Life in The Netherlands Indies is abundant. Dutch colonials grow rich on oil and rubber, fat on Bols gin and rijsttafel ("rice-table," a huge meal which requires a dozen natives to serve). Their activities at clubs are so serious as to be nearer worship than relaxation. The social hierarchy is solid and rigid as a marble staircase. After a party at the Harmonic Club in Batavia, Java, chauffeurs must line cars up according to their masters' standing, so that 20,000-guilders-a-year may drive off before 15,000-guilders-a-year.
During World War I, club life in Batavia and Surabaya was trying. Since The Netherlands Indies were neutral, both Britons and Germans were allowed to retain club membership. Arguments and fist fights occurred. Finally the diplomatic Dutch rebuilt their bars with three separated bays—Germans to the right, Britons to the left, Dutchmen buffing between.
This time the problem is different. And the difference is the fault of an ambitious little country where life is not abundant, Japan. Last week a European squeeze was on The Netherlands, and Japan was on the alert. At the most opportune and opportunistic moment, out came a spectacular jingoistic blast: Japan would like some of that Dutch abundance, and would brook no interference to her ambition to dominate the South Seas.
Trombone for this blast was the Pacific, official organ of a pseudo-liberal Japanese organization called the Institute of the Pacific.* The Institute is dominated by a dynamic, humorous politician named Yusuke Tsurumi, who can write 14,000 Japanese characters by hand in one day and can talk English faster than the late Floyd Gibbons could. The Institute was probably one of the chief catalytics last September in the appointment as Foreign Minister of Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura. Such an outfit is worth listening to. It said:
"We possess the strongest Navy and Air Force in the Far East and dominate the South Sea markets. The South Seas belong to the Far East and Japan is entitled to share the wealth of those regions, which Europe snatched while Japan was self-isolated. It is necessary to rectify Japan's economic portion, and now is the psychological moment, while European powers with interests in the South Seas are preoccupied.. . . It is sometimes proposed that Dutch oil be forcibly seized, but other methods can be tried at first. . . . We do not expect Britain, France and Holland readily to accept our demands, but the longer the war lasts, the more certain it becomes that our ideas will materialize."