The Netherlands: "We are in danger of losing the war."

What time is it in Indonesia? Last week the public clocks which the punctual Dutch had placed along Batavia's sweltering, mosquito-infested streets did not say; nobody had wound them. Nobody collected electric bills, because the electrical engineers are Dutch and the company accountants Indonesian; they could not decide who should get the receipts.

Batavia had two mayors, one Dutch, one Indonesian; two flags, one Queen Wilhelmina's and one Ir. Soekarno's; two currencies, neither of which could buy much, and two possible destinies: it might become the chief city of the first great Moslem colony to free itself from European rule, or it might come to symbolize the first wave of Asiatic nationalism to break into chaos.

By last week it was clearly too late in Indonesia for restoration of full Dutch imperial rule, too early for stable native government. Was it too late for cooperation between Dutch and Indonesians in a framework of expanding independence? From Batavia, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod cabled a gloomy forecast :

"Throughout most of Asia, the white man is truly hated and the sky is black with chickens coming home to roost—probably blacker in Indonesia than anywhere except Indo-China. The natives' passions run away with their leaders' intellects. I am inclined to doubt whether whites and colored will work together in this generation."

"We Cannot Stop Her." In Amsterdam, 9,900 miles away, Dutchmen could not bring themselves to accept so pessimistic a view, which would spell catastrophe for their country. Said Pieter de Jong, a middle-of-the-road Dutch businessman: "We've already lost our trade with Germany. If we lose Indonesia too, The Netherlands will become one of the poorest countries on the Continent. If Indonesia really wants complete freedom, we are not going to stop her and we cannot stop her. But we Netherlanders sincerely hope the Indonesians have some common sense left. If we move out, the Indonesians will be a prey to Communism or to ruthless big business."

"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 Soekarno too."

Soekarno

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."

"Mister Merdeka." At the end of each speech he punches out, with clenched fists, three thunderous cheers: "Merdeka [Freedom]! Merdeka! Merdeka!" His followers roar the word, plaster it on billboards, use it as the Nazis used Heil Hitler in telephone greetings. Affectionately, they call their leader "Mister Merdeka."

He could do with a nickname. Soekarno is his first name, and it is almost as common in Java as Hans is in Holland. Indonesians are careless about surnames, and Soekarno lost his somewhere along the rocky way of a life that began humbly in Surabaya. Young Soekarno was one of those bright, indifferent students who frequently turn out to be politicians.

Soekarno, like thousands of other young Indonesian intellectuals, was a wavering moderate in his opposition to Dutch rule. In 1926 the Dutch made a major blunder. In suppressing a Communist uprising, they exiled 4,500 Indonesians, without trial, to New Guinea. Soekarno became an uncompromising (but nonCommunist) nationalist, reached out for power, achieved a considerable following before being exiled to Flores Island in 1934.

He was still on Flores when the Japs attacked the N.E.I. In eight days the Dutch lost Java. Gallant but inept, the Dutch Navy bungled into calamity and the Dutch air force was destroyed. Thereafter, it would have been pointless, militarily, for the Dutch Army to attempt resistance. To the Indonesians, however, the Army was the symbol of Dutch rule. When the Army did not fight and Dutch Governor General A. W. L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer* fled to Australia, the Indonesians lost all respect for the Dutch. Millions of Indonesians swallowed the Jap slogan "Asia for the Asiatics."

Umbrella & Bicycle.

Soekarno's career well illustrates how intensely the natives felt about the Dutch. Soekarno rounded up thousands of his countrymen, who later died as Jap slave laborers in Borneo and New Guinea. Half a day after the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, he was still boasting that "thousands of Indonesian youths have entered the ranks of [Japanese] suicide squads." Yet when the Japanese Army proclaimed the Indonesian Republic (on Aug. 17, 1945, two days after Japan surrendered) and appointed Soekarno President, the Indonesians greeted him with acclaim.

Had the Allies landed immediately, Soekarno's career would have been cut short. But in the six weeks that elapsed before British troops, under Lieut. General Sir Philip Christison, arrived in Java, Soekarno had a chance to consolidate his "independent" government. Christison gave Soekarno another break by announcing, "I am not going to Java to return the country to the Dutch." Soekarno used this statement to build up his people's confidence that they could successfully resist the return of imperial rule. For 14 months the Republican Army fought British and Dutch occupation troops. By the time the British withdrew last month their casualties were 600 killed, 1,320 wounded and 320 missing.

Valedictorian.

Because van Mook at first had refused to treat with collaborators, Soekarno induced a rival native leader, Sjahrir, to become his Prime Minister—a move that turned out to be the smartest Soekarno ever made. Smoother and brighter than Soekarno, and with a clean anti-Japanese record, Sjahrir had everything—except the adulation of the Indonesian masses.

Sjahrir quickly adjusted himself to the role of Soekarno's front man in Batavia, while Soekarno left Batavia for the cool hill city, Jogjakarta, where he could indulge both his love of comfort and his sense of historic irony. Soekarno luxuriated in the terraced, marble-floored mansion that once belonged to the Dutch Resident. Near the mansion are the ruins of Borobudur, the massive Buddhist temple where Java's kings worshiped eight centuries before the Dutch came to the archipelago.

Sjahrir (whose favorite author is Ernest Hemingway, and who sponsored American dancing parties for Javanese youngsters as a protest against Jap occupation) got along well with Westerners. He played tennis several times a week with British Consul General John MacKereth.

When the British troops left last month, Sjahrir delivered a graceful but two-edged valedictory: "You introduced to our country by your personal qualities some attractive traits of Western culture that our people have rarely seen before from the white people they know. I mean your politeness, kindness, dignified self-restraint."

Asked van Mook: "What did you mean by that remark?"

Said Sjahrir: "When your troops leave Indonesia I'll say things twice as nice about the Dutch."

Ice in the Jungle.

Today, while the Indies wait upon The Netherlands' reaction to the pact, a truce—but no peace—prevails in Indonesia. The Indonesian Army, led by hotheadedyoung General Soedirman, continues to snipe at units of the 92,000 Dutch troops under Lieut. General S. H. Spoor. Actually, in Java the Dutch hold only three small areas: the cities of Surabaya, Semarang and a corridor two to six miles wide connecting and including Batavia and Bandung. Of Java's 51,000 square miles, the Dutch hold perhaps 380 square miles. In Sumatra the Dutch control three areas (at Palembang, Padang and Medan), less than 76 square miles out of 164,147.

Can the Indonesians govern themselves? Says Correspondent Sherrod: "They have done surprisingly well, and with some assistance—Dutch or otherwise—I think they can. Van Mook says the Indonesians have matured more in the past five years than in the previous 50."

Gin on the Terrace.

In Batavia last week some of the old, prewar hallmarks of empire were still present. The tuan besar (Dutch for pukka sahibs) sat in their white linen suits and drank fiery Bols gin on the terrace of the Harmonie Club. Every now & then in the evening their talk was disturbed by a bullet whizzing by from the lines outside the city.

News more disquieting than casual bullets came last week. The Dutch had assumed that their friends, the local sultans of the Great East islands, would not be troubled by rebellion. But now there was insurrection in Celebes, and even reports of trouble in Amboina, where Indonesia's most loyal native troops are recruited.

Most of the Indies Dutch now realize that the old days will never come again. The Dutch at home are beginning to understand that Ir. Soekarno & Co. are attempting to engineer a complete break, economic as well as political. As a result Holland's earlier, more tolerant attitude toward Indonesian home rule is stiffening. But at best the Dutch faced a pretty grim prospect. Sardonic Hubertus van Mook put it this way: "There will be shooting for a long time in Indonesia, but we hope to get it on a friendlier basis."