Merdeka!

For three years, merdeka (freedom) was the battle cry, the greeting and the promise of the young Indonesian republic. Strangers saluted each other with the word, children chanted it in the street. Many of the republic's hotels were renamed "Merdeka." But when the Dutch seized Jogjakarta, they took black paint and blotted out the word on the fagade of the hotel in the capital's heart. They have put no other name in its place.

The incident symbolized the main question about Indonesia's future. As one Indonesian put it last week, "the republic was ours; we made something of it. What are the Dutch going to put in its place?"

Boil in Oil! Jogjakarta, which had looked like a dead city after the Dutch entered, was slowly coming back to life last week. Ragged peasant women once more brought their vegetables to sell on the sidewalks. Coolies lined up at the railway workshop, waiting for jobs.

But at night, firing could still be heard near towns. Saboteurs set fire to many a plantation; in Surakarta, republican Java's second city, they had blown up most public buildings. A clandestine "free Indonesian" radio station broadcast news of guerrilla successes to the republican army scattered in the hills. "The confusion of the defending Dutch troops," said one broadcast, "was increased through tomtom beating by the population."

Most vociferous anti-Dutch leader was Major General Sutomo, known as Bung (Comrade) Tomo to Indonesian radio listeners. A limpid-eyed, long-haired journalist, Bung Tomo turned guerrilla leader in 1945. He then vowed not to shave until the Dutch left Indonesia, but a year ago his beard got too much for him and he shaved. Sample of his radioratory: "Kill the Dutch, kill the British, cut throats, tear limb from limb, boil them in oil!"

Comrade Nail. The Dutch have gained the "close cooperation" of Paku Buwono XII, the Susuhunan ("Nail from Which the Universe Is Suspended") of Surakarta. The Susuhunan is a shy little Dutcheducated, sport-loving princeling who meekly permitted himself to be called "Comrade" during the republic. The Dutch would have to find stronger nails on which to peg their rule.

Last week, in front of Jogjakarta's nameless hotel, the people no longer shouted friendly greetings; they had only glum, sullen stares for white men. Said a Dutch official: "Indonesians, like the Dutch, would rather live in a leaky sod hut of their own than in the finest foreign-built building. Will Indonesians have another building of their own? Now they are not sure. When they come to trust us to give them independence, as we promised, they will work with us."

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