Word: raja
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These words were almost a century old last week, and almost a hundred times as ironic as their author, Sir James Brooke, the first swashbuckling white Raja of Sarawak in Borneo, thought they ever would be. For last week evildoers with scant respect for the English union jack descended on his Sarawak...
Jamie Brooke's grandnephew, Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, now Raja of Sarawak, said some bitter words on this matter in Australia, in ironic counterpoint to Grand-uncle Jamie's complacency: "Brass hats . . . lah-di-dah old-school-tie incompetents, who are responsible for the fantastic position in Malaya, should be sacked immediately. When I left, I was given to understand that, should Sarawak be attacked, it would receive air support. The only protection over Sarawak today is Dutch...
They dispatched several naval ships to Singapore. Dutch submarines harassed the Japanese supply lines for the assault on Malaya. Dutch planes attacked the Japanese attackers of Mindanao, the southernmost major Philippine Island. Dutch planes and submarines played a doomful tune on the hulls of Japanese ships heading for Raja Brooke's Sarawak...
...sago. In places red veins of iron ore crumble right out of the earth's surface, but they have not yet been tapped. Coal is known to lie just under the surface, but it has not yet been mined. With all Sarawak's natural wealth, some of Raja Brooke's main sources of revenue are, according to the ultra-conservative Statesman's Year Book, "customs, the Government opium monopoly, gambling, arrack and pawn farms" (ie) the Government farms out licenses for gambling, the sale of distilled rum, pawning...
...dramatic moment. Thailand had surrendered to the Japanese. In the Thailand Legation in Washington the brisk, round-faced Minister, Mom Raja-wongse Seni Pramoj, had to announce whether or not he surrendered...