Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/15

 INTRODUCTION

These letters which breathe the modem spirit, in all of its restless intensity, were written by a girl of the Orient, reared in an ancient and outworn civilization. They unfold the story of the writer with unconscious simplicity and present a vivid picture of Javanese life and manners.

But perhaps their chief interest lies in their value as a human document.

In them the old truth of the oneness of humanity is once more made manifest and we see that the magnificent altruism, the spirit of inquiry, and the almost morbid desire for self-searching and analysis that characterize the opening years of the Twentieth Century were not peculiar to Europe or to America, but were universal and belonged to the world, to the East as well as to the West.

Kartini, that was her only name—Raden Adjeng is a title—wrote to her Dutch friends in the language of the Netherlands. In her home circle she spoke always Javanese, aiid she was Javanese in her intense love for her land and people, as well as in dress and manners.

She did not live to see the work that has been accomplished in her name during the last ten years. Today there are "Kartini Schools" in all parts of Java. The influence of her life and teachings is perhaps greater than that of any other woman of modem times because it reaches all of the thirty-eight millions of Javanese and extends to some extent throughout the entire East.

She did not desire to make of her people pseudo-Europeans but bet- —xi—