Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/236

 where, and particularly in another form, than in these annoying and sense-destroying titles.

The answer to this letter inculpated some of Havelaar’s predecessors, and proved that he was not so very much mistaken when he included, among the reasons that might plead extenuation for the Regent, the “bad examples of an earlier time.”

In publishing this letter, I have anticipated, in order to emphasize in advance the fact that Havelaar had to expect but little help from the Controller as soon as it would become necessary to give their proper names to altogether different and more important matters, considering that this officer, who unquestionably was a right-minded man, had to be thus addressed to make him speak the truth where it was but a question of price-quotations of timber, stone, mortar, and wages. It will thus be realized that he had not only to fight the power of the persons who benefited by criminality, but also the cowardice of those who—though condemning this criminality as much as he did—did not consider themselves called upon or able to make the necessary courageous stand against it.

Perhaps also, after reading that letter, one will drop some of the contempt for the slavish submissiveness of the Javanese who, in the presence of his Chief, cravenly retracts the once-preferred charge, however well-founded. For if one reflects that there was so much cause of fear, even on the part of the European official, who after all might be considered to be less exposed to vengeance, what then awaited the poor native who, in a village far from the head-centre, was left entirely in the power of the oppressors whom he had accused? Is it to be wondered at that those poor people, terrified at the results of their temerity, sought to escape or mitigate those results by abject submission?

And it was not only the Controller Verbrugge who did his duty with a nervousness that would have befitted dereliction of duty.