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Sanity is the gold standard. Sanity is a balanced budget. Sanity is free trade. These verities the Queen and many of her subjects consider eternal. Judged by such verities, the Great Powers have gone insane, turning sound money into unsound, unbalancing budgets meant to be balanced, and shutting out cheap goods by tariffs, with the result that their own peoples have to pay more than they otherwise would for the necessities of life.
The Dutch point of view and the Queen's are of much significance in the tiny Netherlands but of vast significance in Netherlands Indies, which are the third largest colonial empire in the world (59,000,000 natives). Great Powers may not care a great deal what happens to or in the Kingdom of The Netherlands but the destiny of the white race may prove to be that of the Netherlands Empire. If the small yellow subjects of Japanese Emperor Hirohito succeed in filching away from Queen Wilhelmina's big white subjects the No. 3 colonial empire of the world, what about France's No. 2 colonial empire and Britain's No. 1? To Dutchmen, firmly convinced that they are sane, it was the supreme irony last week that Japan's determined and successful filching is based, at its present stage, on Tokyo's "insane" decision to make the yen worth only 40% of what it used to be worth in gold, while the guilder is still at full, sane value. Should Dutchmen Dance? Cold figures reveal that in 1928 England supplied 29% of all textiles bought by Queen Wilhelmina's dusky Indonesian subjects in Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Soemba, Bali, Flores, Timor, Banka, Billiton, New Guinea, Madura, Lombok, the Riouw Lingga and Molukken Islands, with Japan and The Netherlands tied for second place at 26%. Since then Japan has seized the lion's share of 76%, while England and The Netherlands have been reduced to a mere 7% each. Lumping all Indonesia's imports together, Japan's share has swelled from 10% to 31%, while that of The Netherlands slumped from 20% to 12%. And such Japanese gains are but half the story.
As the tax income of the Netherlands Indies Government has fallen, it has sanely cut expenses to balance its budget. Out went most of the money for higher native schools. This has sent Indonesian youths rushing in droves to get their higher education in Japan, where they are told that Wilhelmina is a wicked old white millionairess and that Indonesia under Japanese rule would have to pay only a fraction of its present crushing, budget-balancing taxes. Even better, many Indonesians are now figuring out for themselves, would be self-rule. They babble ineffectually about "Indonesia for the Indonesians!" But native discontent is grim, real, threatening, and it springs from the impossibility of selling Indonesia's products in sufficient volume on the World market at guilder prices.