Governor General's Junket

EAST INDIES

When the Chinese President or the Japanese Emperor goes junketing not even high-priced cable tolls can keep the details out of U. S. newspapers. But with the Governor General of the Philippine Islands the case is different. Last week a few inch-long despatches buried the fact that Governor General Dwight Filley Davis, his daughter Cynthia and his son Dwight Jr. were using the U. S. S. Pittsburgh for the kind of voyage that Cook's tourists dream about for years and finally take. For two years Mr. Davis has been at his post in Manila. Lately he was joined by newly-appointed Vice-Governor George Charles Butte, felt free to travel. He knew that the 26-year-old Pittsburgh was about to be relieved by the cruiser Houston as flagship of the Asiatic fleet, was then to steam to Norfolk Navy Yard and be scrapped. Perhaps sorry to see the old ship go to her grave, Governor Davis secured her for his tour. She was freshly painted, and six weeks ago she cleared from Manila for Saigon.

Beyond stating at the outset that the Governor of the Philippines was sailing to promote goodwill, to study French, British and Dutch Colonial administration, and to foster trade, the Navy Department dropped the subject. But to millions of brown & yellow natives, to thousands of white residents in the East Indies, the visit of the Big White Governor & children was news, fun, sufficient excuse for brief but lavish festivities. The longest while that the Davises remained in any one place up to last weekend, was 92 hours.

Paris-in-China. When people finally take their dream-trip to Paris they notice that it is on a river, that nearly every street is flanked by rows of shade trees, that the sidewalks teem with cafes, that French officials wear evening dress at day-time functions, and that many a signboard bids one to start the next meal with a Dubonnet.

Every one of these Parisian features the Davises found in Saigon, true "Paris of the East." But all the way up the Saigon River everything was pure Indo-Chinese: junks, half-naked boatmen in big hats, smiling children who live the merry life of water rats.

Upon a quay profusely decked with flowers and after a salute of 19 guns, Mr. Davis was received by the French Governor of Cochin-China, M. Krautheimer. Reason: the exquisite old Governor General of all French Indo-China, His Excellency M. Pierre Pasquier, was in Paris, France, complaining about all the trouble Communists have been making in his bailiwicks (TIME, March 23). But native Reds made at the Davises not even faces.

The doubles tennis score of two Davises, pere et fils, in defeating MM Claviez and Peysson, French Indo-China's champions, was 5-7, 6-1, 6-0. After this triumph all three Davises motored out to Pnom Penh, capital of Cambodia (French), seat of that good-natured puppet, King Sisowath Monivong. Upon Governor General Davis, His Majesty bestowed the Grand Cordon of the Royal Order. Stiff little women in pearl-encrusted cloth-of-gold performed a royal ballet. Then the Davis party motored on to Siam, lamenting perhaps that U. S. Colonial policy does not permit the existence of genial kings who could thrill distinguished visitors by conferring on them whatnots.

Royalty en Route. Slim little King Prajadhipok and ample, moon-faced Queen Rambai of Siam were streaking across the Pacific ocean last week, bound for Mrs. Whitelaw Reid's estate on Long Island Sound. There His Majesty will recuperate after deft U. S. surgeons have removed a cataract from his eye.

Bangkok, as Governor General Davis saw when he landed there, is a fine progressive city full of rice mills (80) and Buddhist temples (innumerable). Siamese officials were most cordial, but the Davises boarded the Pittsburgh and steamed on.

Britain's Malay Might. At Singapore, most potent war base in the far east, the clanking, 26-year-old Pittsburgh was sirened and saluted by smart British fighting craft. If, during his three days in Singapore, Mr. Davis studied British colonial methods in the Malay States, he doubtless learned first this paramount fact:

Malays are lazy, so lazy that not only will they not work, but they will not even make good at standing-&-waving jobs (such as that of a traffic policeman). Result : The British have allowed the Malays fend their little rajas to be as lazy as they like. Most hard work is done and much big money is made by Chinese immigrants whose palaces grow constantly more numerous. The British keep largely in their own hands the banking and shipping. They, too, wax rich.

Dutch Empire, Quiet, matronly Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands refuses to assume the style of "Empress," but she has, in Sumatra, Java and Borneo an empire 31 times as large as her tiny kingdom, one-fourth the size of India and containing 40,892,000 subjects of her modest crown.

Java of course is the chief Dutch possession, and Batavia is the capital of Vice-regal Governor General Jonkheer A. C. De Graeff (he recently visited the U. S. unnoticed). But on the Pittsburgh's route Sumatra came before Java and the Davises first landed on Dutch soil at the port for Medan.

Goodyear Rubber Corp. was waiting and Goodyear local managers Messrs. Hargess and Ingle must have had a lot to say to the Governor General of the Philippine Islands--whether or not they dared to say it. Goodyear would much prefer to have plantations in the Philippines, rather than in Java; but there is a reason, and it may as well be called U. S. colonial stupidity.

In the William Jennings Bryan era of statecraft, solicitous measures were taken to protect the native Filipino from selling his land (ideal for growing rubber) to "exploiters." He was to be educated and he was to exploit his land himself. He has been educated with marked success; but he has not made expected progress in developing his land, has turned politician rather than gentleman farmer.

Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Goodyear and United States Rubber--why are their major rubber plantations in Brazil, Liberia and the Dutch East Indies, rather than on U. S. colonial soil? Last week Mr. Davis found, presumably, the answer. The Dutch permit their natives to lease land to exploiters.

The native owner under Dutch rule is neither cheated nor expected to show the commercial genius of a Firestone or a Ford. He sits back in his Rolls-Royce (literally), draws his rent, smokes cigars about the color of his skin, and frequently elects to go about as ill-clad as Mr. Gandhi.

Shellback & Polliwog. According to despatches, the Pittsburgh as she crossed the Equator last week hoisted the Jolly Roger.*

It was now a question of ducking 600 "polliwogs" (persons aboard ship who had never before crossed the Equator) and the No. 1 polliwog was Miss Cynthia Davis. She was not ducked. Her father, a "shellback" who had crossed the Equator before, asked King Neptune if he could be ducked in his daughter's stead.

The request was granted. The Governor General of the Philippine Islands was dealt with as a polliwog, went ashore a short time later to be regaled in the palace of the Dutch Viceroy in Batavia. Later he motored the length of Java, famed "Isle of Flowers," rejoining the Pittsburgh at Soerabaya--terminus of the Royal Dutch Indian Airways.

Souls to Paradise. The Isle of Bali is a special treat in any Far East tour. Its clever folk, artisans for generations, fashion from precious metals and from common clay wares which tourists love to buy. Here the Davises were to stop for three days and 14 hours.

Curious are many Bali customs. For example a horrible stench merely means that you are passing a house where a dead man has been laid out, to remain perhaps for years. So long as his skeleton is not removed his soul is thought to remain in a kind of limbo. When younger members of a family die they are laid out thus to await the death of the Head of the House. When he dies there is a grand and most expensive crematory celebration which may last for weeks. Led by their elder the souls of all dead members of the family then descend in unison to earth, are reincarnated. After seven reincarnations the soul finally achieves Paradise.

Amazing Sarawak. After leaving Bali the Pittsburgh was to touch for a few hours each at Dutch Makassar and British North Borneo; but oddly enough Governor General Davis elected to omit amazing Sarawak.

What small boy worth his salt has not imagined himself sailing off to the exciting East, having adventures, becoming a Raja or something?

Once upon a time, just about 100 years ago, little Jamie Brooke of Coombe Grove (near Bath), England not only had imaginings but went off, aged 22, to serve the British East India Co.

On the death of his rich father James bought a vessel which he called a yacht and named the Royalist. He stocked it with arms, set off as a most flagrant privateer. Arriving off the coast of Borneo he found its Sultan hard-pressed to put down a rebellion in the large province of Sarawak. In return for the armed aid which James Brooke offered, the Sultan granted him concessions in Sarawak. The revolution was put down, and Mr. Brooke, aged 36, asserted that the concessions had been cessions, stated that he was now the Raja of Sarawak. Two years later the Sultan formally recognized this fact.

Queen Victoria liked men of Jamie's stamp. She knighted Raja Brooke. He weathered a series of scandals which convinced almost everyone except his British judges that he had practiced ruthless extortion on the natives of Sarawak.

When Sir James Brooke was stricken with paralysis, Britons raised a public subscription in his honor. His grandnephew, the present Raja of Sarawak (since 1917), is Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, aged 56, married to the second daughter of Viscount Esher, possessed of an English estate at Ascot.

Give Japan Philippines? When Governor General Davis returns to his Philippines on April 15, he will find them still reverberating from a bomb of irony exploded in Manila last week.

The Rotary Club had as its luncheon guest, "Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons of Princeton" (town, not university). Every-one grinned happily when Dr. Gibbons said he had been visiting the Philippines "for the special object of writing up their scenic beauty." But he went on to say things that made Rotarians rage.

If U. S. rule has failed to please the Filipinos, said Dr. Gibbons, and made clear that it has failed to please, then "Japan is the logical successor of the United States as mentor of the Filipinos. Japan could develop these islands better than we have done. Japan would be more enthusiastically received, I have no doubt, than we have been."

Dr. Gibbons then flatly proposed that the U. S. should entrust the Philippines to Japan as a mandate under the League of Nations. But he made clear that he proposed this step chiefly because he thought the U. S. might some day decide to grant "complete independence" to the Philippines and that as soon as that were done Japan would gobble the islands. Better a mandate than a war.

Of U. S. rule and Philippine agitation visiting Dr. Gibbons said most significantly:

"As explained to me by Filipino leaders who enjoy the confidence of the great majority of the electorate, the Filipinos want immediate and complete independence and are willing to take the consequences. But what makes this an unique independence movement in the history of the world is that it is not based upon any grievance and that its leaders have absolutely no program for the future after they achieve their aspirations.

"Immediate independence is what I hear on every side. . . . And yet no sensible Filipino can possibly believe that the United States would or could grant immediate independence to these islands."*

*The Hamburg-American Line runs a series of cruises to the former "Spanish Main" (West Indies) on which each passenger is certified to be a "Pleasure Pirate."

*The Army's General Staff, the Navy's General Board have from time to time intimated that in the event of a war with Japan the U. S. would not attempt to defend the Philippines or the long line of communications thereto, but would withdraw to Hawaii as a defensive outpost in the Pacific.

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