MALAYAN SEAMEN: A SUGGESTION. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Those of your readers who do not chance to possess shares in Plantation Rubber Companies will probably never have heard much of this country except as the scene where the pioneers of the study of tropical medicine claim to have won some of the most notable victories in their anti-malarial campaign. Malaria, however, we still have amongst us in abundance, and I sometimes think that it does less harm to the few who are admittedly subject to its visitations than when it takes that suppressed form which, without recognized external symptoms, seems, sooner or later, to afflict every white resident in the country with general apathy and mental inertia.
It is because of the impossibility of getting the public as a body to undertake any new measure of importance that I venture to ask you to reproduce in your columns, if not the actual contents, at least the substance of a letter which recently appeared in the Malay Mail. In England I am convinced people altogether fail to recognize the excep- tional position which has been attained by these States. They are the countries which produce the largest supplies both of indiarubber and of tin, and when it is realized that it costs something under eighteenpence to produce rubber which sells in London at 5s., and that the present price of tin is about double the figure at which it can be mined at a profit, it is not difficult to understand that our population is prosperous and our Government in the enjoyment of large surplus revenues. Furthermore, the inhabitants are both loyal and well disposed to the existing Government, to which they attribute the prosperity they enjoy. There are no traces here of the sedition which is a constant source of anxiety in India, or of the unrest which is perpetually disturbing the tranquillity of Egypt. The Chinese and the Malay, unlike in many respects, are alike in this, that they are content to let the Government go its way if the Government allows them to go theirs, and if the Tamil immigrant is not capable of the same amount of sturdy independence, the elaborate Labour Code, amounting to thirty chapters, which the Federal Council has just passed ought to satisfy his requirements in the way of paternal legislation.
In these circumstances it would seem obvious that the Government is under every obligation to take adequate measures to secure for the country adequate protection. Yet the only thing that is done is to keep up one Indian regiment, the Malay States Guides, which is bound by treaty to proceed to the Straits Settlements in the event of war. I have been informed that the Malay, although, I know, anxious to under- take military service, is not considered by the authorities likely to take kindly to the regular discipline of barrack life. I do not know what foundation there may be for this state- ment, but there can be no doubt that he would make a magnificent seaman. If the Admiralty would only aliow us to have one of those cruisers and a few of the smaller craft which they are at present sending to the scrap heap we might soon be in possession of the means of safeguarding the inde- pendence of the country and its connexion with the Empire which is essential to its welfare. I am also convinced that if the question was taken up in your columns the Government would be supplied with just the necessary impetus which is required to put it in motion.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A RESIDENT IN BRITISH MALAYA,
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