Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/115

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS our head-dress, clothes and surroundings, and these merely gave to the common place a stamp of individuality.

Is it not pleasant to find one's own thoughts reflected in another? And when the other is a stranger, some one of another race, from another part of the world, of different blood, manners and customs, it but adds to the charm of kinship of soul.

Still I am convinced that not a quarter so much notice would have been taken of us, if we had worn petticoats instead of sarong and kabaja; had Dutch manners, and if European instead of Javanese blood had flowed through our veins.

Our friends made us a present of several books; among them that splendid work by Baroness von Suttner, "De Wapens Neer Gelegd" (Lay down your arms).

I have read several other books, among which "Moderne Maagden" impressed me most, because I had found in it much that I myself had thought and experienced. Marcel Prevost has spoken the truth, and knows how to express his ideas, I think his book very beautiful. Nowhere have I seen the aim of the "Woman's movement" expressed with so much truth and power. Still I am just as far from the solution of that great problem as I was before making the acquaintance of "M. M."

I do not take it amiss that the writer — and this not in a spirit of childish mockery — represents all opponents of the woman's movement with the exception of Fedi and Lea, as absolutely base and detestable. What splendid words he puts into the mouth of the lovable and deformed apostle of feminism — Piruet — at the end of the book — words which express clearly the whole aim of the woman's movement. I have taken a double pleasure in this book because a man thought of it and wrote it.

Just before I read "Moderne Maagden," I wrote long letters to my two —93—