EAST COAST ETCHINGS.
[To TEL EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—In the Spectator of January 9th you published a short review of my book, "East Coast Etchings," which was brought out in Asia a year ago. Your reviewer expresses himself as somewhat puzzled by the views I express with regard to the bad influence which European civilisation and contact with white men is apt to have upon the character of the natives of the Malay Peninsula. He finds these views to be at variance with the tales I have to tell of crime and cruelty and oppression in Independent Malay States, and he asks whether I am not myself a " European influence," whether I do nothing towards ameliorating the condition of the people of Pahang, and shielding them from oppression. I reply most emphatically that, in common with other British officials in the Malay Peninsula, I believe myself to be engaged upon a work which is for the ultimate good of the Malays; but this does not hinder me from perceiving that contact with a stronger race does not tend immediately to improve the character of the people. "East Coast Etchings" was written and published in the East. It was intended for European dwellers in Asia, who have sufficient knowledge of the land in which we live to enable them to understand things whieh, though true in themselves, may seem to be impossible contra- dictions to men who have not wandered further East than Suez. Perhaps the following extract from the preface of my new book, which is now being published in London for English readers, may best explain ray views :- "The conditions of life of which I write, more especially in those sketches and tales which deal with native society in an Independent Malay State, are rapidly passing away. Nor can this furnish matter for regret to any one who knew them as they were, and still are in some of the wilder and more remote regions of the Peninsula. One may perhaps feel some measure of senti- mental sorrow that the natural should here, as elsewhere, be replaced by the artificial ; one may recognise with sufficient clearness that the Malay, in his unregenerate state, is more attractive an individual than he is apt to become under the influence of European civilisation; but no one who has seen the horrors of native rule, and the misery to which the people living under it are ofttimes reduced, can find room for doubt that, its many drawbacks notwithstanding, the only salvation for the Malays lies in the increase of British influence, and in the con- sequent spread of modern ideas, progress, and civilisation."
I think that this makes my position sufficiently intelligible.—
British Residency, Pahang, Malay Peninsula, Feb, 161h.
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