Raden Adjeng Kartini

“ But we threw aside our own desires, when we found that the cause could be served best in a different way. We saw this as soon as we ceased to think of ourselves, but only of our cause.
The people for whom we wish to work, must learn to know us. If we went away, we should become as strangers to them. And when after some years, we came back, they would see in us only European women. If the people do not like to trust their daughters to European women, how much less would they be willing to trust them to those who were worse in their eyes, Javanese turned European. ”

“ If the public should be aroused against us, the whole cause would be held back. People would be unwilling to give their daughters a liberal education, for education would be held responsible for such impossible creatures as we.
Patience! patience, even unto eternity. Stella, I was so miserable when this truth penetrated at last. We must curb ourselves in our enthusiasm, we will not pass our goal without seeing it. Mevrouw Van Kol wrote to us, that before we can realize an ideal, we must first lose many illusions. ”

“ The main question is the danger to our undertaking itself. We had never looked at the other side, from defiant courage, or courageous defiance, call it what you will—carried away by our enthusiasm, we thought little—or not at all—of the temper of the public. ”

“ Now we are beginning to understand. Stella, now we know that the watch-word of all reformers must be Patience. We cannot hasten the course of events, we only retard them when we try to push forward too hastily. ”

“ No, Stella, your work is not lost, the work of you all. Though we may make no use of its fruits now, it will be of great good to our cause, attention will have been drawn to it. Before this, questions relating to the education of the Javanese people, have always been brought up by those who had some interest of their own at stake. ”

“ Our aim is our people; and if they should be set against us, of what good would the help of the Government be? We ought to strike as quickly as possible, and place before the public as an accomplished fact , a school for native girls. ”

“ Consider this, we have never been away from home, and if we were suddenly taken from our warm little nest, from our own country, and placed in another environment far from all who loved us, the change would be great. ”

“ You know that it is our dearest wish to complete our educations in Europe. Can you realize what it will cost us to give up the idea on the very eve of its realization? We have been through a terrible struggle. ”