Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/263

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS We do not expect the European world to make us happier. The time has long gone by when we seriously believed that the European is the only true civilization, supreme and unsurpassed.

Forgive us, if we say it, but do you yourself think the civilization of Europe perfect? We should be the last not to see and appreciate the great good that is in your world, but will you not acknowledge that there is also much that brings the very name of civilization into ridicule?

We complain about pettiness and smallness of soul in our own surroundings; do not imagine for a moment that we think that in Holland we shall not find pettiness too.

You know better than we, that among the thousands that are called civilized by the world, only a very few are that in reality. That a broad mind is not possessed by every European from whom it might be expected. And even in the most elegant, exclusive and brilliant salons; prejudice, intolerance and short sightedness are no infrequent visitors.

We do not think of Holland as an ideal country, not in the least. Judging from what we have seen of the Hollanders here, we can certainly reckon upon much in that small, cold country that will wound our sensibilities and bitterly grieve us. We Javanese are reproached as bom liars, wholly untrustworthy, and we are called ingratitude personified. We have not only read this many times, but we have heard it spoken aloud, and that was a fair test of the speaker's delicacy of feeling.

We only smile when we read or hear such pleasantries, we think to ourselves of European society life which often gives glaring proof of the truth and sincerity of those who sit in high places and look down with scorn upon the lying, untrustworthy Javanese.

We came in contact with Europeans very little until a few years ago; the first occasion on which we found ourselves in a European crowd, —241—