Word: java
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...pact recognizes Sumatra, Java and little Madura as the Republic of Indonesia, whose degree of independence will be great, but is deliberately left vague. Borneo and the Great East (see map) will be left under Dutch control. Both the Dutch and the Indonesian nationalists agree to work toward a federation which would bring the whole Netherlands East Indies into a future United States of Indonesia, a sort of Dominion under the Dutch Crown. Further negotiations to clarify the pact are expected. Meanwhile, the Indonesians think that events are moving too slowly toward independence, and the Dutch think they are going...
Sample of Soekarno's oratory: "Our ideal is an automobile for everybody. . . ." (At present few cars travel Java's pot-holed roads.) "I've just received a letter from a young girl who wants to be an airplane pilot. . . . That's right, hitch your aims to the stars. . . . We can laugh, we can eat and some day we can have clothes. . . . But our ideals will not be realized easily. We must struggle for them...
...could do with a nickname. Soekarno is his first name, and it is almost as common in Java as Hans is in Holland. Indonesians are careless about surnames, and Soekarno lost his somewhere along the rocky way of a life that began humbly in Surabaya. Young Soekarno was one of those bright, indifferent students who frequently turn out to be politicians...
...civil engineering, which entitles him to put Ir. in front of his name (Ir. is a contraction of ingenieur, Dutch for engineer). Soekarno's architectural career was as short as his professional title. He designed a few Chinese homes and was commissioned to do a Moslem mosque (most Java mosques are hideous tin-roofed stucco monstrosities, in contrast to the lovely ruins of the vanquished Hindu temples...
This was not the stringless independence Java's rebel President, Dr. Soekarno, had sought, but it was close enough to be palatable to most Indonesians. However, extremists attacked Dutch soldiers at Buitenzorg, and the mother country had a few extremists...