'Well, I Did N't Know That!'

I

AN intelligent New York business man joined a group of men in a Washington hotel, during the Conference for the Limitation of Armaments, and was introduced to one of the party, which included a leading member of the Netherlands Delegation to the Conference.

‘Ah,’ said the man from New York, ‘then you can tell me what has puzzled me: why you people from the Netherlands are sitting in at the Conference.’

‘Because of our interest in the Far East question,’ was the answer.

‘Just what does your interest consist of, may I ask?’

‘Our possessions there.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the American, ‘ possessions! Are they considerable?’

‘Well,’ came the answer, ‘you Americans think in rather large terms, and I don’t know whether you would consider large what we think of in that way. For instance, you are very fond of citing Texas as one of your states into which you could put several of the European countries, and not “find them,” as you say.’

‘One of our pleasant little methods of comparison,’ said the American.

‘Yes,’ said the Netherlander. ‘Well, suppose I use the same illustration: we could put Texas into one of our possessions and you could n’t “find it.”'

‘ Really ? ’ asked the American.

‘ Or, to carry the simile a little further,’ said the delegate, as he saw that the surprise extended to the entire group, ‘our possessions equal, in area, New York State, New England, the Middle Atlantic States, and nearly all the Middle West. We have a coast-line of three thousand, five hundred miles.’

‘Great Scott, man!’ said the American, ‘how much population have you? ’

‘Almost one-half of the entire population of the United States: about fortynine millions, and nearly seven millions in the Netherlands proper. You understand now why we are here?’

‘I surely do’; and then, almost in a chorus, came: ‘Well, I did n’t know that!’ And until midnight the delegate held the group in his description of the Dutch East and West Indies, in their area of over one fifth of the entire area of Europe.

‘I see you were born in Holland?’ said a man to me recently.

‘In the province of North Holland, yes,’ I answered.

’I meant the country of Holland.'

‘No, I could n’t have been born there,’ I replied; ‘there is no such country.’

‘No such country as Holland?’

‘Not unless you are willing to have me call the United States by the name of Carolina, simply because there are two states in the Union of that name: North Carolina and South Carolina. The simile is, to a great extent, identical, except that the Carolinas never held the dominant position in the United States that the two Holland provinces in the Netherlands have held. There are two provinces: North Holland and South Holland; but there are also nine other provinces, just as the United States has forty-six other states. The President of the United States does n’t send a minister to Holland to be presented to the Queen of Holland.’

‘Where does he send him, then?’

’To be Minister to the Netherlands, for presentation to the Queen of the Netherlands. Take this atlas, and show me Holland,’ I answered.

Of course, he could n’t.

‘Well, well,’ was the final answer, and then: ‘I certainly did n’t know that. Then,’ with a ray of hope, ‘why the Holland-America Line of steamships?'

‘Just a compromise to lack of American knowledge. Look at the flag on the ship, the towels, the cutlery, the bathmats, everywhere you will see the initials “N. A. S. M.,” which, translated, mean “Netherlands-America Steamship Company,” which is the actual title of the line.’

‘Then how did the word “Holland” come to be?’ asked one of the party.

And the answer is interesting.

The time was — the world was a great deal younger, then — when the soil of the northwestern part of the Continent of Europe was still a wilderness. The three rivers—the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde, poured their waters into that part of the Atlantic Ocean now called the North Sea. The coast of what now are the southern and eastern parts of the Netherlands was already formed, but the northwestern part did not exist. On their way to the ocean, the rivers took with them clay and soil from the mainland, and deposited a great deal of this soil on their banks. For ages this went on, until the alluvial deposit built up, slowly but surely, a large piece of mainland, just as did the Nile in the Mediterranean. Along the coast beat the turbulent ocean, which, in turn, lashed the new mainland with sand, and built up great dunes and sandbanks. These protected the forming mainland, which consisted of nothing but the slime and muck of the rivers. And so, in time, there came to be a great morass. Here and there a bit of the slime showed above the surface, like an island; and, as time went on, these bits of mainland became larger, vegetation came out of the rich soil, and the rivers took different, courses. The morass was beneath the level of the sea, and it seemed useless for any purpose.

Then there came along, one day, a man of Roman foresight and sturdiness, who concluded that the land could be drained by waterways, the sand dunes strengthened and used as protections from the sea. What the sea had in part created, he argued, it could be made to protect. In those days, as in these times, success came in ‘cans’ and failures in ‘can’ts,’ as has been well said; and the sturdy new adventurer began to drain the land and strengthen the sand dunes. And others of the same type and vision followed his lead, and there began to arise a settlement of farms, the soil of which naturally had no superior in the world. Owing to the lowness of the land below the sea, the land came naturally to be known as land that lay in a hollow: hollow-land, in other words.

It is difficult, if not impossible, now, to trace accurately the derivation of the word Holland. Some historians contend that the word Hol originated in the word Houtland, meaning Woodland, from the trees which rapidly sprang from the rich soil; others from the word Holtland. Another derivation, and one accepted by many, is that the word Hol, meaning Hollow came from the fact of the hollow lands. Be the exact derivation what it may, the Romans toiled, and brought a state into being; and, whatever its derivation, it was called Holland. All this land was in the most northerly part of the new mainland; and as the adventurers drained the soil next to the sea, the land back of them came into view, and there states sprang up. The next was more to the south, and this was the southerly part of the holland; one became known as North Holland and the other as South Holland, although the official differentiation did not take place until the nineteenth century.

This tract became the most powerful and the richest tract saved from the sea. Other communities, seventeen finally, came into being, and were given other names, until the entire vast tract, including what was then Flanders and is now Belgium, for the most part being lowlands, became known to the French as Les Pays Bas, and to the AngloSaxon mind as the Nether [low] lands. But the definition of Holland for the originally reclaimed tract persisted; and slowly but surely the word Holland came down the ages as applying to the country, and not to a section, despite the fact that, after the Eighty Years’ War, the seven northern states (including Holland) were welded into a republic called the United Netherlands. But custom is strong: the word Holland was shorter than Netherlands; Holland it erroneously became, and remained.

There is also a singular confusion in the mind of the average American in his indiscriminate use of the word Dutch as applied to the people of both Germany and the Netherlands. When the Low Countries were one, naturally only a single language was spoken—Dutch; that is, Duitsch, which is the Netherlander’s word for German, since to him Germany is Duitschland. But when the independent Netherlands came into being, and their people developed a civilization peculiarly their own, the need naturally arose for a separate language, and the tongue now spoken in the Netherlands came into being. The World War has made the differentiation in the American mind between a German and a Hollander much clearer and the confusion less. But it is curious how the confusion still persists. Even in representative newspapers, in fact, in novels and books of reference, we find the term ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’: an absolute error, since the Pennsylvania Dutch are Germans — descendants of the German colonizers of Pennsylvania under Pastorius, who, in 1683, settled Germantown; and likewise, in part, descendants of the Hessian soldiers who fought against the United States in the Revolutionary War, and were left stranded there because the Grand Duke of Hesse refused to pay homeward fare. But they are not Netherlanders.

It is never agreeable to a native of the Netherlands to have his people confused with those of Germany, when you analyze history and find that the Netherlands has always been the friend and champion of the United States, whereas the soldiers of Germany twice have taken up arms against the people of the United States. As a matter of simple fairness, is it not time that the American people should get this distinction clearly fixed in their minds?

I was watching a brick road being laid in Pennsylvania, when the contractor said to me: ‘ Best kind of a road, this. We have brick roads in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri, that are from twenty-nine to thirty-two years old, with the roads still in excellent condition. We Americans beat the world in road-building.’

‘I thought the Romans laid a road or two abroad which have stood up pretty well,’ I ventured.

‘Yes, but not of brick. No country has ever tried brick roads. We lead the world,’ returned the contractor; and then he added, ‘Do you doubt that?’

‘No,’ I answered, ‘I don’t doubt it; I know America never led the world in brick road-building.’

‘Where have they ever tried it and got away with it as we have?' he asked, with a delicious contempt in his voice.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘England, for one country, has a few brick roads that have done their bit. There are brick roads in the Netherlands, where they are over one hundred years old, laid in Napoleon’s time, and just as good as when they were laid, if not better.'

‘Of brick?’ he asked.

‘Of brick: vitrified brick; in fact, the vitrification of brick was brought to practical perfection by the Dutch.'

And then came the inevitable, ‘Well, I did n’t know that!’

We were golfing one day, when one of the foursome remarked: ‘We certainly owe a debt to the Scotch for golf.’

‘Why to the Scotch?’ I queried.

‘Because they discovered it, invented it, so to speak. Did n’t you know that?’ I was asked, in astonishment.

‘No, I did n’t know it,’ I replied. And when I reached home, bringing my friends with me, I said to them, after dinner: ‘Now, let me show you fellows something apropos of the Scotch “discovering” golf. Read the beginning of this article on “Golf” in the Encyclopœdia Britannica: an English publication, which would most likely have credited the game to the British Isles if history permitted, would n’t it?’

‘“First played by the Dutch,”’ read my friend. ‘Well, what do you know about that?’ And then, from another article, '“Brought to Scotland from the Netherlands by two Scotchmen.”’ And then, of course, there followed: ‘Golf, a Dutchgame! Well, I did n’t know that! ’

I was watching the erection of a great building in New York one day, when one of the most noted engineers engaged in the work said to me: ‘We are erecting this building entirely on piles; do you realize what that means? No other nation in the world would dare do such a thing, and yet the method is perfectly feasible and safe. It shows how far the United States has gone ahead of the world in engineering skill.’

I pondered for a moment, for the man was very pleasantly suffused with his achievement; I hated to spoil an illusion, and yet —

Very meekly I asked: ‘ And how do you think they built Amsterdam?’

‘Amsterdam? ’ he echoed. ‘ You mean Amsterdam, New York? ’

‘Not exactly,’ I answered; ‘Amsterdam in the Netherlands.’

‘Oh,’ he corrected, ‘you mean the Dutch city, in Holland. Oh, I don t know. Never been there. America’s good enough for me. An American engineer can’t learn anything over there.’

‘No?’ I wondered.

‘Not for a minute,’ was the positive answer. ‘Do you think so?’

‘I was just wondering,’ I answered, ‘as I remembered that the entire city of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, with thousands of houses, the largest Bourse in the world, one of the largest railroad depots in Europe, is entirely built on piles, and was so constructed some few hundred years ago. You mention that the piles you are driving here are, some of them, twenty-four feet long; “the largest in the world ever used for building purposes,” you say. I happened to see piles thirty feet long driven as foundations in Amsterdam. And speaking of foundations,’ I continued, ‘do you realize that there is one dyke in the Netherlands, protecting the land from the sea, where the dyke itself is forty feet in height above the water; while underneath the water there is a wall two hundred feet deep, all made of solid Norway granite? And that there is a province in the Netherlands, called Friesland, where the foundations of every village and town are of artificial construction? I am saying all this,’ I concluded, ‘wondering whether we are so very far ahead of the Old World in our ideas as we sometimes think.’

‘Well, this is all news to me,’ was his comment.

And when, a year later, this same engineer was appointed one of a committee to visit the Netherlands and study the plans of the most astounding piece of engineering skill ever conceived in the history of the world, — the reclamation of the land under the Zuyder Zee — he sent me upon his return the laconic message: ‘My dear fellow, we are pikers compared to those fellows in the Netherlands. You must have thought me a fool that afternoon in New York.’

And then followed the inevitable phrase, ‘ I simply did n’t know.’

‘ What does Mengelberg do when he is at home ? ’ a man, supposedly of musical knowledge, asked me not long ago.

' Conducts the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra,’ I replied.

‘Oh,’ he replied nonchalantly, ‘I did n’t know the Dutch had orchestras like ours.’ And then this delicious bit: ‘It must seem strange for him to conduct an orchestra like the New York Philharmonic.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘So large and so fine,’ he ventured.

' It is n’t as large as his own in Amsterdam,’ I remarked.

‘Not as large?' he echoed. And then another titbit: ‘Does it play often? '

‘About one hundred and forty times each season,’ I answered. ‘And then it visits the great capitals of Europe, because it is now recognized as the finest symphonic orchestra on the Continent.’

And then it came, as I knew it would and always does: ‘Well, well, I did n’t know that!’

He went on, too, did this man of musical knowledge —and, forget it not, he writes musical criticisms for one of the representative newspapers! — ‘I did n’t know the Dutch were musical.’

‘ No? ’ I queried. ‘ William J. Henderson says in his History of Music, you know, that they were the founders of the modern school of music.’

‘The founders? The Dutch?’

‘Well, who invented the canon in music, and brought counterpoint to perfection, if it was not Okeghem in 1470? Who invented the madrigal form of music, if not the Dutch? You forget that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was a Netherlands school of music that, for over two hundred years, furnished the world with music and singers and composers. It was two men of this Netherlands school who went to Naples and founded the first musical conservatory, — the first, not only in Italy, but in the world, — and from that institution sprang the Italian school of music. The same was true of Venice, where another member of the Netherlands school Started a conservatory. Then came the school of Rome, which is acknowledged to owe its existence to the influence of the Netherlands school. The Dutch were in every way the forerunners of what we to-day call the school of secular music, but which, in those days, was confined to religious purposes. That would prove, would it not, that the Dutch were musical? And that they still are musical is shown by the large number of native Netherlanders in American orchestras, and the fact that nine out of ten of the great ’cellists to-day are of Dutch birth.’

Not long ago, a dinner was given in New York in honor of Doctor van Karnebeek, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands Government, who was in the United States as chief delegate to the Netherlands Commission attending the Conference for the Limitation of Armaments in Washington.

In the course of his speech, the Minister spoke of the origin of the institutions upon which the United States rested; and, assuming an historical knowledge on the part of his audience, he remarked: ‘It is not that we are proud of having given you those institutions, but that we are proud of the way in which you have developed them.'

Upon which, no less than four intelligent Americans said to me after the dinner: ‘Just which institutions did the Minister mean?’

‘Well,’ I said,’he probably meant our Federal Constitution; the Declaration of Independence; the whole organization of our Senate; our state constitutions; our freedom of religion; our free public schools; our free press; our written ballot; our town, county, and state systems of self-government; the system of recording deeds and mortgages; our — '

‘Do you mean to say that these fundamental institutions came to us from the Netherlands? ’

‘You have only to read history for proof.’

Then, inevitably: ‘Well, I did n’t know that!’

II

Now, of course, this phrase, ‘Well I did n’t know that!’ takes on a humorous aspect after constant repetition. But there is a more serious side to the matter, which takes the form of the question, ‘Should not the average American know whence his great institutions emanated? ’ For it is little short of pathetic to note the amazing lack of knowledge among the people of the United States of the great debt which they owe the people and institutions of the Netherlands. I am not speaking now of the historic help which the Dutch gave to America in the way of financial aid in the War of the Revolution, when no other nation would extend it credit; or of the fact that it was the first nation in the world to salute the American flag after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Creditable as these are to the people of the Netherlands, and showing how far back extends their loyal friendship for the people of the United States, they were, after all, merely evidences of good-will. When I speak of the American people being indebted to the Netherlands, I mean something more fundamental.

Take, as an example, four of the institutions enumerated a moment ago: the four vital institutions upon which the United States rests, and,more than that, which have caused it to be regarded as the most distinctive nation in the world. I mean our public-school system of free education; our freedom of religious worship; our freedom of the press; and our freedom of suffrage, as represented by the secret ballot. It is popularly supposed that these came to the United States from England. But how could they, since not one of them existed in England when they were introduced into the life of the United States by the Pilgrim Fathers, who had lived for eleven years in the Netherlands? Each and all of these four institutions were flourishing for years in the Netherlands; the Pilgrims absorbed them there and brought them to the United States.

Take the two documents upon which the whole fabric of the establishment and maintenance of America rests — the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution of the United States: one, the Declaration, is based almost entirely upon the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of the United Netherlands; while all through the Constitution its salient points are based upon, and some literally copied from, the Netherlands Constitution. So strong is this Netherlands influence upon our American form of government that the Senate of the United States, as a body, derives most of the peculiarities of its organization from the Netherlands States-General, a similar body, and its predecessor by nearly two centuries.

New Yorkers do not begin to realize the extent to which they are indebted to the people of the Netherlands for their very existence: that there might be no such city as New York to-day but for the sturdy Netherlanders.

There is not one New Yorker in a thousand, I believe, who knows — or cares — that his city was originally founded by the Netherlander; that it was named New Amsterdam; that for forty years, from 1625 to 1664, it was governed entirely under the flag of the Netherlands; that its first Mayor (then called Governor) was a New Netherlands colonist; that its present official flag is the Dutch emblem of William of Orange; that its motto, ‘Eendracht maakt macht’ (‘In union there is strength ’), is in the Netherlands tongue.

He may know that he owes the name of his beautiful Hudson River to Hendrik Hudson; but does he know that Hudson came over in a Dutch ship, the Half-Moon, and that he was an employee of the Amsterdam Chamber of the East India Company; that his cruise not only was financed by Dutch capital, but was due to Dutch initiative?

Does he know that the names of his suburbs — Brooklyn, Flatlands, Harlem, Flatbush, New Utrecht — are all Dutch; that the name of Wall Street came from a wall built by the Dutch as the end of the city at that time; that his foremost families of to-day, such as the Van Rensselaers, the Stuyvesants, the Beekmans, the de Puysters, the Cowenhovens, the Lefferts, — literally all the keystones of his city, — he owes to the people of the Netherlands?

‘Little does he care,’ you say. True. But there are the facts, nevertheless.

The surprise naturally occasioned by the extent of Netherlands influence upon American institutions is lessened when it is borne in mind that the early influences which fashioned American life were largely brought direct from the Netherlands in the lives of the early settlers. The men who founded New York were, chiefly, from the Netherlands. The Pilgrims who settled Plymouth had lived eleven years in the Netherlands. The Puritans who settled elsewhere in Massachusetts had all their lives been exposed to Dutch influence. New Jersey, as well as New York, was settled by the Dutch West India Company. Connecticut was given life by Thomas Hooker, who came from a long residence in the Netherlands. Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, was a Dutch scholar. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, came of a Dutch mother, whose teachings were a potent influence in his life. These men introduced one Netherlands institution after another into America.

Take the common modern practice of the state allowing a prisoner the free services of a lawyer for his defense, and the office of a district attorney for each county. These are so familiar to us that we regard themas American institutions; or they have been credited to England; whereas, as a matter of fact, it is impossible to find them in English history. Both of these institutions existed in the Netherlands three centuries before they were brought to America.

The custom of equal distribution of property among the children of a person dying intestate was brought from the Netherlands by the Pilgrims.

The recording of all deeds and mortgages in a public office, a custom which affects everyone who owns or buys property, came direct from the Netherlands.

The township system, by which each town has local self-government, with its natural sequence of local self-government in county and state, came from the Netherlands.

The practice of making prisoners work, and turning prisons into workhouses, was brought from the Netherlands to America by William Penn.

What we are apt to forget, unless our histories lie very close to us, is that the Netherlands was an influential nation in commerce,art,education,statesmanship, when the United States still lay undeveloped. With its three millions of people in 1555, for example, it was the most prosperous and most highly intelligent nation in the world: the centre in Europe of all things that stood for progress and culture. A reading of the history of those times reveals the tremendous part that the Netherlands played in the institutions of the world. Ranking as one of the first states of the world, her people added to the intellectual and moral resources of mankind in nearly every art which heightens and adorns human life, and in nearly every aspect of human endeavor.

It was the Netherlands that gave to the world some of the towering figures of solid and abiding culture. It was the Netherlands that produced William the Silent in statesmanship; Rembrandt in art; Erasmus in philology and theology; Boerhaave in medicine; Spinoza in philosophy; Grotius in international law; De Ruyter in naval strategy; and Vondel, the poet, traces of whose influence have been so manifestly found in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

In education it contributed a tremendous impetus to the world by the founding of the great University of Leyden in 1575, making the Netherlands the centre of learning for all Europe.

In finance, it led the world by the establishment of the Bank of Amsterdam, pointing the way to the establishment of the Bank of England one hundred years later.

In medicine, Boerhaave so greatly influenced medical science that the medical schools of the Netherlands became great seats of authority.

The founding of international law by Grotius attracted the attention of the entire world to the Netherlands as a seat for the learning of jurisprudence.

From the Netherlands also came the great lesson of the publishing of books, under the famous Elzevirs.

Its great step of placing the reader and the spelling-book in the hands of every child, irrespective of means or station, marked an epoch in the annals of the world’s educational system.

It is conservative to say that Erasmus led the world in education by his epochmaking editions of the New Testament in Greek, and of classical authors, and by his teaching of pure Latin.

The Netherlands introduced to the world the manufacture of woolen cloth, which marked an epoch in history; and followed this up by developing the manufacture of silk, linen, tapestry, and lace, until it made Flanders the manufacturing centre of the world.

Then came the invention of woodengraving by a Dutchman, followed quickly by the printing of books from blocks; the substitution of movable type for the solid block of wood, and we have the printing-press — the invention of which Germany may never concede to the Netherlands, and yet the germ of which was in the block books to which the Dutch lay unquestioned claim.

Practical as well as artistic, the Netherlands not only contributed to, but actually led the world in, those forces which add materially to the fabric of civilization.

It was the first nation to master the soil, and teach the possibilities of wresting a land from the water.

It taught the world the art of gardening as has no other nation.

The skill of its engineers became acknowledged in every part of the globe, as it is to-day.

It taught the art of commerce to the entire world when it ranked as the great commercial nation of the globe.

It has given a demonstration in successful colonization, which has outstripped all other nations.

Take its five great innovations and inventions, and stop to consider just what this quintette from the brain of man has done for the enlightenment of the world: —

First: the inauguration of a system of equal education for girls and boys, making no distinction of sex in its common-school attendance.

Second: the invention of the telescope.

Third: the pendulum clock, to which can be ascribed the beginning of what may be called accuracy in time.

Fourth: the microscope.

Fifth: the method of measuring degrees of latitude and longitude.

It seems almost incredible that so many momentous contributions to the enlightenment of mankind should have emanated from a single people. Is it too much to say, then, that the people of no other nation make so bold and strong an impression on the mind as one after another of their achievements pass before it; and especially when it is considered that all these contributions to humankind were done with one hand, while the other was busy in saving every foot of land from the rushing waters? But the people of the Netherlands always remained cool, balanced, and solid. It was that same patient, but deep, perfervid spirit which built the dykes and saved the land at one period, and opened those same dykes, built by the very life-blood of the people, at another, and flooded he land against encroaching enemies. It was that same spirit which built up a nation unrivaled in history as a financial, commercial, maritime, artistic, literary, medical, and political centre, from which have radiated the strongest influences for the upbuilding of great empires, not only in the new Western world of America, but also in the Far East, where to-day exists an empire of such unknown and untold wealth as to stagger the imagination by its potentialities.

Nor is this glory of the people of the Netherlands of the past alone. One has only to visit this amazing country today to be convinced of the peculiar solidity of its life and its institutions. Nearly every American traveler, with seeing eyes and receptive mind, sees, as he meets the people of the Netherlands, that there is less intellectual veneer among them than in any other country in Europe; that there is more solid and abiding culture of the very highest kind; and that the modern Dutch family represents a repose of mind, a simplicity of living, and a content with life in general, that any nation might envy.

Few know of the enterprise and the business acumen of the people of the Netherlands of to-day: its annual export trade of from 2,000,000,000 to 3,100,000,000 gulden (the gulden is about 39 cents in American money); its port of Rotterdam, now leading Antwerp and Hamburg in tonnage; its steamship combine, with a capital of 200,000,000 gulden; its Royal Dutch Oil Company, capitalized at 370,000,000 gulden, with its annual output of over 30,000,000 barrels of oil; the marvelous development of the air, by a daily aeroplane service to London, Paris, Hamburg, Prague, Warsaw, and other European capitals; its 30,000,000 gulden invested in model workingmen’s houses.

Nor has the nation ever taken a backward step in its leadership in the education of its people. The principal item in the national budget is still for education, until to-day the nation occupies the enviable position of being foremost in the enlightenment of its people, with an illiteracy of one tenth of one per cent! Can any figure speak louder for the vision of its people?

And yet never, with their material progress, have t he people lost that idealism which has ever distinguished them. One recent illustration will suffice. A wealthy resident of Amsterdam last year found himself hard put to it to meet the heavy taxation caused by the war, and decided that he would have to dispose of one of his priceless works of art. He chose Vermeer’s Straatje (The Little Street) for the sacrifice. This painting is one of the Delft master’s greatest works, and its probable sale to someone outside the Netherlands hung over the people like a pall for weeks. Foreign dealers vied with each other for the treasured painting, held for nearly half a million of dollars; and every report of its reputed sale caused a chill to run down the backs of the people.

Then came the report of its actual sale. The General Director of the Royal Dutch Oil Company, Sir Henri W. A. Deterding, was to celebrate an anniversary: he had purchased the picture and presented it to the Netherlands Government in perpetuity.

I was on the N.A.S.M. steamer on my way to the Netherlands when the news of the presentation of the painting came over the wireless. The captain was the first to read the news. He was in his cabin, clad in his pajamas; but he could not contain himself for joy, and, throwing on his bathrobe, rushed out to convey the wonderful news.

Can you imagine an American seacaptain so overcome with enthusiasm at the news of the preservation of a work of art to his country?

Is it to be wondered at, then, that there is so much pride among the people of the United States in their Dutch ancestry, from the present President of the United States to the humblest citizen? But there is much room for a greater enlightenment of that pride, and as to the facts upon which that pride rests. Fortunately, there has recently been noticeable among the American people a distinct national awakening in everything pertaining to the Netherlands and its people; and that this rests on the solid foundation of an inherent influence and blood-kinship, none who know the facts, as they have been only sketched here, will deny.

The projected publication of a series of books on ‘Great Hollanders’; the creation of the new Netherlands-America Federation in New York City; the appointment, by the President and Trustees of Columbia University, of Doctor A. J. Barnouw us the Queen Wilhelmina Professor for the teaching of Dutch history, language and literature; the recognition by the Government of the United States of the Netherlands as an empirical factor in the Far East question; the necessity, felt by the Government of the Netherlands, for the erection of the most beautiful of all the homes of diplomacy in Washington for its legation; the suggestion, already taking shape in official minds, that The Hague should receive the diplomatic dignity and recognition of an ambassador instead of a minister from the United States — all these currents in the minds and life of the American people are but indications that the day is not far distant when an intelligent knowledge of the people of the Netherlands will take the place of mental and geographical confusion; and when a statement of its greatness as a nation of fifty-three millions, nearly one-half of the population of the United States, and of its immense geographical area, with its far-flung coast line in the Far East, will not be met with the statement, ‘Well, I did n’t know that!’