Point of No Return

Indonesia's President Sukarno, packing up for a six-week tour of nations ranging from India to Egypt and Japan, seemed in a heady mood. "Last year," he told a Djakarta gathering, "was the year of decision. We have reached the point of no return."

Last week thousands of Dutchmen concluded there would be no return for them. For weeks many had clung to their homes and their businesses, hoping that the government would impose moderation on the rampaging nationalists. Instead, the government had only made the seizures orderly, making clear that there was no hope of a reversal. On New Year's Day the new-standardized team of military men, civilian supervisors and union representatives took over the management of Bank Indonesia, and the bank's 24 senior Dutch officials were summarily dismissed. With that, many another Dutchman started packing.

At Djakarta's moldering port of Tandjong Priok, sweltering Dutch housewives and pathetic clusters of elderly women waited solemnly while customs and immigration officials examined their documents and belongings. The Indonesian officials, long famed as among the most uncooperative and most sullen in the world, were being scrupulously kind and considerate. Javanese maids in batik sarongs wept as they said goodbye to moppets they had reared from infancy. On the Dutch liner Willem Ruys, evacuees were berthed in the ship's lounge and laundry rooms.

In East Java nearly 4,000 Dutchmen and their dependents have given up hope, plan to leave as soon as possible. Last week there were reports that Dutch in North Sumatra, who had hitherto not been directly threatened with expulsion, were also about to depart on their own. Most tragic were Eurasians with Dutch citizenship. Most of them, born in Indonesia of Dutch fathers, had never seen the homeland to which they were being shipped. By week's end some 9,000 Dutch had left.

Only the Communist Party journal, Harian Rakjat, had no misgivings about the future, observing happily: "We've never celebrated a New Year in a situation quite so good as that which confronts us now."

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