On the terrace of the Hotel des Indes in Batavia, the brown men in white coats were as quiet and wonderful and attentive as ever. They padded softly, bearing long cool drinks to the linened Dutch civilians, the officers in Dutch, U.S. and British khaki, white and blue. In the crowded, varied city itself, tropic life went on: in the shops of Chinese, impenetrable behind their prayerful squints; in murky canals thick with scum and bathing Indonesians; in streets hot and sunny between the frequent rains, pocked here & there by a Japanese...
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