Stieltjes was a member of the States General who, as an expert voice, took part in the secret sessions of the Tweede Kamer of April 1874 on the origin of the Atjeh war and the state of the Netherlands Indies Army. Cited by Verstege in 1886 as “de reeds gestorven eerlijke vaderlander” (the honest patriot, since deceased), Stieltjes on 18 April 1874 pronounced the parliamentary verdict on the expedition’s launching: his greatest grief was that the war had been begun straightway with a great landing at a moment when the army was not sufficiently replenished; the number of supplementary troops ordered to be sent out had never been so low as in the budget adopted a few months before the first expedition, and prudence would have demanded that at least a thousand men more had been sent. He closed with the words that Verstege quoted still in 1886: “Wat ik (behalve de begane misslagen der Regeering) nog meer betreur en afkeur is, dat de maatregelen, die genomen (moesten) worden om het leger te land zoodanig te versterken dat het beter wordt dan in 1870, uitblijven, alsook de geheele omwerking van het Indische leger, want ingrijpende maatregelen zullen voor land en zeemacht noodig zijn” (“What I, besides the mistakes made by the government, regret and condemn still more, is that the measures which had to be taken to strengthen the army here so that it would become better than in 1870 fail to come, as well as the entire recasting of the Indies army, for far-reaching measures will be needed for army and navy”). Almost twelve years later, Verstege remarks, the Indies army still waited for that recasting.
See Also
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 121, 133. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.