LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS
went away, we should become as strangers to them. And when after some years, we came back, they would see in us only European women. If the people do not like to trust their daughters to European women, how much less would they be willing to trust them to those who were worse in their eyes, Javanese turned European.
Our aim is our people; and if they should be set against us, of what good would the help of the Government be? We ought to strike as quickly as possible, and place before the public as an accomplished fact , a school for native girls. Just now they are talking about us, and we are known over the whole of Java. We must strike while the iron is hot. If we went away, interest would grow luke-warm and after a time dwindle away altogether. Now we can make ourselves personally known to our people. Seek to win their sympathy, teach them to trust us. If we had their sympathy and their trust then we should be at peace.
We have not entirely given up the idea of going to Holland, Stella. We could still go, always, and if we should go from Batavia, it would be better than from here. Our parents would then be accustomed to having us at a distance, and after they had once gotten used to the idea, it would not be so hard for them, if the distance were made greater.
For us too that would have a good side. Consider this, we have never been away from home, and if we were suddenly taken from our warm little nest, from our own country, and placed in another environment far from all who loved us, the change would be great.
But that is only a side issue. We knew that all along, and had never seen anything against it. The main question is the danger to our undertaking itself. We had never looked at the other side, from defiant courage, or courageous defiance, call it what you will—carried away by our enthusiasm, we thought little—or not at all—of the temper of the
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