Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/151

 no war in the country, whereby the paddy is trodden down while yet green, nor is there sickness to paralyse the patjol. Neither are the sunbeams more powerful than is necessary to ripen the grain, that has to be food for you and your children; nor banjers, that make you say, ‘Show me the place where I have sown.’

“Where Allah sends inundations that wash away the fields; where He hardens the ground as barren stones; where He makes the sun burn even to scorching; where He sends war to devastate the fields; where He slays with diseases, that make the hands weak, or with dryness that kills the cornthere, chiefs of Lebak, we bend our heads, and say: ‘His will be done!’

“But it is not so in Bantam-Kidool.

“I have been sent here to be your friend, your elder brother. Should not you warn your younger brother, if you saw a tiger in his way?

“Chiefs of Lebak, we have often committed faults, and our country is poor, because we have committed so many faults.

“For in Tjikandi, Bolang, and Krawang, in the regions round about Batavia, there are many men who were born in our country, and who have left our country.

“Why do they seek labour far from the place where they buried their parents? Why have they fled from the village where they were circumcised? Why do they