before it was too late to redress the wrong in a less sanguinary manner than meanwhile became inevitable.
I said I could prove my charge. Where necessary, I shall show that often there was famine in districts that were praised as examples of prosperity, and that frequently a population which was reported to be peaceful and contented was on the point of bursting out into raging rebellion. It is not my intention to supply these proofs in this book, although I trust that no one will lay it down without believing that they exist.
For the moment I will confine myself to one more example of the absurd optimism of which I have spoken, an example which anyone, be he au fait with the affairs of India or not, will readily understand.
Every Resident supplies monthly a statement of the amount of rice imported into his province, or exported therefrom. Now when one takes note of the quantity of rice transported according to these joint statements from residencies in Java to residencies in Java, one will find that this quantity amounts to many thousands of pikols more than the rice which, according to the same joint statements, is imported into residencies in Java from residencies in Java.
I shall for the present be silent about the opinion one must inevitably conceive of the insight of a Government that accepts such statements and publishes them, and only wish to draw the reader’s attention to the object of this falsity.
The percentage reward to European and native officials for products that are to be sold in Europe had so pushed rice-culture into the background that in some regions famine occurred which could not be juggled away from the sight of the nation. I have already said that then instructions were issued to the effect that things must not again be allowed to go quite so far. Among the many consequences of these instructions were also the statements I have referred to of imports and exports of rice, so that the Government might constantly keep an eye on the fluctuating ebb and flow of
