As a reslut of forced Christianization, the motherland threatens to alienate the indigenous population of our colonies from herself.’ With this slogan a combination of left-wing political parties entered the elections for the Dutch Parliament in June 1913. This combination won the elections and in the end it was the liberal Cort van der Linden who was commissioned to form a government. The then governor-general of what was called the Dutch East Indies, the Christian statesman A. W. F. Idenburg (1861-1935), consequently considered relinquishing his post, now that a government would be formed of a political colour different from his own. On the advice of the leader of his party, the Dutch politician, journalist, and church leader Abraham Kuyper, however, he decided that his decision to stay or to resign would depend on the possibilities of co-operation with the new minister of colonial affairs. But he had no illusions about the opinion of the European press in Indonesia. ‘Against me,’ he wrote in a letter to the outgoing minister of colonial affairs, J. H. de Waal Malefijt (1852-1931), a fellow party member, ‘a devilish howling has burst out in some of the papers. They all agree that I must go.’