Letters of a Javanese Princess

long to be free, to be able to stand alone, to study, not to be subject to any one, and, above all, never, never to be obliged to marry.

But we must marry, must, must. Not to marry is the greatest sin which the Mohammedan woman can commit; it is the greatest disgrace which a native girl can bring to her family.

And marriage among us—Miserable is too feeble an expression for it. How can it be otherwise, when the laws have made everything for the man and nothing for the woman?

It takes me back to times of which I must not think. It makes me weak and sad

In them the old truth of the oneness of humanity is once more made manifest and we see that the magnificent altruism, the spirit of inquiry, and the almost morbid desire for self-searching and analysis that characterize the opening years of the Twentieth Century were not peculiar to Europe or to America, but were universal and belonged to the world, to the East as well as to the West.