Jakarta, November 9th, 1945

Sir Philip Christison, Bart.
C.in.C. Allied Forces in Indonesia,
Jakarta.

Sir,
Every time you want to put us in the wrong, you produce your pet argument that Indonesians do not possess a stable government and, as proof of your contention, you point to the fact that shootings and lootings have taken place in this or that area. Having done that, you dissociate yourself from all responsibility for occurrences directly attributable to the ill-conceived policy you have all along been following. The march of events should by now have served to convince you of the gross immorality of trying to foist the Dutch on an unwilling people; but it would appear that the ethics of the case have been ignored in view of your “moral obligations to an ally” who (in the words of a SEAC commentator) “played a major part in winning the war for the United Nations”. In view of Dutch claims that their heroic stand in Holland and Indonesia saved Britain and Australia respectively—and now officially recognized by SEAC radio—we realize how difficult it is for you to take a firm line with the one people who saved Britain from German occupation. However that may be, the United Nations mandate from which you derive your title to set as the Allied Army of Occupation in Indonesia makes it incumbent on you to give some measure of fair play to the people of this country.

It is but just to point out to you that your policy of trying to put the Dutch back in the saddle has resulted in your turning a blind eye to criminal and provocative Dutch actions nicely calculated to render difficult Indonesian attempts to maintain law and order in an exceedingly trying and confused situation. Every so often we have had occasion to draw your attention to the manner in which Dutch soldiery under your over-all command keep on harassing the local population, evidently to prod Indonesians into taking retaliatory measures. We were led into believing that Jakarta had been placed outside the sphere of such Dutch activity, yet hardly a day goes by without reports of Dutch excesses within the confines of the municipal area. To specify every single substantiated not would serve no useful purpose, but I recount one instance which took place at 1830 hours on 7/11/45. There trucks laden with Dutch troops, moving