Download PDF The history of american foreign policy from 1895 5th edition jerald a. combs full chapt
The History of American Foreign Policy from 1895 5th Edition Jerald
A. Combs
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/the-history-of-american-foreign-policy-from-1895-5thedition-jerald-a-combs/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
Now in its fifth edition, this volume offers a clear, concise, and nuanced history of U.S. foreign relations since the Spanish–American War and places that narrative within the context of the most influential historiographical trends and debates.
The History of American Foreign Policy from 1895 includes both revised and new sections that incorporate insights from recent scholarship on the United States in the world. These sections devote more attention to the international framework as well as the domestic constraints under which American foreign policymakers operated. This edition also emphasizes the role of non-state actors such as missionaries, aid workers, activists, and business leaders in shaping policies and contributing to international relations. As a result, the text considers a broader and more diverse range of people and voices than many other histories of U.S. foreign policy. Expanded final chapters bring the story of U.S. foreign relations to the present and explore some of the contemporary challenges facing American and global leaders, including terrorism, the effects of climate change, China’s increasing influence, and globalization. Updated controversial issues sections and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter reflect important contributions from new studies.
This engaging text is an invaluable resource for students interested in the history of American foreign policy and international relations.
Jerald A. Combs (PhD UCLA 1964) is Emeritus Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers and American Diplomatic History: Two Centuries of Changing Interpretations
Jessica Elkind (PhD UCLA 2005) is Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University, where she teaches on the United States in the world and Southeast Asia. Her publications include Aid Under Fire: Nation Building and the Vietnam War (2016). She is currently working on a study of U.S. non-military involvement in Cambodia during the 1970s.
The right of Jerald A. Combs and Jessica Elkind to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by M.E. Sharpe 2012
Fourth edition published by Routledge 2015
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
4.1 Alignment of the European powers in World War I, 1914–1918
5.1 Central Europe and the Balkans, 1925
8.1 Occupied and divided Germany, 1945
8.2 Poland after Yalta, 1945
9.1 Conflict in Korea, 1950–1953
10.1 Indochina, 1953–1954
12.1 Divided Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1968
14.1 Israel and occupied areas, 1967
14.2 The Middle East, 1979
14.3 Lebanon, 1983
16.1 Breakup of the Soviet Union, 1991
Figures
1.1 President William McKinley, whose diplomacy leading up to the Spanish–American War still stirs controversy among historians 22
2.1 President Theodore Roosevelt (center) with the Russian and Japanese delegations at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he helped negotiate an end to the Russo–Japanese War 45
2.2 President William Howard Taft brought about a significant shift in U.S. diplomacy toward Japan and China 48
3.1 “School Begins” political cartoon created by Louis Dalrymple and published in Puck magazine, 1899 63
5.1 The U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (left to right): “Colonel” Edward House, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, President Woodrow Wilson, Henry White, and General Tasker Bliss 124
5.2 The Big Four at the Paris Peace Conference (left to right) Vittorio Orlando of Italy, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States 128
6.1 Charles Evans Hughes (center) with delegates to the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference 149
7.1 Secretary of State Cordell Hull (left) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt 192
8.1 The Big Three at the Tehran Conference 1943. From left to right: Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill 207
9.1 Secretary of State James F. Byrnes (left) and President Harry Truman 235
10.1 President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles 273
11.1 U.S. President John F. Kennedy (left) and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev clash at the Vienna Conference 311
12.1 President John Kennedy explains U.S. policy toward Laos and Vietnam in 1961 336
12.2 President Lyndon Johnson, (center) with his key advisers on Vietnam, Secretary of State Dean Rusk (left) and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara 341
12.3 “Stick ‘Em Up” political cartoon created by Edmund Valtman and published in the Hartford Times, 1964 346
13.1 The architects of détente, Richard Nixon (left) of the United States and Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union 376
13.2 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (left) with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller (center) and President Gerald Ford, 1975 378
14.1 Anwar Sadat (left) of Egypt, Jimmy Carter (center) of the United States, and Menachem Begin of Israel 408
15.1 President Jimmy Carter (center) confers with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (left) and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance 423
15.2 President Ronald Reagan (center) consults Secretary of State George Shultz (left) and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger 430
16.1 President Ronald Reagan (left) and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (right) grimly leave the Reykjavik summit meeting after failing to agree on disarmament 468
16.2 Gorbachev (left) and Reagan sign the INF treaty in 1987, marking a major step in ending the Cold War 470
16.3 U.S. President George H.W. Bush (left) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin 476
17.1 President George H.W. Bush (fifth from left) and his primary foreign policy officials, including (from left to right) CIA director Robert Gates, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James Baker, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell 491
17.2 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (left) and President Bill Clinton at the Wye Conference, 1998 494
18.1 President George W. Bush (left) with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz 526
18.2 President Barack Obama (seated second from left) watches simulcast of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden with Vice President Joe Biden (seated far left), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (seated second from right), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (seated far right), and other members of his national security team, 2011 556
19.1 President Barack Obama (left) meets with President-Elect Donald J. Trump in the White House, 2016 582
Preface
Although few Americans would deny that current U.S. foreign policy often generates significant controversy and disagreement, most people assume that histories of international relations are relatively straightforward and objective. Yet, historians of American foreign relations have always engaged in lively debates over the nature of U.S. involvement in the world. In many ways, those debates parallel contemporary disputes over specific policies such as American participation in foreign wars or trade arrangements. Contrary to popular belief, academic studies of American foreign policy rarely present a simple narrative of the “truth” about the past. Instead, as is the case in other fields, historians attempt to reconstruct the past through a close analysis of documents, interviews, and other sources surrounding critical events in U.S. diplomatic history. However, those scholars’ experiences, judgments, and predilections inevitably shape their understanding and interpretation of the past.
This text strives to explain the history of American foreign relations while also placing the narrative within the context of some of the most influential historiographical debates and trends. In previous editions of the book, Jerald Combs emphasizes the contrasting views of nationalist, realist, and revisionist historians. He demonstrates how scholars who subscribed to each of those schools of thought understood American diplomacy and evaluated specific foreign policies.
Nationalist historians tend to view U.S. foreign relations as a fairly successful blend of democratic idealism and pragmatic concern for American interests. They consider most wars in U.S. history as justified and necessary resistance against foreign aggression, and they present a relatively positive account of American territorial and economic expansion. Although nationalist histories inform many secondary school textbooks and reflect the outlook of politicians as well as the mainstream media, some academics also subscribe to this view and have produced serious analytical studies with a nationalist interpretation. Samuel Flagg Bemis, considered by many the founder of the field of American diplomatic history, published the classic nationalist text A Diplomatic History of the United States in 1936. Robert Kagen’s Dangerous Nation: America’s Place
in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (2006) is a more recent example of this approach.
Realist scholars offer a more critical interpretation of American foreign policy. Since the end of World War II, realist accounts have challenged the more sanguine outlook of nationalist scholars. Unlike nationalist historians, realists argue that U.S. behavior in the world has been based too often on overly naïve, idealistic, and moralistic assumptions. These scholars believe that American foreign policymakers oscillated foolishly between a policy of isolation, designed to insulate themselves from evil foreigners and their meaningless wars, and a policy of crusading internationalism, intended to eliminate foreign evils by making nations over in America’s image. They contend that the United States would have enjoyed more success had it focused on national interests rather than grandiose democratic ideals, seeking peace through a balance of power rather than a utopian vision of a world without conflict.
Although all realists suggest that the United States should balance its aspirations with the power available to reach those goals, these scholars disagree about how policymakers applied power to particular situations. For example, hard realists emphasize the need for the United States to protect its national interests and the world balance of power by dealing with adversaries from a position of unassailable strength. When an imbalance exists between America’s goals and its power, they generally favor increasing the nation’s power. They believe that the United States must be willing to take significant risks, including major military action, to prevent empowering its adversaries even in morally ambiguous situations or in areas others might see as unimportant to America’s most vital interests. Thus, they favor a very activist American foreign policy. Thomas Bailey’s A Diplomatic History of the American People (10th ed., 1980) and Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy (1994) are good examples of hard realist interpretations.
On the other hand, soft or restrained realists argue that, when faced with an imbalance of goals and power, foreign policymakers should reduce the nation’s objectives rather than increase its military power. They also contend that power should be measured not strictly by military force, but also by what political scientist Joseph Nye has called “soft power,” which depends on the persuasive power of ideological consistency, respect for the cultures and opinions of others, and the importance of multinational cooperation. The most prominent soft realist diplomatic historians include George Kennan, Walter Lippmann, and Hans Morgenthau. Other, more recent surveys of American foreign policy such as George Herring’s From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (2008), Michael H. Hunt’s The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (2007), and Richard Immerman’s Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (2010) also subscribe to the soft realist approach.
Another major school of thought regarding American diplomatic history emerged during the height of the Cold War and gained traction following the
failed war in Vietnam. Revisionist historians regard the primary theme of U.S. foreign relations not as an oscillation between isolationism and interventionism, but as continuous aggressive expansion based on self-interest. They view U.S. imperialism beginning with westward expansion and “internal colonization” during the nineteenth century, extending through attempts to protect its markets and capitalist economy in the first and second world wars, and culminating in recent efforts to preserve economic and strategic interests in Asia, the Middle East, and Central America. Moderate revisionists, in particular, understand American diplomacy as the product of a combination of dynamics, including bureaucratic and economic elites; ideological, cultural, and psychological factors such as racism and fear of communism; and well-intentioned error as well as malevolence. A good example of the moderate revisionist interpretation is Foreign Policy: A History (6th ed., 2005) by Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, Deborah Kisistaski, Shane J. Maddock, and Kenneth J. Hagan. For a classic radical revisionist perspective, which emphasizes the historical pattern of capitalist economic expansion and imperialism in American foreign policy, see Gabriel Kolko’s The Roots of American Foreign Policy (1969).
While the nationalist, realist, and revisionist schools continue to inform studies of American foreign policy, recent scholarship often reflects a broader understanding of what constitutes international relations. Over the last two decades or so, several important trends have emerged in the study of diplomatic history. First, many historians have embraced the internationalization of the field. These scholars rely on multi-lingual and multi-archival sources, incorporate the views of non-American scholars, and present the history of U.S. foreign policy within the context of global and transnational developments. Second, scholars have increasingly considered the influence on foreign relations of a more diverse range of people, including non-state actors and non-governmental organizations. These studies include analyses of ethnic, racial, religious, and women’s groups as well as business and labor organizations. They also address the interplay between foreign relations and cultural, ideological, and social trends.
The emergence of the “U.S. in the world” as a teaching and research field mirrors the methodological shift away from traditional diplomatic history with its emphasis on elite policymakers and heads of state. Historians who subscribe to this newer approach tend to decenter the United States in their treatment and to assign more agency to foreign leaders, societies, and organizations. Rather than depicting populations in other parts of the world as the passive recipients of American programs and policies, many scholars demonstrate how people from various walks of life—from world leaders to human rights activists to union organizers—have shaped international relations. Many historians of the United States in the world also emphasize the imperialist nature of American foreign policy and draw comparisons with other empires. A general survey that illustrates these trends is Walter L. Hixon’s The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy (2008) while Odd Arne Westad’s The
Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (2007) highlights the role of ideology and applies recent historiographical approaches to specific policies in the mid-to-late twentieth century. The volume America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (Second edition, 2014), edited by Frank Costigliola and Michael Hogan, contains lively essays on the most important shifts, trends, and debates in the field over the past eighty years.
In writing the new edition of this book, I have tried to remain faithful to Jerald Comb’s original vision for the text while also incorporating insights from new studies as well as my own research. My overarching goal has been to present an accessible, balanced, and nuanced account of the history of American foreign relations. While I retained much of the substance and content of earlier editions, I have added new sections to most chapters that not only reflect my understanding of the role of the United States in the world but also draw upon recent scholarship. In particular, I have highlighted the role of non-state actors including missionaries, aid workers, activists, and business leaders in shaping policies and contributing to international relations. As a result, this account includes a broader and more diverse range of people and voices than do many conventional textbooks. Furthermore, I have tried to demonstrate how domestic political, economic, social, and cultural developments have been intertwined with foreign relations throughout U.S. history. I have also incorporated into the final chapters of the book a discussion of American foreign policy during Barack Obama’s second term, Donald J. Trump’s administration, and the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. Although these chapters pay particular attention to the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, they also emphasize other contemporary challenges facing American and global leaders, including the effects of climate change, China’s increasing influence, and globalization. Finally, I have updated and augmented the existing discussions of controversial issues and the recommendations for further reading in each chapter. My hope is that this fifth edition of The History of American Foreign Policy will engage readers while shedding light on debates about both the past and present.
Jessica Elkind
1 The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire
The Imperial Surge, 1895–1917
Few Americans living in the early 1890s likely realized that they stood on the threshold of a new age in American diplomacy. National politics still revolved around internal questions. Americans regarded the economic issues stemming from industrialization and immigration as essentially domestic, despite rising concerns about foreign trade. The warnings of the founders against foreign entanglements, military establishments, and colonial oppression still dominated popular attitudes toward foreign policy. Little of the nation’s economic strength had been translated into the military or diplomatic power necessary for largescale overseas intervention, and most Americans would have been aghast at any suggestion that the United States should involve itself in a major way in Europe or Asia. Americans were more divided on their opinions about acquisitions closer to home, however, especially if those territories might be annexed without much fuss or expense. Rejections of treaties or petitions for the annexation of Santo Domingo, Cuba, Haiti, and Hawaii had been somewhat accidental, involving political partisanship, personalities, and fortuitous events that swung the balance against territorial expansion. By the end of the nineteenth century, opposition to overseas annexations and involvements was becoming increasingly precarious, ready to be altered by a major crisis or opportunity that could give it a substantial push.
The forces inclining the United States toward overseas expansion and intervention had developed rapidly in the post-Civil War period. Most important of these was America’s growing power. The nation’s population increased from 39 million in 1870 to 63 million in 1890. By the 1890s, America had surpassed all nations in the production of coal, oil, and steel, the sinews of modern power until the atomic age. Popular writers and politicians made clear to the American people the strategic and economic benefits of acquiring Caribbean naval bases, an isthmian canal, and Hawaii. They helped translate hazy inclinations into systematic thought patterns.
The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire
The Spanish–American War supplied the catalyst to create a new national majority ready to intrude into the realm of great power politics and accept an overseas empire. The original rationale of the Spanish–American War, intervention to free Cuba from Spain, did not stretch the old diplomacy too much, especially when Congress declared its intention not to annex Cuba. But the thrill of military combat and victory broke down many of the existing barriers to overseas intervention and annexation. As a result of the war, the United States took Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island as colonies, completed the annexation of Hawaii, and asserted a protectorate over Cuba. It then acquired the Panama Canal route, undertook wholesale military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, and increased its diplomatic activity in Asia.
Even in this imperial aftermath of the Spanish–American War, Americans remained wary of European entanglement. Policymakers defended their Latin American interventions as necessary to ward off European expansion and consequent conflict, as well as to protect the interests of the United States. They offered the Open Door in Asia as an alternative to European attempts to carve China further into spheres of interest, a process that might entangle the United States in European balance-of-power politics. Finally, however, World War I dragged the United States into the European arena. When that conflict broke out, in late 1914, Americans had become thoroughly enmeshed in global politics.
The Diplomatic Revolution of the 1890s
In the 1890s, foreign nations seemed no more aware that the United States was on the verge of adopting a new diplomatic posture than Americans themselves. When the Turkish sultan sought to cut expenses in 1880, he decided to eliminate the diplomatic missions in several minor powers, including Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States. The German envoy in Washington offered to take a pay cut if his superiors would transfer him to Madrid. Russia neglected to send a minister to the United States for two years after the previous one had left.
These nations failed to realize that the Second Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century had increased American wealth and strength tremendously. By the 1890s, the United States was manufacturing almost as much as Great Britain, Germany, and France combined. This output gave the United States the means to expand its diplomatic role from a regional to a global power. Overproduction, especially of industrial goods, also provided a motive for such a change in American foreign policy, creating more need for overseas markets. By the 1890s, manufacturers had surpassed agricultural products as America’s main exports. Of all the nations in the world, only Great Britain outstripped the United States in the total value of its exports, and Britain’s lead was clearly temporary. America’s increasing desire for overseas markets naturally led to calls for more active diplomacy.
Throughout the post-Civil War period, there had been no lack of voices calling for a more aggressive military and diplomatic policy to accompany America’s increasing economic strength and expanding foreign trade. Naval officers like Admiral Stephen Luce extolled the benefits of a larger, more modern navy. In the 1880s, these officers succeeded in beginning a naval building program that produced long-range, steam-driven, steel-clad battleships. Otherwise, as we have seen, the United States pursued overseas markets, coaling stations, and strategically located colonies sporadically and ineffectually. Then, in the 1890s, advocates of an aggressive foreign policy took advantage of several traumatic events to propel the United States into a policy of global intervention and the acquisition of an overseas empire.
The economic panic of 1893, which initiated a four-year depression more severe than any the country faced until 1929, caused influential Americans to pursue more actively foreign markets. Fifteen thousand businesses failed in 1893, including several major railroads. Hundreds of banks went under. Three million people were left jobless, some 20 percent of the workforce. Farm production and prices plummeted. Violent strikes occurred in coal mines and railroads, and federal troops were called in to break up the great Pullman strike. Discontented farmers flocked into the Populist Party. They demanded currency inflation by unlimited coinage of silver, advocated a graduated income tax, and urged government control of railroads and utilities. Some politicians and businessmen feared that America stood on the brink of revolution.
The depression highlighted other disturbing trends that had seemed less ominous when the country was more prosperous. Large companies with monopolies and concentrated capital increasingly dominated American business, threatening the older model of smaller competitive enterprises. Cities expanded tremendously, undercutting the power and prestige of rural areas and the older prototypical American, the yeoman farmer. Immigrants flowed into these cities at a staggering rate; over 500,000 arrived in America every year. Most of these newcomers were from southern and eastern Europe, bringing with them cultural mores and religious practices that clashed with the Protestantism and AngloSaxon culture of the dominant elite.
In addition to the problems posed by immigration, historian Frederick Jackson Turner startled the nation by publicizing the fact that the census of 1890 no longer recognized the existence of a frontier line in the West. Turner warned that the disappearance of this frontier would mean declining opportunities for internal territorial and economic expansion. Turner argued that most American democratic traditions had stemmed from the frontier’s existence, and he feared its disappearance would have political as well as economic consequences.
All these trends produced in America what historian Richard Hofstadter called a “psychic crisis.” Powerful and wealthy as the United States was, many Americans seem to have feared that the nation was close to blowing up or at least entering a decline in wealth and political well-being. For some, these concerns
4
The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire led to gloom and apathy. However, others sought to deny their own failure of confidence by embarking on a frantic crusade, motivated by the hope that if they could project their virtue and strength overseas, they could convince themselves as well.
The economic, political, and psychic crisis brought on by the depression of 1893 caused some soul-searching among leading figures in President Grover Cleveland’s administration, Congress, and the private sector. They argued that the depression resulted from a glut of American agricultural and industrial products. Since America’s factories and farms were producing more than domestic markets could consume, the United States needed to pursue overseas markets more aggressively. Yet at the same time that exports came to seem increasingly important to many American leaders, foreign markets seemed to be closing against American trade. European nations were carving up Africa and, in the wake of Japan’s victory over China in the Sino–Japanese War of 1895, were seeking to increase their spheres of influence in Asia as well. These European colonial powers generally erected discriminatory tariff barriers in their newly acquired territories. Even in Great Britain, the trend seemed to be toward closing markets to foreign competition. The British colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, advocated preferential tariff structures throughout the British Empire, which formerly had been relatively open to exports from the United States.
American Culture and the Rise of U.S. Imperialism
While the depression frightened the United States into a more interventionist policy abroad, intellectual, religious, and cultural currents provided a moral rationale for expansion. The surge of European imperialism in the 1880s and 1890s led to a wealth of literature praising the beneficence of European colonial government. Writers such as Frederick Fabri and James Anthony Froude spread these ideas to the attentive and cosmopolitan portion of the American public that was aware of and concerned for national policy. Many of these writers drew on the theories of Herbert Spencer and other Social Darwinists to justify colonial expansion and to promote a racial hierarchy that placed white Protestant males at the top of a pyramid of civilization.
Influential politicians also propagated the imperial gospel among Americans. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, argued that peace could not be had “until the civilized nations have expanded in some shape over the barbarous nations. This means the cooperation of the civilized peoples of the earth to that end, whatever the cost or time.” Naturally, Roosevelt thought the United States was the best of such civilized nations, but in areas outside America’s core interests, he was willing to support the imperialism of other European powers. For instance, he thought England would be doing “her duty as a civilized nation” by colonizing the Sudan. He also said it was in the interest of civilization that the Englishspeaking race be dominant in the Western Hemisphere.
The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire 5
Roosevelt did not believe such benevolent colonialism ran contrary to the traditions and ideals of the founders expressed in the Declaration of Independence and President Washington’s Farewell Address. In his best-selling book, The Winning of the West, he pointed out that the founders had conquered and colonized the Indians. This action had been perfectly justified, he argued, for it had been impossible “to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, unless we were willing to see the American continent fall into the hands of some other strong power” or “willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghenies should remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting-ground of savages.”
A still more influential propagator of the imperial vision in the 1890s was Roosevelt’s friend, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. His world-famous book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, extolled the benefits of Christianity and Western civilization and noted the role the British navy had played in establishing the British Empire for the mutual benefit of the British economy and the barbaric natives who had been brought under British control. He urged that the United States likewise build a strong, two-ocean navy, acquire bases and coaling stations in the Caribbean and the Pacific, build an isthmian canal, and thus extend protection to the extensive commerce that would carry American civilization to Asia and Latin America while enriching the United States. He pointed out that modern technology had brought within reach lands that the founders had considered far beyond the realm of vital American interests. Conversely, he warned that the United States now was also within easier reach of foreign powers and would become increasingly vulnerable militarily if it did not strengthen its navy and take a more active interest in overseas affairs.
American missionaries reinforced the inclination of the followers of Mahan and Roosevelt to seek a more activist foreign policy. Josiah Strong embodied this missionary spirit. His best seller, Our Country, proclaimed that the AngloSaxon race in America,
A race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it—the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization—having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over Africa and beyond. And can anyone doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the ‘survival of the fittest’?
Strong emphasized that this expansion need not be a “war of extermination” for “the contest is not one of arms, but of vitality and of civilization.” Nonetheless, his description of international affairs as a competition of races culminating in the survival of the fittest could not help but contribute to a more aggressive American foreign policy.
The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire
“The survival of the fittest” was a catchword of the 1890s and a powerful intellectual support for the “large policy” of people like Roosevelt and Mahan. It derived from Charles Darwin’s pathbreaking work on biological evolution that portrayed natural selection as the means by which species had evolved from primitive forms to their present status. An Englishman, Herbert Spencer, adapted Darwin’s idea of biological evolution to the realm of human social affairs. Spencer theorized that civilizations, like biological species, progressed by natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Many imperialists adopted Spencer’s Social Darwinism into a formula for international relations. According to this view, nations and races competed with one another; the strong survived, the weak succumbed. Thus, civilization progressed.
Some Americans, especially young, white men, found the Darwinian emphasis on survival of the fittest a convenient rationale for their own desire to participate in a glorious fight. Most of the generation alive in the 1890s had not experienced the blood and terror of the Civil War. That war appeared to them in retrospect as a great adventure fought for profound principles. It seemed far more exciting than the dreary economic concerns that dominated their own industrial America of the 1890s. Some even agreed with Theodore Roosevelt that “this country needs a war.”
Roosevelt epitomized the emphasis on manliness and contempt for effeminacy that dominated American attitudes in the 1890s and pointed the nation toward war and imperialism. Roosevelt had gone from being a teenage weakling into a vigorous athlete who prided himself on participating in strenuous and dangerous activities, including hunting and military service. He urged Americans to follow his example. In a famous address to the Hamilton Club of Chicago in 1899, he condemned
The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the overcivilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues. … These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading.
Popular Culture and U.S. Imperialism
The attitudes of American superiority, white supremacy, manliness, and survival of the fittest permeated mass culture in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Popular literature, including tales of the Old West, and photography, such as Edward Curtis’s iconic images of native Americans, contributed to popular notions that conflated white superiority, masculinity, and human advancement. Mass spectacles, such as world fairs and circuses, portrayed Americans as rising over primitive conditions and peoples to reach a new apex of civilization. For instance, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show—which played to 50 million people throughout the United States and the world and required eighteen railroad cars
The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire 7 to transport its entourage of cowboys, Indians, animals, and wagons—illustrated the country’s progress from barbarism to civilization. The show included scenes such as “The Primeval Forest,” “The Prairie,” “The Cattle Ranch,” and “The Mining Camp.” In most of these scenes, Buffalo Bill and other cowboys rescued white settlers from Indians. Thus, the Wild West show represented the imperial ethic of Anglo-Saxons taming nature and triumphing over savagery, although the message was somewhat less straightforward when Cody added Custer’s Last Stand as the culminating episode of the show.
By the early twentieth century, Cody’s show and popular novels about the Old West and Indian wars had inspired novel forms of entertainment, including a new genre of films: the western. Like Cody’s live show, these films depended on and reinforced racialized and gendered stereotypes. Westerns created a mythology around life on the frontier that celebrated the bravery and heroism of white settlers and cowboys while ignoring their brutality toward indigenous people and their efforts to eradicate native culture and sovereignty. For example, the Wild West show and numerous western films portrayed the Battle of Wounded Knee not as a ruthless massacre stemming from a desire to suppress native religious practices but as the culminating episode in the Sioux Wars. Following the commercial success of the 1903 movie The Great Train Robbery, westerns proliferated. In fact, westerns comprised nearly a quarter of all American films produced over the next sixty years. Although about one out of every four cowboys in the late nineteenth century had been Black Americans, westerns nearly always depicted cowboys as white and, as had been the case with earlier cultural forms, the films were produced for primarily white audiences.
World’s fairs, such as the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, provided another opportunity for Americans to celebrate their achievements and emphasize their exceptionalism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these public expos showcased scientific and technological innovations such as agricultural machinery, modern railroad cars, electric motors, and incandescent lightbulbs. In addition to promoting new technologies and inventions, the world’s fairs endorsed Western, liberal values such as private enterprise and free trade. They also strongly suggested the applicability of American developmental models for other societies. In fact, world’s fairs reinforced the popular notion that the United States had a responsibility to export not only products and industrialized goods but also American ideas and mass culture. Economic and cultural expansion were complementary, and American investors, traders, and businessmen argued that world trade would contribute to global peace and international development. As a speaker at the 1893 world’s fair’s railway conference exclaimed, “The locomotive bell is the true Liberty bell, proclaiming commercial freedom. Its boilers and the reservoirs are the forces of civilization. Its wheels are the wheels of progress, and its headlight is the illumination of dark countries.”
8 The Spanish–American War and the Decision for Empire
Sports such as baseball also embodied the message of American superiority in the 1880s and 1890s. As one journalist put it, baseball was
A great sport, representative and typical of the people who practice it … one that stimulates all the faculties of the mind … keenness, invention, perception, agility, celerity of thought and action, adaptability to circumstances—in short, all the qualities that go to make the American man the most highlyorganized, civilized being on earth.
Thus, baseball celebrated the American values of self-reliance, individualism, competition, and survival of the fittest. Because only white men were allowed to compete in the premier organization—Major League Baseball—the sport also reinforced racial and gender hierarchies.
A.G. Spalding, a manufacturer of baseball equipment and owner of the Chicago White Stockings in the National League, imitated Buffalo Bill by taking his own team and a mix of other players on a world tour in 1888–1889. His goal was to promote the sport, the United States, and his own products. Spalding told the Australians during his time down under that his teams, composed entirely of white players with a single black mascot who entertained audiences with “plantation dances,” embodied “all those essentials of manliness, courage, nerve, pluck and endurance characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race.” After touring New Zealand, Australia, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Spalding’s group stopped in Egypt, where the players competed in the shadow of the pyramids and shocked the audience by trying to throw balls over the tombs. The Spalding tour culminated in Europe with games in Italy, France, England, Ireland, and Scotland. As with Buffalo Bill’s show, the baseball tour had only mixed success in convincing foreign audiences of American supremacy. The British, for instance, refused to accept Spalding’s insistence that baseball was superior to cricket and instead mocked baseball as much closer to their children’s game of rounders.1
Opposition to Imperialism
The depression, the psychic crisis, the increased need for foreign markets, the rapid development of modern communications and transportation, the surge of European imperialism, and the development of powerful, cultural rationales for overseas expansion set the stage for the Spanish–American War and its imperial aftermath. But there were still strong voices for restraint, even among those who might have been expected to be in the vanguard of imperialism.
Two of America’s most prominent Social Darwinists, William Graham Sumner and John Burgess, were nonetheless strong opponents of overseas expansionism. So was the historian James Schouler, who had written paeans to earlier continental expansion. Such people could agree that the United States housed a superior race and civilization, yet oppose overseas acquisitions. Like the older generations of Americans, who had an equally fervent if not so systematic belief
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
T P G B H.
B , I . B.O.W
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: H. van Brakel, Ing. B.O.W Oorspronkelijke roman
Author: P. A. Daum
Release date: September 7, 2023 [eBook #71591]
Language: Dutch
Original publication: Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1875
Credits: Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)
H. VAN BRAKEL, Ing. B. O. W.
H. VAN BRAKEL,
Ing. B. O. W.
OORSPRONKELIJKE ROMAN
DOOR MAURITS.
LEIDEN.—A. W. SIJTHOFF.
H. VAN BRAKEL, I B. O.
W.
De lampen brandden in de achtergalerij, boven de nog gedekte tafel. Vlug namen de bedienden de gerechten weg; ze hadden ditmaal haast; ’t was immers de laatste arbeid des daags!
Het hoofd van Lucie zonk voorover op haar borst; haar oogen waren dichtgevallen; zij kon zoo’n onoverwinnelijken slaap krijgen, ’s avonds na het eten! Dan was het zoo rustig, zoo stil: de kinderen sliepen; de huiselijke bedrijvigheid was ten einde.
Van Brakel had zijn lorgnet opgezet en las de courant. ’t Beviel hem niet. Er stond weer iets in van den „strijkstok,” waaraan bij den Waterstaat zooveel hangen bleef. Het doelde niet op hem,—volstrekt niet; maar dan toch op z i j n ondergeschikten. Hm! ’t was beter, dat die kerels, dacht hij, wat amusanter couranten maakten, dan zich altijd te bemoeien met eens andermans zaken.
Toen hij ’t blad neerlei en zijn stoel achteruitschoof, schrikte Lucie wakker.
„Ga je uit?” vroeg ze, zich de oogen wrijvende.
„Ja, nog ’n uurtje naar de soos.” [2]
„Ik ga naar bed.”
„Welzeker. Je bent moe.”
Hij zette zijn dienstpet op, nam een wandelstok uit een hoek en floot zijn hond, die hem blaffend naar buiten volgde.
Toen Lucie haar buffet en haar dispenskast had gesloten, draaide zij de lamp neer en ging naar haar kamer.
Het was er benauwd, en het rook er onfrisch.
Op een grooten divan stonden twee k o d j o n g s , en daaronder sliepen als rozen de tweelingen, waarmede zij den gelukkigen waterstaatsingenieur op St.-Nicolaas aangenaam had verrast.
Drie jaren waren zij getrouwd, en ze had nu vier kinderen.
Hun aantal „beren” echter was legio.
Vooreerst kon Van Brakel als vrijgezel de eindjes reeds niet samenknoopen, en wat Lucie betreft,—op de koffie-onderneming haars vaders had men steeds het huishouden „gedaan” uit het werkkapitaal; dat „s t i m m t e ”, altijd volgens H e r r Drütlich.
Zij was een brave, ijverige huisvrouw; van dat de zon aan den hemel kwam tot ’s avonds klokke acht, was ze in de weer; haar tweelingen zoogde ze zelve, en ze zou, als een krachtige telg van Germaanschen stam, in staat zijn geweest zeslingen te voeden en.… over te houden. Zij had verstand van keuken en goedangzaken, als de beste uit Europa geïmporteerde huisvrouw. Zij zorgde goed voor haar man en haar kleintjes. Als die maar „dik” waren, dan leefde ze, en haar stelsel van vetmesten gelukte volkomen, ook wat haarzelve betrof; de gansche familie zat terdege in het vleesch, en Van Brakel, schoon hem de tweelingen aanvankelijk [3]zwaar op ’t hart hadden gelegen, was geëindigd met er trotsch op te zijn.
Wanneer bezoekers deze welgeslaagde proeven van multiplicatievermogen bewonderden, en de „engelen van kinderen” ’t vel van de wangetjes kusten, dan kon Van Brakel er bij staan met een gezicht, stralend van zelfvoldoening; een gezicht, waarop als het ware een
aanvraag stond te lezen om een gezegeld en geregistreerd certificaat.
Sommige menschen, die wel wisten waar in dergelijke omstandigheden de beroemde Abraham zijn geurigen mosterd haalde, glimlachten spottend; maar de domme menigte kende den ingenieur groote verdiensten toe.
Doch welk een goed vrouwtje Lucie ook was,—twee eigenschappen miste zij: ze was niet erg zindelijk op haar huis, en zuinig was ze evenmin; stof zag ze niet gauw, maar ze schreef verbazend snel een bonnetje.
Dit eerste, en de eigenaardige geuren van de zuigelingen en van de baboe, die vóór den divan op den grond lag te slapen, waren oorzaak van de onfrissche lucht, die in het slaapvertrek heerschte.
Zij merkte het niet; ze was aan die soort van zaken gewoon; thuis, toen haar moeder stierf, bleef ze met haar broertjes en zusjes achter, en nu die groot waren, zat ze in een wip in haar eigen kindertjes.
Zulke fijne reukorganen kwamen op haars vaders onderneming ook niet te pas, en als Van Brakel thuis kwam, en een sterken gemengden geur van tabak en brandy buiten en binnen de k l a m b o e verspreidde, dan had ze daar zoo geen last van. Papa Drütlich begroette steeds het opgaan der zon met zijn F r ü h s c h o p p e n , rookte er groote pijpen zware [4]tabak bij, en salueerde Morpheus met b r a n d y k r i n g en havana’s. Zoo’n „heerenluchtje” hinderde haar niet; ze was het van kindsbeen af gewoon.
En Van Brakel was een goed man. Hij hield veel van Lucie; net zooveel als toen ze nog geëngageerd waren. Voor geen geld zou hij haar ontrouw zijn geworden; zij wist, dat ze voor hem d e vrouw
was, en hij kwam daar altijd rond voor uit. Doch huiselijk van aard was hij niet, en hij werd dat met elke maand minder. De sociëteit had iets wonderlijk aantrekkelijks voor hem.
Sedert lang mopperde hij niet meer tegen den dienst. Men hoorde hem niet meer afgeven op ongediplomeerde hoofdingenieurs en op projecten, die toch nooit werden uitgevoerd. Hij ontplooide een grooten ijver in het begrinten van wegen, het verven van gouvernements-gebouwen, het witten en teeren van postloodsen. ’s Morgens vroeg kon men hem reeds zien uitrijden in zijn bendy, hoe verder, hoe liever. Het mocht dan waar wezen, dat hij geregeld elke maand te kort kwam, en hij zijn „beren” even voordeelig zag groeien en dik worden als zijn kroost,—het eenige wat nog strekken kon om er niet al te diep onder te raken was een fatsoenlijk bedrag aan declaraties elke maand.
Fluitend en pratend tegen zijn hond, die al blaffende om hem heen sprong, liep hij voort in den helderen maneschijn; zijn blonde haren krulden om zijn pet en de schaduw van zijn gezette figuur dandineerde op het witte zand van den weg.
Het was een gewone avond in de sociëteit, want er werd geen muziek gemaakt. [5]
De groote lokalen waren leeg. Uit de biljartzaal kwam het eentonig getik der tegen elkaar loopende ballen. De kastelein, die de verlichting uit zijn verdiensten moest betalen, was zoo vrij geweest de lampen op „halve kracht” te stellen.
Er viel toch niets te verdienen op zoo’n avond!
Van Brakel ging door de lange voor- en binnengalerijen op het geluid der biljartballen af. Daar ten minste was nog wat leven.
Hij trad binnen en knikte even met het hoofd een „goeden avond” in het rond.
„Zoo,” zei de assistent-resident van politie, een vroolijk celibatair.
„Wat kom jij hier doen?”
„Ik kom eens zien of jullie je niet misdraagt,” lachte Van Brakel.
„Nou,” zei een ander ingenieur, die met den redacteur van een dagblad aan het biljarten was, „we zijn altijd blij als we je rechtop naar huis zien loopen.”
Men schertste, en critiseerde het spel, waarvan de spelers uitmuntend geoefend waren, en men dronk er de eeuwige brandysoda bij. Het was een „vast clubje.” Van Brakel was het eenige getrouwde lid. Zijn collega, de journalist en de assistent-resident hielden trouw den gehuwden staat een „kleine vrouw” voor, waarop Hymen telkens verschrikt en beschaamd de vlucht nam.
„Willen we?” vroeg, toen de partij uit was, een van de club, terwijl hij met duim en vinger een beweging maakte, als wilde hij iets laten tellen.
Zij glimlachten allen en keken elkaar aan; zij glimlachten, [6]zooals verstandige, goed ontwikkelde en beschaafde menschen doen, wanneer ze willen overgaan tot iets, wat ze weten dat verkeerd is, dat strijdt tegen hun beschaving, ontwikkeling en verstand; zij glimlachten als menschen, die heel goed weten, welke in het leven de verboden vruchten zijn, maar er zich niettemin in koelen bloede aan te goed gaan doen.
„Nog één keer, en dan nooit weer,” zei de assistent-resident.
Ze lachten nu luid, en al schertsend en lachend gingen ze naar een hoek van de binnengalerij, waar het uitverkoren plekje was voor hun
zonde.
De bedienden brachten hun glazen; de mandoor haalde het draaibord; elk zette een „lapje” van tien gulden bij; men draaide.
Er werd weinig bij gesproken. Zij waren echte spelers; zij speelden niet om het genoegen van het spel, maar alleen om te winnen. Een half uur waren ze aan den gang, maar het hielp niet. De kans was zeer grillig; ieder won op zijn beurt; er ging „niets om.”
„We konden best vijf en twintig zetten,” meende er een.
Men keek elkaar even aan en knikte goedkeurend.—Het scheen te helpen, de kans richtte zich naar v e i n e en d é v e i n e ; er werd gewonnen en verloren; de hartstocht werd opgewekt en met de grootste aandacht werd de beweging van den draaienden wijzer gevolgd.
Uit de leeskamer der sociëteit, die met een deur in de binnengalerij uitkwam, schreed langzaam een heer en ging voorbij het tafeltje der spelers; hij groette zeer beleefd. [7]
Van Brakel mompelde iets met saamgeknepen lippen, terwijl hij hem woedend nakeek. „Het is nu de tweede maal, dat die ploert me dit levert.”
„Misschien heeft hij er geen bedoeling bij,” zei zijn collega.
„Nu ja! I k zeg je, hij doet het met opzet. M i j kan ’t niet schelen.”
„Mij ook niet.”
„Waar zeur je dan over? Kom, zet op!” viel de assistent-resident in, en gaf met zijn dikke vingers een krachtigen zet aan het draaitoestel.
Van Brakel eindigde dien avond met een paar honderd gulden verlies, maar het scheen hem niet te hinderen. Ook sprak men daar niet over. Iemand, die over zijn verlies zou hebben gesproken of getoond zou hebben, dat hij daar niet tegen kon, ware, althans in hun clubje, een onteerd man. Of liever het was ondenkbaar, want dan kon hij tot dat clubje niet behooren.
Men ging gezamenlijk biljarten om geld: een rijksdaalder per carambole; dat was een billijk tarief.
Van Brakel won er een kleinigheid mee, maar het werd den spelers te warm.
Nog één keer dobbelden ze, wat hem zijn biljartwinst weer afhandig maakte, en met het slaan van tweeën gingen de vrienden naar huis.
Het was nog altijd een heerlijke nacht. Van Brakel’s hond was vroolijk en blafte als een razende tegen de maan; maar de baas werd door onaangename gedachten geplaagd.
Den volgenden dag was het traktementsdag. Verwenschte dag! Dat was nu, naar zijn gevoelen, de ellendigste der [8]geheele maand, terwijl het eigenlijk de aangenaamste wezen moest.
Het was dan toch ook schandelijk van het Gouvernement om iemand van zijn positie en zijn dienstjaren zóó slecht te betalen. Zelfs m e t de declaratie-gelden kon men van zoo’n inkomen niet leven! Had hij een paar honderd gulden meer in de maand, dan was er doorkomen aan. Nu gaf het slechts een agglomeratie van beren, waaraan geen einde kwam. Men kon er waarlijk het einde niet van zien.
Zóó wandelde hij naar huis in droevige stemming, het lot verwenschend, dat hem als ingenieur B. O. W. in de klauwen had doen vallen van het Indisch Gouvernement.
Hij had dan een geweldigen afkeer van rekeningen ten zijnen laste, en, welk een goed en gemoedelijk man hij ook overigens was, zoo kon hij buiten zichzelven geraken van woede, bij het zien van een mandoer, die met een portefeuille of een trommel vol quitanties het erf op kwam. Deze bruine broeders, wetende welke onwelkome verschijningen ze waren bij den toean ingenieur, bogen als knipmessen nog vóór ze iemand zagen; maar zóó vriendelijk konden ze niet wezen of Van Brakel zei, met een paar groote oogen, tegen zijn Lucie:
„Daar heb je weer zoo’n smeerlap!”
Zij moest er om lachen. Haar gemoedelijke aard verloochende zich nooit. Het was immers niets! „Als men niet kan betalen”, zei ze altijd heel leuk, „dan zegt men maar l a i n b o e l a n ”. De tokohouders verdienden, vond zij, toch genoeg.
Maar Van Brakel kon er niet tegen, en daarom zorgde hij steeds met den maandelijkschen Grooten Verzoendag op reis [9]te zijn om te zien naar de dijkjes, de postloodsen en wat zich verder koesterde onder de vleugelen zijner technische bekwaamheid.
Alles sliep toen hij thuis kwam; zelfs toen hij in bed stapte en zijn gewicht de ijzeren staven van het ledikant deed knarsen, werd Lucie niet wakker, maar bleef rustig voortslapen, haar dikke, blanke armen boven het hoofd gekruist. Nog een oogenblik zat Van Brakel overeind, bedenkend of hij haar wakker zou maken of niet.
Hij deed het niet, want „k a s i a n ,” dacht hij, „ze is zoo moe”.
Wèl was het reeds drie uren, vóór hij rustig insliep, maar dat belette hem niet met het vallen van het ochtendschot weer op te staan. Zijn ijzersterk gestel veroorloofde hem alles; wat een ander in de gematigde luchtstreek doodziek zou hebben gemaakt, dat kon hij
zich in de tropen ongestraft veroorloven. Een uur later was hij reeds op weg naar „het werk”, dat zes, acht palen van de hoofdplaats werd uitgevoerd.
Maar in dat uur, welk een drukte en bedrijvigheid! Als Lucie sliep, dan was ze moeilijk wakker te krijgen, doch eenmaal goed uitgerust ontwaakt, scheen zij een voor den ganschen dag opgewonden uurwerk, dat met een krachtige vaart afliep en ’s avonds stilstond.
Nog was de duisternis niet geheel geweken, toen reeds alles in rep en roer was; de koffie werd gezet, de tafel voor het ontbijt gedekt, de zuigelingen schreeuwden van den honger, de baboes liepen heen en weer met vochtig en geïllustreerd beddegoed, de katten miauwden, Lucie gaf met luide [10]stem vier, vijf bevelen te gelijk aan de bedienden, Van Brakel zocht vloekend een gesp voor zijn schoone pantalon,—het was of met den nieuwen dag Satan was losgebroken, alsof het een huishouden was van Jan Steen; kleine Wilhelm, het oudste zoontje, gilde als een bezetene, omdat hij niet wilde baden, en de driejarige Lucie beet haar baboe in de wang.
Zoo was na vier jaren van ongestoord huwelijksgeluk het „kleine Paradijs”, waarover Lucie haar oude vriendin Louise Van der Linden met zooveel enthusiasme had geschreven, toen ze nog pas kort waren getrouwd.
Toen eindelijk Van Brakel vertrokken was, en de kinderen gevoed en gereinigd met de baboes aan ’t wandelen waren, begon het eenigszins rustiger te worden. Dan weldra snorden de naaimachines van Lucie en haar m e n d j a h i t , welk eentonig en toch zenuwachtig geratel alleen werd afgebroken door de meer of min onaangename besprekingen met weldra van alle zijden opdagende Chineezen en rekeningloopers.
Het was een nare geschiedenis toch tegenwoordig. Vroeger kreeg zij elke maand geld gezonden van haar vader, en dat was zoo heerlijk; Van Brakel wist er wel zoo iets van, maar hij vroeg er niet naar, en zij kon met dat geld soms zoo ongemerkt de leemten in de ménage aanvullen. Doch daarvan was in den laatsten tijd geen sprake meer. Het was, schreef H e r r Drütlich, nu „d i e v e r d a m m t e K a ff e e l a u s ” zijn boomen vernielde, niet meer mogelijk om haar etwas te zenden, en daar bleef het bij, terwijl toch de uitgaven elken dag toenamen.
Na zijn tochtje, dat tot twaalf uren ’s middags duurde, reed Van Brakel beslijkt en bestoven het erf op van de sociëteit. [11]De Clubleden zaten er reeds. Zijn collega, iemand altijd even net en bedaard, zoo in zijn uiterlijk als wat zijn manieren betreft, zag hem opmerkzaam aan, toen hij uit zijn voertuig stapte.
„Vindt je niet dat Braak erg achteruitgaat?” vroeg hij den assistentresident.
„Och, het gaat nogal. ’n Beetje vet, anders niet.”
„Je hebt hem vroeger niet gekend. Te Delft was hij een van de netste kerels. En nu heeft hij hier in Indië iets verschrikkelijk ordinairs gekregen.”
„Kom, dat is zoo erg niet!—Dag Braak, ’n paitje?”
„Dat was nog zoo ’n kwaad idee niet,” meende Van Brakel.
Zij bleven zitten tot tegen twee uren. Sommigen hadden zich tot weinig consumtie beperkt: het waren de ambtenaren, die nog naar hun kantoren moesten; maar Van Brakel en de assistent-resident, die t o c h m a a r naar huis gingen, hadden een „slordig bittertje” gedronken.
Thuis vond hij Lucie met een van de tweelingen aan de borst, en bezig een glaasje Spaanschen wijn te drinken, wat zoo goed was en zoo versterkend; hij vond het erg gezellig en accompagneerde haar met nog een weinig volksdrank, waarna zij aan tafel zwart Engelsch bier dronk om zich te versterken en hij bruin Duitsch bier omdat hij het lekker vond.
„Ik heb een brief gekregen van pa,” zei ze onder het eten.
„Zoo, hoe maakt hij het?”
„O heel goed.”
„En hoe gaat het met de K a ff e e l a u s ?”
„Akelig! Geen driehonderd pikols van ’t jaar.” [12]
„’t Is beroerd.”
„’t Is verschrikkelijk. Zoo’n mooi land!”
„En wat denkt hij nu te doen?”
„Ja, wat zal hij doen?”
Dat wist Van Brakel ook niet, en daarom zweeg hij maar liever.
Lang zouden ze geslapen hebben dien middag, zoo niet tegen halfvijf een politie-oppasser was gekomen met een briefje van den assistent-resident, die in vliegende haast meldde, dat hij per telegram was overgeplaatst en in weinige dagen naar zijn nieuwe standplaats moest vertrekken, omdat de overneming van den dienst daar geen uitstel kon leiden.
„Kom, ik ga gauw baden,” zei Van Brakel tegen Lucie. „Je begrijpt, dat wij hem in elk geval een heerendinertje moeten aanbieden.”
