Arriving in Singapore, I put up at the Hotel de la Paix on the Marine
Parade. I posed as an ordinary tourist with a leaning toward hunting
and a fad of doing research work in tropical botany. I gradually
became acquainted with a number of English officers and was introduced
at their clubs. The information obtained through these channels about
the new naval base was merely theoretical and I soon found that to
obtain practical results I would have to get in touch with the native
clerks. In the English Eastern possessions, you see, most clerical
and minor mechanical positions are held by natives. It soon was
brought home to me, though, that this cultivating natives was by no
means easy and a rather dangerous thing to do. To be in any way
successful, I had to find a native of a higher caste, one with
sufficient influence to command the clerks. If I could get hold of
one of the numerable discontented petty rajahs, for instance, there
might be a chance of obtaining what I sought.

In one of the clubs, I found a clue. A young Rajah, one of the
numerous coterie of petty princes--fair play compels me to withhold
his name--had got himself into some trouble and the paternal
government had promptly suspended his income. Here was my chance. I
soon ascertained young Rajah's haunts and made it my business to
frequent them. One day I found him on the veranda of the Marine Hotel
and asked him for a match, making a return compliment of a cigarette.
This was a procedure against established British social usage in the
East, where it is considered _infra dig_ to meet a native on a social
footing. Herein lies a grave danger to English colonial policy. Your
semi-European educated native, having partly absorbed European
manners, resents this subordination and ostracism. So, with this
high-spirited, rather clever young rajah. I accepted his invitation