UNDER THE SPELL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 897, 12 October 1956, Page 13

UNDER THE SPELL

THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA, by Dorothy Woodman; the Cresset Press, English price 30/-. NDONESIA is a fascinating country; the Indonesians are charming and attractive people. The diversity of life, from the central State of Java to the exotic island of Bali and the wildness of Borneo, lends colour and interest to the traveller’s journey. If there is a spell of the East, surely Indonesia casts it? This is the conclusion one reaches from reading the books of enthusiastic, and especially female, visitors. Enthusiasm is all very well for amateur travellers’ tales, but it is ous when an author has a more pretentious aim. Dorothy Woodman has, Sh is described on the dust cover as "an authority on Asian affairs," and her book is intended to be an historical survey, a geographical and cultural description of the’ principal islands, an account of the Indonesian struggle for independence, a history of the new Republic and a discussion of the major political, social and economic problems of the young State. A task for a scholar who is a linguist and an anthropologist if one’s book is to be anything more than a journalist’s impressions, Miss Woodman is earnest and enthusiastic: the bibliography suggests that she is also industriousp. but none of these qualities are sufficient in themselves for the kind of book she is credited with writing. It never rises above the level of the New Statesman: intelligent and well meaning traveller's tales. Miss Woodman has swallowed the Indonesian case. She dislikes colonial-

ism anda the inaonesians who won their freedom have her sympathy. She has talked to Indonesian leaders who have told her of their visions and their intentions. Her book, like so many others about struggling colonial peoples, refuses to face the dilemma that political independence (continued on next page)

may, and usually does, mean economic retrogression, Whatever the intentions of the Indonesian Government, it is not as efficient, competent or disinterested as the Dutch administration. Perhaps this is the price necessarily to be paid for independence; perhaps, although I have seen no convincing evidence, the politically unconscious are glad to pay it, But let’s not pretend, as Miss Woodman does, that political progress and the welfare of the people are the same

thing,

Francis

West