Fighting For Peace | Page 4

in French, which is the language of the court, and passed at once into
an informal conversation in English. She speaks both languages
fluently and well. Her first inquiry, according to royal custom, was
about family matters; the number of the children; the health of the
household; the finding of a comfortable house to live in at The Hague,
and so on. There is something very homely and human in the good
manners of a real court. Then the Queen asked about the Dutch
immigrants in America, especially in recent times--were they good
citizens? I answered that we counted them among the best, especially
strong in agriculture and in furniture-making, where I had seen many of

them in the famous shops of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Queen
smiled, and said that the Netherlands, being a small country, did not
want to lose too many of her good people.
The impression left upon me by this first interview, and deepened by
all that followed, was that Queen Wilhelmina is a woman admirably fit
for her task. Her natural shyness of temperament is sometimes
misinterpreted as a haughty reserve. But that is not correct. She is, in
fact, most sincere and straightforward, devoted to her duty and very
intelligent in doing it, one of the ablest and sanest crowned heads in
Europe, an altogether good ruler for the very democratic country of the
Netherlands.
We settled down in the home which I had rented at The Hague. It was a
big, dignified house on the principal street, the Lange Voorhout, which
is almost like a park, with four rows of trees down the middle. Our
house had once been the palace of the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, a
princess of the Orange-Nassau family. But it was not at all showy, only
comfortable and large. This was fortunate for our country when the
rush of fugitive American tourists came at the beginning of the war, for
every room on the first floor, and the biggest room on the second floor,
were crowded with the work that we had to do for them.
But during the first winter everything went smoothly; there was no
hurry and no crowding. The Queen came back to her town palace. The
rounds of ceremonial visits were ground out. The Hague people and our
diplomatic colleagues were most cordial and friendly. There were
dinners and dances and court receptions and fancy-dress balls--all of a
discreet and moderate joyousness which New York and Newport,
perhaps even Chicago and Hot Springs, would have called tame and
rustic. The weather, for the first time in several years, was clear, cold,
and full of sunshine. The canals were frozen. Everybody, from
grandparents to grandchildren, including the Crown Princess Juliana,
went on skates, which greatly added to the gayety of the nation.
At the same time there was plenty of work to do. The affairs of the
legation had to be straightened out; the sending of despatches and the
carrying out of instructions speeded up; the arrangements for a

proposed international congress on education in the autumn of 1914,
forwarded; the Bryan treaty for a year of investigation before the
beginning of hostilities--the so-called "Stop-Look-Listen"
treaty--modified and helped through; and the thousand and one minor,
unforeseen jobs that fall on a diplomatic chief carefully attended to.

II
Through all this time the barometer stood at "Set Fair." The new Dutch
Ministry, which Mr. Cort van der Linden, a wise and eloquent
philosophic liberal, had formed on the mandate of the Queen, seemed
to have the confidence of the Parliament. Although it had no pledged
majority of any party or bloc behind it, the announcement of its simple
programme of "carrying out the wishes of the majority of the voters as
expressed in the last election," met with approval on every side. The
"Anti-Revolutionary" lion lay down with the "Christian-Historical"
lamb; the "Liberal" bear and the "Clerical" cow fed together; and the
sucking "Social-Democrat" laid his hand on the "Reactionary" adder's
den. It was idyllic. Real progress looked nearly possible.
The international sky was clear except for the one big cloud, which had
been there so long that the world had grown used to it. The Great
Powers kept up the mad race of armaments, purchasing mutual terror at
the price of billions of dollars every year.
Now the pace was quickened, but the race remained the same, with
Germany still in the lead. Her new army bill of 1912 provided for a
peace strength of 870,000 men, and a war strength of 5,400,000 men.
Russia followed with a bill raising the term of military service from
three to three and a half years; France with a bill raising the term of
service from two to three years (but this was not until in June, 1913).
Great