Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/228

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS consent. Father wants me to keep everything secret at present; if the Government says yes, then the world can hear of it. It is very true that we should choose our way with all prudence, but experience has shown us lately that we gain more by publicity than by secrecy. Even if the Government should refuse our request, we should lose nothing. How many petitions are never reached!

Let me say now, to set you at ease, that we will always remain what we are, but we fervently hope with you, that it may be granted us to make our own form of religion admirable in the eyes of those who think differently.

We feel that the kernel of all religion is right living, and that all religion is good and beautiful. But, ye peoples, what have ye not made of it?

Religion is designed as a blessing, it should form a bond between all the creatures of God, white or brown, of every station, sex and belief,for all are children of One Father, of one God. There is no God but the Almighty, say we Mohammedans, and with us all-believing monotheists, God is the master, the Creator of everything.

Children of one father and for that reason, brothers and sisters, who must all love one another, help and support one another. Ah, if this were but understood. But we are so harnessed down by form that we are sometimes driven against all religion; the followers of one dogma look down upon the followers of another, despise, hate and, sometimes, even persecute them; but enough of this for the present.

Is there a Dutch translation of Lessing's works, and of the life and writings of Pudita Ramabai? I was still going to school when I heard of this courageous Indian woman for the first time. I remember it still so well; I was very young, a child of ten or eleven, when, glowing —206—