t never a word do they breathe about the necessity
for increased troops to stand by and back these little operations.
Perhaps they assume that the Home Government will provide, but it does
seem strange to hear them cold-bloodedly discussing notions that will
inevitably demand doubled garrisons to keep the ventures out of alien
hands. However, the merchant-men will do their work, and I suppose we
shall borrow three files and a sergeant from somewhere or other when
the time comes, and people begin to realise what sort of a gift our
Straits Settlements are. It is so cheap to prophesy. They will in the
near future grow into--

The Professor looked over my shoulder at this point. "Bosh!" said he.
"They will become just a supplementary China--another field for Chinese
cheap labour. When the Dutch Settlements were returned in 1815,--all
these islands hereabouts, you know,--we should have handed over these
places as well. Look!" He pointed at the swarming Chinamen below.

"Let me dream my dream, 'Fessor. I'll take my hat in a minute and settle
the question of Chinese immigration in five minutes." But I confess it
was mournful to look into the street, which ought to have been full of
Beharis, Madrassis, and men from the Konkan--from our India.

Then up and spake a sunburned man who had interests in North Borneo--he
owned caves in the mountains, some of them nine hundred feet high, so
please you, and filled with the guano of ages, and had been telling me
leech-stories till my flesh crawled. "North Borneo," said he, calmly,
"wants a million of labourers to do her any good. One million coolies.
Men are wanted everywhere,--in the Peninsula, in Sumatra for the tobacco
planting, in Java,--everywhere; but Borneo--the Company's provinces that
is to say--needs a million coolies." It is pleasant to oblige a
stranger, and I felt that I spoke with India at my back. "We could
oblige you with two million or twenty, for the matter of that," said I,
generously.

"Your men are no good," said the North Borneo man. "If one man goes
away, he must have a whole village to look after his wants. India as a
labour field is no good to us, and the Sumatra men say that your coolies
either can't or won't tend tobacco properly. We must have China coolies
as the land develops."

Oh, India, oh, my country! This it is to have inherited a highly
organised civilisation and an ancient precedence code. That your
children shall be scoffed at by the alien as use