State of Siege

Gedge chose the lesser evil. He called a meeting of headmen, reminded them of the law, and secured their agreement to his applying to the labourers’ union in the capital for an official organiser. He also instructed them that a record of all dues paid to Captain Emas must be kept in future so that Captain Emas could be held accountable for them later. He then called Captain Emas in and repeated the instruction in his presence.

That took care of Captain Emas for a few weeks, but it soon transpired that Majors Djaja and Tukang had been operating the same racket in the plant and electrical departments. Further meetings of headmen proved necessary.

All this was tiresome enough. The headmen felt that their authority was being undermined and were being obstructive; the workmen resented having to pay union dues just because somebody in Selampang said they had to, and were slacking on the job; small difficulties were beginning to cause big delays. But there was worse to come.

About fifteen miles east of the valley camp, on the road up from Port Kail which was used by the supply trucks, there were several big rubber estates. Two of these were still run by Dutchmen.

The position of the Dutch who remained in Sunda was both difficult and dangerous. The majority were employees of the few Dutch business houses which, under Government supervision, were still permitted to operate; banks, for example. The rest were mostly rubber planters in out-lying areas where anti-Dutch feeling had been less violent; men who, rather than face the bitter prospect of having to abandon everything they possessed and start afresh in another country, were prepared to accept the new dangers of life in Sunda.

For the Dutch, those dangers were very real. When there was trouble in the streets, the greatest risk that any European ran was in being taken for a Dutchman. After a ghastly series of incidents in Selampang, the Chief of Police had even made a regulation authorising any European in charge of a car involved in an accident to drive right on for a kilometre before stopping to report to the police. If he stopped at the scene of the accident, both he and his passengers were invariably beaten up, and often murdered by the crowd. Men or women, it made no difference. The explanation that the victims had seemed to be Dutch would always serve to excuse the crime. Dutch owners of rubber estates were in an almost hopeless position. They were not allowed to sell or mortgage their estates, except to the Government, who would pay them in blocked currency which could not be exported. If they continued to operate their estates they had to sell their entire output to the Government at a price fixed by the Government. On the other hand, they had to pay their estate workers at minimum wage rates which made it virtually impossible for the estate to remain solvent. If they wanted to survive, their only chance was to conceal a proportion of their output from the Government inspectors and sell it for Straits dollars to the Chinese junk masters who made a rich business out of buying “black” rubber in Sunda and running it to Singapore.

Mulder and Smit were both men of about fifty, who had spent most of their lives in Sunda. Mulder had been born there. Neither had any capital in Holland. Every guilder they had was in their estates. Moreover, both had Sundanese wives and large families of whom they were very fond. Inevitably, they had decided to stay.

In the early days at the camp we had seen a good deal of both men. During the first few months, indeed, before the road was properly completed, we had used their guest rooms almost as if we rented them. Smit was a huge, red-faced man with a fat chuckle and an incredible capacity for bottled beer. Mulder had a passion for German lieder, which he would sing, accompanied by a phonograph, on the smallest pretext. With each other they played chess; with us, poker. Later, we had been able to repay some of their hospitality, but they never really liked coming to the camp. No women were allowed in the European club, so we could not ask them to bring their wives; and there were many Sundanese in the camp for whom the mere presence of a Dutchman was an irritant. When the liaison managers arrived I had seen neither of them for weeks.

Early one morning about three months before I was due to leave, Mulder drove into the camp with the news that Smit and his wife had been murdered.