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"We Are Losing the War." The Dutch are hurt and bewildered at what they consider native ingratitude. For generations the Dutch regarded themselves as the world's model colonizers. Now their very benefactions are turned against them.
They introduced sanitation and Western medicine, and raised the standard of living. Result: the Javanese population rose from 35,000,000 in 1920 to 42,000,000, became too big for little Holland (9.000,000) to handle.
The Dutch raised the shamefully low literacy rate to a less shameful 10%. Result: educated Indonesians became the worst enemies of the mother country.
The Dutch established some safeguards against big business exploitation of the natives. Result: Indonesian leaders, some of whom are rich, now feel that they can manage their fabulously rich archipelago (37% of the world's rubber, 3% of its oil, 91% of its quinine), preferably through public ownership of key industries.
The Dutch were reluctant to admit that native unrest has been stirring for years. Some Hollanders were inclined to blame it all on the Japs. Said Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, The Netherlands' wartime Premier in Exile: "We are in danger of losing the war." Others blamed it all on a Jap puppet. Said an Amsterdam cigar-store proprietor last week: "This fellow Soekarno is just a crook and a collaborator who is certainly going to turn Communist within the next five years. We have killed our own quisling Mussert in Holland—we ought to shoot Soekarho too."
Boola, Boola. As a matter of fact, Soekarno lives in terror of assassination, although the passionate loyalty and vigilance of the men around him would make an attempt difficult. Few men in the postwar world evoke the fanatic devotion of millions as does this 45-year-old child of luck and revolution. He is tall for an Indonesian (5 ft. 8 in.) and, by native standards, superlatively handsome. His Malay is self-consciously choice; in fact, he is so insistent on advancing the native speech that he is called Indonesia's Webster (meaning Noah, not Daniel). He is quite an orator, too—TIME'S Sherrod cabled the following picture of Soekarno addressing an audience of 5,,000 women:
"Mostly he spoke extemporaneously (65 minutes). Occasionally he slipped on horn-rimmed spectacles, read a note. I have never seen an orator who held an audience in the palm of his hand so easily and confidently. Soekarno would speak slowly, then at machine-gun pace. Some times he shook a finger at the audience, again he stood arms akimbo and bit off his words. The fascinated audience laughed with him, grew serious with him, sympathized with him when he said he had just come from a sickbed and had to wear a light raincoat (which he took off after half an hour)."
Sample of Soekarno's oratory: "Our ideal is an automobile for everybody. . . ." (At present few cars travel Java's pot-holed roads.) "I've just received a letter from a young girl who wants to be an airplane pilot. . . . That's right, hitch your aims to the stars. . . . We can laugh, we can eat and some day we can have clothes. . . . But our ideals will not be realized easily. We must struggle for them."