Individuals have put Christianity to the test and have convinced themselves that benevolence, unarmed, is mightier than selfishness equipped with sword and mail, but nations have as yet seldom ventured to embody the spirit of the Nazarene in their foreign policy. Is it not an opportune time for our nation to make the trial? Our president has recently been hailed as a peacemaker because he took the initiative in terminating a great war, but this involved no sacrifice upon our part. May we not win a greater victory by proving our disinterested concern for the welfare of a people separated from us not only by vast waters but by race, by language and by color?
Carlyle in concluding his history of the French revolution declared that thought is stronger than artillery parks and that back of every great thought is love. This is a lofty platform, but not too lofty for the United States of America.
CHAPTER XVIII.
JAVA—THE BEAUTIFUL.
We had not thought of visiting Java, but we heard so much of it from returning tourists as we journeyed through Japan, China and the Philippines, that we turned aside from Singapore and devoted two weeks to a trip through the island. Steamers run to both Batavia (which is the capital and the metropolis of the western end of the island) and Soerabaja, the chief city of eastern Java, and a railroad about four hundred miles long connects these two cities. A tour of the islands can thus be made in from ten to fifteen days, according to connections, but unless one is pressed for time, he can profitably employ a month or more in this little island, attractive by nature and made still more beautiful by the hand of man. There are excellent hotels at the principal stopping places, and the rates are more moderate than we have found elsewhere in the Orient.
The lover of mountain scenery finds much in Java to satisfy the eye. The railroad from Batavia to Soerabaja twice crosses the range, and as the trains run only in the day time, one can, without leaving the cars, see every variety of tropical growth, from swamp to mountain top, from cocoanut groves and rice fields on the low land to the tea gardens and coffee plantations of the higher altitudes, not to speak of mountain streams, gorges and forests.
Java is the home of the volcano and contains more of these fiery reservoirs than any other area on the earth's surface. While only about six hundred miles in length and from sixty to a hundred and twenty miles in width, it has, according to Wallace, thirty-eight volcanoes, some of them still smoking and all of them interesting relics of a period when the whole island was deluged with molten lava. Some assert that almost all of Java has been built up by the eruptions of volcanoes. Two extinct volcanoes, Salak and Gedah, can be seen from Buitenzorg, and from the top of Boro Boedoer temple nine volcanoes can be counted when the air is clear—at least Groneman so declares in his description of this temple, although not so many were visible the day we visited there.