Children of the East

In a strange, remote country, a cabinet falls. The name of the departing Premier is Wilopo. Who ever heard of him before? Yet the country in question owes its existence largely to the U.S., and the issue which brought in Premier Wilopo last year was a sporing of that Communist-cultured world growth: anti-Americanism.

The soft green islands of Indonesia, lifting their distant volcanoes against flashing thunderheads, lie melancholy and mysterious in the warm blue seas between the continents of Asia and Australia. U.S. and allied military forces swept through these islands in a few months of World War II, liberating them from Japanese conquest. Because the Roosevelt Administration objected violently to colonialism, the U.S. was determined that the islands should also be liberated from the Dutchmen who for more than 300 years had been masters of Indonesia.

Men of Good Will. Having set the machinery in motion, the powerful U.S. passed on to more pressing world problems. Little study was given to the nature of the Indonesians, their 200 different languages and many religions. No one took heed of the fact that of the islands' 75 million people, only 6.4% were literate. It was four years before the Dutch could be induced to turn over sovereignty to a provisional Indonesian Parliament. The country by then was in a chaotic state.

The U.S. came through with a loan ($100 million), and a platoon of economists, health officers, farmers and sociologists descended on the country, full of good will, all ready to help the Indonesian raise his standard of living, rebuild his country, increase his crops, strengthen his army, educate his people, improve his health and save him from Communism. Instead of being met with open arms, they found themselves treated with indifference, hostility and suspicion. Baffled, saddened, the experts went home, vaguely aware that to the Indonesians independence meant something quite different from the Western notions, and that the Indonesians are an Asian people whose view of life is essentially elusive, esthetic, negative and passive.

The Indonesians like to call themselves "The Children of the East." Their cultural values were formed during a thousand years of Brahminist-Buddhist teaching, culminating in the great, 14th century Hindu-Javanese civilization of Madjapahit. Then came the swift, peaceful penetration of Islam. Securing a firm but gentle grip on the islands (Indonesia is now the world's largest Moslem nation), Islam took on a subtle duality. Moslem mosques assumed Hindu temple forms; followers were called to prayer on Oriental gongs. While putting on the cloak of Islam, the Indonesians remained essentially Eastern; nor has their character changed under the plastic waterproof of the West.

Intolerable Conditions. Many sad confusions result. Desiring foreign capital investment, the Indonesians devise intolerable conditions for its operation. They launch a reconstruction program, then impose heavy tariffs on the tools of reconstruction; a health program, but ban the import of X-ray films; an education drive, then double the import duty on school textbooks. Rather than have their army trained by Western military experts, they would have it untrained.

The previous Indonesian cabinet was headed by Dr. Sukiman, who, in the early days of the Korean war, agreed to stop the shipment of Indonesian rubber and tin to Red China, jailed 10,000 Communists who tried to seize the government, later initialed the Japanese Peace Treaty, and agreed to accept MSA military aid. This was too much for the neutralists. Sukiman's cabinet fell under a barrage of anti-American abuse.

A new cabinet was formed by the Nationalist Party's Dr. Wilopo. No Communist, Wilopo promised to stop the drift to the West, and prepared the way for the country's first general election. In the prevailing climate of anti-Western opinion, the Communists drew the left wing of Wilopo's party into a "National Front" coalition. Directed by Moscow-trained Communist Alimin Prawirodirdjo, financed by Peking, the National Front began attacking the government, brought the country to the brink of civil war last October on the issue of military leadership. Only by yielding leadership of the army to the mutineers, and by agreeing to exchange embassies with Moscow and Peking, was Wilopo able to remain in power.

Then the Communists shifted their attack to the government's agrarian reform program. Three months ago the government police tangled with Chinese peasant immigrants illegally squatting in North Sumatra. Six Chinese were killed. Red China's consul was on the spot within the hour. His protest led to a National Front vote of condemnation in the Indonesian Parliament last week. With half his party openly against him, Wilopo quit. Probable next step: a government which will include Communists.

There was no U.S. ambassador to report on developments in Indonesia last week. Offended by the reception given to its proffered aid and advice, the U.S. had lost some of its interest in Indonesia. The Communists, exploiting anti-Western feeling, were moving in. The Indonesians had not yet realized that they were losing a friend and gaining an enemy.

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