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LECTÜEES ON HOLLAND






LECTURES ON HOLLAND
DEL1VERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN DURING THE FIRST NETHERLANDS WEEK FOR AMERICAN STUDENTS JULY 7—12, 1924
* 1924
A. W. SIJTHOFF'S PUBLISHING COMPANY — LEYDEN






PREFATORY NOTE
In the summer of 1899, Mr. Seth Low, President of the Columbia University in the City of New York and one of the delegates of the United States to the firs% Peace Conference at The Eague, on paying a visit to the University of Leyden, founded in 1575 by William the Süent, found an American flag displayed in his honour from one of the University buildings. A meeting of "the Lafayette Post of the Grand Army of the Republic" hearing about this simple act of courtesy feit 80 much touched by it that they resolved to -present an American flag to Leyden University, which was sent in April 1900, accompanied by a letter from the President of Columbia University to the Rector of Leyden University.
Similor feelings of friendship and courtesy prompted, in 1928, the Netherland America Foundation at New York and her sister at The Hague to start the idea of a Leyden University week for American Students. The idea met with enthusiasm on both sides of the Ocean. A scheme of lectures was drawn up on such lines as to embody in a succinct form a genèral survey of Holland's significaties, both at the present day, — her international, colonial, religious, and artistic life, — and in the past, —. her work of nation building, her struggle for liberty, and her interestin international justice —. Professor Barnouw of Columbia University took every pains in his power to render the plan widely known throughout the United States.
On Monday, July 7th 1924, the Leyden American week was officially opened by the Rector Magnificus, in the old University building on the " Rapenburg" canal: a building, dating itself from before the Reformation, but in academie use since 1581, the same year in which the United Provinces abjured the King of Spain. From the 7th to the 12tó two or'three lectures were delivered each day, by seven University professors in turn, followed by trips to Haarlem, Delft, The Hague, and other enter-



tainments. The American flag of 1900 floated aü the time above the University entrance yard.
There seemed to be a general desire among the foreign audience, — some sixty young men and women, — to see the Lectures in print. In complying with this wish, the lecturers hope that their addresses, — given here as they were delivered: in their home dress —, may contribute a little to awake or to strengthen friendship for the Netherlands and for Leyden University in America.



CONTENTS
How Holland became a Nation, by J. Huizinga,
Professor of General History pag. 1—18
The Place of Holland among the Nations, by W. J*. M.
van Eysinga, Prgfesso* of International Law . . „ IJ)—30
The Indian Empire of the Netherlands, by H. T.
Colenbrander, Professor of Colonial History. . . „ 81—47
Religious Thought and Life in Holland, by A. Eekhof,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History , 48—66
John Lothrop Motley as Historian, by P. J. Blok,
Professor of Dutch History , 67—75
The National Element in Dutch Art, by W. Martin,
Professor of History of Art 76—86
The Latest Discoveries about the History of fhe Pilgrim Fathers, by A. Eekhof, Professor of Ecclesiastical History. M 87—100
The Land of Grotius, by C. van Vollenhoven, Professor of Colonial Law „ 101 119



pa



HOW HOLLAND BECAME A NATION
BY
J. HUIZINGA
The theme I have chosen for my two lectures : How Holland became a nation, implies a preliminary question of a more general nature, namely: What is a nation ? — Everybody seems to know quité well, yet on trying to define it the difficulty beging. Having a language in common of coursé* is no test at all: Brazüians and Portuguese are different nations, so are Americans and Englishmen. On the other hand the Swiss most decidedly form a nation, though being divided into three different linguistic groups. Political unity and independence are strong factors in making a nation; yet sometimes nations have persisted as such for centuries, though lacking independence, as the Irish for instance, or both: independence and cohesion, as thé Poles. Racial characteristics are altogether misleading and vague for the purpose of deteimining nationalities. There is hardly a greater danger to sound historical learning than those biassed theories of race, so popular nowadays.
Perhaps the most attractive answer to the question: What is a nation ? was given by the celebrated French scholar Ernest Renan, in a lecture here at Leiden some fifty years ago. That which keeps a nation togejher, he said, is the fact of having done great things together and being willing to do so stül.—If not quite exhaustive as a definition it certainly can serve for a motto.
Even by a rapid glance over the large field of national differences existing to-day, we realize that the notion of nationality varies in each individual case. Some nations of Europe appear eariy in history as a distinct and almost unchangeable whole. Take for instance Denmark and Portugal. Both had segregated nearly a thousand years ago from the larger ethnographical complexes, here the Iberian, there the Skandinavian, to which they originally belonged. Their political status underwent but Uttle variation. Till recent times both formed
Lectures on Holland



2
stable national kingdoms. Apart from Portugal's colonial empire and Denmark's former s way over Norway their linguistic and political areas coincided. There was no expansion of the national frontier, no assimilation of alien populations within the nation's territory, no lasting rupture of the national whole.
Now look at England. What a number of ethnographical and political elements had to succeed each other and cooperate, before the English nation arose: Briton, Roman, Anglo-saxon, Dane, Norman. Geographical conditions seemed to predispose Great Britain for national unity, and yet even now Scotland is not England, and Welsh and Gaelic are spoken to this day. Wales offers an instance of a quite distinct and very hve national unit comprised within the limits of a larger one, and proves that even the fact of belonging to two nationalities at the same time, a primary and a secondary one, is not impossible.
Let us now look at some cases, where a nation is the outcome of a long process of political development. Your own country, even by its name, the United States, betrays that a political nexus is the basis of its national existence. Can we go so far as to assert that in America the State has created the nation ?—Decidedly not, yet it seems safe to maintain that political events have been a main factor in forming the American nation.
The same holds good of Switzerland and of Holland. Here too, political circumstances concurred with geographical conditions in founding independence and national unity. The American nation, the Swiss and the Dutch have in common the feature of being comparatively recent products of a rather compücated development. At a time when Danes, Poles and Portuguese were known in Europe as distinct nations, let us say about 1800, there was neither a Swiss nor a Dutch nation. Nor of course an American, because Columbus had yet to be born.
Can it be quite fortuitous that these three young nations, Americans, Swiss and Hollanders, have yet another feature in common, namely the strong element of conscious wül in the genesis of their national being ?—We shall leave that question aside and now confine ourselves to Holland.
I must here wam you, that I shall use the term Holland sometimes synonymous with Netherland, as you do yourselves, sometimes to denote the province of Holland, now divided into North and South Holland, that is the County of Holland of the Middle Ages. Speakingofthe



8
Netherlands in the plural I shall often mean the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium taken together. ;j§ék
The case of Holland is by far the most complicaled of the three instances enumerated just now. For here we have consecutively first a process of conglomeration of different territories, and their segregation from larger units, and then a lasting breach severing the just formed whole into two parts. Figure to yourselves for a moment that the War of Secession had torn the United States asunder, and that the North and the South had furthermore developed each along their own rather different lines. That is about what happened two times over to the Netherlands, though by totally unlike causes and in quite different circumstances. To describe the growth of Holland as a nation we shall have to speak of Belgium too. Both together at one tune formed the Low Countries, the Netherlands.
The name seems to imply that at the bottom of their history is their geographical status of being river deltas and depressed regions But this fact in itself does not account for their particular development Moreover Netherlands, Low Countries, Pays Bas, as a proper name for them, is of rather recent origin. It does not appear before the end of the 14th century. Still the significance of this geographical situation is very important. Here in this region three large rivers flowed into the sea close together: the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt Their deltas even mtermingled. Now the Rhine took its course through the main part of Germany. The Meuse flowed through Romanic speaking regions as far as its lower course. So did the Scheldt These territories formed part of that middle zone, stretching from thé North sea to the Mediterranean, where the Germanic and the Romanic elements of Europe met. (I believe you are wont in America to use the terms Germanic and Romanic, as we do on the Continent, and not to follow the English use of saying Teutonic and Romance. So I shall say Germanic and Romanic.) The conquering Franks pushing southward and westward, had subjugated Gaul and Germany together but southward from a line stretching right across Belgium of to-day' they did not maintain their Germanic speech or an ethnographical distinction from the earlier inhabitants. They became Romanized. This lingiustic frontier has hardly changed since more than a thousand years.
Three of the large divisions of ancient Germanic peoples had a share m forming the population of these lower regions. Frisians had dwelt along the coast since Julius Caesar's days. They are one of the



4
very few original Germanic tribes that neither changed place nor name; they only expanded over a somewhat wider area than they originally inhabited. To this day our province of Friesland retains the old stock and the old speech. The Frisian element has doubtless contributed very essentially to give our nation its peculiar stamp.
Our eastern provinces formed the outermost part of the territory of the Continental Saxons, stretching eastward over North West Germany. The southern provinces: Brabant, Guelders, a part of Holland, were inhabited by Franks, not Romanized Franks as in Gaul, but Germanic-speaking Franks. So they formed a continuous whole with South West Germany, which was frankish from the Lower Rhine to the sources of the Main.
Consequently there was as yet no ethnographical frontier separating these low countries from the main land of Germany. Stiü, they already possessed one peculiar ethnographical feature : the Frankish, Saxon and Frisian elements were interwoven and blended here, to a degree which did not exist elsewhere and which makes it difficult to decide for the several parts of our country, whether they must be called Frankish, Saxon or Frisian. Such a blendingof various components might easily result in engendering a new ethnographical type.
When the great Frankish Empire of Charlemagne was broken up in the 9th century, almost the whole of these regions, after some oscillations, remained incorporated in the new German Empire that was to be, from about 950 til 1250, the first power of Christendom. Only Flanders, except its eastern section, feil to the share of the Western kingdom, the realm of France.
The new political demarcation did not coincide with the linguistic frontier between the Romanic and the Germanic population. The main part of Flanders was purely Germanic of speech, though belonging to France, while on the other side, Hainault, Namur and Liège, purely Romanic of speech, formed part of the German Empire. This disharmohy of political and ethnographical border-lines could not fail to promote a loosening of political ties and a strengthening of cultural ones.
From the political point of view all these territories, in the Middle Ages, were outskirts. What power could the king of France exercise over such a remote fief as Flanders ? He might succeed in subjecting to the crown the great fiefs of inner France: Champagne, Anjou, Normandy etc, Flanders remained semi-independent. The same holds good of the power of the German Emperors over their low-



5
country domain. As the imperial power declined, these regions were the first to lose contact with the central power, and follow their own way, under a number of feudal dynasties, which had sprung up here.
So far there was going on a process of political segregation, without a necessary complement of mutual agglomeration of these territories themselves. But now another factor of historica! development comes in, namely the economie forces, which in their turn are closely connected with geographical conditions.
Look at the situation of these regions : halfway between Northern Europe and South Western Europe, over against England, communicating by a great many navigable streams with the hinterland of Germany and France. If anywhere, trade and navigation must begin to flourish here. And so they had done for ages : as early as the 9th century Frisian merchants visited the fairs of Saint Denis; Frisian cloth (whatever Frisian may mean here) was widely known as an art iele of trade. Now, even without the stimulus of navigation and trade, a level soil, easily accessible by water to friend and foe, is apt to engender municipal agglomerations. A great many fortified towns spring up here, when the great resurrection of municipal life begins about 1100. From the tnirteenth century onward the Netherlands have been most essentially a country of towns.
Now, in the Middle Ages; perhaps even more than in other epochs, town-life nas been the great factor of cultural development. The most marked and glorious manifestations of mediaeval civilization: the art of the cathedrals, the learning of the universities, are closely connected with the flourishing of cities: in Italy.in France, in Spain, in Germany, in England.
Economie development in these low countries had produced cultural harmony and cohesion, where ethnographical unity was lacking and political unity could not yet exist.
I am speaking of the 18th and 14th centuries, I am thinking of Bruges, Ghent, unhappy Ypres, Brussels, Tournay, Valenciennes, Lüle, French-speaking and Flemish-speaking towns alike, but all towns which now do not belong to Holland but to Belgium. The towns of Holland, of tardier growth and less importance than those of Flanders and Brabant, followed in the rear; they were not yet centres of civilization as Bruges or Ghent. Dordrecht and Middelburg were developing a lively trade, Haarlem and Leyden were just arising, Amsterdam was still a f ishermen's vUlage, all of them at best townships of a diminutive size.



6
The cultural unity I mentioned was furthered by the fact that by this time, that is about 180», the Germanic tongue of Flanders, Brabant, Holland proper etc. had come to differ so much from the Low German and High German dialects spoken more eastward, as to form a language of its own: the Middle-Dutch, from which our present Dutch language immediately derives. Its difference from Low and High German was parüy due to internal linguistic development, partly to the mingling of Frankish, Saxon and Frisian dements, and not in the last place to the fact that it remained open to a continuous influence from the French, which, without altering its purely Germanic character, gave a direction of its own to its development.
So, when focussing our historical telescope on the Netherlands of the beginning of the 14th century, we feel entitled to admit the existence of a sort of loose cultural unity embracing territories of both Romanic and Germanic stock. But to conclude from this that there thenexisted a Netherlandish (I must use this word) nation, .would be altogether wrong. There might be independence, or nearly, both from France and the Empire, there was no political cohesion among the Netherlands themselves. The counts of Flanders were at war with those of Holland about the possession of Zeeland, which ultimately remained to Holland. The counts of Holland wanted toconquer Friesland. Violent dissensions between Holland and Utrecht or Guelders were frequent till the end of the Middle Ages. And it must be observed that the peoples of those territories heartily shared the enmities of their rulers. Moreover the linguistic unity did not extend beyond Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Utrecht, over Friesland, Guelders etc. The Frisians strove to the last to maintain their secular liberty, Guelders was far more akin to the German territories of the Lower Rhine than to Holland or Brabant.
National coherence would never have been brought about by geographical, ethnographical, economie and cultural factors alone, even though working all together. It was achieved by the enterprising policy of a high-minded dynasty. The dynasty itself was doomed to an early fall, and their work, in the hands of their suceessors, to a lasting disruption. Ultimately two nations were to arise instead of one. I am speaking of the Dukes of Burgundy, and of their suceessors the House of Austria, Kings of Spain. The nations to be bom are those of Holland and of Belgium.
Feudal dominion of the Middle Ages, in the Netherlands as elsewhere,



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tended by itself to the agglomeration of groups of fiefs and territories, less by conquest than by inheritance. Shortly after 1800 dynastie ties had already united Holland and Zeeland with Hainault, Flanders with Artois, Brabant with Limburg. The reigning dynasties, though largely infused with French and German blood, might still be called indigenous. It was reserved for a foreign dynasty to inheritthemall. In 1868 King John the Good of France enfeoffed his youngerson Philip with the duchy of Burgundy, as a reward for his valour displayed in the battle of Poitiers, in 1856, where he had stood with his father and had been taken prisoner with him. We need not discuss here whether it was wise or unwise, from a French point of view, to loosen such an important demesne as Burgundy from the crown, and allow a younger son to found a power of his own. The act of 1363 was meant to avoid dangerous combinations, but evoked the most dangerous of all: a new state outside France. Philip of Burgundy, by his marriage with the heiress of Flanders, Franche Comté, Artois, Ne vers & Rethel soon had taken root in the Netherlands, and once established there did not lose an opportunityto provide for the extension of the Burgundian power. The memorable story of fine diplomacy, high-handed enterprise and good luck cannot be told here in details. After Flanders, the next in wealth and importance, Brabant, feil under Burgundian sway. A doublé marriage prepared the annexion of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault. Sigismund, the German Emperor, strove in vain to retain first Brabant, then Holland etc. for the Empire, and withhold them from the grasping hands of the Burgundian dukes.
As their power extended towards the North over non-French territories the relations of the dukes with the crown of France, whence they had sprung, became less friendly. The first Philip, who died in 1404, was still in the first place a French prince. Under his son, Jean Sans Peur, the long and bitter feud between the rival houses of Burgundy and Orleans began. When the last period of the Hundred Years War opened the dukes of Burgundy still held with their royal parents of France. Jean Sans Peur's brother Anthony, duke of Brabant, feil at Agincourt, fighting for France. But soon followed in 1419 the murder of Jean Sans Peur, in revenge of his crime against the duke of Orleans in 1407, and now the estrangement of Burgundy from France was complete : Philip the Good, in the Treaty of Troyes, 1420, allied himself with Henry V of England. For a period of fifteen years duke Philip the Good was waging war in France against his royal



8
cousin the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, and at the same time keeping up a hard gtruggle in Holland and Zeeland for the possession of those territories. His endeavours were crowned with success : about the time of his peace with France, at Arras, 1435, his conquest of the Low Countries had come to a temporary halt.
So a new state had arisen between France and the Empire, comprising valuable parts of both, and meaning a danger to both. This state as yet had neither geographical cohesion nor political unity. It had not even a name. Lorraine, a fief of the Empire, and the French province of Champagne, separated Burgundy proper, duchy and eounty, from the Northern half of the duke's demesnes. There was no centre and no capital. At Dijon in Burgundy, the dukes had their tombs, but Brussels was the town where they usually kept court and the real centre of their administration.
After peaceful and warlike conquest a second and more difficult task lay before the dukes: that of welding their different possessions together and building up a solid whole, united by a common patriotism and resting on a strong basis of uniform law. Would it have been possible to achieve Jhis ? History has not allowed the experiment to be fully carried out. The rashness and lack of insight of Charles the Bold was soon to destroy what the patience of his father Philip the Good had built.
I have just said these Burgundian Lands lacked even a common name. "Burgundy" was the name of the dynasty; it might sometimes be applied to its possessions in general, but this did not generally obtain. "Low Countries" or "Netherlands" was as yet hardly a proper name and excluded Burgundy proper. To distinguish the Northern territories either from France or from Burgundy proper, the chancery used to call them "pays de par dega", the lands over here, which well betrays how badly they stood in need of a namé.
Now if there was not a common name for them, there was another ideal connection, namely a historical prototype. This large stretch of border lands between Germany and France, covering the broad frontier, where the secular struggle between those two countries was to go on for centuries to come, had they not at one time formed an independent Kingdom, that of Lothar, the grandson of Charlemagne ? His name still clung to the duchy of Lorraine. It might seem as if the course of events was to prove the necessity of such a middle state between the two great contending nations.
Burgundian diplomacy of the 15th century was quite alive to this



I I Burgundian (Habsburg) territories after 1493. Boundary between the Holy Roman Empire
and the Crown of France (to 1548).
I ~] „ „ „ lost 1477/1493. Boundary between the United Provinces, the
I— -, Spanish Netherlands and the German Empire
I I „ n » acquired in the 1648 (with shght modifications now of Nether-
XVItn century by Charles V. lands, Belgium and Germany).
Linguistic Frontier between Netherlandish
(Flemish, Dutch) and French (Picard, Walloon).






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recoUection of historica! independence. In 1447 the envoys of Philip the Good were to suggest to the Emperor a reestablishment of the kingdom of Lothar. Under his successor, Charles the Bold, there has been question of the Emperor raising him to the dignity of King of Burgundy and of Friesland, the Southern and the Northern part. But Charles the Bold perished in the attempt to conquer those provinces which were needed to unite the two separated halves of his dominions: Lorraine, Alsace, Champagne.
Immediately after his death in 1477 Louis XI of France recaptured the duchy of Burgundy, nucleus of the ducal possessions. Henceforth the illusion of a large middle state from the Alps and the Rhone to the North sea vanished.
But just now the Northern half of the ducal dominions proved how fruitful half a century ofc entral power had already been in engendering a sentiment of common political interests. The Estates of the Netherlands united to claim from Charles's daughter, Mary of Burgundy, a national government. There was a strong anti-French feeling, even in the provinces of French speech, as Artois, Hainault, Namur. The Burgundian state, now severed from its outlying parts far away in France, survived the dynasty. The House of Austria inherited the lands by the marriage of Maximüian with Mary of Burgundy, whence sprung the line of Charles V and the Spanish Kings and German Emperors alike. But the Netherlands, now more and more called by this name, continued to represent the old heritage of Burgundy.
Consequently we see Charles V pursuing the Burgundian policy of his predecessors in rounding off his dominions in the Netherlands in behalf of his own house, notwithstanding the fact that as an Emperor he would have been obliged to maintain their appurtenance to the German Empire. One by one the Northeastern territories were added to the so-called Burgundian dominions: Friesland, Utrecht, Groningen, at last the important duchy of Guelders, in 1543. Shortly afterwards, in 1548, the Emperor himself confirmed the pact which constituted the Netherlands as a tenth or Burgundian circle of the Empire, thereby severing the feudal ties of Flanders and Artois with France, but at the same time reducing the connection of all the Netherlands with the Empire to a mere form.
So, in the middle of the 16th century there existed a State, eomprising both Belgium and Holland of to-day, with some parts which afterwards feil to France. It was loosely connected with the so-called Franche Comté or County of Burgundy, which had been rescued



10
from the catastrophe of 1477. This State was sometimes spoken of as the Seventeen Netherlands. The name implies that no strong unity had as yet been achieved. The complex consisted of a great number of particular duchies, counties and dominions, each having its own administration and judicature, and its own Estates. Central institutions, such as the Grand Court of Mechlin, or the occasionally convoked Estates General, were few and feeble. We may perhaps compare this state of things with the American Confederation bef ore the framing of the Constitution of 1789.
The population of this Netherlandish State did not yet represent a nationality. There were strong sentiments of Burgundian loyalty, there was a vague feeling of a common fatherland, but on the whole Flemings, Brabantines, Hollanders, Frisians and the rest still feit as many different breeds, and had not yet forgot their former enmities. Besides, there was the difference of language: Artois, Hainault, Namur and some parts of Flanders and Brabant spoke French, the dialects of the Eastern and Northern provinces differed from the official Dutch. Perhaps fortunate circumstances and a wise policy of the rulers might in the long run have overcome this lack of unity and gradually have blended all the provinces into a Burgundian-Netherlandish nation.
This name of Burgundy had migrated, so to say, towards the North: in sixteenth century English, we often find the word Burgundians to denote the inhabitants of the Low Countries.
But circumstances were not fortunate and the policy of the rulers was not very wise. Not 25 years after their definite constitution as a Burgundian circle, the great crisis had begun which ultimately resulted in the formation of two nations instead of one.
From the moment when Habsburg in 1477 had inherited the possessions of Burgundy, the Netherlands had become implicated in the stupendous growth of that house.' Rulers of Austria and of a great many German territories, Emperors, then by unforeseen events Kings of Spain, lords of the New world and pretenders to large parts of Italy, Habsburg in the person of Charles V had won a position as near to universal monarchy as the world had known since Charlemagne. In this vast power the Netherlands were but an item, of much importance by their wealth and their situation, which now had become central instead of outlying, but far from dominating the Habsburg policy. They had to be subservient to the great aims of conquest in Italy, of authority in the Empire and of checking France. Their



11
national interests were sacrificed to those of Spain and the Empire.
When Philip II succeeded his father in 1555, the evil consequences of this f ailing to acknowledge the right of the Netherlands to be governed according to their own interests, were already apparent. The political wishes of the nobles who at that time acted as the spokesmen of the country might be expressed by a modern word as a claim for home rule. The general discontent was dangerously complicated by the religious unrest. I cannot think of tracing here the series of events leading to king Philip's resolve of violent and military repression by sending the duke of Al va to the Netherlands, in 1567. We shall have to limit ourselves to envisage the position of the parties after the Dutch revolt of 1572 had begun.
The Belgian provinces of to-day: Flanders, Brabant and the rest, till then had been far more important than the Northern half of the Netherlands now forming this Kingdom of ours. The court resided at Brussels, learning was concentrated in the University of Louvain, commerce in Antwerp, which had superseded the older centres of Ghent and Bruges by this time. The nobility and prelacy alike centred in the South. The first act of the rising had been playe dat Brussels and Antwerp.
But now, with Alva residing at Brussels and curbing the land by his spanish veterans, the Northern provinces profited by their geographical advantage of being outskirts, not easily accessible to regular troops by their natural defence, the water. The little towns of Holland and Zeeland revolted and held out against Spain, while Antwerp or Brussels could not even stir.
William of Orange was the first to realize that the only hope of success lay in the North, in Holland proper. He, the brilliant courtier of former days, did not shrink from locking himself up, for long and perilous years, in Delft and the Hague, there to take the lead of the desperate struggle. Here he founded, in 1575, in the darkest days of the strife, this University of Leyden, which is proud to call itself libertatis praesidium.
For some time however the hope was revived that Flanders and Brabant too might be recovered for freedom. A long and intricate diplomatic play began, wherein William of Orange exerted himself to the utmost to hold together the Seventeen Netherlands against the King of Spain. But in vain. In 1579 the French-speaking provinces of the South reverted to the obedience of Philip II. Ln the same year the other provinces, except a few, made the Union of Utrecht, to main-



12
tain their independence from Spain by mutual assistance. The fate of Flanders and Brabant remained in suspense for some years, till the fall of Antwerp in 1585 (a year after Prince Wüliam's death) decided that the border-line between the free Republic of the United Netherlands and the Spanish provinces was to run right aeross the Dutch -speaking territory, which had seemed about to form one compact national whole.
' The exact frontier of the Dutch Republic was only established by the Subsequent chances of a long. continued war. The left bank of the lower Scheldt beneath Antwerp, originally a part of Flanders, remained Dutch from the beginning of the 17th century, so did the Northern part of Brabant after 1629, while Dutch power was thoist forward far into the enemy's land by the capture of Maastricht in 1682. The peace of 1648, which confirmed the entire dissolution of the formal ties of the Netherlands with the Empire , at the same time confirmed these fortunes of the war as the demarcation between the free and the Spanish Netherlands. It is the frontier between Holland and Belgium to-day.
From the first successes of the revolt against Spain we may speak of the United Netherlands as constituting a nation. We have seen how much political factors have contributed to welding them together, first by framing a dynastie union under the house of Burgundy, afterwards by uniting them by common determination of regaining their freedom, and of vindicating the form of religion that had become inseparable from the cause of freedom.
We have also seen, that this new formed nation ethnographically means a fragment of a larger whole. It had gained in ethnographical homogeneity by the dropping out of the French-speaking territories, but it had considerably lost in ethnographical strength by the separation from the most populoüs and hitherto most flourishing regions of Flanders and Brabant. However, this loss was not absolute. Ever since the revolt against Spain had begun, Flemings, Brabantines, and Walloons from Artois and Hainault too, kept crowding tö the free provinces, to share their perils and their prosperity. I need not assure an audience of Americans that those who in times of oppression leave the old country to seek freedom elsewhere are not the worst. The emigrating Flemings and Brabantines did not find the task of building up an entirely new eommunity here, such as the Pilgrim Fathers and the colonists of Virginia found in America. But they added invaluably to the skill and energy needed to harden the new Republic in holding



13
out in its long struggle and in performing the glorious things that lay before it.
In the new Commonwealth the province of .Holland together with Zeeland preponderated. Each province was govemed by its States, which means Estates, composed of representatives of the towns and of the nobles, the clergy having dropt out as an Estate by the Reformation. Deputies of the provincial States formed the States General, the suprème body in the Republic. Sovereignty however was held to reside not in the States General but in the States Provincial, which means that the federative bond was loose; it often proved not strenger than the "rope of sand" in the early days of the United States. The Stadtholder occupied a very peculiar position. Theoretically he received his commission from the several provincial States, but his office bore many traces of being in reality a remnant of the old monarchie sovereignty; stadtholder, that is lieutenant, meant the deputygovernor of the House of Burgundy-Austria, which once had ruled the whole. Since the abjuration of PhUip II in 1581 the Stadtholder was a locum tenens taking the place of nobody. But he had another title of authority: the glory of the Ulustrious house of Orange, to which the Stadtholders belonged.
Now, though in the States General each province theoretically had an equal share of power, the province of Holland had the casting voice. Here the richest towns lay together, concentrating by far the largest part of trade and industry. Holland paid 58% of the oosts of government of the Union. Just as Holland preponderated in the States General, so did Amsterdam in the States Provincial of Holland. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585 Amsterdam had rapidly risen to be the first centre of trade on the European continent. Now this doublé preponderance, of one province over six others, and of one city within that province, has largely determined the f urther development of national Dutch civilization. Holland and Amsterdam eradiated, so to say, over the whole area of the Republic. Happily, so many resisting forces were left in the other towns of Holland, and in the provinces outside Holland, that preponderance never resulted in domination. Amsterdam never played the part of Venice. Still Amsterdam and Holland became so much the true centre of national culture, that their type prevailed. — Dutch civilization bore the stamp of municipal aristocracy, middle-class manners, tastes and morals, and a strong propensity to commerce and the sea.



14
It is not surprising that other nations and their governments used to speak of the Republic simply as Holland.
The. other provinces became assimilated to Holland. When the Union was formed, in 1579, the Northern and Eastern provinces still differed in dialect as well as in economie conditions. The official Dutch tongue of Holland proper soon imposed itself also there. Friesland and Groningen, Overijsel and Guelders might keep their social status of agricultural regions with a rural gentry holding the land, but this rural gentry itself received the best of its civilization from the municipal patricians of Holland. A stern protestantism of the Calvinistic type kept the ruling classes together and pervaded their culture. A prosperous minority of protestant dissidents has played a röle not wholly unlike that of the Nonconformists in English history. Catholics remained numerous and enjoyed relative tranquilUty, but the conquered territories in the South, with their almost exclusively catholic population, were not allo wed to become provinces on the same footing with the original seven. Only after the end of the old Republic North Brabant and Limburg were raised to political and religious emancipation. Dutch national civilization never became so pronouncedly protestant as for instance Scotland or New England. Our greatest poet, Joost van den Vondel, in the middle of the 17th century, in later life became a catholic and though his later works breathe the spirit of his new faith in all its fervour and magnif icence, he still could hold his place in the memory of Holland as the first poet of al).
A simple narrative of the facts leading up to the formation of-the State of the United Netherlands, has thus explained, — at least I hope so—: first, how a new nation, unknown as such in the Middle Ages, was added to the nations of Europe, to play its part not without praise nor without some profit to the world at large.
Secondly, how this Dutch nation could not be born but by a violent crisis, which split in twain the ethnographical elements that seemed about to conglomerate into a larger national whole than the small State of the Seven Provinces, namely the Burgundian State of the Seventeen. — This larger unit was revived once more : in 1815, when the Congress of Vienna decided for the union of orphaned Belgium with Holland as a Kingdom under the House of Orange. —Strangeirony of history: Orange after two centuries and a half ascending the throne left by Charles V in 1555, the ideal of William the Silent, of a national unity of all the Netherlands, fulfilled at last by the calculations of Euro-



15
pean diplomacy. They failed. The unic-n was only to last for fifteen years. Belgium revolted in 1880, and after a long period of diplomatic action the exact frontier that formerly separated the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Netherlands was restored. So much had political cohesion of two centuries effected that, now that separation had become requisite, the old status could not be ignored. The modern Kingdom of the Nertherlands, though consisting of eleven provinces instead of seven, corrésponds almost exactly with the territory of the old Republic.
Are we to look at the separation of Netherland on one side and the Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium on the other, as the inevitable result of deep-lying differences of character, or as an unfortunate accident to be deplored ? Some historica! scholars here, of late years, have started a little controversy pro and con. I for myself incline to side with those who regard historica! development with the eyes of determmism, rather searching the past to understand why things have come about so, than to prove (what theoretically always can be proved)> that they might have come about otherwise too.
My narration, in the third place, tended to explain why the terminology concerning our State and our nation never became quite fixed. This country can be said to bear the name of Nederland. You are in the habit of making it a plural: Netherlands. So do our coins and our official publications. If need be, Netherlands, Low Countries, Pays-Bas, may still be used when you mean to include Belgium, though this use is now almost limited to historical style. Most peoples of Europe are wont to call us Holland. We ourselves very of ten speak of our country as Holland, though we are quite aware that Holland in the proper sense means only two provinces of it. How it came about that the name of Holland was used to denote the United Provinces as a whole, I hope to have made clear.
So there are three different ways* of calling our country: Netherland In the singular, Netherlands in the plural and Holland.
The English-speaking nations have one more reason of confusion. Your adjective for our nation is Dutch. You call our language Dutch, in so far as you are aware there exists one. You speak of Dutch painting, Dutch pottery etc. Your English forefathers even contracted a bad habit of calling all sorts of things Dutch, which we would rather
call well we ought to avoid calling another nation names alto-
gether.



16
We do not speak of our language or customs as Dutch. The corresponding word „Duitsch" nowadays , with us, means German. The Germans themselves, as you well know, call their country „Deutschland", and their nation "Deutseh". That is the reason why, as I am told, thé common people in America often confound Holland and Germany altogether, because hearing the Germans calling themselves "Deutseh" they confound them with those who were called Dutch from the beginning, namely the Hollanders.
Now if you have followed my exposition, you wül remember that at one time all the Germanic-speaking territories of the Netherlands in their largest sense, except Flanders, were politically united with the^ German Empire and ethnographically not distinct from it, except by graduaily increasing differences of dialect. Dutch in the Middle Ages meant all that was contained between Friesland and Austria, the Slavic border in Germany and the Alps.—As late as the 17th century a Hollander might call his language "Duytsch", though by that time it had differentiated as well from the Low Dutch spoken in North Germany as from the High Dutch that became the civilized tongue of all the German states.
So, Dutch as a term for the Hollander or Netherlander, is in a way an anachronism. It reflects a unity which ceased to exist three centuries or more ago. Moreover it has got an unfavourable tinge which is hateful to us. It would not be a loss, if Americans and Great Britons could be brought to substitute Hollander or Netherlander for Dutchman, and even to adopt the adjectives Hollandish or Netherlandish instead of Dutch. It would help to avoid confusion and to make old misunderstandings and disparagement to be forgotten. If the vague and antiquated word Dutch got out of use, it would mean that the English speaking nations were beginning to see us such as we are to-day and such as we ourselves wish to be known, no longer in the caricature of an old fisherman smoking a pipe.
My friend Professor Van Eysinga has just told you how we concerve our place among the nations. It is before all other things an independent place that we want to keep. And wc feel equal to the task of maintaining our independence as a nation. I do not mean by arms, but by the weight of our national personality.
No other nation of Europe, by its geographical situation or by its history, has become so equally balanced in the midst of the three foremost nations of. Western Europe: British, French and German. No other nation has been so open to cultural influences from three or



17
more different sides. At all times Holland, while having often something to give to others herself, has eagerly taken in all that she could learn from her great neighbours. These lasting influences have engendered in the Dutch mind a faculty of understanding and appreciating foreign nations. I do not mean the fact that the average Hollander of some pretention to culture speaks more or less fluently English, French and German, and reads them rather easily. What I mean is that we seem to be able, in a higher degree than for instance Skandinavians or Belgians, to understand the spirit of Anglo-saxon, French and German civilization equally.
Now this aptitude to appreciate other nations is not an obsohite advantage. It sometimes really threatens to weaken our own national feeling. And yet this very faculty is inseparable from our possession of a culture and a language of our own. If we spoke French as a large part of the Belgians, or German as the greater part of the Swiss, we could not avoid leaning culturally towards one of the great nations. Just because our nation is distinct from all that surround it, it is able to sample them all, without getting enslaved by their potent charm.
I do not know whether Americans can fully realize the necessity there is for Europe of preserving its division into many nations, and the fervent desire of all and any of these to maintain their specific national existence. I do not mean this politically so much as culturally. Perhaps the most essential difference -between contemporary history of America and of Europe lies here.
It would be quite natural for you to say: why should not the European nations, after so many centuries of bitter strife, in the long run be merged into one vast unit ?—Your own amazing history presents such a spectacle of national assimilation and absorption. A national nucleus of Englishmen, after having already assimilated various foreign elements (among whom we are proud to reckon our hardy fqrefathers of New Netherland), in one century and a half of freedom extended over a whole continent, all the time as long as space and work did not fail, receiving and absorbing all new-corners of whatever origin, and so giving to poor old divided Europe that splendid and enviable model of unity, your immense Commonwealth. This mighty unity of yours, politically spoken, is the hope of the world.
Still, political harmony and concord is not the one thing the world stands in need of. However indispensable to civilization peace and order may be, real civilization is not contained in them. They may even be a danger to it, should they be promoted by equalizing
Lectures on Holland
3



18
and levelling. What we envy you is your unity, not your uniformity. j We Europeans feel too keerdy that no nation, however prosperous or great, fa f it to bear the burden of civilization alone. Each in his turn fa called upon, in this wonderful world, to speak his word, and find a solution which just his particular spirit enabled him to express..Civilization fa safeguarded by diversity. Even the smallest facets in the many-sided whole may sometimes catch the light and reflect it.



THE PLACE OF HOLLAND AMONG THE NATIONS
BY
W. J. M. VAN EYSINGA I.
When at the end of the eighteenth century your country became an independent nation that was within a hundred years to grow into a big Power, the rapid decline of the Netherlands became a sudden catastrophe. In the seventeenth century it had been the turn of the seven small United Provinces to develop with remarkable celerity into a great nation ; in all the extra-European continents we then built up that worldwide colonial empire that in the domain of international law would bring to the modern world the notion of the freedom of the seas. I need not remind you of the fact that one of these Dutch colonies was situated where New-York now is. In fact the history of our two countries at the end of the eighteenth century is symptomatic of the everlasting movement in the life of states ; this movement perhaps constitutes the most constant phenomenon in the evolution of the family of nations. Our decline was hastened by the very birth cf the United States. Indeed, the very great semi-official sympathies with the American colonies fighting for liberty against a great power, as the United Provinces had done 200 years before, brought us into war with Great-Britain and this war weakened us to such an extent that we could not escape from the vortex of revolutionary and Napoleontic France. From 1810—1818 we even disappeared from the list of independent states and when after the battle of Leipsic we regained our liberty, the treaty of amity and commerce which in 1782 we had so heartily conceded to the struggling American states was considered as dead at the very moment when we had been incorporated in France. And so a new commercial treaty had to be made, which after long negotiations was signed in 1839.
This year 1839 is of great importance for other reasons in the life of our country; for it was not until then that we were able to continue our real national life; after the painful years of the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th we had since 1815 been linked



20
to what is now called Belgium and what was in the 15th and 16th century the southern part of the Burgundian Netherlands. The union was in conformity both with the wishes of our first king, William I, and with that of the allies of 1814, who were grouped in quite another way as those of 1914. The Netherlands of 1815, of which also the grandduchy of Luxemburg was an integral part, were destined by the reconstructors of the political map of Europe to be a bulwark against the country that in those years was considered to be the great peacehreaker, France, and therefore our country had to be as big and strong as possible. But though, after a decided victory, the framers of peaceterms may be able to put eveiything they like into the peacetreaty, the articles of such a treaty will not always have a long life, if they do not contain a certain minimum of reasonableness and when Belgium after the revohition of 1830 preferred going its own way again, this was considered also by the great majority of the Dutch people as a reasonable dissolution of the union. King William I did not at once share that view and it was a difficult task for the London conference in 1839 to settle the terms of the separation of the rather artificial union of 1815.
To a certain extent this conference was a conciliatory one; king William took the initiative of what we should now call a meeting of the Suprème Council or of the Council of Ambassadors or even of the Council of the League of Nations and in virtue of a protocol, signed in 1818 at Aix la Chapelle our government was at once invited to join the conference, just as in virtue of art. 4 of the Covenant of the League of Nations any member of the League, not represented on the Council shall be invited to send a representative to sit as a member at any meeting of the Council during the consideration of matters specially affecting the interests of that member of the League. After nine years of sometimes interrupted pleadings, intermediate propositkms, fighting on the battlefield, as well as military execution short of war of guaranteed treaty-stipulations, the dispute was settled by conciliation in the interesting treaty of 1839, to which I shall have to make another allusion in the course of this lecture. A study of the "Confederation of Europe" as the British author Phillips called it in 1914, shows, besides differences, striking resemblances between that very simply framed league of nations of the post-Napoleontic years and the very much more elaborate one of the treaty of Versailles.
King William's policy has been much critisized, not least in our own country and so we are inchhed to forget his great qualities and all he did in order to restore the old high international position of his



21
country. Our constitutional law of that time allowed him to personally direct the foreign affaire, and the personal share he had in those affaire was very great. I quote in this connection the very keen interest our king took in the first schemes to dig a Central American canal. As you know, he also played a part in the so remarkable Anglo-American arbitration series, being nominated arbitrator in the difference about the Northeastern boundary of the state of Maine.
So in 1839 after fifty years of unrest we got an opportunity of continuing our real national life, now as a small country, that nevertheless had saved a good deal of its old colonial empire and whose spirit was not too bad. We then became a state that no longer pretended to be big ; our embassies were turned into more modest legations and the words by which prof. Huizinga in his lately published book on Erasmus characterises our mentality, are particularly true for the first decades after 1839 : "These countries were already, as prof. Huizinga writes, what they have ever remained, contemplative and selfcontained, better adapted for speculation on the world and for reproving it than for astorushing with dazzling wit." Destiny had not been very favourable to the last three generations of Dutchmen and so the generation of the middle of the nineteenth century was too happy to be let alone and it took a rather philosophical interest in the world's affaire. And those who were of opinion that some more activity would do no harm, accused their fellow citizens of being like hedgehogs that show nothing but their prickles, as soon as another creature is kind enough to take an interest in them. In this respect it is significant that, when the great Powere in 1841 concluded their wellknown treaty with Turkey about the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, providing adhesion by other states, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden-Norway adhered, but Holland which had very old capitulations with Turkey and "as late as 1803 had been able to obtain free navigation through the Straits for its mercantile marine, stood aside. Whereas your country, always upholding the Monroe doctrine, continues its marvellous expansion on the American continent and afterwards in and even across the Pacific as well as in Central America, every idea of further expansion is far from old Holland's mind ; we content ourselves with developing and rounding off what we possess, and even in the rush for new colonies in the Pacific, where our Indies are a riparian state, the Netherlands do not take part. Once more only, we act as a great Power in the Far East; against Japan, where we had had the monopoly of intercourse, until your fleet under commodore Perry in 1858 began the opening up of



22
that most remarkable country. Eleven years later, in 1864, our naval forces joined those of Great Britain, France and the U.S. in order to open the important straits of Shimonoseki. But this was more or less an anachronism.
You will not be astonished to learn that this state of mind that was also fostered by our geographic situation, made us steadfastly adhere to a policy which, for other reasons, is not unknown in your country, the dislike of entangling aliiances, the wish not to be dragged into foreign political questions, by treaty or otherwise. This dislike is perhaps the most prominent feature of the foreign policy of our country, whose history in the seventeenth and eighteenth century had been so full of aliiances. "To be good friends with every one of the great Powers—and a fortiori with the little ones—but not to be too closely attaehed to any of them", in these words one of our prominent statesmen, M. de Beaufort, once characterized our foreign policy. So we were very happy, when in 1867 we were able to get rid of the membership of our province of Limburg of the German confederation, a membership that is very interesting from a technical legal point of view. The same dislike of entangling aliiances witheld us from acting upon suggestions that often came to us from Belgium, before and after the great war to enter again into some closer alliance ; and the same attitude was adopted, when the Franco-British entente cordiale tried to take us in tow. On the other hand the idea fostered about 1900 by different Germans to unite both countries, though of so different a size, in a customs union, never had any chance of being entertained in Holland. When in April 1908 our country with other riparian states signed the declaration about the maintenance of the territorial status quo along the Northsea co ast, the fact the parliamentary commission instituted to report on that treaty liked best in this af fair was that the minister cf foreign affairs did not consider the treaty to be a "departure from the prudent policy of abstinence from political treaties". I could easily go on quoting other practical instances of this deeply rooted dislike of entangling aliiances, a policy that is generally considered to have greatly contributed to keep us out of the great war.
Of course, this policy implies a constant neutrality during war; although the idea of having our neutrality solemnly recognized or even guaranteed by the Powers never had many friends in this country, precisely on account of the possible entangling consequences of such a measure. It is obvious that the departure from our constant neutrality policy during a great war would be even more dangerous



23
for a country with a geographic position like ours, in Europe and overseas , than in peacetime.
You know how difficult it has been for our country to uphold its neutrality between the hammer and the anvil of the allies and Germany during the great war, especially when in the end your country joined the allies and led them to victory. I will only say this about it here, that if the world should deem it useful to try and revise the codification of the rules of neutrality of the Hague Conventions of 1907, the Dutch experience of 1914—1918, laid down in the long series of Orange Books will have to be taken into the most earnest consideration. That this will have to be the case, was already strongly felt, when a commission of jurists from the five great allied Powers and Holland met at the Hague in the winter of 1922—1923 presided over by your excellent countryman John Bassett Moore in order to consider and report upon the revision of the rules of warfare.
The law of neutrality is mainly determined by geographical and technical circumstances. When the old sailing men of war, which could remain at sea for months, were replaced by steamships that were very much dependent on coalingstations, the base of operation in neutral countries got a new and very considerable place in neutrality law. The great maritime war that coincided with that technical evolution was your war of secession and the well known Alabama claims on Great Britain mark the legal evolution that followed upon the heels of the technical one. It is not so generally known that cruisers of the Southern states also used to call at our West Indian port of Curacao and that our government then at once took strong measures that were similar to what was to become in 1907 at the second Peace Conference of the Hague the 13th Convention concerning the rights and duties of neutral Powers in naval war.
I already had occasion to allude once or twice to our geographical position as well in Europe as on your continent, in Asia and Australia. This position is a remarkably advantageous one for us, but for this very reason during a world war like that of the Napoleontic era or that of 1914—1918 the different parts of our kingdom may be in a very dangerous situation. So the international status of our country is to a great extent determined by geographical factors much as is the international status of, for instance, those parts of the world through which the canals of Suez or of Panama were dug.
Situated at the Northwestern corner of the European continent between Great Britain, France and Germany at the mouth of two



24
great international rivers and one of minor importance, the Rhine, the Scheldt and the Meuse, our country constitutes the entrancehall of the inland waterways that lead to Belgium, to Switzerland, to the most important parts of Germany and even to a certain number of departments of France. Holland is the classic country of international rivers and its prosperity greatly depends on that geo-political factor: this has of late been very strongly feit, when in January 1923 France and Belgium occupied Germany's great industrial centre, the Ruhr basin and paralized by a series of encroachments on the Act of Navigation of the Rhine of 1868 the free navigation on that river.
On the other hand our splendid geographical position gives rise to some envy on the part of our neighbours, who are more or less separated from the sea and, in one instance, even'from other countries by Holland. This specially applies to Belgium as a look on the map will clearly show you. Most of the important waterways to Belgium pass through Holland. I mention the waterway from Ghent to the sea, that from the Belgian ports to the Rhine and, last not least, that from Antwerp to the sea; and besides this the overlaad communication between the Northeastern part of Belgium and Germany crosses our province of Limburg. It may be understood that during the London conference of 1830—1839 Belgium wished to get those parts of old Holland adjoining Belgium that would have allowed all these water and overland ways but one (the way from the Belgian seaports to the Rhine) to pass through Belgian territory only. But Belgium was not able to obtain this at the London conference; nevertheless a great part of the treaty of 1839 constitutes guarantees in order that Belgium may have a free use, for non-military purposes, of all these water and overland ways. These articles, developed later by a series of HollandoBelgian conventions, are full of interest and show how geo-political the relations between the two countries are. After the great victory in 1918 Belgium again tried to get what had been refused to it eighty years ago, but that wish again was vetoed at once by president Wilson and other statesmen assembled at Paris.
Splendid as our situation may be in peace time, in a great war between Great Britain and great Continental Powers like that of 1914, our position becomes most exposed. By a gigantic blockade the entente then besieged and nearly starved the Germans, while they redaced the neutral seaborne trade, free in principle, to a medieval genera! prohibition to trade with the enemy, with only some rare exceptions. It seems marvellous indeed that Holland, situated within



25
the line of bloekade, has neither been strangled nor dragged into the war.
Curagao with its excellent port offers another instance of a part of our country, situated in such a way that its status is absolutely determined by its geographical situation. Nearly a prolongation of the Venezuelan coast the Dutch island has always been a calm transshipment harbour for the republic, whose history is so full of revolutions and whose presidents thrown out of power, or not yet in power, used the hospitable island as a safe look out. These facts have led to legal relations between Venezuela and Curagao which are sui generis and interesting to a jurist to a high degree. Of course I cannot now enter into details as to these relations but being familiar for instance with the peculiar legal relations between your country and Mexico you will easily grasp what they are likely to be. If you would study the Hollando-Venezuelan relations, that some years ago were published by a good Dutch book, you would have the impression of being in a legal laboratory, where all imaginable legal relations are put under the influence of one great force: the geographical position of Venezuela towards our island of Curagao. Sometimes the relations have been very strained and also, once or twice, your Monroe doctrine was named in connection with them. But I am happy to say that the great American expansion in the Caraibian sea never reached our island. I am equally happy to add that the relations between Holland and Venezuela have been excellent during the last years, which brings great prosperity to our island.
Last but not least our Indian Empire. Here I must be very short because Professor Colenbrander will treat the subject separately. I wül only say this that the Far East and the Far West were very long considered to be separated by a vacuüm from the po int of view of great politics. It was not before the end of the 19th century that the Pacific became a centre of political activity. And then we at once feit how exposed the position of the Indies was, situated as it is on the Western threshold of the new worldsea. The voyage of the great Russian armada past the Indies during the Russo-Japanese war suddenly showed us the full weight of this new geo-political problem and you know that many rules of maritime neutrality law, laid down by the second Peace conference of 1907 have been greatly influenced by considerations to which that voyage had given rise. The very exposed position of our Indian Empire was again unanimously acknowledged, when at the Washington disarmament conference of 1921—1922



26
each of the great Powers, represented in your capital, declared that it was firmly resolved to respect the rights of the Netherlands in relation to their insular possessions in the regions of the Pacific Ocean.
In the facts I had the pleasure to lay before you, you will have missed every allusion to 'my country as a centre of international law and international organization ; to Holland as the seat of the Peace conferences, of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and of International Justice, to the Peace Palace at the Hague that we owe to Carnegie^s generosity, to Holland as a member of the League of Nations. It is to that part of Holland's place among the nations that I will call your attention to-morrow.
II.
In order to understand the Holland of the Peace Conferences, of the Peace Palace and its Courts and of the Academy of International Law we have to remember, as was pointed out yesterday, that my country wishes to live its own national and international life without being entangled in the noisy and dangerous worldpoUtics^
We are in the happy condition of being absolutely satisfied with the well situated but smaU piece of land we possess in Europe and with our oversea territories. Holland is a perfect nation in this sense that there is with us no tracé of irredenta, no minority problem whatever: we don't want a square meter outside our frontiers and nobody inside wishes to belong to another state. And apart from this the now generally accepted legal eonception of our Kingdom as a whole composed of different pieces of land in different continents and with very different populations, is a happy one and allows an evolution leading up to great autonomy of the component parts, coupled with the maintenance of national unity. Your country knows by experience that it is not an easy task to find a constitutional frame, when a country has oversea territories that can no longer be considered to be colonies in the old sense of the word. Our legal conception starts from the idea of an all embracing kingdom under which are grouped four perfectly equal legal communities: the Europe an part of the kingdom, the -East Indies, Surinam and Curagao. We owe this conception to the clear and lofty, but at the same time, very practical and simple legal vision of prof. van Vollenhoven. It is equally true that, for the time being, the place of Holland among the nations is more determined



27
by the seven million inhabitants of the European part of the kingdom than by the fifty million Dutch subjects of its oversea parts.
When about 1900 our great commercial strength again proves to require a much larger area than the kingdom alone, and when our steamshipcompanies, the Royal Dutch Oilcompany, our great banks and our world firms like that of M. Kröller, begin to conquer a great part of the world, this takes place by really pacific penetration. Every idea of imperialistic expansion is far from us and necessarily must be so.
Our love of very lively intercourse with all countries is not only commercial but also cultural. Although we have very strong national feelings we also have a wide open eye for things and men abroad. Our position between three great Powers speaking different languages and of very different mentality, combined with our love of travelling for business or other reasons obliges us to learn foreign languages and that is a good way to the real understanding of foreign peoples. I think it will be difficult to find another nation that understands and appreciates different foreign countries so well. Perhaps some French or German individual will surpass us all in the right understanding of the British or the American soul; but in Holland you will find hundreds and thousands of average men who have a fairly good and objective idea of a great number of foreign nations. Our press is excellent in its attempts to cherish a modern version of the old notion that all men are our brethern. We have strong national feelings, but nevertheless I think it true what one of the best representatives of my country once said to me, namely that the best and the strongest quality of the Dutch is their internationalism, their open eye for and their understanding of what is not Dutch.
It is only a consequence of this state of mind that you will find in our country a great respect for foreign nations; Holland is perhaps slow in signing new conventions, but having once signed it sticks to its international obligations; speaking as a jurist this means that the notion that international law breaks national law is generally accepted and acted upon in Holland. Besides this our legislation regarding foreign merchandise, foreign ships, individuals and companies is an extremely liberal one; our fiscal custom duties are the lowest in the world ; flagdiscaimination does not exist in our country and the door is open to foreign individuals as well as to companies on equal terms. This legal mentality cannot but make a country fit for international organization and inspire confidence in the other nations. This confidence led to more than Platonic feeling, nay to something



28
very practical, when the world began to realize that its fifty different states had got linked together by so many practical ties that their community wanted something more than the old international law with its diplomatic and consular officers, its commercial treaties and its principle of non-intervention in each other's affitirs. The new orientation of international organization manifested itself in non-* political international conferences of the states, leading to collectivaconventions or even unions, each of which embraces some non-political subjectmatter like postage, railways, telegraphs etc.
Our representative man for that free trade period of much stronger internationalism than exists nowadays, was Asser. Tnis Jewish professor of law in the Amsterdam University and afterwards Privy Cpuncillor, began bis career about 1860, the year when the Anglo. French treaty of commerce seemed to mark the begirming of an era of goodwill among the nations. Asser is justiy best known as the man who starled, and directed untü his death in 1918, the Hague conferences for the codification of private international law. In doing so he intentionally directed the general attention of the Governments towards our country again, and it is largely due to his activity that Holland got its very marked place in the new movement for international organization, being chosen in 1899 as the meetingplace of the first Peace Conference.
The world, trained by international co-operation in mattere like postage, railways and so od, tries to lay more general foundations for a peaceful symbiose, as one of the most prominent promotors of international organization has called it: disarmament and peaceful settlement of diff erences are the first problems to be solved here.
The Peace Conference of 1899 led to permanent institutions at the Hague : in the first place the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a rather loosely framed first attempt to establish worldjurisdictioD, which nevertheless was necessary to arrivé at the institution of Courts more or less of the national kind and which are still necessary. The second Peace Conference in 1907 very much under American influence tried to add a new one to the old Court, whose judges were to sit permanently. The scheme was wrecked on the difficulty of finding asmallnumber of judges representing the fifty or more countries of the world. The second Peace Conference was happier in its endeavour to create a central international Prizecourt, also with its seat at the Hague; unfortunately this Court could not be established because of the opposition of the British House of Lords. The League of Nations established, as you



29
know, a new really permanent Court of International Justice. Although the U. S. is not a member of the League one of your best international jurists, Mr. John Bassett Moore, is a judge on that Court, and president Harding proposed to your Parliament that the U. S. should adhere to the new Court's convention.
I The result of all this is that the two worldcourts now existing have their seats at the Hague. In this respect we can say that Holland is the centre of worldjurisdiction; our non-political atmosphere is a healthy one for the judges. Everybody is agreed as to that fact and if need be, the judges can always refresh the serenity of their rninds by reading Grotius' serene three books on war and peace.
Holland is also a centre of international legal studies since the Hague Academy of International Law last year started its lectures in the Peace Palace.
Our country shelters more than enough of the world's organization and we did not at all envy Switzerland for being chosen as the seat of the other branches of legal administration. When in 1909, only seven years after the end of the South African Boer war which the two üttle Dutch republics maintained during two and a half years against the ovemhelrning superior forces of the British Empire, the Union of South Africa was founded, the framers of its remarkable constitution deemed it expediënt to give the new British dominion three capitals: one for the executive power, Pretoria; one for the legislative power, Capetown, and one for the judicial power, Bloemfontein, Holland cannot be discontented that the so much more extensive League of Nations has two capitals, and that that of the judicial power is at The Hague.
Our own part in the work, done at the Hague, is a modest one and our influence on the moulding of the first articles of a world's conjtttution is far less great than that of a great Power can be. There can be no doubt about that. We for instance are unable to further the peaceful settlement of international differences by the push that is so characteristic of your country; the American series of arbitrations with Great Britain since the beginning of the nineteenth century to which I made an allusion yesterday, is one of the great phenomena that paved the way for arbitration as a generally accepted part of peaceful worldorganization; and at the Hague, both in 1899 and in . 1907 the American delegation was always found in the first ranks. We rather follow and support the movement. This we also did when in 1918 our minister of foreign affairs Loudon, amended Bryan's peace-



so
plan in such a way that arbitration and conciliation in the Dutch treaty with the U.S. complemented each other, which had not been the case in the first peaceplan.
It may be true that the Dutch influence on the conventions of the Hague is not so great as yours, on the other hand the world knows that a country like Holland will and can never determine in a unilateral way international relations as, for instance, the U.S. did, when it allowed a part of Columbia to become the state of Panama in order to realize a Panamacanal under American control. Our international disinterestedness is perhaps forced upon us by circumstances, but nevertheless this only reasonable policy for a country like ours turns into a valuable factor in the framing of a better organized international community.
I am at the end of the observations I intended to submit to you. Any idea of chauvinism is far from my mind and I hope has been equaüy far from my words as they were understood by you. My country and my fellow-countrymen are not ideal and I am convinced that we can learn much from other nations not in the last place from yours ; but we are not too bad either as I said already yesterday. Our place among the nations is that of a small member of their family which has a great history, but is not at all "une nation éteinte", an extinguished nation. Whereas we strongly dislike entangling and dangerous worldpolitics, our legal mentality as to international affairs offers no difficulty in accepting a strong international organization and I think the opinion is true that, if a majority of countries had a mentality like ours, it would not be so very difficult to have a League of Nations which all states would be willing to adhere to.









THE INDIAN EMPIRE OF THE NETHERLANDS
BY
H. T. COLENBRANDER t
The lectures I am going to deliver will offer a painful contrast; between a strong wave of sympathy towards you, striving for utteW ance in blameless JUnglish sounds, and the impediments inherent in my Dutch throat; for the fesult, whatever it may be, I claim your indulgent audience.
A peculiarity of the Indian empire of the Netherlands is that it is an empire built up without imperialism ; let us say, with a minimum of conscious imperialism. Grotius once called the United Provinces a respublica casu facta (a republic formed by accident); this repubüc begot in the Far East an imperium casu factum.
Professor Huizinga, in his lecture „How Holland became a nation", has presented to you my countrymen of the past as having been distinguished from their neighbours by some strongly marked national characteristics bef ore they were a nation in the political sense. Bef ore having achieved political independence we produced a Thomas a Kempis and an Erasmus of Rotterdam, whom everybody will recognize for what they were, for Dutchmen. Likewise, before the establishment of the independent Republic we were already marked out by a particular economie function : we were not yet the merchants of Europe ; we were its carriers.
Nature has divided Europe into two halves, with quite different products. The oil, the wine, the fruit of the South have, from times immemorial, been exchanged for the wood, the corn, the fish of the North; and in so far as this traffic went on by sea, it was effected by the national industry of the Low Countries near the sea: by the canying trade of the Dutch skippers. •
The ancestors of these Dutch skippers has been Dutch fisherfolk. The extraordinary richness of the North Sea in eatable fishes, especially herrings, had very early given birth to flourishing Dutch fisheries as a



32
natural means of subsistence for a population increasing in numbers on an ungrateful soil, where the possibilities for agriculture were very limited indeed, and even cattle rearing could not be indefinitely extended, as the deep-green meadows every visitor of our country is still f amiliar with, encircled by water, intersected by water, of ten undermined by water as they were, had to be wrested from and to be held against what the Dutch people called de waterwolf (the waterwolf), an expression remarkable for two reasons, its picturesqueness first, and next for pro ving that to learn Dutch for a person using the English tongue is a mere trifle ! I now owe you a confession that for a Dutchman involves some risk: I beg to differ from one of the greatest of Dutchmen, from Grotius himself, in venturing to say that the respublica casu facta perhaps was not so much casu facta after all: that it was the crowning merey rewarding centuries of strife and struggle against overwhelming forces of nature, the recompense of history held out to the sterling virtues developed on a terra manu facta.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here I put before your discerning minds the foremost of the titles to the respect of our feüow-creatures : that we have turned that bitterest of our enemies, the water, into a staunch friend ; that we have based our existence upon what was meant first to prevent and later to destroy it; that we may say in words I will not translate, so much do I wish you to retain their sound:
Het water is ons element, De zee bruist onze glorie.
The men living in these untoward—one might say hydrographical rather than geographical—conditions used to be ridiculed by their neighbours of the main land as amphibia. But the amphibia got the best "of it. Ere long, from the gains achieved by their f ishing hulks they built their carrier vessels, and by their skill as a seafaring people, their economy and thrift, were able to drive their competitors, the Hanseatics, from the sea. In the 16th century the number of Dutch ships passing through the Sound were to those of other nations as seven to three. They went as far south as Lisbon and Cadiz to provide South-Europe with the products of the Baltic, and took back the southern products to carry them to the North.
Among the articles of trade to be obtained in Lisbon the products of the East occupied a certain place. The Indian spices were not unknown in the Middle Ages; they figured, as highly appreciated curiosities, on the tables of the rich. The Arabian trade took them to the Persian Gulf. from where, by way of Bagdad and Trebizond, thay



33
reached Byzantium,—or, by way of the Red Sea, brought them to the Alexandrian market. From Byzantium or Alexandria, the shipping of the Italian trading ports, Amalfi first, then Genoa and Venice, trans ported them either to the Italian co ast (to be taken over by the overland trade, which made use of the Brenner and Gotthard passes, to offer them for sale on inland markets like Augsburg), or to Lisbon roads to be taken over by the Dutch carrying trade.—In the middle of the 15th century these complicated trade routes from the Indian Archipelagoto the West and the North of Europe were obstructed by the capture of Byzantium and Alexandria by the Ottoman Turks. In order not to lose—as Augsburg did—its position as an nucleus of the world trade, Lisbon was obliged to fetch the East Indian products, which did not pass the black belt of Turkish dominion any more, from the land itself, where they grew. So the Portuguese tried the sea route, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
In many respects, the Portuguese dominion in the East has been the prototype of that of the Dutch East India Company in the first period of its existence. It was not so much an empire in the territoria! sense as an absolute control of commerce, made possible by a firm hold in dominating positions like Socotora at the extrance of the Red Sea, Ormus at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, Ceylon at the southern end of India proper, Hugli at the mouth of the Ganges, Malacca at the turning po int of the searoute from India to China, Macao facing Canton harbour. The system was completed by a few outstanding posts like Ambon in the eastern part of the Indian Archipelago, and Hirado in remote, fabulous Japan ; it was superintended from a centrally situated, strongly fortified territorial establishment of some extension, seat of the Viceroy and of an Archbishop, military stronghold, centre of administration and rendez-vous for the shipping at the same time; a thoroughly disorientalized, christianized community: Goa on Malabar coast.
For the Dutch interest, this superseding of the old Arabo-Italian by a Portuguese trade which made use of a new, the Ocean, highway, made no difference at all for nearly a century. Before as after Vasco da Gama their vessels came down to Lisbon roads to be loaded, amongst other articles, with Indian spices, and take them to the North. In consequence of this shipping business Dutch firms were established at Lisbon and provided an employment for young Dutchmen, some of whom, more adventurous than the rest, went even to India in the
Lectures on Holland
S



34
Portuguese service. There is no reason why this state of affairs shoukfhave eome to a sudden end, but for the political events of the end of the 16th century.
The rising of the Northern provinces of the Netherlands in revolt against Spain did not, as you might be inclined to expectd^jrb their commercial relations with the Ibenan r^runsula ; at least, tlns was not the case for the first fifteen or twenty years of the struggle. Holland, that lived partly by them, did not want to give up those relation ; nor did Philip the Second so long as he kept his mind^elear The Mediterranean trading vessels were not fit for use m the Atlantic or the North and Baltic seas ; nor were their crews to compete with the sober, thrifty northern seafaring people in their own^regions So the exelusion of Duteh shipping from Iberian ports would not have been Z tZ hiterest of Spain itself; at least, Philip theSeeond beheved ^ for many years. And before 1580, a Spanish prohibition would not n^rSed Lisbon roads against the Dutch, Portugal tul that year romlmngin the position of an independent state. " was only after having joined Portugal to his dominions in 1580, especially after the SofrdsArmadaml588,thatPhüip,nowawarethathewa^
tesutd^
He forbade the entrance to his roads and harbours to Dutehjtaps. ZZ the vessels at hand, threw the crews in prison, prosecuted and
xecuted the captains. He never adhered tc> these regulat^s manently but after a year or so returned to them agam ; a proof that Z apjared to him te be as clearly requiredby his dynastie pohcy as «Tey we^iudicial to the commercial mterests of the Spamsh people.
Ste hJving been exposed three, four times te this «4 trea ment the Dutch tumed their back on the Iberian continent and took^the
arge They took it in the most literal sense of the wordand in very
d-Tetion. 1590 and the next years witnessed a most merveUous
a^t sudden, an ubiouiteus expansion of the
shipping, an industry now vivified by a new spint as well «b^new
means. By a new spirit: the war with Spain now uphdd under
circumstances of incredible difficulty for twenty
adventurousness to the highest pitch. By new
of Antwerp capitalists fled from an emponum of which the bare stones
only were left to the Spanish captor, to be overgrown with grass now
to Amsterdam, the empire city of the NetherlandsJo be The old Dutch shipping business, limited to Western and Northern Europe



35
from Lisbon to the Baltic Sea, expanded in a few years into a world wide trading enterprise. Being obliged, by the closure of Setubal port in Portugal, to look for other quarters for the salt they needed in such large quantities for the upkeep of their fisheries, the Dutch resolved to fetch it from the West Indies, and succeeded. Excluded from the Iberian ports where they had procured the whole of the Mediterranean produce next to that of Spanish America, of Brazil and of the Guinea Coast, they set up a most successful smuggling trade with the American and African possessions of the Hispano-Lusitanian crown, and after having built ships of a new type fit for service in the Mediterranean, they forced the entrance to that sea, soon to maintain it in the teeth of the Spanish naval forces which they defeated before Gibraltar;—a regular direct intercourse with Italy, Greece and the whole of the Levant was the result. The East India produce had to be secured by opening a direct East India trade. They tried a North Eastern thoroughf are and did not succeed (discovering Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla on the way); they tried a North Western thoroughfare, also in vain (being driven, on the way, to a spot that in a near future was to be christened New Amsterdam); in the track of the Portuguese, they tried the way round the Cape and succeeded. In 1595 the first Dutch ships reached the island of Java, to be followed by many others, and since the establishment of -the V.OïC. (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in 1602, by regular yearly fleets.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the beginnings of our relation with the Indian Archipelago have been put before you in their simple, clear necessity. We went to India for the retention of that commercial profit by which Holland lived and without which it would have coüapsed in a moment. Having been of old a necessary complementary means of subsistence for the Dutch people, commercial profit had now grown to be the very nerve of the unequal struggle for freedom, waged against the first military power of the age. We went to India for a purely selfish object, an object sanctified for the moment by the quality of the "self" that had to be maintained, but a selfish object all the same. We went to India; what has our presence meant to it ?
If, in our case, the answer cannot be given without exhibiting some amount of infamy, we are no exception. The story of all colonial enterprise of a remoter period is in many respects a sad story, one of harshness, of ignorance, of hypocrisy. Such, in a large measure, has been the history of the Dutch East India Company.



36
Colonial enterprise of a European nation in a densely populated tropical community meant in the first instance making the Archipelago and its trade subservient to the interests of the European profiteer by fashioning the export of the country into a European monopoly. When Europe was rent asunder into inimical parties which fought each other to the death, this meant a Portuguese monopoly in Portuguese, a Dutch monopoly in Dutch, an English monopoly in English eyes. Before the arrival of the Dutch in India, the Portuguese had only had to provide against native competition, and this had been a relatively small affair. The Dutch had to follow the same policy with regard to the natives, but at the same time they had to throw out the Portuguese; —after a struggle of sixty years, this was effected. The conquest of Ambon by the Dutch in 1605 was followed up by that of Malacca in 1641, of Ceylon and Negapatnam (on the coast facing Ceyion) a few years later, to be concluded by that of Cotchin on Malabar coast in 1661. Then Holland declared itself satisfied and made peace with Portugal, leaving this country in possession of the now insignif icant Goa, which had long ago been overshadowed by the central establishment the Dutch had founded in 1619 in imitation of them, the celebrated Batavia, in the 17th century considered, and with perfect justice, to be the queen of the East. While throwing out the Portuguese and limiting the Spaniards to the Philippines, the Dutch had been driven—by considerations arising from their relations with Great Britain in Europe, as a possible ally against Spain—into admitting the English, then neither in skill nor in actual force their equals in India, so that, after 1625, it was possible to limit them to a factory at Bantam (on Java coast to the west of Batavia), and even in 1684 to drive them from there; they then occupied a kind of last refuge on the outskirts of the Archipelago: the remote settlement of Bencoolen on the West coast of Sumatra. The Portuguese likewise retained a little outskirt post at Dilly on the northern half of Timer, the Dutch occupying the southem part of that island. Neither Bencoolen nor Dilly seriously hampered the commercial and military supremacy of the Dutch in the Archipelago generally.
Outside the Archipelago, the Dutch owned Ceylon. They were the only Europeans who had access to Japan. For forty years they occupied the island of Formosa and after having lost it, kept in touch with China on other points. They arranged an intermediate shipping and sanitary station, protected by a fortress and garrison, at the Cape of Good Hope. Next to Portuguese, Danish, English and French



37
factories, there were Dutch factories in India proper (in Bengal, at Surat, on the Choromandel and Malabar coasts), the Dutch ones being the most prosperous of all in the 17th century. Next to the English, the Dutch had a settlement in Persia. They had factories at Mocca and Aleppo. Their commercial relations stretched from thence to New Guinea and from the Cape of Good Hope to Desima in Japan. The commerce of the central part of this vast region, i.e. of the Indian Archipelago, was absolutely controüed by them. The position enabled the Company to secure profits in different ways: by monopolizing the export of Indian spices and Ceylon cinnamon to the European market; by monopolizing the import into the Archipelago, especially of cotton goods from Choromandel and Surat, and of opium from Bengal ; by supplanting native shipping in the inter-insular trade within the Archipelago itself and in its intercourse with southern Chinese ports ; by doing a vast commercial business in the Indian Ocean and the Chinese sea as a whole, conveying slaves from Madagascar and the Malabar coast, copper from Japan, ebony from Mauritius, pepper from the Great, sandelwood from the Minor Sunda islands, diamonds from Borneo, spices from the Moluccos, silk from China, opium from Bengal to every market in the East where they could be sold with profit. In the intercourse between the different islands of the Archipelago, its export and import trade, its relations with China and Japan, the Company achieved a monopoly; —in what it called its Western quarters (all quarters lying to the West of the Straits of Malacca), it traded in competition with others, holding the first rank in the 17th century, being superseded by the English in the 18th century. Since Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, England has been the paramount power in India proper, and this paramountcy enables British vessels, under the protection of what had grown to be a world power superior to that of the Dutch, the world power of the Great Britain of Pitt the elder and Pitt the younger, to penetrate even into the sacrosanct preserves of the Dutch and endanger first, finally to break their commercial supremacy in the Archipelago. "The English," our Company complains in 1761, "a few years ago leid down the principle that they are at liberty to trade in whatsoeverclirectionGod has spread out the waters." Mare liberum, once the watchword of the Dutch during their starting up, was now a cry raised against them in the years of their decline. In 1784, the English enforced their right of free access to the seas within the Archipelago by treaty; in 1786, they established a special agency for the commercial penetration of the Archipelago at Pulu Penang



38
near one of the entrance gates to this part of the East, the Straits of Malacca; and the political events of the last years of the 18th century, events which threw Holland on the side of France in Europe, involved the downfall not only of Dutch commercial supremacy but of Dutch political power in the Far East. From 1795 tül 1800, all Dutch settlements outside, and some within the Archipelago, were conquered by British forces ;—with the exception of the island of Ceylon, they were given back at the peace of Amiens in 1802, but were re conquered by the British in the next war, Batavia itself completing the number in 1811. The Dutch flag was hauled down everywhere in the world : in Europe by Napoleon (1810), in the world at large by his British foes. Without interruption, it has been kept flying on two points of the globe : at our factory of Desima, protected against an English attack by the jealousy of the Japanese, and over our possessions on the Gold Coast in Western Africa, which the British, considering them a minor object, neglected to take over. After the battle of Leipsick in 1818, Holland threw the French occupants across the rivers and regained political existence in Europe ;—in August 1814, Great Britain retroceded every possession taken from the Dutch since January lst 1808 with the exception of the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Essequebo and Berbice in America;—in consequence of this convention, Batavia and its dependencies were reoccupied by the Dutch in 1816. They were not reestablished into their exclusive commercial rights which had gone for ever, free access for the British flag being stipulated ;—but the convention of 1814, developed by an Anglo-Batavian treaty of ten years later, left them at liberty to exert themselves in the Archipelago not as trade monopolists but as a government, as the sUpreme political power.
It was not the East India Company to which this task feil. It had been abolished by the constitution of the Batavian Republic in 1798. The heir of the Company was to be the new Kingdom of the Netherlands itself, the political structure to which considerably more than 50 million people now have vowed their allegiance, 7V4 in Europe, a few hundred thousands in Surinam and Curacoa, but the large majority of the number in Indonesia, the term applied by scientific research since 1885, by political thought now, and to be applied, I think, by official documents in a near future, to what was formerly styled a possession of the name of the Dutch Indies, but now is to be considered an autonomous member of the Dutch empire. It is to the slow growth of this political community in the past, to its present state,



39
and to the forecast of its future, that I will draw your attention in the lecture of to-morrow.
II.
In the beginning, all that the East India Company had to do was occupying the entrance gates to the Archipelago and establishing at Batavia what it called its general rendez-vous, a shipping agency and central warehouse rather than a seat of government. Under direct Dutch government were then, bésides the immediate environs of Batavia, only a few small islands in the Moluccos, müitarily occupied and bound by an oath of allegiance to the States General by reason of the exceptional value of their produce: the nutmeg of Banda, the clove of Amboina. But ere long the Company experienced that their object of insuring under all circumstances a profit to shareholders in Holland involved the application of an efficiënt European control to every sort of native political matters. The prevention alone of every kind of intercourse between the natives and the Company's European foes or competitors required a certain stability in internal Indian affairs which could only be obtained, and if obtained, only be perpetuated by constant European inspection. After a certain lapse of time it was not only shipping regulations which had to be enforced, but culture regulations as well. On the European market, the demands were not always the same, and perpetuating a profit meant forestalling the changes in those demands and preparing to cope with them. In the long run, the profit was gained not so much on what was readily found in India, as on what India first had been made to produce (like sugar and coffee in the 18th century). This new need was met primarily by a system of forced delivery of certain products at a certain price ; afterwards by immediate control of the culture itself, no longer a culture recommended to the natives by the Company who arranged to buy up the erop, but a commanded, an enforced culture under strict government regulations as to the extent of soil to be covered by it and the hands to be employed in it: the cultures op hoog gezag (by public authority). Thus, the system of contracts with Indian princes gives way to direct government instructions to Indian populations ; the koopman (merchant) of the first becomes the opziener (controleur, overseer) of the second period of Dutch rule. This new governmental task proves to be so expensive that it soon appears impossible to be equal to it without laying hands on the public revenue of the country itself and increasing that revenue by the



40
application of Western fiscal methods. The Indian grandees, at first the allies of the Dutch, are forced into the position of officials paid by the Dutch government from public revenue, this government now having to provide for the public service in its full extent, both with regard to the natives and to the Dutch and Chinese dements. This new system, slowly prepared by the East India Company in its second period, was regularized and completed by Thomas Stamford Raffles during the years of the British occupation from 1811 to 1816.
'The British East India Company, under whose sway the Archipelago was then placed, had developed on the same lines as the Dutch East India Company, but with much greater speed. Behaving like a government, it ceased to be a merchant at the same time; the control of the Indian production that it had achieved, was to be given over in the hands of private Western capitalism. The Dutch after their return in 1816 meant to continue this same policy, but the spirit of private enterprise, once so powerful in the Holland of 1590, was then at its lowest ebb, and failed to avail itself of the new opportunity thrown open to it. In these circumstances, the system which had taken remunerative Western enterprise in the East for granted, also as a fiscal object from which to draw government in come, utterly failed. It produced nothing but an increasing yearly deficit in the means levied from what should have been a progressive community but proved to be a stagnant one. The deficit had to be made good by the mother country,' which at the time was nowise in a brilliant financial condition itself. Therefore, in 1828, King William the First resolved upon a return to the former system of enforced culture and so inaugurated what in our colonial history is known as the cultuurstelsel (the culture system) par excellence. This revived and in every point perfected system of government cultures, introduced by a man of genius, the governor-general Johannes van den Bosch, achieved splendidly its primary object of filling the Government treasury, but the profits were not applied to the furtherance pf Indian welfare: they were absorbed by the mother country as greedily as in the days of the shareholders of the East India Company. To explain this extraordinary phenomenon (for in the middle of the 19th century, considering the Standard of morals then adopted in colonial enterprise generally, it was already an extraordinary phenomenon), to explain I say, this bit of atavism which went a long way to disqualify Dutch colonial rule in the eyes of mankind, it will be necessary to enter into a few details. i;'*^,'-



41
The new system was adopted in Holland in the year 1828. Its object was then only to restore the balance of the Indian budget and to enable it to provide for three so-called colonial loans raised by the mother country in behalf of the Indies. But the year of the first application of the system in the Indies, 1830, was also the year of the Belgian revolution. Dissatisfied with the conditions of separation proposed by the London Conference, Holland readily permitted its King to put the military forces of the country on war footing. The King did so very wülingly, but with a secret object in view, unpalatable to the Dutch political conscience. The nation declared for a revision of the terms of separation: it did not reject the idea of separation itself; it even welcomed it. The King abused the state of mind of the Dutch people to maintain himself in a strong military position, eagerly expecting a turn of the tide in European politics which might enable him to reconquer Belgium. After a successful campaign of ten days in 1881 the Powers remodeled their articles to the advantage of Holland, but not sufficiently for the majority of Dutch opinion to sanction it, and in the course of the year 1831 the King was still able to reject the remodeled articles amidst the general applause of his subjects. But year after year went by, and the Dutch forces remained on war footing; a policy devouring millions and millions of guilders. The discrepance of political aims between King and nation would have been laid bare much earlier, if an account of the policy had been presented to the last cent to the States General. But the profits of the Indian culture system enabled the King to avoid this. He availed himself of an article of the Constitution stating that the colonies were under the exclusive government of the Crown, to turn over huge profits, from 12 to 18 million guilders a year, from the Indian to the Dutch treasury; he likewise brought over a much greater part of the Dutch public debt than was meant in 1828 to the Indian debet, and so withheld the knowledge of the full cost of his policy from the nation. It was not before 1839 that a vote of the States General put an end to this evil practice : they declared against further manipulating the public debt account in the said manner, and by a revision of the Constitution in 1840 caused the net profits of the Indian budget to be appropriated by law only. This meant a triumphof national over dynastie policy (1839 is also the year of the final settlement with Belgium and the acknowledgment of Leopold of Coburg f ir its king};—it did not mean to end the plundering of the Indian treasury, for from 1840 down to 1877, when they ceased to appear, the net profits



42
of the Indian household regularly were made over by law to the Dutch treasury, as they had been by an act of royal prerogative during the ten years before. From 1830 till 1877 the Dutch treasury in this marmer received a bonus of 828 million guilders, a bonus which enabled Holland to spend on fortifications and state railways sums that would otherwise have had to be,raised by loans. That i* the sclme period the Indies were left without railways is one of the sadly üluminating consequences of the system.
Of course this culture system of van den Bosch, run by the use of underpaid native labour, had only been possible by the starvation of private European enterprise, which would have offered better wages to the native. But as time went on, private capitalism refused to be kept from India any longer, and enforced its admittance. The middle classes, made paramount in Holland by a revision of the Constitution in 1848, claimed room for their activity in India as well. They argued that much greater profits than the transference of gains obtained on government produce secured for the Dutef treasury might be secured by the Dutch nation as a whole left to the free exercise of its own powers ; also that natives permitted to sell their labour to the highest bidder in a free market would be much better buyers than the labourers under the government regulations whose economie welfare was artificially kept at a low level. This caused the fall of the system of government exploitation and indirectly put an end to the habit of turning over Indian government profits to the Dutch treasury. A legislation prepared by the minister for the colonies Fransen van de Putte during the years 1863 to 1866, completed by one of his suceessors, de Waal, in 1870, abolished the van den Bosch system and threw India open to private enterprise.
It was a few years before the private capital now admitted had found out that its own interest forbade the reservation by the mother country of any part whatsoever of the means levied from the Indian community, and required to spend every penny of them on the Indies themselves. In 1878 there broke out an expensive war with Acheen (northem part of Sumatra) which was to continue for years and years, but this war was not the sole or even the principal factor in turning the yearly profits of the Indian budget into the yearly deficits occurring from 1877 down to the early years of the 20th century. Their primary cause was the too long postponed fitting up of the Indies as a field of operation for modern capitalism. Public safety had to be secured by a reorganization of the police, the reign



43
of law to be extended by codif ication and increasing the number of judges, a system of public instruction to be inaugurated for Europeans and natives alike, traffic to be ameliorated by digging out of harbours and construction of railways and organizing a modern postal, telegraph and telephone service and subsidizing an inter-insular steamship company. The cost of the administration of justice and of the police rosé from half a million guilders in 1840 to 3 millions in 1870, 6 millions in 1900, 21 millions in 1916 ; that of public instruction from less1 than half a million in 1840 to 7 millions in 1870,17 millions in 1900, 28 millions in 1916; that of public works from nothing in 1840 to 8 millions in 1870, 22 millions in 1900, 28 millions in 1916. AU these sums are those of the or dinar y budget only; in addition, the extraordinary budget for 1916 appropriates 12j millioens for harbours and 19 millions for railways. Promoting the welfare of the Indonesian community to the highest possible level, a confessed object of Dutch colonial policy since in 1800 the colony was taken over by the State, but an object sadly neglected during the greater part of the 19th century, at the end of that century had become the real aim of an energetic and enlightened government.
From which motive did this remarkable change for the better arise ? From mere disinterestedness ? Of course not. If the relation to Holland which Indonesia has been forcèd into, proves acceptable to it, it is not because the Hollanders, as compared with other'nations, are distinguished by angelic virtues. The truth seems to be, that accordingly as the insight of the economically stronger partner into his own interests gets clearer, his attitude towards the weaker one will change. In the period of free access of private European capital it had become Holland's task to adnühister the Indies in such a way that profiteering in private enterprise remained possible, and it only remains possible by applying systems of exploitation that enrich the Indies as well. Private enterprise does so 1° by ensuring to an increasing number of natives a means of subsistence which would not have been found without it; 2° by becoming, because of its gains, an object for heavy, some American capitalists who were anxious to in vest capital in Indonesia have complained a too heavy, taxation by the Indonesian state. It has especially been since the year 1907 that this taxation of the profits of imported capital has increased, at first at a moderate pace, which later on was deformed more or less by the eff ects of the Great World War, which, by necessitating a food regulation for Indonesia, put a heavy strain on the strength of Indonesian finance. That



44
private Western capital in its operation in Indonesia has begun to enrich the Indonesian community as a whole and native labour especially, is dear from the fact that at the outbreak of the Great War Indonesia had no public debt worth mentioning, while it possessed splendid new harbours and, in Java at least, a well developed railway system. The tax levied on native income not derived from traditional native agriculture, i.e. from labour subservient to Western capitalist enterprise, rose from 8 millions in 1900 to 18 millions in 1916, the tax levied from traditional native agriculture rising in the same period only from 18$ millions to 211; you see how important the new means of living have already become in comparison with the old ones. That the process of building up native capital, though still in its infancy, really exists, may be gathered from the figures indicating where the 64j millions, being the amount to which Indonesians subscribed the first loan issued by Indonesia in its own right in 1915, did come from: 38$ millions were subscribed by Europeans and European corporatipns; 17$ by natives and native corporations ; 8£ by Chinamen. Among the 17j millions of native subscriptions, by far the larger part was taken by agricultural credit institutions and local funds, not quite 2 millions by private native subscribers. In the postal savings bank of Indonesia. somewhat more than 100.000 natives in the year 1919 owned a little less than 2.700.000 guilders.
Thus much about the working of the imported capital of a material order, as it affects the native community. What about the imported intellectual capital ?
The native community eagerly demands the import of western knowledge, considering its acquisition a necessary condition for its being raised to a higher level. Instruction to natives is given in the ordinary native school where the medium of instruction is a native language; in the so called Hollando-native and HollandoChinese schools, where the medium of instruction is the Dutch language; in high and professional schools of various denominations (two medical schools for natives being among the number); in a Technische Hoogeschool (Hig Technical School) at Bandoeng, in a Rechtshoogeschool (High Law School) to be opened this autumn at Batavia; which means, by the way, after the establishment of the said Medical Schools and High Technical School, a third step towards the completion of what is soon to be the Indonesian University. One can say that the demand for the spreading of western knowledge has been fairly met by the Government.



45
But by the mere import of knowledge no spiritual unity is achieved. Can we communicate what in the building-up a new civilization is a more powerful factor than simple knowledge, can we communicate our religion ?
To communicate a religion it is necessary to have one. The forms of religious creed imported by our missionaries into the East have become more or less indifferent to a considerable portion of the western community, a portion in frequent intercourse with the East. It does not like proselytism of any kind, which means that it does not propagate religious indifferentism intentionally; it all the more does so unintentionally, by the simple fact of its moving about Indonesian society. In the spiritual life of the East, there are some tendencies to eventually meet those tendencies of the western mind. Will they, in their meeting, interpenetrate and fertilize each other ? It depends upon the number and the quality of the seeds each of them is carrying with it. There is a western indifferentism of a superficial, not to say barbarous kind, which in the West itself has had its day, but from which the western element in the East, I am sorry to state, is not yet free. There is also the indifferentism of Lessing's Three Rings, conscious of the variety of garb which one and the same divine truth may adopt, and feeling due révérence for what in Eastern religious thought strikes it as holy and great; — and is not this represented in Java by the remains of a religious architecture of inspiring beauty ? An indifferentism of this kind lacks no moral sense, and could commune in spirit with a native élite. Will it ever do so with the native masses ? It may be doubted. To the masses go the various preachers of the Christian gospel, and what is the result ?
The natives are mostly Mohammedans, for a little part Hinduists, for the remainder animists, the so-called heathens. Among the animists, the work of the missionaries is now generally one of bliss. In the past the mission was not free from the blame of contenting itself with a Christianity of outward forms, unable to turn the hearts. At present, it learns more and more how to turn native hearts. In comparison with the earlier days, its basis of ethnographical and linguistical knowledge has broadened tenfold. One of the best of our missionaries, Dr. Adriani, has made for ever the distinction between what he ca lis abstract and altruistic mission, and the altruistic mission amongst the animists as he practises it, meets with universal praise and goodwill. But a vast majority, and a majority comprising all the more civilized of the natives, are Mohammedans, living in a social



46
status totally different from that of the uncivilized animists in the more remote parts of some islands. This majority, Dr. Adriani confesses so himself and it is obvious from the share a union like the Sarekat Islam has had in the growth of native political action, considers Islam to be the backbone, the real expression of its nationalism; amongst them the missionaries are without any power whatsoever. A change not intervening—and there is no sign of it—the question will not be: is the Cross to supersede the Cresent, but: is there any collaboration'possible between Cross and Crescent ?
The Indonesian Crescent is one of a very peculiar eharacter. In Indonesia, Islam has not altogether destroyed the influences of a milder, the Hinduist and animist past. Fanatic Mohammedanism is an exception, at least among the Javanese. It was the Javanese woman Kartini, championess of the cause of the liberation of her sex from the subjection in which Mohammedan morals kept it, who found the sublime word, addressed to Dr. Adriani the Christian missionary:
"Different as our ways may be, the common aim is to approach the one Being that amongst its names bears those of God and of Allah".
If this spirit might prevail with them as with us, the cause of IndoBatavian moral collaboration is not a hopeless one.
Political collaboration is already a fact, in local councils sprang from an act of parliament of 1903 ; in a Volksraad (National Council) sprang from an act of parliament of 1916, and which met for the first time in 1918. It is but an advisory council; an act of parliament which is soon to follow will make it more than that.
Difficult is the task of a government which has to keep within legal banks the foaming stream of the awakened nationalism of an Eastern nation. The manner in which the present Indonesian government tül now has fulfilled this task is open to discussion; some say it is subject to reproof. Its pace is judged differently: many think it, too slow, and others too fast. But about the direction itself in which it moves there is no doubt left.
We cannot wonder that on the road ascending to Indonesian autonomy, from time to time one stops for a moment and looks around. The level from which national life had to be raised was so low, the summit of their politicals wishes is placed so high, the sky around that summit looks often so nebulous. We Dutchmen know that from many a place we have to recede, to welcome a native suecessor in our stead. We cannot be expected to do so willingly, unless we may be convinced



47
that the newcomer will fjll the place well; that he is sensible of the duties he incurs by entering it, and capable to fulfil thein. All sentimentalism in this matter is out of place, if, alas, not out of date. Native rule in Indonesia would be a curse, if it would mean destruction of what the white man has built up there. The true task before us is to give way to the native in the measure wherein he has first enabled himself to fül our place. Othetwise, the prediction might come true that once warned the United States whom the poet wishes to remain under the direction of cool-headed men :
O but for such, Columbia'» days were done. Rank without ripeness, quickened by the sun, Orude at the surface, rotten at the oore, Her fruits would fall before her spring were o'er.
America's spring is over now, and we rejoice to see it still bear fruits. That Indonesian growth will be a harmonious one, Leyden University, whose duty as well as whose highest aim it is to be an intellectual centre not for Holland only but for the empire, will do its utmost to further it. Conservatives are wont to say of Leyden that it spoils Indonesia for them ; — the time draws near that radicals will say the same. Party feeling in relation to Indonesia in a near future will run high; we at Leyden will stick to our guns as a Dutchman does, remembering the motto of the founder of this our University: saevis tranquillus in undis. We have already formed here Indonesian youngsters who are a credit to the community they sprang from and to which they returned. These men are now able to start the national University of which Indonesia stands in need, and, in so doing, will not copy Western institutions, but instal Eastern ones which will enrich and strengthen Eastern personality. Under the tropical sun we do not expect, nor do we want, the rise of our equals in thought and deed, but in value of both. Thus may be realised Kipling's saying:
... that there ia neither East or West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they eome from the
ends of the earth.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I beg to thank you for your courteous attention.



RELIGIOUS THOÜGHT AND LIFE IN HOLLAND
BY
A. EEKHOF
The task, which I have taken upon my shoulders is not an easy one, to discuss in a short time a so large and complicated subject as: religious thought and life in Holland, although I must confess that it is a subject of great importance and extraordinary attr activeness,
Not an easy task to take you through so vast an arena, where the struggles sometimes were very fierce and the discussions came up to the boiling heat. An Englishman who stayed quite a long time in Holland says: "In my first walks among the picturesque villages of Walcheren, I noticed with special interest the old churches, plastered thickly within and without, but still retaining their prereformation choir. On some conspicuous place outside the church, in bright coloured letters the useful but somewhat suggestive information is usually given, that the local f irehose is to be found within". Whether the Church and the firehose have something to do with each other, is not for me to decide. Neither an easy task to give you a picture of a life that has so many sides, that varies so much and is often perplexing. There is also a possibility that one side of life is brought more into prominence than the other, and that the personal opinions of your lecturer may peep around the corner. Still I will try to give you a sketch, as true as I can, without prejudice, and will look upon my subject not from an apologetic or polemic view, but from an historical standpoint, and as this is a lecture for students, I may be allowed to call your attention now and then to some books, which as introductory may be of some use to you. Some of them in Dutch, for those of you, who can read the Dutch language, and also for the others, who by their visit to Leiden will be stimulated to learn it;



49
for, ladies and gentlemen, what the school commissioner of Massachusetts said to the assembled children one morning about the English language, I may apply to you and the Dutch language, he said: "Children, the correct knowledge of the English (Dutch) language is important in this world and in the world to come".
Let us begin at the beginning, not in Paradise, but in that little garden of paradise in the neighborhood of Brussels, where is a green and pleasant valley, on the eastern edge of the Bois de Soignies. Here in Groenendaal, the mystic John Ruysbroeck, a friend of birds and flowers, a lover of the contemplative life, tried so solve the mysteries of the Universe. A few years before his death the Hollander Geert Groote visited him, about the year 1875 or 1876, together with his intimate friend John Cele, rector of the school at Zwolle. They imbibed some of Ruysbroeck's opinions, and with Geert Groote the mystic school was transported to the extreme north of Holland: the Brotherhood of Common Life. Groote labored in the spirit of John the Baptist, laying the axe to the root of the tree. His magnetic personaUty, his burning zeal to win souls and his power of conviction carried Groote's message to the heart. People came for miles to hear him, huge churches had not enough room to hold the surging crowds. He addressed the clerical dignitaries and reproved them severely for their most flagrant sins. Whenever he preached, a group of men and women roused from apathy, changed their lives and continued his word. This was the beginning of the religious movement: "Devotio Moderna".
The Brothers of Common Life, the Windesheim Congregation, devoted a considerable share of their energyto the religious training of schoolboys; they corrected the Vulgate, began to translate portions of the Bible and a great many Church hymns into the vernacular; they sent hundreds and hundreds of religious books throughout Western Europe ; they attacked the decadent Scholasticism and in all humiüty taught that far above the sacraments, above miracles and prophecies stood virtue and love. They conforted the sick, consoled the afflicted, fed the poor, lodged the homeless—Geert Groote and his circle were the spiritual fathers of that movement, the Christian Renaissance, whose spirit kindled the fire in Thomas a Kempis, Wessel Gansfort, Hegius, Murmellius, Beatus Rhenanus and Erasmus, Just a few months ago a young American scholar, Dr. Albert Hyma of the University of North Dakota, who also followed our lectures in this Univers-
Lectures on Holland
1



50
ity, has written a very interesting book on this subject, a specimen of thorough scientific work
Erasmus ! It was John Golet who wrote to him in 1516, when the New Testament was completed: "Nomen Erasmi nunquam peribit" *). Erasmus 1 why are people so interested in him? Dr. P. S. Allen of Oxford and prof. J. Huizinga, of this University, in his last book "Erasmus", that is published in the series «Great Hollanders' both in English and Dutch, have given the answer. In Holland his name is famous for many reasons, but also for this reason, that he may be called the father of that Erasmian spirit, that Erasmian Renaissance, the Biblical Humanism, a real Dutch reformatory-movement. Erasmus wishes a biblical Christendom, a dogmatic that not only takes its contents, but also its terms from the New Testament. He urges that students shall study the original texts of the Bible; they should preach about faith and not about futile questions. The love of God is one and all. Christ is the heavenly Master, to prepare himself a new people, a people that seeks not the things that are on earth but in heaven ; the Sermon on the Mount is the watchword ; love and faith are the centres, freedom and tolerance the purpose of the Christian life.
It is a realdistinctive movement, this Dutch reformatory-movement, with Erasmus and the Erasmians as founders, to which especially prof. Pijper, of this University, has opened our eyes. In his great standard-work "Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica" he has published the writings of those men, Who were impregnated with the religious ideas, which were in the same spirit as those of Erasmus. I think of Gnapheus, of Listrius, of Comelis van der Heyden and of that eminent reformer of the Veluwe, Joannes Anastasius Veluanus, who has given us his "Der Leeken Wechwyser"—the Guide of the Layman. Some of them very distinctly were on the sides of the Reformers, and suffered martyrdom for their belief; others remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church as Murmelhus and Ortuinus Gratius; others kept a mixture of Roman Catholic and Protestant ideas, a middleparty if you like, as George Cassander, who in fearof persecution confessed neither the one nor the other, but wished that Roman Catholics and Protestants should live in peace with one another; but by all of them we find that undogmatic biblical colour, centering in the Divine fatherhood, the Providence of God and the
•) Albert Hyma, The Christian Renaissance. Grand Rapids Mioh., The Reformed Fresa, 1924.
J) P. S. Allen, Erasmus. A lecture delivered in 1922, p. 24.



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Brotherhood of Christ. The Cross, on which the Lord bore the sins of mankind, though not neglected, still is not in the centre of their teachings. This Biblical Humanism in some way prepared the way of the Reformation or gave an peculiar colour to it.
Of course the Reformation from outside was also joyfully acclaimed in Holland, and had a great influence. Luther himself took a sincere interest in what was going on in the Netherlands, and when the first martyrs Hendrik Voes and Joannes van den Esschen were burnt in Brussels, in 1528, Luther profoundly moved by the news, wrote a letter "An die Christen ym Nidderland" and a poem: "Ein neues Lied wir heben an"; Joannes Pistorius in Woerden, a countryplace near Utrecht, who was burnt in The Hague in 1525, had drank from the fountain Luther had caused to spring forth; some books can be produced that show very distinctly the Lutheran influence; the version of the Bible by Luther was soon translated into Dutch and tül the new version of the Bible appeared, after the synod of Dordt in 1618 and 1619, the Lutheran Bible was in some way or another the canvas on which all the Dutch versions were embroidered. Also Zwingü had great influence and even more the Swiss Heinrich Bullinger. The Hollander Cornelis Hoen (Honius) brought a Uttle book about the Lord's Supper, which he had written, to Zwingli, who published it in 1525, in which was pointed out that the formula: 'hoe est meum corpus' means «hoe significat meum corpus'—"this is my body" means "this signifies my body"—a new vision, seen by a Hollander, which became dominant in Reformed Protestantism, as I pointed out in my publication on Cornelis Hoen.
Then there were the Anabaptists, a European movement, but also with Dutch tendencies. The leading principle is to be found in their conception of the "community without spot or blemish", to which all must belong who would be saved; hence the constant use of the 'ban" or excommunication. In more or less close connection with the leading idea of a community separated from the world, are several distinctions of the Baptists, such as: their original dislike of a regular ministry, their refusal to do müitary service, or to take an oath; in adult baptism they saw a mark of recognition to seperate the sheep from the goats. Some feil into such a state of religious mania, which we all remember when we say Munster and Jan van Leyden ; but also in Amsterdam, in Friesland and Groningen things happened which we recall with shame. The Dutch Baptists, whether a reaction against the fanaticism of the Anabaptists or a separate party, look



52
upon Menno Simons and Dirk Philips as their founders, and are of ten called "Mennonites" after the first named, till this very day.
So we have indicated in the first half of the 16th century the influence of Luther, Zwingli, Bullinger, the Anabaptists, but besides that a special Dutch movement, which we might call Dutch Biblical Humanism, tracing it back to Erasmus.
And then comes Reformed Protestantism, born out of the persecutions in the south of the Netherlands. Since 1544 many f led to Emden, Cologne, Aix la Chapelle, and also to London, where they found a shelter in Austinf riars, where in 1553 a Dutch church was founded, where the Holland language was spoken 6 years before areal Dutch Reformed Church in Holland was erected. Utenhove and a Lasco became the leaders, and their religious thought and constitutional churchlife had a great influence on Holland. They stood in relation with Calvin and Bullinger; the Confession of London was used in the Netherlands, before the Confessio Belgica of Guido de Bray was introduced in 1566; the London Catechism was a chief source for the later Heidelberg Catechism; thePsalms of Utenhove were song before those of Dathenus; our liturgy of Baptism and Holy Communion has much in common with Marten Micron's "Christian Ordinances", certainly it can be said of this church of London, what the famous scholar Festus Hommius said in 1620 : she was "mater et propagatrix omnium Reformatarum Ecclesiarum Belgicarum", the mother and foundress of all the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands 1).
And then our struggle for liberty began: the war with Spain. To all who speak the English language, the history of this great agony through which the Republic of Holland was ushered into life, must have peculiar interest.
A mild Calvinism took hold of our country and our people. Prince William of Orange, the pioneer of liberty, became a warm adherent of this Calvinism, the Calvinism of De Coligny and Marnix and the French Huguenots. And although he once said in 1577: "as bald is my head, so calvinistic is my heart" *), the Prince never approved of the ferocious bigotry and the atrocities perpetrated by some wild leaders, and it may be questioned whether he grasped fully the depth and fierceness of the religious animosities in the midst of
*) 8. Ruytinok, Oheschiedenissen, in: Werken der Marnix- Vereeniging, Serie III, Dl. I, p. 394.
*) M. Gachard, Correspondance de Quillaume le Taciturne, Brnz. 1851, Tom. III, p. LXIII, note 2.



53
which he had to work. In 1575 the Prince founded this our University and proved himself to be also on this domain the shepherd of his people ; those who taught in this University in the beginning years were adherents of that mild Reformed Protestantism of which Loyseleur de ViUiers was an example and the Heidelberg Catechism a typical symbol.
But London did not always keep the scepter, and the Paltz' influence faded; a stronger Calvinism came in. It came from the southem Netherlands, during the reign of Parma, after the fall of Antwerp in 1585, when many were forced to go to the North.
About 60.000 people came to Holland and went mostly to our large cities as Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leyden and Middelburg. In Leiden f.i. in 1622 two out of every three inhabitants had come, at earlier or later times, from the southern Netherlands. They were clothmanufacturers, workers in linen, velvet, gold, ivory, diamond, potteries, lively in appearance and manors, the nucleus of the Reformed Calvinistic partyWhen Oldenbarnevelt stands before his judges, he says, that he always has had the fear that most of the troubles that had come to these countries in matters of religion were caused by the foreigners and Hugo Grotius is of the same opinion'). Thegreater majority was Calvinistic in heart and soul, and believers from Brabant and Flanders took in such great numbers in the St. Pieters-church in Leyden the Holy Communion, that Dusseldorpius allows himself to make this sour remark: they empty in that cesspool of Holland, as he calls Leyden on account of the great number of foreigners, whole barrels of whine (integra vini dolia)s).
The Calvinistic element was still more reïnforced by those who had studied in the university of Geneve, where Calvin and after him Beza had taught. Geneve was the metropolis of education and culture, and many from the Netherlands went there to study theology. Those who came from Friesland studied especially law. Bogerman, the president of the synod of Dordt, studied here, and also many of those known later on as the most fiery Contra-Remonstrants: Sibrandus Lubbertus, Kromhout and V. d. Essen, the judges of Oldenbarnevelt,
*) A. A. van Schelven, Omvang en invloed der Zuid- Nederlandsche immigratie van het laatste kwart der 16e eeuw, 's-Grav. 1919.
') Berigten van het Historisch Genootschap te Utrecht, DL II, 2de Stuk (Utr. 1849), p. 251; H. de Groot, Verantwoordingh van de wetielycke Regieringh, Parijs 1622, p. 89, 93—95.
*) R. Fruin, Uittreksel uit Fr. Dusseldorpii Annales, 's-Grav. 1893, p. 217.



54
but also those who were later the leaders of the Remonstrants : Arminius, Uytenbogaert, de Haan and Van der Myle. Many of the Dutch translators of the Bible, published by command of the States General, that came from the press in 1687, had studied in Geneve, as prof. Thysius, Walaeus and Polyander "pacis amantissimus vir"This translation was published also with "Kantteekeningen" (Annotations) that were translated into English in 1657, and may have shaped the English theology.
Thus in the beginning of the 17th century, at the Synod of Dordrecht, there were two parties in the Netherlands: the Remonstrants and the Contra-Remonstrants. The first, heirs, as they said, of that broad Dutch Reform Protestantism, that practical Christianity, that undogmatic piety, preached by Veluanus and others, maintaining the right of the State to take part in ecclesiastical affairs ; while the Contra-Remonstrants were strong Calvinists, preaching and teaching predestination, the sovereignty of God and the total depravity of mankind, zealous in their maintenance alike of the autonomy of the Church. They were strong opponents and harassed each other continually. A writer of the times tells about a scène in the Pieterskerk in Leyden in 1612: "mirum erat videre", he says, how, when a minister mounted the pulpit, a part of the congregation left the church; according to his being a Remonstrant or not. If he was gummarista (follower of Gomarus) burgomasters and councillors left the church, "ut diabolo viso", but if he was herminista (follower of Arminius) then the Calvinists left the church *).
And so the great controversy began, that led to the Synod of Dordt, the unravelment. The Arminians were summoned there as accused parties. Their leader Episcopius defended their views with great eloquence and boldness. The doctrines of grace concerning predestination, redemption, the corruption of man, the manner of his conversion and the perseverance of the saints were elaborately discussed and more accurately defined. It was decided that the Remonstrants should be excluded from their offices. The Contra-Remonstrants had triumphed, but still there were many who kept their remonstrant views; and also others, who were in the position as that English delegate on the synod, who, when he had heard the explanation by Martinius of Bremen about John III, 16 said: „there I bid John
*) Herman de Vries, Genève pêplnière du Calvinisme Hollandais, Fribourg 1918, Tom. L
') R. Fruin, Uittreksel uit Fr. Dusseldorpii Annales, 's-Grav. 1893, p. 436.



Calvin good-night", although, as Mr. Fulloch remarks, ne dia not Dia Axminius good-morning.
So Calvinism became prevalant and dominant in Holland. The theological faculty of Leyden was reformed and became Calvinistic. It was the time of the synopsis purioris theologiae. Walaeus, Thysius, Polyander a Kerkhoven and Rivetus are the famous leaders, great men in this golden age; Voetius lectured in Utrecht, and students from foreign countries came in great numbers to our Universities especiaUy to Leyden, remembering us of the word of Scripture : who are these that f ly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows ?
The Contra-Remonstrants were antagonistic not only to the Remonstrants and Roman Catholics, but also to the Socinians, "who had come in from Poland, who denied the Trinity, the two natures m Christ, the Atonement of Christ, whose teachings did not muchdiffer, as the theological faculty of that time said, from the Turkish and Mahomedan doctrine, who exhumed or dug up, as it said, the old heresies of Ebion, Cerinthus and that great blasphemer Servetus"
So Calvinism had the suprème power, tül a new doctrine came gnawing at the roots of this big and strong tree. This doctrine was taught by Cartesius, the spiritual father of Geulincx and Spinoza, who lived from 1629—1649 in Endegeest, near Leyden. Prof. Heydanus came under the spell of Cartesius' words and writings and Coccejus was charmed by him. Cartesius broke down the Aristotehan handling of dogmata, wanted to disentangle himself from the formalistic forms, and urged a free and unhampered research. He tried to formulate sharply that alone those maxims could count for the human reason, which after all traditional authority had been broken down, should stand upright, clearly and distinctiy, for ones own personal insight. Coccejus kept the same stroke with Cartesius, only he was rowing in another channel. His Covenant-theology made considerable way in Holland after the predestination-questions had been settled. Cartesianism was condemned, but gained the day at last; the suprematie of Calvinism had come to an end.
The 18th century was a time of tolerance and sterility at the same time : the gospel of tolerance and the rights of the free human being were equally preached. The names of Voltaire and Rousseau were in the air, and in Holland the Frenchman Pierre Bayle labored as
i) A. Eekhof, De theologische faculteit te Leiden in de zeventiende eeuw, Utr. 1921, p. 237.
55



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minister in Rotterdam, and not in vain; everybody must choose his own altar at which he can sacrifice; unhampered freedom of thought is requested.
The lamp of mysticism was carried from the 17th to the 18th century, but it burned rather dimly. The theology of the inner life of Lampe, of Verschuur, of Schortinghuis was very oppressive and close, like a hot wave; they opposed themselves against a dry and dust dogmatism, but feil in the fault of fostering an unhealthy mental life, which ended in overestimation of themselves.
And then again Hollland was an asylum for the oppressed, or as Professor L. Knappert, of this University, points out in his book "The History of the Dutch Reformed Church": Holland was again an arch of salvation—la grande arche des fugitifs. Foliowers of the Count Von Zinzendorf (who had studied at the University of Utrecht), came from Herrnhut to Holland, and even the princes (Marieke Meu) was interested in them; although sometimes persecuted by strong orthodox synods they at last settled in some places in Holland. Stfll congregations of Hernhutters, followers of Von Zinzendorf. are in Zeist and Haarlem, with 800 members. Not only Von Zinzendorf but also William Penn and George Fox had visited in 1677 our country, Wieuwerd, where the mystic Jean de Labadie had lived. Quaeckers came to Amsterdam and to Leiden. Penn and Fox had a disputation with Galenus Abrahamsz de Haan in Amsterdam; but the conference did not come to a good end, whether the Englishmen feil into the pitfaüs of the Dutch language, or the Dutch into the snares of the English, I cannot teil. So there was still an orthodox church-system, but the thorough and capable defenders of former times had shaken off this mortal coil. The 18th century makes upon us the impression of a bird's nest of last year.
And now the 19th came on the stage. In an interesting book published by prof. K. H. Roessingh, of this University, under the title i "Het Modernisme in Nederland" (Modernism in Holland), hesays: "What is worth relating about Holland's spiritual life in the 19th /century begins with the Réveil".
The Réveil. It had its origin in a religious awakening in Switserland, but was confined in Holland almost entirelyto certain aristocratie circles in Amsterdam and the Hague. The poet Bilderdijk is the father of the Réveil in Holland. He gave lectures and gathered a group of followers around him, among whom was the Jewish prophet and poet Isaac da Costa, who as he puts it, was brought by Bilderdijk to "the



57
Christ, whom his fathers had crucified". Also was among them Groen van Prinsterer, a jurist, an historian and states man, and Willem de Clercq, described by Allard Pierson in one of his beautiful and inspiring books.
Those men and women of the Réveil placed the antithesis : human sin and divine grace; they clung to the divine inspiration of Scripture and sovereign grace; they were opposed to the spirit of the Age, as a book written by Da Costa was called, published one hundred years ago, and above all they wished to bring life into the dead bones, also on the elementary schools ; religion is experience and feeling.
This root has produced two branches: the moderate orthodox and the calvinistic. Among the moderates, if I am allo wed to call them so, we reckon : Van Oosterzee, a professor in Utrecht and famous preacher; Doedes, who devoted himself chiefly to textual criticism and gave considerable space to the art of conjectural emendation; Nicolaas Beets, our great poet, the immortal writer of the "Camera Obscura", the most typical Dutch book ever written; in this connection we may also point to Gunning and Chantepie de la Saussaye Senior, who were representatives of what is called the "ethical school". Not the dogma but life stood in the foreground ; through life to doctrine, and not the reverse, was their teaching, under influence of Vinet.
The other branch was embodied in Dr. Abraham Kuyper. First a pupil of Scholten in Leyden, he went after his conversion in the footsteps of Calvin, and in politics he took the line of Groen van Prinsterer. He has done much for the revival of Calvinism in Holland. He founded the Free University in Amsterdam in 1880 on Calvinistic principles; he established a new Church formation, when he and many with him left the Dutch Reformed Church in 1886; he has been the prime minister for several years and has made his political party, the Antirevolutionary party, a strong power in the State. A man of great knowledge and energy, he published shelves of books on all kind of theological and political subjects, which still are read with great care and trust. Kuyper did a great deal for the Hollanders in the United States, visited them and delivered his Stone lectures on Calvinism in Princeton University.
A second movement that shook the 19th century out of its drow siness was: the Groninger school. Hofstede de Groot, Pareau and Van Heusde were seeking to impress the truth that life is more than doctrine. Not a doctrine of Paul it was they wanted to preach, but the Evangel, and therefore they called themselves: "Evangeli-



58
schen". Niet de leer, maar de Heer: not a dogma, but the Lord, was their watchword.
Was this movement the same as the Réveil ? No. The difference with the Réveil was that the outlook of the Evangelischen on the world was optimistic, and although binding themselves to the Bible, they wished to keep in contact and bring in contact with the high Culture of their times. Schleiermacher was a well-beloved name.
Round about 1860 a third movement came: the Modern Theology and Modern School. Prof. Roessingh says: they wanted a synthesis between that what they understood to be the real Christian belief and the scientific thought of their time. Ideas of State and Church, Confession and Bible, Reason and Revelation, God and Man got a new significance; the autonomy of ones own mind was insisted upon. The influence of Aufklarung, of Kant, Herder and Hegel were felt-^the time of the discoveries on the scientific domain had come1). The three men whose names rise spontaneously in the mind, when we think of the foundera of this School are: Opzoomer, Scholten and Kuenen.
Opzoomer the professed philosopher, who recommended philosophy as consoling man with himself ; who saw in the empiric-the only true law to knowledge. OproomeFwTth his passion for reality, whose philosophy was brought to the studies of the ministers by him, whose name I have mentioned already and that has a charm still in Holland, also for his books on the Réveil and his aesthetic essays: AUard Pierson, one of the gifted members of the Pierson family.
Hermannus Scholten, professor at Leyden, who in his "The doctrine of the Reformed Church" taught a monism on deterministic ground ; and then, last not least, Abraham Kuenen, with Graf and Wellhausen, the old testament critic, whose graciousness is specially and rightly noticed, and whose genuine Dutch exactness some Dutch writers ascribe in some measure to the interruption in his studies, which took place on his fathers death, when he had to work for some time in a chemical laboratory. His fine picture you can adrnire in the Senatsroom; one of his sons died a few years ago, rector of this University, much beloved as bis father had been. Tiele, professor in the study of comparative religions, wellknown for his Gifford lectures, and Oort, professor of Hebrew, who gave us a new Dutch translation of the (Hd Testament, were among the first, who stood in theforemost ranks
') See also: Eldred v. d. Laan, Protestant Modernisme in Bolland, 127 p



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of the Modernist movement; Busken Huet, with his prose, and De Genest et with his poetry brought the ideas to the common people.
In the 20th century these currents flowed in another direction and other problems asked for new solutions. There came the labourmovement and the socialistic tendencies. The religious social-democratic groups concentrated themselves in 1902 and published a paper in which they make propaganda for their ideas: "The happy world". A newly colored Modernism came to the foreground that distinguished itself from the old, by laying more impression on the holmess of God, the redemption from sin, the longing for a new Christologie, and that also seeks to accomplish a more close connection of the right wing of the modern party with the left wing of the orthodox. And then particularly the "Woodbrooke-movement" has to be mentioned. The Dutch students who had studied in Woodbrooke near Biirmingham, under the spiritual guidance of prof. Rendel Harris, formed a little society when they had returned to Holland. They gathered in Barchem, seeking religious communion, unity with God and each other, and they published a periodical'' Omhoog'' (Excelsior). The movement of the Liberal Christian Students has become pretty strong in University life; they plan organisations among the youth, hold religious conferences and feel for the social gospel of peace, instead of a dogmatic one. These are the currents in the liberal religious party.
In the orthodox we have the middleparty, usually called the "ethical" group, about which we spoke already. Their strong individuahstic standpoint, or rather their insistence on the personal element in religion, characterizes them; they read the Scriptures, using the historic-critical method, but they want to keep in touch with "the belief of the Faithful", as they call it. One of their leaders was prof. P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, who is wellknown for his book on religions, and who wrote a book on "Christian life", that has already a second edition, and has found its place in current church literature. The strong orthodox, more Calvinistic party in Holland, are the "Confessionals" and "Gereformeerden", inside and outside the Dutch Reformed Church. Hoedemaker, who spent his youth in America, was the leader of the Confessionals, who try to reform the Dutch Reformed Church on the principles of Dordt and along the ecclesiastical lines drawn up by this Synod; another party is de "Gereformeerde Bond" who also wants to reform the Church. Outside the Dutch Ref.-Church we mentioned already Dr. A. Kuyper, but we should also give honor to Dr. Bavinck, a scholar and teacher, professor of the Free University, who



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wrote a thorough and much studied Dogmatic in four volumes, and who had an open eye for the problems of Calvinism and the Culture of today. His death a few years ago was a great loss for the whole country. Now these orthodox parties, various in church and religious doctrine, work together in the practical domain: homemissions, mission festivals, care of the poor, the orphans, the insane, the blind and all other kinds of work for the destitute and the needy.
Religious thought always wants some concrete form; religious life needs an organisation; different kinds of churches and religious societies have sprang up in Holland, about whom we must say a few words. There is a characteristic word in the Dutch language "Geestverwanten", which may be translated as "Spiritual Kindred", people of the same mental disposition; they feel the need of thinking and acting in a group, so we have first the different Churches. There are some of course who do not belong to any Church. Holland has at present 6.865.000 inhabitants, of whom in 1920—7 %, nearly 8%, did not belong to any Church; in 1899 this was 2V«%; in 1909 5 %. So about 92 % wish to be reckoned to belong to a Church.
The oldest is the Roman Catholic Church, which has now about 2.444.000 members. She grows a little bit in numbers, owing to the decline of deathrate among infants and the large families many Roman Cathohes have. Some Protestants went over to the Roman Catholic Church, among whom a few years ago was one of our best and famous writers Frederik van Eeden; the Roman Catholic element preponderates in the southern provinces of Limburg and Noord-Braband. The Church has an archbishop in Utrecht and four bishops: Haarlem, Den Bosch, Breda and Roermond, since 1858. Our premier Ruys de Beerenbrouck belongs to this Church. In the R. C. scientific world there is a great foreward movement; they have an University at Nijmegen, that was opened last year with great splendour. On July next the Eucharistie Congress will be held in Amsterdam, at which various American bishops are expected. Roman Catholics from Holland have founded colonies in the United States, in 1848 in Little Chute in Wisconsin, also in Butlar in Minnesota. Vondel who glorified "the Mysteries of the Altar", wrote a drama Lucifer, that was translated by Mr. Van Noppen in the English language.
There are about 115.000 Jews in the Netherlands; in the middle of the 17th century they were openly recognized. Mostly SpanishPortugeese Jews; later on came the German Jews. We know them



61
from the pictures of Rembrandt and Israels. Honor be to Baruch Spinoza {
The Dutch Reformed Church has 2.826.000 members, which is a little more than the Roman Catholic Church; so it has as members between 1/a and l/3 of the whole Dutch population. It dates from Reformation times and has many shades of opinion. The strong Calvinistic (Gereformeerden and Confessioneelen), the Middleparty (Etischen), the Groninger (Evangelischen) and the Moderns (Liberal), and all these again with many variations.
These differences have often caused difficulties and lead to collisions : so in 1834 and in 1886 wfien members seceded from the Church. Many efforts have been made and are still made to reconcile the different parties in the Church through a modus vivendi or otherwise, but the solution of the problem is not found yet. The Church has no seminaries, but it has two professors of its own at each University, in Leyden, Utrecht and Groningen, who teach the branches and subjects, necessary for those who wish to be ministers of the Church. Formerly women were not recognized as ministers, bnt now they can become assistant-ministers. The present organisation of the Church dates from 1816. The Church is governed by a Synod, who meets once a year at The Hague.
The Dutch Reformed Church has churches in the East Indies and also in the West Indies (Surinam and Curacao) and has done a great and enterprising work in the 17th century through East-and West Indian Company for the colonisation. Not only to the East Indies, but also to South Africa, Surinam, Brazil, Ceylon etc. ministers were sent and churches established. It was the classis of Amsterdam of the Dutch Reformed Church who founded the Church in New York (New Amsterdam), in 1628, and along the Hudson River (Albany, Kingston, Esopus). Tül the beginning of the 19th century the classis of Amsterdam as motherchurch kept up correspondance with these American churches. The Reformed Church in America still has in some way the same liturgy as the motherchurch in Holland.
As I have said before, there was a secession from this Church in 1834 and one in 1886, called "De Doleantie"; some of these parties united in 1892 as "Gereformeerde Kerken", others kept on as „Christelijk Geref. Kerk". Many of the seceders of 1834 went about 1850 to America and founded under leadership of Van Raalte and Scholten congregations in Michigan, of which Holland and Grand Rapids are well known. These were the Pilgrim Fathers of the West.



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The "Gereformeerde Kerken" in Holland, with 572.000 souls, have two institutes for the training of ministers: one in Kampen and the Free University in Amsterdam. This has faculties for theology, law, hterature and medicine. These Churches develop a great power m thereligious life of Holland; as they have no State funds the chanty is great. At present work is going on to unite Calvinism and Culture and to get a good insight into the problems of authority of Scnpture and other articles of Faith.
The Lutheran Churches have an orthodox and modern element. In 1888 some Lutherans re-established the Church, in order to keep more strictly to the orthodox faith. The Lutheran Church has a serninary in Amsterdam; and the Re-established has one in Utrecht. About 87.000 members belong to the Lutheran Church; and 15.000 to the Re-established Lutheran Church.
The Mennonites you will find speciaüy in Groningen, Friesland and North Holland, and also in the large cities. They have 188 congregations They belief in a practical and undogmatical piety and in the autonomy of each congregation. They have reunions to strengthen the religious life, a mission on Java and Sumatra The first woman who became a minister in Holland, Dr. Zernike, belonged to this Church. Some of the Dutch Mennonites went to Russia and also to America, where they have congregations in New Paris inthe state of Indiana, and in Alexanderwohl in Kansas
The Remonstrant Brotherhood has as motto: Unity m what is necessary; liberty in what is uncertain; in everything chanty. They have 27 congregations, ako one in Friedrichstadt a/d. Eider. There is a serninary in Leyden, where Dr. P. J. Heering is professor, who with prof. Roessingh, is one of leaders of liberal Christianity in Holland. Social problems and the etbical side of politics are centres of interest In Holland there are still some, though smaU, Walloon (French) Churches and congregations; there are English (Anglican) churches in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht, and also nonconformist English, American and Scotch churches in de Bagrjnehof in Amsterdam, in The Hague and the Scotch Church in Rotterdam.
There is no time to dweil on all the sects, who contribute to the religious life of Holland, more or less, to day: Darbysts, Baptists,
«> A description of the Hollanders and the different Dutoh Churches inrthe tl l a bv A Eekhof Vijf en twintig jaar HóCUindsch- Vlaamech leven
lmiïJÏZriZ t.ÏÏÏÏo* I Armeen ****** Vertond, Dordreoht 1923, p. 86—120.



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Christian Scientists, Salvation Army, even Mormons. A great influence on the religious life has been executed by the Christian Student Associations. We count about 9000 students in Holland, of which 1000 are members of the Roman Catholic Church; 1000 of the Netherl. Christian Student Association; 1000 of the Liberal Christian Student Association and about 500 of the more Calvinistic* Association; so more than one third is religiously organized. Movements among the youth (Gymnasium and H.B. Schools) are promoted; conferences are held for discussion of religious, social and political problems and also conferences on missions; they wish to work and stand in the midst of the world, doing their bit. All these Churches and Societies add their stone to the edifice of the religious life in Holland.
"This life culrninates in the church service on the Sunday morning. Then you can hear the ringing of the churchbells ; in the villages sometimes at 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock and also at 10 o'clock, when usually the service begins. In many churches there still is a precentor, who stands in front of the pulpit and gives out the first psalm. When the congregation sings, the minister with the elders and deacons come out of the consistory room ; the minister mounts the pulpit, elders and deacons take a seat on each side of the pulpit or in the baptismal rail around the pulpit. The minister pronounces the votum; the precentor reads a part of the Bible, sometimes also the Ten Commandments or the Creed. There is one long prayer, the men arising from their pews ; and usually four times a psalm or hymn is sung, in slow tune, the congregation sitting, and not standing as is the custom in England and America. In the middle of the sermon there usually is a hymn, when two or three collections are held, for the poor, for the church, and for other christian purposes. The service lasts one hour and a half, of which the sermon takes 8 /4 of an hour. In the usual way four times a year Holy Communion is held, when the members of the Church sit around a table which stands in the middle of the church or just before the pulpit. In many of our country congregations women come to church wearing their golden headdress, their lace caps, carrying their Bibles, as in Staphorst and Rouveen, on silver chains; a beautiful and wonderful sight it is, when the lights are Ut in the evening, to see the glimmer of the gold and süver and lace aU over the benches in the church.
Now let us see in conclusion what is the characteristic in the religious thought and life in Holland :



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One who lived quite a long time in the Netherlands and who knows Holland well, rev. James Hutton Mackay says in his "Religious thought in Holland during the 19th century" : "The Dutch are a people of dykes and dams, both as to theii land and to their mental life" *) and the saying of Dr. Abraham Kuyper, that is often quoted, points'in thé*same direction, when he speaks about the danger of: "blurring the boundary lines". This we can apply to the religious thought and life in Holland. Holland is a country of dykes and dams and ditches. Our country is won from the sea; much fighting with the ocean had tol* done and still is done, and this calls for perseverance; dare has to be taken; fitness of sr^t and mind is necessary. This has formedthe character of the Hollander through the ages, his theology and his life. The Hollander in general is, although the mingling with other nations of course grve excePtions-he is, as Fruin says, "bedaard» »): he ways well the pros and cons, he is slow in action, calm in rjrosperity, patiënt m adversity, persevering in opposition, not passionate in trouble, not excrted m by These quahties however can become imperfections and f aihngs a> htantness and obstinacy. The Hollander is not favorably disposed towards novelties ; he has entreprise but likes to be certain of the result. In religious aff airs he wrestles; he takes things earnestiy, just as he likes good strong food for his body, he wants it also for his soul;, he isi mo* mclined towards the inteUectual than the emotional, and although it sometimes can be rough on the canals, usually his chmate and the air over his dykes and dams and ditches are temperate, no sharp contrasts, and so are the feelings of the Hollander in general.
Holland is a country of dykes and dams and ditches, this means : separation. In other countries religion is more a mass movement, in Holland religion is taken personal and individual. Everybody thinks for himself, stands by himself. Certainly there is a social feehng but when two or three do not agree with the leadership or the conclusions arrived at, they form a new group and a separate party. In 1918 there were more than 30 political parties, and some one pointed out how many different "Gereformeerde Kerken" (Calvinistic Reformed Churches) there are : The Reformed Churches ; Chmtian Reformed Church; Reformed Congregations (Ledeboerianen); Old Reformed
1) RoiL Fruin, Het karakter van hei Nederlandse!* Volk, iu: Robert Fndn'. Verspreide Geschriften, VGrav. 1900, DL I, p- 8—9.



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Congregations ; Reformed Congregations under the Cross ; The Dordt Reformed Churches; the Free Reformed; the True Reformed; the Free Reformed Congregations devoted to the Synod of Dordt etc. etc. Each one has his own dykes and dams and ditches : the idea of separation. Hollanders always have to remind each other, like in the days of old : Eendracht maakt macht (In Unity there is strength).
At the foot of his dikes and dams Holland has built its little cosy green painted houses, with the small vegetable garden round about. The Holland woman cleans the house outside and inside once a week and even more. nis house is his castle, with his own little bridge; here he is master. Woe to him who tries to push him out of it; then you will see fire in his eye, he clenches his fist, he squares his shoulders: "hij zal op zijn stuk staan", as he calls it, "he will stand to his guns", he will fight.
But he will open the door of his house and his heart to the destitute and wretched, to the exiles and persecuted, and in wartime he '11 not first ask: who are you ? but he will show charity and hospitality; he will go to the barn and sleep near his cow and will give his own bed to the guest and the best of the cow's butter and cheese to his poor friend. This is not the excessive description of your lecturer, but it was said by one of your distinguished men in America: ■"When we consider the history of religious bigotry and persecutibn that has marred the fame of every other nation in the world, then that little land rescued from the sea, rises before us in a blaze of glory and will meet with praise until the stars shall fall. Let others talk of their armed strength, and their victories, we will talk of the large-heartedness and the broad-mindedness of the nation that was a church under the cross, and under the cross made what the Father intended all His children should make under that symbol of love, a sanctuary for the persecuted .and oppressed. And so it is that, while time shall last, the name of Holland will live. It is immortal, it is indestructible, because it stands as the representation of a charity which is divine" x).
These dykes and dams and ditches are the symbols of his perseverance, of his love for separation, of his hospitality, but also of* bis s elf confidence in times of anxiety and trouble. This s elf confidence leads to a desire for independance, a love of liberty. Holland above all knows how priceless the boon of liberty is. From behind her dykes and dams Holland sailed the great ocean, and paused hot until
') Tearbook of the Holland Society of Neto York, 1894, p. 98, 99.
Lectures on Holland
5



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she dipped the fringe of her banners in the waters of the western seas : freedom of movement, unhampered independance, love of liberty are in her blood. Again these quaUties have their weak sides : dislike of discipline, a kind of stubbornness, sometimes even lawlesness. But this love of liberty and independance is not a doting on an abstract idea, but the cherishing of a simple practical thought of personal freedom to think, to say, to do, what God and conscience bid him to do, although he does not always unite this love of freedom with true hberahty. Holland has breathed into her nostrils at the very birth of the nation the true spirit of hberty, but Holland knows, or better should know: Nisi Dominus f rustra !
Marching in the van of ehristianized hberty, her manifest destiny is to light the torch of hberty tül it illumines the entire pathway of the world, in the spirit of our Prince William of Orange who has written these golden words, in 1574 to his brother .John: "We must submit to the will of God and trust in his divine Providence, that He, who has given the blood of His only son to maintain His Church, will do nothing but what will redound to the advancement of His glory and the preservation of His Church on earth".






JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
Etching by Ph. Ziloken after C. Blsschop's picture to Huis ten Bosch, the Hague



JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY AS HISTORIAN
(1814—1877)
BY
P. J. BLOK
The great American historian, who in Holland too is gratefully remembered on account of the peculiar services he rendered to Dutch historiography pertaining to the Eighty Years' War with Spain, deserves to be commemorated in a course of lectures like the present.
On bis mother's side, he descended from an ancient English family in the East Riding of Yorkshire (Lowthorpe), whence in 1634 the "godly minister", John LothropdepartedforMassachusettstoofficiate there as a clergyman. In the beginning of the 19th century his descendants were established in Dorchester (Mass.), at present apart of Boston (Mass.) and belonged to a well-to-do family. Of the marriage of Thomas Motley, whose grandfather had emigrated from Belfast (Ireland) to Maine at the end of the 18th century, with Anne Lothrop, daughter of the Rev. John Lothrop, the future historian, John, was born as the second son. His father was a partner of a well-known mercantile firm.
In early youth already John proved to be of a studious disposition. He read a great deal. With the exception of swimming he was not much interested in sports, though, up to a great age he continued to be a good skater. After passing through the lower school he studied at Harvard from 1827—1831. He was not a particularly brilhant student, but still of "recognized abüity" ; here, too, he read much, especially Scott and Carlyle, Prescott and Cooper. To complete his education he sailed for Europe in 1832 and studied at Göttingen and Berlin. An industrious (let alone a brilHant) scholar he was not here either. With his intimate friends: Otto von Bismarck, the afterwards so famous statesman and count Kayserling, he applied himself to acquire all-round culture ; to read old medieval chronicles and modern literature rather than to specially devote himself to the study of law or eonscientiously to attend lectures. He was a young man of prepos-



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sessing appearance, slender and elegant, a fluent talker and fond of debate. Bismarck relates in one of his later letters, that after a long dispute during the night Motley was sometimes sitting beside his bed in the moming, waiting to resumé the conversation directly on his awakening. But "he never lost his mild and amiable temper". For the rest he looked about him with wide-open eyes and got to know German life and the German soul thoroughly. On his return to America in 1884 he established himself as r barrister at Boston, but he had only a small practice and chiefly devoted himself to his historical and Uterary studies, wrote short stories and essays, which were published in periodicals and attracted attention by their facile style. On the 2nd of March 1837 he married the gifted Mary Benjamin with whom he passed an exceedingly happy life and who presented him with three daughters, also girls of talent.
His lawyer's practice remained of httle importance. He mainly led the life of a young and well-to-do man of letters, writing novels and historical essays, which brought him into contact with the American authors of his time, especially with those of Boston, who made him a member of their club. Particularly Prescott, the writer of the History of Fenlinand and Isabella (1888) ever had a great influence upon him.
His ability, which by this time was recognized, in 1841 procured for him the post of secretary to the American legation at St. Petersburgh. But he did not hold it much longer than a year; the Russian climate did not agree with him, he longed for his family at Boston and, at last, returned home, after which he devoted himself again to his historical and Uterary studies, which, however, did not procure him the great reputation which he afterwards acquired. At one time he thought of a political career in his native country, and in 1849 he actuaUy became a member, as a democratie liberal, of the Massachusétts House of Representants, but soon he had enough of "dirty politics", as he later said. Again he returned to history and Uterature, more and more under the influence of Prescott, who then had written his Conquest of Mexico (1848) and of Peru (1847) and in this way had made a great name for himself.
At Prescott's advice, who just then was making preparations for his book on Phflip II of Spain, he resolved to turn his attention to the history of our Eighty Years' War, struck as he was—as he later told Groen van Prinsterer— by the resemblance of the Dutch war of independence to that of the American repubhc ; of prince WilUam of Orange to Washington. He read much on the subject and soon set himself



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to write a historical work on it. But while thus engaged, he understood that, after all, it would be better to go to Europe first and there to consult not only the printed, but also the unprinted documents, which were still hidden in the archives. He laid aside his nearly finished manuscript and in 1851 he crossed over to Europe with his family, where soon at Brussels, the Hague, Berlin and Dresden he delved deep in the" archives "working like a brute beast" for a couple of years. He was now, after getting acquainted with Dutch and Belgian historians of the later school, deeply convinced that "the first duty of every conscientious historian is to make the most impartial and unbiassed statement of facts and to judge every personage and every series of events according to the code presented by justice and reason, which are unchanging and perpetual"1).
After two years of this serious study and talks with men like our Groen van Prinsterer and Bakhuizen van den Brink, like the Belgian archivist-general Gachard, he had obtained quite a new insight into the history of the Dutch revolt. With ardent enthusiasm he applied himself to these studies and soon began to compose parts of his "Rise of the Dutch Republic", that splendidly written and deeply feit description of William of Orange's, his venerated hero's struggle. He regards this struggle as that for modem ideas of civil and religious hberty and, therefore, of tremendous importance for his own time. He views prince William as the ingenious leader, the statesman ripened into a hero of the faith, the founder—as he thinks—of democratie modes of thinking, which were so dear to him, the liberal democrat, as Americans understand the term. His book is of great importance to Hollanders, because it has made the history of the rise of the Dutch state the common property of the whole cultured world and of the Anglo-Saxons in the first place.
At first he experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher for his speedily finished book. Murray in London refused it and Chapman was only willing to print it, if the author himself defrayed the expenses. With the aid of his father and his uncle Motley collected the sum required. Thus he was taught by personal experience that "history writing is not a very money-making concern", that it "must be pursued honestly as a science, if it is to be permanently valuable, and not as a trade" 2); that "the moment a man begins to write for money,
') Ms. Letter to Groen van Prinsterer. lst. of Sept. 1857. ') Corresp. I p. 319.



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it is apt to be all over with his true reputation" *). Yet with practical sense he decided that "a telling and selling title is always desirable to attract readers and buyers". And he found that title.
The book was an overwhelming success, especially on account of its style, but not on that account alone. The English historian Froude *) praised his "power of dramatic description", his "elaborate and distinct analysis of character", his hatred of oppression, his contempt of selfishness, his "honest love for all which is good and admirable", the moral effect of his book ; Guizot, Prescott, Bakhuizen van den Brink en Groen van Prinsterer praised it equally. At one blow it made him a famous man *): at the Hague the cultured queen Sophia honoured him with her friendship and sought his company; in England he was lionized by the leaders of London Society; in America he was hailed as an ornament of young American science. Translations into French,German and Dutch, the first^named under the supervision of Guizot himself, the last under that of Bakhuizen, procured him evér new readers, new adrnirers. A single critic only ventured to ask if the pains bestowed on the form had not, here and there, been detrimental to the contents, if the modern mind of the author had not tinged prince William's times and himself with too modern colours. And it cannot be denied that, indeed, Motley did not escape these dangers, dangers to which he certainly was not sufficiently alive *). But in spite of this his work is of great importance, also as a pure and honest work of history, as scientific labour.
This great success induced him to continue his work, as he soon did; to conceive the grand scheme of writing the complete history of our war of independance, to the end, to the peace of Munster (1648). After a short rest he resumed his researchês in the archives, this time referring to the period 1584—1609, that of prince Maurice of Orange and of the great Dutch statesman Oldenbarnevelt. Again he was deeply engaged in "minework" in the archives, now especially in London and at the Hague. He took care to introducé approprfate yariety into his life and after a day's work of many hours, he acted like a miner, who is desirous of shaking off the "dust of ages" by intense domestic
>) Ibid. p. 212.
2) Holmes. Memoir. p. 78.
') Cf. his corresp. of this period.
*) Cf. among other articles Fruin's oriticism of his second work, in F.'s oollected essays, vol. III p. 118 etc.



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and social intercourse. But while thus occupied he saw that also in this work "the individuals seem to clothe themselves with a ghostly kind of life" ; they "seem to haunt me" he says l). In this way the work progressed quickly while he was, uninterruptedly feeding himself on the carcase of the buried centuries". And before long he could again commence to write, hoping, as before, that he would be able to follow out his wish of calling "fancy to the side of history" *). But here he was confronted by a, to him, serious obstacle. "I have not got a great central heroic figure, like William the Silent, to give unity and flesh and blood interest to the scène." The new book "I fear will be duller and less dramatic than the other", though here also are "many great events and striking characters, if I can do justice to them" *). Here he had not "William of Orange for a hero", and consequently he feit less inspired in writing. Still, he could report, as early as 1860 that two volumes were finished.
This time the highly honoured author, who moved especially and with a certain zest in exalted English and Dutch circles, found no difficulties in getting the book published. Murray himself now asked the favour of being allowed to print it, and offered him a considerable eopy-fee. The first two volumes of his "History of the United Netherlands" appeared in 1861 but did, indeed, as Motley himself had feared, not make such a deep impression on the public. Brilhant descriptions like that of Parma's siege of Antwerp (1585), of Sir Philip Sidney's death (1586), of the destruction of the Armada (1588), reminded the reader of those in the preceding book, but the long political speculations and stories of diplomatic complications, introduced as the documents furnished them, proved a disappointment to the general public, on the whole. Still, in the scientific world the book was not less favourably received than the preceding one, and was highly praised in the reviews, though the voice of adverse criticism was louder than before 4). It was not before 1867 that the next two volumes of the new book could appear. This delay was caused by three circumstances which diverted Motiey's attention from the composition of his book: the American Civil War, his work as ambassador at Vienna, the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.
The great struggle of the North under Lincoln, whom he admired
') Corresp. I p. 330.
2) Mildmay. J. L. Motley. p. 296/7.
8) Corresp. I p. 207.
') Holmes. Memoir. p. 100.



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enthusiastically, under Johnson and Grant, against the Southern alliance of Davis and Lee, never, for a moment, lost its hold on the attention of the American living far away in Europe. That struggle occupied his active mind day and night. The "northern view" of the slave-question found in him a passionate advocate and in the letters to his mother and to his friend Holmes, he expresses himself as clearly as possible regarding his hopes of an approaching victory of the Northerns, after a protracted alternation of chances x). In 1861 Lincoln charged him with representing the United States at Vienna as an ambassador, for it was important to establish a post of observation in the ancient imperial city and there was reason to fear "what was going on in the cabinet councils of Europe", where Motley by his personal relations with English, German and other statesmen, by his travels in various countries, his intercourse with princes and high dignitaries, could render great services to his country. In the midst of his historical studies of olden times, he kept in touch with his own, as before. As during his composing "the Rise", when he used to vent his anger with general Haynau, the emperor Nicholas I of Russia and Louis Napoleon, on Alva and Philip II, and accounted himself happy "to be able to pitch into them to my heart's content" a), he now found consolation in disparaging Parma, queen Elizabeth and Philip II. His letters brim over with violent expressions about the enemies of the North, about England's evident inclination to support the South8). Although he takes an active part in the Viennese court conversations, which often enables him to insert amusing descriptions of the court, of the diplomats, of the "cavaliers" end "comtesses",yethesympathizes with the Prussian ideas of his friend Bismarck, though there is little harmony between them and his own liberal views. The Mexican embroilments naturaüy cause him a great deal of trouble and sometimes he finds little leisure to prosecute his favourite studies. Then follows the great struggle in Germany between Prussia and Austria, in which he by no means disowns his sympathies for the former. Thus he gets himself into a false position, to which in 1867 a sudden end is put by the curt authoritative word of Johnson, who sends him his dismissal as an ambassador, because he meddled too much in "internal Austrian politics and society". He is furious and disappointed to be thus treated, but obliged to acquiesce and consoles him-
') Corresp. II. p. 90 and 160.
2) Holmes. Memoir. p. 124.
*) Cf. the corresp. of these years.



78
self by printing the last two volumes of his History, which appear this year and bring up his work to the Twelve Years' Truce. For the restit is true that his correspondence both about the Mexican ad venture of the unfortunate young archduke Maximilian, and the relations between Prussia and Austria do not bear witness to special diplomatic talent. Certainly even then his chief mental occupation was not his diplomatic work, which, indeed, might have been of such great importance, also to the United States, but his digging "deep in the bosom of archives", his passion for his book in the midst of his diplomacy and his torment about the course of events in America. "I try to write but it is hard work with one's thoughts so perpetually absorbed with our own war against tyrants more bloody than Philip or Alva and an institution (slavery) more accursed than the Spanish Inquisition"*). On the other hand he complains—at the time of the Civil war, the Mexican question and the German embroilments!—that he has "very little business, so little that I am almost ashamed to take a salary for it" 8). A sufficiënt proof, surely, that he was not really fit for the post.
Indeed, he soon conceives the plan to begin the third great book. This is work after his own heart and he commences at once to think it out. Within ten years he hopes to bring it up to the peace of Munster. "I feel the want of work", he exclaims in the spring of 1867 ; "if I once lose the faculty of enjoying work, what will become of me ?" 8)
A visit to his native country in 1868 and 1869 revives his interest in the course of events there, especially when Grant has become president, the continuator of Lincoln's tradition. Grant Wishes to avail himself of Motiey's popularity in England to put an end to the discord between the United States and this country, which continued to exist even after the war. But during his two years' embassy in London, in particular in the ticklish Alabama question, Motley has of anew shown little diplomatic talent. One of his good friends, lord Odo Russell thinks him, after this episode, unfit for such a task, on account of lack of suppleness, and too great impulsivity. Consequently Grant suddenly relieved him of his office (9th of No v. 1870), and that in the midst of the new great struggle in Europe between Germany and France.
Once more deeply injured by the way in which he was treated,
*) Corresp. II p. 90. 2) Ibid., p. 194. *) Ibid., p. 286.



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Motley, at once, applied himself with all his might to his historical work. As early as February 1871 he is at the Hague to plunge into the times of Oldenbarnevelt. Queen Sophia at first offered him a house behind the rural "Huis ten Bosch", where she herself resided and whence she came to see him and his family every day; afterwards he established himself on the Kneuterdijk, in the historical house of Johan de Witt*). Oldenbarnevelt's notoriously bad handwriting causes him a great deal of trouble, so that on one occasion he even exclaims that the statesman deserved to be beheaded on account of his scrawl rather than his politics. But with the help of Groen and Bakhuizen he bravely acquitted himself of his task. At the Hague and in London, where the Record Office and the British Museum furnish much material, he soon finished "The Life of John of Barnevelt". But the inspiration which stimulated him in writing the "Rise" is lacking in this book, though here a hero is by no means wanting, as in the "History". It is the weakest production of the three. He is evidently "broken by work", as he mentions in some of the letters, and in July 1878 he writes the word "finish" with a sigh. It was a great satisfaction to him to take part, on the first of April 1872, as one of the king's suite, in the festivities of Den Briel, to commemorate the event which three centuries before might be considered the beginning of the war of independence. On that occasion the University of Leyden offered him the honorary degree of doctor of law, on the proposition, in all likelihood, of the patriotic Leyden professors Fruin and de Vries, with whom, however, he did not keep personal touch a); it seems to me that the rather severe criticism of the former, the greatest of our historians, somewhat ruffled Motley, accustomed, as he was, to general admiration.
After Motley published his Barnevelt (1874) the state of his health seriously impeded his labour on the task he had set himself. He went to England and there, especially in the environment of the Russells, he enjoyed, for another few years, society-life and the reputation which his writings had brought him. In the summer of 1876, he was once more the guest of queen Sophia at the "Huis ten Bosch". His letters, especially after the death of his beloved wife (Dec. 1874) clearly reveal his increasing feebleness and lassitude. Having returned to
») Amusing descriptions of life at the Hague, and of his environment, also in this house, in several letters in Corresp. II. p. 320 ff.
») No evidenoe whatever of oorrespondence or personal acquaintance has been found in the letters of either.



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England he died peacefully at Russell House near Kingston (Dors.) in the midst of his daughters and relations, on the 29th of May 1877.
Motley was one of the best his tori ans of the United States, after whose example the study of original documents was seriously taken up there. To Holland he rendered a service by showing, as Lyell wrote to him one dayx): "how Uttle justice has been done .... to the part which the Dutch Republic played at the period which you have chronicled. I suppose all our writers cherished a great deal of insular prejudice against the Hollanders, to say nothing of the jealousy of a rival power in commerce, navigation and empire in the East, of a people who presumed to dispense so largely with feudal institutions."
For this Holland will always remain cordially grateful to the great American. Its gifted queen has shown that gratitude by hersincere interest and personal friendship up to her death. The University of Leyden accounts it an honour *to have manifested that gratitude by means of an honorary degree ; the University of Groningen conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of philosophy. His name will not be forgotten in the Netherlands.
Books consulted.
Oliver Wendell Holmes. John Lothrop Motley. A Memoir (London 1878).
Correspondence of J. L. Motley. ed. Curtis (2 vols. London 1889). Mildmay. John Lothrop Motley and his family (London and NewYork 1910).
*) Holmes. Memoir. p. 273.



THE NATIONAL ELEMENT IN DUTCH ART
BY
W. MARTIN
v It is obvious that in speaking to you to-day conceming the national element in Dutch Art1), I can only offer a very condensed explanation and that the main part of my remarks must be devoted to our greatest glory in the sphere of Art: old Dutch painting.
Holland forms the delta of the* rivers Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt. At the time when the hinterland had already been populated for a long time, that delta was hardly inhabited. For a long time it was even strictly isolated. The oldest forms of Art which we find here after the period of isolation, were imported.
Henee it is all the more remarkable to observe that as soon as our population became denser and our production of Art became greater, simultaneously deviations from the forms of Art of our neighbours began to manifest themselves.
The most typical differences occur already in Gothic architecture, sculpture and painting in those parts of the low Countries, where the character of the inhabitants was most peculiar: I mean the part which to-day we still call Holland. a)
Gothic ecclesiastical and domestic architecture in Holland, though' using a style that was imported into this country, yet show such differences in proportion, in the allotment of space and the handling of detail, that already then one may safely speak, in Holland itself, of a national element, which, besides the dimate and soil, exercises a great influence on the composition of our buildings. The German, French, and even Italian influences in architecture are feit as far as Utrecht, Bois-le-Duc, Middelburg. But in Holland itself, for instance in Haarlem, Leyden, Dordrecht etc., we find a very modified Flemish
*) The leoture was illustrated with over forty lantern slides. It has been retouched in such a way that the laok of the slides is not feit too much.
') Chief towns: Amsterdam, Hoorn, Enkhuizen, Alkmaar, Haarlem, Leiden, Rotterdam, Gouda, Dordrecht.



PLATE 1. FLEMISH TNTEBIOR ± 1560. THE COURT OF JUSTICE IN BRUGES.
PLATE 3.
PALA7.ZO ODE90ALCHI, ROME, 17TH CENTURY.
PLATE 2. DUTCH INTERtOR 1600. THE COURT OF JUSTICE IN NA ARDEN.
PLATE 4. THE PRINSENHOF, AMSTERDAM, 1661.






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* style in ecclesiastical architecture. The Dutch of this part of the Netherlands mostly took the style of the Scheldt for an example, but they changed its proportions and made the whole simpler. Comparing the two Leyden churches (St. Peters' and St. Pancras' Church) with their Flemish prototypes and with the French ones whence the Flemish were derived, one finds in the Dutch churches a lack of that elegance and grace, which strikes us in southern cathedrals. It is interesting to note, that while in a French cathedral like that of Amiens the height of the nave is three times its width, the Dutch cathedrals (Haarlem for example) have a nave whose height is twice its width. In the Dutch churches, of which I specially draw your attention to the huge St. Bavo Cathedral at Haarlem (constructed ± 1450), the great impression of beauty is made by the very distinct construction of the masses of the building, by which very quiet outlines are attained, and by the picturesque working of light and shade. To these national characteristics may be added the lack of plastic decoration of the exterior of the old Dutch churches.
This feeling for the sober and simple, accompanied by pictori al effect, we find in all pure and strong Dutch Art. Its strength is not in the monumental nor in any brilhant effects. The strength of Dutch art is in its unadorned picturesque intimacy.
Allow me further to draw your attention to the fact, that not only in the churches, but also in the civil architecture, there is a difference in proportions between Holland and Belgium even.
Typical Belgian houses of the 15th and 16th centuries as we find them in Ghent, Bruges, Mechlin, show a higher and loftier exterior than those of the same time in Holland.
The decoration is not as rich as the Belgian, but very picturesque.
Within the dwellings we also find a special Dutch character: whereas the old Flemish interior is higher and the windows are divided into three parts, the rooms are not so lofty in the Dutch interiors; the light is different: the window is divided into two parts only.
The difference is shown very distinctly by comparing the interior of the Court of Justice in Bruges (± 1550, plate 1) with its rich Flemish decoration, lofty, gay interioir, richly ornamented details everywhere in the room, with the Court of Justice in Naarden (± 1600, plate 2) near Amsterdam. It has quite the same arrangement as that of Bruges, but the whole is very simple, very harmonious, and of that strong, calm beauty, which forms the greatness of our national art.



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The style of all these interiors has been imported into Holland as well as into Belgium. In Holland it has been nationalized into something specially Dutch. Again and again in these low countries a process of what one might call ,,Dutehifying" was repeated, which became all the more pronounced accordingly as the character of our people developed itself to something original. Despite of all foreign influences, our architecture was a national one.
The Italian buildings like Bernini's Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome (17th century, plate 8) are monumental, pompous and broad, while the Dutch ones, for instance the Prinsenhof at Amsterdam (1661, plate 4), though showing many details borrowed from the classical Italian styles, show an enormous difference: a Dutch building like this is not at all a monumental one, but a picturesque and calm house which, at first sight, does not remind us of any palazzo at all.
Here in Leyden this is certainly also very obvious. One has only to carefully observe the street in which our University is situated. Whole rows of houses show a style of architecture in which the Italian influence is immediately discernible. Ionic capitals upon Italian pfllars and bases are to be found in a certain part of the Rapenburg in almost every house. This exoticism, however, has been so much changed by the national requirements for dwellings and by the B-^ch picturesque sense, that the layman hardly observes these foreign influences, because he sees the Dutch style in those rows of houses especially.
Conduding we may say, that the national element in old Dutch architecture is to be found in the particular way in which the Dutch transform the imported styles by eonsulting their own sense of proportion and beauty. Their aesthetic feeling in architecture leads them to simple, well calculated beauty, which is never pompous, except in times of decadence. It shows a very distinct feeling for the picturesque. It is characteristic to note, that the baroc-style never had any important influence in Holland and that in the 17th century the classical styles where chosen in preference to the baroc ones, that had, at the same time, such a great influence in Belgium.
In the Art of the sculptor, it was scarcely otherwise. In this country sculpture developed but little outdoors, our climate not being f avourable to this. This Art also repeatedly experienced influences from the South and East, nevertheless it shows many Dutch characteristics: a great love of reality, a very picturesque conception and an extremely correct treatment of the material, even at the expense of grace and elegance and absolutely without any "grandezza". A



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certain squatness even is a characteristic of the best of our old sculpture.
The national element in Dutch Art, however, occurs most clearly in that Art that has always occupied the principal place in these low countries: the Art of painting. This is the only one of the plastic arte in which Holland has been able to compete, even with Italy. It was predominant in Holland and even to-day it is lying closer to the hearts of our people than architecture or sculpture. The fact that the Art of painting dominates here, and that it exceeds in importance that of most other countries, causes it to be recognised as the national expression, par excellence, of the Dutch artistic instinct.
The pictorial, in our architecture and plastic art a factor of significance, cannot be hampered by anything in the Art of painting. Here, it is able to become fully developed and hence, one finds in Holland, already early, all kinds of variations of light and shade and also all tints and reflections, which form as many objects of interest for our painters.
If one compares a Dutch prayer-book of the fifteenth century with a Flemish, the difference immediately becomes obvious *); the Dutch miniature painter prefers the brush to the pencil. Colour is of more importance to him than line. The building up of his composition is of less importance than the rich variations of colour which give a particularly attoactive decorative character to his work.
The endeavour towards reality is so strong that often the vigorous and the grotesque is depicted, and no preference for the production of the beautiful exists. In other words, every part of the actual is of equal importance to these painters, provided it be of interest by its colour or its sense. In this manner there arose an illustrative Art, full of striking and picturesque features.
These characteristics : a feeling for the picturesque and for the actual, rather than for beauty of line, also in later times have continued to be the instrinsic thing in the painting of the Dutch.
Apart from these characteristics, there are still others in Dutch painting. I mean those in the choice of subjects. In your text books and guides, you see that Dutch painting is spoken of as being "democratie" and domestic, that it is averse to outward show and monumental expression. As touriste, you saw Dutch towns comparing them with the French, or, for instance, you compared Brussels with Amsterdam,
x) Cf. Winkler, Altniederl. Malerei, Berlin 1924.



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and the difference was immediately apparent. Also, while analysing the impression made upon yourselves by the Italian museums, palaces and churches, with their series of huge pictures which are closely connected with the architecture, you will also have immediately observed "the independence of Dutch painting and also its much greater versatility: landscapes, interiors, still-life, portraits, subjects from the Old Testament, etc.
Very briefly, the evolution has been as follows : In the Middle Ages it was especially the Church that was the patron of the painters. It was only the art of portraiture that was able to develop apart from the influence of the Church.
In the sixteenth century, other than sacred subjects also began to be painted : subjects of a mythological and historical nature or taken from every-day life. It was especially in the Southern Netherlands that genre, landscape and even snU-life subjects developed into independent branches of painting.
This development, however, only attained its maturity at the commencement of the seventeenth century and then, most completely, in the Northern Netherlands, in what is really Holland. There, Protestantism was predorninant. The Catholic element had disappeared and a new patron had arisen for the painters: the civic authorities. There was no court, from which good commissions or encouragement emanated; the best commissions were given by the Civic Guards and the Corporations. The greatest masterpieces of the Dutch Art of portraiture: Rembrandt's Night Watch (1642) and Syndics of the Drapers (1661), the world famous Civic Guard pictures by Hals (1616—1689), Van der Helst's Dinner of the Civic Guard (1648),. are all to be attributed, exclusively, to commissions given by citizens.
These portrait groups of Civic Guards and the Corporations pictures, do not occur in any other country. In these is manifested, very strongly, one of the Dutch national characteristics: individuahsm, the feeling of one's own worth, civic pride. Our historical sense has never expressed itself in any actual historical paintings of high artistic value. It is only in the nineteenth century that we begin to glorify our heroic struggle of the time of William of Orange in historical pictures. At that time, however, in the years from 1570 till 1700, not a single Dutch picture was painted that comes anywhere near "The surrender of Breda" (by the Dutch to the Spaniards in 1625) by Velazquez, for instance.
There are only our naval battles, especially our struggle with Eng-






PLATE 7. ANTHONY VAN DIJOK, POBTRAIT OF ANNA WAKE. MAURITSHUIS, THE HAGUE.
PLATE 8. PAULUS MOREELSE. PORTEAIT CtF A DUTCH LADY. BREDIUS OOLLEOHON, MAUMTSHUI8, THE HAGUE.



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land, that were depicted at the time itself in historical paintings (by William van de Velde). These, however, do not rank among our greatest works of Art.
We were not strong in painting our history 1 We only painted our picturesque beauty!
Besides in the groups of portraiture, our nature was also revealed in the evolution of religious painting, in the conception of Protestantism. Holland is Calvinist, and this was expressed in a part of the art of painting. Whole series of subjects have been painted which cannot be spoken of as really being subjects of Catholicism. Rembrandt is the great creator of Protestant religious painting in Holland. His works, and those of his scholars in that sphere, ornamented the mantelpieces of numbers of our private dwellings. They reminded our ancestors of their duties, they were the painted moral lessons of the centres of a strict rule of life. Many stories out of the Old Testament have been interpreted by Rembrandt and his school. I need only re mind you of Rembrandt's "Abraham with the Angels" or of his: "Abraham's Sacrifice", to give you an impression of the grand manner in which he depicts the Patriarch.
Finally allow me to refer to the desire of the Dutch to paint everything in their immediate environment. This typically Dutch characteristic, already mentioned by me at the commencement of this lecture, in the seventeenth century led to a great specialising of subjects ; much more than was the case in any other country at that time. The interior of the churches was depicted by our painters, the rooms and corridors of the houses, the streets and towns, the meadows with cattle grazing and the farm-houses, the poultry yards, the woods and beach. The Dutch painter even depicted the food he ate, as well as his flowers ; and the lover of Art bought these eagerly1).
So far, we have been concerned with the subjects which, up to a certain point, are only the outer shell within which the painter puts his work. I shall now therefore return to the main subject of my lecture, namely: to show further the intrinsic differences which are the direct reflection of the nature of our people. - I mean the preference of the brush to the pencil, the re production of the inner rather than the external beauty.
How can these characteristics be observed ? In a general way in
') This part of the lecture was illustrated with slides after works by Houckgeest, Jan Steen, Jan van Goyen, Jan Vermeer of Delft, Jacob Ruisdael, Paulus Potter, A. van de Velde, M. d'Hondecoeter, Heda and Van Aelst.
Lectures on Holland
6



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this, that in the purely Dutch work, the elegance of line and the gay and pretty colours with which you are familiar in French, Flemish and Italian pictures, will be lacking. In particular, you will see, that the Dutch painter always prefers to put his love of subject and of its picturesque interpretation to any building up and construction of composition.
Now you will perhaps ask: where are your proofs ? Well, we have examples of foreign painters who established themselves in Holland and who became Dutch. What characterizes their work is a deeper tone and a greater attention and thoroughness of technique. Thus, for instance, the work done in Holland by the German, Joachim Sandrart.
We also have examples of Duteh painters who went abroad, to work in the manner prevailing there. For example, Jan Lievens. At first, in Holland, he was altogether a painter of light- and tone-values and gentle outlines, emulating Rembrandt, whose pupil he was (cf. plate 5). Afterwards, however, he went to Antwerp and what he produced there has the elegance of Antony van Dyck and also the latter's brilliant colours. His painting is no longer Dutch, it has become international (cf. plate 6).
Other examples can be studied in many museums. In the Mauritshuis at the Hague for instance you will find two still-life pictures by Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The first was painted during his Leyden period, painted for the sake of the tone-values, the Hght-effect and the technique. It is a combination of brown-grey tones and results in a beautifully picturesque uniformity. The other is of De Heem's later period, when he had gone to work at Antwerp, therefore, of his Flemish period. In the construction of composition, it has been very well thought out; it is, however, glaring in colour and lacks all pictorial uniformity.
Let me show you, still more distinctly, the national characteristics of our painters, especially by a comparison of the portraits of two ladies, both in the Mauritshuis. The first is by that great neming, Anthony van Dyck (pl. 7). What grace, what nobility of attitude and appearance! But, viewed at close quarters, the hands show but little individuahty and the touch of the whole, however splendid it may be, is more on the decorative, the loose side. The lady has not the f acial expression of the moment; it rather seems to indicate her position in the world.
Just compare this with a portrait of a lady by P. Moreelse, belonging



83
to Dr. Bredius, the Hague (pi. 8). As a matter of fact, here is a painter who desired much to rival Van Dyck and who adopted the same kind of pose as the latter. But with what a difference 1 The elegance is wanting, and a certain "naiveté" has taken its place, owing to his attention to all details, as a consequence if his great love of calm technique and his fixing precisely every shade of light and every detail of colour.
But what a strong expression of inner life has been obtained in this way! It gives us a moment of a friendly spirit of accomodation. The subject has not been worked up to any general norm of beauty; she has been viewed in her individuahty, just as her carefully painted hands.
Ladies and gentlemen: I will now go somewhat farther. The essential of all things hes beyond the expression of words. The essential part of every picture cannot be reproduced.
A picture would not be composed in colours, if those colours did not form significant and those colours do not allow of their being reproduced without the reproduction being mendacious. Hence, I am not showing reproductions in colours, though I do speak concerning the colours. K you go to the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam and there carefully view the "Seven works of Charity", by the master of Alkmaar, painted about 1500, or if you go to the Municipal Museum in Leyden and look at the work of Engelbrechtsz and Lucas van Leyden (1508 and 1526), what will you see there ? You will notice such a preferenee for the softest tints and shades in the fore- and background, that you cannot help being impressed by this endeavour towards colour-effects, that is known in no other art of painting.
The same thing is repeated in the seventeenth century among our painters. Take Aelbert Cuyp's landscapes, the Civic Guard paintings by Hals or G. ter Borch's interiors. There is nothing more different than their subjects and painting, but they all exhibit such a refinement of colouring that even from this alone, this special nature of our painting may be deduced.
Next to colour come the tone and the light effects, these are more easily shown in reproductions.
Uniformity of tone and pictorial composition, these are the main purposes of those great seventeenth century painters who make coloureffects subservient to these. This they do, each in his own way and this manifold variation arouses in us just as many different feelings of pleasure on looking at their immortal works. For instance, in his worldfamed



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interior in the Rijksmuseum, a Pieter de Hoogh is able to express, by bis light effect, a calm peace, in an extremely simple composition, almost without any movement. The entire relationship between mother and child, the complete domestic happiness, would not have such a convincing effect upon us, were it not for the tone, the atmosphere, being portrayed in this way.
The sunny, careless, studious effect, how distinct are these in pictures like Metsu's Scholar (Beit-collection, London) in which, in spite of some French elegance, just that genuine Dutch stamp is obtained by that combination of tone and wonderful light and colour-variegation which makes a wonder of painting of this work.
On the other hand, the deep reflection and morbidity of another Scholar, by Rembrandt (Brunswick Museum), is of an entirely different mental order. Here too, a great deal of the effect is obtained by the tone and the light-effect, another instance of the numerous variations by which we might supplement Rembrandt's Philosopher, in the Louvre, where the great master of light and shade brings the peaceful eveningtwilight into accord with the earnest contemplation of the ancient scholar. While in his Holy Family (Louvre) he just makes use of the twilight to make it appear as a ray of benediction, descending upon the happy family of Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus.
Rembrandt is the greatest light- and tone-artist of all time, and his Art, with that of Vermeer of Delft, is certainly the strongest exponent of the Dutch element in our painting. When yoU look at his Lesson in Anatomy, you are not so much impressed by the portraits of Dr. Tulp and his pupils, asby the predominating light-effect, which throws a soft, tranquillizing lustre over the anatomical exposition, which, in reality, must have been a somewhat lugubrious affair.
By his light- and tone-effects, Rembrandt transfigures reality, not so much by the line and plastic effect. He gives the actual, intrinsic, rather than the external beauty. He never tries to make people more beautiful than they are. His "Woman cutting her nails", now in the Metropolitan Museum at New-York, does not mean to show the beauty of the woman, nor what she is doing;it is only the picturesque appearance and the painting of the light that transfigures this simple subject into a kind of magie, Michelangelesque greatness. In spite of Prof. Van Dyke x), this is one of the most impressing Rembrandts in the world.
■) Cf. John. C. Van Dyke, Rembrandt and his Schobt. N.-York, Scribner 1923. The writer denies this picture as a Rembrandt.



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With Jan Vermeer of Delft, who, in distinction to the golden light of Rembrandt, renders the silver clearness of the daylight in such a masterly marmer, we see exactly the same symptom. The "Head of a young Girl" (Mauritshuis), in outward appearance is not what we call a beauty. Her inner being, however, fascinates us, and she inspires us as greatly as does Leonardo's Gioconda.
When this picture was exhibited, some years ago, at Paris, the French called it "the Gioconda of the North". NotHng shows more clearly that this picture possesses the same mysterious quality as Leonardo's masterpiece, but that this is expressed in the Dutch manner and not in the Italian. As a matter of fact, the expression of beauty is not attained by endeavouring to embellish this woman externally.
I have naturally laid emphasis upon the seventeenth century. This was the greatest period of our Art, and painting was our greatest expression of that Art, and, at the same time, one of the greatest expressions of the Art of mankind.
Since then, however, we have continued to be of importance as a people of artists. Though in the eighteenth century there was a period of decline, in the nineteenth we were the only nation, whose art was again mentioned beside the French, that had dominated the eighteenth. I will only mention the greatest master of that period, Jozef Israëls (1824—1911) and remind you of pictures like "The Sexton and his Wife", to prove to you that here too the national tradition: pictorial interpretation and a depicting of the mtrinsic, is present m a great measure, though enveloped in the romantic feeling of the master and his time.
There is much that is intimate in this School of Art, which has now already become a thing of the past. The present Dutch Art shows you, just as is the case with Art throughout the whole world, a struggle, a period of transition. In that struggle, again many influences proceeding from our neighbours are at work; our geographical situation has imposed that fate upon us. We are, however, emerging from that struggle with a stamp that again is entirely Dutch, and which originated years ago with the greatest man of our period of transition, the architect Berlage. There is a powerful movement among the younger generation imbued by the feeling for beauty and encouraged by great energy. We are creating here new forms of Art in which it is just the Dutch characteristics that come out so strongly. Nowhere will you find such architecture as in Berlage's Exchange and in Van der



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Mey's Shipping House at Amsterdam, and the applied art of our younger artists is so characteristic, and is, in itself, so Dutch that at every international exhibition you will observe and enjoy it as something apart, as something entirely new and as an expression of a refined sense of beauty.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I will leave it at this. May this short lecture have given you the answer to some questions which must have arisen within you, on visiting our beautiful, characteristic land, and on viewing our masterpieces of former times and of to-day.



THE LATEST DISCO VERIES ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
BY
A. EEKHOF
Emigration nowadays is seldom an act of religious protest, still more seldom an endeavour to found a more perfect human state. A generation fond of pleasure and shrinking from hardship will find it difficult to imagine the temper, courage and manliness of those emigrants who made the first Christian settlement of New England. The settiing of New Plymouth is the sowing of the seed, grown in England, fostered in Holland, from which the erop of Modern America has grown.
"If for a moment we could lift the veil", says Arthur Lord, one of the American experts in Pilgrim Fathers History ,,and from out the shadowy past summon the form of one of the great leaders of that immortal company to stand forth and be their spokesman today, and bid the dumb lips speak again as in the olden time, this would be the Pilgrim's message which would fall on your attentive and listening ears :
The toils we bore
Your ease have wrought, We sowed in tears, In joy you reap. That birth-right we so dearly bought Here guard, till you with us shall sleep! l)
It is not necessary to repeat the history of their toils and tears. Let me give you a few headlines by way of introduction.
In the early years of the 17th century in the country about the borders of Nottingham, Lincoln and York, a movement began, that
') Arthur Lord, Plymouth and the Pilgrims, Boston and New York, 1920, p. 178.



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accepted the ruling of the Church of England in articles of faith, but refused her judgment in pointe of discipline. They entered into a covenant to walk with God and with one another, in the enjoyment of the Ordinances of God, according to the Primitive Pattern in the Word of God. A party was organized in Scrooby, about ten miles west from Gainsborough, containing two prominent men : the layman William Brewster and the minister John Robinson. Church discipline which forbade their meetings, imposed a persecution upon them. After many trials they fled to Holland, and in August 1608, the whole party was safely in Amsterdam. There were there already two other English separatist parties, so Robinson af raid there might come controversy, took the decision to move to Leyden. A formal petition was presented to the authorities, registered in the Court Daybook February 12, 1609, in which Robinson askes in the name of 100 persons, men and women, freedom to come to Leyden and also to carry on their trades, without being a burden in the least to any one. The decision of the Burgomasters was "that they refuse no honest persons free ingress to come and have their residence in this City, provided that such persons behave themselves and submit to laws and ordinances. The coming of them would be agreeable and wel come". And even when the English ambassador Winwood complained, the authorities stated that the charge brought against the English was unjust.
So they stayed in Leyden from 1609—1620, taking up the commerce and the handicrafts of this busy town. They prospered and rose steadily in the esteem of the burghers. John Robinson bought a house "De groene poort" (the green gateway) in the Bell Alleyin 1611, at present the Jean Pesynhof je, where the congregation also met for worship. Bradford and others acquired the rights of citizenship of the City; Robinson, Brewer and Brewster became members of the University. Brewer and Brewster established a printing press but king James I through his ambassador Sir Dudley Carleton made violent efforts to have the daring printers arrested and the type confiscated. Elder Brewster was the man he wished to seize, but elder Brewster was not to be found, so Brewer a member of the University was arrested, and his printing letters and books and papers were sealed up, but having privileges of the University, the Dutch Republic looked after his interests also when he was sent to England on trial and had him escorted back safely to Leyden. The printing press however was stopped for the time being.



DEPARTURE OF THE PÜGRIMS FROM DELFSHAVEN (1620)
Memorial window in the Baggnekerk in Amsterdam presented by Mr. Edward Bok






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And then came the time for their emigration to America: times in Holland were hard, the truce with Spain came to an end; how likely they were to loose their language, and their name; how httle good they could do in reforming the Sabbath; how unable to give such education to their children as they themselves had received; theyhad a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation for the propagating and advancing of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world : yea, though they should be but even as stepping stones unto others, for the perf o rmi ng of so great a work, and many other reasons as governor Winslow and Bradford teil us.
So in Jury 1620 half of the Company deeided to leave Leyden, as Bradford says, "that good and pleasant city which had been their resting place for nearly 12 years". The Pilgrims sailed by canal boats from Leyden, past the Hague to Delfshaven, where a httle ship of 60 tons—the Speedwell—was ready to sail; the wind being fair, they went aboard and their friends with them and truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting as Bradford says; but the tide, which stays for no man, called them away, though loth to part; and their reverend pastor John Robinson, f alling down on his knees, and all with him, with tearful eyes commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing. The Speedwell sailed away from Delftshaven and arrived in Southampton. Now in August 1620, the two ships Mayflower and the Speedwell sailed from Southampton ; but the Speedwell sprung a leak, and they had to return to Dartmouth. Again the voyage was resumed, but again the Speedwell sprung a leak and they returned to Plymouth, from which place 16 September 1620, with 102 passengere, the Mayflower went off to the New World. After a difficult joumey and terrible storms, when a mainbeam of the ship was broken, which could be inended by a jackscrew, they came to Cape Cod. Having got a patent for a settlement in Virginia, the Pilgrims wished to go more south, but the crew of the ship refused, and told the Pilgrims, they must go ashore, where they could.
On the 21th of November 1620 they came to anchor, having made before entering the harbour that famous Compact, in which they eombined themselves together into a civil bod ypoliac. This "association and agreement" was more a promise than a command, and they made it immediately operative until they could secure the requisite authority under a second patent to govern and direct the persons and affaire of the members of the Company in their new and unde-



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signed home l). Forty one signed the covenant. John Carver was selected first governor. As place of settlement they choose Plymouth Harbour; by middle of January most of the Pilgrims were ashore. The first winter was very terrible to them; nearly half of them died within six months. Also John Carver died and Bradford took his place, and after Bradford came Thomas Prence, "who had a countenance full of majesty, but was a terror to evil-doers" *). Many are the descendants of that small party that came in the Mayflower; "the wood of the Mayflower", as John Masefield says, "is changed into a forest of family trees".
This story, more or less detailed, you have read in books of Dexter and Arber, of Goodwin and Masefield, Usher, Gregg and Wood. Is there anything new to be added ? Since the Tercentenary in 1920, a few facts have come to light, to which I call your attention for another few moments.
The term "Pilgrimfathers". The hundredth Anniversary of the landing of the P. F. came and went, so far as we can learn, quite unnoticed and unmarked. In January 1769, a club was started by twelve young men of Plymouth, and in the following December they decided to have a dinner on December 22nd in commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrims. This may be said to have been the beginning of Forefathers day. "Forefathers" they were called, or "worthy ancestors", or "first corners", or "band of heroes", but the name Pilgrims was not used until 1798, when Mr. Thomas Paine wrote that elegant and patriotic ode, for the commemoration-occasions in which he calls his countrymen : heirs of Pilgrims.
Heirs of Pilgrims, now renew
The oath your fathers swore for you.
And the Chorus sings :
Sons of glory, patriot band, Swear to guard this chosen land! To your children leave it free, Or a desert let it be!
') Arthur Lord, The Mayflower Compact, Worcester 1921, p. 19. *) John A. Goodwin, The Pilgrim Republic, Boston and New York 1920, p. 478.



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In the next year 1799 the term "Pilgrimfathers" occurred for the first time in an ode written by Samuel Davis :
Hail Pilgrim Fathers of our race, With grateful hearts your toils we tracé. Oft as this votive Day returns We'11 pay due honours to your urns.
So the name "Pilgrim" appeared first in 1798 and "Pilgrim Fathers" in 1799, as applied specifically to the early settlers at Plymouth, as Albert Matthews has pointed out *).
To explain this term we must glance back nearly three centuries. When Bradford, referring to the departure of the Pilgrimfathers from Leyden, writes in 1630 about this. affair, he says : "So they left that good and pleasant city, which had been their resting place, nearly 12 years: but they knew they were pilgrims and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country and quieted their spirits". Though Bradford's book from which this is quoted was not published until 1856, it was well known to American historians before the disappearance of the manuscript at the Revolution, and the above passage had more than once made its appearance in print before 1798. In 1669 Nathaniel Morton gave it as follows : "they knew that they were Pilgrims and Strangers here below"; also Cotton Mather in 1702 spoke about them as Pilgrims and Strangers, and in 1767 governor Hutchinson remarked, that it took up several years of their pilgrimage to make the necessary preparations; in 1775 Rev. Samuel Baldwin, preaching from Hebrews XI, 8 compared their condition with that of Abraham, the Pilgrim, and in 1793 the Rev. Chandler Robbins, pastor of the First Church at Plymouth, stated that they knew they were Pilgrims. Thus the pedigree of this term can be traced back through Robbins, Hutchinson, Mather, Morton and Bradford to the departure from Leyden in 1620, but it is only used in the words Bradford has given in his 'Plymouth Plantation'.
During the first years, when they spoke of ancestors, forefathers etc, they chiefly had on mind the Mayflower passengere, but about the year 1800 when the terms "Pilgrims" and "Pilgrim Fathers" occur for the first time and have caught the popular fancy, by these
') Albert Matthews, The term Pilgrim Fathers, Cambridge 1915 (Reprinted from the Publioations of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. XVII).



92
terms are meant any early settlers of either of the two colonies, which were united under the Province of the Massachusetts Bay. Yes Edward Arber, a wellknown Writer on the history of the Pilgrim Fathers even goes as f ar as to say : "Pilgrimfathers were all those members of the Separatist Church at Leyden, who voted for the emigration to America, whether they were actually able to go there or not, together with such others as joined their Church from England". This use of the term as we find it by Arber continued for many years and still continues to go on, although some writers wish to confine it exclusively to the Plymouth Colonists.
The leader of the Pilgrims in Leyden was Rev. John Robinson. In May 1611 he bought from Jehan de Lalaing a house "the green gateway" in de Kloksteeg (Bell Alley), now the Jean Pesynhofje1); other members of his congregation lived near to him in the surrounding little houses. In 1619, as a document from the archives of the "hofje" tells us, Jehan de Lalaing sold a house "adjoining the house of John Robinson to Jacob van Swieten" and in this document mention is made of "de poórte ende gange van de Engelsche gemeente" (the gate and doorway of the English congregation); it was thus a place well known in Leyden. When Robinson died here in 1625, Bridget White his wife and his children stayed there till 1648 and perhaps even longer ; it may be after her death or earlier, that this 'Engelsche poort' and the surrounding little houses were sold and bought by Jean Pesyn and Maria de Lanoy, both from French origine, who established here a "hofje" (a home for old people), for men and women of the Walloon Congregation.
But the once famous "English gateway", where the Pilgrims lived, about whom the magistrates of the city of Leyden had declared "that never any law-suit or accusation had come against any of them", had become in the middle of the 17th century a place of great scandal. The residents of the Bell Alley complained of it by the magistrates and the whole gateway and the houses round about it were broken down and rebuilt in 1683. I found a document in the Leyden archives, only a short time ago, in which 9 November 1684 thanks was given to the magistrate "that this spot, being so well known, was frequented by a great number of lawless persons, even rascals and thieves, to the
') This document is published in facsimile, transcription and English translation in: Legden Documents relating to the Pilgrim Father» by Dr. D. Plooy and Dr. J. Bendel Harris. Leyden, E. J. Bril], 1920.









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satisfaction of the citizens was thoroughly cleansed from rabble and scum, while in the place of it had come such an embellishment to the town", which is the present Pesynhofje 1). So the "English gateway" that once was the place of the httle band of Pilgrims, had become the place where rascals and thieves hid themselves ; it had to be broken down and was rebuilt in 1683. Sic transit gloria mundi !
In the room, that is above the gateway at present, you will find the beautiful portraits of Jean Pesyn and his wife Maria de Lanoy, and also two others'in the exposition in the "Lakenhal", to which I invite you to come this afternoon.
As I have already said, John Robinson lived and died on this spot in 1625. We have the Tegistry of his interment in the Pieterskerk in Leyden, March 6, 1625. We do not know exactly the place in the church where he was buried, perhaps in the Baptismal Chapela). After his death his wife Bridget White stayed in Leyden; she made her will in 1643, stuf being a widow. I had the pleasure of finding this will, and I published it in my book: "Three unknown documents conceming the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland" (The Hague, Martinus Nyhoff, 1920). In this document we find that Robinson had six children, of whom two died; in 1643 his widow Bridget White still had four children: John, who was doctor of medicine, was married and lived at that time in England ; Isaac who had gone to New England and was also married; further two daughters Bridget and Fear. To the two children of her son John, John and Maria, she bequeathed each a silver spoon, and also one to each of the little daughters of her daughter Brechgen (Bridget). The "Reemsche Testament", the Bible of father John Robinson, she bequeathed to her son John in England, who had already received a considerable sum from the lands and goods located in England, and also some money.
Although Bridget White, after Robinson's death, with her children and other acquaintances were accepted into the communion of the Netherlands Reformed Church, some of them even having changed their names, as Stephen Butterfield into Stieven Butturvieldt and John Masterson into Jan Meester, (a proof that John Robinson's congregation was beginning to melt into Dutch society), still Bridget was also well
>) W. Oeregts dagboek, (27 Juli 1684—25 Juni 1686), 9 Nov. 1684. 2) A very good photograph picture in: Memories of the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland, edited by The Leyden Pilgrim Fathers Society.



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acquainted with the ministes of the English Church in Leyden, on the Bagijnehof, Hugh Goodyear, who was minister from 1617 until 1661. This Hugh Goodyear kept an interesting correspondance with the PUgrims in Plymouth, that was found by Dr. Plooy in the chamber of Orphans in the archives of this city of Leyden i). Goodyear corresponded with Ralph Smith, the Mas tersons, with Mr. Aspinwall, notary in Boston. Among those papers is an original letter by governor Bradford himself (1649), about a house on the Uiterste gracht in Leyden. John Keable and William Jepson, two prominent members of Robinson's colony, were later deacons of Rev. Goodyear's church. Among this interesting correspondence there is also a letter written by governor Thomas Prence, 1684, with the very interesting first seal of Plymouth on it. Among those documents is another one of special interest: a letter of Rev. Hugh Peter, pastor at Salem, overseer of Harvard College, 12 Nov. 1689, being a letter of introduction for Francis Higgenson Jr. to the Rev. Goodyear in Leyden. Apparently he was to be instructed by Goodyear, and then to be immatriculated as a student of our Leyden University. After his studies he was to came back to Harvard as a teacher in the recently erected college. So this Higgenson was the first of those numerous students who came from America to hear the lectures of the Leyden professors— one of your predecessors, ladies and gentlemen 1 This introduction letter of Higgenson to Goodyear and the Leyden University I will show you on the shdes.
Another important discovery in the archives at Leyden—you see • how rich they are—is the only known autograph of John Robinson himself. Until I found it in the notary-archives the signature of another person had passed for the genuine one; namely the one on the titlepage of a booklet in the British Museum in London. Justin Winsor gave it in f acsimüe, also Dexter, but they are both wrong. The genuine one we have on a notary record of Jan. 2,1621, a recognition of indebtedness, given by Thomas Brewer, John Robinson and William Jepson, for the behoof of Jehan de Lalaing to the sum of 744 guilders, on account of several years accumulated interest *). Dr. Walter H.
1) D. piooy, SecenÜy discovered Letters of the Pilgrim .CoUmy in New England, in: The Leyden Pilgrim Messenger, Leyden 1922, p. 18—28.
») A f acsimüe of this autograph and the notary-reoord in: A. Eekhof, Ihree unknown documents concerning the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland, The Hague, Martinus Nyhoff, 1920.



OBIGINAL SIGNATURE OF JOHN ROBINSON, PASTOR OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS AT LEYDEN






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Burgess also found another specimen of Robinson's signature in a letter from the fellows of Corpus Christi in Cambridge, dated 1602, which he published in facsimile in his book on John Robinson.
The importance of the discovery lays in the fact, that now we have his genuine signa"Eüre this may be the key to many other of his writings, as John Robinson had inherited, like Smith, one of those names, which are really in a large population like that of England, no notamina, affording therefore httle assistance to the critical inquirer.
I have mentioned already the printing press of the Pilgrim fathers at Leyden. There is no time to dweil very long and mtrinsically on this affair, but let me bring a few points to the foreground. Brewer, Brewster, Edward Winslow and John Reynolds were connected with it. We know that it was located "in vico chorali" i. e. in the Choir Alley, a httle street leading from the Breestraat to the Pieterskerk. The exact place has been found by Dr. Plooy through a very careful and painstaking research. It was located in the background of the house, where at present Dr. Schokking is hving. Dr. Plooy gives the results of his investigations and also a picture in a book that was published by prof. Rendel Harris and Stephen K. Jones "The Pilgrim Press" (Cambridge, 1922). In this same book Dr. Rendel Harris suggests a few things that are interesting to teil. On the list of the Mayflower passengere is a certain Master Williamson, a phantom personage up to this time. Dr. Harris suggests that this is Brewster himself, for we have evidence, he says, "that Isaac Brewster was known to the community as Isaac Williamson, and since Brewster Senior, was also the son of a William Brewster, he was also entitled, if he chose, to be addressed as Master Williamson". It was also this same Brewster, prof. Harris suggests, who, when on the Mayflower in the stress of a great storm one of the main beams of the ship was "bowed and cracked", gave an great iron screw, in order to bring it back into position and keep it there. This screw, which as Bradford tells, the Pilgrims had brought from Holland, what was it ? Prof. Harris says : "the answer is obvious : it was the part of the printingpress, which the Leyden authorities had not carried off". In another book "The finding of the 'Mayflower'" prof. Rendel Harris argues that the old Mayflower-ship is rebuilt in a barn at Jordans, in the county of Bucks in England, where the cracked beam and the incised lettere can be seen today.
Now in the book on the Pilgrim Press prof. Rendel Harris has made



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thorough investigations as to which books may be ascnbed to it. AU of them, except three, are pubUshed anonymously. Two of them are in Latin : a book of Amesius and one of Cartwright. The first has as printer's indication i" Prostant (i. e. for sale) Lugduni Batavorum, apud Guüjelmum Brewsterum, in Vico ChoraU 1617" ; the second has as indication: "Lugduni Batavorum, Apud Guiljeimum Brewsterum, in vico ChoraU 1617". The third book that has been discovered only a short time ago is a Dutch translation of Dod and Cleaver's "Exposition of the Ten Commandmente", by a Dutch minister Vmcentaus Meusevoet: a copy of it is in America, another in the Ubrary in Amsterdam, and also Dr. Plooy has a copy x).
In an article : "A weU-nigh unknown imprint of the Brewster-press at Leyden" a), I discussed several questions in connection-with this third book. I called the attention especiaUy to the word "Voor" in the printer's imprint: "Tot Leyden, Voor GuiUaem Brewster, Boeckdrucker, Anno 1617", which word, I mean, sigriifies "for ; others are of opinion that there is no difference between "voor" and apud (by). DrTRendel Harris says : "Certainly, if we foUow Dr. Eekhof, we should hardly expect "Boeck-drucker" (printer). In our opuuon however", he says, "the typography of the book tips the balance in Dr Eekhof's favour. Outside this one book there is in the whole range of books acknowledged by Brewster or attributed to him, not one single'jot or title of Gothic letter" »), So far Dr. Rendel Harns.
After I had written the abové-said article I got some new evidence for my supposition that this book was not printed on the Pilgrim printing-press, but somewhere else, and that the word "voor in the fmprint "Voor GuiUaem Brewster" does not mean "by' , but for, on behalf of, on account of", the latin expression «sumptibus ). But
.j Facsimile of titlepages in: Bendel Harris and Stephen K. Jones, The Pilgrim Press, Cambridge 1922, fig. 1, 8, 4.
«) The Leyden Pilgrim Messenger, Leyden 1922, p. »»—»ö-
van Bavesteyn. Anno 1627.



picture in a tastblbss modern frame, as it is at present in pilgrim hall at plymouth mass., supposed to be the departure of the "speedwell" from delfshaven, but in reality nothing else than a copy of wenceslau8 hollab's
„de heu van Brussels" (See next picture)






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who was the printer them ? May we assume that in was printed on a press in Leyden, where they had the Gothic letter, "for" Brewster ?
Perhaps it may have been Willem van der Hoeve, printer in Gouda, who lived there in the Peperstraat. He published in 1652 a book of the same size, with the same gothic lettertype, and above all used exactly the same vignette (a man putting a plant into the ground, with the same biblical words around it). At the back of the book we also find the wellknown bear vignette, a very common form in those days x).' We may be certain that the book was not printed on the Pilgrimpress itself, but Brewster, perhaps for having no lettertype enough for printing this book, game the job to Willem van der Hoeve, printer in Gouda, or some printer in Leyden.
The Pilgrims sailed on the Speedwell from Delfshaven to England, on a small ship of some 60 tons. The touching scène of John Robinson falhng down on his knees, and they all with him, he commending them, with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing, can be seen on a memorial window in the English church in Amsterdam, placed there a few years ago, by the generosity of Mr. Edward Bok. A beautiful imaginative picture, but the question rises: is there any true and real picture of the Speedwell ?
When I was in America, in Plymouth, in 1921, during the Pilgrimfathers-celebrations, one morning a wonderful story was told to me. A picture had just been presented by an American to the Historical Society of Plymouth. The owner had bought it at a sale of Christie in London, Dec. 22th 1920. It was "A view of ships", painted by the wellknown W. van de Velde, the naval painter, and had as inscription on the back: "The departure of the Pilgrims". So we should have here not a fiction, but a real and trustworthy tableau of the Speedwell saUing from Delfshaven. A discovery of the first order, to which the papers called the attention. The picture was placed in the "Pilgrim Hall" in Plymouth (Mass.).
There are many things that plead in favour of it. In the first place Willem van de Velde, the elder, the painter of naval battles, f lagships, the navalpainter of Charles II of England, was born in Leyden about 1610, so he was ten years of age when the Pilgrims departed, and he, as a boy, may have been present at their departure; in the
•) The title ol the book is: Iohannea Stuperus Embdanus, Groot wonderwerck des Heeren van Loths wijf. Ter Goude, Ghedruokt bij Willem van der Hoeve, 1652. (Univ. Library at Leyden). — Compare: Harris and Jones, The Pilgrim Pres», fig. 4.
Lectures on Holland
T



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second place the hats those men on the ship wear, are exactly the same as we know the Pilgrims were used to wear. Wonderful! a real picture of the Speedwell, and the gentleman who presented it was thanked for his gratious and wellcome gift.
When I returned to Holland I came in contact with one of our best experts on ships and naval scènes Mr. C. G. 't Hooft in Amsterdam. He exarnined the photograph and wrote me the following words: "The picture of W. van de Velde of which you have sent me a photograph is nothing but a forgery. The picture has nothing whatever do with the Pilgrimfathers ; it is nothing more than a copy of one of the engravings of Wenceslaus Hollar, 1647, one of our best etchers". The society "Onze Vloot" published it in facsimile some years ago ,it represents the "Heu of Brussels", a ship sailing in the ferry between Brussels and Antwerp. Hollar has lived quite a long time in Antwerp before he went to England, and so he knew it well and could paint Antwerp on the background from his own experience. The forger appears only to have desired to make an imitation of an old picture, and the inscription at the back is the unhappy idea of a second forger Pil show you both pictures, the original and the copy, on the slides, and you can made the conclusion for yourself *).
But let us not end in the valleys of forgeries, but on the highlevel top of Plymouth Mass. When I was in Plymouth in 1921 during the celebrations, there where three outstanding points in these commemorations. In the first place: the pageant, a combination of scènes taken from the Pilgrim history, performed in the evening on Plymouth Bock. In one of those scènes there is a march of the Dutch Cities: Middelburgh, Amsterdam — dignitaries, burghers and common people—then also comes Leyden. First are the citizens and their wives, and then, as the textbook says, "through them come twentyfour professors of the Leyden University, each hearing a torch, so that Leyden brings most light of all. Immediately all, young and old, and of every sort and profession, are dancing, laughing, shouting. Even the torch bearers join arms and dance". To me a scène of inspiring memory: not the dancing off course, but the torehbearing of the
») The pioture is meutioned: Gustav Parthey, Wenzel Hollar, Berlin 1853, No. 1269 (p. 272) and was published in the Calendar 1923 of „Onze Vloot".
!) Mr. Christie was so kind to write me on my request dd. June 20, 1924: "When we oatalogued this Picture, we oatalogued it as a school work and although we do not express opinions on authentioity the prioe that it realised of ten guineas rather suggests that the work was not a genuine example by W. van de Velde".



"DB H.EU VAN BRUSSELS" Engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar. 1647.






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professors *). The second point of the celebrations that made a deep impression was the fohowing. You remember that Isaac de Rasière, in 1628, wrote a letter to Samuel Blommaert in Amsterdam, in which he, who had visited Plymouth, described the way in which the Pilgrims went to church, as foliows : "Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a flat roof, made of thick sawn plank, stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannon, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on sundays and the usual hohdays. They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the captain's door; they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order, three abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the govemor in a long robe ; beside him, on the right hand, comes thejpreacher with his doak on, and on the left hand the captain with his side arms, and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand ; and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are constantly on their guard night and day".
Now in 1921 one of the performances that made a deep impression was, to see how at 4 o'clock in the aftemoon, each day of the week men and women and children from the best families in Plymouth, would climb the hill, dressed as Pilgrims. At the top a httle service was held, which I once had the honour of conducting. To me a scène of sacred memory!
But as a proof how necessary it is not only to publish a translation of a document, but also the original, I beg leave to call your attention to the fohowing. The original of this letter of De Rasière, from which I quoted, is in the archives in the Hague. I published it in original Dutch a few years ago, although it had been known only in various English translations. Now in the translations one word is translated in a wrong way and that gives a fully wrong idea of the situation. We read in the translation : "they are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the governor". In the original Dutch you will find: "achteraan" comes the governor, which means: at the back, in the rear. In 1921 I made this remark to him who was responsible for the procession, and since that, I am told, the order was changed 2).
') George P. Baker, The Pilgrim Spirit, p. 66.
*) The letter of Isaac de Rasière in original Dutch in: Nederlandsch Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 's-Grav. 1919, Dl. XV, blz. 246—280. In English translation in: CoUections of the New York Hist. Society, Second Series, Volume 11 (1849), p. 352, and J. Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, New York, 1909, p. 112.



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And the third moment of great and deep impression—to me a scène of grateful memory—was, when president Harding addressed about 50.000 people from Plymouth Rock. May I close this my lecture with the words he spoke there: "The men and women who came here to found in a wildemess a new State, came with the high and conscious purpose of achieving a great human end. Out of their letters, records and historical writings we constantly get the impression of their deep conviction, that they had been called as Divine instruments to accomplish a work of the supremest significance. We may investigate, speculate and conjecture, we may seek to frame laws of human relationship, by which to account for such results as here have been wrought; but at last we will have to recognize, that they are not for us to explain. Hands of men alone did not build, what was founded here ; it was but the visible sign, the human symbol of a purpose, which we may not understand, but for whose beneficence all men must give tribute and praise, and voice undying gratitude" 1).
■) The Boston Globe, August 2, 1921.






HyGO^GROTIUS .IC
OBOTIüS AT THE AOE OF THIBTY



THE LAND OF GROTIUS
BY
C. VAN VOLLENHOVEN I.
I deern it a privilege to address you on Grotius — the man, and the book — and on Holland as the land of Grotius in this university of Leyden, where Grotius himself has been a student, and in this university building, in academie use since 1581, where as a Leyden student and as a man Grotius must have walked and sat down.
We Hollanders of ten venture to think that Grotius's fame is honored in your country almost as much as it is in ours; yet at any rate we should be greatly mistaken in supposing that such has been the case in the United States ever since the thirteen colonies sprang up, or ever since the thirteen states got their independence. William Penn. in his essay of 1693 on the present and future peace of Europe, did not even ment ion Grotius's name ; and a century later, in 1791, when Patrick Henry, having returned to the bar, had to act as a lawyer in the famous British Debts case and had to study international public law for several weeks, he sent off his grandson from his remote Virginian county on a journey of sixty miles to procure him a copy — not of the book of Grotius (which at the time existed already in four English translations), but of the book of a recent Swiss author, Monsieur Vattel. It is not, I think, until Henry Wheaton (Providence, R.I.) published his renowned Elements of international law (1836). until Hallam finished his Introduction to the literature of Europe (1839), until Wheaton printed his History of the law of nations in English (1845) and until Whewell, the Master of Trinity, gave his abridged translation of Grotius's book (1853), that his name in educated circles of the United States gradually became a household word.
Not so much of a household word, however, that any one of my audience would be delighted to undergo at this very moment anexam-



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inalion in all the particulars of Grotius's life and books. And let me say at the outset, you need not be afraid that I shall endeavour to be exhaustive.
Before I can try to open your minds to his personality, his influence and his life (1588—1645) — he is a near contemporary to Captain John Smith, or to Captain Myles Standish, or to Lord Baltimore —, I must clear away one misconception that often follows his reputation like a shadow : the conception of Grotius as a bookish pedant, as an unpractical collector of unpractical knowledge. Lord Macaulay, in his first essay on the Earl of Chatham, warns us in his witty way against those biographers who find nothing to blame in their heroes ; we should be warned as well against another kind of biographers, who, from mere annoyance at the excessive praise of former generations, are fond of tearing down great reputations by petty means.
You are, no doubt, aware of the fact that the growth of Grotius's genius coincides with the rise of the Dutch republic: of its commerce, its sea power, its power in the Indies, its importance in Europe, its university of Leyden. He was bom one year before the murder of Wilh'am the Silent (1584), in that very town of Delft which was the Prince's residence in his northern parts, and which, with its can als and trees and churches, still is the gem of our old cities. He is a boy and a Leyden student and a lawyer at The Hague, when young Maurice of Orange, William's son and a first-rate general, takes from the Spanish king and from his governor at Brussels town after town, fortification after fortification, and makes the Dutch revolutionary army the mihtary training school for European nobüity. He is an attorney-general at the provincial court (the state court) of Holland during that famous Hague Congress of 1608 — negotiating a truce between Holland and Spain —, which has been justly styled by the Belgian professor Pirenne the first European diplomatic congress.
Lu these eventful days, in these years of heavy responsabüities and intense labor, young Grotius already got a prominent position. It is Grotius who carries the quill against Spain and (virtually) against Great-Britain on the vital topic of the freedom of the seas, Mare liberum, and who is sent in 1618, as an extraordinary envoy, to the court of the British rival. It is Grotius who is chosen by the great pensionary Oldenbarnevelt — in a sense: the president of Holland — to be his right hand, his heutenant, his confident, his emissary: the Alexander Hamilton to this General Washington. It is Grotius who is known all



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over the country, not only as a man of exquisite learning, great ability and great energy, but also as the coming man, the man next to his grand old master, the man destined to be a leading power; you might anachronistically say: the foremost candidate for the next presidential election.
I venture to ask: is it conceivable that a man of thirty, thirty five years, so famous and occupying this position, and eclipsing in England in 1618 the three diplomatic envoys to whom he is attached, has been an unpractical conceited fellow, living by books and among books only ? —
I wish to add another characteristic.
Some ten years later, Grotius writes — first in his native language, later on in Latin — a simple treatise on the truth of thejChristian religion, intended for plain people and others, which is read side by side with their Bible by those sailors on Dutch ships and those peasants on Dutch farms who abhor his policy; which has, for popular use, been reprinted frequently and translated into numerous tongues ; the most popular religious book of this religious period, a book whose influence might be compared to Bunyan's.
I ask again: is it conceivable that a book hke this has been written by a mere pedant ? —
Finally. AU foreigners (one man excepted) who have met the living Grotius are unanimous as to his easy and winning ways, the integrity stamped on his face, his artless and truly aristocratie quahties, his cheerfulness, his affability. The French ambassador at The Hague, Aubéry du Maurier, is inspired by Grotius with a friendship that is near to honest love, and that lasts. —
Whence, then, come these nursery tales about Grotius the pedant ?
First of all, they come from one single witness, the very worst witness in this respect: George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Abbot is a fervent and tearing Calvinist, a narrow and polemic nature, who considers Grotius the chief of anti-Calvinism on the continent — an unintentional tribute to bis fame —, who sees Grotius coming to England in 1618 with aversion and disgust, and who meets him once or twice. Bishop Andrewes (bishop of Ely), the wittiest and most learned theologian of England in those days, and the famous Casaubon see Grotius repeatedly during these weeks and become fond of his person and of his company; but the archbishop describes him as an idle talker, a tedious, vain, partial and sarcastic self-admirer, a would-



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be scholar *). One might quite as well ask Senator Lodge to paint an impartial portrait of Woodrow Wilson.
The second argument comes from a very silly story about the Grotius of twenty years later, when he is the ambassador of Sweden at Paris. This story reads that Grotius, while waiting in the antechamber of the French minister Richelieu, did not converse with his diplomatic colleagues in the waiting-room, but was all the time reading the New Testament in Greek. I did not sueceed in tracing back this story to its origin; but one can only shrug one's shoulders at a tale hke this.
But the things that most impair Grotius's reputation and that cannot be denied are: his wonderful precocity — of ten misrepresented and exaggerated, by the way *) —, his wonderful memory for everything written either in Greek or in Latin, his habit (after the wants and tastes of his time) to corroborate his statements with frequent and prolix quotations from the older and younger classics. Natural though it may be that a superficial mind as Voltaire's infers from facts like these that he must have been an intolerable fellow 3), I hope you will not be deceived by appearances so scanty and so untrustworthy.
Now Grotius, having been — as I already told you — a young lawyer at The Hague for eight years and a young attomey-general at The Hague for five years — a jurist, to be sure, fond of theological and classical studies, and several times involved in international affairs —, is drawn by Barnevelt into politics, 1618,1617.
The United States (Provinces) of the Netherlands, in those days of truce with Spain (1609—1621), are split up into two political and religious parties: one in favor of a new war with Spain, and one in favor of converting the truce into a durable peace ; the first one desiring an outspoken Calvinistic stamp on the republic, the other one of that broad and mild protestantism which Professor Eekhof explained to you the other day, wishing to grant an equal and impartial treatment to all protestant denominations ; the first party induding prince Maurice of Orange (now fifty years), the Calvinist ministers, and an ardent enemy of Barnevelt and Grotius Mr. Francis Aerssens, — the
») S. Muller, Mare clausum (Leyden thesis), 1872, p. 82; W. S. M. Knight in Transaotions of the GrotittB Sooiety V, 1920, p. 32—34 (who ignores Muller' s book).
>) Sohotel, De academie te Leiden, 1876, p. 306; W. S. M. Knight in Transactions of the Grotius Sooiety VII, 1922, p. 15—16.
') Oeuvres oomplètes, 1819—1825, XXX p. 164, XXXII p. 216, XXXV p.224, LTV p. 103—104.



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other party lead by the great pensionary Oldenbarnevelt and includding Grotius. Your Pilgrim Fathers — whose ears, I fear, will tingle during this Leyden American week —> have been welcomed by Maurice and his party because of their rigid Calvinism, and have been welcomed by Barnevelt and bis party, because this party respected, and wanted to see respected by others, any protestant creed, even when different from their personal belief.
This entense political struggle, the most violent our country has known, — this struggle in which Grotius is used for every delicate business, for every conference, for every proclamation and every appeal to public sentiment, to which he has to give his whole personahty and in which his nerves are strung to the utmost, — this struggle is ended on a sudden by an unexpected military move : a coup d'état, a state-stroke, August 1618, by Maurice of Orange, — his adviser Aerssens standing behind him. The Prince imprisons both Barnevelt and Grotius, sees Barnevelt sent to the scaffold, and sees Grotius sent to a remote castle on the boundary between Holland and Brabant, to be locked up for life. But even in his confinement and his helplessness, Grotius is still considered to such a degree the most dangerous enemy of the present party in power — the victorious and warlike Calvinistic party —•, that ever and anon, time and again, rumors are being spread through The Hague about Grotius having escaped.
In the first days of April 1621 the truce between Holland and Spain will end and war will recommen.ce. Your Pilgrim Fathers, with a view perhaps to coming events, have left Holland already; and in the middle of March 1621 a special ambassador, Chancellor Peckius, chancellor of Brabant and a well-known jurist, is sent from Brussels to The Hague on behalf of the king of Spain, to lay before the States-General this bold proposal: the proposal of avoiding new warfare by submitting — submitting after all their victories won — to the Spanish King's Most Excellent Majesty. Poor Peckius, in his state-carriage, is waited for by the States-General with the deepest scorn and disdain. Poor Peckius, in his state-carriage, is hooted by the mob, at Delft and elsewhere, and even pelted with clods and mi re 1). And when poor Peckius, trembling, has delivered his message before the States-General on Tuesday March 28 2), nobody in Holland has time to pay any further
') Willem de Groot, Broeders gevangenisse, 1842, p. 151—155. *) Pamphlets in French and Dutch, Royal Library at The Hague, University Library at Leyden.



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attention to his funny mission, for in the afternoon of that very day *) a much greater piece of news runs like wild fire through Rotterdam and Delft and The Hague and Leyden and Amsterdam, bringing everything and everyone in commotion: the news that the dangerous prisoner of state, that Grotius escaped from prison in a bookchest, the day before, and fled to Antwerp. Because truce has not yet ended, he may safely pass through Spanish territory, through Belgium, and by this way he arrivés at Paris, April 1621.
Here begins that new and important part of Grotius's life, the most important part as I see it: the ten years of his private life in Eranee, 1621—1681. Ten years, which are difficult to the biographer, because Grotius himself has seen them in a light quite different from that shed by our present day opinion.
Suppose, a reporter of the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Ledger or the New York Times had found an opportunity to ask Mr. Grotius at Paris for an interview and had obtained it — he never would have obtained it —, Grotius might have complained of many oppressive cares: his exile, his unemployment, his poverty, his bad health (he was seriously ül in 1622, 1624, 1627), his family scattered, the education of his children neglected, his goods forfeited, his French pension paid most irregularly, his foes in Holland slandering his reputation all the while. The books he writes are treated by the Calvinists as if they had been written either by the devil himself, by a Socinian, or by a semi-Cathchc („Grotius papizans"); on the other hand, the same books are placed on the Roman index by that talented and highbred pope, Urban VIII, to whom Grotius feels bound by personal admiration. In the meantime the man in the background, Mr. Francis Aerssens — at first he was Mr. Aerssens, then he made mmsehMr.VariAeresen,lateronhebecame^FrancisvanAerssen(ie09), at last Lord Aerssen of Sommelsdyck (1619)—, in the meantime Mr. Aerssens, a very able diplomat by the way, is rising higher and higher, and constantly uses his influence against Grotius.
Notwithstanding all this, I for one feel inclined to deern these ten years the best and happiest years of Grotius's life, a blessing in disguise. The self-sacrificing love of his too manly wife in these long years of trial; the esteem and admiration with which French scholars and political men surround him; the charming country life at Balagny
J) Willem de Groot, Broeders gevangenisse, 1842, p. 151—155.



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in Northern France, 1628, where, quite leisurely, he works on his great book—a rest he has not known since boyhood—■; the conviction with which he develops in his book the thesis that a state as well as a citizen may act as a criminal, that crimes of states are as bad as crimes of citizens, and that they ought to be punished;—«11 these facts contribute to the impression that, though Grotius thinks himself unhappy, he cannot have been so.
Yet, one great hope constantly keeps him in anxiety and suspense : the hope to return some day to Holland. This international minded man, this cosmopolitan, who has been treated worse by bis native country than any one before or after him, cannot weed from his heart the love for his fatherland; he cannot endure exile. For him exactly seem to be written those touching words from Euripides' Phoenissae, the tragedy he translated in prison and published in 1630 : "The native land seems to be dear to mort als ? — One may not simply teil, how dear it is"
Now, since Maurice's death (April 1625) a long series of events in Holland have been encouraging his hope: the accession of his friend prince Frederic Henry of Orange, some of his partisans being allowed to return to Holland, his denomination being allowed to build a church at Amsterdam, fellow-prisoners of his who have escaped being let alone. Moreover, in the spring of 1631 he publishes a work—a masterpiece—on Dutch Roman Law (printed five times in that single year), and he expects that this contribution to his country's interests may help also to put its people in a softer mood. At last, October 1681, Grotius, notwithstanding the rude sentence of 1619 which never has been cancelled or revoked, risks the daring deed, and returns by sea to Rotterdam, Delft, Amsterdam. He indeed sees again his dear old province, his native town, his old parents at Delft, his devoted brother, many affectionate friends. But at the same time a thunderstorm of hatred, aversion and slander bursts out again against the dangerous pretender of thirteen years ago; a prize is even set on his head; and he feels compelled to go away once more. Of course, he cannot, in these, conditions, return like a beggar to France: he goes to Hamburg in Germany, no aims in life, no prospects left, nothing to hope for. The state-stroke of 1618 has broken his career; this disillusion, this upsetting of his dream of dreams, breaks his life. It makes him feel tired and despondent, though he is only forty-nine ; his heart is smitten and
') 'H irarplq, (f>; ïotice, qnATaxov ppoxoii;. — Oöo' övoudo-m oüvai'av wc, èotiv q>(Xov. Compare Epiatolae quotquot, 1687, n° 196 (July 21, 1623).



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withered, his days—as the psalmist says—are like a shadow that declineth.
Three years later, 1634 and 1685, he experiences a short revival of his hope and courage. It is when the Swedish Government, the great chancellor Oxenstierna, appoints him to be Swedish ambassador at Paris, the representative of the mighty and redouted northern state at the first court of Europa, at a time when great efforts are .made to bring about peace for that ravaged continent. But Grotius soon discovers that, in this brilliant and honored position, he can do almost nothing for the betterment of international feelings ; the ten years of his diplomatic service, though he performs his duties with the greatest care and ze al, are-^as his wife says in a confidential letter x)—.years of thistles and thorns. He writes many renowned books, he does his utmost for religious peace, but he has lost confidence and hope ; he even dislikes to answer when in 1685 his Mare liberum is attacked by Selden's Mare clausum. Grotius's life is not of those lives which go higher and higher and are highest towards the end: his life is one of those numerous lives from which the latter part might be cut off without materially changing their influence on the world's or their nation's history.
But in the course of these remaining years, two characteristic qualities of his shine out more brightly than they did before.
On one side: his serious and deep belief in the Gospels and in the whole Scripture. That the sheep of Christ shall be one fold under one shepherd—an unspeakable ülusion, according to realistic theologians from both camps—is an indubitable truth to him, a divine command. That monarchs and states shall abstain from crimes and obey God as well as individuals shall—an unspeakable folly according to diplomats of the type of Richeheu or Aerssens—is an indubitable truth to him, a divine command. That—'this is a minor point, but it may interest Americans—when Scripture states that mankind began in Eden, the aboriginal population of America (Indians, Mexicans, etc.) must have started from the old continents, is an indubitable truth to him; and he devotes two ingenious, but modestly written pamphlets to finding out a solution of this diff iculty.
On the other hand—this is the second quality I alluded to—, during
J) Brieven van en aan Maria van Reigersberoh, 1902, p. 245 (Ootober 25, 1642. to her brother).



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all these years not one single word either of personal pride or of personal hatred escapes from his pen or from his lips, touchy and irritable though the last years have made him. John Selden attacks him in 1685; it is a pleasure to read how honestly and earnestly he praises Selden 1). Aerssens dies in 1641; he writes: „may God forgive him for what he did against men better than himself; a man born both to the benefit of himself and of the house of Nassau" *); just that. He never in his long diplomatic career refers to his book on international law as to a book of great information and good explanation regarding facts; just once, in 1641, the ejaculation escapes him: „but if Christian princes folio wed all my warnings, there would be no wars between them; they would rather give up some part of their rights, or appoint pious umpires" 3). Until the very last the atmosphere of Grotius is the atmosphere of a highminded man, a highspirited man, a pure man; and to Grotius also one might apply that sober and splendid American inscription : „his fame his best epitaph".
Better, however, than by the qualities of his great character, better than by all his learning and all his books, Grotius is known to his fellow-countrymen by a story, dear to their hearts: the story of his escape from prison by means of a book ehest. Do not fear I shall even try to teil this story before you as it ought to be told. You are aware how utterly impossible it would be to make a stranger really share your own feelings as to Roger Williams in the snowy woods, George Washington's cherry tree, John Brown (Harper's Ferry). Such tales are a quite peculiar part of your national treasure, even because you heard them again and again and cherished them in the gentle and impressionable age of boyhood. Well, it is quite as impossible to make you understand what we feit about Grotius praying before bis chest, his stepping into the chest, the soldiers dragging him from the castle to the ship, his bold wife remaining in the castle, his tossing on the waves of the broad and stormy river, the smartness of his courageous maid-servant who accompanies the chest, his emerging in safety from the chest, his wife's jokes in the face of the deceived
') Epistolae quotquot, 1687, appendix, n°. 371 (May 7, 1636, to Willem de Groot).
*) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, appendix, n°. 581, 582 (January 4 and 11, 1642, to Willem de Groot); cf. n°. 156 (August 13, 1621, to Du Maurier: homo nostro malo natos).
3) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, appendix, n°. 545 (May 4, 1641, to Willem de Groot, on Nioolaes de Bye).



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castle-keeper. I do not believe that, apart frora the epic narrative of William the Silent's life and murder, there is one story either better known or better beloved in the long history of this country than this story of Grotius's book chest.
But if you ask—which is a quite different thing—, which period of Grotius's life deserves to be best known to mankind, of course we approach the episod of his brooding and working on his book on war and peace, a book more valuable now perhaps than it has been for three hundred years:—but that will, with your good pleasure, be my narrative for to-morrow.
II.
In the year of our Lord 1899, on the occasion of the first Peace Conference at The Hague, Mr. Andrew White, acting in compliance with the instructions of the United States Government (President McKinley, Secretary Hay), deposits a wreath on the tomb of Hugo Grotius in the church at Delft.
In 1900, Pope Leo XIII resolves to strike out from the index of prohibited books the title of Grotius's book on the laws of war and peace, which has stood there since 1626.
In 1914, at the outbreak of the war and the invasion of Belgium, both parties try to strengthen their cause by quoting the book of Grotius.
In 1915, a Grotius Society is founded in London.
In 1919, the book of Grotius is repubhshed in Holland, at Leyden, according to that critical method in which classical authors are wont to be published nowadays: the 68rd edition of the book, its 40th edition in Latin.
In May 1924, a French committee affixes a memorial slab at Balagny, in Northern France (halfway between Beauvais and Senlis, on the small river Thérain), on the spot where Grotius, 1628, prepared his book.
All this means a most curious thing. We know sufficiently well, how long-hved artistic and aesthetical works can be: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, the story of Brer Fox and the tar baby. But we also know that scientific books are not only easüy superseded by the younger books they engender themselves, but that this phenomenon is even in accordance with the very nature of scientific treatises.
Not so with the book of Grotius. It has been read, consulted, studied, translated, explained, repubhshed from 1625 tilï about 1775. Then a



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period of decline begins : the very period in which the United States emerge into independence, renown and welfare. But since about 1850 the reputation of the book gradually comes back in Europe and begins in America, and at this moment, 1924, it seems as high as it ever was in the days when every scholar read and wrote Latin with pleasure, which, I fear, is not any more the case now.
Now here a question presents itself, analogous to my question of yesterday. What did Grotius purpose in writing his book ? Is it conceivable he only meant to give a very learned and ponderous book on jurisprudence, a complete systematical survey of international law, a book for the use of law students and lawyers ? Or has he rather meant to write a book for the use of humanity, pleading the thesis I submitted to you yesterday about crimes committed by states, punishments inflicted on states, and the way in which these punishments ought to be executed ?
Allow me to lay before you a few considerations that may enable you provisionally to choose.
a. Two or three years (1620) before his taking up the laws of war and peace, Grotius had finished(not yet printed)a complete systematical survey of the law of his native country, his celebrated Introduction to Dutch Roman law. Lf it really had been his aim to do, in 1623 and 1624, the same thing and nothing else for international law, no doubt a consistent mind like his and a believer in the universal apphcabihty of the Roman law system as, in these days, he was, would have followed for the new treatise exactly the same methods and divisions. One look, however, in both books is sufficiënt to convince us how much theydiffer. TÖ* keystone of the book of 1625 is the thesis that the most righteous war is a war against state crimes; its largest chapter is the chapter on punishments.
b. In 1641, a Dutch relative of Grotius's, Mr. Nicolar s de Bye at Alkmaar (in Northern Holland), a pious Mennonite, objects in an endless letter to Grotius—„a book rather than a letter"—: that it is every Christian's duty not to cause grief to his fellow-creatures, and that, for this reason, a Christian nation is not entitled either to compel a sister-nation by force of arms, by war, to do anything she dislikes. Grotius, in two letters to his brother x), compares, like his correspond-
•) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, appendix, n°. 645 and 646 (May 4 and 12, 1642, to Willem de Groot).



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dent, the case of a nation making war on a guilty nation to the case of a judge inflicting punishment on a guilty man, and asks: both Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were criminal judges ; has Christ ever told them to resign ? if Christ has not, how can our friend allege that what my book says about punishing culprit states by war is contrary to the Gospels ?
c. In 1642, a new edition of the great book appears, and Grotius adds an appendix: he adds two quotations from the words and the biography of the French king Lewis IX, Saint Lewis (18th century). What is the tendency of these quotations ? Do they contribute anything to an insight into jurisprudence ? No. They state: that on one hand a king of France would be entirely wrong in waging war for the glory or the interest of himself and his country, or even in indulging in war whenever it might be avoided, but that on the other hand he would be right in not standing aloof during a war in which his neighbour nations wronged each other.
d. Who, in the Europe of 1625, is Grotius's favourite statesman, his hero ? The Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus. Is he a systematical jurist ? Not he. Is he a peace-maker ? Not he. He is a warrior, but a holy warrior, a happy warrior, a disinterested warrior,' the personification af a war against crime and injustice.
e. What had been Grotius's preparation for his book of 1625 ? A treaüse—published only as late as 1868—on the law of spoils (of booty). Which had been the tendency of this treatise ? A fervent accusation of Portugal as a culprit state ; a defence of Holland's action against Portugal in the Indies as being a war against crime; arepresentation of Holland's booty in the Indies as a part of the mdemnification and the fine which a criminal state has to pay.
f. Last of all: why did Grotius undertake bis book of 1625? In his book on Dutch Roman law he states : I undertook this work because lawyers and students are much in need of a systematical surveyi But in his book of 1625 he states *): because the horrors of the wars of his time—the thirty years' war in Germany, the eighty years' war in Holland, the civü wars in France—are calling loudly for new principles to guide the European nations and their warfare* He mentions his love for the science of jurisprudence as a mere seoondary consideration. —•
Now, if my notion be false and my interpretation be wrong, look here what may be the consequences.
') Edition of 1919, Molhuysen, p. 12—13 (Prolegomena, par. 28—30).



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One hundred fifty years ago, a French abbot, Condillac (1715— 1780), writes this *): Grotius has given a systematical survey of law and ethics, but the title does not fit the book, the title and the book do not belong together; Grotius must have chosen this title in order to excite a more general curiosity, to hold before the general reader a bait, a lure, a sign-board alien to the business.
And four years ago, an author in the Transactions of the Grotius Society of London suggests a): Grotius has given an „exposition of international law"; why ? apparently because he „wished to move efficiaüy in international circles", „to be the agent and associate of rulers", to come in contact „with crowned heads". His book „was written largely with a regard for its possibilities as an introduction to diplomatic service".
I do not ask whether the tendency of this book was not exactly the reverse of what a book on international law should say in order to be agreeable to kings; I just propose to refer both these gentlemen to our honored friend of yesterday morning, George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury. —
But if my notion be right and my interpretation true, Grotius's book, though oldfashioned in its Latin form and its quotations, is a quite modern book; for it is only since the first Peace Conference (1899) or rather since the outbreak of the war (1914) that the problem of punishing a culprit state occupies the public mind.
Therefore, if we desire either a right understanding of this book or a short formula resuming the same, it will be useless to go and search for it in the 17th and 18th centuries, and even in the 19th century. We might perhaps take one or two expressions from papers distributed by the American League to Enforce Peace (1915), from war speeches by President Wüson, or from the Covenant of the League of Nations; but we might best of all take article 1, § 1, of Lord Robert Cecil's treaty of mutual assistance in the form the draft of this treaty got at Geneva, September 1928, and in which it has been transplanted in the draft treaty of June 1924, prepared by General Bliss, Professor Shotwell and other members of the American group of the League. The paragraph reads — of course I do not discuss here the guarantee problem itself—: „The High Contracting Parties solemnly
') As qnoted by Dugald Stewart, Colleoted works, 1854—1858, I, p. 171. I could not yet tracé the quotation in Condillac's Oeuvres.
*) W. S. M. Knight in Transactions of the Grotius Society V, 1920, p. 25—26, and in Seleotions translated, 1922, p. 8—9.
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declare that aggressive war is an international crime and severaUy undertake that no one of them will be guilty of its commission". This clause, I think, is Grotius's book in a nut-shell; this clause, I think, is Grotius's triumph after three hundred years; this' clause, I think, contains the formula that ought to have been placed as a gate-keeper on the threshold of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
If really this clause sums up Grotius's book, Holland's best service to Grotius's memory has not been this that as early as 1658 a Leyden professor, Bornius (tutor to the young William LU), was lecturing on Grotius's book as a textbook, and that other Leyden professors folio wed him—Vit riarius, father and son, and Pestel—■; hut that even in the days wherr the United Provinces were powerful enough to render themselves redoubtable, they never menaced other nations, they never waged war against their neighbours, they never sought aggrandizement; that the spirit of mihtarism was alien to them; and that only twice in history they declared war (on a European state who had violated a treaty): in 1657 on Portugal, in the case of Brazil, in 1702 on the imperialism of Lewis XIV of France.
November, 1624, the book on war and peace goes to the press. March or April, 1625, the printing is finished. July, 1625, the book comes from the press and its first copies are being mailed. The letter in which Grotius promises these copies to his brother Willem in Holland is dated *): Paris, 1625, the fourth of July.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people, for one continent, or for all mankind to break with the past and to have the world's face changed; when in such days the voiee of the human race calls loudly for a great statesman, a great prophet, a great reformer to arise ; and when upon this call this man does arise, —we bow our heads in silence.
Does Grotius himself, July 1625, realize the importance of his book ? He does not. When the book appears, be is full of a quite different thing: he is full of the recent death of his most powerful enemy, Maurice of Orange (April 1625), and of his own chances to return to Holland. But, of course, he soon perceives the immense success of his work. The book comes, sees, wins. It is reprinted in 1626, 1681, 1682,1632 again, 1642,1646. He hears how Gustavus Adolphus appreciates it; he hears how it is admired by clever men in France, England,
') Epistolae quotquot, 1687, appendix, n". 97.



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Poland, Holland. Hallam was right in calling this book more original than even Montesquieu or Adam Smith 1).
Yet, to be sure. this is not the kind of success Grotius has hoped for. He has not written to add new glory to his scientific glory: he has written to move the hearts of princes and nations. But once the militarism of Spain has been crushed, new mihtarisms arise.
What about France, where he lives,—France the mightiest state of the seventeenth century ? France, at the time of Grotius's book being prepared for printing, April 1624, gets a new chief: that brilliant statesman, Cardinal de Richelieu. The great cardinal stamps out civil war within a few years; but international war is to him and his suceessors a means to add power and security and glory to the land they govem and represent. What about Sweden, the second military nation ? The realm of Gustavus Adolphus and his chancellor Oxenstierna, until the king's heroic death in 1682, is the righteous state after Grotius's heart; the realm of Oxenstierna, who in 1633 and 1634 calls upon Grotius to be Sweden's ambassador at Paris, still perseveres in this track; but the successful realm of Sweden since about 1640 has become militaristic. It wants land, power, glory; it wants to be master all around the Baltic; above all, it wants to smash, to crush the rival king of Denmark. In December 1648, unexpectedly, Swedish troops are sent over to the Danish isles and continent, and occupy large tracts of Denmark, in Jutland and Holstein.
Here again, the paths of Holland and of Grotius separate.
Holland is bound by a recent treaty, 1640, to support Sweden against her enemies; Holland has been of ten ill-used herself by Denmark and its toils, the famous Sound dues—called after the narrow passage between the North Sea and the Baltic—; but Holland already foresees Sweden's growing militarism, and it does not wish to co-operate any further than the treaty requires. Therefore, during the whole year of 1644 Holland waits, and lingers, much to the regret and the illhumour of Grotius. For Grotius gives a different interpretation to Sweden's policy, whose ambassador at Paris he still is. Undoubtedly, when he first hears of Sweden's invasion, December 1643, he is very uneasy; he repeatedly asks his government for more and more particulars. But when the great chancellor Oxenstierna, his venerated friend and supporter, mails to him a copy of the Swedish manifesto of January 16 (old style), 1644, all flowing over with law
') Hallam, Introduction to the literature of Europe, II, 1860, p. 142.



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of nations and freedom of the seas1), his suspicions are smoothed down, the weight is off his mind; he recovers his old confidence in the welltested pohcy of Sweden»), and he wishes to see Holland share this policy. Holland, on the contrary, keeps its suspicions, prefers—as has been its practice ever since—practical considerations to credulity in international affairs, and looks which way the cat will jump. Before another fifteen years have passed, Holland really will have to support Denmark against the militarism, now unmasked, of Queen Christina's suceessors.
What is this Scandinavian ad venture to end in ? The Scandinavian adventure is mixed up in a striking way with the end of Grotius's life.
In March 1645, the States-General resolve at last to send a fleet against the high-handed proceedings of Denmark. In March 1645 also, Queen Christina of Sweden recalls her ambassador Grotius from Paris. Grotius accordingly leaves Paris. He makes a stay of a eouple of days in Holland (April—May 1645): not now with the deep emotions of fourteen years ago, but with coolness and indifference in his heart. He sails from Amsterdam harbour to Hamburg, proceeds to Lubeck and Wismar, crosses the sea, and arrivés at Kalmar, Sweden, on June 6 or 7,1645.
Two days later, June 9, a strong Dutch fleet leaves Holland, a fleet of fifty men-of-war, under a bold and daring admiral, Witte de With, instructed to lay his fist on the Sound and to prevent Denmark from exacting unjust toils from Netherland merchantmen. The Dutch admiral divides his fleet in two parts, each of them controlling and protecting one of the entrances of the passage ; he Iets hundreds of Dutch ships sail in and out without paying one cent to the Danish treasury—they are provisionally paying at Amsterdam—>, and in this manner he has the keys of the important passage, "the keys of the Sound", in his mighty hand.
In the meantime Grotius, abiding in Southern Sweden, hears and fears. All through the preceding year 1644 he has desired Holland to join the Swedish arms; but what he now sees might mean a new naval war, in which he cannot foresee Holland's part 8). The Dutch admiral, howevèr, sincerely supports Sweden, and behaving as the land of Grotius should behave, expressly states to the Danish king that, once
') Pampblets in Dutch, Royal Library at The Hague, n°. 6075,5076,6077. *) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, n°. 1661 eto. (from April 1644); overlooked by Kernkamp, De sleutels van de Sont, 1890, p. 40—41.
3) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, n°. 1764 (June 25, 1645, to Willem de Groot).



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the tcJl dispute between Denmark and Sweden is settled, Holland shall pay to the last cent what is due to Denmark and has been left unpaid x); but Grotius does not know it. In this way July and the beginning of August pass away.
In the middle of August, 1645, Grotius after taking leave from the Swedish queen, being now a retired ambassador, not knowing where to go—his wife and daughter are at Spa, in Belgium, for the moment—, an exile on earth for the rest of his days, crosses the Baltic. His ship is overtaken by very rough weather, which lasts full five days, and he arrivés at last at Danzig, shipwrecked and very UI. Too ül and too far off to be aware that HoUand only fights for justice, that a twofold peace is about to be signed, and that through Holland's influence peace conditions for Denmark are rendered more tolerable. On August 28rd, peace is signed both between Sweden and Denmark and between Holland and Denmark; on August 26th, Grotius travelling in western direction reaches Rostock (in Mecklemburg), very very UI. On August 28th, in the morning, the Dutch admiral is informed that peace is signed and his task is accomplished; on August 28th, about midnight, Grotius dies, a forlorn traveUer in a foreign country.
Why does this death of Grotius fUl us with sadness ? Because he dies in sadness, in loneliness and despondency. Hé does not even know that in this Scandinavian affair HoUand has kept her hands clean. He does not live to see, in 1648, the peace of Westphalia ending two long and cruel European wars. He does not Uve to see, in 1658, the old party of Barnevelt and himself return to power, remaining aUmighty for a quarter of a century (the great pensionary Jan de Witt), and firmly estabhshing in HoUand those principles of moderation and peacefulness in international affaire that never shall be given up. Worst of all, he does not Uve to see, how Great Britain and HoUand under William III of Orange— "the world's great patriot", as Addison styles him—resumé that grand European task of fighting for the cause of peace, which Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden has leftunfinished on the battlefield of Lützen.
Now, can anyone believe that the spectacle of the world, especiaUy the European world, as it developed after the death of William III (1702), might have been a comfort to Grotius ?
') Kernkamp, De sleutels van de Sont, 1890, p. 207.



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No one can.
Yet I think: some facts or tendencies, now and then, might have given him just a little satisfaction.
On one hand the policy of Holland. I am not going to impose on you by saying that after 1702 we have been a brilliant nation, a righteous nation, a disinterested and altruistic nation: Dr. Van Eysinga in his lectures has given you, to be sure, a more reliable insight into our hanrlling of international problems. But I wish to state two facts. The outstanding characteristic of our foreign policy was and is its disinclination to be drawn into any European militarism; it often looks as if the Farewell Address had been addressed to us; we still f ollow the trend of policy which inspired our Scandinavian policy of 1644 and after, showing ourselves in this respect realistic and suspicious, not to say oversuspicious. On the other hand: our confidence for the future is in international impartiality only. As much as we should dislike to become even an important centre of political international intrigue, as much we like to be a centre of Peace Conferences; and as much as we like to be the seat of a Permanent Court of Internationa' Justice, as httle we should have feit inclined to lodge a political organization of the nations of the world.
It is not an idle compliment when, in this connection, I add to the name of Holland the name of the United States. Ours is the negative tendency of the international mind; yours is its positive tendency, which seems to me to be richer and loftier.
In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence is signed, it reads towards the end : "We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America solemnly .publish and declare: That as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy war". It is .quite comprehensible that, in those days and in this document, a clause of this tenure has been inserted: yet it is not the Grotian trend of thought; and America, in spite of her remarkable Jay treaty and the foresight of her time-honored arbitration policy, has in the last century fought some wars that were not free from national egotism. But, in 1861, the civil war declared by that incomparable man and statesman and that true Christian, President Lincoln—of course I do not judge between the causes of the northern and the southern states—, the civil war was waged as a war for the sake of peace and justice," a war without seKishness and greed and hatred, a war in accordance with Grotius's hopes. And again, in 1917, when the United States threw into the scale of the European conflict her unselfish efforts and






QROTTOS 'S TOMB



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■fiér disinterested power—of course I do not judge now between the causes of all parties fighting on the Allied side—, she only intended to support a war against crime and lawlessness, to wage a war for the sake of peace and justice, a war without selfishness and greed and hatred, a war in accordance with Grotius's hopes.
Therefore, let me state it once more: this oldfashioned Latin book pf 1625 is a quite modern book; this oldfashioned Latin book of 1625 is the very book we wanted after the armistice of 1918; this oldfashioned Latin book of 1625 gave, and can give still, "a noble change to the course of human af fairs" l); and although Grotius himself has died in despondency, lonehhess and sadness, his spirit, living on, has given us courage, confidence and strength.
There is a letter extant, written by Grotius 'in the brightest part of his career, in 1614, to a friend at Leyden *), ending in these generous words: "Let not the sight of the wrongs I suffer deter you from standing up for truth, but let us rather plant trees for the benefit of those who come after us" (Noli exemplo meae iniuriae deterreri a patrocinio veritatis, quin potius seramus arbores alteri saeculo profuturas).
Grotius's life has been in keeping with this maxim. A man, not only first in learning, first in integrity, first in attachment to peace and justice, but a man who has become a benefactor of his country and of mankind at the oost of his life's happiness.
Repentance cannot redress what has been done. But Holland, bowing her head for shame, could not have shown her repentance better and in a more eloquent way than she did by laying Grotius to rest in her most sacred spot, to sleep where William the Silent sleeps.
') A. D. White, Seven great statesmen, 1910, p. 25.
:) Epistolae quotquot, 1687, n°. 41 (September 8, 1614, to Vossius).















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