About the year 1560, the people living near Jogjakarta in Java found a strange creature on the beach. It looked like a man, except that it was white. They chained it to a big square stone outside of town where all could watch and laugh at its antics. They called it "the white sea monkey."
The "white monkey" chipped away at the stone, glowered at the people, and finally died, still chained. Years later, other white sea monkeys came to Jogjakarta and read what the first one had carved on the rock. In Latin he had written : "Laugh at your own stupidity, but do not laugh at the misfortunes of a poor man." In French, Italian and Dutch he had repeated (soon after Copernicus and before Galileo) a sentence so as to form a circle: "So moves the world."
The newly arrived white sea monkeys conquered Java, and before they were done, three-fourths of the globe. Then the world moved on in its circle. The long ground swell of anti-Westernism rose to a tidal wave after Pearl Harbor. It ebbed with Japan's defeat, but nowhere in Asia did the white man regain his prewar position.
Last week a Western nation won a quick, clean-cut victory in Asia. The Dutch had grasped the nettle. At Jogjakarta, where the square rock still stands, they had seized the top Indonesian Nationalist leaders (TIME, Dec. 27). In ten days after their attack, they had captured every major city of Republican Java.
With China falling, Burma in chaos and Indo-China locked in civil war, the West might have been expected to rejoice at the Dutch victory. Instead, W. R. Hodgson, representing Australia at the United Nations, cried: "[This] is worse than what Hitler did to The Netherlands." This immoderate expression went further than the official stands of the Western powers. Nevertheless, adverse criticism of the Dutch move was widespread.
London thought the Dutch were, not "playing cricket." The U.S. State Department was "irritated" and U.S. economic aid to The Netherlands East Indies was cut off. The U.N. Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire order intended to dislodge the Dutch. Not even the Dutch themselves celebrated their victory. Queen Juliana deplored the violence. Said she: "It is a tragedy of human society that makes force the necessary reaction to force . . . We are all in God's hands."
Horrified Look. Many of the Security Council members returned grudgingly to Paris from their Christmas holidays to take up the Indonesian case. The shivering Council met on the cold stage of the Palais de Chaillot; all week long the U.S.'s Philip Jessup sat huddled in his overcoat and muffler. The atmosphere was strained. The Dutch knew that their fellow U.N. members were about to jump on them with both feet. Said one Dutch delegation member: "That was a calculated risk we had to take." The Dutch also knew that the risk was not too great; had not the British themselves sent several units of the Guards Brigade to Malaya to suppress a Communist rebellion? Were not the French and their Foreign Legion fighting a war in Indo-China?