MILLIONS TO SPEND —MILLIONS TO FEED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 289, 5 January 1945, Page 12

MILLIONS TO SPEND —MILLIONS TO FEED

HREE Dutchmen flying over here with hundreds of millions of guilders (florins) — but, of course, only a fraction of it, if any, to be spent in New Zealand — gained just three-quarters of an inch notice in our newspapers. Dr. van Hoogstraten, lean, tall, and aristocratic, the leader of the Mission and Director of Economic Affairs in the Netherland Indies, hearing that I had met his nephew on Java, gave me a gracious welcome. However, it was with his more conventionally Dutch-looking col leagues, van Holst Pellekaan and van der Noorda, that I presently found myself drinking coffee and discussing Alice in Wonderland. "Where have you people come from?" my curiosity presently broke through. "It can’t be from Holland or the Indies because both are still in enemy hands. It can’t be from Britain because there you would be out of touch with your country. And you can’t have set up a Government already in the patches of New Guinea bush coast that McArthur has eanprured.::. *;" "We are in Brisbane," they said, "the ‘Nederland Indié’ Administration lives there at present, a properly constituted and recognised, Refugee Government." How Many Million Yards? "But we do not simply sit waiting in Australia," added van Holst Pellekaan. "We are most busy training personnel for the tasks of return and reconstruction and securing the supplies and plant that they will need." "Think. Seventy-two million people," said his companion. "They can have had no new cotton clothes to speak of since three years. Even if Japanese factories were not too busy making other things, Japan has not conceivably enough ships to keep supplied so vast an empire as hers is to-day. If we gather and buy enough cloth for only a shirt and shorts for each person-and we plan only for bare necessities-how many million yards of cotton will that be?" "But how do the people in the Indies exist at all to-day?" I asked. "The Japanese must be able, for example, to use only a fraction of the one-third of the world’s rubber that the. Indies grew. What do those who used to cultivate it live on now?" "I do not know," said van Holst Pellekaan. "We never realised how little we knew of our own country until we were shut out from it. It must be difficult enough to keep up contacts across the frontiers with Europe. But across our vast empty seas and jungles it is impossible. We know practically nothing of what is happening in Indié to-day. Of course all plantations except those kept supplying Japan must have run wild. Tea bushes that should be up to my hand will be as high as this ceiling Coffee and sisal and latex will be all wood and flowers. Export and manufacturing crops altogether will have committed self sabotage, and the native economy of just growing food for them-

selves will have reasserted itself. We ourselves destroyed the factories before we left. So as we return we must first bring seeds and fish hooks and simple tools to improve local food production so that later on men can be freed for replanting work. For this a million ploughshares that will be tied on wooden handles for water buffaloes to draw will be more use than ten thousand tractors. To rehabilitate the Indies will need simple things- but such quantities of them that you cannot believe." Getting Ready in the Dark I remarked that he had said "as we return" not "when we return." "It is because we are returning already," he explained. "We never know where the next advance will be until we are asked for a ‘crew’ just before it happens. We call a ‘crew’ a group of men trained to take over the district the army occupies-to organise its Government and police, to get labour and food for the troops, to make it again a part of Netherland Indié. Of course the Indies are a very big place and different parts very different from each other. If a crew is trained for Timor conditions and then the General decides to land on Celebes-well, they must just do their best. All our preparation is very much in the dark." I wondered how much the Japanese had managed to gain native Indonesian co-operation. That led to a discussion of the great advances in Dutch government made in the ’30’s in particular. "Since this century began," said van der Noorda, "We have come up from Colony to practically Dominion status. Holland and the Indies now make together the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In Indié a Folksraad or People’s Council makes the legislation. It has 60 members, about half of whom are elected and half nominated. One (continued on next page)

{continued from previous page) half represents the natives and the other half the other races. Of course the Governor-General is the executive ruler like your Prime Minister, and his Cabinet is four or five Heads of Departments, not politicians; but you see what a long way our country has come." No Colour Bar I thought myself that a Parliament in which a quarter of a million Europeans had 25 members and one and a-half million Chinese and other Eastern immigrants had five members, while the second 30 members spoke for seventy million Indonesians, had still a long way to go to becoming representative. But I said nothing, seeing that there had been such a great advance. What I asked, therefore, was whether political equality really meant social equality. "Indeed," "I assure you," chimed my hosts together. "Ability, not colour, is the test for every appointment. One at least of the five Ministers always has thus far been a Javanese. But there is nothing to stop all of them from being so." Said van Holst Pellekaan: "It was a half-caste who commanded our N.E.I. Army." Said van der Noorda: "The head

of N.I.C.A.-our re-occupation adminis-tration-is Javanese, a lieutenant-colonel who also has represented us in America." Under the half-dozen top posts in the Government service,°90 per cent of all civil servants were Indonesians, they informed me. What was more, the pay for every post was the same, whatever the race of the occupant. "We elevate their position: and by them we elevate ourselves." They'll Be Glad To See Us "And when your task as a Government in Exile is over," I asked, "do you think that your stay in Australia and the greater independence of your country from Europe will mean increased association with our part of the world?" They definitely thought so. "Think: one day’s plane journey to Australia,

another day to New Zealand, and then some one of our people can have a fortnight of bracing holiday away from the tropics where he works. Plane services should be frequent, surely. Then also scholars and students might exchange to study." But I asked whether there was a big enough economic base to hold continuous relationship. "It depends on you," said they. "We have the tropical products that you want. And we make no discrimination. You will be as free to trade with us as Holland itself. For fats we have eaten hitherto vegetable oils. But we have had your butter, tinned, and we know which we prefer. Vegetables, too, perhaps. If you can make your prices right against other competition we shall be most glad indeed to see much of your products-and of you."

A.M.

R.