ndeed, it was not until 1914 that a form
of peonage which had long been authorized in Java was abolished by law,
for up to that year private landowners had the right to enforce from
all the laborers on their estates one day's gratuitous work out of
seven.

There are no shrewder or more capable business men to be found anywhere
than the Dutch traders and merchants in Java. Many of the great trading
houses of the Dutch Indies have remained the property of the same
family for generations, their staffs being as carefully trained for the
business as the Dutch officials are trained for the colonial service.
The young men come out from Holland as cadets with the intention of
spending the remainder of their lives in the Insulinde, studying the
native languages and acquainting themselves with native prejudices,
predilections and customs. They are usually blessed with a phlegmatic
temperament, well suited to life in the tropics, take life easily, live
in considerable luxury, play a little tennis, grow fat, spend their
afternoons in pajamas and slippers, stroll down to the local Concordia
Club in the evenings to sit at small tables on the terrace and drink
enormous quantities of beer and listen to the band, not infrequently
marry native women, and often amass great fortunes.

Though the Javanese peasant is, from necessity, industrious, the upper
classes, particularly the nobles, are effeminate, indolent, decadent,
and servile. Their amusements are cock-fighting, dancing, shadow
plays, and gambling, and they lead an utterly worthless existence which
the Dutch do nothing to discourage. Their Mohammedanism is decadent and
has none of the virility which distinguishes those followers of Islam
who dwell in western lands. Though there is no denying that the natives
are immeasurably more prosperous, on the whole, than before the white
man came, the Dutch have done little if anything to improve their
living conditions. True, their rule is a just and a not unkind one;
they have built roads and railways, but this was done in order to open
up the island; and they have established a number of industrial and
technical schools, but there is no system of compulsory education, and
no systematic attempt has been made to ameliorate the condition of the
great brown mass of the people. I do not think that I am doing them an
injustice when I assert that the Dutch are administrators rather than
altruists, that they are more concerned in maintaining a j