n we were there was the representative of
the Standard Oil Company--a desperately homesick youngster from
Missouri who had been a lieutenant of aviation. He introduced himself
to us on the terrace of the Oranje Hotel, begged the privilege of
buying the drinks, and pleaded with an eagerness that was almost
pathetic for the latest news from God's Country. At almost every place
of importance which we visited in Malaysia we found these agents of
Standard Oil--alert and clean-cut young fellows, who, far from home and
friends, are helping to build up a commercial empire for America
oversea.

The native soldiery, who form the bulk of the Makassar garrison, are
quartered, with their families, in long, stone barracks--ten couples to
a room. For every soldier of the colonial forces, whether European or
native, is permitted to keep a woman in the barracks with him. If she
is the soldier's wife, well and good, but the authorities do not frown
if the couple have omitted the formality of standing up before a
clergyman. The rooms in which the soldiers and their families live have
no partitions, to each couple being assigned a space about eight feet
square, which is chalk-marked on the floor. The only article of
furniture in each of these "apartments" is a bed, which is really a
broad, low platform covered with a grass-mat, for in a land where the
mercury not infrequently climbs to 120 in the shade, there is no need
for bedding. Here they eat and sleep and make their toilets, the women
preparing the meals for their men and for themselves in ovens
out-of-doors. At night the beds may be separated by drawing the
flimsiest of cotton curtains--the only concession to privacy that I
could discover. As Malays invariably have large families, the barrack
room usually has the appearance of a day nursery, with naked brown
youngsters crawling everywhere, but at night they are disposed of in
fiber hammocks which are slung over the parents' heads. The colonel in
command at Fort Rotterdam told me that in the new type of barracks
which were being built in Java each family would be assigned a separate
room, but he seemed to regard such provisions for privacy as wholly
unnecessary and a shameful waste of money.

The military authorities not only permit, but encourage the Dutch
soldiers to contract alliances of a temporary character with native
women during their term of service in the Insulinde, with the idea, no
doubt, of making them more contented. D