Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/140

120 and order him out of Netherlands India; and a resident is such an autocrat that he can order any planter or trader out of his domain if it is shown that he habitually maltreats or oppresses the natives, or does anything calculated to compromise the superior standing or prestige of the white people. The Dutch are severe upon this latter point, and the best of them uphold a certain noblesse oblige as imperative upon all who possess a white skin. The European military officer is sent to Holland for court martial and punishment, that the native soldiers may remain ignorant of his degradation, and the European who descends to drunkenness is hurried from native sight and warned. While the conquerors hold these people with an iron grasp, they aim to treat them with absolute justice. Many officials and planters have married native wives, and their children, educated in Europe, with all the advantages of wealth and cultured surroundings, do not encounter any race or color prejudice nor any social barriers in their life in Java. They are Europeans in the eye of the law and the community, and enjoy "European freedom." No native man is allowed to marry or to employ a European, not even as a tutor or governess, and no such subversion of social order as the employment of a European servant is to be thought of. There is a romance, all too true, of governmental interference, and the dismissal from his office of regent, of the native prince who wished to marry a European girl whose parents fully consented to the alliance. The laws allow a European to put away his native wife, to legally divorce her, upon the slightest pretexts, and to abandon her and her chil-