its dominion over part of Vil

the archipelago, and in the seventeenth century the hardy Dutch seafarers came to oust their southern European predecessors, and to begin the process of systematically bringing the islands under Netherlands rule. In Sjahrir’s words at Lake Success: In this process, my country lost its freedom... and fell from its ancient proud place to that of a weak dejected colony.” Sjahrir’s life and career have been devoted to regaining that freedom and to establishing conditions in Indonesia in which his country could revitalize its national pride and build a place for itself in the modern world. To secure these objectives, Sjahrir has long been an active figure in the Indonesian nationalist movement. The nationalist movement had its informal beginning at the end of the nineteenth century under the intellectual leadership of the moderate Dr. Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo

(the “Dr. Soeribno” of Out of Exile). Its organizational beginnings came in the first decade of this century with the formation of the Boedi Oetomo or “High Endeavor’”’ society by the social reformer Soetomo. Throughout most of its history prior to World War II, Indonesian nationalism was more or less unified in its longer-run objectives, but its leaders were widely divided as to the methods that they deemed advisable for attaining these objectives. There were the cooperators, like Thamrin and Tjipto, who believed in working with and often in the Netherlands Indies regime. There were also the non-cooperators who felt that collaboration with the colonial regime was impossible, and that nationalist policy must be directed against the colonial administration. Among the non-cooperative group, there were further divisions: the faction led by Soekarno favoring mass public opposition to Dutch rule; while the group organized by Hatta and Syahrir believed in education and thorough organization, gradually developing into mass expression. It was not until 1939 that this division within the nation-

Vill

alist movement was partly resolved by a unification of the nationalist parties. With the proclamation of Indonesian independence by Soekarno and Hatta on August 17, 1945,

the differing nationalist factions finally achieved a working unity behind the new republican government. It is, how-

ever, worth noting that while there has been unity during the past two and a half years, in support of the Indonesian Republican government

and the maintenance

of its au-

thority, there has been wide and vocal divergence on many of the policies of that government, particularly those that involved compromise and negotiation with the Netherlands.

The strong Masjoemi (Islamic) and the Nationalist parties have particularly opposed many of the compromise policies for which Sjahrir has stood. As a guiding figure behind the Indonesian Revolution, Sjahrir has been one of the most moderate and undoctrinaire revolutionists of modern times. President Achmed Soekarno has been the dominant rallying figure in the republican revolution, but Sjahrir has been the architect of

the new and struggling government’s policies, not only for the twenty months during which he was the Republic’s

Prime Minister, but thereafter as its “ambassador at large” and its representative at Lake Success. It has been the alliance between Soekarno and Sjahrir—the former contributing personal color and his command over public opinion, the latter contributing intellect and realistic shrewdness— that, to a large extent, has given the infant republic stability in the face of strong pressures, both internal and external.

Sjahrir has a boyish and deceivingly ingenuous face, which makes him look younger than his thirty-nine years. With a full shock of coal-black hair and a friendly smile, the diminutive statesman has a tendency toward plumpness, which he tries to defeat by dancing, at which he is excellent, and tennis, at which he is not so excellent. Reserved and quiet in manner, he is a man who is nearly always under-

estimated when met casually; and yet to know him well is 1X

to know a keen, versatile, and sensitive mind. So sensitive is he, in fact, that when a Dutch Foreign Office representative recently asked him for a calendar decorated with the Republic’s motto, Merdeka (freedom), and jokingly stated, “If I hang this over my desk perhaps none of the Indonesian sweepers will take my pencils away,” Sjahrir avoided the diplomat for more than a month. Born in the Minangkabau region of Sumatra’s west coast on March 5, 1909, Sjahrir received his elementary and secondary education in Medan, Sumatra, and Bandoeng, Java,

and thereafter went to Holland to study law at the University of Leyden. His stay in Holland affected him deeply, and he married a Dutch girl whom he was not to see for fourteen years following his internment in indonesia. His

study in Holland left him with a profound respect for Western education and culture, which is strongly presented

in Out of Exile, and a devotion to the idea that he must use his life to help bring freedom to the people from whom his westernization had partially alienated him. This idea lived

and grew, as he tells us in Out of Exile, throughout the whole time that he was imprisoned and exiled after returning to Indonesia. After some socialistic and nationalistic activities in Holland with the Perhimpoenan Indonesia or Indonesian Association, he returned to Indonesia in 1932 and joined the Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia (the “P.N.I.” referred to in

Out of Exile) or Society for National Indonesian Education. His original intention had been to return to Indonesia briefly to get readjusted to life there, and to work out his orientation toward the nationalist movement in the light of his Western education and affinities. He then intended to go back to Holland to complete his law degree at the University of Leyden and finally to bring his wife back to Indonesia with him. Sjahrir had first intended returning to the land of his birth alone in order to organize and redirect his mixed feelings toward his people on the one hand, and toward his wife and friends in Holland on the other. During X

the two years away from Holland, he was continually troubled by doubts concerning the course that his conscience had led him to take. In the meantime he had furthered the cause of the P.N.I. by advocating expanded educational

facilities along Western lines for Indonesia. In February 1934, as he was on the point of returning to his wife in Holland, he was arrested and imprisoned in Tjipinang, Java. * So inflexible was prewar Dutch colonial policy that after a year in prison a man of Sjahrir’s basically moderate and thoughtful nature—without even being specifically charged —was sent to internment in Boven Digoel, New Guinea, a camp that had been intended for hardened criminals and violent revolutionists. /

Sjahrir was sent to Boven Digoel in January 1935, along with Hatta and the other members of the P.N.I. He contracted malaria in Digoel and endured its other physical and psychological rigors for over a year. In the early part of 1936 he and Hatta were removed to Banda Neira in the Moluccas, where they were to remain until just before the

Japanese occupation of Indonesia in March

1942. Banda

Neira was much less severe than Digoel. Sjahrir and Hatta no longer had a direct censorship of their mail. Their living conditions improved immeasurably, and they acquired a large degree of bodily freedom. They were not, of course, allowed to leave the Banda islands, or to engage in any political activity. They were thus still prisoners, but their prison had increased in size and comfort. It is remarkable but true that after eight long years of exile and imprisonment, Sjahrir acquired little bitterness or hatred toward the Dutch. Actually, while his exile confirmed and reinforced his already strong beliefs in Indonesia’s right to independence and self-determination, the long period only served to sharpen his tolerance and realism. When Sjahrir eventually came to the helm of the Indonesian ship of state, his was always the side of modera- | tion and compromise within the framework of what was politically and economically practicable.

Xl

Sjahrir’s attitude toward the coming of the Japanese had been foreshadowed seven years before in Out of Exile. Looking behind the submissive Easterner’s desire to assert himself against the Western domination under which the East had long labored—a desire that often expressed itself

_ in pro-Japanese sentiment—Sjahrir recognized the Japanese brand of fascism and imperialism for what it was. As a foe of Western fascism and imperialism, he remained implacably opposed to these same forces in the East. Those of his

people who, as he recounts in Out of Exile, had cherished other impressions of the Japanese later found out their mistake as they sweated, toiled, and died under four years of

a Japanese overlordship that was more ruthless than anything they had previously undergone. Throughout the occupation Sjahrir remained opposed to the Japanese. Leaving Banda Neira on January 31, 1942,

with his three adopted children, Sjahrir was sent to Soekamoemi in west Java. With the fall of the islands, he went to a mountain retreat in near-by Tyipanas. Here he began the task of organizing and directing a resistance under-

ground that operated all over Java during the occupation.

Managing to keep a few steps ahead of the Kempeitai (secret police), who thought he had retired to the mountains because of ill health, Sjahrir came under direct suspicion only toward the end of the war. His co-worker Sjarifoeddin

only narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Japanese for resistance activities. During the early part of the occupation Sjahrir’s time

was mainly occupied in traveling throughout Java to build up and cement the resistance organization. His contact with the collaborating nationalists in Batavia was thus irregular

and clandestine. It was not until after the Japanese surrender that the nationalist underground under Sjahrir’s leadership linked its forces to those of Soekarno and Hatta. When Soekarno and Hatta proclaimed Indonesia’s independence —after Sjahrir’s repeated urging—and set up the republican government, he rallied to the common cause. With XU

- Soekarno and Hatta as president and vice-president respectively, Sjahrir was chosen chairman of the influential Working Committee of the new Central National Indonesian Committee, or Parliament (Komzté Nasional Indonesia Poesat). On November 13, 1945, he was appointed prime minister, a position that he held—except for a one-month

hiatus during 1946—until June 27, 1947. During this time Sjahrir also held the portfolio of Foreign Minister in his own cabinet, and conducted all diplomatic relations and negotiations with the Netherlands and other foreign governments as well. As a diplomat he has been shrewd and farsighted rather than aggressive. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Sjahrir’s shrewdness, sincerity, and restraint—more than those of any other man, with the possible exception of the Dutch acting governor

general, H. J. van Mook, until his point of view underwent a substantial alteration—were responsible for the formulation and signature of the Linggadjati Agreement of March 25, 1947, which set up a blueprint for co-operation between the Netherlands and republican governments in forming a

United States of Indonesia. The subsequent outbreak of large-scale military action in Indonesia four months after the signing of Linggadjati were due to factors beyond the control of the “Little Boeng” (or brother), as Sjahrir is often spoken of in Indonesia. As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Republic during the tedious negotiations with the Dutch, Sjahrir not only earned the admiration and respect of large groups within the Dutch camp, but he also won the open diplomatic support for the Republic of Australia, India, and the Arab League. Moreover, at the New Delhi Inter-Asian Conference in late March 1947, Sjahrir laid the groundwork for an active Indonesian role in the future of southeast Asia.

However, while he was strengthening the Republic’s position abroad, his own political position at home was weakened. It was, in fact, to support Sjahrir’s internal position that the United

States

government

presented

an

aideXi

mémoire to the Republic on June 27, 1947, urging the formation of an interim government along the lines suggested by the Dutch and partly agreed to by Sjahrir, and promising the consideration of American financial aid once the interim government had been set up. The note arrived one day too late. Sjahrir had already handed in his resignation in response to strong opposition from both leftist and rightist groups within the government, which felt that he had gone too far in conceding to the Dutch on the point of having the Crown’s representative as the titular head of the proposed interim government. As a point of fact, within nineteen hours of Sjahrir’s resig-

nation the leftist group (Sajap Kiri) reversed itself and announced that it would support his policies and seek to reinstate him. In the light of the American note and the unprecedented leftist reversal, President Soekarno called upon Sjahrir to form a new cabinet and to return to office. Sjahrir declined. Nevertheless, with the support of the American note and of the leftists, Sjahrir felt that there was almost no possibility of peaceful compromise as relations with the Dutch then stood, and that under the circumstances, hostilities might be postponed but were nevertheless inevitable. That there was a political stratagem in his refusal to return is quite probable. If hostilities were to break out, Sjahrir was not the man to lead the Republic. In the course of hostilities that were almost certain to go against the Republic at the start, Sjahrir’s long record as a compromiser might have been a psychological liability, and even might have led to internal political disaffection. His possible service as an international ambassador to plead the Indonesian case before the world would, on the other hand, unquestionably be a great asset to the Republic, in case it was needed. By decree

of President Soekarno on June 30, Sjahrir was made “special adviser to the government” and his use in this capacity was foreshadowed. Three days later, Amir Sjarifoeddin—formerly co-leader of the Socialist party with Sjahrir—was appointed Prime

X1V

Minister, at the head of a coalition government that continued Sjahrir’s policies almost to the letter during the next eighteen days, after which came the outbreak of Dutch

“police action” in Java, Sumatra, and Madura. Immediately after the Dutch action of July 21, Sjahrir left the Republican capital, Djokjakarta, by plane as a sort of world emissary to present the Indonesian case abroad, and eventually

to appear at Lake Success. Sjahrir’s own statements upon his arrival in India indicated that his moderate views on compromise with the Dutch had altered. He spoke, instead, of Indonesia “fighting to the last man” in the struggle against Dutch attempts to restore colonialism. Aside from the political and psychological reasons for these statements, there is no doubt that his personal viewpoint had stiffened. Throughout the

twenty-month negotiations that he had led, Sjahrir clung to the belief that he could compromise with the Dutch without compromising the basic tenets of the Indonesian

Revolution, and that he could concede details without making any concessions to the restoration of colonialism.

From Sjahrir’s point of view, Dutch action had—tempo-, rarily, at least—made it impossible to compromise any further without compromising the principles of the nationalist movement for which he stood. Though a moderate, Sjahrir had decided that moderation was impossible in an atmosphere of force. His public testimony before the Security Council in August 1947 clearly indicated this change in his viewpoint. At the beginning of 1948, Hatta became Prime Minister and Sjahrir split decisively wath Sjarifoeddin over the lat- | ter’s Communist leanings. Continuing in his position as special adviser to the Republic, Sjahrir organized a new party.

the Partai Sosialis Indonesia, on the platform of a third force in Southern Asia—independent of both Soviet munism and Western colonialism. Sjahrir and the currently represent the core of the non-Communist Indonesia. The political situation in Indonesia is still fluid.

ComP.S.I. left in

When XV

Sjarifoeddin joined the Communists in attempting to over-

throw the Republic during mid-September 1948, Premier

Hatta—supported by the Moslem and Nationalist Parties,

as well as Sjahrir’s P.S.l.—moved aggressively against the insurgents. Within six weeks, the Republican army crushed the revolt, captured or killed its leaders, and forced the re-

maining guerrillas to flee to the East Java hills. Elimination of the immediate Communist threat led to a brief resumption of negotiations between the Dutch Foreign Minister and Premier Hatta. After a promising beginning the discussions were summarily broken off by decision of the Netherlands Cabinet on December Sth. Two weeks later, Dutch armed forces renewed their police action, in direct defiance of the Renville Agreement and the United

Nations Good Offices Committee. Jokjakarta was occupied. Soekarno, Hatta, Sjahrir, and the Republic’s Foreign Minister, Agoes Salim, were taken in custody as they prepared to leave for India. Profoundly shocked at this flagrant resort to force by one of the most respected of European democracies, the United Nations contemplated direct punitive action against the Netherlands with uncertainty and indecision. Sympathy for the Republic was abundant and intense, but as the year drew to a close, prospects for decisive action in support of the embattled nationalists were dim indeed.

Sjahrir’s contributions to the Republic’s survival thus far have been subtle and unique. He negotiated with the best brains in the Dutch Foreign Office and secured terms favorable to the Republic before the outbreak of hostilities.

He won foreign friends and support for the Republic, and when hostilities began, he effectively represented the Republic at Lake Success, utilizing to the fullest the foreign support that he had built up. Since then, he has played an important if unpublicized role behind the scenes, helping to determine Republican policy at home and abroad. As to what his contributions to Indonesian nationalism will be in the future, it is hard to say. Sjahrir is an idealist,

as Out of Exile clearly shows. As long as he feels he can XV1

materially and appreciably advance the cause of independ-

ence, his position in the Republic is sure to be a prominent one. When he begins to feel that the cause is well on its

way to fulfillment, it is likely that he will turn from politics to study and writing. It may well be some time before he will feel free to pursue the study in which he is even more vitally interested than politics.

Il. THE BOOK The intellectual gap between the West and the East has been appalling. One of the major reasons for this has been the lack of individual thinkers truly competent to compare,

analyze, and interpret both Eastern and Western culture according to the values of both the East and the West. We have had books on the East by Westerners, and books on the West by Easterners, but we have had too few people equally familiar with both cultures to appraise and write convincingly about each of them. Soetan Sjahrir is one of

these few, and Out of Exile is an unconscious step, however small, toward the spanning of that gap.

The first part of Out of Exile was based on letters written by Sjahrir to his wife in Holland without any intention

of publication. During the war, Mrs. Sjahrir revised and edited the letters, publishing them in 1945 under the pen name Sjahrazad.* The name was derived from a combination of Sjahrir and Azad, a name that had often been used in Sjahrir’s family. Covering the first half of his exile from 1934 to 1938,

the letters are set first in Tjipinang, then in Boven Digoel, and finally at Banda Neira. In a larger sense, however, this part of the book is not set in any local context of place. In his analysis of the attributes and failings of the rationalism and science of the West and the fatalism and mysticism of the East, Sjahrir speaks to us not as an exile in Digoel or Neira, but as an intellectual cosmopolitan who is intimately familiar with the mainsprings of both West and * Indonesische Overpeinzingen, Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 1945.

XV

East. The so-called “Eastern spirit” is analyzed by Sjahrir as a response to an unbearable life, as an adaptation to the

feudal yoke of slavery that the East has not yet thrown off. He nevertheless recognizes that “the tolerance and endurance” that have resulted from this adaptation are “indeed real attributes, and in a certain sense one can truly say that the slave has cultivated the art of life . . . more fully than the master.” What he is groping for is a new synthesis of

values. His gropings are clear in Out of Exile. The synthesis is more vague. During his exile Sjahrir read and reread the Bible, Nietzsche, Kant, Marx, Croce, Goethe, Dante, Mill, Ter Braak, Ortega y Gasset, De Kadt, Freud, Russell, and literally everything else he could lay his hands on. As his study and thinking progressed, he became more and more convinced of the East’s growing need for Western science and rationalism and its declining need for the mysticism and resignation that had served to make life’s tribulations bearable to its poverty-ridden people. It is interesting to note that not a few Western intellectuals, such as Huxley and Auden, have come to just the opposite conclusions in satirizing science’s brave new world, and calling for an interpenetration of Oriental mysticism into the excessive refinements of Western superrationalism. Again, in his discussion of the importance of and relationship between the Spanish crisis of 1936 and the Sino-

Japanese conflict, Sjahrir’s analysis is global rather than local in scope, and at times even clairvoyant. As early as March 1938 he wrote: “For a long time now, I have not believed in the possibility of a separate solution of the Spanish or the Pacific crises. They will both find their solution only in a general world-wide crisis. It is only a question of time as to when... the world conflict will break out. The time itself will depend on . . . whether Herr Hitler feels the need for another breathing space after his latest successes. Personally, I fear that he no longer considers such

a need to exist... [and] the eruption stands immediately before us.” XVill

Sjahrir’s discussions of prewar colonial society and its psychological implications are of interest to the layman as well as to the sociologist. Colonial society in the Indies, which, as Sjahrir observes, was already undergoing marked changes in the thirties, was formerly a potpourri of mixed races, cliques, pyramidal discrimination, and social barriers.

At the top of the pyramid were the Dutch or European white tuan besar, then the “Indos” or Eurasians, then the Chinese, and finally the Indonesians. The Indos felt them- , selves superior to the Chinese, the Chinese felt themselves superior to the Indos, the tuan besar felt themselves superior to both, and all three felt themselves superior to the Indonesians. In turn the Indonesian nationalists—the nonco-operators, at least—reviled the Indos, ignored the Chinese, and opposed the tuan besar. Miscegenation was widespread, and yet color and racial barriers were evident in social clubs, theaters, public swimming pools, and restaurants. As Sjahrir points out, “the abnormality of colonial society derives mainly from the peculiar psychic relationships and attitudes that characterize it,’ but even at that time he realized that this abnormality was “slowly disappearing.” Sjahrir himself was never sympathetic toward the non-co-operative nationalist idea, because while he realized its suitable use as a tactic in advancing the nationalist movement, he felt that it was essentially negative in approach. “I have never been a non-co-opera-

tive at heart,” he tells us in Out of Exile, “as a consequence of the fact that I have felt [non-co-operation] too bitter, too narrow ... [and too much] a projection of the inferiority complex that springs from the colonial relationship of subject and ruling race... . It could therefore never furnish a positive ideal . . . or a philosophy.” On the other hand, he is fully aware that for any real co-operation to succeed in Indonesia, it must be predicated on a “moral revolution” that eliminates both “coarse arrogance” on one side and “hypersensitivity and inferiority complex” on the other. Sjahrir admitted that this process had already been begun even before his internment. HowXIX

ever, he foresaw that under the influence of both internal and international pressures it must be vastly accelerated. At

the end of the first part of Out of Exile he wrote in 1938, “All this shall happen. The question is only whether it will take place regularly and according to plan, or suddenly as a surprise and an eruption.” The first part of the work is often discursive and discontinuous. These limitations follow from the book’s epistolary background. The letters themselves are alternately light and deep, adolescent and mature, cursory and analytical. Throughout the book there is a growing sense of the destiny of an awakening East. There is none of the morbid melancholy that might be expected of letters written over a four-year span of isolation; instead there is a buoyant touch of philosophic optimism. Sjahrir’s letters bring us into contact with a broad and resilient mind, and with the thousand and one stimulating mental experiences of the author, released from the physical confinement of his cell by the soaring freedom of his thoughts. They tell the fouryear story of a personality that has, perhaps, grown as much since the book was written as while it was written. It is certainly true that the Sjahrir of 1947 is not precisely the same man as the Sjahrir of the early thirties. The second part of the book reflects some of this change. Written by Sjahrir in 1947, Part II recounts the sequence of events in Indonesia after the outbreak of war in Europe. Where Part I was speculative, Part II is pragmatic and realistic. The

Sjahrir of the present tempers ideals with Realpolitik. His account of the Japanese occupation and of the activities of the resistance group that he headed are a far cry from some of the youthful idealism of the earlier letters. The spark

of idealism, however, has never been lost. Out of Exile reveals Sjahrir’s mind as one that takes life’s problems and competing values seriously, but that never takes itself so seriously as to lose the flavor of imagination and wit.

CuarLes Wor, Jr. Allston, Mass. December 23, 1948

GLOSSARY

OF UNFAMILIAR

USEDIN

THE

NAMES

TEXT

BLANKENSTEIN, VAN: a liberal Dutch journalist, who had written an account of conditions in Digoel before Sjahrir was sent there. Corijn: A long-time Minister of Colonies in the Dutch government until the midthirties, who was strongly disliked by the nationalists for his policies. Harit: Mohammed Hatta, the vice-president and third prime minister of the Indonesian Republic, who was imprisoned with Sjahrir at Tjipinang, Digoel, and Neira. Hart: The prewar Director of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands Indies government, who was popular among the nationalists for his progressive ideas. Huizinea: A well-known Dutch historian and social philosopher whose writings are still highly regarded in Holland.

DE Jonce: The governor general before Starkenborgh. Kaja-Kaja: A primitive tribe of western New Guinea. K.P.M.: The Royal Navigation Steamship Company (Kon-

inklyke Paketvaart Maatschappij), which had a monopoly of shipping within the waters of the archipelago, in return for which it provided a service to out-of-the-way and unprofitable stations where there were government or military posts. Mussert: Leader of the Dutch Nazis in Holland. Parinpra: The largest co-operative party among the prewar

Indonesian nationalists.

(Partai Indonesia Raya.)

Partinpo: A nationalist party that Soekarno led in the early thirties.

XX

P.K.I.: The Partai Komunis Indonesia or Indonesian Communist party, which organized a revolt in the Indies in 1927, before it was outlawed and forced underground. RacHMAN, AppuL: Soekarno, first president of the Republic and long-time nationalist leader.

SoeriBNo: Dr. Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, one of the first nineteenth-century Indonesian nationalists, who was already in

exile in Neira when Sjahrir and Hatta were sent there. STARKENBORGH, VAN: Tyarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer, the Dutch governor general from 1936 until 1942. Starkenborgh remained in the Indies during the Japanese occupation, and was interned for the duration. He is now the Dutch ambassador to France. Tuamrin: The leading nationalist in the Volksraad or National Advisory Council. He was generally considered the most able Indonesian parliamentarian before the war, and died shortly before the Japanese invasion. Wetter: Colijn’s successor as Minister of Colonies in 1937. After coming into office, the reputation he acquired among the nationalists proved to be second only to Colijn’s own.

XXIl

Book One

THOUGHT

l TJIPINANG MARCH

29, 1934

HAVE now been behind bars for a whole month, but I | still haven’t the least idea why I have actually been placed here. At the time of my arrest I could get no information except that it had something to do with the

P.N.L, or Pendidikan

Nasional Indonesia, but precisely

what is at present still a mystery to me.

This is naturally only an incidental point (although it is possible that in Holland one would not find it so incidental), and it is not unlikely that someday they may tell me. In any case I must be prepared for a long siege before that time. Evidently that is the custom in such political matters, and I have just about resigned myself to it. As a “native” I do not have any rights to assert; and in such cases there remains to support your morale only the famed Oriental trilogy: “modesty,” “resignation,” and “patience.” This last month has nevertheless passed rather quickly for me. Things are not really bad here, and I have a rather large cell with a garden, although the garden is like me— behind bars. If the bars were not there, I could perhaps

imagine that I was not a prisoner, but they represent, as it were, a materialization of the concept of force. As a result, I

you can never shake off the feeling of imprisonment and of the strong psychological effect that this feeling evokes. Fundamentally, it sharpens your consciousness of freedom and makes it impossible for you to reconcile yourself to the circumstances. Still the isolation does me good. Since I have been back from Europe I have never had the chance to think as clearly and as fully as now. Djon’s mother sends me food every

day, so in that respect as well I have nothing to complain about.

Sometimes it seems as though I have lost completely any idea of time. I have already read a few novels, and I have refreshed my adolescent recollections of the Bible by going

through it thoroughly. I have wanted to do that for a long time, but something always seemed to prevent it. A thorough perusal of the Bible is certainly no small matter, and for ten days I have been busy with it for hours at a time. At present I have begun reading a work on world literature.

APRIL 20, 1934 Today I wrote my brother in Holland that he ought to stay there if it is at all possible, even if his income seems to be insufficient. The main thing is that by so doing he can have the opportunity to make Western knowledge and culture his own. In three months there he can learn to understand more of European society than he could here from all the schoolbooks on the subject that he might study during ten years’ time. At least, that will be the case if he uses his eyes and keeps his mind open. The latter is especially important because so many of us come to Europe with the fixed idea of condemning everything Western, and in most cases the preconceived idea 2

proves to be successful. A short while ago I spoke with a man, a doctor of law, whose four years of study in Holland had only helped to increase his prejudices, his antipathy, and even his fanatical hatred toward everything Western and European. This attitude is certainly deplorable, for only by direct contact with Western society itself is it possible to understand all the culture that that society has produced and nourished. One then appreciates the disciplined thinking and the rationalism that are the indispensable prerequisites for unraveling and understanding the more complicated and diversified society itself. When I was in London for the first time I actually felt as though I were a cannibal. Such a tempo, such technique, and such human capacity! In one moment of direct experience the sense of science becomes clear, but without direct contact it would simply be impossible to understand. I therefore believe that the lack of scientific living and real interest among our intellectuals here in Indonesia is not to be attributed to a lack of capacity or of character, or to moral emptiness, but rather to the presence of an insufficient measure of the necessary stimuli in our [present day]

so much simpler community. With most of our “degree holders” (I use these words instead of “intellectuals” because here indeed the criterion is not so much intellectual

activity as it is schooling and diplomas), the concept of science remains merely a superficial thing with no deep conviction or understanding. For them science remains a

dead thing, not a living dynamic entity that must be continually nourished and cared for. It is not their fault, particularly if they have not had the opportunity to make contact with that science as a living concept in Europe itself.

However, I know by experience that efficacious studying is not so easy for us in Holland. The climate and the social life there can be very enervating for us. Living be-

hind walls in damp rooms, the restlessness of society— everything has a greater effect upon us because it is new and different. There have been many very talented students among the Indonesians who have failed only because they were not equal to the challenge, and who wasted all their energy in restlessness and even wasted their bodies away as a result. I indicated all this to my brother, and I told him that, in a proper sense, study is simultaneously character-forming, provided that the study is combined with self-control and self-discipline. I also advised him to pay close attention to the cultural life in Europe, and particularly to the litera-

ture, since in addition to providing him with a better insight into the life and intellectual world of the Westerner, it will also open his eyes to the problems of Western life and to the diversity and complexity of that pattern of life in general. It will also enable him to understand social and

political problems more easily, and to be more interested in them. At the same time I have written M. to help him as much as possible in this direction.

It is not strange that he will need such advice, for actually even our top intellectuals are still, in these matters,

analphabetists. We do not really “read,” except for some literature in specialized fields, as well as our newspapers and perhaps some additional light material. In Hafil’s whole library there is only one novel—for which he actually apologizes, mind you, with the comment that he received it as a present; and Hafil belongs undoubtedly to our most Europeanized intellectuals. Nothing more can really be said for our own literature. There are no intellectuals in this coun-

4

try who write, and hence there is no literature, neither in Malay nor in any of the other local languages.

There is, of course, writing, and even in substantial quantity, and there is an Institute of Popular Reading (Instituut

voor Volkslectuur), which circulates books for the masses, largely translations, but some originals as well. In any case, that is still not literature. We have come only to the point where we write some stories in Indonesia, and the exceptions to this general rule remain few and far between. We are, in fact, for the most part, totally ignorant of, and pay no attention to, European or world literature, and that is why, for example, there is not yet any real attention given to the attempts of a few young nationalists to master the belles-lettres, although their efforts are sometimes publicized as a sort of renaissance. In reality, our cultural level is still too low for a real renaissance. There is no thought, no form, no sound, and what is worse, there is not yet enough earnestness and integrity among us. There is still only unsavory counterfeit, which is published with great fuss, but which still has little merit. Without an evolving literature, there is also no avowal of life’s major problems, and as a result there is

again a lack of real knowledge of life among us. A boy of perhaps seventeen or eighteen years in Europe, who has graduated from high school, knows sometimes more about

jife than our Indonesian intellectuals and scholars. MAY 25, 1934 Sornetimes one suffers more from the real or fancied suffering of others than from one’s own. In a certain sense this is understandable because one’s thoughts and feelings are, in such a case, concentrated exclusively on the suffer-

ing qua suffering, or let us say on the “absolute” suffering

5

of those concerned, so that one experiences an extreme intensity in the suffering, which in reality does not exist. Not only are the proportions aggrandized in one’s mind, but one tends to idealize the suffering until it becomes a completely different thing from what it truly is. This is really the case with me, too. I am not in the least conscious of being a martyr, and the intense suffering that others attribute to me and that makes them suffer merely by thinking about it does not exist, for me, at all. For as far as suffering is concerned, I feel cares only for what I have left behind, and so heavily does this weigh upon me that from the standpoint of providing a relief from suffering, the letter that I received this morning from home meant more for my mental condition than my actually being set free. Martyrdom is, I think, for most people not a concept, but rather a momentary emotion. Sometimes it calls forth a romantic reaction and sometimes a mystic religious reaction, but it becomes an actual concept only when you experience the situation yourself, and that experience now lies outside the everyday life of most men. Thus it becomes a subject for fantasy and myth. Nevertheless, modern scientific methods made it possible to understand and appreciate

the spiritual and psychological make-up of a martyr. That he is an extraordinary and heroic person is merely what the romances have made of him. In reality, he still remains the same after his martyrdom as he was before: an ordinary man with the same great potentialities of all other normal human beings. Conditions and relationships, both internal and external, but with the emphasis on the external, determine his spiritual and psychic outlook, make-up, and final heroism. His martrydom is thus a composite of these factors, and he turns out, upon analysis, to be a normal man, whom abnormal circumstances make into a more-than-

6

normal man. From this point of view, the fanaticism of heroism and martyrdom becomes merely romantic and irrational. Any human being, given certain circumstances and relationships, can be a hero and a martyr. History, in fact, shows that even the mass, with its conglomeration of uneducated individuals, can act collectively with heroism and martyrdom. There is no reason why we should regard the thousands of people who were crucified, burned at the stake, broken at the wheel, or tortured for their beliefs as extraordinary people. In fact, I am convinced that the ordinary human being of today, whose.weak nerves and

softness is so generally deplored, would have acted precisely the same way under the same circumstances. I know quite well that modern men are apparently much more impressed by such happenings of the past, and I have myself seen people faint when they saw something of the sort in a moving picture. But really that doesn’t mean very much because the screen is merely an imaginary drama, and the imagination of the observer plays tricks upon him. The swooning woman or man would actually be capable of quite different reactions if he or she were one of the players in a real-life drama instead of being merely an observer. The particular circumstances and relationships that produce the phenomenon of martyrdom exert a strong pressure in a social and psychological sense. For ordinary men, this pressure acts as the most extreme intensification of life, forcing all the negative, futile, and trivial whims and desires, which are precisely the most important constituents of everyday life, into the background, and bringing the great potentialities of the individual into sharp relief in the

foreground. This “psychic” pressure is to be compared with the mobilization and concentration of all one’s physi-

y)

cal powers in a last jump, and at such times the goal of life and the meaning of life seem to stand directly in front of the doer’s eyes. Bodily pain is subordinated in such a moment of psychic tension, and in fact even increases the tension itself, for physical pain is, finally, also a psychic experience. For myself, I do not feel at all like a martyr, probably because I am not living in a lions’ den or anything like it, but in a modern prison in which everything helps to pre-

vent you from losing your objectivity. Thus far I have been fortunate not to have had any inclination to go off on a _ romantic tangent by dramatizing my predicament. I think that we mislead ourselves when we place too much emphasis on self-sacrifice or martyrdom, as for example in the case of Christ’s crucifixion. Primarily this emphasis has the result of making us waste valuable minutes, hours, and days in sentimentality, with a neglect of the simple reality that in our time and in our pattern of life it is usually impossible to make one’s contribution to posterity in this way. It is true that such moments of martyrdom are elevating and can be purgative and inspiring for humanity as a whole, but if one conscientiously directs and patterns one’s life according to the values of such moments, then one becomes either a passive, sentimental vaut rien or a Don Quixote, if one calls imagination to one’s aid. Of course, there is more to be said for Don Quixote than for a

sentimental vaut rien, but in any case Don Quixote is certainly not a Christ, and judged by our modern standards he is to be censured for his lack of realism and his waste of energy.

If we wish to have a true idea of the word martyrdom, then we would do better to look for another and more contemporaneous type, the type that one finds at the helm

8

of all peoples’ governments in this time (for example, the Gandhi type): the type that is animated by a disposition toward objectivity, by a will to dissociate consciously all personal emotions from the contemplation of the object

itself, and by a subordination of death and other things that otherwise evoke a romantic tinge to the attitude of objec- » tivity. This requires spiritual self-control and self-discipline, which are learned only by a maximum of diligence and by

insight into humanity and into the object contemplated itself. JUNE 24, 1934

I consider myself fortunate that Soelaiman is here in Java with me. He has done a lot for me of his own accord, and there is no one else who would have had the inclination to help me as he has. Everyone else is rather afraid to inquire about me, much more so to visit me, and they remain at a safe distance in order to avoid trouble, suspicion, or something worse. Actually it is just another indication of our timidity toward everyone who is somehow involved with the government and its legal processes. This timidity is really much less apparent than it used to be, but it nevertheless remains, even among the most sophisticated Indonesians. What a difference compared to the attitude of the ordinary people of Holland! But even their attitude has not always been so. Under the Napoleonic regime or under Philip II the same feeling of fear and timidity prevailed in Holland as one now finds among us in Indonesia, as well as among the Indians in British India. At any rate I am thankful that Soelaiman is here with me, since he has been brought up in Europe and therefore has no comprehension of this timidity, or, in fact, of the

9

‘differences between things here and in Holland in matters of this sort. It is not impossible in the meantime that this difference will soon be made clear to him from many sides, and that he will then be deterred from giving me so much

attention. Thanks to his efforts, however, I have thus far been able to get books from the museum library in Batavia. That the museum can give me books pleases me and shows plainly the political neutrality of academic institutions— even of government-subsidized academic institutions. The only difficulty now concerning the books is that contact with Soelaiman remains slow, since it all naturally has to pass through the censor, and when I write him it takes at least a week before he receives my letters and another week before I can expect an answer.

JULY 6, 1934 I notice that I have unconsciously become accustomed to thinking as little as possible within a context of time. In fact, I sometimes have trouble in remembering whether a visitor has been here the same day or several weeks ago. This is due probably to the fact that so little has happened, and that the various periods of time are so empty and void, as it were, that you can hardly distinguish between them. For example, it seems to me that Egon visited me here three weeks ago at the latest, but in reality it has been almost three months ago. And the visit of Djon’s parents with their youngest child three weeks ago is so fresh in my memory that it seems as though it were only yesterday. I think furthermore that there is still another cause of this lack of realization or appreciation of time: the fact that my term of imprisonment has not been fixed. I think that all the other prisoners here, and there are more than one thousand, know precisely what day and 1fe)

what date it is. They simply figure from day to day and know exactly how many months and how many days they are from the day of their release. I have read about this phenomenon often, and it must appear to them that time is merely passing slowly, because they still only have that one day in their minds: the day that represents the terminus of their sentence and that alone separates them from freedom. The concept of time is thus dominant in their thinking. The duration of time is for them a special reality that they are particularly conscious of, and that they measure and calculate bit by bit. I think that there are probably many who leave the prison far better mathematicians than they were when they entered! None of this, of course, applies to me, since everything is as indefinite as possible in my case. For me, time has a meaning only in so far as it tells me that I have now been in prison so long, or in connection with the few happenings that I experience, including the receiving of visits, letters, and books. My whole conception of time is governed by these happenings, and consequently the less often they take place, the less notion I have of time. My interest is wholly fixed on what happened; that is, on the event itself. I have thus learned that time is tied to the thinking subject and is more or less dependent on him, and that it is merely a thought form [denk vorm], which has no existence apart from the thinker. Actually, one ought to say that a period of time is long whenever a great deal happens during that time, but there is also a psychological factor that must be considered, as in the case of my fellow prisoners. Actually, no more happens to them than to me, but their psychic state is fixed on time to such an extent—as, for example, is the case in waiting—that even uneventful time II

é appears to be endless to them, since it is a purely subjective time. My concept of time, due to the indefiniteness of the duration of my stay here, is more like the objective concept of time. In other words, at the moment, I seem to have no interest in time, and the few events, which act, as it were, as milestones in my thoughts, only serve to lead me further astray, because of their tendency to condense broad time gaps. If I were to concentrate on it, then of course it might be quite different, because I know that they do not usually hold one without proceedings for more than a year, and probably our case will be handled in the second half of the year. However, the unique part of the whole thing is just that I do not know what the case is all about, so that I cannot possibly make any appraisal concerning the contents of the proceedings themselves. Naturally I can make a guess, and perhaps the guess will be correct. In fact, there is more likelihood that the guess will be correct the longer the present situation continues, since the longer it does, the more it seems to indicate that the case will not be treated as a legal matter, but simply as a so-called “administrative” matter. But because this could be only a vague supposition, particularly in the beginning, I have simply set it aside in my mind and kept myself occupied with other things: with my family, with everything that I had to leave behind, and above all, recently, with study. I can now see the whole field that I must still study, and it is very large. It is not that I have the conviction that all this knowledge will be necessary in practice, but rather that I have an increasingly strong feeling that the world is presently governed by words. To me, all this fashionable glib wisdom that currently provides the keynote of power is only quasi 1924

knowledge and pseudo knowledge conscripted into the service of politics and propaganda. It is, moreover, not difficult to find in this new and modern wisdom platitudes and long outdated axioms. As an end result of mass production and of overstandardization, the spiritual level of the facile slogan has been glorified to meet the needs of the new wisdom of emotionalism, of antirationalism, of fanatical irrationalism, and of conscious emphasis on race, blood, and state. I have little faith in what is called “knowledge” in the area of the social sciences. Scientific deviations, not only in Germany but everywhere, are so suspiciously parallel to political deviations that they can be regarded only with grave mistrust. That is my problem at the moment: the former reliable and tested intellectual and scientific guides have become untrustworthy.

JULY 22, 1934 A consuming, deep emotion, a real happiness, is never exclusive. One wishes to communicate it to others, and one becomes generous with it toward others. It is for this reason, I believe, that in the long run the highest attainable personal happiness coincides with the general happiness and well-being of humanity. I believe, furthermore, that this is why pessimists, cynics, and egoists are really unhappy men—men who simply do not know how to make life yield the highest and fullest richness and beauty. They may dazzle us with the acuteness of their intellects, or with the brilliant success of their work, but their satisfaction, or happiness if you will, is never complete. It is, at best, only

one-sided and partial. On the other hand, the philosophy that gives emotion and beauty a vital place in life is something quite different

se

from what is currently called emotionalism, volition, intuition, and Bergsonism. These are not philosophies, but rather only doctrines of rationalized emotion and will, which in fact refine and rationalize the emotional core out

of the emotion, so that it no longer is emotional. Such transposition and confusion of mind and feeling really amount only to self-deception, and in the final analysis come to naught. It seems, furthermore, that the practice and application of such doctrines yield only the dry fruits of catchwords for the masses:

Gleichschaltung.

activism, biologism, élan vital, and

.

This deception is to be compared only with the current exaltation and apotheosis of superficiality and mediocrity,

and with the disguise of ignorance and impotence behind

the mask of antirationalism. In reality, it is another example of the rule of Babbitt. It is also worth mentioning that Babbitt is not specifically an American phenomenon, but rather the archetype of man in our time, at least in so far as Babbitt represents the narrow one-track mind of the professional “expert” of modern society: the specialized “expert” whose vocabulary consists only of technical terms and catchwords, of those mottos and platitudes for the common man that the press and radio spread so widely.

This spiritual side of the division of labor and of specialization 1s a problem in itself, and a problem of real magnitude. Even in the so-called intellectual life everything is diluted, split up, and compartmentalized. There is this specialization in the technical, medical, and social sciences as well, and even within each of these sciences. There are engineers—specialists, of course—who know as much about each other’s specialty as a lawyer or a theologian knows. Wherever one finds this specialization, one finds its neces-

14

sary complement: ignorance and narrowness; and one finds them both everywhere. We may be pointed out to one another. We may meet

and chat; but we remain—spiritually and intellectually— strangers. Each thinks only in the terminology of his spe-

cialty and his profession, and outside of his own field he faces such a gigantic unknown expanse that he feels completely impotent before it, and decides definitely not even to attempt to encompass such an awesome scope. He thereupon shuts himself up in his own field, estranges himself and his thinking from the thinking of others, and becomes a gullible consumer of “Bata” * shoes and catchwords. This is, I think, the reason why mediocrity and superficiality can rule at present. To create a spiritual totalitarianism, you just have to be able to invent catchwords and slogans; the cheaper—that is, the emptier and simpler—the greater the sale and the stronger the totality of the totalitarianism. This is the strategic wisdom behind the politics of recent years. The slogans must serve to replace the ruptured spiritual and intellectual unity of the people. This substitution, of course, is shabby and illusory, and at best—where the effort is made honorably—one can only speak of an attempt to make a virtue out of need, to make the best out of a bad situation. Compare all this with the unity and beauty of life in Plato and Kant! We must, it would seem, direct all our striving toward the rediscovery of this unity; by searching outside of our special fields, and by returning from the leaves and the branches once more to the stem, and finally * “Bata” shoes, made from lasts imported from the famed Czechoslovakian manufacturer, are sold all over Indonesia. So wide was their publicity that the name alone became enough to sell them, regardless of quality. The phenomenon is not peculiar to Indonesia.

15

to the roots themselves. Instead of discarding the old thinkers as so much refuse on top of the heaps of waste, and consuming in their place the modern slogans, we would do

better and more wisely to search with them and through them for universality and for our real unity of interest. Instead of the superficiality and the stilted, artificial emotionalism of Bergson, d’Annunzio, Mayakovski, and innumerable others in Germany, we would do better to look for the profundity, the true beauty, and the spiritual harmony of the old thinkers. If we look along these lines, then we can also come to fathom the sense in which labor specialization can contribute toward real co-operation and collective unity, and can censciously serve, rather than unconsciously oppose, spiritual and intellectual unity. I am sure that I would never have been able to see any of these things so clearly if I were now, like other men, a free part of society. As long as you are 7m that society, you are constrained toward your post, your field or specialty, and you must contribute to the productive process. Then

the problems of doing and of maintaining the pace consume your whole being, and you have no time for reflection. This is, actually, the excuse for all our actions: that we are only doing, without knowing or asking ourselves why or where. It is also the reason why so many long for authority and leaders to whom they can turn over everything

that does not immediately concern their own special field, so that they can then be safeguarded from any responsibility for the whole, and can function simply as mechanical

parts of the single great machine. And we are, moreover, only too content when these leaders furnish us with the

slogans with which to assuage our consciences. What do we know or care whether they are banalities, clichés, empty ideas? As far as the leaders are concerned, we are either 16

markets or war material, mere pawns within the outline of their strategy. At the same time, this touches the core of the question of all mass movements: the old problem of education or

strategy, calling for two different types of popular leaders: the educator and the man on horseback. As soon as one recognizes this problem, then one can see the similarity behind all the seemingly different popular movements, whether in America, Soviet Russia, India, or Indonesia. There is no doubt that education can be used as a conscious political method, which, moreover, has in many cases demonstrated and justified this use as opposed to the mili-

tary method of force and strategy. Giving politics a moral basis increases its scope and appeal, and in modern terms, morality and culture can be considered as political factors. From my imprisonment, I cannot express anything political, but I can express moral judgments, and yet every-

thing I say here has, in a larger sense, political overtones. The moral factor is more common, and more personal in its influence, but not less real as a result. For example, openness and nonresistance are considerably more than pleasant moral qualities. They are a potent weapon in life, and can even be a strong weapon in politics. The truth of this matter was brought home first and most clearly to me when I tried to interview Gandhi in London, while he was there for the Round Table Conference in 1931. I couldn’t find him in his official residence near Hyde Park, because he actually was living in the East End slums. However, I was met by Mr. Desai, his secretary, in a room where different people were busy doing work for the conference. Each of them was simple, straightforward, and unconstrained, and they greeted me cordially and continued talking freely. Mira-Bai, Gandhi’s renowned disciple, was

17

there, and she spoke openly and freely, as well as critically,

about “the old fox Lloyd George.” I heard and learned a lot, and anyone else might have heard the same things. I might have been an agent of the secret police, but it would have made no difference. “Moral force,” said Mr. Desai, “that is our force.” Here was a real and consistent application of a moral principle in politics, and I think that Gandhi’s strength lies precisely in this absolute consistency, which sometimes appears, from the outside, to be only narrowness and lack of rationality. One can set Gandhi’s system in principle against that of Machiavelli, and then one is confronted by the temptation to see this as a demonstration of the difference between the East and the West. This is, in fact, often done, but it is naturally only an oversimplification, for in reality there is as much violence, intrigue, and conspiracy on the Eastern side as on the Italian, and Gandhi certainly has learned much from the teachings of both Christ and Tolstoi. In many respects, one can view Gandhi as the disciple of the educational method in politics, as against, for example, Sun Yat-Sen, the proponent of strategy, although the moral element, in the form of a real sense of humanity, played an important role in Sun’s work as well. Even if one does not agree fully with Gandhi, one can still not remain blind to the practical accomplishments of his morally inclined approach to politics. Ortega y Gasset

laments that the world is suffering because it is ruled by the theory and practice of strategy and force, instead of by the theory and practice of justice. I think that he is here

alluding to the same problem: the drive and élan of the struggle for justice are becoming increasingly superseded by the calculated, deliberate, strategic struggle for power. 18

AUGUST 3, 1934 I have now heard nothing from Soelaiman in exactly two

months, and all my contacts with the outside world have been broken for the same length of time, as well. There have been no books, either from the library or from else-

where, and so I guess my program of study was only a short-lived piece of luck, somehow too good to be true within the confines of prison. Nevertheless, I’ve been able

to adjust myself to this new situation, and I feel regret only for the loss of time. But, of course, that is just the reason why one is put in prison!

AUGUST 18, 1934 I should like to learn Italian so that I will be able to read Croce in the original. He is of particular interest for our national rejuvenation, and his brilliant and penetrating critique can bring some enlightenment to the ranks of our young intellectuals here in Indonesia. I have already recommended him to some of our literateurs, but there hasn’t been enough spirit in their reaction for them to do anything about it. Sometimes they discourage me so that I have the

desire to throw the whole thing aside, and only the example of the shoemaker sticking to his last restrains me from such a course. As long as these so-called “art devotees” do not broaden themselves, as long as they refuse to look outside the confines of their own borders, so long will they remain preoccupied with the bloodless, sugary, spiritless farce that they call their “art.” They cannot yet make a distinction between maudlin sentimentality and true, deep feeling.

SEPTEMBER 11, 1934 My “proceedings” are now

over, and the hearing has

19

been held. In total, the whole thing didn’t take more than an hour and I could have made it still shorter by not an-

swering the questions at all or by answering more carelessly! The points in question were all regarded simply as a formality, which would not affect the decision, since in most cases of this sort they have already reached a decision in advance. Nevertheless, for my own satisfaction I answered each question seriously, although I must admit I didn’t wrack my brain to do so. I am now expecting within a few weeks, or perhaps a month, to receive my sentence, and there is still a possibility

that it will be exile. Actually, this wouldn’t be so strange since I have only recently come into the political arena, and if the times were not so “difficult” they certainly wouldn’t deem me worthy of an administrative procedure, much less

a “first-class” sentence [to Boven Digoel]. SEPTEMBER 18, 1934 The meals, which I get on tin bowls here, now that I no longer receive food from outside, are hardly what you would find on hotel menus, but if you once get over your gastronomical prejudices, you must admit that they feed you surprisingly well. In fact, it gives me a certain satisfac-

tion since I find that without pretense I can live as simply and as ascetically as most of the [Indonesian] people are forced to live. Furthermore, I feel more “really” imprisoned, now that I have to eat this prison food, than I did when I was still getting food from outside. I don’t think any of the others, except Hafil, receive any extra food from outside, and so I don’t feel ill at ease any longer out of a sense of special privilege. At first I thought that I would absolutely refuse any food from outside, but later I wasn’t sure whether that would be only a pathetic gesture—a sort 20

of desired martyrdom. And I finally decided not to do it. Now the whole thing has worked out quite naturally. Djon’s mother could no longer send me anything, and I was already somewhat prepared for the change, and free of my initial prejudices. I even think that this solid fare has done my stomach some good, for at least I haven’t had any trouble from it during these last months. Furthermore, if you figure your diet in terms of calories, as Hafil does, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more calories in these prison meals than in the carefully prepared and diversified delicacies that he probably receives. I am thus well nourished and fed at present, and I have decidedly more flesh on my body than I have ever had before. In fact, when Djon’s parents were here, they even asked me if I had beriberi, because they thought I looked so swollen and round! On the other hand, I think I am forgetting more and more what savor is. I now regard eating as a duty, and the satisfaction I get from it does not come

from the eating, but from having eaten, in about the same way one feels satisfied after one has properly acquitted oneself of a task: more a spiritual satisfaction of the soul than a sensual satisfaction of the stomach; and thus, satisfaction of a spiritually “higher” grade! As you can see, it is surprising the things one can discover even in meals from tin bowls!

SEPTEMBER 20, 1934 I have just received a letter from Soelaiman, who has departed for Europe again. I am happy for him, because he was degenerating spiritually and physically in this environment, which to him is still unfamiliar. His experiences here would, in fact, be an excellent subject for a modern psychological novel: an Indonesian who lived in Europe until he ZL

was twenty-three years old and was brought up and educated as a Netherlander, then thrown back into the middle of the Indonesian community and of the colonial problem, without even knowing the language of his own people, and remaining still completely European in his thinking and his action. He conducted himself splendidly here, and it is not his fault that things went as they did. It is not his fault that he has the soul and the disposition of a naive and sensitive aesthete; a soul that has been almost destroyed by the peculiar stresses and strains of colonial life. If that destruction

had actually taken place, I would have felt myself partly guilty, since I originally encouraged him to come here. What is there for him here, with his aesthetic ideals;

where could he find sympathy, let alone understanding, in our so different Indonesian community and society? Who here has an interest in Rousseau or Fujita? Perhaps a few

among the European colony, but they are as far distant from us here as is Europe itself; in fact, even farther, because Europe can be reached by ship or airplane, whereas the social barrier, the race distinction, in a colonial society is far more difficult to overcome. I say “social barrier” because, even when one admits the existence of race prejudice in general and in other environments, the most extraordinary and sharpest form of race distinction and racial opposition is possible only in a colonial society, because the social basis of that society is founded on those very rubrics. How could Soelaiman, with his hundred guilders a month, hope to have entree to the Batavia art circles, or hope to come into contact with the art devotees and. artists who are an integral part of the highest European society here? In Europe, on the other hand, without a single cent, he can have the Rotonde, the American, the Bohemian. 22

With the best of intentions, he came here to become familiar with his country and his people, and to realize his ideals in them and through them. From the beginning I saw that it would turn into a fiasco, but I still encouraged him to

come here so that he would realize that the wayang * of Jodjana or Bali do not give any idea of what Indonesia

really is like, and also because it disturbed me that he was so proud of his ivory tower of “art for art’s sake, above all political matters.” And now he has finally found out at firsthand what the colonial problem is. Deserting “art for art’s sake,” he became one of us, with nothing else to motivate him but purely emotional convictions. But, resisting all dogmas and

theories, he remained an individualistic aesthete in his approach. He started with the discovery that everything was far different here from what he had thought. There is nothing unusual about that, and every young Dutch newcomer finds the same thing. On the one hand, instead of the romantic idylls he had read about the people, he found the

Batavia “natives.” And he really got to know these “natives” well because, with his salary, he was obliged to live in the village with them. He nevertheless could not understand them, and saw only their shortcomings, because he looked at them with Dutch eyes and by Dutch standards: their “indolence,” their “dishonesty,” their “submissiveness.” This is also natural, and every other Dutch newcomer goes through the same experience. He nevertheless would not let himself admit these things. He persevered and remained fast in his decision to stay with them and to understand them. *The wayang are dolls used in the puppet shows of Balinese and Javanese folklore.

“3

Then he came to learn the other side of the problem. He

began to feel that he was “oddly” treated in his studio at the Museum. He found that the Europeans here did everything “oddly.” He had his first clashes. You can’t, of course,

blame the Europeans for not being able to read on his face that he, Soelaiman, had been accustomed to being treated on the basis of equality, and that he could not feel himself inferior to them. Soon he was discharged for “impertinence,” and remained without work for months. Slowly he became more “broken in,” since he was obliged to. He gradually was becoming a part of his environment, and slowly but surely the realization of his status as a “native” forced itself upon him. The “Dutch” arrogance began to lose its striking quality, and without even being consciously aware of it, Soelaiman began to move aside to allow Euro-

peans to pass on the street. And here was the “native submissiveness” about which he was at first so indignant! This process of adjustment was not completed without a struggle, but he could not fully understand what was happening. He could not explain or interpret what was happening to him, so he could not free himself from it. This experience is just the opposite to that of so many former planters and other Europeans who have lived too long in the Indies, and theirs is just as tragic. In so far as they have been victims of the abnormal colonial attitudes, they too are uprooted and lost when they return home. The former planter and Soelaiman are two different sides

of the same colonial problem. Both are apolitical, even asocial, types. Both are innocently subjected to the influence of colonial life without being conscious of it, and both are therefore the victims of that life. Soelaiman had the same nervous symptoms as so many planters have, with their so-called tropical tempers and unusual irritability.

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In the case of the planter, in fact, the situation is some-

what simpler. It becomes more a question of the relatively higher and inflated life that he leads amid the abnormal attitudes and values of colonial society, as a result of which the normal attitudes and values of his own country finally

become subjectively strange and unfamiliar to him. Consequently, when he returns to his own country he no longer feels at home, becomes lonely and lost, and cannot maintain the same social level that he enjoyed in the tropics. I have further noticed that this phenomenon holds true not only for those who have been repatriated on pension, but for those who have large bank balances as well. Even the latter feel themselves no longer at home when they return, and they are only in their element if they can dream and be reminiscent about “the old days on the plantation.” It is doubtful, I think, whether these people—pensioners or millionaires—have made anything of their lives. To have spent one’s whole life alone on the plantation, so that finally one can end one’s days alone with one’s bank balance—I think it is really quite sad. Fortunately there remains for us the truth that life changes, and even life in a colony is changing, bringing with it a change in circumstances. Actually, the situation is no longer precisely as I have described it. In principle it remains true, but in practice there are many other modifcations and nuances.

OCTOBER 4, 1934 If someone were now to ask me to state the difference between freedom and restraint, I think I could give him a clear and precise answer! I recall that the headmaster of the school I attended once embarrassed me by asking: “What is freedom? No one is

25

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_

really free!” I know now that he was both right and wrong. Philosophically and sociologically, it is perhaps true that no one is wholly free. Our lives are governed, in this sense,

by physical, biological, and sociological laws. But nevertheless

there is certainly a place for the concept of freedom.

The area for the concept of freedom lies within the framework of our conscious physical lives. I know, for example, without question, that I am being held here against my will. My imprisonment has nothing to do with the question of free or unfree will. It is a simple and practical, real, bodily, palpable, and concrete circumstance of restraint; a circumstance, moreover, in which I am constrained from outside myself, and in which my will is opposed by another will, perceptibly and obviously in the form of walls and bars. I think, for that matter, that the respectable headmaster, despite his determinism, would have some observations to make regarding the reality of freedom if he were to experience what it is to be placed behind walls and bars when he wished to be in his library studying Roman and Greek documents! Even if there is no scientific and philosophical freedom, one can certainly discover and experience the real existence of practical freedom and restraint. It is quite a different matter whether your will is obstructed by natural or social conditions, or whether it is thwarted by another will, as in my case. Furthermore, it is logical and justifiable to speak of active force when this foreign will works not only in a negative way, but positively, to make you do something or to hold you upon a certain course that it wants and you do not. The mistake of the old disciples of “freedom” was that they deified freedom as the highest and most expansive principle behind the world and nature, whereas the real ap26

plicability of their ideal of freedom lay rather in the reaction against tyranny, against material and_ intellectual constraint, against injustice, and against arbitrary despotism, which manifested itself in concrete ways. Out of the nature of the matter, they attached great value to freedom, but at the same time they idealized and generalized it into an intangible abstraction representing the beginning of revelation [Rede]. From this point evolved the fiasco of liberalism, which is now also threatening individualism. The sort of philosophical freedom that they apotheosized does not, in fact, exist, and the development of physical, and even of social and psychological, science has represented a continual refutation of that philosophy of freedom.

The socialists were the first to rebel against this abstract freedom, and it was they who gave the impetus to the rise and development of social science—the study of the relation of the individual not only to the laws of nature, but also to

the laws of society; the study of the individual’s constraint by the society in which he lives, and of the interaction and mutual dependence of the members of that society.

OCTOBER 30, 1934 If you once proceed from the principle that there is ego-

ism in yourself, which must be in every case tracked down and checked, then you have thereby actually placed that egoism on a pedestal, from which it exercises a decisive influence in your life. You seek it everywhere, and come face to face so often with your own psychic reactions that require an explanation, that the psychic explanation be-

comes easy and temptingly simple. Compassion, love, sacrifice are all reduced to self-love and pride. The investigation of oneself in this manner has already a tendency toward

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egocentricity, namely in that one finds oneself interesting enough to warrant such an extensive investigation. Herein must we look for the explanation of the rise and

growth of psychological knowledge during the individualistic period that now

lies just behind us: the period in

which the individual’s interest in himself has, of its own accord, deepened immensely. A psychomonistical concept of the world is possible only in a hyperindividualistic time, as

a. consequent outgrowth of the individualistic concept of the world itself. Thus, with the rise of the strong opposing current of “community interests” lately, there is little doubt that a reaction will set in against the psychologism of the early decades of this century, making an end to the rule of Freud, Fries, Heymans, etc. Ortega y Gasset makes the observation that the novel i1S a typically bourgeois form of art. In general, I think one ought to say that it is an art form of the individualistic

period; the last development into the psychological novel is, moreover, a strong support of this analysis. I believe, thus, in the relativity of our psychological wisdom in so far as it is, finally, itself a socio-historic symptom. No matter how temptingly sound, simple, and obvious it may seem, I do not think we can explain life purely in terms of a psychological approach, although there is much of last-

ing value in this approach. Precisely what, we cannot yet be sure. In any case, we can certainly say that it has increased our insight into the individual mind. Even this relative truth has its value, if it has only furnished us with a better understanding of the psychic facts of individualistic life. It appears as though the individual gains his individuality by concentration on his life and himself, and that furthermore such self-absorption and self-consciousness are at

the same time often combined with egocentrism, self-con28

finement, exclusion of others, and introversion, as a result of

which it becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to make contact or reach a mutual understanding with others. Hence all the controversy and disputation on both sides. Meanwhile, as children of this individualistic period, we take to psychologism only too readily, and become decidedly one-sided as a result. That is, at least, how I remonstrate with myself whenever I feel that the essentially pessimistic counsel of psychology is threatening to rule my mind. OCTOBER 31, 1934 Since I have been away from Europe and have undergone a change in diet, I have been having periodic dreams, almost nightmares. For the most part they deal with the most copious and luxurious meals consisting of all sorts of fantastic delicacies. I am amazed about it myself! To ward off these tormenting dreams, I finally have bought some fruit for a quarter, ordinary unexciting oranges. As a result I don’t have the dreams as often, but they still occur now and then. Fortunately these dream meals are always so rich and fine that they are completely outside my reach, even if I were to use all of the little money I have. I really wonder how I come to have such foolish and fantastic dreams, since in general I have never been an epicure. [ think, actually, that it is a sort of psychological reaction to the very sober meals we get here, which I partake of courageously and full of a sense of duty! Physically I feel fine, and am troubled only by a susceptibility to colds, which according to the prison doctor is due to being shut up incessantly and to too little exercise. On his advice I have taken to a sort of minute room gymnastics, which I think really helps.

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NOVEMBER 23, 1934 There is still no news, but it will come now fairly soon. According to a letter that I received from Holland, a report appeared in the press concerning arbitrary intern-

ments, and it has given me much to think about. I think that perhaps my inexperience and my naiveté have thus far deceived me, and yet I don’t want to be taken by surprise. With the prevailing spirit of the times, and my knowledge of the ideas and intentions that His Excellency the present Minister of Colonies [Colijn] developed in his

brochure Colonial Problems of Today and Tomorrow, I must be prepared for anything. And then occasionally I think about the wry remark of Gyo that we originally laughed about heartily, but that really contains the essence of truth: “The people feel that we are accomplishing nothing, but the government says that we are actively undermining the colonial structure.” Furthermore, our own evaluation of ourselves differs, naturally, from that of the colonial government. This difference, however, is not substantial in my case, and there

is therefore in my own thoughts still an undercurrent of unconscious hope, due to my own appraisal of my actions. I am, for one thing, certainly not an old political hand, since that would, in fact, be impossible for someone with my exclusively academic background and of my age.* It is thus perhaps also possible that I am being deceived by the same * The implication of this point is an important one in appraising the shortcomings of Dutch colonial policy. As a result of this policy, a man

of Sjahrir’s youth (twenty-five years at the time) who was not even sure of what his offense had been, or of precisely where his sympathies lay— since he had friends and attachments in Holland as well as in Indonesia

—was regarded and treated as a confirmed and hardened political agitator. Under these conditions, the growth and crystallization of a strong and uncompromising nationalist movement was not only not surprising, but followed almost a priori. 30

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psychological factor that’made Sacco and Vanzetti feel that they would get their freedom even up to the moment when they were being led to the electric chair. I suppose this comes from the intense realization of one’s own innocence, or of the special extenuating circumstances attached to one’s own guilt, and from the unconscious regard of this realization as a general, rather than personal, criterion of justice, in the expectation that this criterion must be fulfilled. Actually, to expect from the world justice of the same type as one feels oneself is an indication of a maudlin belief in humanity and its justice. There is a question as to whether another factor is to be considered here, namely whether disbelief in one’s own fate is caused simply by a unique and subtle expression of the will toward self-preservation. The admirable manner in which Sacco and Vanzetti finally met their fate is, however, proof that they never lacked in personal courage. The dominant fact remaining in their case is thus their naiveté, their abstract belief in the minimal justice of humanity as a whole. This is, in origin, the subjective, individual impulse toward justice: justice that they expected to be applied individually to themselves in their particular subjective circumstances. And that was precisely what they ought not

to have expected, because their case was political. They were simply a political stake in a play of opposing political interests. In so far as they themselves were representatives of a political faction, or were the actual or fancied symbols _ of a political current, they could not possibly expect that any individual, subjective justice would be shown them by the opposing political faction or current—or by those who had constituted themselves, or wished to be regarded as, the opposing political current! That Sacco and Vanzetti 31

still had such expectations was only an indication of their naiveté—but of a naiveté that is nonetheless touching because it represents a faith in humanity, and even a faith, if unconscious, in the sense of justice of the opposing faction. In my case, such a naiveté would be still less justifiable, because here we have to contend with an openly and frankly political problem; and there is no question of an attempt to administer justice, as in the case of Sacco and Vanzettl. DECEMBER 9, 1934 The decision, dated 16 November, has finally been made: Digoel! So, finally, it is to be Digoel! It surprised me somewhat, but that of course comes naturally from my naiveté.

The decision read as follows: “For spreading hate and endangering public tranquillity and order, by virtue of Article 37 of the Netherlands Indies Government Ordinances and in concurrence with the Council of the Indies, sentenced to remain in the capital of the temporary administrative sub-

division Boven Digoel, in the division of Amboina, Government of the Moluccas.” There has thus been no specific accusation, no mention of an oral or written offense; in point of fact they have not been able to charge me with any misdemeanor. Consequently I should have thought that I would only rate a “third-class” sentence to Timor or something similar at the most. But on the other hand, of the five others who received the same sentence to Digoel, there are at least two who deserved it even less than I did! However, it is now final, and in any case it has brought an end to the period of doubt and the internal struggle as to whether all this was fair to those whom I must now leave behind. The decision has helped me, as it were, to rise above per32

sonal elements to the broader considerations. What is the purpose of it all, and why must I bring misery to those whom I love? Only because I wished to serve my people. Actually it is all due to an error in my reasoning, in that I felt myself able to fulfill both obligations: that to my people and that to my family. An end has now come to all the doubt and self-reproach that I have experienced during these last two years. Now I cannot and I must not think about it any more. It was as though I were recalled to my people when I received the banishment sentence; to my people and to everything that ties me to the destiny and suffering of these millions. My personal grief is finally only a small part of that greater, general suffering, and it is just this that is my deepest and strongest bond. And now, perhaps just when

I have to renounce what I love best in the world, now I feel myself more firmly and indissolubly bound to my people than ever before! We have so often misunderstood one another, that people and I. I have been too abstract for my people, too far removed from the framework of their concepts, too “Western.” They have been, for me, too inert. They have often made me despair at their lack of will and their misconceptions; angry and impatient at their petty faults. They filled me sometimes even with bitterness, but now I know that their destiny and the goal of my life are one; we were and we are still mutually bound to each other. Now that my people require from me the dissolution and the destruction of my personal happiness, the separation from my loved ones, now all my sorrow disappears, and there remains only my deep feeling of belonging and alliance to this downtrodden people of mine.

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DECEMBER 16, 1934 What a fuss we make about life! We are convinced that we can judge ourselves objectively, that we know the precise relationship between ourselves and humanity and society. Yet how much time and energy do we spend in order to make our own personalities shine in the eyes of the community and in our own eyes as well? Why can’t we tolerate others thinking less of us than we do ourselves? Why do we become so disturbed if we think that our errors are being judged more severely than we deserve? Because of our regard for justice, or for ourselves? If it is no longer because of a bare and material impulse toward self-preservation, then it is only a refined, spiritualized version thereof that represents itself as a preoccupation with our own lives and a recognition of our own personality and self-respect. The weaker we actually feel ourselves to be, the stronger is this preoccupation and recognition,

and the more we wish to assert our personality. And finally, how difficult it becomes for us to take leave of our youth or our personal happiness! We act as though the whole world were affected thereby, when in reality we are dealing only with the life and the happiness of one single infinitesimal being. But on the other hand, is the broader and idealized criterion of man’s value appropriate? Is it, for example, appropriate to apply the Christian ideal of complete selfabnegation as the criterion for judging man’s worth? If we take the Christian ideal as the standard for judging man and for humanizing people in general, then we characterize man as an ethical rather than a rational being, and what appears to be natural then becomes “the low and the animal instincts in man”! On the other hand, perhaps we had better simply regard

34

that idealized concept as unreal, and hypothecate man as a rational animal and a creature of nature with, as a conse-

quence, his struggle for life and for a pattern of living in which he experiences a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain: thus, the materialistic, hedonistic man? And as a result of this last hypothesis, can we arrive at no ethic whatsoever, or at best at a rationalized ethic, a utility ethic—no absolute ethic, but only a relative, historical, or even class or group ethic that can be characterized

only as sociological or finally biological? And then, according to socialistic doctrines, we have co-operation and collectivism as the natural, social concept of evolution, and thus co-operation and solidarity become the prime utility ethic, to which all other ethical values are subordinated! Or, from the same original premise, but now according to doctrines of liberalism, we arrive at the concept of competition, the creative ego-individualistic motive, the homo-homini-lupus idea, as the natural and absolute conclusion, and we see the highest ethic in personal individual well-being. There is thus the choice between the biological concept of preservation of the species, and the individual concept of self-preservation. In reality the whole ethical problem can be brought back to this last question. For if solidarity represents humanity, love for fellow man, or if need be, Christian brotherly love, and competition represents human nature, then you have reached the crux of the problem with only this difference: that with the principle of social solidarity you become more mildly inclined toward the principle of life and even toward the concept of individual self-preservation. The absolute conviction of any absolute, idealistic ethic provides a place for an understanding, reasoned rejection of pure egoism. oF

We need the principle of solidarity or the ethic of humanity as a guide in our personal lives and as a test of ourselves and our actions. Yet many of us stand closer to the absolute idealistic ethic with its highest and strongest value of self-abnegation than we do to the more scientific and natural ethic of solidarity, which has precisely the natural life as its basis and thus cannot judge us too sharply and critically with respect to our normal thoughts of self-preservation. Perhaps this arises because the first ethic gives us an easier and stronger sense of security, whereas the latter still and always leaves unanswered the burning question of how self-preservation and species preservation, individuality and collectivity can be reconciled, as a result of which one cannot find an absolute general answer, but must judge each instance and question separately and specifically. To accept the ideal man as a general criterion is easier, particularly for those of us who are young, inexperienced, and even immature. What experience has not yet taught us, the ideal must supply. In fact, a great part of our internal con-

flict comes from this source. I remember how once, after I had argued with a Calvinist friend of mine for half the night, he finally said: “Man is certainly a sinful being’”—the tie between idealism and pessimism, which is also the spirit of the Bible; for example, as the ideal is expressed in the Gospel according to

John: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Pessimism is actually ubiquitous, particularly in the Old Testament, beginning with the first story of man. What is often called the “sinful man” is actually the immature man. Only mature, understanding, and experienced

men do not tear their lives into two separate parts, but re36

tain their vision of the transitions, relations, and currents between the two. What we must learn is to accept our life and, where it is necessary, to reconcile ourselves with it, so that we can conserve our energy and use it for other, attainable and constructive, ends. We still act too much like immature men; we worry too much about direct happiness. We must rather learn to regard it from apart so that we can reach further and higher. We must be willing to risk our happiness in order to participate in a higher and greater happiness. Schiller wrote (if I remember correctly): “Und

setzt Ihr nicht das Leben ein, nie wird Euch das Leben gewonnen sein.” (“And if you do not risk Life, you cannot conquer it.”) We must not gaze blindly at what is immediately before us, if we wish to progress higher and further.

JANUARY 6, 1935 Life will not be pushed or forced! We may try to make many reasoned, brilliant theories our own, but they acquire full value and meaning only when, through experience, we are able to gain insight into their fundamental import. Until such a time, they can only remain dead and dry mental skeletons, which give us a distorted image of life, which lead us astray, and which bewilder us in life’s diverse problems. Experience cannot be learned from books; it requires years and events. That is—or should I say “was”?—the es-

sence of youth’s problem during this century. “Was,” because it begins to appear that in some countries youth itself is again calling for authority and fixed values. But there was a time—and if it is indeed already behind us, then it is only just past—when the young generation gave the impression of fulfilling a world mission. By word

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and action, it expressed its disbelief in the old values of mankind; in age itself it found an obstacle, an impediment. And the watchword with which it stormed the world was: honesty! Honesty toward life. And who would wish to dispute the propriety and the goodness of this watchword, even though it certainly cannot protect us from all life’s difficulties? On the contrary, sometimes it even seems that if we act with complete honesty toward ourselves and toward the world at a given moment, we shall be confronted with the greatest difficulties imaginable! We have contended for our right to life, and our night to the pursuit of happiness. We can, perhaps, justify that right theoretically and scientifically, but does that mean that we know what life and happiness are? Does that teach us how we can be happy, and how we must live in order to find happiness? That we didn’t learn. All we had to do was to live from moment to moment, and to think, at each moment, that there was the happiness that we needed—only to discover at the same time that it was not so after all. We discarded all our forms in favor of honesty, and of the substance and reality of things, and does it not sometimes seem that with the form we have also discarded a piece of the substance and reality itself, that the reality we retain is without beauty, and is even coarse and repugnant? For the most part we live at such a fast tempo that we do not even consider this. After all, we are looking not for beauty but for happiness. But is happiness without beauty possible? Is, then, coarse and repugnant enjoyment happiness? Are endless nervous tension and irritation happiness, and does it matter how we find it as long as we are honest and make no secret about it? It seems so simple: If 38

you are only honest toward yourself and toward life, then everything must work out all right. The only difficulty is this: that because of our youth we did not know what we were and what life was. In place of real life, we were thinking of a schematized self and a schematized life, and where real life did not seem to fit into the schema, we tried to force it in. But life will not be forced. Even as the old, outdated values had constituted an impediment, so our theoretical honesty and happiness threatened to become one. What we lacked was experience; the knowledge of how to live; how to act at every given moment in accord with the direction of life, in harmony with the goal of our life and with the concepts of our life.

We are not yet finished with the task of finding new values to substitute for the old. The new values of youth were, finally, just as common, just as abstract, just as relative and temporary, and just as susceptible to obsolescence as the old ones had been. We truly need new values if we are to make progress in the direction in which we must go, but we must never apply or accept them mechanically or automatically, since that will only return us to the original obstacles that we wish to surmount. We must search, act, and do; the emphasis here thus falls again on the individual, on the subject who must act differently at each given moment, because the circumstances differ. At such times our theories and schemas often desert us, and I think that at these times the feeling of beauty [schoonheidsgevoel] is our best guide, not sensual irritation, not nervous intoxication, but the tranquil feeling that brings contemplation; the feeling we have only when we have our nerves and emotions under control, and ay,

when we are able to free ourselves from all distorting psychoses. The most difficult thing of all is, indeed, that we often do not know where our happiness is to be sought. There is nothing wrong in seeking happiness, only in wrongly seeking and in wrongly living, and if we are really living wrongly, we become aware of it quickly. As soon as we are

troubled by anguish, we can look for the cause in our pattern of life. Grief and sorrow are not what I mean by “anguish” [zielsellende| but self-doubt and self-disdain, and the worst spiritual misfortune of all: moral decay. That is the worst that man can descend to, and it is that from which death is perhaps the only relief. Because this fate is so cruel, man often tries to protect himself against it by becoming insensible, by internal stupefaction and hardening, and the degree of his moral decay expresses itself in the extent of his stupefaction and hardening. Where hardness and insensibility exist, there can never be happiness because there can never be beauty. What we need most, above all our theories, is a feeling for beauty in life. As a theory, of course, this does not yet mean anything, because both “feeling” and “beauty” are indefinite quantities, and hence there is no absolute. Then are we, perhaps, reinstating the same age-old, antiquated values that we have already excoriated?

Indeed, there is always a tendency toward conservatism in “feeling,” which is why revolutionaries almost always place their emphasis on the intellectual and the mobile, and sometimes even attack or eliminate feeling. But on the other hand, can a revolutionary be a good revolutionary if he has no heart? Can this subjective impulse be completely neglected? In any case, we can at least accept the premise that

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beauty, as well, does not point toward any absolute. All that is posited is a proper, normal functioning and activity of the feeling, but no attempt is made to analyze that feeling. At the most we can say that it must be in harmony with the goal, values, and concepts of our life in general. I think that this removes the danger of becoming stultified by a too dogmatic approach to the idea of feeling and sensibility in life.

To live well and properly is indeed an art. Living according to instincts and impulses can signify beauty for the animal family but not for mankind. We can no longer grope blindly, since human, intellectual, and communal living has wedged itself between simple nature and simple living. Men have tried to interpret this dilemma through human ethics and religion. They have tried to understand life in terms of norms and specialties, and, unnatural as this is, it has been for the purpose of living with understanding on the basis of instinct and impulses. Man cannot con-

sciously wish to live as an animal, and consequently the attempt to do so artificially and by guise is unnatural, unsavory, and awkward.

The man who can live in such a way that his aesthetic feelings are joined harmoniously with the rest of his life is the man who understands the art of living. He is the man who is entitled to claim life and happiness for his own. But for the most part we do not follow this course any longer because we are, paradoxically, too absorbed in liv-

ing life and in striving to gain more and more pleasure.

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Z INTERMEZZO JANUARY

30, 1935

E have been under way now for three days, and \ } \ tomorrow we come to Makassar. From there we must change ships for Ambon. I’ve been quite troubled during the trip and haven’t slept more than twelve hours in these last three days. I am lodged in a second-class cabin, since they have assigned Hafil and me, as “intellectuals,” to second-class accommodations although the others have to travel as deck passengers. In other words, after a

year of hard prison sleeping benches, I now have a nice feather bed! Actually I have had no benefit from either the bed or the good food. I have become too unaccustomed to these comforts to enjoy them any more, and besides, I can’t feel at ease because of the difference in treatment that we have received. When I first heard about it, I immediately protested. “If you’d rather lie on the deck, go ahead” was the mocking answer I received from the only Indonesian among the police escort that brought us on board. If I do that, of course, it becomes difficult for Hafil, and in any case I don’t want to cause a demonstration. I let it go at that. Naturally, I spend all day with the boys on deck, and perhaps I'll now go there at night to sleep. There are eight of us: seven boys of the P.N.I. and one Chinese youth who is suspected of being the leader of some section of an anti-

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imperialistic league. Up to now we have all been gay and in high spirits, and it sometimes seems as though we were on a pleasure trip. At present the trip 1s particularly scenic, and even traveling as a deck passenger is certainly preferable to being shut up in a prison. I had intended to enjoy as much of the trip as possible, but I don’t think I'll be able to. Naturally I’ve gone along

with the laughter and general good spirits, but I don’t feel sincere about it. Two of our boys have taken their young wives with them, and I am extremely uneasy about them. Of course, at present more and more people take their wives and children with them to Digoel and the living conditions of the inmates are better than they were six or seven years ago, but still it is no place for a woman. The boys know nothing about all this, and I can’t find it in my heart

to deprive them of their good spirits; it may be so very long before they are again in such spirits. FEBRUARY 11, 1935 We have already been waiting for three days on Ambon, and in five more days we begin our journey again. They put us in one of the rooms of the field-police barracks, because the prison was full. In Makassar we also spent a few days waiting in prison. All of the boys are sleeping now, next to one another on the wooden boards that were given us. The women have to sleep in the hallways night in front of our door, which is kept locked. They aren’t locked up, receive forty cents a day for food, and are allowed to go into town. Ambon is really not a town, but rather a large village. We had a chance to see something of it when we had to walk through on the way to the barracks. Everything

seemed much friendlier here than in Java and Makassar. 43

In Soerabaya, no one was allowed to see us. There was also an extra police guard, and the wharf was fenced off. In Makassar we were taken ashore by a police motorboat so that we would not arrive at the same point or at the same time as the boat we had been traveling on. _ But here it is quite easy to see that we are in the eastern and isolated part of the archipelago. Apparently nobody knew in advance about our arrival, and there appears to be no one who is in the least curious or has heard about our sentences. As one of the policemen who had to accompany us from Makassar said: “To the east of Makassar there are only villages and wilderness [doesoen dan hoetan].” From here in Ambon, there is a boat only twice a month to

Makassar, which is the only connection with Java, and

there is not a regular service of even one boat a month from here to Digoel. And yet how beautiful this eastern part of our country is! We had a chance to see quite a bit of it during the trip: along the coast of Celebes a beautiful blue sea, sometimes light and pellucid like mother-of-pearl, sometimes a deep, dark blue, but always beautiful. The sea remained calm, and so we had a chance to enjoy the lovely vistas, the coast and mountain of Celebes, the white and green islets, so beautifully set in the blue of the sea, and bathing in the gold and sometimes silver-tinted light of the sun.

We dropped anchor in front of one of these islands, and how perfect it was! The blue sea up to the very edge of the shore, white rocks, the white sandy shore, and in the background the bluish-green mountains. Blue dominated everywhere, even where the sun shed all sorts of shades of gold and silver tints on the blue sea, and on the bluish-green mountains under the blue sky. It was like a world of makebelieve. . ..

44

FEBRUARY 14, 1935

On Ambon they are at least twenty years behind Java and Sumatra, and still they have plenty of schools, pro-

portionately many more than in Java. All the missions are represented in this so-called “twelfth province of the Netherlands,” and in several places there are even Catholic missions. Missionaries, the military, men of the civil administration—the usual outposts of “Western civilization”—all these are here in abundance, and hence there are also mission and government schools. I know this part of our people too superficially to speak with authority, and yet I have no-

ticed that there are seldom any Ambonese * in the nationalistic movement, in contrast with the Menadonese, who are also Christian. The people here are quite handsome, and appear to be

considerably stronger and more robust than those in Java or Sumatra. This is a better edition of the Negro type: they have the same good physique and kinky hair as the Negro, but not the flat noses and thick lips; in fact, the nose is quite high for this part of the world. The features, in general, show more of the Aryan or Arabian type than they do of the Negroid or Indonesian-Malay type. There are also Mohammedans in Ambon, who can be recognized by the fezzes of the men and the attire of the women. I have noticed that they are generally lighter in color than most of the other inhabitants, and in general look

more

like the people of Java and Sumatra.

I wonder

whether they are perhaps immigrants or descendants * The Ambonese,

from the island of Ambon,

of

have always been re-

nowned for their loyalty to the Dutch. They are mostly Christian, and have always supplied the best and most loyal of the native troops in the Netherlands Indies Army. By contrast the Menadonese, on the northern tip of Celebes, have always contributed to the intellectual group behind the nationalistic movement.

45

earlier Malay immigrants. As far as I can make out, they also constitute the merchant class here. That the Moslems form the middle and especially the

merchant classes is something that I have noticed not only here but elsewhere; for example, in India. I would like very much to study this matter further, if I ever get the chance. I wonder whether Islam has not perhaps played the same historical role in relation to Hinduism as Protestantism played in relation to Catholicism; namely, representing the bourgeois concept of life contrasted with the feudal. So far as I know, there has never been a study made along this line, and still I think it would be important. For such a study one might even take all of Asiatic society under examination: a combined sociology of Islam and of Hinduism in Asia. Such a work would certainly be logically connected with my earlier work on Chinese society, but unfortunately, I won’t have the necessary material to pursue it further. ON BOARD THE S.S. ALBATROS, FEBRUARY 21, 1935 We have been sailing up the Digoel River since yesterday evening. We left Ambon on the sixteenth of February on the Albatros, a government steamer of about eight hundred tons. The seas that we had to cross are famed for their beauty but also notorious for their roughness and storms. Fortunately we did not experience anything of the latter, and we have enjoyed ideal weather throughout this lovely part of Indonesia. At sunset we left the Bay of Ambon. The sea and the light were still clear blue, and behind us lay the bluishgreen mountains. The golden light of the sun, which was quickly becoming redder, made the sea sparkle as with

46

thousands of little lights. And on the sea—so full of life,

color, and sparkle—fast little sailboats moved, playing spiritedly on the waves, while the sleepy blue mountains rested as quiet spectators in the background. I remained on deck until all these million little lights had disappeared, and the quiet, somber mountains began to fade against the blurring blue of the sky. Then the moon rose, seeming to enchant everything in a world of soft, tranquil, dreamy make-believe. Again millions of magical little lights shone on the sea. The mountains lost their somberness and again seemed to be sleepily friendly. I sat fore on the bow of the ship, leaning against the flag mast. I thought of nothing, even felt nothing. I forgot where I was, forgot myself, and lost my being in all this beauty. The next morning we came to Banda, also famed for its beauty, but for my part the Bay of Ambon was still more beautiful. The part of the Bay of Ambon in which we dropped anchor was about fifteen meters deep, but the water was so clear that you could see plainly each object lying on the bottom of the sea. The sea bottom was covered with starfish, and the water in the bay, protected by Goenoeng Api [Fire Mountain], was mirror-smooth. Banda itself—that is to say, the town proper—seemed to me to be abandoned. From the ship we could see an old fort of the East India Company that was built on the side of a hill, and farther up there were large houses. But there were no people to be seen anywhere. In this part of Indonesia nature dominates. Everywhere there is the splendor of nature, and the people are more a part of that nature than a product of their society. Unconsciously one looks at the people from that standpoint, and judges them according to their physiques, their racial fea-

ay,

tures, and in connection with the natural beauty of their

environment. Their cultural backwardness is no difficulty and suggests no social problem. From a social point of view this part of Indonesia has almost no meaning. These fairytale islands serve only to beautify our country, but from the point of view of social production their value is very small. In the time of the East India Company, this was all quite different. At that time the products that are no longer

of so much importance on world markets—such as pepper, nutmeg, and cloves—were the honey to which the Westerners flocked.* And here on these beautiful islands one of the blackest pages in the history of the East India Company was written: a page of brutality, greed, and inhumanity— the extirpation not only of flowering gardens but also, through plunder and murder, of large numbers of peaceful and industrious people. This is now all history. There is nothing here now that is reminiscent of those bloody

times; even the old fort on the hill has nothing bloody about it now, and it simply blends peacefully and harmoniously with the surroundings. The next day we arrived in Toeal. Here there were definite signs of economic activity. Chinese and Arab merchants came on board offering their wares for sale. I spent the last of my money for a little table, four folding chairs, and a deck chair, all made of ironwood, and altogether

costing two and a half guilders. We remained here the whole day lying at anchor, and again left the bay at sunset. That was the most memorable sunset we saw during the trip. The sky was not completely cloudless, and just before the sun sank into the water it * These words were obviously written at the depth of the depression of the thirties, when these products commanded a very low price on world markets. At present, one-half ship’s cargo of any of these spices would make the owner a rich man for the rest of his life.

48

disappeared behind a cloud. It then came out as a glowing red ball that bathed the universe in a dazzling red light, and caused millions and millions of red lights to shimmer on the sea. Then the sea became a spectrum of a thousand colors, from red and purple to all shades of ereen and yellow. One red band of light remained dominant between two green islands that became darker and darker as the red light got weaker and weaker. There was one small boat, rowed by a single oarsman, which drew toward the red band of light like a shadow, and of a moment the boat and the oarsmen were suddenly spotlighted by that red band, as symbols of life in the midst of that great splendor of nature.

Then shadow again. The colors continued to change but became weaker. The clouds that had caused that wonderplay of tints and shades lost their red color and became again white or dark. When I turned round I saw that the sun dominated only half of the universe, and behind me there was another world, the phantom world of the moon. While one half of the world was being enchanted by the sun and the

clouds, the moon had conquered the other half with its cool, clear light. It had come up from behind a mountain that was now again the usual dark blue, and its light seemed purer and clearer, driving, as it were, the color play of the sun before it until finally everything was emersed in its soft, dreamy light. Again there came the million silver lights shimmering on the sea; the moon and the thousand flickering stars above, and tranquillity, peace, and quiet everywhere.

The next morning we reached Dobo, renowned as the center of pearl fishing. That there was also activity and economic life here could be seen by the metallic ware-

49

houses on the piers. The first things we saw were two high radio towers. A Japanese and a few Europeans came on board to join us, and judging from their appearances they were only representatives or employees of business concerns. Dobo has a more or less international population, and a fairly busy trade. Whether I would like it or not I don’t know, but it does seem to me as though here the individual occupies the primary place, and nature is, by contrast, incidental. I began thinking about the economic and strategic importance of these small islands, about New Guinea, about Australia, about the potentialities of this part of the world, and even the pressing Pacific problems that lie ahead. Here in Dobo our luck came to an end. We at last met with wind, waves, and rain. Our boat began to rock lustily, and two of the boys and the young wives got sick. This weather continued until we reached the coast of New Guinea on the evening of the twentieth. After going somewhat off course, and running aground temporarily, the Albatros steamed up the Digoel River at night, although we were aware that in general, after sunset, ships never sailed on the river. The Digoel River is deep enough, approximately eight hundred to a thousand meters,

but it is extremely tortuous and there are no warning lights whatsoever. That the danger in the evening is not imaginary we found out last night, the second night that we were on the river. The boat almost literally steamed into a tree, and had it struck solidly there would have been a serious accident. The boys—and Hafil as well—were sitting or lying on deck at the time of the collision. I was the only one who wasn’t there, since I was here in the cabin writing. Suddenly I heard the thumping and rumbling of heavy objects, and I ran on deck to see what 50

was really turmoil. Half of the deck awning had been torn away, just where the boys were sitting, and heavy beams and broken wood lay on the deck. They were all frightened. Hafil was just able to save himself at the last minute when he saw the tree right in front of him. He ducked

quickly and let it pass over him without touching. It was really a wonder that no one was hit. This river journey is nevertheless monotonous: dirty yellow water and dark, thick vegetation on both banks, no life, not even a crocodile. The vegetation is not very different here from what it is in the jungles of Sumatra. There is the same oppressive thickness and the same abundance. In these jungles you feel strongly the contrast between this part of the world and the other, overpopulated areas. The difference is that here all thoughts about overdevelopment and overpopulation seem to be ridiculous. ‘This whole island is practically uninhabited, and yet with such a rich vegetation it is certainly not unfertile. This suggests a good deal about the future of mankind. It seems very logical that human history will shift its cen-

ter of gravity to the East, to the lands of the colored man, and that man will slowly but increasingly draw upon these undeveloped areas. It is an open question whether or not capitalism will be able to accomplish this task. Thus far it has preferred to lodge itself only in well-populated re-

gions, and for centuries this wilderness has been neglected despite the knowledge that the land must contain great natural riches such as metallic ores, oil, gold.* Is this simply because all these riches acquire value only in connection with labor and human power? *Now, about twelve years after Sjahrir wrote

these words, Aus-

tralian, Dutch, and American oil companies have become increasingly interested in New Guinea’s undeveloped petroleum wealth, and have undertaken new projects for investment and development in this area. 5 Fr

5 BOVEN

DIGOEL

TANAH MERAH, MARCH 7, 1935 AM now beginning to understand why the police inspector who brought us on board at Ambon

asserted

so positively that we were administrative “punitives” [gestraften]. At the time that seemed to me to be a misconception in conflict with everything I had studied about juridical principles, but now I understand the legal error of the inspector. In reality, the opinions of Van Blankenstein concerning Digoel still apply in full, even though

there is no longer any coal godown [Goedang Areng] for the inmates to sleep in, and even though Tanah Merah is now, superficially at least, more like an ordinary village,

differing little from any typical village in Java or Sumatra. This place consists of two separate sections that are cut off from one another by a ditch. One section contains the government buildings, the barracks, the prison, and the houses of the government employees and other nonexiles. The other section is the exile camp. The two sections are strictly separate from one another, and inhabitants of one camp can go into the other only if they obtain a permit from the head of the local administration, who is also the commandant of the military establishment. At present the commandant is an army captain. In the exile camp we have a wedana * and a native police * A wedana is an Indonesian appointee to the civil administration who serves in the village as the representative of the Dutch administration, 52

staff from the civil administration and also a kind of complete village administration: a village chief (who is called

here wahil kampong), with village police, called “law and order guards.” The whole so-called administration is not actually a village administration, since it consists only of men under sentence. They are, furthermore, not official civil servants, although they are paid. At present there are about four hundred exiles here, and about sixty of these are isolated from the others in Tanah Tinggi,* which is about five hours up the river. The prisoners here in Tanah Merah are divided into two categories: the voluntary workers, and the so-called “naturalists.” The first group consists of those who are engaged in work for

the Dutch administration for which they are paid: the po-

lice, the teachers,

the medical

attendants—all

drawing

monthly wages—and the much larger group of day laborers who do coolie work for forty cents a day. Also included in this category of voluntary workers are those who have declared themselves as such, but who actually rely on their own trade for their livelihood. These are the vegetable

farmers, fishermen, etc. There are about fifteen of this group, and they receive from the administration only socalled “basic support,” 1.e., 18 kilos of rice a month. The real voluntary day workers don’t get this and have to get along solely on their forty cents a day. The “naturalists” are those who do not wish to do any work for the government, either because of their principles or for opportunistic considerations. They receive from the *Tanah

Tinggi was the remote part of the Digoel camp—located

farther up the river—where the incorrigible or troublesome cases were sent. The Boven Digoel prison camp was divided into two sections: Tanah Merah at Digoel itself, and Tanah Tinggi located five hours up the river. Escape from either was impossible because of the location, inaccessibility of transport, and surrounding jungles.

53

| government nourishment in kind or “natural nourishment”

—hence their name—up to a value of not quite three guilders a month; that is, 18 kilos rice, 2.2 kilos salted, dried fish, .6

kilos katjang idjo,* .48 kilos salt, .18 kilos tea, .36 kilos cooking oil, .6 kilos brown sugar. No meat, no vegetables, no lighting material, and no clothing.

What they lack they must provide for themselves, which they generally do by growing vegetables or fishing in the river. For the most part it is impossible for members of this category to earn money, because the only possibility of making money is by working for the government. There is among this group, therefore, no special industriousness, and yet I am convinced that if the government did not exert a sort of pressure in that direction, there would be even fewer voluntary workers than there are now (about 150)! About a week after our arrival we were officially told that we had the choice between becoming voluntary workers or naturalists, and it was strongly emphasized that the voluntary workers were regarded as “having shown regret for what they had done,” and thus it was they who would first come up for probationary consideration. I suspect that this is why you see many former officials of various popular parties working industriously for forty cents a day at cleaning or scrubbing, or doing some other kind of coolie work. It is obviously not simply an economic consideration on their part! t Of our seven P.N.I. boys, there is now just one volunteer worker (Alim, whose sentence I had particularly wondered at) and six naturalists. “A sort of leguminous plant, something like peas. t Sjahrir’s implication is that the party officials were willing to work for the administration so that they might be set free sooner in order to

begin again the nationalistic pursuits for which they were originally sent to Digoel.

Mr

For us, actually, the choice was not very difficult. The attraction of forty cents a day for coolie work during the best part of the day was just too little to make us even hesitate. All the day laborers—after their work from seven in the morning until twelve noon, the coolest part of the day— are no longer in fit condition for any other, intellectual, work. The afternoons are too hot for any work—on an average of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, since you are housed in a sort of iron box, which is unbearably hot. In the evening, moreover, you have to get under your mosquito net in order to protect yourself against the malarial mosquitoes. Besides, you have to spend a good portion of the day preparing the meals and keeping the hut clean. Except for Hafil, who was assigned to the only empty hut by the administration, we all have to build our own little hovels. Part of the construction material is supplied by the government—the roof covering and other metallic material. Wood for stakes and walls must be found on your own, and for this reason we have to go into the forest, cut down trees, and work the wood so that it is suitable for building purposes. At present you can find suitable wood only about seven kilometers [4.2 miles] distant from here, and so we must all—naturalists or not—work voluntarily. At least one must work unless one prefers to sleep under the sky to provide pleasant company for the malarial mosquitoes! I had heard that there were a movie, an ice factory, and electric lighting in Tanah Merah, but evidently I wasn’t too well informed. Here in the exile camp there is none of this. In the government section of Tanah Merah there is electric lighting and also an ice factory, but this has very

55

little to do with us because of economic considerations: the ice costs ten cents a pound.

MARCH 9, 1935 My existence in the Tjipinang prison was certainly materially better than it is here, where I get only food valued at perhaps 2.60 guilders a month. I was able to live hygienically there, with plenty of light and water, and food that, while it wasn’t palatable, was solid enough so that I got fat on it. What we get here is, I think, insufficient from a purely scientific point of view in terms of calories. In addition, I have to build my own hut, which requires that trees first be cut to supply wood. I have to take care of my own clothing, which, since I have no other source of income, almost means using tree bark for material! Moreover, the soil does not seem very suitable for growing edibles. Rice cannot be grown here. There is still some fishing in the river, but people here have been doing that so much and so long that near Tanah Merah the river is just about fished dry. On the other hand, you can’t go too far away looking for fishing water, lest you be regarded as a fugitive with all the consequences that would entail. My goodness! The things you have to be and do here: architect, carpenter, farmer, and, last but not least, chef! MARCH 15, 1935 Now I can allow myself the luxury of sorrow even less than in Tyipinang. I need all my energy to defend myself against climate, nature, and sickness, and above all against the demoralizing effect of life in an exile community with all its pettiness, shabbiness, and psychological anomalies. Fortunately I have kept free of malaria, but I doubt whether that will continue much longer. There is really no 56

prisoner who does not have the sickness despite the regular doses of q quinine.

MARCH 27, 1935 As long as the will to live remains with us, so long are

we able to recognize and enjoy the beauty of life even under the most trying circumstances. We can—in fact, we should—be realistic and critical, but why should we embitter our lives with skepticism and cynicism? Why and wherefore should we give in to disbelief in ourselves and in the world? There is room for life’s beauty in a sharply realistic concept of life as well. Modern psychology can help us to learn to know ourselves, to penetrate and understand when and where we have been dishonest with ourselves. Realistic self-analysis thus naturally has its use, but it can never teach us what life is. Life is actually much more than all the separate, unraveled pieces placed next to one another; more than all the thousands or even millions of glimpses into mental existence that we place under the microscope of our critical, analytical minds. What does all this finally teach us about

life as life, as a movement and a growth, and what does it teach us about love for life and for the beauty of life? That kind of love and the feeling for beauty are synthetic in so far as they concern our intellect. They represent, as it were, a harmony and a synthesis between feeling and intellect—and is not that to be gained only by experi-

ence? Are not these synthetic moments the bright spots for which we strive in our lives? And after all, what would life be without them, but darkness and death? It is completely

natural that man struggles and strives for these bright spots, and the struggle is good and worthy. Absolute harmony and synthesis, however, do not ex-

De

ist, in my opinion. We human beings strive toward them as toward the absolute ideal, but the absolute actually lies only in our striving and in our struggle, and that forms the real content of life! APRIE'6;, 1935 I will tentatively give my opinion about the community here, although I would prefer to wait until I feel I understand the whole matter more thoroughly. The phenomena that I can write about now, however, touch on other, larger, issues, and are related to broader and more important questions that I cannot yet fully appraise. Nevertheless, I have a chance here at Digoel to penetrate more deeply than ever before into the psycho-physical make-up of our people. Tentatively,

I can only say that my first impressions

seem to have been confirmed: spiritual and intellectual limitations, immaturity, and narrowness not only are great handicaps in life, but in certain respects and under given circumstances they can have disastrous consequences even on the individual’s physical condition. They may, for example, lead to the disintegration and breakdown of his whole nervous system. There have been many interesting psychological and psychiatric instances of this phenomenon. I once saw the play White Ballast performed in Amsterdam, and the situation here at Digoel parallels that of the play. As the white people looked in the play, so the prisoners here look, and you find, moreover, the same psychic condition and the same problems here as well—except that here the subjects are Indonesians in exile, rather than white people. Many of them are nothing but complete wrecks. All the levels of our people are represented here, and I 58

have noticed that their real characters stand more nakedly evident here than was ever possible when they were at home. Back home, in their own villages, their true selves— or lack of self—often remained concealed behind newly acquired customs and “modern” propaganda catchwords and phrases, which often misled one because they were so glibly used, although so seldom understood by the user.

One sees here that the zdeology is primary and the ideal is secondary; that the latter is defined and understood not by the use of a misleading word or name that is attributed to it, but only by an investigation into the ideology itself. And this ideology must, in turn, finally find its explanation in the social relations of communal life, and in the economic-technical structure of the community itself. I hope to write more about this later on.

APRIL 51935 For the present, I am living together with Abdoel and Wahab in a one-person dwelling that really belongs to someone else, a certain Hamid of Medan; a Partindist who arrived one group before us. I knew him before, but I certainly never had a thought that I would see him again here.

And I’m sure he himself never thought so either; he is such a young fellow and still so new in the nationalist movement. He is certainly no older than twenty-five. There are, for that matter, still younger men from the Partindo, and one of them, in fact, is not even twenty-two. God only knows what such boys can have done to warrant exile.*

We are all busy building new houses. We are beginning with Abdoel’s hut, because he is expecting his wife soon, *Sjahrir himself was not yet twenty-seven at the time, although throughout the book his approach is obviously that of one considerably older than his years.

xo

and we have already been into the forest a few times to bring wood for him. In general the huts are constructed pretty much on a hit-or-miss basis, made without any plan or foundation, simply of tree trunks from which the bark has been removed. You finally get a house that is to a large extent made of zinc plates and thus supplies very little light. The roof covering is also generally of zinc, so that it becomes terrifically hot in the house if the sun shines strongly for even a short time. But because you sometimes get stiff breezes here (almost like Holland in November), most of the people prefer zinc roofs to the surprises they would be exposed to if, for example, they were to use palm leaves for a roof covering. The layout of our prison quarter is completely unimaginative. There is one “main street” (really nothing more than an alley of about three meters’ breadth), which divides the camp into two parts: villages B and C. At the beginning of this street there is a crossroads; and the administrative office, the house of the head of the village, the administrative school, and the largest shop of the camp are located at the crossroads. The shop is the property of a Chinese, who is the only free person allowed to live in the exile camp. Parallel to the main street there are footpaths in both kampongs of from one and a half to two meters in breadth, which are intersected by other walks leading into the main street. The dwellings of the prisoners are situated on the main street and on the footpaths, and at present there are something under two hundred such dwellings. In general the dimensions of the huts are about six by seven meters, and while there are some smaller ones, there are also some

bigger ones of about eleven by nine meters... . The only house that has the luxury of a cement floor is the one occupied by the village chief. All the other huts 60

have the ground as the floor. The ground is a sort of clay, and when it is pounded hard it provides a fairly nice floor. In general it appears that not much attention has been given to a hygienic arrangement of houses. Rather they seem to have been built in a helter-skelter way, as though the houses were to be regarded as only temporary buildings. There are only a few of the old houses that were more solidly constructed, and these are the ones built in stories after the

manner of American apartment houses. In the houses of this type it is usually relatively cool downstairs, if there are not zinc walls. The other old houses are simply ordinary boxes in which you practically suffocate from the heat. There are only a very few houses with ceilings that check the radiation of the hot zinc plates. The new huts are better. They are higher and lighter, and they make as little use of zinc as possible; that is, they

use it only as roof covering. In general, they look considerably more attractive, and I have even found a few among

them built along a Soekarno style,* I think! ... MAY 11, 1935 Now that the first avalanche of visits is over, we are let

more and more alone by the other prisoners. For myself, I am becoming more and more isolated and filling my time with study as much as possible. Nevertheless, I am not particularly satisfied either with the study or with the isolation. I sometimes have the feeling that it is just a sort of escape for me from the daily difficulties, or even a kind of defeat for me in the community of exiles, which I can still not

quite understand. I still do not understand most of the other prisoners: * Sjahrir is referring to a modernized hut style designed by Soekarno after he left the architectural school in Bandoeng.

61

what lies behind their words and actions, and what their train of thinking really is. On the other hand, perhaps it is an error on my part to look for things in their lives that

may very well not be there at all. Perhaps all that they do are merely spontaneous reactions, instinctive actions, and perhaps, finally, they are only primitive and simple beings moving and hiding behind the modern phrases that they use. That there is spiritual suffering among them is certain. The weary faces, the shy, sometimes queer-looking eyes, with deep, dark lines under them, bear testimony to this suffering. Most of them appear to be permanently broken in spirit, and that applies even to the newcomers, who found here upon their arrival a more or less normal village, and who, in a material sense, did not have to make so many adjustments. For many of them, it seems that the severest grievance is something quite different from material suffering. It is, however, possible that the mental distortion of some material difficulties to unreasonable proportions has been the cause of the physical and spiritual decay of many of them. Whenever the physical element plays the outstanding role, then the cause is to be sought in the nerve centers and in the brain, which may have been affected by a lack of calcium in the diet. From a purely bodily standpoint, however, most of the men do not appear to be very miserable. The average prisoner is even strong in body, and the manual labor and generally rugged life that is led here produce quite a few well-muscled physiques. But the faces are

flabby and the eyes are weary, and you see this same weariness in the children and women. The climate, sickness, and inadequate nourishment may certainly play an important part in all this, but I am con62

vinced that the real moral undermining comes from the

psychic reaction of the individual to this situation of imprisoned exile, and the transmutation of this reaction into a profound spiritual misery. Furthermore, they speak of pergaoelan sempit, meaning literally “oppressive living pattern,” by which they mean that the breadth and relationships are so narrow that there is a real sense of spiritual oppressiveness. | wonder whether this is not, perhaps, another form of the well-known “amok” psychology. I remember the murder that took place in Utrecht, when an Indonesian houseboy murdered the whole family of an Indonesian veterinary apparently without even the slightest reason. The conclusion: a primitive nature, excessive spiritual pressure acting on an undeveloped mind, and finally a blind, primitive, groping reaction. The judges, who sentenced him to the gravest punishment, did not give the impression of having the slightest understanding of the

background of the deed. It took place, moreover, in the Netherlands, where it was absolutely unnecessary to punish him so severely, certainly not from the standpoint of “making an example of him” or of “the preventive working of punishment.” I must admit that try as I might, I could never fully understand this amok psychology. Goethe wrote somewhere that there was no crime that he was not capable of doing, and thus that all crimes were human. But it seems to me that that can still not mean that he could place himself in the different psychological frame of mind of each criminal, or that he could thus fully understand every crime and every criminal. I think that that would be impossible. Such a complete understanding would be possible only if one had lived fully through a similar psychological predicament

oneself, even if one had not actually come to the decision

63

and execution of the deed. It seems to me that complete

understanding of the psyche of another person is possible only if one has completely or partially gone through the same experience as that person. Perhaps that is also why the murder psychology of a Dostoevski or the suicide psychoses of the Russians or the French are closer to us than the amok psychology of a primitive and_half-civilized individual. I have approximately that same feeling here now, sometimes even with such intensity that I find the others incomprehensibly strange. And yet they are my own people, with whom I have lived the greatest part of my life.

It all fatigues me somewhat, and then I temporarily return for the greater part of the day to my books. I am at

present busy with John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. ... It is lucidly written, and I find in it the basis of the whole substance of economics and even of the most modern economists, albeit as a germ of the future. Mill has presented Smith and Ricardo better than they themselves did, and yet it is still useful as a handbook for modern economics.

The attraction of classicists like John Stuart Mill lies, to a large extent, in the fact that in them you meet with a much greater degree of objectivity and a breadth of thought that you seldom find among economists of this day

and age. At present they all seem rather to belong to a special branch of the study, or to a special school with the definite and limited approach of that school.

MAY 30, 1935

For weeks now I have in vain resought my enthusiasm for study. I have been able to study no more than three hours consecutively without slackening and becoming en64

ervated. It may be due to the inadequate nourishment; I am at least strongly inclined to this conclusion. But I do not have malaria yet. Meanwhile we have had a visit from the Resident [official] of Ambon. Hafil and I were called to appear before

him to answer a few questions. The result was that, after we had formally declared that we did not favor “the forceful overthrow of the existing social order,” we were classified as “nonextremists.” For this reason we can now claim a gratuity of seven guilders and fifty cents a month in place of the two guilders and sixty cents’ worth of food a month we have received thus far. Furthermore, we are now to be allowed greater freedom in providing for what we lack, for example by writing articles for the press, which will then only have to be passed on by the regular censor. Perhaps I shall make use of this last prerogative, although it will be with some distaste, since I had definitely decided not to publish anything during these first years. In any case, I certainly won’t write any political articles, not only because there is a great danger that the censor will not pass them, but because I propose to remain silent on this subject for a few years. Perhaps I'll write some ethnological sketches or studies, although I am not much of a believer in such dilettante writings. That is what they would be, after all, since I do not have the necessary texts or my own books for deeper study. The latter are still roaming around

in Java, and I don’t seem to be able to get them here, despite the many attempts I have already made. The friends who ought to take care of this for me don’t have the money to send them here, since the freight would be about forty guilders. Perhaps they are also afraid of getting into trouble with the government.

65

JUNE 20, 1935 Am I perhaps estranged from my people? Why am I vexed by the things that fill their lives, and to which they are so attached? Why are the things that contain beauty for them and arouse their gentler emotions only senseless and displeasing for me? In reality, the spiritual gap between my people and me is certainly no greater than that between an intellectual in Holland and, for example, a Drents farmer, or even between the intellectual and the undeveloped people of Holland in general. The difference is rather, I think, that the intellectual in Holland does not feel this gap because there is a portion—even a fairly large portion—of his own people on approximately the same intellectual level as himself. And that portion is, moreover, precisely what constitutes the cultural life of Holland; namely, the intellectuals, the scientists, the artists, the writers. That is what we lack here. Not only is the number of intellectuals in this country smaller in proportion to the total population—in fact, very much smaller—but in addition, the few who are here do not constitute any single entity in spiritual outlook, or in any spiritual life or single culture whatsoever. From the point of view of culture, they are still unconscious, and are only beginning to seek a form and a unity. It is for them so much more difficult than for the intellectuals in Holland. In Holland they build —both consciously and unconsciously—on what is already there. They stand on and push forward from their past and

their tradition; and even if they oppose it, they do so as a method of application or as a starting point. In our country this is not the case. Here there has been no spiritual or cultural life, and no intellectual progress for centuries. There are the much-praised Eastern art forms, but what are these except bare rudiments from a feudal

66

culture that cannot possibly provide a dynamic fulcrum for people of the twentieth century? What can the puppet and other simple and mystical symbols offer us in a broad and intellectual sense? They are only parallels of the outdated allegories and wisdom of medieval Europe. Our spiritual needs are needs of the twentieth century; our problems and our views are of the twentieth century. Our inclination is no longer toward the mystical, but toward reality, clarity, and objectivity. In substance, we can never accept the essential difference between the East and the West, because for our spiritual needs we are in general dependent on the West, not only scientifically but culturally. We intellectuals here are much closer to Europe or America than we are to the Boroboedoer or Mahabharata or

to the primitive Islamic culture of Java and Sumatra. Which is our basis: the West, or the rudiments of feudal culture that are still to be found in our Eastern society? So, it seems, the problem stands in principle. It is seldom put forth by us in this light, and instead most of us search unconsciously for a synthesis that will leave us internally tranquil. We want to have both Western science and Eastern philosophy, the Eastern “spirit,” in the culture. But what is this Eastern spirit? It is, they say, the sense of the higher, of spirituality, of the eternal and religious, as opposed to the materialism of the West. I have heard this countless times, but it has never convinced me. Did not Hitler also say that the Aryan Geist was the sense of the higher, the spiritual, the moral, the religious? And is this spirituality actually such a pre-eminently Eastern attribute and ideal? It seems to me definitely inaccurate. It is possible that climatic and racial factors have had an influence on the present differences in development between the East and

67

the West. However, it is no longer possible to determine the direction or magnitude of that influence, because of the more direct and apparent expression of the influence of economic and sociological factors. If one looks at world history as a whole and endeavors to understand its total gradual development, then the perennial so-called “essential” differences between the spiritualism of the East and the materialism of the West disappear; and instead the emphasis centers upon feudal culture with its spiritualism and universalism, on the one hand, and the bourgeois-capitalistic culture with its bourgeois ideology, its materialism, and its modern objectivity on the other. Meanwhile, this remains the problem of the so-called “awakening Easterner.” Turkey and China orient themselves principally and consciously toward the West, whereas India—with Gandhi and Tagore—seeks a “national, Eastern form of life” and resists, as it were, westernization, or modernization. Gandhi places the greatest emphasis on what is “eastern,” on the spiritual, the moral, and the religious. Tagore, on the other hand, wants Western science and modernism, but in a new, Indian form that will be steeped

in the “Eastern wisdom of life” [levenswijsheid]. In point of fact the whole thing is hardly clear. This latter approach of Tagore cannot be the answer to the problem either, for in the East everything is more deeply rooted than in the West. This must be taken into consideration particularly if one is to understand the psychology and the spiritual position of the Eastern intelligentsia. They feel no foundation whatsoever under them. In Indonesia, for the most part, they go along unknowingly perhaps, but in Turkey, in China, and in India they are consciously searching for some secure foundation.

68

POLTAS 2003935 I received a calendar in the last mail with paintings by

Jo Spier of Dutch shipping in bygone centuries. It is strange that such national romances now seem spurious for Europe

and in particular for western Europe, and in fact that they now are even somewhat repulsive. There is certainly no need for such vain and coarse bombast, and I feel that tal-

ents such as those of Spier are wasted and thrown away when they are used in the service even of what is called “healthy” or “modest nationalism.” In the service of a disproportionate use of national colors shown on his paintings, his art seems dishonorable and ugly. Technique alone can accomplish nothing. The artistic ideal and the artist’s ideal of life alone can give rise to art. Great souls and great characters alone can accomplish great works of art, and great souls do not let themselves be im-

prisoned in narrow ideas and ideals. The great works of art have always been broadly human, and the artistic ideal that has inspired these works has been a human ideal—an ideal that contains something of mankind in general, and

that has as its aim mankind itself. Genius rises above itself, its surroundings, and its epoch, so that we can enjoy for all time the great, broad humanity of its creations. That would, moreover, not be possible if these creations were rooted in the service of ideas and ideals

of one time or one country, which themselves were transitory and relative. The great ones of the past actually seem to be our own spiritual relations and our current companions because of that element which is broadly human and atemporal in their

work and which

they reached perhaps unconsciously.

Every work of art gives the impression—and, in a sense, is

—a panegyric on humanity, for it is always a manifestation

69

of a specific human attribute. More than science, art is a broadly human possession and characteristic; it is that which distinguishes us from the rest of nature, and that is why all mankind can see itself best and most clearly in art, despite differences of race, culture, and civilization. In art there is possible a more immediate and spontaneous recognition and appreciation of the broadly human bond between all men. It is therefore not simply a matter of taste that the degradation of art to national and racial art seems to me unnatural and in conflict with the essence of art. This is particularly true of the western European art of Goethe, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Dante, and Plato. For how can a D’Annunzio ever be compared with a Dante? Art uses temporal ideas as its material content, but it acts as a form of expression for broadly human thoughts and feelings. This is precisely why the high points of artistic life are possible only with, are determined by, and in fact coincide with the high points in human history. Great works of art are products of those periods of material and spiritual progress in which great ideas flourished on a basis of faith in humanity and in humanity’s powers. This argument can also be cited as an explanation of the paltry art produced in times that are lacking in spirit and intellect, since there is neither material nor intellectual prosperity at such times. This explanation, however, implies a factor of intellectual values, an evaluation that I mentioned above—that great works cannot arise from narrow ideas and ideals. To put it more strongly, only distortions can arise from confused and disabled minds.

JULY 24, 1935 I am now living in my own hut, which I was lucky enough to get as is. A Menadonese fellow lived in it first, 79

and it was he who built it. He has now been sent for the second time to Tanah Tinggi, the camp for so-called “incorrigibles,” which is about twenty kilometers up the river from here. The house is well situated, high, and with a view of the river, which is about 150 meters wide at this point. On the opposite bank there is a thick forest, but the lower section of the bank on this shore is well irrigated and under cultivation. I can see these little green patches from here, and every morning I find it pleasant to look toward the river, the forest, and the gardens. Sometimes the water is mirror-smooth as though there were no current in the river, and at other times it seems to come to life as it ripples and shimmers with the sun shining upon it, and the green background of the forest seeming to move with it. Except for a few small fishing craft belonging to the prisoners who are trying to provide themselves with fish, there is seldom any sailing on the river. Although I now live in a pleasant hut that is certainly large enough for a bachelor existence, at first I was not particularly anxious to go into it. Actually it is hardly more than a zinc box! The roof and the walls are zinc, and if the sun shines brightly for even a moment, the heat is unbearable inside. Furthermore, since it is so close to the river, there is much more chance of getting malaria. Yesterday we had one of the regular spleen examinations, and it seems that I am still free of malaria although my supply of red blood corpuscles has decreased. Of our group, I am the only one who is still without malaria. Mahmoed is in the hospital with malaria, and Abdoel has already been there for over a month without our knowing what is the matter with him. His house is progressing well, nevertheless, under Wahab’s direction, and his wife and qo

child are expected soon. I think that the poor fellow must be pretty homesick by now. My new hut is situated on a sort of peninsula. On the tip of the peninsula a Menadonese named Liantoe lives, and next to him is a young and interesting chap named Achmad. Achmad has been married and had several children, but his

wife couldn’t stand it here, and has since returned to Java, where she married someone else. Between Achmad’s hut and mine there is a Batak fellow called Gagah, and in the last house on the other side is a former official of the P.K.I.,* a rather old man, with his equally old wife. My first impressions of the climate here were not wholly

accurate. Actually it is quite rainy; hardly a week goes by without rain. The river is quite high at present and it may get still higher. Already a few of the little green gardens on our side of the bank have been washed away. AGUS 1291935; Water is a great problem here. In addition to drinking water and water for household purposes, we also have a critical need of bath water, since one naturally needs at

least one and preferably two baths a day here. Formerly everyone went to bathe or to wash in the Digoel River, but ever since one of the men was pulled under by a crocodile there has been less inclination to go to the river. Most of the people now go to another small river called Kali Bening, which is farther away, and there are also several public washing and bathing facilities of which we make use. * Partai Komunis Indonesia—Indonesian Communist party. In the late 1920’s, after a Communist revolt in 1927, all Indonesian Communists were jailed by the Dutch. Boven Digoel Camp was, in fact, originally intended for the imprisonment of Communists only, but the intention was later altered. 2

For drinking and cooking water we mainly use rain water. There are a few who have dug wells behind or in their houses, but well water is evidently not good here, and besides, it is necessary to dig very deep before you strike

water. Fortunately we have had a Jot of rain recently, which has made the weather somewhat cooler. It is not unusual, however, for a whole month to go by without a drop of rain, and then the wells and the Kali Bening dry up, and we all have to go to the Digoel River.

SEPTEMBER 10, 1935 Before we came here—that is to say, first the Partindists and the Menangkabauers from the religious parties came and then our group followed—only so-called communists were exiled here. It is well enough known—since van Blankenstein and others have already made it quite clear—that in

general they were actually not communists, and I am saying nothing new when I say that I have thus far not met in Tanah Merah even one communist in the true sense of the word. The term “revolutionaries” or “extremists” would

be more accurate, although there are even very few of them to be found. With respect to the first prisoners who were sent here after the famous [Communist] uprising of 1927, the largest part of these men, who followed the command of the P.K.L. at that time, did so with the same sort of disposition that they would have followed any prince or venal quack or

lunatic. The largest number of them were undeveloped villagers, and the percentage of illiterates was high. It seems to me plausible that even if a large majority of them were not communists, they still were in favor of a rebellion. However, I think that they did not even quite know what they wanted to represent thereby. For many it was perhaps

is)

nothing more than a crude mystical impulse, and for others it was perhaps a case of direct economic ambitions. Immediately upon my arrival here, it struck me that the average man, whom I had mostly dealt with in the [ nation-

alist] movement

before my arrest, seemed to be more

moderate and slightly more developed than these exiled prisoners. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that since they were exiled here [in 1927] they have experienced eight years of intellectual stagnation. However, it is also an indication that the intellectual caliber of the nationalist movement in Indonesia has improved during the last few years. Among these prisoners, in the first place, I recognize a part of our ordinary Indonesian people; and they are absolutely “ordinary” regardless of whether they are called communists or rebels. They are, simply and fundamentally, Indonesians: that is to say, Javanese, Menangkabauers, Bantammers, or Soendanese. If one wishes to understand them, one must regard them in this light first of all, and only then can one really evaluate the so-called communism that many of them profess. And if one then makes such an evaluation, one finds that it is a strange sort of communism indeed, a

mystical Hinduistic-Javanese, Islamic-Menangkabau, or Islamic-Bantam sort of communism, with definite animistic tendencies. There are not many European communists who could recognize anything of their communism in this Indonesian variety!

This is actually true not only of the majority of the villagers but also of the city and town dwellers, although it sometimes appears otherwise on first glance. There is no sharp contrast to be made between city and village in this country for the most part, and there is even less distinction

74

to be made between the mentality of a town and a village inhabitant. At the most, there are only gradual differences

in degree, rather than sharp difference in kind. The Javanese factory worker

is often just the ordinary peasant

[orang tani], and the Soerabajan is still thinking in rural terms even if he rides in an electric tram or drives a taxi.

On the other hand, our boys here from the P.N.I. are of a very different caliber. They are not narrow-minded fanatics. They are more liberal and hence more dispassionate and more sober, and as far as a rebellion is concerned, they haven't even dreamed about it. That is why we were, I suppose, immediately classified with the nonextremists after the Resident of Ambon came here. On the other hand, it is a little peculiar: if we are nonextremists, then why are we exiled? For my own part, I consider the lack of a militant spirit among our boys a great fortune under these exile conditions. They are more tranquil and steady as a result and accept their fate more readily. Consequently the time passes more easily and quickly.

OCTOBER 7, 1935 Last week I sailed up the river in a fishing boat to one of the settlements of the Kaja-Kajas. They live in high stilt houses, with floors of wooden boards and roofs of braided palm leaves. These houses have no rooms, and the space is simply divided into two parts. In such a house, with a surface of not more than a small worker’s house in a Dutch town, more than twenty men, women, and children live next to one another, not to mention the many dogs and piglets. The piglets, in fact, are carried by hand just as the

children are, and sometimes the Kaja-Kaja women

even

he

nurse the piglets at their breasts as they do their own children! When[J arrived at the settlement the Kaja-Kajas began to scream to me and waved their hands about. I stepped out of the boat and went toward them. As soon as I landed, the Kaja-Kajas came out of their houses on all sides down the stairs—which were not European stairs but simply long, straight tree trunks with notches in them—and surrounded me. Naturally, the children were the first ones there, and they made all sorts of grimaces at me, just as mischievous children throughout the world would do. The men asked me for tobacco, because they are avid smokers. One of them also wanted to exchange his piglet for my ax, but I didn’t agree to it. I did give them some

tobacco, and I received in return a substantial quantity of sago. OCTOBER 18, 1935 Now, finally, I also have malaria. I had my first serious attack of fever last week. It has subsided but I am far from feeling normal.

NOVEMBER 24, 1935 My unconstrained fatalism is definitely the best mental attitude under these circumstances. I am only surprised that I am capable of such fatalism, and of the internal confidence that I find in myself that there is no limit to this fatalism. When I first came here, and regarded most of the prisoners here as intellectual and spiritual ruins, I thought: At least I would never let it go that far. If I really had no more hope for the future whatsoever, and felt that I was intellectually dying, I would certainly make an end to myself. Moreover, I wondered at 76

the time that there had been so very few who had thought of this solution. So far as I have been able to find out, there has been only one case of suicide during the eight years that the camp has been functioning. I am no longer surprised about it. It seems paradoxical but it is nonetheless true: fear of death brings death closer, whereas fear of life estranges death. For, from an analytical point of view, I do not think that the almost boundless tolerance of our people—and in general of all Eastern peoples,

with the exception of the Japanese—finds its cause in the Easterner’s greater fear of death. On the contrary, I think that for the more dynamic Westerner, the prospect of death is much more terrifying than it is for the passive Easterner. The Eastern philosophy of death is actually the Eastern philosophy, and it is not limited to Buddhism. The quality of nonexistence as the highest ideal of life is a sort of general philosophy in this passive East. It is not the philosophy of death but rather of shunning life, of a fear of life. It is a mental attitude of disdaining life, of turning from life, and thus of passively accepting life and the world, without making any attempt to change or oppose it. Consequently, there is the Eastern concept that life zs suffering; and therefore, the contrast between life and death is seen and interpreted in a light that is entirely different from that of the Westerner. The Westerner defies death in order to act upon and influence life, whereas the Easterner accepts life and waits for death, which itself signifies for him the solution to his suffering. The Westerner says with Schiller:

“Und setzt Ihr nicht das Leben ein, nie wird Euch das Leben gewonnen sein.” Life is the main thing, the goal, and death is thus the highest price to pay for it. The Westerner

struggles and suffers to live. ‘By contrast, the Easterner lives to suffer, and he accepts

if,

suffering. The Westerner makes demands upon life and shuns death. The contrast between death and life dominates everything for him, and is delineated as sharply as possible

in his thinking. If life can give him nothing, and if it only signifies a total failure, then there is only death, zon-living, non-existence. And thereby he is still dynamic and active. He still chooses, and he prefers, as it were, death in place of life.

On the other hand, the Easterner accepts a life of suffering, and in fact shuns death. His shunning is not conscious, but he comes to the same result by never making a sharp distinction between life and death, and by not asking anything from life. He never comes to a choice between life and death, and never undertakes an action from which the choice appears. He does not act, and he does not struggle.

The nonviolence and satyagraha of Gandhi—which has attempted to make this passivity into a weapon—is a case in point. And even the most militant part of our Indonesian people —who are for the most part presumably here in Boven Digoel because they attempted rebellion (at least in so far as the members of the former P.K.I. are concerned)— remain still a part of this passive East. Tradition and history still press inevitably upon them, and thus it is that escape and suicide have so seldom been attempted in this exile community.

78

4 BANDA

NEIRA*

BANDA

NEIRA, FEBRUARY 11, 1936 opay Hafil and I arrived in our new island of internment. Although the newspapers had written about it for several months, and hence I could more or

less expect something of this sort, nevertheless the change took place suddenly. There was not much formality, and

they only asked us for a signed statement that as long as we were interned on Banda Neira we would not engage in any political activity.

We left Boven Digoel on January 30, and we were thus under way for about ten days. First we went along the coast of New Guinea, along Mimika—notorious for the savage Kaja-Kajas—then Fak-Fak, and via Ceram to Banda Neira, the capital of the Banda Islands. We are not restricted to the capital, however, but to the whole group of Banda Islands, and these stretch more than two hundred kilometers from here, according to the commander. We thus have extensive “living space” now, as well as vast, ineffable natural beauty. * After approximately one year’s time at Digoel, Sjahrir was moved from New

Guinea to Banda Neira in the Molucca Islands; a far less severe internment. At Banda Neira he was allowed much more freedom of movement. There was no longer direct censorship of his mail, and his status was that of an exile rather than a prisoner. He was not, of course,

allowed to leave the Banda Islands or to go to any other islands in the archipelago. He was still a prisoner, but his prison had increased in size and comfort.

fe]

Banda Neira is a step upward in other respects as well. We are closer to the world, and closer’to the tin mines, even though only by the airplane connection. Moreover, there is no longer any censorship of my letters, or at least no open censorship. In a financial sense, it is also an improvement, since I'll receive a fair allowance here. Notwithstanding these facts, the change has not stirred me as it has Hafil, who has become quite happy. Actually I have been almost indifferent toward both the report of the change and the whole trip here. For in a real sense, this has hardly changed anything in my life, and it is even possible that I will feel more alone in the more normal and lively community of Neira than I did at Tanah Merah. Furthermore, I will be put in a milieu that I always avoided before my arrest: the well-to-do bourgeois milieu that I won't be able to get away from completely no matter how I try, in a little town like this. There is something of a “society” here, and for the Moluccas there is a very high percentage of European and Indo-Europeans. Banda Neira is a very old Dutch settlement, and the fort dates back to 1617, while the Portuguese fort, which is now a ruin, is still older. In the last century Neira was still flourishing, and there are large, former

Dutch and other houses with dozens of rooms, left from

the end of the last century, which one can rent for ten or fifteen guilders a month. The house of the commandant of the city—which formerly was the governor’s palace—is almost a whole block long.

FEBRUARY 19, 1936 I do not yet know the place very well, but as far as its size is concerned, it can best be compared with a Dutch provincial town. There are shopping and residential districts, 80

and lovely small streets with old, tall trees. The population is not more than a few thousand people, but unfortunately they seem quite nondescript and uninteresting. The original population of these islands actually was almost

completely exterminated

during the time of the early

Dutch plunder. Those who did survive fled to other islands of the East, and even as far as New Guinea. The Dutch and their business comrades established themselves as planters at that time, and in the last century there were still many Dutch nutmeg plantations, for which many

coolies were imported from Java. These later arrivals make up what is now the population of Banda Neira: the descendants of the planters—for the most part Indo-Europeans

—Indonesians

from other islands, particularly Java, and

many Arabs and Chinese. The latter are here, as everywhere in this country, the shopkeepers and artisans. The population is not so dark here as on the other islands of the Moluccas. Among the so-called Europeans, you find some Negroid as well as Mongolian and Semitic [Arabian] types. Physically, these blood mixtures seem to be particularly successful. The kampong population is predominantly Malay, which

is to say, of Javanese or Boetonese origin, and there are many Javanese and Boetonese who live as agriculturists in the hills of the Goenoeng Api. It is really remarkable that the Boetonese come here to earn a livelihood. They come in their own small sailing craft, which are shells of sometimes no more than ten meters in length, across the seas of the archipelago. They stay here for a year or two and then re-

turn to Boeton with the money they have saved—if they have been able to save. The Boetonese are the salaried workers and laborers here, and the servants, coolies, and porters are almost all Boe81

“tonese, as well. They are Malay, but the race is represented at its best by these Boetonese. Physically, they are stronger

than the Javanese or the Sumatrans, and they are generally

better-looking, although their physiognomies are often somewhat simple and uncivilized. The living standard of the ordinary village inhabitant 1s quite low, as is indicated by the low rents that I have mentioned, and the average daily wage for a coolie or a servant —that is, the unskilled worker—amounts to about fifteen cents. The language here is Malay, but of a Banda dialect with many Dutch words. Bread, for example, is brot,* and furthermore, the Malay that is spoken here contains many tonal variations, and sometimes it seems to be like the Malay of the Mandailingers.

The Arabian element is also quite noticeable, and while for the most part they are Bandanese Arabs, some of them still understand Arabian, and they often wear red fezzes on their heads. Another noteworthy fact, which perhaps cannot be found anywhere else in Indonesia, is that the Arabs here engage in all kinds of work, and not only their traditional professions of moneylending and house renting. They also engage in wage labor, and one meets with Arabian shoemakers, tailors, bicycle mechanics, and so forth. We also have here our Morgan, Ford, and Rockefeller, although they are all three rolled into one person: the “ruler” of Banda. He is of Chinese origin but he has been “assimilated,” and hence is considered to be a European! He holds in his hands all the economic threads of Banda:

export (mainly nutmeg) and import, housing, the major businesses, the ice factory, etc. * After the Dutch word brood, rather than the Malay word réti.

82

FEBRUARY 21, 1936

We are not the first exiles to be sent here, and besides Dr. Soeribno, who has been an exile since 1929 and lives here with his whole family, there is also a Mr. Soebana, with his wife and children. I have only hasty impressions of Dr. Soeribno, one of the fathers of our nationalist movement. He is a subtle sort of person with a somewhat belligerent nature, but I haven’t the least idea whether I can expect intellectual enlightenment from him. There is, in fact, some talk that he may be

moved from here to another, larger place. Judging by the views he has expressed to me, they would actually do just

as well to let him go back to Java. I am really curious whether the colonial government may now gradually put another policy into effect. In fact, I think that they cer-

tainly ought to make use of a part of the nationalist movement in their foreign policy.

I am certain of at least one thing, and that is that this colonial regime, and even more so, the “colonial-minded”

Dutchmen, will be sorry that they have not pursued a policy of wide perspective suited to the modern, changing

structure of the world. They will be sorry that they never —not for a single moment—paid any attention whatsoever to a sensible, uplifting cultural policy for the benefit of the Indonesian people. For my own part, I am convinced that

this shortsightedness, this famed Dutch “‘stolidity,” and this lack of imagination and daring will “return to plague the inventor’ from now on. This viewpoint has become strong in my mind as a result of my acquaintance with Soeribno. it seems to me that they could make good use of a man of his type. He is indeed so thoroughly westernized, and perhaps they will actually

dare to take that “risk” now. In the final analysis they will,

83

of course, have to follow this line, but by that time it may well be too late. As an exile, I can only say: We shall see!

FEBRUARY 26, 1936 I have now been in Banda Neira for two weeks, but it already seems as though I’d been here for years. Time certainly moves slowly. Probably the main reason is that I am so impatient to receive some news from home in Holland.

I guess that the mail still goes to Digoel first, and from there comes back here, which is why I will have to wait a few months between letters. Moreover, we live in such an outlying district that I almost feel as though I were back in the Digoel community. I see it in my own impatience in wait-

ing for the arrival of the steamers and the mail! After living with Mr. Soebana for a week, Hafil and I

have now found a house of our own. It is really quite a large place covering an area of four hundred square meters. It has six rooms with a front and rear veranda and adjacent servants’ quarters of about eight more rooms. The rear veranda, in fact, is almost as large as a tennis court. It seems like an impractical waste of space, but actually it is a real luxury since we now have almost no discomfort whatsoever from the heat. And for all this we pay a rental of twelve and a half guilders a month! From the advance that we received on our allowance * we purchased some furniture, but the articles are almost unnoticeable in these huge rooms. Only our studies seem to be furnished, since this is where we shall spend most of our time in Banda Neira.

We live in the so-called Dutch village in the European section, near a pleasant and clean street. In general, Neira is * A fairly liberal subsistence allowance granted by the Dutch govern-

ment.

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quite clean, even the sections in which the poorer inhabitants live. Our neighbors are not pure-blooded Europeans,

but they seem to be good-natured and simple people who call themselves “Europeans’”—as distinguished from the “natives’—despite their dubious command of the Dutch language and their totally indigenous appearance. They also have European names, and hence are probably descendants of the old planters or other Dutch residents. MARCH 9, 1936 For my relative unpopularity in nationalistic and intellectual circles in Indonesia, I can largely thank what they call my “Western inclinations” and sometimes even my

“Hollandophile” sentiment. I have always known that such attitudes were inevitable in every nationalist movement that pits itself—as an independent movement—against a ruling nation. Masaryk was obviously anti-German, the Egyp-

tians anti-English, and so one finds among us an always growing anti-Dutch—and even anti-Western—disposition or ideology. This disposition is, in fact, strongest among some intel-

lectuals and petty bourgeois, and hence precisely among those who are not yet active contributors to the political movement. In these circles one finds the most unreasonable attitude toward Westerners, and especially toward the Dutch. Most of them are civil servants or white-collar workers, and because they are afraid of losing their jobs, or because they pay too little attention to political affairs and too much attention to the subordinate but connected issues, they merely grumble bitterly to one another. Although I understand this, I have never been sympathetically inclined toward such an attitude, and I have never wished to make any concessions in this direction.

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MARCH

16, 1936

What I predicted to Hafil months ago has now taken |

place: They have tried to make political capital out of our removal from Digoel to Banda Neira. I predicted to him that they would certainly not miss a chance to use us as an example of moral victory on their side, and that when they finally did move us, they would make sure that we should leave behind a few scraps with which to feather their political nests. Indeed, no one has ever been able to leave the Digoel hell without sustaining damage in some way. They have now tried it with us. When they set that declaration before me in which we were supposed to promise that we would have nothing further to do with politics, I

involuntarily laughed. Hafil was actually astounded, and I had to “negotiate” with the commandant about it. If my wife had not been in my mind, I wouldn’t have even thought it worth while to “negotiate,” since our case had already been decided upon by that time, and it would have been a nice way to thwart the gentleman. I could certainly have confused our case by refusing to make any concessions whatsoever from my side. Moreover, this would have been the easiest and most gratifying line to pursue, because I could play the part of a hero, and at the

same time remain on the noble and righteous path in the eyes of others. At present, the whole political struggle has a very strong moral element for us in the East. For most of the people, politics is not planning and premeditation, but ethical and moral eminence and actions. Political leaders must thus be heroes and prophets, and because I realized this, I was sure that there would be difficulties for us connected with our removal to Banda—and even more difficulties for Hafil than

for me. For he is probably the father of the non-co-opera86

tion idea in Indonesia, and in any case he is certainly one of the most outstanding champions of this idea. I have never held with that idea, and I have never helped to spread non-co-operation as a political doctrine. Our promise that we would refrain from political activity on Banda implied, certainly, co-operation in the matter of our removal from Digoel. I knew it beforehand, and I was quite aware of what would happen as a result. When we left the office of the head of the local administration in Tanah Merah, I really laughed to myself, and I had occasion to laugh still more later on. When we were on the ship en route here, the second officer asked us if we had signed a declaration, and Hafil—before I could prevent him—naively told him everything, so that we even “co-operated” in this

aspect of the case as well.

At the time of our arrival at Banda Neira the press reported that we had arrived safe and sound on Banda after we had signed a declaration that we would have nothing further to do with politics. Naturally the press made out that we had been “converted,” and if I am not mistaken the second officer was the source of the report. We tried to rectify the matter by sending a statement to the press. Hafil drew the statement up, because I didn’t want to bother myself with the matter further. Thus far the statement has not appeared in the Indonesian press, although it is possible that it will still come out. Even if it doesn’t appear, however, it will not surprise me, and if it appears too late, the original report will have already accomplished its purpose, particularly in Digoel. It cannot help but have

depressing effects there, and finally, while it is not true that we are “converted,” something of the insinuations that have

been started will always hang over us.

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MARCH

21, 1936

During these last years—or to be more accurate, during my stay at Tanah Merah—I have acquired a certain hardness that I never had before. I learned by direct experience that notwithstanding all the culture, humanity, religion, and ethics that we claim to have, there is still an animal factor in us that makes all our culture, humanity, and religion almost laughable. I saw there how one individual can be hard and subtly cruel toward another without the slightest realization on his own part; and how crude and unfeeling he thus really is.

Formerly, I wanted to be a realist with all my heart, but I remained an idealist. I looked at the world through the rose-colored lenses of my ideals and my optimism. My benevolence—even toward my opponents—was the natural consequence. They have now made a realist of me, and to

this extent Digoel was truly an educational school although it had not been so intended by others. When I was at Tanah Merah, I thought of Henriette Roland Holst. Did

she really believe that any real hope could be based on man’s veneer of culture and ethics? What I have thus far

learned is that bread comes before conscience. Conscience is able to force itself into all sorts of forms and shapes, precisely in accordance with the dictates of self-preservation. And there is, besides, the lust for power, which is the human form of the animal’s thirst for blood.

The human being of Tolstoi and even of Gandhi, whom I had long held before my eyes, has left me. In reality, man is stupid, vulgar, cruel, and brutal. He may be taught, he may have scientific terminology to conceal himself behind, he may wrap himself up in his academic titles and the whole mirage of his refinement and culture, but nevertheless, the

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animal in him, which he doesn’t want to recognize, projects from all sides. Intellect is not autonomous, and it is not governed by the categorical imperative as the idealistic Kant posited it to be. When it can be measured statistically, it will probably be found that that famed intellect is really nothing more than the slave of the animal in man, of Nietzsche’s undefined will, of the animal’s Triebleben.

MARCH 24, 1936 : Naturally there is much exaggeration in this pessimistic attitude. I already discovered in Tjipinang the unusual re‘sults of the mind’s influence on the body and the nervous system. Only through the analysis of one’s feelings and impulses can one sometimes free oneself from them. And, in fact, the realization and analysis of one’s passions implies already a measure of control over them. This concept has significance particularly for the individual. For example, if one investigates thoroughly and honestly why one feels attracted toward a particular idea, a particular theory, or a particular line of thinking, then one comes to the conclusion that not only logic has led one to this idea, but that there are other elements involved according to which the particular thought or theory appears

to coincide with the truth. It is these elements that mold that theory or idea into

your particular concept of truth. In each certainty there is thus an element of wish, and the less developed the individual is, the weaker his intellect and the narrower his

mind—then the greater the role that this element of wish plays in the formulation of his thoughts. In other words, among backward peoples the intellect per se has less influ-

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ence on wishes and passions than among those whose minds are more broadly and fully developed.

APRIL 12, 1936 Consciousness must, in the first place, include selfcriticism and appraisal of one’s own thinking. Why, for example, do we search for new theories and reject the old? Why is it that the old ideas no longer contain sufficient truth for us, and why do we no longer find any certainty in them? Is it because they no longer jibe with the facts? And if so, then what facts are we referring to? Simply those facts that we have chosen in order to justify our doubts. And are these, then, really facts, or only facts from the point of view of the individual concerned; facts that he has formulated in his own mind; that is, only certain selected aspects of the facts that have been picked out and put forward as the whole truth? Why then do we search for new truths? Is it in the interest of truth itself, or is it only because we wish to move in a certain direction different from the old? What are, really, our deepest and basic motives in looking for new truths?

This subjective factor in knowledge plays an especially large part in the area of the social sciences. In fact, all theories in this area have only a very relative value. This is why the practical value of such theories is of so much import. It is true that the theory, and not the practice, specifies practical aims, but it is the practical aims themselves that determine the choice and feasibility of a given theory. The theory itself is thus also not absolute, but quite relative. The time of the absolute and exclusive truths is well past now, as is that of the theories that proclaimed the “whole” truth. We can actually speak only of theories that are or

are not useful to us, personally. And then we come directly gO

up against the question: Why are they not useful? Simply because they are of no practical use, because they are not appropriate for the attainment of our particular goal; and thus one comes to the final recognition that that goal itself is a very vital factor in shaping our thoughts. If one analyzes that goal, and tries to understand its place in his thinking and his emotions, its function, and also its origin and its genesis, then one has uncovered one side of the question of truth; a very important, perhaps the most important, side, as far as he himself is concerned, for it is that which makes it possible for him to control his thoughts and his passions. This is why I am sometimes so vexed at the supreme positiveness and assertiveness of new theories. For the most part

they simply give the impression of narrowness and onesidedness, and above all of a pretense of having now, finally, discovered the complete truth. In most cases, it even appears that the formulator is unusually ignorant, that he has become the victim of his own Triebleben—and that he is

sometimes even a psychological, if not a psychiatric, case. All this is not argued in order to cast doubt upon the

value of scientific thinking or of science itself. Moreover, it does not by any means imply that I do not attach any value to social theories. All I wish to point out is the strong ele-

ment of relativity in all these cases. I also feel that while each one of us has the right to choose the theory that seems most valid to him, we must never thereby allow ourselves to become fanatics whose minds are warped by this theory. We must still try to maintain as broad and objective a viewpoint as possible by the

recognition of the relativity of even our own convictions and our own truths. We must try to make our knowledge as wide and extensive as we can.

gI

And again, this does not mean that a strong purposiveness in life [avilsleven] is wrong. On the contrary, by recognizing the influence of the goals and the purposes and even of

the Triebleben, we also recognize the value thereof. But through the effort of understanding and analyzing them, we attempt to arrive at a higher consciousness and knowledge. In other words, we attempt to live in such a way that we take advantage of all the potentialities of life that are— in a subjective sense—available, and we utilize them in a

proper combination and relationship, and in mutually functional harmony.

APRIL 24, 1936 There are many things that I thought about at some length in Digoel, but that I could not or did not want to write about while I was there. I was held back by the idea that something of my personal state of mind would come under the foreign and hostile eyes of the wedana and the captain—who exercised the censorship there. With a prison warden, you stand in a different light because he often sees himself as the leader of a social educational foundation. He may even cherish the thoughts of his inmates, because he feels a sincere sympathy toward social misfits and psychologically unbalanced people who are the so-called “criminals” under his care. Such a man may have a positive and constructive attitude toward his work. But at Boven Digoel the situation is quite different, despite the fact that it is still assumed that enlightened prison methods are used toward the internees. For example, in what social concepts can the inmates be educated? What would the aim of a modern probation system be there? And if indeed there were enforced a creed of educating and helping the psychologically unbalanced (let us say, the

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politically high-strung!), of treating the cases of rashness and inconsiderateness, or even the psychiatric cases of the politically “asocial” or “antisocial” who have committed such crimes as murder and attack—if indeed there were any intention of regarding Digoel as a task for responsible direction—then they would never have selected a civil or military commander to be in charge, with the aid of a wedana who maintains “contact” with the internees through his network

of spies. Instead there is no question but that an educated, trained, and experienced probation officer would have been chosen for the difficult task, if such had been the intention. At least no one has the impudence to call Digoel a genuine “reformatory,” although on the other hand the institution of a concentration camp is not yet officially recognized in the laws of the Indies. As far as that is concerned, they are still far behind Germany here, although on the other side of the picture, Germany ought to be able to learn a good deal from the Digoel practices as far as the regulation of the institution is concerned. Germany has taken the institution into its laws, but here they have not, probably because of their conservatism; or perhaps, indeed, because they are not yet wholly sure whether such a thing as a concentration camp like Digoel can be justified to the democratic conscience that they still recollect from Holland. In any case, Boven Digoel has now been in existence for almost ten years without its being regulated by law!

MACS 193.6 It is understandable that technology has been made into an object of worship and fear, not only in western Europe. Nevertheless, technology is only a means, and an inanimate means cannot be blamed for the disequilibrium in man’s

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affairs. As far as there is a question of blame, it must be attributed to man himself. Only the user of the means can be held guilty for the method by which, and the goal to-

ward which, he employs the means. That technology has outgrown humanity is really only true of the peculiar relationships in which we now live. As long as there is only an impotent minority among mankind that wishes to direct and utilize technology for the welfare and benefit of humanity, and for propelling humanity in a forward direction, so long can the world not be regulated constructively and so long must we accept the fact that our development proceeds blindly. We can rail against human beings for their ignorance and lunacy, we can assert that they are simply living as animals; but as long as their natures are more animal than human, they cannot live otherwise. Instead, they remain driven by their passions; they trample and destroy one another in a mad national, social, and individual struggle for existence. And now the world is ruled by the men of passion. They are masters because they form the overwhelming majority, and it is they who decide the immediate fate of mankind. And the rest of us can only recognize this fact. The best we can try is to prepare for what this fate will be. We can only attempt to prosecute our tasks within the limits of the possible. If the men of passion start another war of annihilation, then there is nothing we can do to prevent it. But there will certainly come a reversal even in this. When these men begin to realize—as even they will—that their attempts at annihilation of other men will amount in the final analysis to suicide and self-destruction; when a realization of the ultimate equation of murder and suicide sets in, then they too will listen to reason, and then it will 94

be up to the rest of us. Until such a time, we must understand our role as a purely scientific one.* As long as men live as animals there is a blind regularity in their lives, and they follow the same natural laws that govern animal life. Marx sought to demonstrate this at length in his theory of social development. He has been accused often of naive optimism, but in reality his theory rests on a strongly pessimistic realism, on a recognition of the ignorance of man, and on the idea that man is not to be understood in terms of what he thinks, but rather—as a physical being, as an animal—in terms of what he unconsciously does. That was—and still is—man. That, and that alone, is why it is possible to accept a regularity in history and in social life, and that is, moreover, why it is not strange to find a mechanical causality in hu-

man history so that the paths of human development can often be calculated in advance. Mankind—as it still exists at present—is the price for which the tigers are fighting. The tigers are those who struggle for power, and who stop at nothing to ensnare the

ignorant mass; those who cast a spell over the mass by their demagoguery, and who appeal to and seek to give dominance to the animal in man for their own advantage. And as long as the animal in man remains dominant, any propaganda attempting to bring him to reason is doomed to

failure. In our times, power and brutal, material force alone can do all, but this itself is only because the peculiar relationships of our current epoch make this possible. To my way of thinking, this does not yet give reason for despair.

It has always been so, but we have still made some progress, and I feel that we shall continue to do so. * Written three years before World War II, and nine years before the atomic bomb, these last two paragraphs are particularly interesting, regarded in retrospect.

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These are really only the subjective factors of the question, and that, perhaps, puts the problem in a one-sided light. But after all, is it not precisely this subjective side that is the most vital for those who seek to grapple with the problem? What, after all, is to be done? What is wrong in ourselves, and how can we better ourselves? For most of us, these are the questions of the moment. And nevertheless

the questions must be answered from as many-sided an approach as possible; that is, both subjectively and objectively. In my exile status, I cannot, however, go into the objective approach!

MAY 6, 1936 There is considerable tension in the world today. Litvinov states that “peace is indivisible,” or, in other words, war cannot be localized. Wherever it breaks out—either in Europe or here in Asia—this time it will become one great world conflagration. And poor Ethiopia is now being sacrificed in advance to it. There may naturally be some quick relief, but if there are no delays, even that will not materialize. And one thing is certain: This time a war will also be at the expense of Holland. A short while ago I wrote that the Dutch would be sorry that they have never pursued a cultural policy or a broad policy of reconciliation in this country. As the situation now stands, they can expect no help whatsoever from the people of Indonesia. Colijn’s authoritarian ideas will not be worth one half a cent, from the standpoint of international politics. As far as that is concerned, Holland is absolutely dependent on foreign events. Both the eight million Dutchmen and the seventy million Indonesians are alike in having absolutely no military strength whatsoever. And further96

more, the Dutch and the Indonesians, in the meantime, have only learned to distrust each other. But then, the Dutch

petite bourgeoisie cannot be anything but narrow and shortsighted. MAY 9, 1936 I am busy with In the Shadows of Tomorrow

[In de Schaduwen van Morgen] by Professor Huizinga. Within one year there have been five editions of this book, which is something quite remarkable for a work written in Holland. And why is it so successful? Certainly because it is so pertinent, and because it deals with problems that the whole world is concerned with at present. It gives a “diagnosis of the spiritual misery of our time,” and above all, it is written in a clear and appealing style. There are, in fact, a few sections—for example, the first—that are almost monumental in their style. I feel, however, that these are not the qualities that have | been behind the book’s success, but rather it is due to the fact that Huizinga’s pattern of thought and feeling is so closely linked to that of the whole Netherlands people. I recollect another writing of Huizinga, the brochure The

Spiritual Characteristic of Holland |Nederland’s Geestesmerk], in which he showed how Dutch history has plainly

left its mark on the Dutch people, and how the unity of the Dutch people arose between 1500 and 1700, during the period of the Protestant struggle against the Catholic Church. The new faith found its adherents among the lower middle class and the tradespeople of the time, in opposition to a Catholic king and his lords. This Calvinist philosophy has become the heritage as well as the burden of the Dutch people, who have retained it up to the present day. It can, indeed, no longer be called pure

eA

Calvinism, because it is equally present in the Dutch Catholic, liberal, and atheist. It has really become the national heritage, the spiritual characteristic [geestesmerk]| of the Netherlands. It might, in fact, be called the Dutchman’s concept of life [Jevensgevoel]. And of what does this concept actually consist? Holland itself—so full of hedges, canals, and boundaries—gives a perfectly accurate picture of the Dutch mind. The Dutch ethic finds its origin in Calvinism, colored with typical Dutch characteristics: the feeling of tranquillity, order, balance, and a more or less static intellectual life. In Dutch life there are more boundaries than free ground; its principle and its goal is to live without ever overstepping these boundaries, which themselves are determined by religion, tradition, and propriety. Dutch life stands for solidity and spiritual conservatism. Throughout the centuries this same concept of life has been represented by the great names in

Dutch history: Olden Barneveldt and Jan De Witt in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, Thorbecke in the nineteenth century (and with the great Thorbecke, who was actually educated abroad and brought the results back with him to Holland, there were Droogstoppel and the Kegge

family at the same time); Kuyper and Colijn in the twentieth century, and from Colijn through Aalberse and Al-

barda, and even the writer of In the Shadows of Tomorrow himself—Professor Huizinga. . . . There is no people in the world who employ the word “balance” in their thinking and in their living as extensively as do the Dutch. In fact, the worst fault that one can speak of to a Dutchman is the accusation of “unbalance,” and it is precisely in defending and maintaining that balance in the extreme that he himself goes astray and becomes “unbalanced”! 98

Professor Huizinga is ready to give his life to maintain his law and order, and he extols the value of “balance” and

harmony in a society that is actually based on opposition— opposition of one group’s power to that of another group. And supposing these groups are nations or classes, then how can you anticipate harmony in the world? And if this

opposition between the different groups becomes sharper and more intense, then how can he expect that any attention will be given to humanism and the forces that bind men together? As the forces of opposition become stronger, morality becomes weaker, since morality is based, simply, on commonly shared values, and thus has a collective basis. As the collective spirit becomes more and more dissipated, morality becomes torn in pieces, shattered and cut by the different groups into which mankind becomes divided. Morality

has never led the thoughts or the feelings of man in relation to his enemy in the struggle for power. Morality exists only between men who live in peace with one another. It is thus not surprising that man has conveniently discarded morality as an impediment to the conduct of his daily affairs, where the opposition between groups is so sharp and strong. There is even a certain forthrightness in this. Can it then still surprise us that morality is being replaced by the blackjack, the club, the whip, the concentration camp, internments, and poison gas?

In fact, many of these substitutes for morality are even accepted by Professor Huizinga, provided they are used to protect or defend his law and order, or to serve the fatherland. Nevertheless, he is troubled and indignant over the situation in Germany, where again men are trying to maintain a system of law and order—which he himself admittedly would defend by killmg—by Gleichschaltung and

09

Judenbass, by mass stupefaction, mass deception, black-

jacks, Schutzhaft, and concentration camps, simply because of the fact that they do not know any other way to accomplish their goals. Foreign ventures are undertaken because, as Mussolini has stated, ‘““We Italians have the choice between spreading our wings abroad or starving at home.” His criticism of fascism and Hitlerism simply does not strike the core of the matter. He deals with symptoms and has only insufficiently sought causes. What is the reason that the concept of power dominates the world in our time? What is the cause of the ubiquitous supremacy of conscious irrationalism? The investigations of Ortega y Gasset go much more deeply into these basic questions in his La Rebelién de las Masas and particularly in his El Tema de

Nuestro Tiempo,* although even these do not wholly provide satisfactory answers. Ortega y Gasset is also a philosopher who has steeped himself in the learning of past centuries. He is really not ethical but aesthetic, and his concept of life is basically different from that of Professor Huizinga. He is not a Calvinist and he is not a Hollander. Instead he dares to soar to greater heights. He is not afraid to evaluate his own liying ground and his own law and order candidly, and he ventures to surmount the different “hedges” that he formerly perhaps thought were necessary in his own thinking. He does not swear by “balance,” and his intellectual mood stands closer to the universal spirit, that of Goethe and Nietzsche. One can also see the shortcomings in Huizinga as a cultural critic and philosopher if one compares him with Benedetto Croce. To each of these three thinkers one can ask the following * Revolt

of the Masses and Theme of Our Sjahrir read and admired.

philosopher whom 100

Time, by the Spanish

question:

Will

the concept, doctrine,

and

practice

of

power, as represented so blatantly and coarsely by fascism and nazism at present, ever disappear from the world, as long as the fundamental underlying causes—that is, the

opposition of forces based on the conflicting interests and desires of different national or class groups—remain? This question can be answered only by abandoning Professor Huizinga’s frame of reference. Only outside the hedges and the furrows, and outside “law and order,” can an evaluation of the world and of man be developed that will strike to the core of the question. Only from there can one build a new world and a new man, different from the man of today, who is engaged in self-destruction by the oppression of his fellow man. Only there can one arrive at a deeper understanding and a more fruitful evaluation of man’s destiny. MAY 19, 1936 The “communist” situation here is really quite amusing. Everything and everyone who is in the slightest degree suspected of “leftist” sympathies is immediately denounced as “communistic.” So, in fact, the paradoxical situation sometimes arises where one of our very moderate, middleclass nationalists who actually is firmly entrenched in his narrow bourgeois prejudices is arrested as a “disguised communist” by some highly placed government people, who must then be kept busy writing a long report about his life. Because the unfortunate fellow happens to be in the nationalistic camp, they cannot even recognize him as one of their own spiritual brethren! Often, of course, someone is accused of being a communist in order to make it easier to start a procedure against him. According to Colijn, the name has nothing to do with IOI

it. The question is only whether the colonial government pleases you or not, and if it does not, then you are to be eliminated. It is thus no sin for the Colijnists to call anyone a com-

munist if they fear or cannot tolerate him from a political point of view. Such a confusion of names and aims is hardly an indication of intellectual attainment, and it is, moreover, to be expected, since there is really no intellectual

attainment in colonial society, even among the European veneer. ... MAY 21, 1936 The sea here is ideal for swimming and rowing, and when the weather isn’t stormy, the bay is mirror-smooth, and there hardly appears to be a sea between the islands of Great Banda, Banda Neira, and Goenoeng Api. When I visit the Soeribnos’ house in the evening, we sit on the front veranda, and we look out at the sea. Their

house is situated along the so-called Herenweg, a lovely street with huge old trees running along the sea front, and separated from it by a grass lawn. In front of the commandant’s house, which is also on this street, there is the jetty, which projects into the sea like a pier. This is where the government’s ships lie at anchor, while the K.P.M. harbor is on the other side of the island, opposite Goenoeng Api. Sitting there in the evening on the veranda watching the

sun set behind Great Banda and the white houses of Lontor, you can’t help but be touched by the beauty of it. Even the Soeribnos, who have been living here for eight years, never tire of watching the beautiful spectacle. The people here enjoy the natural beauty unconsciously rather than consciously, and when the weather is good and the moon is 102

shining there is always abundant activity. They go for long walks, and everyone stays up until late at night. Although Banda has retrogressed in recent years, it is

nevertheless certain that the population is far better off than

that of Java. The kampong people are much stronger and more robust, and there are even some giants among them. The women, as well, are pretty and healthy. In general, they are less subject to cares and worries here than elsewhere, and they love their celebrations. There are many feasts and parties given, although naturally on a much smaller scale than formerly. There is no doubt that a profound process of assimilation has taken place here. Even the Banda Europeans prefer to speak Bandanese—that is, Malay—to one another, and for the most part they observe some Dutch and some Arabian, but mainly Indonesian, habits and customs. On the other hand, the Indonesians here have copied a good deal from the Dutch and the Arabs. What you have is thus a composite. For example, there is the practice observed here of exchanging visits between two and four o’clock in the afternoon—the time at which elsewhere in the tropics people take their afternoon naps unless they are busy at the office. Then there is the greeting of “Good day,” according to the Dutch habit, which people exchange on the street, and there are also many Dutch words used in the kampongs without the inhabitants’ actually being conscious of their origin. Arabs, Europeans, Indonesians, and Chinese are very often mutually related here, because there has been general and widespread miscegenation. And so the outward appearance of Banda has itself a strongly mixed quality. For example, you find a child whose mother is a cross between a

Chinese and a Swiss, and whose father is a cross between 103

a Menadonese and a Eurasian, and again this latter also has a separate history of mixture, in which some Arabian stock is likely to be found. This is one of the reasons why the people are all quite docile, except for pure nationalists of “the holy war”! MAY 29,1936

I have just read J. de Kadt’s book From Czarism to Stalinisnt. Throughout the book, the writer reiterates that it is not what might be called an objective, scientific, historical work, but rather a “critical” work. By “critical” he seems to mean the evaluation and appraisal of the people and the events that are dealt with by the writer according to his own fixed standards. The standards themselves are not made known to the reader, but they seem to amount to a “socialistic” policy and approach as the author understands these terms. The arrangement of events, and especially the interpretation of the events—to which is closely attached the evaluation and appraisal by the use of qualifying terms—are plausible for anyone who consciously or unconsciously accepts the same criteria as the author. Actually, however, the criteria themselves hardly seem to be plausible... . You could draw an excellent parallel between De Kadt

and Hafil. They are really very similar to one another. Both have a great affinity for ratiocination and the abstract. Both have so much faith in reasoning that they consider it sufficient for knowing reality. Hafil, too, would be capable of writing about something that he knew only from other books—although he might have had the opportunity to observe the same phenomena himself, and to see and know the same people at firsthand. And that is precisely where they fall short. Hafil has the

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same didactic, positive, and narrowly one-sided tone of the schoolmaster. De Kadt has perhaps the advantage that he is more broadly educated, but it seems to me that there are the same basic fallacies in his approach and in his whole nature. There is no doubt that while he also writes about revolutionary movements, he is definitely not the sort of man to whom the leadership of revolution could be entrusted—except, perhaps in the role of a Robespierre! But as a leader in the true sense of the word, he has too little of the “human” and too much abstraction and ratiocination in his make-up. |

MAY 30, 1936 To return to Huizinga for a moment. I really feel a kinship with his humanism, but I consequently feel even more sharply the limits that he arbitrarily applies to it. It is true that he drinks from the source of the noble and beautiful, the ethical and aesthetic. The history of culture is thus more for him than the history of mankind. But again this is why his whole approach, which is indissolubly tied with the past, is out of keeping with the present. In his ethical and aesthetic outlook, he never frees himself from that past; not from the breadth of the Greek classicists, and still less from the Christian ethic of Luther and Calvin, and particularly not from the narrowness of Dutch Calvinism. Perhaps that is why the bases of his thoughts and feelings leave me cold, however honorable and sincere their intentions may be. My mind reacts too strongly against the petty elements of Calvinist stiffness and hardness, which to my way of thinking are incompatible with the noble, expansive spirit of the Greek classicists. It is perhaps true that we have formulated this expansive spirit in our own minds, since we really have only frag-

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ments of literature or sculpture or architecture remaining to go by. For me, however, that Greek spirit signifies tolerance, greatness, and hence nobility. Take Plato, for example. Despite everything that can be said against his aristocratic thinking, one can never accuse him of narrowness, and one never meets with forbidding barriers in his intellectual world. Throughout, it is broad, free, beautiful, and noble. In this sense, Goethe also has the real classical soul, as well as Beethoven and Marx, but not, for example, Kant. The best in Goethe’s romanticism is in essence similar to

classicism. The culture of the petite bourgeoisie, the false panegyric of middle-class emotions into which romanticism later developed, these are not to be found in Goethe. Through Goethe, in fact, one can return to the true classical spirit of Plato. Huizinga has unquestionably steeped himself in the tradition of ancient classicism, and yet one still finds in his attitude the narrowness of the Dutch lower-middle-class character. And is not this the best indication that the mind is indissolubly bound to material and environmental relationships, and to the reflexes that these produce in the spirit itself? To the Dutch people, who now also have their spiritual problems—their “spiritual suffering,” as Huizinga calls it—this book must seem to have been taken right from their own hearts, and it is for this reason that the book has had such a great success in Holland.

MAY 31, 1936 At the expense of a small exchange of words with Hafil,

I have managed to free myself from the Soebana’s Saturday-evening “soirees.” Hafil really seems to enjoy them, 106

but they were a source of torment to me. They always proceeded the same way: After dining, at about seven-thirty,

we went to Soebana’s house. The whole family would be seated around a table waiting for us, and an extraordinarily garrulous Arab, Mr. B., would also be there. As soon as the

whole group had gathered, Mr. B. would begin his stories from The Thousand and One Nights. As a raconteur, moreover, he was not without merit, and while he was busy with his stories, tea and cakes were served. This recounting of sage lessons from the time of

Harun al-Rashid, with simultaneous disposal of large quantities of tea and cakes, continued until after midnight. It was not only that I had the feeling of having wasted an evening, but the next Sunday I never felt well because I hadn’t had enough sleep. Hence last night, for the first time, Hafil went alone, and while my nonappearance will certainly be held against me, I'll just have to bear it. Instead, I spent a very quiet and pleasant evening alone in

the house with Gustav Mayer’s biography of Engels. While it is not nearly as good as, for example, Mehring’s biography of Marx, from a literary standpoint, it is still very interesting, mainly because Engels’ life is so enthralling. It is, in fact, a pity that his life has not been written by an artist. As it stands, the book is almost wholly documentary, and you become acquainted with Engels’ ideas alone, and

only very slightly with the man and his real life. For example, in the complete work of two parts and almost one thousand pages, there are only two pages devoted to Mary Burns, although Mayer himself writes that this Irish working girl, whom Engels lived with for more than a decade, had a great influence on his life and on his development toward socialism. Despite the fact that Mayer admires Engels, he treats him so objectively as to make an

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Ubermensch of him. His own sympathies are only very seldom apparent, and he simply presents the dry facts in an orderly relationship almost without comment. There 1s

much that in the hands of an artist would be delightful and vital, but that here appears banal, and sometimes vain or superficial. Engels was, in fact, an ordinary man endowed with both good and bad qualities like all other human beings, but with an unusually strong character and a clear goal in life, as well as the virtues of modesty, courage, and intel-

ligence. He was a fighter, but not a prophet. His public life, as far as it can be presented by documentation, is thoroughly dealt with in the book. This, of course, arouses all sorts of objections in itself, but I feel in addition that by his particularly sober and objective treatment, and by his inability or unwillingness to put himself in En-

gels’ own position, Mayer does not give a wholly true picture. Engels’ internal intellectual development is inaccurate and inconsistent, in so far as we draw our conclusions from this objective, documented presentation of his public life. And sometimes, where the author is tempted into an evaluation, one gets the impression that he is too small to conceive fully the idea that he wants to evaluate, and that instead he succeeds only in bringing the idea down to his own level and to his own dimensions. At first I was somewhat disappointed to become acquainted with such an Engels, but later, after thinking the matter over, I understood that this Engels, because of the sobriety and excessive objectivity of the scholarly writer, was not true to life, and that he sometimes was nothing more than a caricature of the real Engels. But there are also some advantages in this treatment, and they lie in the objections themselves. There is, for example, no fanaticism here, and we are 108

thus not in a dreamland or a make-believe world of giants and dwarfs. Asa result, we do not feel or see any unbridgeable gap between the great leader and ourselves—between Christ and man, or between the perfect and the imperfect. We see, instead, an ordinary human with the ordinary banalities of all men, with virtues and faults, but still a strong human, a fine human, and a great fighter. Completely shut out by this treatment is the sort of pessimism that says, “We eternal sinners are evil; we strive, but we shall not succeed because we are evil.” And finally, another advantage is that the work stimulates our thinking, precisely because the image of Engels sometimes appears to be a caricature, and we are obliged to look for the true proportions in the portrait ourselves.

JUNE 1, 1936 Besides writing to my wife and children, I’ve had so much other correspondence that it has been difficult for me to keep up with it. For the last few weeks I have been giving lessons to a

foster son of Dr. Soeribno. He is thirteen years old, but he has never been to school because he was sickly. Otherwise, he is a bright lad. In addition to my teaching, I walk and swim a great deal here. This spot is really a paradise; the natural beauty is overwhelming, and everything is in perfect harmony. There is a custom here of cultivating flowers, and almost all the grounds have beautiful blossoms. In fact, I too have planted a little flower garden, and there are now orchids on the desk from my own garden. There is lavender of all shades, from light to dark purple. I have also seen white orchids here, and in addition all sorts of other flowers—roses, carnations, dahlias.

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Life here is very provincial, and indeed the village gossip seems to provide a good part of the intellectual life of the inhabitants. Fortunately we have very little to do with this, since we live retiringly and tranquilly. At the start we had rather frequent visits from the Indonesian municipality doctor and the head teacher with their respective families, but this soon stopped after they had received a comment from the Resident of Ambon! Actually, that was a good thing from our point of view also, since it was often very difficult for us to resist their visits, and out of courtesy we were obliged to make many concessions to their shallow chatter. Hafil went so far, in fact, that one night he played bridge with them until early in the morning, at the same time conversing about the most fatuous things imaginable. How shortsighted, dull, and ignorant it was for the government to take such an action. That state of affairs would

have been unquestionably the best and surest way to neutralize Hafil politically, and track. He had really almost these people. Soeribno, on them coolly, and they were Soebana, however, was quite

FUNE TT

to keep him off the political no resistance whatsoever to the contrary, always treated never at their ease with him. agreeable to them.

1936

It seems as though changes are about to take place at Digoel. Wahab wrote me that the Resident addressed the exiles at his last visit. It was mentioned that the government would probably agree to extend help in bringing the wives and sweethearts of the exiles to Digoel, and that may mean that things will be somewhat improved for the ones who are there. I hope so with all my heart, and if they can only find some efficacious preventive against malaria, then Digoel will be at least bearable. The latter seems very unIIo

likely. However, they may be able to combat it or rather decrease its incidence by providing better nourishment for the exiles—and who knows, maybe even that will occur someday! In any case, the bringing of women to Digoel will cer-

tainly be a step forward for the colony there. As soon as the people can get accustomed to setting themselves up for good or at least for a long time, life will change for them there. If, in fact, the government had taken that action sooner, Digoel might perhaps be more like a model exile colony now, or at least a much better colony than some of the others maintained by the government. Even now, actu-

ally, Digoel is no worse a camp than some of the colonies for Eurasian delinquents. I believe that Digoel may have a new period ahead of it. If the government holds fast to the idea that revolutionary movements must be combatted by exiling to Digoel all who are not “loyal,” then this new period will still lie a long way off. For unless I am very wrong, the political situation

on Java is just about the same now as it was three or four years ago. If they were consistent they ought really to send several hundred more exiles to Digoel, as they did several years ago. Personally, I wonder whether they really expect any constructive result from such a policy—but that, of course, is not my worry. On the other hand, if our new governor general adopts a different policy, then there are several hundred exiles in

Digoel who might be allowed to return home; namely, those who, even according to the criterion of the governor general, long since have been ready for return because “they have had enough of politics.” And then there is the question whether a final solution of the problem of Digoel will be found by eliminating or exposing the institution. I II!

am actually very curious as to what is going to happen now, but in any case there are likely to be some radical changes from the new administration. These last few years must have taught even the blindest of them some things!

JUNE 28, 1936 It is no wonder that our nationalists have taken such a

fancy toward Japan, particularly during the last few years when the grievances against the white administration have increased, and oppression has been felt more strongly than ever, while, on the other hand, Japan acts so amiably and even offers Korea autonomy. There is a significance and a direction to this winning of sympathy among Eastern peo-

ples by the Japanese, and it will appear more plainly in the future. Unless I am very much mistaken, the Dutch government itself has been responsible for turning so many of our mid-

dle-class and white-collar people toward Japan for the education of their sons and daughters, as well as for their cultural interests. During the last few years, in fact, it has

become quite the fashion to go to Japan on vacation. Of course the white authorities see all this, but they have such a blind faith in their bayonet, their prisons, and Digoel that they never think it is worth while to adopt a definite “policy” in this respect. “We have ruled here for three hundred years with the whip and the club, and we shall still be doing it in another three hundred years,” His Excellency

De Jonge assures us through the correspondent of the Deli Courant. Truly his faith is grounded only on his public prosecutor, his soldiers, and—Digoel! FORT AMI36 I have little diversion here. Besides my regular visits to 1 by

Dr. Soeribno and Miss Cresa—a very alert and amusing invalid whose house I visit occasionally to listen to gramophone records—I have only the Arabian children to whom I give lessons. I now have four of the local children every afternoon in addition to the two foster sons of Dr. Soeribno. The youngest is almost six, and the oldest not quite ten, but they are all poor children who have never been to school because their families did not have enough money. At first they were somewhat coarse, but they are gradually learning better manners. They are able to read and write now, and it really goes quite quickly with them. There is one girl of

about eight years who is especially quick, and you can almost see her make progress every day.

JULY 24, 1936 I cannot help thinking of Digoel and of the boys whom I had to leave behind there. I have always been convinced that those of us who were sent there were simply victims of our times. If we had had another governor general, or even the same one with a colonial government that did not favor taking such radical economic and political measures to maintain its position in the face of the growing crisis in Indonesia, then there would not have been any question of such sentences. And then to think of those fellows in Digoel who had nothing more on their records than membership in a socialistic youth organization or a student association in Holland. They were all so completely idealistic, and the only thing with which they could be charged was making propaganda for their ideals. They had not the faintest idea of how to realize these ideals, or that there were opposing forces that had to be systematically countered. In any case, I hope that

a

the internment will quickly correct their misconceptions, and I look forward with expectation to the results of the pending elections in Holland, which may improve their lot in Digoel. In the meantime, I try to send them as much printed matter and books and clothing as I can. VOINE 25S I36 Banda is certainly one of the most lovely places in the Moluccas. Furthermore, a simpler people seem to live here than on Ambon, for example. Occasionally I go out to the old jetty to watch the sunset, and in front of me stretches the magnificent bay, beside me the clear, light blue water, in the background dark,

rugged Great Banda Island, and in the east the silver coneshaped silhouette of Goenoeng Api. The stars are surprisingly bright here, and I have never seen either the moon or the stars as clear and large as they seem here. It almost seems sometimes as though the moon is giving warmth, so brightly does it shine; and when it is at its brightest, it is

quite possible to read by its light. There is thus little wonder that the population of these paradise islands cherish the moon so deeply. Whenever the moon is clear, everyone is outdoors, and they often hold moon feasts. At such times the people who stay indoors all day go walking—and especially the unmarried girls! For the most part, however, they observe the Arabian or Islamic custom, which is also practiced in Spain, of keeping the nubile girls pretty much under lock and key—although among the Christians one finds the typical shyness of young girls toward strange men. Actually, there is an excess of women here, and while you find many children, there are few young men. Apparently the population is very prolific, and I know one family

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with twenty-three children, all of the same mother. For the most part, however, the male youth leave Banda when they are adult, to look elsewhere for life that they cannot find on

this quiet island. More recently this tendency has been less in evidence because conditions have been so bad elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is no overpopulation here, and there is hardly any apparent poverty.

JULY 27, 1936 The reports of the civil war in Spain have taken me completely by surprise, since even the Niewwe Rotterdamsche Courant never hinted at this possibility. From the expurgated telegrams—or rather the radio reports that we get here—one cannot become much wiser, and I certainly do not understand the situation in Spain at all. It is a source of continual vexation to me to be dependent on such a thoroughly corrupt reporting service as we have in Indonesia. Another disturbing thing is that absolutely no one here, except Hafil, appears to have any interest whatsoever in the events in Spain. At the moment, I consider it by far the

most important happening in Europe, notwithstanding all questions of alliances and German armament. New events have begun in Spain that reach out to France and Belgium and will finally spread throughout the whole of Europe.

If, on the one hand, the democratic forces can maintain themselves, then the rest of Europe, and Holland as well,

will feel the effect of a wave of rejuvenated democracy. If, on the other hand, the reactionaries in Spain win out, then the triumphal march of fascism throughout the world will

gain further momentum, and the defeat of the French, Bel- | gian, and Dutch democracies will be at hand.* * Sjahrir’s prognostications in this section are particularly remarkable in retrospect.

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And if the latter is the case, then we shall face a period of imminent chaos; barbarism will make the world into a still greater hell, and there will be a greater destruction of mankind than has ever before been seen in the world. And,

moreover, it will not be only an Untergang des AbendJandes, but a cataclysm of the whole world, because we in the Far East also have a supernationalism in the form of

\Japanese fascism, with its vast reserves of human cannon fodder. | AUGUST 14, 1936 Whoever avers that the mind can forestall a primary physical function is harboring a misconception. On the contrary, the mind is not even able to restore balance to mental and physical life once that has been disturbed. The mind is capable of such accomplishment only through and in connection with the senses, the so-called autonomic nervous centers. Only when the mind functions in harmony with these autonomic nervous centers is it capable of exerting a regulatory influence; and the necessary conditions for this harmony lie in the sphere of feelings, in the sphere of instincts, and, still more important, in the affinities that have been formed in the individual by his social environment: namely, his prejudices, morality, ethics, and aesthetics. The latter, of course, are not really autonomic feelings in the same sense as the primitive instincts of hunger, thirst, and reproduction. But for most people—even for those who live a very restricted intellectual life—the social affinities have the same force as though they were inherent instincts. It is therefore with such people that these secondary affinities act as a brake on the primitive instincts, and create the conditions for the regulative functioning of the mind. But on the other hand, with those who have recognized 116

these secondary affinities for what they are—namely, social products—and who have analyzed their relativity, and then have rejected them from the sphere of the mind, among these people one often encounters helplessness of the mind against the autonomic nervous system. There is, of course, no one who lives without any moral, ethical, or aesthetic factors whatsoever in his life. The contents thereof differ with different attitudes and philosophies of life, but if you assume that the individual’s philosophy of life has not yet

emerged, and that he consequently vacillates but is free of prejudice, then precisely in this case do you find the strongest conflict between the individual’s mental and physical lives, and between his heteronomic and autonomic nervous systems. Our generation is more or less undergoing a change at

this time. We have a concept of life, we have conviction, but it is not yet mature within us. It has not yet become a vital artery for us, particularly not in the field of ethics. And this can hardly be different under present conditions. We want a new ethic constructed on free, mature, thinking man, and at the same time we are forced to apply that ethic to the real world before us, to the man of today as he now lives, thinks, and feels. That new ethic is not feasible in the world as we find it, and we are thus obliged to search for a compromise in order to live, holding to our hopes and ideals and simultaneously accepting the world as it now is. That compromise ethic is, moreover, simply a utilitarian and changing freak. It never provides us with an encompassing norm. It is incidental, and is simply a means of tempering the autonomic nervous system with a popular palliative.

This period in history of Umwertung aller Werte is one of confusion, wandering, and spiritual suffering, but it is a necessary phase. Without the demolition of the old, the

i

new is not possible. From this confusion and suffering, the better, more satisfying, and higher ethic must emerge. Because we belong to this generation of transition, we un-

dergo not only our own personal suffering, but that of our generation and of humanity. AUGUST

24, 1936

The last few days I have been feeling ill, and I have now come down with malaria. I haven’t contracted it here because they do not have malaria on Banda; it is something that I brought with me from Digoel, and it has again come to the surface because of my weakened powers of resistance. ’ve taken to a quinine cure, and fortunately ’m over the worst part of it. Yesterday I had a high fever, but today it has abated, and left me with a heavy head and a general feeling of weakness. Tomorrow I shall probably get another attack, but that will be the last, since with quinine one is over it in a maximum of four days. In any case, I'll continue taking quinine for at least two weeks.

AUGUST 26, 1936 I’ve begun a series of articles on Engels for Djon’s new monthly magazine, although it is not going too well because I lack the necessary material to work with. Hafil has received many of his books, but mine, for the most part, are

still wandering around Java. His library, however, has only very limited philosophical works in it, the most modern being Windelbrand and Ricket, and if I am to go on with my work, I shall have to procure additional material. AUGUST 30, 1936 I have indeed not been able to escape fully from the pessimism of our time, and my own skepticism itself definitely 118

bears a pessimistic color. I am no longer capable of anything approaching fanatacism, and I am even less capable of the idealism that I still had six, five, or even three years ago. Sometimes I wonder whether these are simply indications of weariness, and sometimes, again, I think that only people with the least personal experience—people who spend the greatest part of their lives in their studies without knowing or making contact with the real world out-

side them—are capable of a maximum of objectivity; and that all others find the pressure and influence of their own personal experiences too strong for them to be objective. Experience, perhaps, may in many cases be a burden. This, of course, is not necessarily true, but such intense experiences as those of my last few years cannot help but leave their irrevocable mark on my vision. Fortunately, I think I recognize the value and effect of such personal experience, and I can thus regard it critically. But I could in no case, whether I would or not, free myself from it wholly. And yet I nevertheless feel that with all my expended idealism, with my loss of fiery certainty, I have still not adopted a negative and bitter attitude toward the world. If there is often doubt within me, and if much has broken

away of what I formerly thought was true and changeless, then I want first to work it out myself, until I have found again a new—perhaps also relative and temporary—truth.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1936 Sometimes I can hardly refrain from commenting to Miss Cresa on the relative value of all religion, but I try to avoid discussing it with her as far as possible. She is too sick to warrant any risk of losing the last bolster that she has in life. On the contrary, I sometimes go so far as to read ser-

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mons to her, and I do it in such a way that she is absolutely convinced that I believe every word I read! She has evidently informed others of this conviction, because the curate here, who is otherwise really a fanatic on the subject, is particularly solicitous and says that he finds me most

congenial. One evening he even went so far as to suggest that I ought to replace him if he leaves, and he expects to be sent to Amahei in about two weeks. It is really a shame, because I could get along quite well with him, and particularly with his wife. She is a refreshing Dutch Frisian girl,

probably a simple farm girl by origin, but still quite refined. When I talked to her, it was as though I could feel something of the best and finest of what I had come to know in Holland; something of the fresh, clean air, as well. They were also quite well disposed to Miss Cresa and me, although elsewhere they were generally misunderstood. Their refreshing candor was regarded here as coarseness and rudeness, and they for their part found the people here rather backward. Furthermore, there are not many people on Neira who feel fully at ease when speaking Dutch, and it is characteristic of the Hollanders that they are sensitive to and disturbed by any strange pronunciation of the Dutch language. They react by mockery, sarcasm, and vexation, whereas in other countries of Europe the situation is quite different. There the people marvel that a foreigner can understand their language, and they are happy and grateful if you can converse with them in their own tongue. Whenever you say anything well, they are enthusiastic about it, and if you make a mistake they find it completely understandable. Even the English do not have as strong a feeling on this matter as the Dutch.

The curate has a particularly strong feeling about this, 120

and it is the language itself—the somewhat differently spoken Dutch that one finds here—that makes it so difficult for him to come in close contact with the people of Neira. Of course, there are some people here who do speak Dutch as well as himself, but they are, in his opinion, bad Christians with whom he cannot associate. As a result, you have the amusing situation of a Calvinist curate’s family that gets along best with a “communist” —because I have certainly not been anything else to them! Actually, they have now begun to doubt and wonder themselves, and they have found so much in me that is familiar to them that they are gradually beginning to regard me as an “ordinary” person. As a matter of fact, my association with Christians does not seem to be to the liking of the Moslems on Banda, and particularly of the Arabs. We are no longer troubled by their visits, and even Soebana doesn’t come to visit us any more. Hafil, of course, is completely guiltless, but he has derived an advantage from the situation, since he can now devote more time to his work. Dr. Soeribno is also not regarded as a real Mohammedan by these people, and they are certainly right in this respect. He has, in fact, a more pantheistic attitude toward life, and admits himself that he finds the Hindu religion most pleasing, personally. I suppose that now I shall be regarded in somewhat the same light, but I do hope they will not make the same accusations against Hafil. I think that the poor fellow would be deeply troubled by it, for he is unquestionably a modern edition of the upright Islamite. SEPTEMBER 21, 1936 The study of the social sciences is hardly satisfying in these times. Most of the theories involved seem to hang I21I

in mid-air, and they posit a world that is pretty hard to accept or to be objective about. This is a period of struggle and tension, and the realization of this fact makes it difficult for me to adopt the tranquil and calm frame of mind necessary to become engrossed in my study. I am still working on questions of methodology and I shall not yet be finished with this by the end of the month. My program is going very slowly, but the cause lies within myself, and though I try to bring about an improvement, I have thus far been unsuccessful. For a while I work normally, and then the letdown sets in. I am not yet able to stay with it for ten hours a day, and yet that is what I must do to complete the work I want to do. In addition to the fact that I am working so slowly, there is the fact that I am not yet convinced by any of the epistemology that I have hitherto studied, and perhaps that is why I still wander about, in an intellectual sense. At every point, I am forced to return to a consideration of the philosophical value of what I am trying to learn, but I now intend to put an end to this dilemma if I can. I first want to delve thoroughly into the whole field of economics, particularly the economic phenomena and facts of life. That may provide a solution to the epistemological questions that have been troubling me. For the most part, students of the natural sciences do not have a need for epistemology. They work with the unconscious conviction and premise that their minds and their way of working and thinking are good and are suited to their study. The decisive factor of all they do is, finally, their organs of sense; that is to say, the faculties that perceive the facts—including the instruments they make use of. If the phenomena perceived do not coincide with the logic of their theories, then the latter are rejected and new ones 22

are formulated. I am not particularly familiar myself with the contents of modern scientific thought, and as a result I have tried to get the works of Eddington and Bertrand Russell, which I would like to study—particularly the mathematical analysis of the latter. Unfortunately, here in Indonesia we are uniquely devoid of modern investigators in the natural sciences.

OCTOBER 9, 1936 Yesterday evening I went to a wedding celebration in the kampong, simply out of curiosity to find out how such things are conducted here. Actually I didn’t see very much, because the ceremony I attended was not actually the wedding itself, which was to follow the next morning.

Yesterday evening they had what is called the patjar: the bridegroom came to the bride’s house, but they remained apart and were not even allowed to see each other. In the patjar, they sit in different parts of the house on cushions, and the women paint the bride’s fingernails with patjar,* and the men do the same to the bridegroom. At the same time, different Arabian songs were sung, and there was a continual beating on Arabian drums, something like those that accompany Carmen when she dances, but somewhat larger. Tea is served and cakes are eaten, and the whole thing often goes on until late in the night. I stayed for an hour only, and while I saw the bridegroom arrive, I didn’t watch the ceremony of painting his nails with patjar. Today the couple will be married by a Mohammedan priest.

In the wedding ceremony, the man declares before the priest his intention to wed the girl, and they profess the same vows and marital obligations that one might find in a * A plant from which a red dye is made.

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~ Dutch civil wedding. In addition, they promise to live according to.the laws of the Koran. Then tomorrow they will be married with a real feast, and placed upon a sort of pedestal where they will be the cynosure of all glances, and even of criticism. I used to be quite familiar with this ceremony when I was a boy, but since then the wedding ceremonies in both

Java and Sumatra have taken on a much more Western stamp. They no longer have a three-day celebration there, and the bride and groom act as host and hostess rather than as cynosures for the guests upon the wedding pedestal. The customs that one finds here are all typically Malay, such as used to be observed in all the Mohammedan areas of Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and Malaya. Now, rather, the weddings in Java and Sumatra are very much like European weddings, which is again one of the innumerable indications of the extraordinary adaptability of the Indonesian people. And this is no wonder, since there is hardly any country in the world that has been so con-

tinually subjected to foreign pressures as this country of ours. During his journeys throughout Asia, Soetomo was amazed to observe that the Indonesian people were the least conservative of any people in all of Asia, and consequently the most westernized of any Eastern people, including the

Japanese! One would certainly not think that, and yet it is nevertheless true. Among our people, Western influence has penetrated into the masses, into the people’s customs, and into the

group imagination; whereas with the Japanese—except for those who have been educated along Western lines in the cities—westernization 1s only superficial, and they remain

100 per cent Japanese beneath the surface. Even the West124

ern-educated Japanese often still lives in a purely Japanese manner, and is comfortable only with such a pattern of life. Westernization there is a veneer, and has not had the same effect that it has had here among our people. It would indeed be justifiable to say that among the upper classes here —except in the palaces—there is no longer any national pattern of life. In the households of Indonesian regents, doctors, wedanas, clerks, and well-to-do merchants, the same sort of pattern is observed as in European households, and this does not apply only to the household itself, but to the habits and even to the meals as well. Only in the outlying places like Banda is there still something characteristic of the past remaining, something that is definitely not European—although on the other hand, it is not Indonesian either, since the marriage ceremony and the attendant rituals were all actually Arabian. These are customs that we have retained from our period of busy contact with Arab culture, as we have retained evidences of those historical periods that were characterized by Hindu and Chinese influences. It is an extremely important fact to note that we are now in the midst of our European period, as before we have had our Hindu, Chinese, and

Arab periods.

\

In a relative sense, we Indonesians are the most nationally| characterless people in the world, and there has therefore | never been possible among us the same sort of Tegel nationalism as some of the other peoples of Asia have shown. In reality, we have drawn close to our white rulers to a considerable extent. There has not been the same sort of repugnance and revulsion at the actions of the white man as has been the case with other Asiatic races. Moreover, there has never been a fanaticism in religion in Indonesia as elsewhere, and hence the Christianity of the white ruler

125

has not yet made his presence here distasteful from a reli/gious point of view. This is why our nationalism will al-

| ways remain political and economic. Other indications to the contrary will be as mere fringe, and will never manifest any real strength. This does not mean that our people love the white man, and it is still possible to speculate about the feeling of foreignness and even of hatred toward the white that exists here

as well. And yet that hatred is not what the Chinese or the Arabs or Indians or even Japanese feel toward the white. That hatred is in reality only superficial, because the haters themselves have actually assimilated the patterns of living and thinking of the whites. This sort of antipathy can thus be traced to an expression of the inferiority complex and to the feeling of impotence of the Indonesian toward the white man. In Banda this is particularly conspicuous. The IndoEuropeans, the Indo-Arabs, and the Chinese live and think precisely as do the people in the kampong. They constitute one kind of people, differentiated only in terms of the classes to which they belong. Recently there were a few full-blooded Europeans here, who were at first rather foreign to the whole community. They did not feel foreign toward me, and after a short time they came to understand the kampong people also, which shows that there are common grounds for mutual understanding, and probably to

a greater extent than there would have been in middle Java, with the Bataks at Sibolga in western Sumatra, or with the Atjenese in northern Sumatra. This is, furthermore, to be expected, because the widespread mixture and social intercourse of people on this island exemplifies, in a sense, the mental attitude of the whole Indonesian people. In general, they are more tol126

erant here than elsewhere, and one of the first things that strikes one here is the friendliness of the people. In fact,

there are almost as many Christians (‘Seranis,” as they are locally called) as there are Moslems, and in general there is no common separation of the two into groups or cliques. In so far as there is such a tendency, it has been imported from the other islands, and in any case it is never manifested openly. For example, at the wedding last evening there were Christians as well as Moslems present. The Moslems here are still orthodox, but despite their orthodoxy they are tolerant toward infidels. As a case in point, Soebana, Hafil, and I always are seen in trousers, and either bareheaded or with a hat on, whereas in general the use of a sarong and skull cap [koepia] are considered as necessary for all Moslems, Nevertheless, we are still regarded as coreligionists, although we dress like nonbelievers even at the temple. Moreover, there is a mod-

ern Arab here from Java who dresses as we do, and they raise no objections to him either. We have never experienced any unpleasantness from all this, whereas if we were to act in this way in Atjeh or in Bantam, we might really be in danger of losing our lives! We are thus, unconsciously and unintentionally, actively

undermining their orthodoxy. They, of course, do not dare to emulate us, but they are becoming more and more accustomed to an Islam that at least is superficially followed in this way. Naturally, the fact that they look up to us as ‘Gntellectuals” and perhaps even as “exiles” is to be considered in this connection. These simple people are, in a sense, flattered to have such exalted coreligionists in their midst, but it is nevertheless an indication of great tolerance on

their part; tolerance that would not be possible in other 127

parts of Indonesia, such as Atjeh or Bantam. Even in Men-

angkabau fifteen years ago, one would have been assaulted, or at best ostracized, for such transgressions.

OCTOBER 12, 1936 My life here is a particularly healthy one: seven hours’ sleep, brisk walks, and regular gymnastic exercises, generally in the morning. At first I also enjoyed playing football, but I’ve had to discontinue it ever since I refused to play on the Queen’s birthday! Sunday I had an appointment to go sailing with the chil-

dren. I was up at half past four in the morning, and we were on the sea by half past six. There was enough wind for us to sail briskly for three hours, and we handled the sails and the rudder ourselves, riding the waves, and watching a beautiful sunrise. Afterward we went back to the beach, had our lunch, and stayed there for the rest of the day.

There is one great advantage at the beach here compared to the much broader strands in Holland. Shade trees come right up almost to the edge of the water and there is no need to have beach chairs. We bathed together, and we sailed, swam, and rowed in the water for four consecutive hours. It was really a very pleasant day, and the children enjoyed it even more than I did. There is no doubt of the fact than you can have the most wholesome and unconstrained fun with children, and although I was somewhat stiff and burned dark red on the following day, I felt better than I had in a long time. OCTOBER 14, 1936 In many respects, Banda Neira is a more

or less ideal

community compared to the rest of the world. Of course, 128

there are some things even in such a paradise that are not ideal, but they are less sharp and less severe in this village Eden. I already wrote elsewhere that there is hardly any apparent poverty here, but that is actually only partly true. It is true that most of the people who live in Neira or in the kampong have their own little houses or live as domestic servants with others and are not undernourished, and for

the most part even have money left over to spend on pretty clothes and feasts. On the plantations, however, there is malnutrition. Dr. Soeribno, for example, has a houseboy now who has come from Goenoeng Api and is very emaciated. The starvelings on the plantations on Goenoeng Api earn hardly more than ten cents a day, if they earn anything! Many of them try to get along by raising vegetables, but without some capital to start with, that doesn’t go very well, and in any case, the most fertile stretches of ground are always owned by someone else. The coolies also live on the plantations in the hills, and although they once made

as much as forty or fifty cents a day, they now consider it a lot if they get twelve to fifteen cents. For the most part the coolies also are in dire straits. And yet the planters themselves are not exploiters. For the most part, they can no longer pay decently because nutmeg is worth almost nothing on the world market at present. Many of the planters actually operate at a loss, but they have to go on, because neglect of their plantations would mean a still greater loss. The rich people here are also not uncongenial. There are

no longer any very rich people, but there are quite a few well-to-do families with bank balances of a few hundred thousand guilders and private incomes of four or five hundred guilders a month. They too live simply, they don’t

129

waste their money, and they put on none of the airs of a

moneyed aristocracy. They too have the characteristic Banda tolerance and friendliness.

The farmers on Goenoeng Api are to a large extent originally from Boeton, to the south of Celebes. They come here in their sailboats, packed in tightly like herring in a barrel, so tightly that they are not able to stretch throughout the whole trip, and the trip itself can take a full month, if the wind is not active. In such cases they have to eat, sleep, and do everything standing up or kneeling, but apparently they do not have any accidents at sea. They must certainly be remarkable seafarers. Once they get here, they try their hand at anything, and even if they make only twenty cents a day, they are still able to put something aside. When they think they have saved enough—between ten and twenty-five guilders—they return to Boeton on another little sailboat, which costs them three guilders. The return trip generally takes less than a week, but it too can take very much longer. Banda is thus not exactly a cornucopia, and it is true to see that the so-called “lazy native” has to toil to the bone in order to earn a few cents. The money that he makes goes generally to the family in order to build a little house. The Boetonese men here are unmarried because they cannot set up a household on ten cents a day, since the woman’s clothes alone would cost more than that. The problem of marriage now manifests itself here in

Banda, and evidently it is present in Java as well. The socalled European problem, which was no problem for us here ten years ago, has now also become an Indonesian problem. Life has become so hard, even in this fortunate land where a minimum of clothing and shelter is necessary, that the people have to consider marriage soberly and ap-

130

praise its economic aspects. In many cases the young men cannot marry because they realize that a wife would cost them half of their already small plate of rice.

OCTOBER 19, 1936 Yesterday, Sunday, we went out again with twelve children for a whole day at the beach. Besides my daily study, my morning walks, and my visits to the Soeribnos and to Miss Cresa, this is my only diversion, and I am glad that the children occupy part of my time. The children’s parents are quite happy and grateful to have me take care of them. If I were to tell them that it is they who take care of me, they would certainly think it strange, and yet such is actually the case.

OCTOBER

31, 1936

The same boat that took my letters for Europe to Java brought me a letter from Digoel. According to the letter Liantoe tried to put an end to his misery at Digoel. He slashed his wrists, not only so that he would bleed to death, but also so that he would be able to make an impression

on the life that he was leaving. With his own blood, he sought to write a political testament on the wall. His attempt failed. He was brought to the hospital and it appears that he has now recovered but that he has grown increasingly shy of people since the occurrence. And a few months ago a book was published about Digoel in which the writer—the former doctor of Tanah Merah, L. A. Schoonheyt—averred that things were “very good” for the exiles! The only excuse for the utter nonsense that this gentleman wrote is that he himself, as a former inhabitant of

Digoel, has become feeble-minded, if not actually a mental case. Some of what he writes is pure gibberish, and the book

Tet

is full of inconsistencies. Occasionally the tone of the book is simply sadistic. Liantoe’s case, however, is the first attempted suicide in Tanah Merah. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, wearing

his torn pajamas and digging in the intense heat of his garden. A Menadonese Christian, Liantoe was a fine and cultivated man with a real humanity in his character, which he derived from the Christian ethics of his upbringing. He was also one of the first Indonesian socialists, and an early member of Douwes Dekker’s* party, the so-called Indies Party. He has had a hard life. Two years before his sentence he left the nationalist movement, but in 1926, just as he was about to get married, they arrested and exiled him. Liantoe came of a rich family, and he had been a wealthy

landlord in Menado. His married sisters are all well fixed, and one younger sister is still at law school.

For nine years he has been at Digoel, from the very beginning. He remained unmarried, and the harsh life of the

camp was terrible for him. His worst suffering, however, was due to the misunderstanding of others, of his comrades toward him, and also to his own failure to understand them. He made two attempts to escape, and the first time he

almost succeeded. He managed to get over the Australian border [of New Guinea], but they turned -him back to the Dutch. The second time they caught him somewhere in south New Guinea, and the native policeman who came to arrest him—a certain Bintang—asked him where he

was going. “I’m looking for Stalin and Trotsky, but it seems * A descendant of the name of “Multatuli”) was in the nineteenth century tem. The book created a

earlier Douwes Dekker, who (under the pen the author of the famed Max Havelaar, which exposed some of the evils of the colonial sysfuror in Holland, and produced some social

reform. Dekker organized the Indies Party, which became an active part of the nationalist movement.

132

that I am able to find only Uncle Bintang,” answered Liantoe. That was Liantoe: apparently always full of good humor and optimism on the surface, but within he was something else again. Within he was broken. He had been in Tanah

Tinggi too long, but after his second attempt at escape he was kept in Tanah Merah. He finally went to work as a teacher at Merah, but they later forced him to become a “naturalist.” His was probably the worst case of malaria in Digoel’s history, and he averaged one attack almost every month. He was, furthermore, not built to withstand quinine or urotropine, and he became permanently overwrought because of these medicines, which he had to take for his malarial attacks. In official circles it is a well-known fact that almost all

the inmates of Digoel soon begin to show signs of mental wandering. Even Resident Haga drew up a report on Tanah Tinggi in which he called the Tanah Tinggiers “psychopaths.” Then why do they do absolutely nothing about it?

Is it simply because they want to appease the tropical distempers of mentally abnormal people like L. A. Schoonheyt and those of his kind who sit behind the editorial desks of the fascist press in Indonesia? What do they accomplish by driving these exiles to something approaching lunacy? Is it for “the benefit of the government”? Is that what is meant by the term “inspiring respect and reverence for the government’? I know that the bureaucracy is cumbersome and inert, and that a wedana who has never even had the benefit of a high school education, and an infantry captain as well— although he may be a capable officer—can hardly be expected to accomplish any better results in their probationary

work than have thus far occurred. Such people can, moreE53

over, never be capable or qualified to do the work for which they were sent there; namely, to judge whether each indi-

vidual case is ready to be returned to normal society or not. Such officials are not in any shape, manner, or form suited or trained for work of that nature. Because they are in-

capable of anything better, they simply regard all the inmates as hardened criminals who must be spied upon, and who must demonstrate their “conversion” by easily recognizable and open indications such as “co-operation” with the government,

which in turn is understood to include

spying and informing on other inmates, celebrating government holidays, wearing orange ribbons, and singing the Wilhelmus! {the Dutch anthem.| In addition, they consider their task to be the discovery of “conspiracies” and the banishment of the “incorrigible” culprits to Tanah Tinggi. Then, too, the policy of “cooperating” with mentally and morally broken individuals —that is, the informing camp “spies”—has the further consequence that the so-called “probation” officers themselves come to value “cunning” and “clever plans”—which may only be expressions of mental deviations—and hence because of their own incapacity for the task they unconsciously let their methods be strongly influenced by mental defectives and semilunatics.

There is a lot more that can be told about Digoel, and perhaps I'll do that later when I again am free. My eyes were not active to no purpose during the year that I was in Digoel. Those mental defectives and semilunatics who have al-

ready demonstrated their “conversion” are gradually sent home; megalomaniacs, or those cases who despite their lunacy do not show any of the strong and obvious signs of

134

moral “conversion,” are sent to Tanah Tinggi as “incorrigibles,” or remain at Tanah Merah. There are dozens of examples that I could cite in these connections. There is the younger brother of Hadji Haschim, who has been mentally unbalanced for his whole

life. In fact, he was completely lunatic for a whole year, and just because of that fact he couldn’t control himself

and spoke all sorts of gibberish—sometimes “revolutionary” gibberish. As a result, he was never considered ready for “probation,” although he made several speeches during his lunacy in which he proclaimed, in the name of his fellow exile lunatics, the hope that Dutch rule might continue here for centuries to come. During this same period of lunacy, he went so far in his “co-operation” as to become a member of the Digoel police.

There is no question but that by far the greater part of the exiles—particularly at Tanah Tinggi—are mentally ill. Liantoe is now another who has become sick as a result of his years there. It is almost unthinkable, and yet it is true, that all the inmates of Digoel are tortured without the tormenters’ and torturers’ knowing consciously what they are doing, because they haven’t the least idea of the mental suffering they are inflicting. The exiles are simply “trash, scum, and criminals”; how could they possibly experience mental suffering? Such suffering is only for Europeans with their more highly developed souls and sensitivities! And yet, nevertheless, even the government officials cannot be completely ignorant of the situation at Digoel. They must certainly wonder at reports such as those of Resident Haga. NOVEMBER 16, 1936 I think I have been able to form a fairly clear picture of the world outside Banda at present, despite the press we

none}

have here. Newspapers here, and particularly the Euro-

pean-language papers, give very different information about Germany than the newspapers in Europe. Here the European press is openly fascistic. As a result, the average newspaper reader in Indonesia has acquired an almost pathological hatred toward everything that is “red,” and has come to regard fascism as the savior of the world. Even on Banda there are quite a few people who openly profess their fascist sympathies. There is, for example, the wife of

our new doctor, who greets her friends with the fascist slogan “Heil Hitler.” She finds it modern and smart, but she doesn’t understand anything more about it.

Japan seems to be very popular in most of Indonesia, although most people do not dare to express their feelings.

Japan, nevertheless, has the sympathy of most of the people, and the Japanese are the most popular foreigners in our country—no doubt because our people have come to know only their good sides. As a parallel case it is true that only when I actually had been in Europe did I come to realize that France—and not Germany—provided the best example of European culture. Before it is possible to understand and distinguish between cultural values, some culture and education are required, as well as experience.

DECEMBER 1, 1936 There is a mutual familiarity in my association with Miss Gresa that actually remains superficial because she knows nothing of my internal thoughts and feelings. She is content with it so, because as an invalid she feels helpless and

has the need simply of friendly association. On my side, that I am capable of such superficial association is an indication to me that I have grown older and more mature. I have lost my shyness and my inferiority complex. I now 136

know better than I did what I can reveal to the world without risking internal injury, and what I must retain within me. People are no longer passive or potential enemies for me, but rather instruments to be played upon in order to

provide agreeable music. My evaluation of the meager intellectual activity of most people has not changed since I last wrote about it. Sometimes, in fact, I cannot free myself from a feeling of superiority toward some people, but at the same time I have become more tolerant toward others. I think I now realize that most people do evil or wrong because of stupidity or ignorance, because they are victims of their heredity, their tradition, their education, and of all sorts of distortions and complexes that express themselves in unbalanced thought and action. Human beings cannot choose their ancestry, and they have even less choice as to the world in which they are born. I am now no longer as retiring as I used to be. The last few years have given me such abundant experience that I can often laugh at life as though it were something silly or foolish. I often even forget to be vexed by people who oppose me or try to thwart me, because I can make sport of their foolishness. It is not coincidental that people here all seem to find me friendly and hearty. I cannot be anything else to them because I find no great value in them,

because I find it possible only to laugh with and at them, because I feel that there is more within me, and that therefore I can be kindhearted toward them and can feel free to be accommodating toward them.

DECEMBER

274, 1936

The P.N.I. boys who stayed behind at Digoel seem to be somewhat better off now that they have successfully withstood the first long and hard test. In the beginning

137

things went really badly, and I truly felt that they might become mentally defective as a result: the recurrent malarial attacks, the tasteless, monotonous food, which sometimes felt like sand or stone in the stomach. By turns they were taken ill and had to go to the hospital. And there were the concomitant misfortunes, difficulties with their young, sickly wives, undesired births, family separations and quarrels. And then the building of their own houses. They came, all of them, as soft city people, and they had to get to work immediately—and grueling work, at that. Only great physical exertion made it possible for them to maintain their mental soundness. They worked all day long in the broiling sun in order to earn a few cents for kerosene for the lamp, or for the other things that the government did not supply; or passed days at a time on the river trying to hook the few fish. I left them with great fear and trouble because I had always felt that while I was not physically the strongest of the group, still I was certainly not the softest. I had even thought that they might not be able to get along without me, and that they would find things even more difficult

after our departure from Digoel. Perhaps this was partly true, and perhaps the little money that I left behind helped a great deal, but it now seems that they have been able to

get along far better just because they have been completely on their own. They began fishing and raising vegetables, and it was not very long before they were able to earn a little money by their efforts. Even lazy Wahab, who used to go around with a surly expression on his face and did nothing but lie down although he was a robust fellow, has finally rolled

up his sleeves and begun gardening. He has now written me that he stayed at the river for seven days and nights in 138

a canoe, to catch the timid fish. The result was a catch for which he received one guilder and sixty-five cents. He wrote me that he had figured out that he had worked at the rate of one cent an hour! And fishing in a little canoe on a stream with as strong a current as the Digoel River is heavy and strenuous work. I know, because I’ve done it myself. To start with, you have to row upstream for hours, or even for a whole day. Then you have to look for worms at the side of the river, and stretch your lines at the most suitable places, and then wait, wait in the middle of the river in the sweltering sun, because at the river shore the air is black with mosquitoes; or if there is a sandy bank, then you build a fire, while the fresh tracks of a huge crocodile are still visible in front of you. Sometimes you have a hard time chasing the old fellow away before you can use the bank; and then, when

evening comes, there are the noises of the jungle all around you. At first there are all sorts of birds calling, and when it becomes darker, thousands of other sounds as And later you encamp in high Kaja-Kaja stilt houses, eat dirty sago cakes with your hosts, and you adopt standards as to agreeable and disagreeable smells. As a

then well. you new mat-

ter of fact, I went out on such an expedition myself just before I became sick. Evidently the malaria thrived inside me because of the excessive physical exertion of those four

consecutive days and nights of fishing. I am so glad to learn that our boys have managed to get through it so well, and despite all the heavy work, it seems that they have still had the time and the inclination to study. And it is still more remarkable that they have now apparently made greater progress than they did when we were there to help them verbally. Hafil left more than a hundred books behind, but even that was not nearly enough.

139

They were

especially handicapped

by their lack of

knowledge in modern languages, which they have now started to learn from Dutch textbooks. They are now ap-

parently diligently working on languages, and there are a few who have already made sufficient progress with English to read books in that language. It is really a great accomplishment for them, and I think I have certainly underestimated their abilities. One thing is certain, however, and that is that when they do eventually return to normal society, they will be much more enlightened and wiser than when they left it. In the meantime, there have been still more exiles sent to

Digoel; sometimes even people who have been in prison elsewhere ten to twelve years for the same political offense for which they are now being banished. In addition, this year no one has been sent back from Digoel. Furthermore, there is at present considerable propaganda being spread by fascist elements on the advantages of Digoel, and I have come to the conclusion that that institution will not disappear until Indonesia is finally free. Evidently it seems so easy to the government to govern in such a way: simply to send all the troublesome cases to Digoel, and to intimidate the population as a whole into the bargain. If only they had a bit more wisdom, they would realize that it is too simple and easy a method to be good. It will become increasingly evident as time goes on that it is the government itself, by its own policy of political aggression, that is creating a revolutionary situation here; a situation that makes the whole population more and more politically conscious, and a situation that is evolving in a way much more dangerous to the government itself than the existence of hundreds of Soekarnos, Hattas, P.N.I.’s, and Partindos.

140

That they should be able to realize this cannot, of course, be expected. Instead they will continue along the same lines until of a sudden they will perceive with a shock the ines-

capable consequences of their own actions. I had hoped that the new governor general might be inclined to try something somewhat less “simple” in his administration

than was formerly the wont, but thus far there have been no signs in this direction. Raison @état is not calculated in terms of human lives. Raison d’état? We will have to wait a while to see whether raison is to be equated with reasonableness and wisdom in this particular case. Anyhow, it is not my problem to deliberate on what is and what is not advisable for the perpetuation of colonialism in this country! DECEMBER 239, 1936 Occasionally I leave the work that I am doing for pure literature, such as one of the books of Nietzsche or Ter Braak. Apart from that, however, I feel particularly attracted at present toward the pursuit of a study of French and English positivism. The niceties of playing with ideas and words that one finds in German philosophy are gradually beginning to lose their charm for me. The depth of Kant or Hegel no longer seems to me to be superior to that of a Comte or a Spencer, or a Hume or a Mill. After completing Mill, I want to go further with a study of the modern phi-

losophers: Bertrand Russell, Eddington, and Julian Huxley. I had already conceived this plan at Digoel, because I don’t . think I can go any further in my present ideas until I know for sure whether the results of their investigations belie the conclusions that I have tentatively reached. I have gradually been able to free myself from my former

141

slavish idolatry to academic authority and “officially recognized” knowledge. Authority in knowledge no longer signifies very much to me, and the change is as though my

mind has grown freer. Neither officially nor unofficially recognized authorities rule my thoughts, blinding me by their brilliance and killing or banishing any original thinking on my own part. What I am now trying to accomplish is, furthermore, not a study aimed at justifying the knowledge of the past, or at making a choice between different teachers or schools of thought. It is, rather, an attempt to arrive at a harmonious, personal truth after taking full cognizance of what has already been learned, thought, and accepted as positive, and of the criticism that has been directed toward this body of accepted knowledge and toward the whole structure of the modern world. Whether this “truth” can be integrated or joined with

another system or school makes no difference to me. The important thing is not the name or the school, but the firmness and equilibrium that such a vital conviction can per-

haps give to one’s life; a conviction, moreover, that may serve as a solid basis for one’s thoughts and actions. Of course, I shall never reach such a goal, but I mean this in a relative sense. The firmness, harmony, and equilibrium to which I am referring are rather to be regarded as points of stability in an endless cycle of flux and movement. What I seek is not a fixed and perpetual balance, but a process of development evolving in such a way that one feels life is expanding and that he himself is growing in spirit. That feeling is not a negative opposition to change. It is instead a positive quantity, and the internal satisfaction to

which it can give rise is what I mean by “equilibrium.” The “harmony” of this state of existence implies the reconcilia-

142

tion of the demands of the intellect with the requirements of emotional life—the requirements of flesh, blood, and senses. It implies the consequent linkage of actions to this reconciliation. This is really the whole question of the art of living, and because the factors involved are different in every man, the problem and the solution differ for each of us. The intellect of a Papuan exercises entirely different demands than our intellects, and there is even a great difference between my intellect and that of my closest friend. What appeals to and satisfies his intellect does not suit me, and vice versa. At the moment, I feel that the emotions are primary to life in the same sense that nature is the most basic and strongest force in the world. I think, furthermore, that both intellect and action—but particularly the latter—are dependent upon, and receive their stimuli from, the broadly natural—and not specifically human—passions and emotions.

Marx and Freud showed their genius in making a distinction between the conscious and subconscious lives of the individual. The conscious—that is, the life of the intellect—

is often not really Jife, but rather a veneer, a life of selfdeception and appearance only. It is simply a channel for appeasing conscience, and for preventing an internal conflict with the general ideas and concepts that we all accept, if only subconsciously, in ourselves, as norms. On the other hand, I know definitely from my own experience that the intellect can make demands upon the natural, emotional life; that the intellect can influence and, to a certain extent, even govern it. Even an understanding of the primacy of the life of flesh, blood, and sense is actually already gained as an intellectual insight. It is, in fact, only through this insight that the intellect can be put at rest.

143

There is no question here of a one-sided dependence of the intellect on the emotions. It is, rather, simply a question as to whether we are able to make a proper distinction, according to realistic criteria, between intellect and emotions. On this point, I feel a special need for finding out more. The explanations and assertions that I have thus far read concerning relief for the difficulties encompassed in the question of intellect, body, and life have not satisfied me. In most of these assertions, the intellect is concerned with concepts, abstractions, and with theories, thus with what

is not seen but is experienced internally; and yet the intellect seems to possess a confidence and a certainty that it is not being active in vain; it applies its findings to the world, and regards its predictions and conclusions as reality. The intellect seems to subdue the world before it, and yet who could deny the usefulness of pure intellect in the field of the natural sciences? On the other hand, however, the natural, empirical sciences have not yet been able to in-

vestigate the intellect itself, or to explore the method by which our theoretical knowledge arises, or the continuity of our emotional and intellectual lives—not only in a formal sense, but in a substantive sense as well. This does not necessarily suggest that everything derives from a concept of matter, but rather that such a basic concept is connected with the most positive knowledge and most exact manner of thinking to which we have attained, the exact sciences.

DECEMBER 31, 1936

For me, the West signifies forceful, dynamic, and active life. It is a sort of Faust that I admire, and I am convinced

that only by a utilization of this dynamism of the West can the East be released from its slavery and subjugation.

144

The West is now teaching the East to regard life as a

struggle and a striving, as an active movement to which the concept

of tranquillity

must

be subordinated.

Goethe

teaches us to love striving for the sake of striving, and in such a concept of life there is progress, betterment, and enlightenment. The concept of striving is not, however, necessarily connected with destruction and plunder as we now

find it. On the contrary, even in Faust, striving and struggle have the implication of constructive work, of undertaking great projects for the benefit of humanity. In this sense, they signify a struggle against nature, and that is the

essence of struggle: man’s attempt to subdue nature and to rule it by his will. The forms that the struggle take indicate the development and refinement of the individuals who are engaged in the effort. What we need is not rest—or death—but a higher form

of living and of striving. We must extend and intensify life, and raise and improve the goals toward which we strive. This is what the West has taught us, and this is what I admire in the West despite its brutality and its coarseness. I would even take this brutality and coarseness as accompanying features of the new concept of life that the West has taught us. I would even accept capitalism as an improvement upon the much famed wisdom and religion of the East. For it is precisely this wisdom and religion that make us unable to understand the fact that we have sunk to the lowest depths to which man can descend: we have sunk to slavery and to enduring subjugation. What we in the East admire most in the West is its in-

destructible vitality, its love for life and for the fulfillment of life. Every vital young man and young woman in the East ought to look toward the West, for he or she can learn

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only from the West to regard himself or herself as a center

of vitality capable of changing and bettering the world. The East must become Western in the sense that it must acquire as great a vitality and dynamism as the West. Faust must reveal himself to the Eastern man and mind, and that

is already going on at present. It is, I suppose, not so unusual that I am sometimes called a “half Westerner,” and that I am often distrusted by those who are fanatically inclined toward Eastern civilization and culture, and who reject Western “materialism.” It is true that I hate self-deception and submissiveness, and that instead I support the desire and courage to live that the West represents. This does not, however, mean that I idealize the West as

it now is. On the contrary, I am quite aware that there is deceit and decay in the West as well, but I nevertheless

feel that it represents an improvement over what is generally and commonly implied by the term “Eastern.” What I value most highly in the West is its resilience, its vitality, its rationality—and it is only rationality that can possibly control human life.

JANUARY 14, 1937 The press reports of the kidnaping of Chiang Kai-shek by “Communist troops’”—which later turned out to be the troops of Chiang’s own subordinate, Chang Hsueh-liang— give another indication of the revolution that is going on in China. The revolutionary process itself is not hard to understand and even to calculate in advance, but the political conduct of the leaders, and thus the apparent course of events, which receives the major share of publicity, are absolutely bewildering. . . .

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Nanking, or rather Shanghai, where the so-called “strong

man” of China, Chiang Kai-shek, is headquartered, is a vortex of international activity. All the foreign powers that have vast interests in China are active, and besides, the Chinese bourgeoisie is at its strongest there. It is this latter fact that makes Chiang Kai-shek stronger than his old rivals. He and his power—that is to say, his soldiers—are not directly dependent on foreign nations. It is, rather, the Chinese bankers and industrialists who have made it possible for him to become the “strongest man with the most orderly administration in China.” It is a wellknown fact that Chiang is the executor of the wishes of the

Soong family, who in turn are the leaders of Chinese banking. Chiang is, finally, bound firmly to the Soongs through his wife. When Chiang bargains, he does so in the service of the

“Soong dynasty”’; and all the slyness that is so highly valued and publicized by the press as the maneuvers of Shanghai and of Chiang Kai-shek actually find their source in the active and self-conscious bourgeoisie of China as represented

by the Soongs. This bourgeoisie has, moreover, no higher aspirations than the maintenance of its position and its profits, and it is far too weak in China to have any expansive dreams. Shanghai is satisfied with Shanghai and does not dream of mastery over China. This is why I feel that a uni-

fied China, a Chinese nation, can never be expected from Shanghai. Shanghai has no desire to form a real, centralized government. It is content with the profits it now reaps, and it is

quite willing to earn these profits by acting as the servant of the greater world bourgeoisie, and as the latter’s paid agent. Shanghai does not want, and will never want, a war

with Japan, but on the other hand, it also wishes to remain

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on good terms with the English, the Americans, and, in short, with all wealth and power in the world! To look at the other side of the picture: the lower middle class in China is now restive, and nationalistically revo-

lutionary. The peasants are also revolutionary, and the workers too are revolutionary and even communistic. Canton’s opposition to the Central Government makes use of the nationalism of the lower middle class, and this particular brand of nationalism connotes two things: weakness in the foreground, and English influence behind the scenes. But the members of the lower middle class seem to be satis-

fied with this pretext of nationalism. They revile the Japanese, and they also revile Chiang Kai-shek, but that is as far as they go. For the rest, they willingly leave leadership

in the hands of Shanghai because they feel too impotent to seize the leading position themselves. There are also the millions of peasants and workers and the tens of thousands of students who are stirring under the influence of idealism. They want a revolution, and they

want to cleanse China of the domestic and foreign enemies of the Chinese people. They find their nuclei in the socalled communist bands, which are spread throughout China, not only in the “Soviet” provinces. They are everywhere in China, wherever there is a spirit of resistance and opposition. In a few provinces in middle China, west-southwest China, and north-northeast China they have finally seized political power. Actually this element amounts to a peasant revolt under Communist leadership. Its success lies neither in its military

might nor in its strong and efficient organization, but rather in the response and sympathy that its aims and actions elicit from the millions of poor peasant farmers and workers in China. It has the silent support of those millions, and it

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finds its inexhaustible reservoir of man power in those millions. Anyone who is somewhat more familiar with the Chinese situation than is possible from the press reports knows that those communist bands can never be eradicated, because of the fact that even with foreign assistance, the Chinese bour-

geoisie cannot be strong enough, in a country as huge as China, to subjugate millions of people, as now is the case in Germany, for example. Even if there were no Soviet Russia, there would still be communist bands in China. That they are in effect now receiving aid from Soviet Russia is highly probable, and this would be true if it were

only due to the fact that hundreds of their leaders have received their education in that land. It is, furthermore, both probable and logical that Soviet Russia attaches value and importance to the movement in China, and that it therefore considers and uses this movement as a factor in its foreign policy. However, there is no doubt that the movement itself has ready access to a core of the best and most gifted Chinese youth, and that it is fully able to chart its own course. Mao Tse-tung, the genial leader of the movement, is now about forty years old, and he is particularly adept at at-

tracting the best of China’s youth to his cause. Of course, the intellectual bourgeoisie of Shanghai would have to be quite stupid not to realize all this, and not to understand

that their greatest danger comes from that source. Consequently there are the incessant punitive expeditions to exterminate “communists,” and these expeditions please the foreign interests, who sometimes even show their pleasure by contributing material support for the maintenance of the Central Government armies involved. It is certainly re-

markable that Chiang Kai-shek has so many foreign friends

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and advisers, as well as the sympathy of the whole world’s | bourgeoisie!

And now the accretion of resistance to the Japanese invasion is being accompanied by a growth in the resistance movement against the Chinese bourgeoisie. All revolutionary elements, whether they are really communistic or not, are being integrated into the revolutionary movement of the communist bands. That does not, however, indicate that Chang Hsueh-liang must have been acting on behalf of Soviet Russia when he captured Chiang Kai-shek, and when, as ransom, he made certain political demands upon the Kuomintang concerning the forthcoming elections—demands that seem to be simply a duplication of the demands of the communist bands. Rather, Chang knew that by such an action he was appealing to the vast, invisible, and latent might of the whole Chinese people, and that Shanghai well realized that the communist bands were growing strong, and would become

a more and more decisive factor as time goes on in the development of both the internal and external situation. That Chang finally allowed himself to be paid off by Soong is quite understandable, particularly if one is aware that the son of Chang Tsso-lin could not possibly have or have had any real sympathy toward the communist bands. From his point of view, it was nothing more than blackmail against Shanghai, and I wonder whether he really un-

derstood the content of the demands that he made. I think . it is more likely that the demands were drawn up for him

by others, by real revolutionaries who were using him for their own purposes. It is thus similarly likely that the spirit of the communist bands may finally spring forth among Chiang Kai-shek’s own troops as well. That is really the ma-

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jor lesson that we can learn from these recent developments. The formulation of those communistic demands was not

so much dependent on Japanese or Soviet Russian intrigue as it was on the feeling and sympathies of the people, par-

ticularly of the soldiers and officers, involved. With this factor in one’s mind, one can learn to distinguish between the vital and the incidental events in the Chinese scene.

Finally, the Japanese advance is the greatest propaganda for the ideas of the communist bands, because resistance to

Japanese aggression has always been prominent in their policies. JANUARY 20, 1937 To my surprise, I have recently noticed that the short stories in American magazines have undergone a real change, and that they now are a class above those found in Dutch publications. This alteration seems to have occurred during the last few years of the Roosevelt administration, and from the improved caliber of American films, it also appears that under Roosevelt the Americans have acquired more and more spirit, refinement, and taste. Moreover, the common, banal films at present no longer come from America, but from Germany and Holland and the rest of Europe; and it is, in fact, the American films that have the higher spiritual stature now. An American culture is thus apparently developing, for the spirit behind these films is definitely not European. I find the new, developing American culture better, because it contains a sort of dry objectivity that is nevertheless permeated with spirit and humor. In the magazines there are the same tendencies. It seems to me that these American attitudes and feelings are closer

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to us in Indonesia than the questions occupying the Van Gogh-Kaulbachs, the Dekkers, and the Vestdijks. There

is no fatuous shopkeeper’s nonsense, none of the false petit bourgeois emotionalism. There is no prolixity from men who are poor in mind and experience, and there is no attempt to apply cumbersome and literary intellectualism to the treatment of psychological varieties, complexes, and the problems of life and death. By contrast, in America life and the mind are regarded as phenomena that are interesting in themselves, and the

means of expression are of secondary importance. It might be called simply old-fashioned realism or “Americanized” naturalism, but the most important thing is that it is eminently

suited for the representation of American life. To portray American life, it appears that this dry objectivity, this emphasis on brevity and intensity, rather than volume of verbiage, is the natural means of expresston. And reading these magazines, one arrives at the surprising conclusion that the caliber of these stories rests on the caliber of the American masses, and that this caliber has thus risen above that of the European masses. There can hardly be any doubt that the ordinary stories

and articles currently appearing in American publications compare very favorably with the best that the top Dutch literary magazines—such as Mork’s Magazine, Elsevier, or Groot Nederland—have to offer. One indication of the wisdom at which they have arrived in America lies in the key words “relax” and “relaxa-

tion”—both mental and physical—which seems to be an important theme in most of the short stories. The impor-

tance of relaxation, actually, is one of the most recent of psychological revelations, and the fact that relaxation is

now regarded in America as a sort of cure-all is itself some-

T$2

a

thing of a psychological phenomenon. After the idolatry of

“strain” and “business,” it is only logical that the gospel of relaxation and internal tranquillity should come to the fore. You hardly ever notice the words “success” or “business” in the American stories now, and instead you encounter “reflection,” “internal harmony,” and “balance.” What particularly. concerns me is the intellectual problems of that new America seem to be so closely related to our own in this country, which I think indicates that we are not exceptions, but only representatives of our generation. At present I am following what our neophytes in Indonesia are producing in this field, and while there are certainly signs of progress, there is still insufficient knowledge, so that all remains awkward and primitive. We are not yet intellectually as well equipped as Europe, by any means. We must build here a completely new culture, because

the old is effete and useless for our time. There are no linkages to make possible a gradual transition and amplification

from the cultural expressions of the fifteenth century— which are still in our midst—to our own times. Still, the main hindrance to our youth remains their limited knowledge and experience, and I do not think that that tempo can be forced. Compared to the tempo of the past, and of other Eastern peoples, we are already progressing quickly enough.

Among our own magazines, the intellectual level is not yet very high, and there is not yet any originality; there is still too much repetition without sufficient understanding of what is actually being said.

JANUARY 25, 1937 Among the few people whom I occasionally visit here, there is an old fisherman and his wife with their two grand-

E53

children, who live in a little hut on the beach. If I have been swimming or if I pass by during my walks, I occasionally drop in on them. I find it so pleasant to sit and listen to their stories about fishing, and about the islands and their people. For the most part, the stories are lore and legend

that have largely originated in Lonthor, a small town on Great Banda. Lonthor was the former center of the principality that these islands constituted before they came in contact with the Europeans. The Portuguese and Spaniards who first came here dealt with the prince of Lonthor, and Neira itself became more important only after the Europeans built their first fort there. It seems that through all the centuries, the people of Lonthor have kept up a written chronicle, which is now kept in the kampong meeting house and is regarded as sacred. It has never been lent out, and they say that a great deal of money has been offered for it. At times of feast and celebration connected with their history, they read to the villagers from the book, and as a result the people—on Neira as well—all are familiar with the contents of the stories. I would guess that only a historian

could distill the true and the factual from the chronicle, | because they say that it begins with history of the first people who lived on these islands! They of course were royal children, seven in number, but they were not, like other royal children, born of human beings. Instead, they allegedly had no parents and came from a flower. Elsewhere

in the chronicle, they probably say that our Goenoeng Api is the wayward spouse of the Goenoeng Api of Ternate! For the simple people here, this is the history of their is-

lands, and not legends or myths. In their customary law (adat), moreover, this belief—or superstition, as the strict Islamites call it—is strongly expressed, and there is again,

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in this sense, something unreal and mythical about these islands.

FEBRUARY 2, 1937 The children are not coming for their lessons this afternoon, since they are going to the boat with a family that is leaving. This family will first go due east with a Japanese boat, and then back to Macassar. The roundabout trip is half as cheap as the direct K.P.M. boat. Actually the Japanese service is quite remarkable, and it must be a K.P.M. : concession, since the K.P.M. has a monopoly in Indonesia.

In general, Japanese interest in this outer eastern part of our archipelago has grown considerably of late. Hundreds

of small Japanese fishing boats sail in these waters, and they say there are also larger schooners and other ships. The whole business hardly seems to be completely tranquil and peaceful, since otherwise we should not receive continual visits from Dutch warships here. Moreover, Ambon has been made into a secondary base for the fleet, and an English cruiser is now lying in our lovely bay. It has been here for four days. The cruiser is part of a fleet group that for some time now has been cruising in these waters. Of course, everything occurs quietly, and I think there is no mention of it in the press in Holland. Nevertheless, we in this outof-the-way place feel that something is going on.

FEBRUARY

9, 1937

A few days ago we had some visitors here from Digoel,

who were on their way back to Java and Sumatra. Their faces were

obviously malarial, and in Neira such drawn

faces are particularly conspicuous. We must have looked something like that when we came.

I wonder whether Digoel has now really become a per55

manent, integral part of the Dutch colonial system. These people who came to call on us were being sent back at the cost of the government, but they did not have a cent with them. Hafil and I had nothing to give them, and I was really

troubled by it. One of them was a woman, also an exile, whose husband has remained behind at Digoel. She had received permission to leave four years ago, but stayed with her husband until now. During the last year, however, she was continually ill, and had to leave finally because of her health. She certainly looked like a ghost when we saw her. Naturally, her family is gone, and after ten years in exile she hasn’t the least idea where to begin looking for them. Mentally she is broken; for example, she told us, as though it were the most normal thing in the world, how she had

participated in the celebration of Princess Juliana’s birthday, and how her husband had sung the Wilhelmus on the occasion. Hafil responded with a virulent verbal attack, but fortunately I was able to stop him before it had gone too far. He had not realized that she had become feeble-minded, and that she was a mentally and physically broken person as a result of the long internment.

We heard from her news of the situation in Digoel, and

of the others who stayed behind there. It seems that they are managing to get along fairly well now. Sometimes Digoel seems to be far away from me, and yet I don’t think that the Digoel period will ever be effaced from my mind; at least, not unless Digoel itself completely disappears, and the whole thing becomes simply a bad dream. For the present, at least, that doesn’t seem likely. I have now also heard that Liantoe is not yet fully recovered.

If he has to stay there for another few years, I think it is very likely that he wili go completely mad.

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FEBRUARY 18, 1937 It is fortunate that not all the officials sent here by the Dutch become demoralized in the long run. There are men like Lefebvre, to say nothing of Multatuli,* and many others as well. There are also Dutch women who do not undergo psychological distortion and disintegration under the abnormalities of a life among “colored races” and “starving submissives.”

Furthermore, our society already has manifested considerable change, and time has acted as a strong leveler. There is, for example, less megalomania and arrogance among the Dutch rulers now than fifteen years ago, and there is also more self-confidence among the Indonesians. The abnor-

mality of such a colonial society, which derives mainly from the peculiar psychic relationships and attitudes that characterize it, are slowly disappearing; not because of an ethical policy and not because of intent on the part of either

the rulers or the ruled, but simply because of the inexorable process of society adapting itself to the needs of the modern

productive apparatus. That process of modernization progresses with or without crisis. Crisis merely has the effect of hastening the process.

In addition, the place that the Indos

[or Eurasians]

occupy in the colonial society has been altered. In spite of everything, the Indos are gradually becoming Indonesians, or one could say that the Indonesians are gradually coming to the level of the Indos. The evolution of the deeply in* Lefebvre was an assistant resident on Sumatra’s west coast. He re-

signed after a dispute with the government. Multatuli was the pen name of the Dutch

writer E. Douwes Dekker, who wrote the famous Max Havelaar, a book exposing and condemning the evils of the “culture system’”—a

sort of share-cropper

agriculture—in

the nineteenth-century

colonial order.

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grained process of transformation in our society first established the Indos in a privileged position, and now that same process is withdrawing those privileges. Even if they retain their “European” status before the law, they will still be on a level with the Indonesians, because there are and will continue to be many more educated Indonesians than Indos. Their privileged position thus is losing its social foundation, and as a result that position itself will also disappear. There are, however, very few of the Indos who realize this. In Indo circles there is certainly a lack of foresight and idealism, and yet this lack is understandable. They are, indeed, spiritually more oppressed than we Indonesians, since they are oppressed from both sides. It is sad but true that as a result they are all psychologically somewhat distorted. There are only very few among them who are able to free themselves from the psychic squeeze, and for the most part these are the ones who reach top positions in the colonial administration. Actually, they are then no longer really Indos, and they go to Holland to spend their savings and their pensions when they are older.

FEBRUARY 25, 1937 Less than six months ago I started to teach my little Arabian pupils their ABC’s. The most advanced among them are now as far as pupils of the fourth grade of the lower school. The progress is really quite rapid, but this tempo is due to the great powers of absorption of children of their age. The most advanced of the group is a nice little girl of eleven years, who is most decidedly a bright child. They are all exceedingly nice children. They are my best friends here and we are truly close to each other. Since I have begun with them, their whole lives have changed a

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little, I think, and they look so neat and bright now that I am really proud of them. Hafil also teaches, but—except for Dr. Soeribno’s foster son—he gives lessons only to adults, to whom he teaches bookkeeping. According to the government’s educational ordinance, we are not allowed to give lessons to members of more than three families, and hence Hafil teaches three adults, and I teach the children from three families, five in number. ,

MARCH 12, 1937 Many Europeans long for the East, which signifies to them tranquillity and reflection. In reality, the East is no longer that promised land of peace of mind and spirit. Precisely as we were accused of idealizing Europe fifty years ago, the Europeans are now looking toward an East that several philosophers have idealized, but that in fact

has never existed. The East of Augusta de Wit exists only for people like Augusta de Wit, just as the East of the Buddhists exists only for the Buddhists. What is there of that East in Hong Kong or Shanghai or Tokyo, or even in Soerabaya or Batavia? Everywhere—and here in the East as

well—the tempo and rhythm of life has been accelerated. That much coveted tranquillity and peace can now be found only in remote places such as Neira, and even then it is not complete, because the radio has penetrated this isolation. The pulse of the world rhythm makes itself felt here as well. I don’t wish to exaggerate it, and it is true that there is still a difference in tempo that the city dweller of western Europe can’t miss. There is no doubt that the people here are calmer and more easygoing. But is it proper to exalt a constrained and far from pleasant situation of poverty and

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slavery as an ideal, simply by referring to it as “carefreeness” and “‘moral superiority”?

Similarly, one might say that the inhabitants of New Guinea are better off than we are, and yet I know that isn’t true. Certainly they would be unhappy if they had to live our life, but on the other hand, could we possibly be happy with their life of endless skin disease and eternal fear of evil spirits? After all that I have learned about the West through my education, my orientation, and my experience there, I certainly cannot and do not idealize it. On the other hand, I know only too well what the Eastern attributes, so admired by the Westerner, really are. I know that those attributes are molded and nourished only by the hierarchical relationship of a feudal society—a society in which a small group possesses all the material and intellectual wealth, and the vast majority live in squalor, and are made acquiescent by religion and philosophy in place of sufficient food. That longing of Westerners for the East, in effect, amounts to the same thing as a longing for the lost land of the Middle Ages, and the greater goodness and universality that presumably characterized it. It is the same as a longing for the past, and it is certainly a sign of age. I do not deny that wage slavery is worse and more miserable than feudal bondage. Wage slavery is accompanied by greater mental suffering because of the greater cares of existence and the constant pressure of insecurity and the dependence on others. But do we want to return to feudal bondage in order to escape the evils of the wage system?

That is what an idealization of the East signifies, because, in a spiritual and intellectual sense, we are still living here in the time of feudal servitude. All the so-called admirable Eastern attributes are remnants of a feudal system of pov160

erty and indolence, as a result of which we have finally almost become people who don’t care, and who are experts at doing nothing. It is a fact that there are people here, especially in Java, who can sit for hours thinking about absolutely nothing; “woolgathering,” as the West would call it. And is that an attribute, a virtue of the East? Perhaps, but only of that East which still lives amid feudal relationships that show none of the stimuli of modern life; only of that East in which millions have extra time because they have nothing else to do but produce their single plate of rice every day. People who have been indigent for generations have indeed become well versed in “Eastern” life; in other words, in the negation of the world and life. They have become experts in the art of negation, which they take to spontaneously and naturally. And now there are many Westterners who are envious of these people, because they themselves have forgotten what rest is. But they lose sight of one other vital fact, and that is that this sort of “art” can be developed and applied only under the heel of a ruler, and that it exemplifies only the virtue of endurance and adaptation. And even here, the fact again appears that life is stronger than all negation, because the negation itself is in the service of life. The East’s negation of life is really only an adaptation that makes an unbearable life bearable. That the ruler envies the slave is, again, understandable. For tolerance and endurance are indeed real attributes, and in a certain sense one can truly say that the slave has cultivated the art of life—that is, the art of self-adaptation—more fully than the master. Still, there are only very few who wish to exchange places with the slave. In the final analysis why must we choose between the slave and the ruler, between the capitalistic West and the servile East? We do not 161

have to exchange or wish for one or the other. We can reject them both, since indeed they have both become, and will continue to become, antedated. MARCH 17, 1937 Here in Neira we are at present living in the time of the

tjoelik. A tjoelik is someone—according to the custom—who hunts heads for the government. And why does the government need these heads? Simply as an offering and a spirit for a bridge that is going to be built, since each new bridge will need a head to be placed on top of a special pillar. Without such a head the bridge cannot be built, or it will be so weak that it will soon crumble. As calm and tranquil as the people here usually are, they are nervous and fearful now. After seven o’clock in the evening almost no one ventures out in the streets, and all the houses are tightly locked. Behind the doors and windows the people sit with anxious faces, shuddering every time they hear a noise. Although I heard of tjoeliks when I was a boy, I have never encountered anything like this before. I always thought it was a device used by maids and servants to frighten the children and make them obey more readily. The source of the present situation lies in the fact that the government is now rebuilding the jetty. There have, naturally, been a few accidents connected with the work, and as a result the local people have been living in fear of the tjoeliks for over a week. In fact, all of Neira is suffering from the tjoelik fear at present. At first I didn’t pay any attention to it, and the houseboy laughed a little when he told me about it. Gradually, however, I realized that people were talking and whispering about it everywhere, 162

including people of all sects and beliefs, and those of whom you would never have expected such superstition.

Nervously and fearfully they gather each morning, with new gossip about where the tjoelik was seen the previous night, or where he was heard. If two women meet each other on the street in the morning, invariably the talk turns immediately to the tjoelik. In fact, a few days ago our houseboy came to my room to tell me about the happenings of the night before. It seems that they chased the tjoelik until late in the night, but of course they couldn’t catch

him. Certainly, if they had, the whole world would now know about it! On the other hand, the tjoelik is never able to catch up with any heads, so he too must be disappointed! At first I tried to talk them out of all this nonsense. They listened, laughed a bit, but still remained frightened and convinced of the existence of the tjoelik. The whole thing is unbelievable: calm “loyal” Christians, who support the House of Orange and who are glad to follow Dutch leadership, are now fully convinced that the same government for which they have so much respect and loyalty hires people to waylay them. One fellow told me in dead earnest that at night criminals who have been imprisoned by the Dutch are let loose on the inhabitants of Neira, and that under cover of Dutch police guards, these prisoners, together with head-hunters of Borneo who are brought here at night from a certain island, Poelau Manoek, do the tjoeliking! I even said to a few of them that they could be sent to prison for five years if the government found out that they were spreading such gossip. They replied simply that they knew it, but they went on with their gossip anyhow. There was one old woman who pleaded with me never to go out in the street after seven o’clock. I asked her how old she

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was, and when she said she was over sixty, I asked her if, during her whole life, she had ever heard of or known a case where a tjoelik had actually been able to get a head. At first she looked at me with great surprise, and then admitted that she had not. I told her that the tjoelik must cer-

tainly be stupid if that is the case, and that he therefore was no one to be afraid of. She nodded shyly in reply, but she remained frightened. For that matter, the whole thing is a good example of

mass psychosis, and reasoning can actually do nothing about it. I then asked her why the tjoelik let me alone, and the others who dared to be on the street after seven o'clock. She answered that they would naturally not attack me, and they let the other rich people alone because they paid such high taxes! There are certainly people who have been sent to Digoel for very much less than this, and here is this gossip among these good “loyal” Christian natives, whose ideal is to become soldiers in the Dutch army! The whole thing was really new to me and I am trying now to find out more about it. I no longer argue with them, but simply listen to them in order to find out just exactly how they conceive of it. Every morning there are new stories, generally about footsteps or voices, or a house that was bombarded with stones, or an attack on somebody by a tjoelik with a noose, or a cowboy lasso. Naturally, the person who was attacked got away from the tjoelik in the nick of time! In the mornings if I go walking through the kampong, there is always commotion there. The people stand or crouch in little groups on the side or in the middle of the path, speaking and acting nervously and in a way that is not at all like their normal habit. It seems that there is a “tjoelik time” every year, and this

164.

is probably a phenomenon for the psychoethnologist,

or

perhaps for the psychiatrist. It is impossible to say who starts it, but the fact is that everyone contributes, and each one gossips with the deepest conviction about the activities of the tjoelik. It all remains more or less innocent gossip,

since the tjoelik has never been able to catch up with anybody. This is really a remarkable characteristic of our people. They are not afraid of sharks, and they are certainly profound fatalists in almost all matters. Yet they are so

frightened by a phantom such as the tjoelik that they completely lose their balance. It is easy to see here again that individuals who have a fear psychosis are simply not susceptible to reasoning. I think, in fact, that the passions and emotions of man can never be completely eliminated by

the mind. On the contrary, the mind can govern only in so far as these emotions permit it to, and whenever the emotions themselves become fully active, the mind is shut out or is subservient to them.

MARCH 20, 1937 I usually keep Saturday evenings free to read a novel

or some magazines. At present I have Stiefmoeder Aarde [“Stepmother Earth”] by Theun de Vries. And sometimes I read something of Nietzsche or Goethe, whose collected works I now have here.

Things have been quiet during the last few days, and we are hardly disturbed by any visitors, since everyone is afraid

of the tjoelik. This morning I even heard that a certain Mrs. P., a full-blooded Swiss, is living in mortal fear of the tjoelik! I also heard that the doctor is now suspected of being a tjoelik, because he was seen one afternoon with two agents of the police in the woods. The thing is thus becoming still more aggravated.

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It is on such elements in the human make-up that the success of the Hitlers and the Musserts depend, to a large extent, and not only their success, but the wild enthusiasm for the House of Orange in Holland, and for the marriage

celebrations of Juliana as well. It is literally a sort of spiritual infection, which the average man simply cannot resist. Besides the tjoeliks, they have ghosts on Banda. We, for example, are living in a “haunted house,” and the respect in which we are held is augmented not inconsiderably by this fact. Moreover, women who die in childbirth—and particularly Christian women—are believed to come out of their graves and wander around the islands in the forms of

evil spirits, or pontianaks. There is no legend of their having harmed anyone, but the people are nonetheless deathly afraid of them. And it is really a form of death fear, a fear of the living and arisen death. It is a primitive fear, but it is nevertheless there. I think that one might be able to define and measure a people’s civilization and development according to the refinement of their death fear. We, too, have that same instinctive fear, although we express it in more “refined” ways. One has only to consider Mrs. P. in order to realize that ours is, in kind, the same basic death fear as that of the primitive, and that there is even possible a spiritual meeting of minds between a Swiss and a Kaja-Kaja. The worry and fear of these people throughout the night is absolutely undescribable. The tjoeliks and the pontianaks still rule in this beautiful paradise, which Europeans find so peaceful and happy. ‘The materialistic West knows nothing of all this. In Europe there exists only the dread of material

failure, of class struggle, and of spiritual and intellectual confusion—all signs of the rule of Mammon. The presence here in the people’s beliefs of these ghosts 166

and tjoeliks—which indeed should be more at home in hell! —is the best indication that we are not in paradise, but in the world—the world that is simultaneously a paradise and a hell!

MARCH 22, 1937 Last evening I read a piece of Jef Last’s Huis zonder Vensters [“House without Windows” to Nellie Cresa. I doubt whether she understood much of it, because it involves a world of thought that is so remote from her that she could not possibly follow it. Sick and sequestered on her chair as she has now been for so long, she no longer reads any newspapers, and formerly she probably read only

local news and the woman’s page. She is not familiar with any of the political figures in Europe or Holland, and this is true of all the women here, the Indonesians, the half-bloods or Indos, and the pure Europeans. For the most part they have gone only to grammar school or junior high school, but even those who have been to high school or another

secondary school are no better off. The same is true in Java as well. In any case, from House without Windows I read her the conversation between Mohammed and Paul; the first as the representative of the East, and Paul as the most ad-

vanced representative of the West. I must say that Jef Last hasn’t done very much with the whole thing, and the best that Paul brings to bear against Mohammed 1s rather feeble. In all fairness, I think that my criticisms of Eastern “wis-

dom,” compared with those of Paul in his argument with Mohammed,

mark me—an Easterner—as a better defender

of the West than Paul, alias Jef Last! Instead of exposing

the inaccuracies of Mohammed’s standpoint by going into

them more deeply, Last merely presents a weak defense 167

about the service of technology in the world to come. In fact, I find the whole book weak and unconvincing. The

same characteristics were apparent in his Liefde in de Portieken [“Love in the Porticoes’’]. Last has too pathetic a nature to be an accomplished novelist, and he should rather attempt the genre poetic prose, in the style of van Schendel or Stefan Zweig. With Last, word artistry remains the major concern. In other words, he is too much of an artist with words, and too little of a psychologist, to be a good novelist. Each of his main

characters lacks depth and substance. It is as though the writer doesn’t understand the people with whom he comes in contact, or as though he is sufficiently occupied with

their superficiality not to be desirous of penetrating more deeply into their motives and Such a deeper penetration by the use of modern means, work of some of the younger

reactions. can, in fact, be accomplished as the Russian novels and the European writers show. Mal-

raux’s Les Conquerants is a case in point: objective, but so minutely and accurately observed and depicted that the spiritual motion of the characters can be followed clearly without the aid of any critical commentary. It is certainly true, however, that this art of objectivity

can be appreciated only by the most sophisticated readers, because the masses still require education even to understand the happenings of their own everyday life. Objectivity in writing requires active participation on the part of the reader, independent conclusions, and personal penetration into the minds of the characters. I can thus understand why Last sometimes seems oldfashioned in his desire to be clear. It may have been a con-

cession to his mass audience, and yet, precisely in this treatment, he shows that he does not understand his charac168

ters. His Captain Dujardin, for example, is simply a model from a well-known formula that the trade widely uses. I did not, in fact, expect a really good novel from Last.

His style is more suited to battle songs and declamations than to the novel form. It is certainly a pity, because he has been able to see much more of the world and of people than perhaps all of the other young writers in Holland put together. His natural inclination toward pathos has always prevented him from transforming his quantitative experience of breadth into a qualitative experience of depth. Compared with the other Dutch writers, however, he has the advantage that even his superficial experiences are more interesting than their toiling with psychological hobbies

and with the narrow, petit bourgeois problems of life in Holland.

MARCH 24, 1937 The Arabian children to whom I give lessons are children

of Sajids; that is, of Arabs who are considered and respected as direct descendants of the Prophet. They are thus what

might be called Arab nobility; the boys are called sajids and the girls sjarifas. Furthermore, a sjarifa is supposed to marry only a sajid, whereas a sajid, as representative of the priv-

ileged sex, is allowed to marry a nonsjarifa, or even a nonIslamite woman. Here in Indonesia the sajids constitute, in general, the most conservative group among the Arabs in their practices. As soon as a sjarifa becomes a woman she is koe-

roenged, or shut up. In Arabia the practice involves only the wearing of a veil and leaving the house only in the evening when accompanied by a chaperon. The sjarifas are considered to be women when their menstruation begins, and from this time on, they cannot be seen by any men ex-

169

cept the members of their immediate families. Here the

confinement itself is called the koeroeng. Outside of Java, the Indonesians have adopted this custom as well, in those areas where Islamic influence is strong. And here on Neira, for example, the Indonesians also confine their daughters. Among the Arabs themselves, the koeroeng practice applies mainly to sjarifas, but oddly enough the Arabs on Neira generally have more liberal at-

titudes on this subject than do the Indonesians. For example, it would be unthinkable among the Arabs in Java for the parents of two girls like Mimi and Lili, who are both sjarifas and are still far from being women, to allow

their children to come to me every day for lessons. In Java, actually, the only education that the sjarifas can and must have is religious education, or reading the Koran. They are, moreover, brought up only to serve their future husbands with the feminine Arab virtues: first of all obedience, and then feminine grace, cleanliness, and bodily care. They are thus brought up to be harem wives, and according to the Arab idea, intellectual development is bad for them. Here, for the most part, the sjarifas go to the European school, although they generally do not go beyond the sixth grade because their confinement begins at about that time. The koeroeng itself also takes place in a different way from the custom in Arabia. Not even the sjarifas wear veils, but instead the koeroeng simply requires that they stay at home

with their sarongs and kabajas, instead of dresses. The koeroenged girls sometimes appear on the street, but much less frequently than before the koeroeng goes into effect. The same custom exists in Spain, and the sjarifas here are considerably better off in this respect than many Spanish girls. Mimi and Lili are nice, bright children, and considerably

170

brighter and quicker than the so-called European children here. I was surprised to find this to be the case when I first saw them, but now I understand why. They are both grandchildren of the famous Baadilla, the “pearl king of Banda,” who personally presented to Queen Wilhelmina a pearl that he himself had dived for, and that she now has among her diadems. Formerly he was very rich, but he be-

came poor and finally died in extreme poverty, leaving his sons and daughters in dire circumstances.

That old Baadilla was evidently very progressive. Of course he could afford to be, because he was rich and the head of the Arab community here, so that the Arabs never dared to oppose his extravagant and even immoral ideas and actions. His daughters, for example, although they were not sjarifas, received a European education, and were even allowed to dance with Europeans. Dancing Arab girls are never found in Arab countries except in the dance houses. Mimv’s and Lili’s fathers are sajids, and they themselves are thus sjarifas, although their mothers are daughters of the

old Baadilla. In reality, these people are no longer Arabs, and so extensively have they mixed with other races that they do not have any more than a maximum of 20 per cent Arabian blood. In general, there is no doubt that among all the inhabitants of Neira, Indonesian blood dominates—and that includes the Arabs, the Chinese, and the so-called Eu-

ropeans. It is my impression that the true Bandanese—those who can, for example, trace their genealogy back four generations—are physically weaker than the other inhabitants. There are also many feeble-minded, tubercular, and leper cases among them, and I think that the cause lies in the fact that a sort of inbreeding has been practiced. The island is

Was

* small, and hence people of such a type usually marry others of the same type. The Europeans and the Arabs are almost all somewhat degenerate types; and only the Chinese, who either go to

China to marry or choose a wife from the working class— since they do not pay so much attention to class distinction —seem to maintain their physical stature. I think a biologi-

cal study of the miscegenation and blood mixtures of Banda and their effects would certainly be a worth-while project. In reality, I think that inbreeding and social taboos would tend to make such a study very difficult. As is everywhere

the case, the “sociality” of the individual and his psychic determinism—and in turn the effect that these have on physical qualities and on the nervous, thinking, and emotional systems—make this problem temporarily insoluble. Moreover, I doubt whether we stand to lose very much if we simply regard the problem as insoluble and hence as nonexistent. In any case, racial mixture here in the East is certainly more of a question for psychology and sociology than it is for biology. The key to the whole question is, I feel, the inferiority complex, since the mixtures in general are judged, regarded, and felt as social deviations, with all the consequences that such an attitude entails for the deviators. Actually, the best indication that this question is not a biological but a social and psychological problem lies in the fact that there is no such problem whatsoever among wellto-do Indos. Who, for example, would possibly think of calling that famous general or this prominent minister degenerate, because they obviously have Indonesian blood in their veins? Even the well-educated Indo here could not be called a degenerate. The determining factor is thus plainly not bio-

ET?

logical, but simply the social relationships involved. And it

is therefore much safer to analyze intellectual and spiritual attributes in terms of social patterns than in terms of blood mixtures. Of course, I do not deny that blood mixture must also have an influence, but it seems to me that this influence

could really be analyzed only among very primitive peoples—as, for example, would be the case in a cross between a Negro from middle Africa and a Lapp from the Arctic. But even this would make us no wiser as to the psychic and biological consequences of a cross between an Arab and a

Chinese, a Britain and an Indian, or a Turk and an Egyptian. I believe, furthermore, that among civilized peoples it is impossible to speak of races in the same sense as the term is used in biology or in the animal kingdom. During the course of centuries there have been far too many mixtures among these people, which cannot possibly be analyzed fully. There is, in fact, a question as to whether the pure

sense of the term “race” even applies to Negroes and to Kaja-Kajas. In appearance, the Kaja-Kajas often seem to differ in racial characteristics. Sometimes they show Negrito characteristics, but then also they manifest Semitic or Arab characteristics—and this diversity is typical not of a few individuals, but of the whole tribe.

MARCH 28, 1937 Yesterday at Nellie Cresa’s house I met a German curate from Saparoea who came here to conduct Communion. Nellie is a great admirer of this curate, and I am sure he is a good preacher, because he certainly seems to talk smoothly and abundantly in private conversation. For a German he spoke an excellent Dutch, and he seemed to be

elie:

considerably more refined than most of his colleagues whom I have thus far known. He seemed to be intelligent, though not wholly free of hypocrisy.

He came in with an ironic, more or less challenging look —evidently intended for me—and immediately launched into a discussion of his work and the courses he had taken at Leyden. Then I saw what he was trying to do: He wanted to show that at college he too had listened to professors! Moreover, he wanted to give the impression of being a full-

fledged minister! When I helped him along by modestly hearing him out, he became more at ease, and his challenging and belligerent attitude disappeared. He then even tried to be unusually polite to me, which his native hypocrisy made quite easy. I tried to start a conversation with him, and asked different questions to find out what sort of man he really was,

for Mrs. Soeribno also seemed to have great respect for him. He told me that he expected to go to Germany on leave very soon. (And it is not hard to deduce that when he gets there he will certainly turn into an ardent fascist.) I asked him about his impressions, experiences, and work in Indonesia, and he replied at some length, although carefully avoiding reference to anything about which he thought I might disagree with him. He began by stating that he had had almost nothing to do with the social life of the population as such, and had had no chance to form any opinions about it. (And that after having lived as curate for six years in one small village community!) He also found it necessary to speak to me about the difficulties that can arise between church and state. I had already understood him, and he gave himself . away further by referring to the “animism” of the people,

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and the police inspector who “could handle the people well.” He was perhaps more intelligent and refined than most of his colleagues, but he certainly does not deserve the esteem that Mrs. Soeribno accorded him. I suspect that he managed to put himself over by his German graciousness. I am encountering experiences here that I would never have been able to encounter in any other part of Indonesia. For example, I am getting to know the Christian element of our people better than I possibly could in the Batak lands

or even in Java. The Christian community here is already approximately three hundred, but both here and in Saparoea—according to the German curate—the Christianity practiced is a unique sort. It is often Christianity in word, but paganism—that is, animistic—in spirit and content. In addition to the tjoeliks, there is the belief in the transmigra-

tion of souls, coming from the Kaja-Kajas of New Guinea. Real development will not come here through religion, but only if the people themselves are placed more in contact with the intellectual life of the rest of the world. The peo-

ple here still live in a way that is far behind that of Java. TONE 0.1937 This is the time of the year when marriages are performed in Neira. We have already attended several marriage feasts, and early this morning there was another wedding invitation. I have also heard that there are several more next week, which we will be invited to attend. Actually it is beginning to be a little annoying, for I have already had enough of those feasts. The difficulty is that since I readily accepted the first invitations, I can’t very

well refuse the others without causing offense. For the kampong people, such a wedding is a great event and an op-

By.

portunity to emphasize or demonstrate the high social position of the families concerned. The richer and more substantial the family, the more numerous and more important the guests. Those who invite us are thus showing that they can suitably receive guests who are “better situated.”

If you don’t give them the chance to prove this, they are naturally disappointed and offended, since they feel they are too important to be ignored. The feasts themselves are really social events. People who earn hardly fifteen guilders a month often spend more than one hundred guilders for such a wedding feast. Usually the bridegroom pays most of the expenses, and among the Is-

lamites the girl is literally bought from the father. The purchase price is called wang antaran or “present of money,” and the more wealthy the bride’s family, the larger the wang antaran. In some cases, in fact, the money may really be a purchase price, and if the girl, though of a poor family, is lovely, and there are many who seek her hand, then the wang antaran may be competitive and may reach a level of hundreds or even thousands of guilders. On Sumatra’s east coast this was formerly a normal procedure. Here, how-

ever, the people are more modest. There are, furthermore, no wealthy Indonesians, and we—the “exiles’”—really constitute the “upper ten.” As a result, the wang antaran is generally only fifty guilders, and often even less. This

money is then used for the festivities. A few goats are killed, rice is served, and naturally there are all sorts of cakes, tea, and coffee. The feast is also accompanied by music of a brassy variety from the kampong

orchestra. Among the wealthier families there are often two bands—a kampong group and a “jazz band,” both consisting of Indonesians who, besides being musicians, are also fishermen, 176

carpenters, cleaners, or sellers. None

of

them can read notes, and yet they play the latest tunes, and

on key! They learn them from the gramophone records and more recently from the radio. Later in the evening _

there is Arab dancing to Arab music. The bridegroom is usually dressed in the Arabian mode

and the bride according to European fashion. Both receive congratulations in the European manner. How such things have changed during the last fifteen years in Indonesia! Formerly one would find such practices only among thoroughly Europeanized Indonesian families. In the kampongs one would see a sorrowful and shy bride with her eyes always turned toward the ground, and her face caked in powder, which made her look horribly unnatural. On the other side, there was the groom, who looked as though he would rather cry than laugh, and who never dared to look at his bride but turned his head the other way. Absolutely no handshaking took place, and it was practically inconceivable that anyone should touch the bride. And now one sees here, among the simplest people of the kampong, two laughing youngsters, dressed in their best clothes, exchanging happy glances, laughing back when others laugh at them, and shaking hands all around. I am curious whether this is also the case in the out-of-the-

way areas of Sumatra and Borneo. I have been told that this has all taken place here only during the last fifteen years, too. Our people are certainly not a conservative folk. In fact, one can say of the whole East that in these matters revolutionary changes are taking place. In the last fifteen years, for example, the Chinese have discarded customs of thousands of years. In the cities they have even become ultramodern. The Chinese youths speak of sexual freedom, and they live as loosely and freely as though they were in New

BY

York rather than Nanking or Hankow. It has not been so bad among us, but on the other hand we have never held to tradition and custom as hard and fast as the Chinese. For centuries we have allowed foreign influences to affect and modify our customs. We have always been a supple, easily adaptable people. Even among us it is clearly evident that

the tempo of change has accelerated during the last quarter century, and that a revolution is actually going on that most people remain unaware of, because they do not compare what they now see about them with what they can still remember from fifteen or twenty years ago. If the dead of a quarter century ago were to return for even a moment, they would think themselves in another world, and perhaps would wish they were back in their graves. But the living—and even the aged among them—are undergoing the changes without any resistance. There is almost no struggle between young and old now. The younger generation rules, pushes ahead, and gives the old no time to realize what is actually taking place. Women who have themselves spent most of their lives in their houses without being seen by any strange male eyes seem to accustom themselves with remarkable ease to the habits of their bobbed-haired daughters who dance, bicycle, and have boy friends. The East is being westernized. It can be deplored or applauded, but the process goes forward inexorably and rapidly. It is a fact that must be accepted and considered. If it is true, as some say, that we are living in a period of “the decline of the West,” then I think one can as well speak of the “decline of the world,” because that Western soul is no longer exclusively Western or European. I completely disbelieve this talk of decline, even if another world war soon breaks out.

178

I am convinced that the cause behind our people’s weakness is also really an unusual virtue; namely, its almost lim-

itless tolerance and its extraordinary adaptability. Originally, Hafil and I went to all the Mohammedan religious festivals bareheaded. Soebana did likewise, and

later another Arab from Java followed suit. At first the people regarded it strangely, but there was no protest. And when their scribes and scholars explained that the head covering was not really an integral part of the Islamic religion, they regarded the revelation as something quite new, but they nevertheless accepted it as some new wisdom. Now they find it quite normal, and in a few more years they may even do likewise themselves. Here everything new 1s allowed to grow, and sometimes

there are the strangest syntheses between old and new. It is certainly a fine trait in our people, but it is at the same time the secret behind the three hundred years of white rule.

What I have said applies, in the first place, to Java and the other islands that have always had contact with the outside world, and not to the interiors of Sumatra, Borneo,

or Celebes. In Atjeh (north Sumatra),* for example, the people have not been so tolerant. As a result, the Atjenese were able to rid themselves of foreign rule several hundred

years ago. This people of ours, in general, has the Christian (and Buddhist) virtue of tolerance, but, as Ludendorff would say, they also “have no grit and no character.” That is why we are the “gentlest people of the earth,” and that is why *The Atjenese of north Sumatra have probably been the most waramong the whole heterogeneous Indonesian people.

like local group

They have continually resisted by force Dutch attempts to establish a functioning civil administration in their land, and as a result acquired a

greater degree of autonomy than did other more docile groups. Throughout the three hundred years of Dutch rule in the islands, the Atjenese revolted almost regularly once every quarter century.

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we have been able to bear three hundred years of foreign

rule without crumbling, and, on the contrary, increasing vastly in numbers. If one looks beneath the local difference, one can discern this common attribute of the people as a whole.

FOLLY TS IIST Sometimes I consciously try to be superficial in order to prevent myself from brooding. I refuse to become depressed because I am convinced that that can serve no purpose besides disturbing my mental balance. I have myself so completely under control in this respect that I never have any trouble from sleeplessness or from my nerves, except when I have an attack of malaria, such as during the last few days. That is my weapon against the force that holds me here and that separates me from the world. As long as I can persist in this attitude, force cannot harm me. I am, of course, still troubled by certain manifestations of this force. And my disturbances sometimes degrade me to the intellectual level of my stupid masters, so that I indulge in reactions

of anger or vexation. But here my weapon is mockery—and even self-mockery. As long as I can retain this self-mockery, the ability to see the humor in my own situation, I can free myself from vain and stupid reactions to the vain and stupid actions of my captors to which I am subjected. So, in fact, I even appear to be internally immune from any further actions that the powers that be may attempt to enforce on helpless exiles. And if my internment continues much longer, then they will be unable to affect me further. Despite my position as an exile and a prisoner, I can be amused by the ludi180

crous demonstrations of power that the authorities seek to impress upon the helpless. Mockery can be a wonderful weapon—the weapon of the helpless and the materially impotent. Although it always

has an unconscious feeling of weakness as its foundation, it is still a strong and sometimes even fatal weapon to the opposition. Might flourishes on prestige, enhanced by terror if necessary. But how can prestige exist if it becomes the object of mockery? Mockery can bring prestige to naught,

and it is a fortunate thing. For otherwise the materially impotent would really and finally be impotent against the material force of the rulers. Even the bayonet requires a spirit and a prestige behind it. Without prestige, it is paralytic and dead.

JULY 851937 Hafil has told me that Jan R. is to be sent to a western

post (in Indonesia) after his furlough. He hasn’t written to me, and for that matter, I don’t think that he will ever do so. I think that upon further thought he realized that he could achieve a greater degree of spiritual contact with Hafil than with me, and I also think that he was right. In a way I am sorry, because I think he is a congenial chap. Nevertheless, like seeks like. They are both slightly

“soft-boiled”! In any case, Jan will certainly shape a career for himself, because I foresee that another period of “progressive policy” is unavoidable; not only because of the current international situation, but also because the spiritual structure of the Indonesian people has changed. The old-fashioned autocratic rule is becoming less and

less satisfactory. The large increase in the number of educated Indonesians requires that more and more of them be absorbed into the colonial government, unless the govern181

ment itself wants to make these people into an ever growing source of opposition to it. And thus a democratization that is at least confined to these upper layers is as inevitable as has been the case in India. Even though no such policy has been announced, we are already moving in that direction, and there has even been a partial success achieved in this regard. For there is no question that the inclination to co-operate with the colonial government is growing among the nationalist intellectuals. There is, for example, the Parindra, which is now the largest and strongest nationalist party in Indonesia. Most of the party’s leaders already occupy positions in government bodies, even though they provide the opposition to the administration in those bodies. At present the government suppresses every radically inclined movement with force, but as soon as it finds another part of the nationalists ready to co-operate, it will have to adopt a more lenient attitude even toward the left-wing groups of the nationalist movement, since such an attitude will be a prerequisite to ensure the real loyalty of even the co-operatively inclined nationalists. In such a case, any further action that may be taken can be covered by these moderate co-operative nationalists themselves. For such a type of colonial administration, people like

Jan R. are certainly the most suitable civil servants. They work with heart and soul because they think that they are working for their own ideals. Such a colonial policy provides scope for such an idealistic disposition, and in fact requires it from the government administrators. POTATO

SEI37

We are at present particularly curious over the first public statements of the new government in Holland. Welter 182

certainly does not have a pleasant history, but that does not necessarily signify very much. The director of eco-

nomic affairs here, Mr. Hart, is himself one of the estate and plantation owners, but at present he is anything but popular with these owners, because of his liberal ideas. The same thing may be the case with Welter. In any case, he is an independent minister of colonies and not simply a subordinate of Colijn. Both Dr. Soeribno and Hafil are pessimistic, and they expect that they will still have to stay here for five or six years more. I don’t agree with them, and the reason is not only that Iam so anxious to get away from here. I think the reason lies in the fact that I try to judge colonial policy by putting myself in the government’s position. In reality, colonial policy is not dependent on party politics in Holland, and even less on the people who happen to become the ministers of colonies. The appearance of the

new reactionary Christian party cabinet does not in itself mean a great deal. If, for example, one compares the colonial program of the liberal Democrats or of the Labor party with that of the Catholics or even the Antirevolutionary party, one sees that there is actually little difference in their aims. We are living at a fast pace, and any moment something may happen that will also sharply alter things here. I am thus not counting on magnanimity or kindness or ethics or anything of that sort. I know that little Holland is neither magnanimous nor kind, and perhaps it cannot allow itself to be. Everything the colonial government does takes place out of necessity, conceived from the point of view of pure self-interest. The Dutch “grocers” * may have little imagi- | * The Dutch have been sarcastically referred to as kruideniers, or grocers, in the same way that the British have sometimes been characterized as “a nation of shopkeepers.”

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nation, but they know their direct interests by instinct. It

| is a pity that that instinct is not sufficient to shape a colonial _ policy for a country of seventy million people. AUGUST HS 1937 Today I had a visit from two officials: Captain W., the garrison commandant and chief of the local administration at Tanah Merah whom I know from my time in Digoel, and a commissioner of police from the residency of the Moluccas, a former classmate of mine. Both were en route from New Guinea to Ambon.

From the Captain I heard some news of Digoel: that there will be some repatriation of exiles this year, and that thirteen bandits from Magetan have been banished to Digoel. The number of malarial attacks also seems to have diminished, owing to the daily supply of quinine, and the attitude of the exiles themselves presumably has improved considerably. If they intend to make Digoel gradually into a deporta-

tion colony, that will be a relief to the present exiles, since then perhaps the political internees will not be needed to keep the place going. Up until now, that has been the reason for keeping many there who might otherwise have been

sent home. Tanah Merah requires a population and workers. At present, however, I understand that a policy of colonization for New Guinea is gaining favor in government circles.

AUGUST

6):1937

Our radio reporting service is abominable. The reports we receive serve only to arouse our curiosity because of their incompleteness. For more than a week now they have contained nothing about Spain or about whether there

184

is still a civil war going on there. Today there was only

something about a nonintervention commission and a rapprochement between Italy and England. Naturally it was presented as unclearly as possible. In any case, I hope that during all the conferences and negotiations France will be smart enough to send sufficient soldiers and material to Spain to neutralize the preponderance of the Germans and Italians. Concerning China, there were only reports about troop concentrations and about the loan that has been granted by the British government for 120 million pounds. That

will certainly anger the Japanese, and the expected clash has now come out into the open. Thanks to American airplanes and the foreign loans, China is no longer helpless.

It is also no longer divided by a civil war, since a pact has been concluded between the Kuomintang and the Communists. As a result, China also has achieved firmer relations with Soviet Russia, and that signifies a great deal more than formerly, because Russia has now again become a power in the East. Moreover, England is now not passive in the Far East, so that China has the support of three powerful friends, to say nothing of France and the Netherlands, who

would also side with China in a conflict with Japan. The troops now opposing the Japanese are the former communist groups, who have long been anxious to resist Nippon. They have now, in a sense, really become troops of the Central Government. This time the conflict will not fizzle out. It is a pity for the Pacific situation, although in a larger sense there is even enough material in China to cause a world conflict. The colonial rulers here regard all this as such a distant danger that they do not see the necessity for bringing about a basic alteration in the old, time-worn method of ruling over

185

this country. Instead, they continue at the same old stand.

By themselves, these “grocer” rulers are not capable of seeking and finding new methods and of applying them to the changing circumstances and relationships. In fact, they are now even trying to stamp out the self-government that the government itself has instituted, for example in Ternate and Goa. The purpose here is absolutely unintelligible. Perhaps we can attribute it only to moments of wistful recollection of the strong-arm days of Colijn. Actually, the whole thing is as senseless and unrealistic as it possibly can be. It is absurd to revive the absolute, reactionary methods of old colonial policy, in opposition to

the forces of popular awakening. The notorious Colijn had crazy hobbyhorses in his colonial wisdom, as a result of which his famed militant past played tricks upon him. AUGUST 19.1937 As far as I can make out, the whole Islamic population

of our country is now pro-Japanese! Japan is continually increasing in popularity,

as was

formerly the case with

Germany. I still try to make the people here realize that the

Japanese are really not angels, and that what they are now doing is nothing else than murder and pillage. I do not,

however, really doubt that Japan will still be able to profit from the sympathy that our people now feel toward that country. Not only here on the island, but throughout the whole of Indonesia, even in the most remote kampongs, they are

firmly convinced of the power of the Japanese, and of Dutch impotence in the face of it. Periodically there are

stories about Japanese daring and Dutch confusion.

Of

course, the government also knows about these stories, but 186

they are so widespread that nothing can be done about them. Besides, on Java there is a popular belief* that after the white rule there will be a rule for “a hundred days” of yellow people who will come from the north. This belief is already centuries old, and now the people say, “It is the

Japanese who will come.” If the Japanese indeed have the idea of taking a hand in things here, they will find the people ready to apply the old maxim to them.

The Japanese have a great advantage over the whites, despite all propaganda that may be attempted to offset it; for the sympathy that most of the Indonesians cherish toward the Japanese is not due to propaganda. It is simply due to the fact that the Japanese habits and general manner have won the people’s hearts. The Japanese are, for example, very polite, and their usual facial expression looks something like a smile. It has not been without reason that

the Japanese have acquainted the people here with this impression of themselves. Now Indonesians regard the Japanese as “fine people,”

99

¢¢

“civilized,” they say; and they regard

the Chinese and the whites as kasar or coarse. Their disaffection with the whites derives, naturally, from the three hundred years of white rule, and their dislike for the Chi-

nese is due to the latter’s economic position as middlemen (approximately in the same way as the Jews in Europe). Even Hafil, until recently, showed unmistakable signs of Japanese sympathies, and the nationalists on Java are also inclined in that direction, although they don’t dare to talk about it. As the attacked and the underdogs, the Chinese necessarily should

have sympathy

and support,

and yet

nevertheless in this Japanese-~Chinese war (which is not yet called a war), Japan has a measure of the support of our * The so-called Djojobojo myth.

187

people; and this despite the propaganda that our nationalist movement has spread during all these years against all im-

perialism, the yellow included. There are deeper things involved here than propaganda. AUGUST 28; 1937

Through the photographs that I have received from Holland, I can again see that country clearly in my mind. Aside from the cold, the dampness, the ditches, and the narrowness of the people, there is still much that is charming in the lowlands. I am, as you know, no Hollandophile, although I know that through my education I am already half Dutch; but I do have pleasant memories of that little country which is so hated by most of us.

I have always felt that way, perhaps because Holland has occupied such an important position in my mental life from earliest youth, because of the hundreds of boys’ books and novels, and the whole pattern of my intellectual orientation. There was not much that was strange to me when I came to Holland, and when I first arrived, it was as though I were recollecting things I had already known. I felt at home, and I experienced absolutely no homesickness. I never was able to feel so much at home on Sumatra’s east coast, where I lived so long; and this was true even when my parents were still alive and I had never seen any other large cities. Despite all the natural beauty, I could never feel attached to Menangkabau, and the lovely Batak lands also remained distant and strange to me internally.

Actually, I first felt a kinship with Java, and more with middle Java than west Java. I also feel a real affection for Banda, and all the beauty that we have in and around these islands. I like the people here much more than those in Holland, although I clearly see their faults and weaknesses, but 188

I can never be happy here. I could never be so happy here as in Holland or elsewhere in the world where there are no colonial relationships to corrupt and vitiate life. One can try to accept with tolerance and understanding this colo-

nial life with its senseless relationships and its psychopathic participants: on the one hand the sadists and the megalomaniacs, and on the other hand the souls that are warped by inferiority complexes. One can accept it in so far as one sees that it is impossible to mold a new world overnight. One

can go so far as to emancipate oneself—to a certain extent; that is to say, one can arrive at a point where neither sadism and megalomania nor an inferiority complex disrupts one’s

equilibrium. One can go so far as not to hate these sick or lunatic people, but to feel only a smiling compassion toward them in so far as one is not able or is not called upon to

help them. One can guard against becoming the victim of colonial life oneself, on the side of either sadism or inferiority. One can also keep oneself free from senseless, impotent hate. I think I am able to do all this. But one can absolutely never

forget that he is still living among these sufferers and sadists. One must even exert all his will so that he never forgets this vital fact, because forgetting it would signify such an egregious adaptability that it would amount to living lunatically in a society of lunatics.

And this idea is hardly enticing, although to a certain degree one is obliged to conform to it. For unconsciously

one has to make some adaptation toward accepting both the sadists and the apparent cowards: the cowardly Easterners who tolerate everything from the white man, and who, even in their hate, feel themselves so much the inferiors of the white man. And if one were not willing to make any such concession whatsoever, then one would be

189

absolutely unable to have any traffic with them at all. That such an adaptation is simply a prerequisite for living and working in this country is a fact that cannot be overlooked. I love this country and its people, and particularly the — Indonesians even more than the other peoples, perhaps because I have known them as the sufferers and the losers. It is only normal, in any case, to feel a sympathy for the underdogs. SEPTEMBER

2, 1937

We are now in the midst of the feasts celebrating the Queen’s birthday. Throughout the Moluccas it is celebrated for three days, and during this time all government offices and schools are closed. I took a brief glimpse at the celebration during the first day. Many people were in the streets, but otherwise there was nothing particularly noteworthy. It was a still more barren demonstration than the

celebration of Juliana’s wedding. In reality, the people here have no idea about how to organize such a celebration. Today there are the competitions for the school children, but aside from the children concerned, I don’t think there is any interest in the matches. There was also a ball given by the representative of the Crown here, although actually it was not an official ball, but one given by a club of which the commandant is an active member. There is now a sign in huge letters on the government building: “Banda Festival Club.” It is amusing that no one else seems to be the least disturbed by the fact that all of a sudden the government associates itself with such lighthearted doings. And I find it still more amusing that I, as an exile, seem to have a greater feeling for the dignity of the government than anyone else here. The Dutch talk a good deal about authority and government, but to a large extent

190

they still remain anarchistic petite bourgeoisie: they are

either scrupulously and narrowly confined, or almost licentiously abandoned. They miss a true feeling for harmony and proportion. I even heard, for example, that at the ball the commandant, as an indication of his satisfaction with the celebration, sang a slightly off-color song for the guests, who included heads of families, government people, and sundry others. Actually this particular commandant is no less refined than his predecessors. He is only a trifle younger—not yet thirty—but perhaps he has become slightly eccentric during his five-year stay among the Kaja-Kajas and the malarial mosquitoes in Digoel. Looked at from the pleasant side, this is only another indication of the good disposition of everything on these

islands—even the governmental authorities! That no one is in the least shocked by it shows the mentality of the people of Banda. SEPTEMBER 5, 1937 This week I received some letters from Digoel. . . . Soeka

writes that he would appreciate any old clothes that I might send him. Soebana got a letter from Tanah Tinggi on the same boat, and it seems that in Tanah Tinggi they have recently had trouble with Kaja-Kaja attacks, which have occurred twice in the last six months. Several houses were thoroughly pillaged, but fortunately there was no loss of life. The Kaja-Kaja land has certainly not yet been pacified and it will be some time before such is the case. The few government posts there really signify nothing in that far-off

part of the world. On Tanah Merah there are rumors of returning some

internees home, and they have mentioned that sixty people will be returned. Actually, I don’t think that number is

1gI

large, and, in fact, they could send 80 to 90 per cent of

the internees of Tanah Merah back to Java, even according to the criteria of the government itself. That they still

are kept at Digoel is due to the fact that both the commandant of Digoel and the resident of the Moluccas interpret these criteria in their own way, and also because the authorities in the home area—where the exiles will be returned—prefer to take no risk, and hence oppose the return of the internees. That is also the reason why the greater percentage of the exiles are from Menangkabau. If that area were to be opened to the return of exiles, Tanah Merah would be almost emptied. The letters carry no mention of the recent visit of a member of the Council of the Indies to Digoel. He must have visited Tanah Tinggi, but there is no further mention of him, and so everything must still be the same. The resident has also visited the place recently, but I won’t be able to find out the results of his trip until later. I still have the feeling that one of these days there will be changes in Digoel. The reports in the papers concerning the latest deportation indicate that there has not been a banishment of political deportees, but rather of ordinary criminals; namely, the so-called bandits of Magetan. If this becomes a general rule, Digoel may acquire a completely different character. It is certainly true that bandits can be considered and treated as people who constitute “a threat to public law and order,” but thus far they have simply been brought before a magistrate and punished. This would be the first time that the government itself has acted, as it were, as the magistrate in a pure and simple

criminal case by withdrawing the case from the courts and exercising the magisterial powers itself.

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The boys have written that these so-called bandits are simple and honest village people, not at all the criminal type. This is probably the best indication that the robbery and murder in Magetan had a social background to it, and, in general, that phenomenon is not an abnormal one; i.e., the phenomena of robbery and murder as reactive resistance to arbitrary authority and force. If the government has reflected on this, then these nonpolitical internments are quite understandable. In point of fact, there is really no question of criminals here, but rather of a resistance to constituted authority. Again it is typical of the press in Indonesia—the colonial European as well as the Indonesian and Chinese press—that there has been no mention of this matter in the papers. Actually, it was given attention only in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. In any case, I must admit that an internment camp is certainly logical in this colonial system. As long as the colonial government shows no inclination to eliminate the causes of the social unrest that are rooted in the very bases of the Indonesian community and its reaction to colonial life, so long must they intern, that is, so long must they attack the symptoms instead of the disease itself, although they know better. And finally, the colonial government will not be able to cure the disease as long as colonial leadership remains convinced that the art of governing these lands involves the suppression of these millions, and that Dutch authority depends on this art; that is, on keeping the people in the same intellectual and material circumstances that they have already been in for countless years. The principle itself is basically unsound, because it does not take into consideration the requirements not only of Western capital and industrial progress, but of the changes that must take place in the apparatus of government out of

193

: practical necessity. And there is also the awakening of the people and the nationalist movement, which is the result and at the same time the stimulus of all this. Even officially they are gradually recognizing the fact that the popular movement is a natural and necessary phenomenon, and yet they still continue to follow the old and fundamentally unsound principle. In fact, they try at the same time to modify the old usage out of practical necessity. But the essence of this practical necessity, the new frame of reality from which a new principle must be distilled, this they perhaps see, but they refuse to recognize it, for if they did, they would have to abandon their old principle. Their line of thinking is that the old has demonstrated its utility for centuries, and it must therefore still be of use. The old methods are, after all, the easiest, and perhaps the new might even require prior changes in the administrators themselves. As a result, we see a modern colonial government that is still founded on an antiquated principle. Already the old principle has become completely unrealistic and even illusionary. It fulfills its role only in a psychological sense, as the orthodox belief of the executors of the colonial regime, as belief that is divorced from practice and reality. And thus, in practice, the colonial government often acts in conflict with its own principle, as a Christian who lives in an unchristian way. In practice, colonial rule often becomes unprincipled and opportunistic, because of the unreality of its starting principle. Others have maintained and written this before me. It is in fact remarkable that despite that old principle they still plod along, that they still can take practical steps and sometimes appropriate action despite the blindfold they have bound before their eyes.

194

OCTOBER 28, 1937 Weare living here in a period of high tension, and events in China and Palestine are gradually stirring the people. Everyone is becoming concerned about these events, and some of the queerest rumors are currently circulating.

Naturally the Indonesian situation is connected with these other happenings, albeit indirectly. One can, in fact, say that people here, in their sympathy for the Japanese, have gone so far that they even dare to show an unfriendly attitude toward the Dutch, which otherwise would hardly have been the case. Indirectly, the popular support for

Japan is a means of expressing feelings of antipathy toward _ the Dutch rule. It is never openly spoken of in this way, and often the feeling is unconscious and often even unintentional. Nevertheless, the sympathy for Japan has subconscious causes, and these lie in the Asiatic inferiority feelings, which seek compensation in a glorification of the

Japanese, since the other alternative—open hatred of the whites—may involve personal danger. Affection for Japan is thus only one side of the whole problem; the safer side for the intimidated colonial Easterner. The pleasure that people

here take in the difficulties that the Japanese are causing the white man is a strong indication of this phenomenon. When it was recently learned that a Dutch patrol boat

had acted highhandedly toward a few Japanese fishing ‘ boats, the people were surprised and disappointed at what

had befallen the Japanese. Naturally, they didn’t dare to express openly their sympathy for the Japanese. But for the past week, rumors have been circulated as to the punitive

measures that the Japanese have taken against the reckless Dutch. In the kampongs they whisper that the ship that fired upon the Japanese, the Flores, has “disappeared.” Despite the unlikelihood of this, it is said in such a significant

Loy

tone as to be accepted as fact. Naturally, they attribute the “disappearance” to the Japanese, and take some delight in the Dutch predicament. None of this is openly expressed, because they have learned that it is wiser to keep any such feelings to themselves. They can, however, safely esteem the Japanese, and thereby give expression to their hidden feelings without being branded and prosecuted as communists. It is not that the

people regard the Japanese as guardian angels, or that anyone wishes to exchange the Dutch for the Japanese. They don’t go that far, and there are even those who, however begrudgingly, admit that the Dutch are better rulers than

the Japanese would be. Rather, their delight applies simply to the difficulties that the “brave little Japanese” are causing the hated but still feared white man. It is, in fact, precisely the ones who are affected most by feelings of inferiority who feel sympathetically inclined toward the

Japanese in this way. For the most part, they retain a faith in the immovable power of the colonial rulers. They admire Japan, they are even fanatical toward Japan and toward the supposed might of Asia that they think they see in that land. They identify their own striving for position with the strength and ventures of Japan, and they are therefore even angered by

unfortunate China, which Japan is warring against, and which might thus destroy the erroneous but self-gratifying opinions that these people now enjoy. And sometimes, in a disguised, seldom voiced opinion, they think that China is playing the cards of the hated and feared white man. NOVEMBER

2, 1937

Whether or not to send children, particularly girls, to school is a controversial

196

question among

the people of

Neira, which shows that in this respect they are many years

behind Java and Sumatra. There, school is regarded as normal and necessary. Actually, change is coming here, too. Life itself teaches people to desert many things that they once considered advantageous but that they have found are

untenable in the economic struggle for existence. At first they try to retain appearances, and some evasion is permitted if only the appearance is maintained. Finally, they even quit the appearance, and they admit that the old no longer is adequate and may even be ruinous, and that adaptations must be made to the changed circumstances. There is always something tragic in such a process of adaptation. For when the adaptation has finally been made, then they are again behind, because in the meantime the

world has gone ahead still a little farther. And so it goes. The struggle between generations, which has also come to Indonesia since the people have begun to awaken, is becoming sharper. Concepts change slowly, and perhaps still only outwardly, but they are changing. A spirit is arising that drives tradition away, and will finally destroy it. And even

if it does not go forward so quickly as we should like it to, it is nevertheless clear that there is movement, that there is progress in an intellectual and spiritual sense. That does not yet signify, however, that there has been moral progress. And, in fact, it is always difficult to make such an evaluation, because it is so completely subjective. It is also a question of inclination, and what one may consider to be moral progress another regards as deterioration. One can certainly observe a growth of self-consciousness despite the warped impression one gets from recent political developments. The manifest political developments give a false impression because they carry the stamp of Digoel and police terror. It is thus not a true image, and cannot be

197

a true image, of the real disposition and intellectual orienta-

tion of the Javanese people. The form of the popular nationalist movement is more or less fashioned according to the tastes of the government leaders. Everything that does not suit these tastes is rooted out by increasing arrests, by police orders, by prohibiting gatherings, by Digoel, and by other measures that they have not yet felt it necessary to employ. This police suppression is really only incidental to the great movement in the midst of which we are living. It concerns only the political expressions and aspects of that process, which in turn are only consequences of the changes in vision, attitude, and relations toward life that are taking place. Against these aspects, even the government leaders can do absolutely nothing. Here on Banda there is also movement in that sense. And here too it is proceeding at an Indonesian—that is, relatively quick—tempo. Even here, we are not completely isolated from the quick pace of world events. Oil capital is beginning to initiate great changes in Ceram and New Guinea. We are increasingly being influenced by the capitalistic tempo around us, and this is stimulating progress here too. Most of our young people, in fact, are swarming to these new areas. Often they return with their new experiences and new attitudes toward the world, and these have consequent repercussions here. They often marry and then take their wives with them to the new areas. Thus the bonds between these islands and the outside world are being strengthened and increased, and as a result Banda is reacting more quickly and more deeply to external happenings. This is the process in the midst of which we now are living. ; 198

NOVEMBER 12, 1937 As long as there is no change in the government’s policy toward banishments and exiles, there is no prospect of a change in our situation. If the government maintains its “tron-fist” policy, then there is not a grain of hope for any concessions to exiles. We exiles stand outside the law, and our fate thus depends exclusively on the disposition of the colonial rulers. We are therefore never troubled by the need to refer to laws or other general regulations. Justice, in the sense of a political theory based on principles of law, does not apply to us. The government is related to us as a conqueror to prisoners of war. This is the system, and all my reasoning and calculations proceed from this fundamental premise. In turn, the disposition of the colonial rulers is determined by what they regard as their own interests. Naturally, it is not always in the interest of the conqueror to kill off his prisoners. On the contrary, it is sometimes even necessary to free hated enemies who have been taken prisoner. Then

the official disposition that is publicized is humanistic, philanthropic, benevolent, and just. At other times, they are all ruthlessly slaughtered; or, in so far as consideration must be taken of public opinion, the humane feelings (or prejudices) of foreigners, or the world press, they may be al-

lowed to live. The question is not how, but just Jive, and the Hitler concentration camps are the best examples of this. And it is sometimes the case that they wish to use the prisoners not only for the negative purpose of avoiding moral reproach from the rest of the world, but to secure positive advantages. In these cases, the prisoners of war are “cared for” in such a way as to reap not only satisfaction from the degradation of those who have stood in the way

109

of the central power, but to win “moral” victories, in the form of the “conversion” of morally and physically broken

peoples who retain only enough life in their bodies to shout hurrah for the regime that has broken them. This is the relationship between the government and political exiles in its sharpest form. There are at present certain indications of the appearance of a disposition in the colonial government that may hold promise for exiles in our position. Besides developments in the international situation, there is still another important factor stimulating the existence and growth of such a dis-

position; namely, the development of our own people. If these two factors continue to evolve in a favorable direction, then the chance will grow that the government’s disposition toward us may alter and that a “humane,” “ethical,” “wise” (or whatever other name it may be given) policy will be adopted with respect to the people and their movement—including their political movement. It is thus possible

that the flagrant attitude of “conqueror toward conquered” will be replaced by a more supple, more farsighted policy of “consolidation in the long run.” Apparently the latest succession of exiles belies this likelihood. However, if the matter is looked at from the stand-

point of amoral, purely practical policy, this is not the conclusion one reaches. In this case, one can understand

that these new exiles represent an accentuation of the socalled political standpoint of the colonial government toward the existing and evolving currents in the popular movement. The new government under Tyarda van Starkenborgh has inherited from the previous administration the

faith that if it is not possible to stop these currents, it is still possible to propel them in a desirable direction; and that 200

by the use of force, a “public opinion” favorable to the government can be formed and nurtured. That, of course, is not new, and every dictatorial regime has this same faith. The apparent success that such methods have achieved in Germany and Italy must certainly have an encouraging effect on other dictatorial regimes, including those in the colonial countries. What it amounts to is the belief that a positive, loyal mentality can be formed through intimidation. At the moment, the aim apparently is to make the pop-

ular movement positively loyal; and this is interpreted to mean that the movement will neither acquire a character nor give vent to sentiments opposed to the maintenance of Dutch rule. The previous government thought it was obvious and simple that this could be done. The intellectual father of the doctrine, Mr. Meyer Ranneft, was at first not so sure of it, but now he also cheers: “It can be done!” They are now convinced that the police can be “politically educational,” that exile, intimidation, even some terror apparently can be used as methods of political pedagogy. I expect that this is the belief of the current administration. While the current regime may not have as naive a

faith as the unintelligent Mr. De Jonge, the current administration still believes at least in the partial effectiveness of such political pedagogy. Hence they wish to show clearly by the latest exiles that they will not tolerate a certain attitude in the popular movement, and thereby to accentuate and bring into sharper relief the attitude that they will tolerate. That is, the progressive and more or less compromising attitude of the so-called “co-operative movement.” The non-co-operative attitude is thus, literally, being expelled=s. The aim is positive loyalty, but in a superficial sense at 201

best. For they at least do not have such a complete faith in the miraculous workings of intimidation and force in political education as to overlook the possibility of opposition behind this apparent loyalty. For this reason, the espionage service is being expanded at the same time as the new pedagogy is being attempted! It is all as old as the world, and it is perhaps logical with every dictatorial, absolutist system. This method, moreover, will continue to be used here as long as autocracy is maintained in the colonial administration. The altered disposition that I referred to before will thus be possible only if at least an expansion in the democratic trimmings of this rule occurs.

MARCH 7, 1938 Despite the fact that I have now been away from Digoel for two years, and apparently have experienced no ill ef-

fects, I am still not yet fully normal. I am still inclined to be distrustful and suspicious, and I cannot yet forget those bitter experiences. True, this is less the case than it was two years ago, but I am by no means as ingenuous in outlook as I was three or four years ago, before Digoel. The same is true of Hafil. Formerly he was a nonco-operator by political conviction, and yet in many respects he still had faith in the conventional morality and humanity of colonial government. He never thought about secret police and the possibility of terrorist methods being used against political opponents; opponents who, like himself, intentionally and consciously acted within legal limits. In other words, in the background of his thoughts he still maintained a high opinion of the respectability and methods of the colonial rulers against whom he made a stand. He now thinks quite differently about these things, 202

thanks to Digoel. He is no longer as grim a non-co-operator as he used to be, but in a moral sense he was perhaps more of a co-operator then than he is now, because formerly he regarded the government with unconscious faith in its rea-

sonableness and respectability. He thus had an unconscious respect for the rulers, and certainly much more than a co-operator such as Thamrin ever had. The same is true in my case, as well. In those days, we

co-operators propagated suspicion toward the government, but we did not realize that we ourselves regarded it with a measure of moral trust. At one time, Hafil did not believe that he would be banished, and certainly never dreamed

that he might be sent to Digoel. ‘The same was true to an even them, them have

greater extent of the others in our party. Most of in fact, still don’t understand how it is possible for to be regarded as dangerous to the state for what they done—or rather, haven’t done; or for them to be

placed with people who have actively employed weapons, people who have even aimed at a direct seizure of power, something our P.N.I. boys themselves never dreamed of for a single moment. It was really a revelation for Hafil, and he has learned more from it than he did during all his years of “political life” in Europe. It is a paradoxical fact that most of the present co-operators—and also those who are not in the government opposition—actually have less trust and less respect for the colonial government than most of the former non-cooperators. Among these co-operators, one found less moral co-operation with the government than among the nonco-operators, The point is that the co-operators co-operate

because they do not think they will be safe against the methods of force that they deem the rulers capable of if

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they don’t co-operate. In other words, they have such a low opinion of the humanity and the morality of the rulers that they think it safer not to be opponents of the regime, or at least not openly. On the other hand, the young nonco-operators had such a high opinion of the same rulers that they considered it natural that frankness and openness, even if troublesome to the administration, would be tolerated by the government as long as they remained within

the bounds of the law. Hafil had a great deal of this faith in the human and democratic disposition of the colonial government. While he attacked and criticized colonial conditions in his articles, and while he expressed his disbelief in the good intentions of the government and in the possibility of co-operation with that government in order to lift the Indonesian people to a really national status, nevertheless in his heart he was still a Netherlander. He was still a Netherlander in the sense that he did not really regard that government as a foreign and enemy element, but considered it in the same way that, for example, a left-wing socialist opponent considers the Netherlands government in Holland. Hafil thus unconsciously accepted many of the same mutual norms and recognized one very important common basis for cooperation with the Dutch: namely, an internal faith in the humane, democratic, and reliable methods of a government that outwardly he called unreliable. In reality, this accusation of unreliability is considerably more ingenuous than the silent distrust of many co-operators. Formerly, the greatest fault I found with Hafil was that he was so naive. Although it has often been said that he was the most outspoken representative of the nonco-operators, in his heart he was nothing else than a cooperator and a member of the “loyal opposition.” He had

204

as a basis for his real political thinking this faith in the possibility of a democratic political life in the midst of a colonial atmosphere. He believed in an education toward social, economic, and even political autonomy, through an open opposition to the colonial government! Hafil was thus an evolutionist, because he believed in the possibility of gradual political development within the colo-

mial sphere, even though opposing it in principal. This educational concept is, after all, parallel to the educational theories of the Social Democrats, who think that they can thus increase their political influence to direct political change along the lines they wish. Hafil felt that there was perhaps as much scope for evolutionary political development in the colonies as he had found to be the case in Holland. One step further, and one arrives at the conclusion that the colonial framework is sufficiently broad for a normal development of our national life in a political sense as well. In such a case, one finally becomes a real and honorable 100-per-cent co-operator! I do not think the colonial government has ever looked at the matter in this light, and I doubt if it has ever asked itself whether this frankness among the non-co-operators rests on anything besides boldness and recklessness. Thus, Hafil formerly was really a co-operator in his heart, as Dr. Soeribno still is. He will certainly never again be one to the same extent as before his exile. Moreover, exile has made him very much less co-operative in the sense that he is now more bitter and more distrustful toward the colonial government than when he was supposedly a fierce non-co-operator, and he now considers it capable of things that he never formerly would have deemed possible. I dwell upon this at such length because it is not impos-

sible that that same colonial government

may suddenly 205

realize that it ought to scrutinize the non-co-operative elements more closely. And if it does, it will make the discovery that the government itself has destroyed the potential forces for a real co-operation because it has not formed them into an official and formal government opposition. The government will then find that it has placed more credence in outward expressions of support, and has annihilated the esteem and the faith in shared norms that constitute the moral basis of true co-operation. : As for myself, I leave that out of the present discussion. I have always been less naive than Hafil, and yet [ had al-

ways been sufficiently naive so that what I say about Hafil really applies to myself as well. Perhaps that is why I can so readily criticize him. With me, everything has been in a lesser degree. I have, furthermore, never been a non-cooperator, and I have rather been able to regard non-co-operation as at best a tactical means. Although I was troubled to a lesser extent than Hafil, there were still surprises and

disillusionments to which Digoel opened my eyes. Consequently, a sudden distrust—even a light touch of the persecution complex—developed within me also.

MARCH 11, 1938 It is certain that there must be a gradual change in the direction of colonial policy. They cannot continue giving merely lip service to a policy dealing with public welfare. Furthermore, the developments in the foreign situation constitute a reason why there must be a real element of synthesis in the colonial policy. A changed disposition and attitude will obviously result, despite the present reserve and aloofness that they consider necessary in order to prepare for the transition.

As soon as there is a real attempt to co-operate with the 206

people, as soon as the general mentality of the rulers has changed and improved in the sense that the offensively supercilious persecution of political consciousness among Indonesian intellectuals disappears, as soon as the customary attitude of looking down upon Indonesians is altered—as soon as all this has been accomplished, there will no longer

be any ground for the non-co-operative movement. Although I do not belong to the sentimental non-cooperatives, who derive their strength from what they call “irreconcilable hate” toward the foreign rulers, but what really amounts to an inferiority complex, still I well understand their mentality. I know that the source and lifeblood of all nationalist extremism is the socially and intellectually inferior station in which the Indonesians are forced to live. Extremism springs from the resentment that they, the oppressed millions, feel at being looked down upon as an inferior race. This fact cannot be eliminated by any welfare or ethical colonial policy. “Well-meaning” regard for the rising strength of the people’s awakening merely plays upon the Indonesian inferiority complex. The basis for this profound resentment toward the rulers can be eliminated only by giving the

Indonesians an opportunity to acquire more self-respect. And that will take place only if there is a fundamental change in the attitude of the white rulers toward the Indonesians; if there is a departure from the well-meaning condescension of the old father toward his child, a departure manifesting itself in an intelligent and real valuation and

respect. That respect cannot arise as long as government affairs continue to be regulated according to the wishes of the rulers, without any Indonesian intelligence or decision

being called upon. That respect cannot arise as long as the colonial government

pretends to have no real need for

207

Indonesian leaders, and instead attempts to rule over and without the people. Whether the new tendency will be noticeable in the immediate future will depend entirely on developments in the world situation, and particularly in the situation here in the Pacific. As soon as circumstances require the change, then the disposition of the noble rulers and executives of colonialism will change. Then, and only then, will their intentions not be subject to doubt and suspicion, since the intentions themselves will be dictated by these international | circumstances. On the other hand, if colonial policy continues to be orthodox—that is, based on the psychology of van Heutz— if prestige, which they consider necessary for the maintenance of their rule here, continues to be based on the superiority complexes of the rulers and the inferiority complexes of the ruled; if their policy continues to be motivated

by the theory that the rulers must have a superabundance of self-confidence and conceit, and the ruled must be deprived of all self-confidence—if this happens, then hate and antipathy will continue and spread, no matter what the government thinks it may accomplish materially. And in this case, the nationalist movement will, and can only, have

a non-co-operative mentality—and I mean the real moral and spiritual non-co-operation that also, and perhaps especially, characterizes the formal co-operators at present. As long as the colonial government remains steadfast in

the belief that the Indonesians, if not politically inept, are uneducated and immature, so long can there be no possibility of any real co-operation. There can, of course, still be formal and spurious co-operation, and that is what is now taking place and is being extolled and rejoiced in. There is certainly the possibility that this formal co-opera208

tion may become real co-operation in the future. The mentality of the rulers has already changed somewhat and will change considerably more, intentionally and ‘unintentionally, as a result of circumstances. Even though we nationalists would know that it was a case of having no choice but to go forward, still there would be ethical merit in a readiness to go forward, and in the spirit of going forward as quickly as possible, accepting any and all consequences that might result. In any case, I do not expect that from this administration. This administration will progress only bit by bit, if conditions force it to do so. By itself it does nothing, and, anticipating events, I should say that it will do nothing.

MARCH

25, 1938

For a long time now I have not believed in the possibility of a separate solution of the Spanish and the Pacific crises. They will both find their solution only in a general worldwide crisis. It is only a question of time as to when the nadir will be reached, and when the world conflict will

break out. The time itself will depend on the fascists; or whether Herr Hitler feels the need of another breathing space after his latest successes. Personally, I fear that he no longer considers such a need to exist, and thinks that he can reach all his defined objectives at one jump. If this is true, the eruption stands immediately before us. We can only hope that miracles may still happen, as most pacifists still hope and believe. In the light of this new world situation, I have again examined my thoughts on the future of our popular nationalist movement in Indonesia. That situation has become such

that it would be idiocy to think and to act as though, since 209

we are still only a colony of the Netherlands, nothing has changed.

Formerly our action was opposed to the imperial relationships between the Netherlands and Indonesia. It was thus directed against the Netherlands and Netherlands imperialism. Our national self-consciousness, our ideology itself, was hence constituted in antithesis to Dutch past history in our country, and to the present Dutch rule here. The inevitable consequence of this attitude was that each element in the diverse nationalist movement was antiDutch; perhaps not in an intellectual sense, but certainly as a spiritual basis, as a point of view, as a frame of mind. I have already discussed one of the main sources of this disposition. I should almost say that our nationalism is a

projection of the inferiority complex that springs from the colonial relationship of subject race and ruling race. Thus the basis of nationalistic propaganda has been an irrational but existing feeling—a reality, and in fact the main reality. The non-co-operative movement is the purest expression of this colonial nationalism. I have never been a real nonco-operative because I have felt and understood that the mentality, the spirit, behind co-operation, while it could be a source of strength for our movement, could never really furnish an ideal. It was too bitter, too narrow, and was often connected with baser feelings and instincts. I have always been able to accept non-co-operation only as an effective instrument of nationalist propaganda, and as a means of spreading the nationalistic idea. I have never been able to base a philosophy upon it. When I returned to Indonesia, I accepted non-co-operation as a traditional propaganda device. In practice, however, it seemed to me increasingly clear that there were

many disadvantages connected with it, and I particularly 210

felt this when I became acquainted with the trade-union movement here. Non-co-operation served a purpose as long as there was no constructive, practical policy that could be followed. The fault of the non-co-operators has been that they cultivated their doctrine as a religion, as a question of honor. Hence the constrained co-operation that takes place

does so too often in a spirit of self-degradation, in the conviction that non-co-operation is the true course, but unfortunately is not feasible because the government persecutes it so ruthlessly. ; I have now come to the conclusion that the situation in the world has changed so much that opposition to the Dutch rule can no longer be the primary task of nationalist propaganda or of the nationalist movement itself. A

greater, more direct and more gratifying task has arisen that makes it possible to push the old nationalistic propaganda methods into the background, and thus to discard the whole idea of non-co-operation. Whether this will be

temporary or permanent, we do not yet know. A real basis for co-operation between the Netherlands and Indonesia is going to arise, because the situation in the world at present is a threat not only to the Dutch realm, but to the independent future of Indonesia as well. It is now clear that we must take a stand in the same camp as Holland. More profound antitheses have now come to the fore, which overshadow and depreciate the conflict between Holland and Indonesia.

Co-operation with the Dutch will now be a political problem for the national movement. There is now practical

political work of great importance to be accomplished;

work that contains greater potentialities than many of the adherents of the motto “Free Indonesia from Holland, now!” have ever dreamed of. It is not possible—now less 211

than ever before—to regard the independence of Indonesia

as an abstract question that concerns only the Netherlands and Indonesia. That independence is now bound up in the complexities of world problems, and especially of Pacific

problems. Indonesia has now become involved in the struggle of opposing world forces that is again in the process of unfolding. The fate of the Netherlands Indies depended entirely on the balance of power in the Pacific. The old period represented the open-door policy of a neutral Netherlands. Now there is actually no balance, either in the Pacific or any-

where

else in the world. The word “balance,” in fact,

affects the so-called “dynamic” states only as a sort of red cloth in front of the bull. The existence of the Netherlands Indies and the existence of the Netherlands itself are both now threatened. This is the crux of all my recent thoughts and reflections. Present world conditions being what they are, an independent Indonesia would be in precisely the same position as Holland is now in—and probably in an even more unfortunate position, because at least Holland has England as its natural ally, owing to the geographic position of the Netherlands in Europe. Without allies we in Indonesia cannot maintain our ex-

istence. We are now helpless, and even more helpless than Holland would be without its English ally. We are thus obliged to make and to find allies. That has always been true, but it is now the major problem of the popular move-

ment, and it is more urgent and more important than all the propaganda about independence, and all the abstract, theoretical disputes that that entails. This is where the real political possibility of co-operation with the Netherlands lies. Holland has always heretofore needed our wealth, but the time is now coming when she 202

will also need our national movement—not to do good, but simply to maintain her very existence. Holland has always asked for co-operation, with, of course, the retention of all the privileges she had gained. It was natural that she always pressed for co-operation, but the prerequisites for such co-operation, particularly the moral and psychological prerequisites, did not yet exist. As its natural course of action, the national movement thus directed itself against the Netherlands. Now this is all going to change. The national movement can also learn to realize that, from the point of view of its own self-interest, it can and does need the Netherlands as an ally. And if that insight and that realization dawn, then there will really be a possibility of co-operation, because then both members of this alliance will voluntarily and consciously need each other. Apart from the moral co-operation that I have already written about, there is also the problem of the organizational forms and the practical execution of these potentialities. Those forms already exist. They comprise Indonesia as it now is, politically, economically, and socially, and this is what I accept as the starting point for such co-operation, because any other beginning can be only theoretical for the present. Naturally, theory is useful and helpful, but this is at present a question of practical, political tactics. While the form may be obvious, the co-operation itself is certainly not. The co-operation itself cannot be so simple and obvious, because it must take place within the framework of the colonial structure. There must be many changes in these Netherlands Indies

before there can be any talk of real co-operation—that 1s, co-operation without an evasion of reality. In the first place, there must be a moral revolution among the Netherlanders.

Zi03

In the second place, there must be a basic psychological change among the Indonesians themselves. They must free themselves of their distrust, fear, and hate, and of their collective inferiority complex. One might say that everything I have said before becomes unreal and visionary because I now attach to it these profound mental alterations. In reality, the mentality of both sides has been changing for many years. The many spiritual impediments to mutual understanding and real co-operation do not now have the same significance as they

did twenty or even ten years ago. There is no longer any of the old grievous and coarse racial delusion among the Dutch; and the hypersensitivity on the Indonesian side has also decreased. Regarded and understood in the light of the three-hundred-year contact between Netherlanders and Indonesians, the psychological changes on both sides

during the past few years can really be called revolutionary. Unconsciously, impelled by history, we have already made progress in this direction, particularly as concerns the still changing attitudes toward life of the two groups. By a conscious and even organized effort, the process can pro-

ceed more quickly, so that a level can be reached wherein the spiritual and moral prerequisites for true co-operation will be fulfilled.

In practice this psychological alteration will have organizational consequences. There will be an acceleration in the so-called “ethical policy,” according to which the Indo-

nesian people—as high a percentage as possible at present, and particularly the literates among them and their representatives, the intellectuals—will acquire real responsibility

for the running of the country by joint government, and by representation in all governing bodies. This is the direct political prerequisite for co-operation.

214

The Philippines and India have been examples of this type of co-operation. Naturally it is not possible to imitate the structure of these countries. Nevertheless, when the differing factors existing in these other examples are taken into account, the fact remains that co-operation, as these

instances clearly show, is feasible only if there is equal responsibility on both sides. It is possible only if there is equal moral and political stature on both sides. The old, dear cant of the rulers that “the Indonesians are politically immature, and for the present must not be concerned with political matters,” will have to be discarded. In the period just past, the Indonesians have been advised: “Build, socially and economically. We are prepared to support you and co-operate with you. Do not, however, meddle with, or talk about, politics! For that only vitiates the atmosphere of co-operation. You are still immature, and do not know anything about politics.” Now the Indonesians must be officially encouraged: “Come on, everyone! We

are now going to tackle the job together. Let us see what you can do. You are now acquiring political responsibility, and that acquisition presupposes that you can bear it.” That same people which has hitherto been kept as far away as possible from government affairs must now be consciously drawn into them. That people must be made politically conscious. Its political interest must be stimulated and maintained. And all this shall happen. The question is only whether

it will take place from now on, regularly and according to

plan, or suddenly, as a surprise and an eruption brought about by circumstances.

215

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Book Two

TT

ACTION

war in Europe began in September 1939. During

May 1940 Hitler’s hordes crushed the Netherlands in less than a week. The Dutch government and the

Queen moved to London, and after the shock of the first few days subsided, everything in Indonesia went on as usual. There were no mail deliveries from or to Holland, and no foreign furloughs were granted. But somehow people hoped that everything would work out all right—although they were not quite sure how!—and that the final solution could be awaited calmly without having to worry about being drawn into the war. During the last years before the war, many of the Dutch in Indonesia had openly expressed pro-German sympathies. They were thus led to hope that even if Hitler were victorious they would be no worse off. A lot of fuss was made

about the treason of the N.S.B.—the Dutch Nazi party, which in Indonesia included many people from the army, the police, and the civil administration—but aside from the internment of German subjects and the arrest of a few outstanding N.S.B, leaders, nothing was done. It could not be otherwise, because in a sense the entire white community was fascistic. And there was certainly no inclination to fight

a war against Hitler Germany. Even after the occupation of Holland few of the colonial Dutch felt anger or hatred toward Germany. They were contented if they heard the Dutch were being treated decently by the Germans. But

despite harsh words and an open renunciation of the N.S.B., 217

the mentality of the colonial Dutch remained the same as before.

In Indonesia things went on in the same old way. In so far as there was greater interest and concern for the seventy million brown subjects, it was expressed by a strengthened

police force, an increase in political arrests, and further restriction of freedom of action. And finally, it was felt that the educated Indonesians could be mollified by pretending to pay attention to their political aspirations. The Visman Commission held hearings to ascertain the political views of the outstanding members of the Indonesian community, but this was the only liberalizing consequence of the occupation of Holland as far as Indonesia was concerned. The loyal and legal Indonesian nationalists offered to form an Indonesian militia and to assume responsibility for it in support of the war effort. Their offer was ignored. It

was felt to be unimportant; experiments with nationalists, which might later be a source of disturbance, were considered unnecessary. The government maintained its super-

cilious attitude right up to the Japanese invasion. Among the Indonesians, plans were made to prepare the nation and the nationalist movement for the dark and difficult days ahead. The Indonesians did not have either

the confidence or the complacence of the colonial Dutch. Even in villages and remote islands such as Banda, people

seemed to feel that things were happening and great events would come to pass. The fall of Holland evoked secret satisfaction, and it was expected that there would be still

more radical happenings. The Djojobojo rumors appeared again, and were whispered everywhere. The consciousness of foreign domination coupled with an intense desire for freedom and independence became increasingly strong. As 218

the war developed in those first years, the people derived a vicarious satisfaction from the misfortunes of their rulers. And this provided a stimulus for further estrangement from the Dutch and for a growth of national self-consciousness.

For the average Indonesian, the war was not really a world conflict between two great world forces. It was simply a struggle in which the Dutch colonial rulers finally

would be punished by Providence for the evil, the arrogance, and the oppression they had brought to Indonesia. Among the masses, anti-Dutch feeling grew stronger and stronger. This was naturally reflected in the nationalist movement and in its leadership, part of which expressed

sympathy for the Axis openly. Essentially, the popularity of Japan increased as one aspect of the growing anti-Dutch animus and as a projection of frustrated desire for freedom. According to the Djojobojo myth, the Dutch would be driven out of Indo-

nesia by a yellow race that would come from the north, and for the ordinary people this meant the Japanese. The idea grew that the liberation of Indonesia would begin with

the expulsion of the Dutch by the Japanese. The Japanese would thus be the liberators, or so it was thought. Long before Pearl Harbor it was widely felt that they would invade Indonesia. While many of the colonial Dutch still thought and hoped that Indonesia could be kept out of the

war—and even a few thought, like the French in IndoChina, of reaching an agreement with the Japanese—among the mass of the Indonesian people the conviction was generally held that war would come to the islands. In general, the leaders of the nationalist movement realized that the Axis was a more dangerous threat to Indonesian freedom than existing Dutch colonialism. Everything

219

possible was done to make this clear to the colonial rulers. The nationalist leaders even tried to shatter the illusion held by the Indonesian masses that liberation could be expected

from the Japanese. From a psychological point of view, almost nothing had been done previously along this line, and the efforts of the movement often made it unpopular. As soon as the war in Europe broke out, the left-wing leaders of the movement immediately declared their support for the Allies against the Axis. Even those of us who were in exile did this. In our little exile colony on Banda, the four of us quickly agreed to adapt our views to the great changes that were taking place. Dr. Soeribno, who was always the most progressive and impulsive of the group, immediately began to correspond with Thamrin and Soekarno on this problem. We chose the Allied camp against the Axis and we were prepared to accept all the consequences our position would entail in Indonesian politics. Dr. Soeribno especially became devoted to the new idea, and lost no time in bringing his feelings to light. He quickly sought an interview with the local representative of the colonial government in order to exchange views, and was received in a rather cool and noncommittal way. Probably Dr. Soeribno’s efforts were merely regarded as a change in his personal feelings toward the colonial govern-

ment. He was thus simply regarded as having become less dangerous, and therefore as being nearly ready for repatriation. The government had already asked him on several

occasions to request a reprieve because of health, but Dr. Soeribno would never hear of it. He did not want any personal favors, and certainly not from the colonial government. Thus his attempts to approach the government after the outbreak of the European war were also construed as a change in heart on this score. At the beginning of 1941 Dr. 220

Soeribno was moved from Banda to Makassar for “reasons of health.” Mr. Soebana, who had long since submitted his request for repatriation, followed shortly afterward. Soebana had become politically vacuous, and had long been ready for return. In Makassar, Dr. Soeribno continued his efforts to come to an understanding with the colonial government, and he kept us regularly informed about his activities. Actually, it seems that his efforts were never taken seriously in colonial circles. His younger brother, who had just entered the colonial service because of his pro-Allied convictions, was sent to find out precisely what he had in mind. Meanwhile I had become convinced that there would be

no change in Dutch policy as we had hoped and anticipated. There was absolutely nothing to indicate that the

Dutch realized that great things were taking place, and would take place in the future. Our suggestions for reprieving political exiles met with no response. On the contrary, political arrests were increased and police strength was reinforced. I felt certain that dark days lay ahead for

us. Japan’s ignition of the spark of war in the Pacific seemed to be only a matter of time. Until that time we were doomed to remain passive, and afterward—utter darkness. I had learned with satisfaction that my party, which was only semilegal, had taken a proper position in the current crisis. I could only hope that with the remaining members—four consecutive heads of my party had been exiled to New Guinea during the course of the preceding six years—we might still retain an organizational nucleus for work in the dark days lying ahead. As 1941 drew nearer, I became more and more convinced that the colo-

nial regime was destined to a catastrophic collapse; and, in addition, that the national movement

not only would be 221

out of the struggle against Hitler, but would be threatened with destruction. When Dr. Soeribno came to Banda briefly before his repatriation to Soekaboemi, he still expressed his hope and enthusiasm for co-operation with the Allies and hence with the colonial government. We could only admire his optimism, but we were convinced that he would be disillu-

sioned as soon as he returned to Java. Meanwhile he was risking his popularity. His new attitude was not understood at large, and he was spoken of as though he were sick and irresponsible. From this time until his death, Dr. Soeribno showed he was one of the greatest fighters we have ever had in the nationalist movement. Personal attacks did not affect him. He remained steadfast in his convictions, never hesitating or vacillating. He was always forthright and candid. He knew nothing of political maneuvers, not to mention intrigue, and did not even recognize them in the actions of others. During this last period I rarely agreed

with him concerning the manner he thought best to fulfill his duty to his country and his people. And yet it was then that I most admired and respected him. I admired his simplicity, honesty, loyalty, and courage, and also his contempt for anything morally unworthy. He liked me and had faith in my judgment, and yet I felt that he seldom was interested in my political calculations. He often found them too involved and suspicious, although he might agree with

their conclusions. As soon as he arrived in Java, he tried everything to secure our release. He wrote me that he would not be able to carry out his plans if he had to do it alone. During 1941 many other attempts were made by the movement to secure the release of all political exiles and of Hafil and me on Banda in particular. The two of us saw 22a

little of this. Each night we listened to the radio reports attentively, and it seemed that Banda had suddenly come nearer to the rest of the world. Each evening scores of

people came to see me to ask my views on the war; and each evening I was vexed by the sentiments that the people voiced. The Moslems were for Hitler and anticipated the

coming of the Japanese, while the Christians, though antiJapanese, were often not opposed to Hitler. One of my Christian friends, for example, had this theory: Hitler had occupied the Netherlands in order to prevent the British

from coming and turning it into a battlefield; he now protected Holland, and as soon as he won the war—which was a foregone conclusion—the Queen would return in honor

and respect. Both the English and the Japanese would be

punished by the Germans. And the Americans would remain neutral because they understood that Hitler was the right man to put Europe in order, and to control the Rus-

sians, the English, and the Japanese! But during these days it became clear that anti-Dutch

feelings were widespread even among the Christian population of the Moluccas. Our popularity had grown considerably in Banda since the outbreak of the European war, and it increased further as the situation became more threat-

ening for Indonesia. By the end of the year, our influence had become so strong on the little island that the civil officials even came to seek our advice on various problems.

This was all linked with the perceptible growth of a unity among the various population groups: Moslems and Christians, Chinese and Arabs and Indo-Europeans drew closer to one another, impelled by a common feeling of danger. The old Chinese shopkeeper became such an ardent fan of mine that he gave me a radio set as a gift, although he knew

he might thereby come under suspicion. He also felt he had 223

acquired a right to more of my commentary on the radio reports than the others, because of the gift. In December 1941 I received the first reports of Pearl Harbor from Hawaii and Manila. Later in the day everyone on the island heard the news. The atmosphere became charged with anxiety and tension. Even the simple fishermen understood that something startling had happened. The Christians formed a crowd in front of the commandant’s office. The Moslems gathered in groups around the little square, and hundreds of people came to see Hafil and me to ask if it were true and what would happen next. We naturally tried to calm them, and to point out that on Banda there was little to fear because the people had long been prepared for the possibility that we might be cut off from the rest of the world. We had cassava fields in abundance, and even if our rice imports were completely stopped, there would be no lack of food.

With dozens of others, Hafil and I heard the Governor General’s declaration over the radio. Indonesia also was now at war! It had been expected for so long, and yet it came as a shock. Civil precautions were taken on Banda: an air-raid alarm service, first aid for the wounded, and civil watches were organized. It went as a matter of course that Hafil and I were to become part of all this. Hafil was made head of the food distribution service, and I of the

listening posts, along with a former sergeant major of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. When the higher and wiser authorities on Ambon were informed of the appointments, they were alarmed. The Banda officials were told they must have lost their heads to put exiles in such responsible positions, and they were immediately instructed to cancel the appointments. On Banda the orders of Ambon

224

were considered bureaucratic and were only partly obeyed. We were no longer to be official chiefs, but instead were asked to give our “advice” as to how the services must be

handled.

In these days Banda became a close community. We saw and chatted with almost everyone daily. My house became a gathering place for the community “war workers,” as well as the center for radio reports. We were no longer treated as exiles by the authorities. They realized that the people came to us in their restiveness, and needed advice and leadership. Our relations with the people were closer in these months than ever before. Later we received an offer from the colonial government to be repatriated to Soekaboemi, where Dr. Soeribno was staying. We thought it the result of Dr. Soeribno’s efforts, but were naturally not certain. In order to find out precisely what was behind it, we did not immediately accept the offer. Instead, we proposed that the Digoel camp be discontinued before we would accept the offer of repatriation. To the local authority our attitude seemed to be absurd and ridiculous. He told us it signified our rejection of the offer. Meanwhile, the people of Banda were quite pleased over the outcome because they were not anxious to

see us leave Banda with the Japanese and the war drawing closer to the little island. But unexpectedly, a few days later, we received a message from Ambon that the exiles in New Guinea would also be cared for, and that the colonial government was particularly concerned over our personal safety. It now seemed clear to us that the colonial government desired our repatriation. We proposed several further conditions, and they were all accepted. As a result, I was able to take with me, at the expense of the colonial gov-

225

ernment, five of the dozens of children who had been my

friends on Banda. Our departure was far from definite, however, because travel prospects were no longer certain. In the last week there was no connection whatever with Java by sea or air. We heard that the Japanese had taken Minahassa and the Kendari airfield of south Celebes; the day before we left

they were reported to have landed on Ambon. Friends came to wish us good-by although they evidently still hoped we would not go. But on the thirty-first of January 1942, early in the morning while it was still dark, a large flying boat circled over the little place, waking the people

before it came to rest in the bay. Ten minutes later we were told we had a quarter of an hour to get ready. We had to leave before daylight, because otherwise it would not be possible. The Japanese were on Ambon and their planes were expected to follow the Catalina at any moment. All of Banda was on the dock—half awake, half dressed, unwashed, and frightened—to see us off. The people had acquired such confidence in us that I felt as if Iwere committing desertion. I later heard that a half hour after we left,

the first Japanese bombs fell on Banda. Only three of the five children whom I was to take were able to go with me. The youngest was Ali, a little boy of three. Two were not allowed to go at the last minute, because their parents were frightened at the thought of putting their children on the Catalina. This Catalina was the

only one remaining of six American flying boats stationed on Ambon. It had received orders to return to Java and to pick us up en route. It was attacked on its take-off from Ambon, and we saw the holes that had been torn in it by

Japanese machine-gun bullets. The flight from Banda to

Java was also dangerous, because Kendari had fallen into 226

Japanese hands and an attack on Bali was expected momentarily. During the thirteen-hour flight we had several

tense moments when we thought we saw Japanese Zeros far below us. During the flight we conversed with the crew of five American Marines. What struck me was their complete lack of excitement or even of tension. They talked about the war and their experiences objectively and matter-offactly, as though it concerned their factory or office work in peacetime. They foresaw the future course of the war clearly. The Japs would, according to them, not be stopped temporarily because they had too great a superiority in the air and on sea. But the farther they pushed to the south, the longer their communications lines would be, and the more vulnerable their defense would become to the increasing strength of America’s war machine. They thought the Americans would have enough planes and ships in the Pacific to begin the counterattack in a year. According to

their views, Java would be able to hold out at least three months, as there were still a number of fighter planes on

Malang and Morokrembangan. Actually, the fall of Java went much quicker when it came to the real fighting. As average, simple Americans, they thought it perfectly natu-

ral that we were struggling for our independence, and they shook their heads when they heard how many years we had lived in exile. They knew Java, but they didn’t ask, as a

European political pundit or statesman would have, whether the Dutch had been efficient colonizers! For us the trip was naturally very interesting: our first flight and contact with a world from which we had been separated for years; and hence with the war itself. Except

for the few times we thought we saw Jap fighters below us, the flight was calm. After dark we reached Soerabaya and

227)

descended with the help of searchlights. The breeze was strong and the water choppy as we came down. A strong

rain was falling. A motorboat brought us to the docks, and here we had our first taste of the situation on Java. Five Dutch marines under command of a warrant officer were waiting for us. Each of us got a marine with bayonet fixed to his rifle to guard and lead us: Hafil and I, the two little girls, and the three-year-old baby! We were welcomed by a gruff command from the warrant officer to carry our own baggage and to march in file. We stood there on the dock in the rain, discomfited at the unfriendly reception, and rather hopelessly surveying the

abundant baggage that had just been unloaded. There wasn’t the slightest chance that Hafil and I and the children could carry all of it. We were thinking of leaving some of it behind as booty for the fighting Dutch marines when the pilot of our Catalina—probably attracted by the barking of the Dutch warrant officer—came over to us. When he heard what our problem was, he asked the warrant officer why the robust marines couldn’t help us and how he could possibly expect a baby of three to pick up

his baggage and march in file. The Dutch officer replied roughly that that was the way it had to be, and there was nothing else to it. Thereupon the American captain took Ali up in one arm, one of our grips in the other, and asked

two of his own crew, who had come over in the meantime, to help with the baggage. The pilot then told the Dutch officer that we were ready to leave. The latter was somewhat nonplused, but we began to walk toward a bus that was waiting a few hundred feet from the dock. The Dutch

officer then suddenly barked an order to his marines to take the baggage from the Americans, and we finally reached the bus with the Dutch and the American air force each carry228

ing a piece of baggage, and with Ali still held in the pilot’s arm. The Americans gave us a roguish look before we left. One of them, in fact, was of Dutch descent. By the wink he gave me before leaving, it was clear that he considered his blood brothers strange fellows. Our marine guards looked stern, and when we were in the bus one of them sat next to each of us so that little Ali— small but important—sat with a rugged, stern-faced Dutch marine with rifle and bayonet held in front of him. It was so absurd that even the girls were amused. On the way to the police office, we sat dead-tired after our long trip, but diverted by the conduct of the grim, stalwart, bayonetarmed Dutch marines. Strange, but really I felt sorry for them. I had the feeling that these simple, young, and still very inexperienced Dutch boys maintained such stern visages because they didn’t quite know what else to do; and perhaps also they were a little ashamed over what had happened with the baggage and the Americans. I think the incident also showed how sternness and apparent strength do not always contribute to awe and authority. We were turned over to the head police office, and after waiting a few hours, we were brought into a dazzlingly lit room. I noticed that dozens of people came to look at us in turns through a window; evidently informers who would identify us. We had been away from this police state for so long. Certainly they must have had police photos of us, but I suppose we might have changed in all the years. It was almost midnight when we were brought to the jail. Except for a snack in the plane, we had had nothing to eat since leaving Banda. Ali and the girls had thus far held up admirably, but now little Ali began to complain that he was hungry. In the bus I had reminded the police agent that the

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children had had a very long trip and had not eaten. He said we would get food in jail. We had to wait still longer before the superintendent came. It was another hour after

his arrival before we were led in and given something to eat. Once inside, we had to separate to go to the cells. Hafil and I were directed to the men’s section, and the children to the women’s and children’s section. This was too much for Ali. While he was with us he did remarkably well. When he was taken away from me he began to cry. Long after he was out of sight I heard him screaming: “I want to

be with Uncle. Why did they take Uncle away?” I found out later that he quieted down when he was alone with the

girls in a cell. And when the girls began to cry, he quickly composed himself and consoled them by saying that Uncle would be back later on! The next morning we were all brought to the police office, where they told us we had been put in jail by mistake. We were then allowed to go to a Chinese hotel for a few

hours before being taken by train to Batavia. We stayed another few hours in a European hotel in the police put us in two passenger cars to go Arriving in Soekaboemi on February 1, immediately taken to the police school. We

Batavia before to Soekaboemi. 1942, we were were interned

there, but were allowed to go into town occasionally, and told to report to the local head of the civil administration. During our stay in the Soerabaya jail Hafil became very

suspicious. He was afraid we might be put into a concentration camp along with the Germans and Japanese. On the train he also wondered whether we would again be asked to sign a statement promising not to meddle in politics. I did not think they would do it this time, and when we were in Batavia the acting police chief was friendly and solicitous. It was a surprise to Hafil. We were told we had

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been taken from Banda because the government felt re-

sponsible for our lives and safety, and we would surely have been killed by the Japanese if we had remained. Yet in Soekaboemi we had no shelters when the Jap bombardment

actually began. Instead we got the impression that no one was particularly interested in our lives or safety, so that the removal from Banda remained a riddle. We also heard little news of Dr. Soeribno. He had found out, after his return to Java, that for co-operation more than one party was necessary; and that the party with

which he thought to co-operate was not very much interested in the sort of co-operation he had in mind.

It surprised me in Soekaboemi that there were so many young Europeans or Eurasians of service age who were in

police uniforms, and so few in military service. There was no warlike atmosphere, and everything went on quite nor-

mally. After the fall of Singapore no one thought the Japs could be kept out of Java, and yet the prospect evidently

did not seem frightening. I made contact with my former party mates, and was even able to hold a few clandestine

meetings with them. We prepared for a quick collapse of colonial authority, and made plans for keeping our organization intact and continuing our fight for freedom during

the Japanese occupation. We were convinced that Hitler and his allies would finally lose the war. For me, America’s joining the war on

the Allied side was the decisive factor in determining the further course of both the European and Asiatic wars. Some

who were strongly impressed by Pearl Harbor feared that Japan would be subdued only if she got into war with Russia; and that was not expected soon. They were also pessi-

mistic about the possibility of a quick Japanese defeat. On

the contrary, a long and hard Japanese occupation of our 231

country was foreseen, and hence an extremely difficult time for our organization and for the nationalist movement. During our first days in Soekaboemi little notice was taken of us. We saw Dr. Soeribno occasionally, and several members of my family came to see me. Later my youngest brother and my sister-in-law with their two children came to stay with me. They had been surprised by the war, and could not return to Banten, to which they were in transit. Even with the little contact we had with the people, it

was clear to us that the majority rejoiced over the Japanese victories. The nearer the Japanese came to Java, the more openly the people displayed their wish for the coming of

the liberators. Hafil was particularly vexed over this. Just before we left Banda he wrote an article for the Indonesian press in which he declared his support of the Allies and his opposition to the Axis. When he sent me a digest of the article, I immediately went to see him to advise against publishing it. I felt that its publication might have unforseeable consequences for us, and that it was not worth while to support the Hollanders in that way. Unfortunately he had posted it an hour before, and we had no success in our attempts to get the envelope back. During the last days of the colonial regime, Dutch propaganda made extensive use of this article. It was translated and distributed in several dia-

lects, while Hafil himself was still interned. Hafil’s antifascist and pro-Allied leanings were genuine. He had always been a profoundly democratic individual,

and he was particularly disturbed over the pro-Japanese attitude of the people. And the longer we were in Soeka-

boemi, the clearer it became that they hoped for a Japanese victory and for a quick collapse of the colonial regime. During the last weeks, the police were feared no longer.

People said openly that the Djojobojo story would be ful232

| filled, and that the days of white rule were over. The com-

ing of the Japanese, they said, would bring liberation. After a hundred days of their occupation, the promised days of freedom would be at hand. Nothing could be done to counteract this spreading belief. I felt that there would be nothing for us to do but to keep silent and await our chance. The Dutch had vitiated or neglected any possible basis for stimulating popular support. Any attempt by the nationalist movement to oppose the feeling of the mass would only isolate and estrange it. I was convinced that the people

would be disillusioned only after the arrival of the Japanese. My advice to the others was based wholly on the assumption that a complete turnabout in popular sentiment would take place after the occupation began. Under these circumstances, it was understandable that

Dr. Soeribno got nowhere in Java, and that he even was suspected by some

Indonesians. During the last days of

February, when the Japanese had occupied all of northern Celebes and Borneo and were expected to attack Java and Sumatra any day, we received a visit from Mr. Boeditjitro, the younger brother of Dr. Soeribno. He had become a member of the Governor General’s staff, and came to see us in a semiofficial capacity. He told us that the colonial government suddenly had begun considering the possibility of soliciting the active co-operation of the nationalists, and particularly of the leaders. I had always had a liking for Boedityitro. I knew him from his student days as a talented and intelligent fellow, and realized that he was working with the colonial govern-

ment, not for his own welfare, but because he wanted to apply the principle of co-operation that he believed in as strongly as his brother. He had never been a political figure. At one time he tried his hand at politics, but soon

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turned away, disappointed and frustrated, to pursue cultural and literary studies. Now, however, he was enthusiastically in support of the democratic fight against fascist aggression. He was disheartened when he did not find the enthusiasm he had expected from me for a co-operative

struggle with the colonial government against Japan. During the years since the fall of Holland, I told him, and par-

ticularly since coming to Java, I had become convinced that a reciprocal and co-operative defense of our country with the colonial rulers had not the slightest chance of materializing, because the Dutch had a completely different and even truculent attitude. He reluctantly agreed with me. Even my conclusion that we would have to fight on alone, and that we still had a chance to win in the longer run, did

not comfort him. He abruptly felt that I thought ill of him. He came a few more times, and we came to understand one another better, but he remained depressed. For him, the

coming of the Japanese signified the end of the world. For me, after the first months of intoxication, it meant a new

beginning of our struggle. In this regard, I believed the Dutch would destroy or hide their archives, and that when

the Japanese came they would be greatly handicapped by a lack of familiarity with the nationalist supporters.

After Mr. Boeditjitro, a Mr. Siregar came to see Dr. Soeribno and told him that he would like to speak with us.

Siregar was the leader of a left-wing people’s party. He was a gifted orator and was particularly popular among the educated youth. Boeditjitro was enthusiastic about him because

he had given up the non-co-operation point of view and had become a staff worker with the colonial government. Siregar had not, however, entered the government for the same reasons that Dr. Soeribno favored co-operation. He had already forsaken the non-co-operation principle in

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1938, after being arrested on suspicion of communist activities. At that time he was given the choice of exile or of

adopting a different political attitude. After conferring with his party mates, he chose the latter and entered the government service. He found a new source of political inspiration in the fight between democracy and fascism, and

became a strong advocate of opposition to the Axis and of support for the Allies, and hence for the colonial regime. I knew him only as a political opponent during a period of conflict between our parties before my exile. From my cousin Djon and exiles in Digoel who were in prison with him, I heard that he was a well-rounded and idealistic fellow. But from what I myself knew of his political past, I had the impression that stability was not one of his outstanding characteristics. At our meeting in Dr. Soeribno’s

house that impression was strengthened. Siregar appeared to be overexcited, and I felt the expressions he used to describe the situation were too strong. For example, he said the colonial government had lost its head and was prepared to turn over a large share of responsibility to us, if we would co-operate. It seemed extremely unrealistic to me, especially because by that time Palembang had fallen and

the Japanese were expected in Java momentarily. In fact, Japanese planes flew over Soekaboemi daily. Hafil and Dr. Soeribno were present at the conversation and I remained quiet throughout. Even Dr. Soeribno was less enthusiastic than would have been expected. What Siregar proposed was that we formally declare ourselves in favor of co-operation. He would then take the declaration to the colonial government as an indication of our position. Steps would then immediately be taken to draw the whole nationalist movement into the prosecution of the war. We would be placed in charge of the radio

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propaganda, perhaps, and if the Dutch had to surrender to

Japan we would be evacuated to Australia. Especially Dr. Soeribno and Hafil would be considered for evacuation. Hafil did not quite know what to make of it, and hesitated. We discussed it, and I told him I thought Siregar exaggerated somewhat but was probably sent by the colonial government to sound us out on these matters. I felt it was obviously too late, and hence absurd, to speak of political co-operation, but I approved of the plan to evacuate Hafil. I advised him not to refuse the proposal point-blank, but to go along with it at least far enough so that the plan for his evacuation might work out. At first Hafil was cool to this

suggestion; he agreed to it only when I promised that I would go with him initially, and would return later to lead our underground work in Indonesia. He drew up the statement Siregar had asked for, but his attitude toward the Netherlanders was so indifferent that it was unlikely to encourage them. However, Siregar was satisfied with it, and promised to return to see Hafil in a few days. Evidently he did not have much interest in me, probably because I had remained so quiet. A few days later a certain Professor Fluiter came to see

us. I never found out why he came, but he stayed for hours, and while he appeared to have something on his mind, he did not tell us much about it. From Bandoeng I heard that Parto, one of my oldest and closest coworkers, had gone with Siregar to east Java. I was not too enthusiastic about it, because I discovered in the meantime that Siregar had made plans for a large resistance movement to operate im-

mediately after the Japanese invasion. He had gone about it in such an awkward and indiscreet way that many people

knew about it even before it got started. I therefore did not want to risk our projected organization by connecting it

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with his. But, by making use of the statement Hafil had given him, Siregar introduced himself to several of our people and got them to go along with him. My fears were not

wholly unjustified. Immediately after the Japanese landings, Siregar’s group was tracked down. Numerous arrests were made, and a few of our people were included.

On the night of February 28 the first Japanese landings on Java took place. In almost no time they. had reached Bandoeng. By the ninth of March everything was over. It went so quickly that at first people hardly realized what had happened. In Soekaboemi everything went on as usual. The Europeans continued to take their daily walks, visited restaurants, and did not change their attitude toward the people in the slightest. The head of the local government continued to function, issuing various orders on behalf of

the Japanese army; such as the order that everyone bow before each Japanese guard or officer. Apparently the Europeans intended to please the Japanese. This was not an easy thing to do, because the first troops were really barbarians. For the least thing one might be decapitated. They naturally understood only their own language, and misunderstandings were thus quick to develop. Later, however, it

became clear that even these rough and tough troops were under strict discipline. The first few days of theft and plunder brought a preliminary disillusionment to the Indonesian populace. Afterward the troops behaved quite well for an invading army, because of the disciplinary measures

imposed by the Japanese: thieves had their hands cut off, and more serious crimes were punished by beheading. Nevertheless, it soon became difficult for our people to regard

the Japanese as liberators. The police, who had been aggressively pro-Japanese in the beginning, changed their attitude in less than a week. They became anti-Japanese, but sae

still not pro-Dutch. People began to hope that the Japanese plague would last only for a hundred days, as had been predicted by the Djojobojo, and that afterward freedom would be born. During these days I began to leave my place of internment more and more frequently to confer with my coworkers. While returning from Bandoeng after one of these meetings I noticed I was being followed. When I reached

the Soekaboemi station I saw immediately that a Japanese civilian and an Indonesian were watching me. The Indonesian tried to keep himself under cover, but I recognized him as one of our movement who had always been suspected of having connections with the colonial political

police. Apparently he was acting as guide for the Japanese. Instead of going directly home I went into a restaurant op-

posite the station to see what would happen. Two Japanese then came and sat at a table next to mine. One of them came toward me, made a deep bow, and asked if the other

Japanese could speak with me. I agreed. The other Japanese, who was introduced as a high personage, asked me who I was. I gave him a false name, though without any illusions that he would believe me. He then told me all In-

donesians should co-operate with the Japanese, and that the

Japanese would soon go away and leave the country to the Indonesians to govern themselves. He spoke Japanese and the other fellow translated in high Malay, addressing me

with great respect. They also looked with suspicion at a few English books I had brought from Bandoeng. I prepared myself for arrest, because I had come from a clandes-

tine political meeting in Bandoeng, and it was clear I had been followed. When I got up from the table I thought it would occur, but I was mistaken. Nothing happened and I

was soon back at my place of internment. 238

I was telling Hafil about Bandoeng and about what had

happened afterward, when the same Japanese suddenly entered his room. They told him the identical story they had told me, but they added a request for Hafil to go to Ban-

doeng to meet the high Japanese officialdom. Hafil waved it aside, but they remained insistent and finally he said he would think it over. Hafil, even more than I, had expected arrest, because so much publicity had been given his declaration of support for the Allies. Siregar had told him many

stories about Japanese atrocities, and in fact Siregar was convinced that he himself would immediately be put before

the wall because of the anti-Japanese radio speeches he had made. The solicitous attitude of the Japanese was thus a surprise for Hafil. I was not entirely surprised. When I had urged him to leave the country, I told him one of my main motives was that I feared he would otherwise be misused

by the Japanese for their propaganda. I thought it impossible for him to be active in an underground movement. He was too well known and the people were still too pro-Japanese. Therefore, when there was no further talk of evacuation (Siregar did not show up again), we had counted on the fact that Hafil would have to lead an open existence,

and perhaps would be obliged to work with the Japanese up to a certain point, for the good of our movement. I would then lead our organization and direct our underground

work. Two days after the Japanese had visited Hafil he received an order to go to Batavia. He left under Japanese escort. No notice was taken of me. I was left with the three children, and it was not easy for us to find new accommodations. Hence we remained calmly in the police offices, ignoring hints from the police authorities that we would have to leave because we were prisoners of the Dutch, and they didn’t want to be mixed

439

up in the matter. Finally we were ordered to leave within twenty-four hours. I took the chidlren to stay with a relative of my brother-in-law, and set out on my travels over Java. Disillusionment had spread everywhere, and we could again begin our work. I heard from people who had seen

Hafil that he had gone to some trouble to put the Japanese off Siregar’s track and had succeeded. When

I came to

middle Java I quickly learned that Siregar was in hiding in Solo. I sent him a message that I would be in Semarang for a few days and gave my address. He came to see me there. Siregar had let his beard grow, but was still easy to recognize. I told him what I had heard about Hafil, but I found

out nothing of what happened after he left us in Soekaboemi. I later found that out from Parto, who went with

him, and had a rather exciting return trip from east Java to Bandoeng.

Traveling in overcrowded trains to east Java, I found the sentiment still strongly pro-Japanese. I nowhere tried to make immediate contact with my old party workers. Instead, I tried to survey the situation carefully, because pro-

Japanese sentiments among formerly reliable nationalists made the work extraordinarily dangerous. This sentiment

facilitated the work of the Japanese secret police in the early days. People at first regarded the Japanese as their friends, and hence they were free and open in speaking to them. This lasted several months before they learned by

bitter experience to hate and fear the Japanese secret police. In middle and east Java it happened more than once that I could afford to make no contact whatever because the old contacts had become unreliable. But we managed to form an organization, even though it was hurt by the arrests. In setting the organization up, my old friend and

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coworker Ganda worked energetically with me. From my sister, who approved of my decision not to have anything

to do with the Japanese, I received an offer to tend her

orange garden, her rice fields, and her house in Tjipanas in the mountains. I thought it a perfect place for my plans. I first took the children to Semarang, and later two of them came to Tjipanas with me. Several of our members fixed the house up as our working headquarters. We brought the equipment needed for a radio listening post, and throughout the occupation this listening service continued in operation. Even after we had

extended our work to practically all the big cities of Java,

none of our workers got into trouble, despite the arrests and house searches that were going on. We daily heard of arrests, particularly of Siregar’s group and of those of our people who had been in touch with him. Siregar was persuaded to give himself up and go to Batavia, on the assur-

ance that if he would work with the Japanese nothing

would be done to him. Boeditjitro also found that he could survive the Japanese invasion. He too went to Batavia, where he helped Hafil, who had been placed in charge of a sort of advisory bureau for nationalist affairs. Dr. Soeribno remained in Soekaboemi and was left in

peace by the Japanese. He persisted openly in his anti-Japanese attitude, but until his death they disregarded him completely. And at his death a wreath was sent by one of the

most notorious of the Japanese agents. During his last days Dr. Soeribno was very sick. He had always had asthma, but during the last years of his life he suffered terribly from it. One of the most remarkable things about him was that even when he was suffering most horribly from his asthma at-

tacks, his mind remained as clear as ever. He remained an optimist and a fighter to the end. He later moved to Batavia

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for medical attention, and after spending a few months in a clinic, settled in one of the suburbs with his wife and his two adopted children. Members of his family and friends,

including Hafil, made sure that he did not lack anything. Hafil’s relationship with Dr. Soeribno was indeed unique. Dr. Soeribno had only contempt for the nationalists who

co-operated with the Japanese. But from the very beginning, although he was disappointed that Hafil became a

leading figure under the Japanese authority rather than a democratic martyr, he always defended Hafil, if not politically, then morally. He never spoke harshly of him, not even when I occasionally expressed my dissatisfaction with him. Hafil’s loyalty to Dr. Soeribno also remained as strong

as always. During a time when only anti-Japanese people were accustomed to visit Dr. Soeribno, Hafil still came to see him. He came and bore all the sarcasm and invective directed against the so-called “collaborating” Indonesians. Hafil had never made common cause with those Indone-

sians who went to work for the Japanese because of either material designs or political sympathies. He always regarded himself as a democrat and a nationalist who had been pre-

vailed upon to accept a position by force majeure. Using this position, he tried to do what he could for our cause. Moreover, he accepted his position at the behest of our party. To him were delegated the tasks of securing funds for us and of facilitating the travel of our workers. Hafil acquitted himself of these tasks capably and faithfully. He also received our reports and warned us when he heard

that something was brewing on the Japanese side. I heard from him everything that took place among the Japanese and among the collaborating Indonesians. Right up to the

present time, he has always been regarded as a loyal supporter of the national cause.

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One of the goals I sought as soon as we became active was contact with other resistance organizations. I realized that we needed the active guidance of a military expert and also of groups having connections in the secret police and the civil administration. Contacts were needed

among the Eurasians and the Chinese as well. The point was not only to prevent each group from impeding the others’ work, but to provide for co-operation among them where possible, as for example through the exchange of reports. Another thing we were particularly interested in was obtaining information concerning weapons: if and where the Netherlands Indies Army had left or hidden weapons, and how we could lay our hands on them. In the meantime, attention was also devoted to the framing of political programs for eventual co-operative action by the various underground groups. In this regard, I made contact with progressive Dutch groups, including that of the wellknown writer de Willigen and the reformed Dutch polit-

ico Jacques. I had several meetings with these groups in Bandoeng, the result of which was the formulation of a political program of co-operation among all the democratic resistance organizations, with Indonesia’s independence as

its goal. Both our groups and the Bandoeng undergrounds circulated this program. I gave a copy to Hafil, but he was never personally a partner to the program. In order to maintain contact with these dispersed groups I traveled continually. My connections with the nationalists in Batavia thus remained limited. When, for example, Boeditjitro and Siregar learned of this common program through other channels, they never knew we had been its originators.

About six months after the coming of the Japanese, all the Netherlanders were finally interned, including the lead-

ers of this Bandoeng group. However, we continued to

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work with de Willigen in Soekaboemi and a few remaining Eurasians, but in general it appeared that the colonial government had made very inadequate preparation for underground action. Several English and Australian officers were arrested in the Banten and Buitenzorg districts, and every day there were mass arrests of young Eurasians, Chinese, Menadonese, and Ambonese suspected of anti-Japanese activities. But as for indications of a well-organized and integrated action by pro-Dutch elements, there were none, especially after the extensive arrests during the first year. It appeared that a few former Dutch army and marine officers were still at large around Soerabaja, but they evi-

dently caused no trouble. After this year, we realized we would have to rely on ourselves alone during the Japanese occupation. Our hope that the Chinese might be a reserve

support for us was only partially realized. However, we did later get some weapons through the Chinese. During my trips I was residing, for all public purposes,

at Tjipanas. I also came to Batavia incognito to hear the news from Hafil and to keep informed of the activities of

our intellectuals and nationalists. Boeditjitro remained active and tried to form an organization among the younger intellectuals and students. He also helped to support our

work financially. I once met Siregar, who had returned to his office at the Department of Economic Affairs, but he appeared to be very nervous and I realized he must be still under police surveillance. I learned more about him and his predicament from Boeditjitro, who was in regular touch with him. His difficulties were mainly caused by the fact that many of his former coworkers talked under the influ-

ence of the Kempei torture methods. Soon Siregar himself came under suspicion of provocative acts, and a year after

the Japanese invasion he was arrested. He remained in

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prison until the Republic’s proclamation of independence, -and must have been terribly maltreated during this time. \. Lalso found that in Batavia there were still a few small groups that tried to do such resistance work as they could. A Frenchman and a Ceylonese were involved. The Ceylonese occupied an important position from our point of

view; he was a translator of Allied news in the Japanese radio monitor service. We managed to keep in touch with these people, and also with an Indonesian major who had been connected with the nationalist movement. The major

was closely watched by the Japanese police, but he was still active among the Eurasians, the Ambonese, the former military people, and later also among our students. We kept in touch with this type-of activity by placing our people in the organizations themselves, while initially avoiding contact with the leaders. This was done because we knew from experience how awkwardly such organizations worked and how difficult it was for the average member to be silent,

particularly if the Japanese police were determined to learn the truth. The more we extended our work, the more difficult it became for us to remain immune to suspicion. Finally, toward the end of the occupation, we were implicated as a consequence of arrests among the major’s group. Two weeks before the surrender, the first of my closest coworkers was arrested, and the investigation turned directly to me. During the first few years I had little contact with the politically collaborating Indonesians. The popular leader,

Abdul Rachman, was brought to Java from Sumatra under police escort, at the request of the nationalists in Java, supported particularly by Hafil. On the day of his arrival Rachman, one of his trusted confidants, Hafil, and I met at Hafil’s house to discuss the general situation. It appeared

245

that Abdul Rachman had been strongly affected by the

Japanese successes. Evidently he had also been treated

rather roughly in Sumatra by the Japanese. He regarded them as pure fascists, and felt that we must use the most subtle countermethods to get around them, such as making an appearance of collaboration. He furthermore considered the future to be far from promising, because he thought the

war with Japan would last at least ten years. I presented the thesis that the war would be much shorter, and we must therefore develop our revolutionary aims. Neither he nor Hafil opposed this, and we agreed that they should do everything legally possible to give the nationalist struggle a

broader legal scope, and at the same time secretly support the revolutionary resistance. We realized that the Japanese would try to capitalize on Rachman’s popularity for propaganda purposes, and we agreed that political concessions

from the Japanese for the nationalists must be pressed for in return. For several months Abdul Rachman kept me fully informed concerning the course of his discussions with the

Japanese, and he occasionally came to ask my advice. He was seeking zealously the legalization of an all-inclusive national organization. In the beginning it looked as though the idea had a chance of success, but it soon became clear

that the Japanese had a very different intention. Instead, they launched an all-out propaganda effort in support of the so-called “Greater Asia” idea and against Indonesian nationalism. The “Three A’s Movement” * was an undisguised attempt

to achieve a Greater Japan. For this purpose, the Indonesians had to be educated and indoctrinated as good Asiatics, ac* The “Three A’s,” organized under Japanese auspices in 1942, sought to popularize and glorify Japan as the “Savior, Leader, and Life of Asia.”

24.6

cording to the Japanese understanding of the term. This

meant that the Indonesians must be educated as good Japanese. They must learn the Japanese language, manners, and customs, and they must also acquire a Japanese soul. Japanese had to be taught in every school, even ahead of the In-

donesian language, and instruction in only Japanese history could be given. This attitude made it particularly difficult

for the collaborating nationalists, but it facilitated our work. __ By way of reaction, a strong nationalistic feeling flared up, particularly among the students and intellectuals. The order to all students to shave their heads, and the use of the

slap on the head as a pedagogical technique, contributed considerably to strengthen the feeling of self-consciousness

and self-confidence. The first anti-Japanese actions by stu-

dents were induced by the shaving order and the pedagogical slaps. Everywhere disappointment grew into resistance, and into nationalistic resistance. Under these circumstances, the efforts at legal collaboration made by Abdul Rachman and Hafil came to nothing. There was no longer any immediate reason for Rachman to see me, and I lost touch with him until just before the proclamation of our independence.

After a while the Japanese intelligence service naturally found out I had some influence in nationalist circles, particularly among the popular movements and the younger intellectuals. Everyone, however, professed ignorance, and never approached me directly in the first two years. Hafil and Abdul Rachman both agreed never to mention me.

Originally the Japanese must have wondered when Hafil did not draw me into his work. In Indonesia it had been the custom to speak of Hafil and me in the same breath. Hafil was regarded as the famed leader, and I was considered his right-hand man. In the beginning, therefore, it was expected that I would work with Hafil. But I turned aside all at-

247

tempts by Indonesians to draw me into Japanese circles, even for social get-togethers. I felt that otherwise my underground work would be impeded by a sort of social surveillance, at least.

Officially I was almost always in the mountains in Tjipanas. The nationalists who were working with the Japanese politically were naturally somewhat unfriendly toward me. The rumor circulated among them that I was not working with Hafil because I had suffered a nervous breakdown, or that I was in Tjipanas convalescing from tuberculosis. But since they did not know what I was actually doing, there was not much active belligerence against me. I received an offer from a Dutch lady who was soon to be interned to rent her house in Batavia inexpensively, and I made use of the opportunity to set up a station there. During the last year, in fact, I was in Batavia more than in Tyipanas.

As I look back at the Japanese period it is clear to what extent everything in the Indonesian community, spiritually as well as materially, was shaken loose from its old moorings. The fall of the colonial regime was in itself a cause,

but what the Japanese showed our people afterward dealt the decisive blow to the old standards and norms. The Japanese gave the people a surprise that was widespread and

general. People had expected them to be quite different, stronger and more clever than the Netherlanders they had defeated. What people saw were barbarians who were

often more stupid than they themselves. Almost all work, and particularly technical work, was turned over to the

Indonesians; and they soon realized that the Japanese supervisors who had been placed over them generally knew nothing about the work they were supervising. The same thing occurred in the government service. The

248

old, experienced Indonesian administrators of the colonial

service felt only contempt for the political ignoramuses who were placed over them. As a consequence, all layers of society came to see the past in another light. If these barbarians had been able to replace the old colonial authority, why had that authority been necessary at all? Why, instead, hadn’t they handled the affairs of government them-

selves?

Under the Japanese, the people had to endure

indignities worse than any they had known before: bowing before people for whom they had only contempt in their hearts, bearing physical abuse, and being treated as though they were wholly unfeeling beings. At the same time this treatment stimulated a consciousness of self, a feeling of self-confidence—partly as a psychological defense against the indignities, but also by virtue of their own work and experience. The national self-consciousness of the Indonesian people developed a new and powerful drive beyond anything known before in our country.

To the Japanese, governing seemed to be very simple. Apparently it consisted only of the bayonet, propaganda, seizure of food and other goods, force, and conscript labor.

Crops were

expropriated and in return Japanese army

money was given, for which nothing could be bought because everything had already been seized and there was no governmental distribution service to the villages. Where food crops were cultivated, hunger was often most prevalent. Elsewhere the peasants were arbitrarily forced to plant

whatever the Japanese thought might be of use; sometimes castor-bean seeds, sometimes cotton. Experiments were conducted on a large scale with both the ground and the people. If the experimental crop failed, the work of hundreds of thousands of people came to nothing. Hundreds of thousands of strong villagers were taken from their villages

249

to work for the Japanese. Many were shipped abroad as slaves. If they lived through the new conditions they were made to work at one of the many military fronts. Barely a handful survived this experience. The villages were deci-

mated by starvation and sickness, particularly malaria, for which no medicine was available. At the same time the

quinine factory in Bandoeng, which had produced quinine for the whole world, operated day and night at full ca-

pacity, producing for the Japanese military forces. In some villages the Japanese labor conscription took such a heavy toll that only women remained. Want and suffering creased so terribly in the villages that more and more bellions occurred out of desperation. In the last year of occupation they were especially widespread. At the same time the air was filled with the palaver of

inrethe the

Japanese propaganda machine. Public radio sets were set up in the remotest villages, and the propaganda squads came with their films and equipment. At first propaganda helped to appease the hungry people. Later it became scorned and hated. And along with the propaganda, physical and military training were instituted. The object was to train the villagers for guerrilla fighting. In the offices, schools, and fields, the hungry people were forced to exercise in the burning sun and to shadow-fight with bamboo sticks and wooden rifles. “Those who resisted ran the risk of being

considered suspicious figures. The Japanese set up a spying system to make it easier for the military police to control the people and to keep their eyes on those who were suspected. Not the least attention was given to old customs and vil-

lage habits. Ihe Japanese acted in whatever way suited them at a given moment. The existing pattern of relationships was discarded and no constructive new pattern was

250

substituted. The situation clearly became more revolutionary as time went on. Everywhere unrest grew. The Japanese military were obliged to act against the simple people. Tens of thousands filled the prisons. Disturbances and resistance multiplied. Even the Indonesian troops trained by

the Japanese as reserve forces began to rebel. The Japanese position in the war against the Allies also grew worse and hope of a victory became weaker and weaker. The political policy now altered slightly. Nationalism

was no longer so vigorously opposed. Some of the Japanese —in Java particularly the navy, which was not immediately responsible for the administrative machinery—began to woo the nationalists. It was just about this time that I first came into direct

contact with the Japanese. The Japanese information serv-

ice sent a Japanese to find out my views on the general situation. I thought it best to take a nationalist position, because I realized that they already had a certain amount of information about my views. Thereafter I had at least one

visitor a week from the information service: first a Japanese and then an Indonesian. I realized that my movements were being watched. They had evidently found out that I traveled considerably and had many visitors. In fact, toward the end they tried to restrict my movements. They requested me to give courses dealing with nationalism and the Indonesian popular movement in a so-called nationalist in-

stitution that had been set up, called the Ashrama Indonesia Merdeka (Association for a Free Indonesia). As the situation then stood, I could not refuse. I realized that it

was an indirect means of making my travel difficult, and at

the same time of keeping an eye on my movements and my ideas. I also found out soon enough that the institution, although apparently directed by Indonesians, was sponsored

251

and controlled by Japanese. The courses I gave concerned nationalism and democratic principles, and I must admit that I derived some pleasure from the results. Quite a few of those who took the courses later became capable fighters for our freedom and our republic. There was, however, one exception, a fellow whom I had originally regarded as one

of my best students. He went to work for the Japanese information service, and later became one of the leading figures behind my kidnaping in Solo.*

During this time the Japanese began to permit Indonesians to assume positions that previously had been reserved

for Japanese. An advisory council to the Japanese authorities was set up, with Abdul Rachman as chairman. Indonesians who had disdained me before sought to reach me, and one of them even asked me, in the name of his Japanese chief, if I would set down on paper my ideas concerning the general situation and what I thought of the future. Naturally I did not accept the proposal. The collaborating nationalists now became more hopeful and confident. They began again to think that a kind of self-government for Indonesia might be possible even un-

der the Japanese: a Dokurichu, or home rule for Indonesia, as the Japanese called it. Not quite like Burma,t but in that direction, anyhow. The Japanese idea was that home rule would provide a sort of training school for administrative

co-operation with the Japanese. During the last months, when the Japanese army and navy were being forced out * Sjahrir was kidnaped in June 1946, when, as the Republic’s prime

minister, he was returning to Djokjakarta from discussions in Batavia. The kidnaping aimed at a coup d’état of the Soekarno-Sjahrir government, and opposed the compromise discussions that the Republic was carrying on with the Dutch. It was quelled within a week, and Sjahrir returned to his post.

t+ Burma was granted a partly self-governing status by the Japanese in the summer of 1943.

252

of the southwest Pacific, a constitutional convention was called for framing Dokurichu. When the final phase of the war set in, Abdul Rachman, Hafil, and a few others were

called to Saigon to speak with the highest Japanese military authorities concerning the setting up of home rule for Indonesia.

Before they left I had a long conversation with Hafil. I told him I thought it was all over for the Japanese, and that our chance had at last come for a total national effort. I advised him to draw the line between our position and the

Japanese as sharply as possible, so that we would be forced into a position of open conflict with them. My point was that the situation must be made as revolutionary as possible in order that there would be no division in the nationalist camp between those of the resistance and those who had collaborated. National unity was the vital thing. He agreed with me. The people in our resistance organization

throughout Java were informed that the moment for which we had waited and prepared might arrive within a few days. Communication with all branches of the organization was accelerated. Hafil was gone for three days, but during his absence we

had a report that Japan was going to capitulate. We thus had no time to lose. On the day of his return I asked Hafil what the results of the discussions had been. He told me that the plan was to go ahead with the constitutional convention for the setting up of Dokurichu, and that the nineteenth of August had been chosen as the date for the

assembly. It was then August 14. I replied that this was a Japanese swindle, because their surrender would be announced at any moment, and they would no longer be in a position to call such a convention. I suggested to him that our independence be proclaimed immediately. Everyone

253

would then think that the proclamation was the result of the Saigon discussions. Hence the Indonesian components of the Japanese regime (i.e., the administrative personnel,

the police, and also a part of the army) would go along with us, and in any case would certainly not oppose the proclamation. At the same time, for those of us in the resistance, the proclamation would be a sign to unleash mass

action against the Japanese. I was vehement because of my conviction that the moment to act had arrived, and it was now or never. If we were to let this opportunity pass, the ignominy of a new colonial period might be unavoidable. Hafil was convinced, but he felt that a proclamation not made by Abdul Rachman would not have significant results, Abdul Rachman had to be persuaded. Hafil was to approach him and inform me of the result within the hour. I passed the word to our people in the city to prepare for

demonstrations and perhaps fighting if the Japanese tried to use force. The sign for the demonstrations was to be the proclamation. We had already drawn up the draft and

sent it throughout Java to be printed and distributed on the same day. At noon Hafil came to see me. He told me that Abdul Rachman was not convinced that things were really so bad

for the Japanese. He feared giving them provocation for retaliatory measures.

I then went with Hafil to see Abdul

Rachman, and he finally promised that the proclamation would be issued after five o’clock that afternoon. Orders were given as quickly as possible and preparation for the demonstrations was accelerated. Our students were especially active in these preliminaries, as were the fellows who

were working at Domei, the Japanese press office. After the arrest of several of my close coworkers, I moved to another house, and this became our headquarters.

254.

The Japanese had not yet realized that something was up. The secret police were looking for me because they re-

ceived a report that I had said the Japanese had surrendered. Five o’clock arrived. On the outskirts of the city we had assembled thousands of the youth, who would move into the city as soon as the proclamation was broadcast by our

boys at the radio station. Our people at the Japanese press office were to make sure it would be transmitted throughout Indonesia and abroad simultaneously. The word had

been sent to all of our most important posts in Java that the proclamation would be made after five o’clock that day. In Batavia the demonstration was to be concentrated at the Gambir Park. The radio station and the Kempei building

would be seized. Just before six o’clock, a message came from Abdul Rachman: He could not yet issue the proclamation, and he wished a day’s postponement! The situation now became dangerous for us, because the secret police might have discovered everything in the meantime. Moreover, several thousands of people were already concerned. A sort of angry disappointment and despair grew among our followers. A multitude of frenzied plans were offered, plans to go ahead without Abdul Rachman and Hafil. I was against such a course because it would bring us into opposition with our own people, and we could not allow that to happen under any circumstances. Ac-

tually, we were not able to communicate with our people in Cheribon, and they went ahead with the publication of the proclamation anyhow. As a result several of them were arrested. The leaders of the prospective demonstrations thereupon called a meeting. They felt they could not simply dismiss all the people who had assembled without giving them at least an acceptable explanation. At midnight a delegation from the meeting came to see me with the plan

255

of prevailing upon Abdul Rachman and Hafil to go through with the proclamation. I had no faith in the plan, but I did not oppose it. An hour later they returned, almost desperate, with the information that Abdul Rachman had curtly and sharply refused. At two o’clock in the morning they came again with a suggestion to kidnap Abdul Rachman. I said that that was not necessary, and I guaranteed that the following day I would push the proclamation through. An hour later the same group returned to tell me that contrary to the consensus of the meeting, one clique in the assemblage had

kidnaped Rachman and Hafil; and what must be done now? I then stressed that in any case there must be no trouble or dispute among us. We simply had to ensure that the proclamation would be made rapidly. The same night some

of our people from west Java arrived, and the following day those from east Java. We were ready for the grand performance. Abdul Rachman and Hafil were held prisoners in a garrison about thirty miles outside the city by some of the Indonesian military who had come over to our side. The kidnaping itself had taken place largely under the direction of students with the help of the Indonesian military. The proclamation had to be made that day, because otherwise we would definitely be put on the defensive and might be picked up by the police. But everything remained surprisingly calm and undisturbed in Batavia. The majority of the population did not have the least idea of what had happened and what stood in the offing. Only the leading nationalists were nervous and excited. In their circles they whispered that I must be behind the kidnaping. I gave the police no chance to reach me. Every three hours I moved to

another house, and only my closest confidants knew where 256

I was. We had by then decided that if Abdul Rachman remained steadfast we would issue the proclamation ourselves and begin our direct action. Retreat was no longer possible. On the afternoon of the fifteenth I received a report that

the Japanese had found out where Abdul Rachman and Hafil were being kept, and that they would try to persuade our boys to bring them back voluntarily. I then made a visit to one of the collaborating nationalists who I knew had

very close connections with the Japanese information service. He was disagreeably surprised, but I gave him no chance to make outside contact while I was in his house. I heard from him that there had been no mass arrests that

day, thanks to the intervention

of his Japanese naval

friends. The navy had intervened upon request from the collaborating nationalists, who wanted the return of Abdul Rachman and Hafil alive and unharmed. When it was found out where they were held, a delegation consisting

of a leading Indonesian collaborator and a Japanese had been sent to the garrison to negotiate for the release of Abdul Rachman and Hafil. He further told me that his

Japanese naval friends would definitely not oppose a proclamation of independence. I began to feel that events were taking an unexpected and unfortunate turn for us. The whole kidnaping affair troubled me because it had brought into prominence a clique that had just entered our ranks on the previous night. I immediately called my top people together to discuss the situation. But while we were conferring, one of the boys who had been involved in the kidnaping and had been guarding Abdul Rachman and Hafil came in. He announced that they were back in the city, and had been

brought to the house of the Japanese Admiral Maeda. ‘The guards had freed them after Abdul Rachman promised to

ol

issue the proclamation the following day, the sixteenth. In the meantime, Rachman convened all the delegates of the constitutional convention in the Admiral’s house in order to frame the proclamation. I realized that the game was temporarily spoiled for us. Because of the inexperience of the young guards, the initiative had been taken from our hands. Immediately thereafter a delegation from the constitu-

tional convention came to me with a request that I take part in the meeting. I naturally could not accept. We had sought a revolutionary proclamation, and instead it was to be is-

sued from the house of a Japanese admiral. Our own draft proclamation was discussed that night at the meeting, but

all the passages that reflected our struggle against Japanese oppression and extortion disappeared from the draft proclamation of the constitutional convention. However, they declared themselves to comprise a truly national convention instead of simply a constitutional convention for the reform

of the Japanese administration. I was later told that the use of the Admiral’s house didn’t have the slightest significance, because no Japanese was connected in any way with the meeting. The house had been borrowed, presumably, be-

cause otherwise the Japanese army authorities would not have allowed the meeting to take place, since they considered it illegal. The Admiral, so I was told, had a sort of immunity from the army, and was personally sympathetic toward Indonesian national aspirations. Admiral Maeda and

a few of his staff were later put in a Dutch jail in Java. On the sixteenth the proclamation was ready. But there

was still hesitation, for it was apparent that the Japanese

army regime was definitely in opposition. Our people in Domei forced the issue by broadcasting the proclamation to the world, and on the seventeenth Abdul Rachman fi-

258.

nally read the proclamation on the lawn of his home. He was to be the president and Hafil the vice-president of the new republic. The effect of the proclamation was tremendous. It was as though our people had been electrified. A majority of the Indonesian civil servants, administrators, police, and military groups immediately declared their support of the Republic. National strength and unity reached greater heights than anything we had known before. In Batavia the

Japanese prevented a mass meeting at which Abdul Rachman was to address the people. But everywhere there was a noticeable growth of open resistance and contempt for

Japanese authority. I started to travel over Java at this time, to find out how the situation stood and how it was likely to evolve. Our people in Batavia were to ensure that there was no turning back and that the revolutionary spirit continued to expand. While I was in Bandoeng, Abdul Rachman issued a decree instructing all Indonesian civil servants to ignore orders

from the Japanese and to heed only instructions from the republican government, at whose helm he stood. The decree stated that henceforth only the republican red-white

flag should fly from all offices, in place of the Japanese red ball. This latter provision seemed to me to be particularly apt. The red-white flag became the symbol of our struggle. The raising of that flag everywhere was the immediate

cause of conflict and open resistance to the Japanese. Within a few weeks after the decree, there arose through-

out Java a large and strongly militant national front in opposition to the now apathetic Japanese authorities. This conflict over the flag grew into a mass struggle for leadership and direction of offices and administrative seats. And

a widespread people’s revolution was born. Where the Jap250

anese did not show much resistance, the revolution was

bloodless. Where fighting occurred—and this took place in areas where the Japanese had made themselves particularly hated—primitive instincts arose to the surface and blood baths and atrocities resulted. But the apparatus of govern-

ment became republican. Large groups of Japanese were disarmed by our republican police and military forces, and especially by the raging masses. Republican power now became an armed power.

The Japanese had by this time surrendered officially, and they became different people in the process. Now passive and apathetic, many of them committed suicide and many more were killed by the people. During this whole period the attitude toward the Dutch who gradually came out of the camps was definitely neutral if not friendly. I can certify this personally from the trip I made throughout Java in these days. Quite often I was in a third-class railway car with dozens of Indonesians and groups of Dutch people who had just come from their camps. The trains were all overcrowded, and the Dutch people invariably were asked all sorts of questions by the Indonesians concerning their experiences in camp. At the

time we had already begun fighting the Japanese, and no

Japanese could have remained unharmed in such a group. I personally visited several of the internment camps in

Java to familiarize myself with the mentality of the Dutch internees, and also to speak with some of my former coworkers who had not yet come out of camp. Those of our friends who had drawn up the program with us for under-

ground work in behalf of democracy and freedom in the early days immediately declared their support of the Republic. In general the Netherlanders who came out of the camps were not inclined toward enmity against the Repub260

lic. It was clear, however, that they did not really understand what had happened. Most of them were physically

exhausted and mentally deranged by their internment. When I returned to Batavia after a two-week journey

throughout Java, the situation appeared to be strongly rev-

olutionary. Japanese were murdered daily, and fighting was widespread. We

had not succeeded in occupying all the

offices and the Japanese police still ruled in the Gambir Park. However, we were issuing communiqués and even government decrees in printed form by this time. The situation was still confused and Allied troops might be expected to land any day. The young students formed the driving force in those days. We organized a sort of joint executive bureau in the students’ assembly hall to direct action in Batavia, and more decisions were made there than in Pe-

gangsaan,

where

the republican government

assembled

daily. All the action organizations were directed from the students’ hall. The first Allied troops arrived in September, but by then the greater part of Java was under republican control. Through my former connections I learned that the Dutch were urging the arrest of the republican government leaders. The British command wisely did not agree, because it evidently had information concerning the republican posi-

tion outside Batavia. Throughout Java there were still tens of thousands of Netherlanders in camps now under the con-

trol of the nationalist government. Then, too, there were the thousands of Japanese prisoners of war we had taken. Furthermore, the troops that arrived at the first landing amounted to no more than a battalion. Immediately afterward the Dutch group that urged the arrest and destruction of the republican government started recruiting soldiers from the released internees and former soldiers of 261

the Netherlands Indies Army. They also took Eurasian minors who had never been interned by the Japanese. All of them were provided with weapons to perform so-called policing services along with the Japanese soldiers. The Japanese ures, until dreds

soldiers were now encouraged to take harsher measand as a result fighting in Batavia began to spread, the city finally became a bloody battlefield. Hunof people were wounded each day, and still more

were killed and kidnaped. Japanese, Eurasian, and later especially Ambonese soldiers of the Netherlands colonial army rode around the city in military: vehicles shooting with automatic weapons at practically anything they thought was red-white—that is, republican—without asking any questions. Sometimes they fired on any group of peo-

ple they saw, for the pure game of it. From then on, hatred against the Netherlanders and the returning Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) began. The national

struggle turned from the Japanese to the NICA

and

the Dutch, the NICA became our number-one enemy. Throughout the country the attitude toward the Dutch changed and violence against them flared up. The struggle crystallized into the protection and maintenance of the Republic’s freedom against the colonialism that sought to return and nullify that hard-won freedom. Meanwhile, more Allied troops landed and the danger of an extension of the conflict increased. For the feeling to-

ward the English was also deteriorating. Originally, the republican government assured the British of support in the

prosecution of their assigned tasks, the disarmament and evacuation of the Japanese troops and the release and evacu-

ation of the internees. The Republic’s readiness to follow Allied orders for these purposes had also been indicated. But 262

the spirit and intent behind change.

the reoccupation

began to

As the threat of general fighting throughout Java increased and the situation in Batavia grew more and more confused, we decided to join our forces directly with the republican government. Thus far I had purposely remained out of the government so that I would be free to lead the popular movement and the direct-action groups. Under the urging of the action committees to take part in the government, it was necessary to enunciate a definite program in order to make our position clear. I issued a pamphlet * setting forth our position in regard to past history and the

present struggle, and explaining what we regarded as the stakes and the goal of the revolution. Our position against

Japanese influences in the government was sharply empha-

sized, because we wanted our people to play a leading role in the present critical phase of the revolution. In the second half of October 1945 I accepted an invitation to join the national committee. On the same day I was chosen to be

chairman of that body, which temporarily represented the people. At the first meeting of the committee a smaller “working” committee was chosen to frame regulations and to work with the administration in governmental affairs. During these turbulent and difficult days this working com-

mittee functioned more and more as the real government, especially when Abdul Rachman had to leave for the moun-

tains because of the dangers threatening him in Batavia. When

the English landed their troops in Soerabaja,

where we had complete control, they were unable to come to an agreement with our people concerning their positions and especially concerning the landing of Dutch troops. As *The pamphlet was (Our Struggle).

later issued under the title Perdjoangan

263

Kita

a result, large-scale fighting flared up. The whole country

now arose in indignation, and a feeling of enmity toward the British grew. Fighting also spread to where there were no foreign troops. In Bandoeng our people made several

vain attempts to wrest the city from the Japanese, but they

still remained in charge. At this time the Allied command in Batavia exerted strong pressure on the republican government because of the unexpected turn of events. The inflamed passion of the people provided another source of anxiety for the Republic. On the fifteenth of November I was asked to form a new government. Departing from the constitution, which provided that the president would be the chief executive, I was charged with the task of forming a cabinet responsible to the Parliament. For this purpose, the representative assembly was called in plenary session, and I accepted the first premiership of the Republic of Indonesia. At about this time the Dutch began to realize there was no escape from the necessity of negotiating with the Republic. The first contact was made between Mr. van Mook and the Soekarno government; but the points of view expressed were still too far apart to provide a real basis for discussion.

From then until my resignation at the end of June 1947, the Republic experienced two years of progressive stabilization and consolidation. The discussions with the Dutch

led to the well-known Linggadjati Agreement, which recognized the Republic as exercising de facto authority over

Java, Sumatra, and Madoera. Before the departure of the British, an armistice agreement was also reached, according to which troop strengths were specified and limited. It began to appear as though the period of revolution was over

264

and that of co-operation with the rest of the world had arrived. But new difficulties arose, especially concerning military strengths and positions. Apparently the Dutch were not

prepared to go as far as the discussions that led to the Linggadjati Agreement seemed to indicate. By the use of artificial interpretations, after the initialing of the draft agreement, they tried to retract commitments they had made. And the more troops they sent to Indonesia, the more just they found their own interpretation and the more they accused the Republic of holding an erroneous interpretation and of ill will and deception. During the last month before my resignation, it had already become clear there was a likelihood of war. I did my best to avert this catastrophe, and resigned only when it appeared to be unavoidable. At the outbreak of hostilities I was sent abroad at my suggestion to present our case to the world. Our struggle has reached a new phase. Our ultimate victory—the establishment of Indonesian freedom—is assured.

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