nly without fear but without reproach"; an
empire to consist of that great archipelago--Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the
Celebes, New Guinea, and the lesser islands--which sweeps southward
and eastward from the Asian mainland to the edges of Australasia.
Though this splendid colonial structure was erected according to the
plans that Raffles drew, by curious circumstance the flag that flies
over it today is not his flag, not the flag of England, for, instead of
being governed from Westminster, as he had dreamed, it is governed from
The Hague, the ruler of its fifty million brown inhabitants being the
stout, rosy-cheeked young woman who dwells in the Palace of Het Loo.

Though in area Queen Wilhelmina's colonial possessions are exceeded by
those of Britain and France, she is the sovereign of the second largest
colonial empire, in point of population, in the world. But, because it
lies beyond the beaten paths of tourist travel, because it has been so
little advertised by plagues and famines and rebellions, and because it
has been so admirably and unobtrusively governed, it has largely
escaped public attention--a fact, I imagine, with which the Dutch are
not ill-pleased. Did _you_ realize, I wonder, that the Insulinde, as
Netherlands India is sometimes called, is as large, or very nearly as
large, as all that portion of the United States lying east of the
Mississippi? Did you know that in the third largest island of the
archipelago, Sumatra, the State of California could be set down and
still leave a comfortable margin all around? Or that the fugitive from
justice who turns the prow of his canoe westward from New Guinea must
sail as far as from Vancouver to Yokohama before he finds himself
beyond the shadow of the Dutch flag and the arm of Dutch law?

Until the closing years of the sixteenth century, European trade with
the Far East was an absolute monopoly in the hands of Spain and
Portugal. Incredible as it may seem, the two Iberian nations alone
possessed the secret of the routes to the East, which they guarded with
jealous care. In 1492, Columbus, bearing a letter from the King of
Spain to the Khan of Tartary, whose power and wealth had become
legendary in Europe through the tales of Marco Polo and other overland
travelers, sailed westward from Cadiz in search of Asia, discovering
the islands which came to be known as the West Indies. Five years later
a Portuguese sea-adventurer, Vasco da Gama, turned the prow of his
caravel