Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/21

XII area would have sufficed, and one might have been spared the trouble and expense incurred in the holding of the "line" which necessitated a considerable military force to do a work of the Danaides under the continuous harassing of the Achehnese.

From the commencement too, every one whose duty it was to supervise the working of this "scheme" found it necessary to do either more or less than it implied; the Governors of Acheh themselves expressed such opinions sometimes by action sometimes by recommendation. We need not trouble the reader with the dozens of different schemes proposed by officials or unofficials. It may however be borne in mind that firstly the trial of a purely civil government (based on the theory that Acheh had been sufficiently subdued), and afterwards the "concentration" (really intended to save statesmen at home from troubling their heads about these questions, but nominally based upon the theory that Acheh would ultimately submit of its own accord) take out fifteen years from the tale of the legendary thirty first referred to by us.

The last three years of the "concentration" time have earned an unhappy notoriety under the name of the "Uma"-period. This adventurer, whose character is depicted in our first volume, came from the Meulaboh country; he was a typical Achehnese in his complete untrustworthiness and in his slavery to opium and gambling, but he differed from most Achehnese headmen in his energy and consummate tact in his relations with all sorts and conditions of men. As he had acquired a commanding influence over the West coast and in one of the three sagi's of great Acheh by cunning and intrigue and by violence of all sorts—and the "concentration" theory debarred any idea of depriving him of his ill-gotten authority—he was a troublesome enemy to the Dutch Government and he could become by prudent policy on the part of those in authority, a useful ally of that Government. It is true that he had many crimes standing to his debit and had more than once been guilty of double-dealing—but these are offences which can be laid to the charge of all "friendly" Achehnese chiefs, and although in Uma's case the proportions in both respects were greater than in the case of other treacherous allies, this was only due to the fact that the others were less subtle and energetic than he.

Thus in 1893 when Uma, intending to advance his own interests had repeatedly asked for the forgiveness of his past offences, the acceptance