The Dutch agrees to initiate talks with the moderate nationalists, to pay a higher political price for order in their Empire. Indonesian nationalism had come to stay.

In the country house of Britain’s Prime Minister the generation of empire menders was at work. The worried ghosts of the empire builders—among them. Raffles of Singapore and Coen of Batavia—looked on. The great Far Eastern domain they had helped create was badly cracked, in danger of breakdown…