Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/234

 “But yesterday you came to my office with the letter of the Resident in your hand, and began to speak of the difficulty of dealing with its contents. I again observed in you a sort of timidity about giving some things their true name, an attitude to which I have already several times drawn your attention, amongst others recently in the presence of the Resident, an attitude which for short I call halfness, and against which I have often given you friendly warning.

“Halfness leads to nothing. -good is good. -true is -true.

“For full salary, for full rank, after a clear and oath, one must do one’s  duty.

“If it may sometimes require courage to carry it out, one should possess that courage.

“For my own part I should not have the courage to lack that courage. For, apart from dissatisfaction with oneself, which must be the consequence of neglect of duty or half-heartedness, the search for easier roundabout ways, the desire to avoid conflict always and everywhere, the tendency to ‘diplomacy,’ inevitably causes more anxiety, and indeed more danger, than one will meet on the straightforward path.

“During the course of a very important matter which is now under consideration by the Government, and in which you really should be officially concerned, I have tacitly left you, so to speak, neutral, and have only alluded to it with a smile now and then.

“When, for instance, recently your Report on the causes of distress and famine among the population had come before me, and I wrote on it: ''‘All this may be the truth, but it is not the ' truth, nor the ' truth. The chief cause lies deeper,’'' you admitted this frankly, and I did not avail myself of my to demand that in the circumstances you should  that principal truth.

“I had many reasons for such forbearance, and amongst others this one, that I felt it would be unjust all of a sudden to exact from