1937-09-10 — Page 12

CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPP

The Land Of To MorrouUE NOIN BERKELEY

RICH SUMATRA

NO UNEMPLOYED

By DENZIL BATCHELOR

UMATRA is the most interest-

SMA OR the Dutch Rast Indies,

for it is the country of to-morrow. To-day its vast resources are al- most untapped, the country itself is comparatively undeveloped, yet already it is apparent that the prosperity of the Indies is to be

found within its boundar fa

Sugar, the staple wealth of Java, has seen its great days. The island, cultivated almost to the last possible acre, is still oppress- ed with severe unemployment and great poverty.

Sumatra, by comparison, is hardly cultivated at all. The road running from the north to the south of the island has yet to be completed. The centre of the island is still not much more than a vast tract of virgin jungle. If you take a train just beyond the suburbs of the larger towns, green oceans of jungle away on either side of you, and the railway lines cleaving them appear almost as miraculously out of place as the Israelite's path to safety-through the hearts of the Red Sea.

plunge

Despite this, Sumatra already offers employment and compara- tive wealth to the Javanese coolie, for whom Java is not big enough One fifth of the rubber the world uses is exported from this island; there are great tobacco planta- tions around Medan, where the outer leaves (the wrapper tobac cos for fine cigars) are grown in almost unrivalled excellence. Tea and copra, and palm oil flourish here; the oil wells of Palembang spout wealth; in the west coast coal mines show veins hardly be low Cardiff anthracite in quality.

Independent Natives

The Javanese gets his chance în Sumatra because the natives of the island are not interested in acquiring wealth at the expensë of liberty and leisure. The Ba- taks and Achinese are ancient agricultural races and prefer he ing their own masters to making money by working for others. The Batak will occasionally work when a debt or a pressin for money forces him to leave his beloved, ancestral fields as soon as he has earned enough. be re- turns to his queer home and car- ved. painted wooden barn that stands on stilts, and has for a roof a crescent with a skirt of straw.

The Achinese are a proud race. who went blackbirding under the skull and cross bones within liv- ing memory. They do not work at all. except on their own in- alienable fields for themselves. They have their living, and they feel no need for money.

than is afforded by a comparison betw the conduct of these plantations and those owned by the great estates, controlled from Europe or America. In the Eu- ropean estates, everything is run on the most business-like princi- ples; the world market controls the output of rabber and the type of selection whether crepe, or spray-rubber, or smoke-sheet. Re- search laboratories have in the past twenty years quadrupled the yield per acre.

Share Farming In Rubber

The native does not grow his rubber quite like that. A few years ago, before the world-wide restriction of the output of rub- ber, there was a slump in the in- dustry and a depression in the land. The native who owned rubber trees felt the pinch- needed money acutely. So badly did he need it, that the whole family was turned out into the plantation to tap the trees for the milky sap that brings wealth.

Then times and prices improv ed. The first thing that happen- ed was that paterfamilias retired from active service as a tapper. He could have made more money by staying on, but he preferred to make enough money and have his leisure. Next, as prices rose, a favourite child would be with- drawn from the plantation, then another, and another, until, last of all, things became so good that even mother was allowed to stop working. And now that the whole family could afford to live in idleness, it was time to employ hired labour.

Probably the Javanese coolies who work the plantation now have an arrangement with the native. owner to divide the rubber they tap in equal shares with him. It is left to the owners to make ar-. rangements for the sale of the rubber. By European standards he does not make a particularly good bargain, in fact he makes an execrable one: but the price of rubber is now so high that he cannot make one bad enough to prevent him from being, by native standards. a rich man to-day.

You will be told in Batavia that the native planter is behaving as if he had learned his lesson from the depression and not wasting

found wealth as flagrant as he did in the last rubber boom. But when you go to Suma-

tra

find that it takes more than one reading to teach a primi- tive people th lesson of thrift Bourbon-like, the native planter has learned nothing and forgot ten nothing. A few days ago in Medan. one of the class walked into a native restaurant and ask ed for a meal. When he had finished he said his hands felt sticky and he would like to wash

He was which he when he

per-

beer He

saying that

ashed

riding round his home town on bicycle sporting in front a flag a yard square. On close examin- tion the flag was found to be composed of five guilder notes gummed together. The epidemic of car-buying which marked the last rubber boom in Sumatra has not been repeated. Then, every native who was not a coolie man- aged to buy or at least sign chits for a car. To-day rubber pays its way rather than booms, and as Fet native extravagance is quite an immature art.

In an island where wages are everywhere high and unemploy- ment does not exist, it is hard to grudge the native his delight his good fortune. His country has earned it for him. If I were a Javanese (and could not have a share of Dutch blood) my next best wish from my fairy god- mother would be a passage to Sumatra

Sumatra is not a paradise for the Javanese traveller alone. The country offers plentiful attrac- tions to the tourist who asks to see nature at its grandest and loveliest. The west coast with its range of volcanoes and vast green jungles is supremely beau- tiful If Lake Kintamani, lying in the lee at the volcanic Batoer, is the most, thrilling sight Bali has to offer, Sumatra can match it with the veritable inland sea of Toba, three times the size of Lake Geneva, with a chain of lofty. mountains towering above it. Java has the coolest and greenest of mountain resorts in Bandoeng and Kopeng, but they are hardly pleasanter, places than Brastagi, 5000 feet up, lying as cool as Switzerland, in the shadow of gi- gantic volcanoes, and within week-end reach of sweltering Medan

Surpassing Bali and Java, Su matra has abundance of sport to offer. There is big game fishing off its coasts, sharks and the most pugnacious crevally are to be found, and swordfish are not un- known. Elephants are preserved, but a licence to shoot one is not. dificult to obtam. The spoor of tigers is almost as commonplace a mark in Sumatra dust as the imprint of motor tyres; I was considerately shown a spoor few hundred yards from my roof in Kisaran on my first evening in the island. I met many men who had bagged several tigers

SQUARE

performing some sad eremonial kite demanded by the march of progress, a young man, in frock coat and silk hat, wield- ing a pick knocked out the first brick in the demolition of twenty historic houses in Berkeley Lon- Square and Bruton Street don Cable.

Let midnight's hand put back

clock

"But on

ere the old houses fall, Whose walls re-echo memoried

wit

The fluent eloquence of Pitts Where Burke bemoaned the Aus-

trian's fall

How soft the mild wax candles.

shine

On rose brocade and powered

hair;

Sly scandal hints behind a fan, Awit takes snuff with Sher

dan

The graceful ghosts of Berkeley Square

blandly merciful at play, Forbears his plunder, a gilt lath, Slim Brummel saunters, and

egad!

Lord Foppington,

clad.

extremely

Lisps forth the latest news from

Bath

A far cock crows! Jack Absolute Hands Lydia Languish to her.

chair:

My Lady Teazle quits the route, The fiddles cease, the lights go

eut

grim dawn breaks on Berkeley

Square.

ELLA MCFADYEN

SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED

She stands before me as I write

little Victorian lady, her net coyly framing a swe piquant face, a patterned-coat al- most oscuring her full skirted blue frock.

Of course, her mittered hands are folded primly in front of her, and you would quite naturally suppose that she is just a demure little ornament whose sole busi aness is to look attractive. On the

contrary, she has an important. duty to perform and an appeal to

piece, and I never heard of (let alone met) one tiger who had bag- ged a hunter On these figures big game hunting in Sumatra would seem to be a sport with a future

Here, to sum up, is an island that is a paradise for man-if not for beast-

THE BROKEN WING

rom page 7)

thought

But his

make

Scan-resist

exciting

At her call the mos

all novel suddenly stopped, and she becomes at once the centre of attractio She is for all her air of sweet simplicity a vain little lady, and how she must count the hours for this supreme moment! And when been her thinking summons obeyed, she rests serenely on the table while the family file in to dinier

DOROTHEA DOWLING.

FOR A CHILD

Boom

dance