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Visit of Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands to the Senate
Extension of Remarks of Hon. Sol Bloom of New York in the House of Representatives August 6, 1942
Mr. BARKLEY. Mr. President, Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands has been invited by Members of the Senate to be our guest this morning and to deliver an address. We have also asked the Members of the House of Representatives informally to be our guests on this occasion.
Therefore, I move that when the Members of the House shall have assembled in the Senate Chamber the Vice President appoint a committee of three Senators and that a similar committee be appointed by the Speaker pro tempore of the House of Representatives to escort Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands into the Chamber when she appears to address the Senate within a few moments.
The motion was agreed to.
Mr. BARKLEY. Mr. President, I also move that, following its delivery, the address itself and all the proceedings connected therewith be printed in the Congressional Record as a part of the proceedings of the Senate of today.
The motion was agreed to.
Mr. BARKLEY. The Members of the House of Representatives will be here presently, and, I suppose, we may be at ease until they arrive.
At 12 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m. the House of Representatives, preceded by the Sergeant at Arms, Kenneth Romney, and the Doorkeeper, Joseph J. Sinnott, and headed by the Speaker pro tempore, Hon. Alfred L. Bulwinkle, of North Carolina, entered the Chamber.
The Speaker pro tempore was escorted to the chair to the right of the Vice President, and the Members of the House of Representatives were escorted to the seats assigned to them.
The VICE PRESIDENT. In conformity with the motion of the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Barkley], heretofore agreed to, the Chair appoints as members of the committee on behalf of the Senate to receive Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Barkley], the Senator from Oregon [Mr. McNary], and the Senator from Texas [Mr. Connally].
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Speaker pro tempore appoints as members of the committee on the part of the House of Representatives to escort Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands into the Chamber the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Cochran], the gentleman from California [Mr. Gearhart], and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Bloom].
Mr. BARKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess subject to the call of the Chair.
The VICE PRESIDENT. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Thereupon (at 12 o'clock and 15 minutes p.m.) the Senate stood in recess, subject to the call of the Chair.
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At 12 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m. Her Majesty, Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands, entered the Chamber, escorted by the committees of the two Houses and the Secretary of the Senate [Edwin A. Halsey] and the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate [Chesley W. Jurney], and accompanied by Jonkheer George van Tets van Goudriaan, principal private secretary; Maj. Gen. L.H. van Oyen, aide de camp; Baroness Ethel van Boetzelaer, lady in waiting; Lt. K. Krediet, equerry to Her Majesty; His Excellency Dr. Eelco van Kleffens, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands; His Excellency Alexander Loudon, the Ambassador of the Netherlands, and Madam Loudon; Maj. Gen. Jay L. Benedict, United States Army, aide to Her Majesty; Rear Admiral Monroe Kelly, United States Navy, aide to Her Majesty; and Hon. George T. Summerlin, Chief of Protocol, State Department. Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands was escorted to a seat on the rostrum in front of the Vice President and the Speaker pro tempore of the House of Representatives, and the distinguished visitors accompanying her were escorted to the seats assigned to them at the left of the Vice President's desk.
The VICE PRESIDENT. Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives and distinguished guests, Her Majesty the Queen of The Netherlands. [Prolonged applause, Senators and their guests rising.]
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Address by the Queen of the Netherlands
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Congress of the United States, it gives me great pleasure to appear in your midst.
Seeing this great democratic assembly, renewing itself at regular intervals and meeting under self-made rules of law, seems to me a sure guaranty that liberty is forever young and strong and invincible, whereas the autocrat, incapable of rejuvenating himself, is every day nearer to his end, his regime doomed to die with him.
Moreover, where and what would the world be today were it not for the United States of America, whose legislators you are?
Such thoughts warm my heart in this hour, and I know that my people everywhere feel as I do.
I stand here as the spokesman of my country, not only of those nine million of my compatriots in Europe, but also of some seventy millions in Asia and in the Western Hemisphere, whom I know to be at one with me in the spirit.
The Netherlands were, like the United States, like all the United Nations, a peace-loving country.
At present, both in Europe and in Asia, that country is under enemy occupation.
A cruel fate has overtaken its inhabitants.
Imagine what it means for a liberty-loving country to be in bondage, for a proud country to be subject to harsh alien rule.
What would be the American answer if an invader tried to cover his wholesale systematic pillage with the firing squad, the concentration camp, and the abomination of the hostage practice?
Having come by first-hand knowledge to know your national character better
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than ever, I doubt not that your answer would be: resistance, resistance until the end, resistance in every practicable shape or form. [Applause.]
This is exactly the answer my people have given, and are giving every day.
If in the material sense they have been ruined by the enemy, their spirit grows with their hardships, and they keep their unflinching belief in their liberation.
They see their families go without what they most need in food and clothing, their workers enslaved by the oppressor.
Yet ‘no surrender’ remains their constant motto.
Inside occupied territory and outside the fight goes on.
We use our resources to the best of our abilities.
In the Indies, where our forces won fresh laurels together with yours, stubborn resistance continues locally.
Surinam helps the United Nations with its bauxite, Curacao with its oil products; our soldiers, sailors, and airmen are on duty in both these territories, and they guard them in alert and cordial cooperation with your own forces stationed there when the war in the Far East prevented us from sending reinforcements to the Caribbean area.
Our Navy is on duty every day.
Our mercantile marine, still one of the largest, has been completely integrated in the navigational effort of the United Nations, fighting off Axis submarines and raiders, in close companionship with your own brave seafaring men.
Those of us who have the inestimable privilege of being free feel that it is our holy duty toward our enslaved compatriots in east and west to do whatever we can to hasten the day of victory.
Democracy is our most precious heritage.
We cannot breathe in the sullen atmosphere of despotic rule.
The people of the Netherlands have developed their free institutions in their own progressive way, in accordance with their high regard for personal and national liberty.
They had long approached the complete realization of the ‘four freedoms’ which the President of the United States has set as one of the aims of our common war effort. There was of old in our whole kingdom freedom of religion and of speech; there also was freedom from fear, and constant forward steps, designed to insure freedom from want, were in ever-expanding evolution.
Throughout my reign, the development of democracy and progress in the Netherlands Indies has been our constant policy.
Under Netherlands stewardship a great number of peoples and tribes are being systematically merged into one harmonious community, in which all these elements-the Indonesians in their rich variety of religions, languages, arts, and customary laws, the Chinese, the Arabs, and the westerners-feel equally at home.
Careful consideration has constantly been given to the particular characteristics and needs of the peoples concerned.
Confronted, as we found ourselves, by highly developed forms of civilization to which the population is deeply attached, we strove not to uproot these, but to promote their adaptation to the exigencies of the modern world.
The voluntary cooperation in mutual respect and toleration between people of
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oriental and western stock toward full partnership in government on a basis of equality has been proved possible and successful.
Increasing self-government, keeping pace with the rapidly broadening enlightenment and education of the native population, has been enacted ever since the beginning of this country, and especially since the revision of the constitution in 1925.
The steady and progressive development received new emphasis and momentum by my announcement last year that after the war the place of the overseas territories in the framework of the kingdom and the constitution of those territories will be the subject of a conference in which all parts of the kingdom are to be fully represented.
Consultations on this subject were already proceeding in the Netherlands Indies when the Japanese invasion temporarily interrupted their promising course.
The preparation of the conference is nonetheless being actively continued, but, in accordance with sound democratic principle, no final decision will be taken without the cooperation of the people once they are free again.
What are our war aims and what are our peace aims?
We have adhered to the Atlantic Charter, and our lend-lease agreement with the United States points the way to wise international economic planning.
We want nothing that does not belong to us.
We want to resume our place as an independent nation on the fringe of the Atlantic, on the dividing line of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, and to remain your good neighbor in the Caribbean Sea, and we accept the responsibilities resulting from that situation. [Applause.]
And, above all, we want to see suitable measures taken in order that henceforth no nation may think it can, with impunity, break its pledged word or attack others.
When speaking of war and peace aims, I do not forget, were it only for one brief moment, that first of all there is a war to be won.
In that war we are with you and the other United Nations to the last. [Applause.]
It is not the first time that the Netherlands has been associated with the United States in common warfare.
In the days of Washington we were at one time comrades in arms, and it gives me pleasure to recall that the first salute given to the American flag on behalf of a foreign government was rendered by guns of my country.
That ancient partnership we see revived today.
One of your great men who stood at the cradle of American liberty, Benjamin Franklin, once wrote to John Adams, your first Envoy at The Hague:
I believe neither Holland nor we could be prevailed on to abandon our friends.
That was in 1782, and I think it still holds good today. We cannot be prevailed on, either of us, to abandon our friends.
That is why we considered the first Japanese bomb on Pearl Harbor as a bomb on ourselves.
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That is why we never wavered in our resolve to be with the United Nations until the end.
United we stand, and united we will achieve victory.
[Prolonged applause, the Members of the Senate and their guests rising.]
At the conclusion of her address Her Majesty, the Queen of the Netherlands, and the distinguished visitors and guests retired from the Chamber; and (at 12 o'clock and 48 minutes p.m.) the Senate reassembled when called to order by the Presiding Officer (Mr Lucas in the chair).
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Queen at Washington
Extension of Remarks of Hon. Sol Bloom of new york in the House of Representatives Wednesday, September 9, 1942
Mr. BLOOM. Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks in the Record, I include the following editorial from the New York Times of August 8, 1942, relating to the recent visit of Her Majesty, Queen Wilhelmina, of the Netherlands:
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Queen at Washington
Queen Wilhelmina didn't need to say or do anything more to endear her and her people to Americans, but her 2 days at Washington have had that effect. Busy days they were. She made a speech to Congress that was a model of clear statement, eloquent without rhetoric. She made a short speech in acknowledgment of the submarine chaser given her, bearing her name and flying the flag of her country. Somehow on that same Thursday she laid a wreath on Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon, and on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery, lunched on the President's yacht, dined at the Dutch Embassy, held a press conference for the women correspondents.
Yesterday at the President's press conference she read a statement to the reporters. At the embassy she decorated certain American officers. Everything she did and said was news. The constitutional ruler of a democratic people, she made herself at home, competent, cordial, dignified in a strange environment she immediately made her own.
Queen Wilhelmina referred to the early association of her country and ours. Hers was the first country after France to recognize our independence. We at once negotiated a loan. We negotiated other Dutch loans when we could. Impotent financially, the Confederation made a few payments of interest. In 1785, when installments of principals as well as arrears of interest were due, Congress couldn't raise the money. If ultimately the debt was paid, remembrance of help given in our day of small things should add gratitude to our respect and admiration of Queen Wilhelmina and her people.
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Doughty Dutch
[Editorial from the Los Angeles (Calif.) Times of August 7, 1942]
Friendship of the United States and the Netherlands was further cemented yesterday by the ceremonies at Washington in which President Roosevelt turned over to Queen Wilhelmina a submarine chaser to be added to the Dutch Navy and to bear her name, followed by a speech of thanks and appreciation by the Queen to Congress.
Between the United States and the Netherlands there have been cordial relations ever since the American flag was saluted, for the first time in history, by the guns of Holland. Now that the two nations are united in the
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enterprise of winning the war and defeating tyranny and aggression, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the ties are closer than ever before, and a friendship has been formed which can never cease.
The subchaser Queen Wilhelmina, built in American yards, but to be taken into battle by valiant Dutch sailors, is a symbol of that friendship. Long may the Netherlands tricolor wave triumphantly at her staff!
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Congress Hears a Queen
[Editorial from the New York Times of August 9, 1942]
For the first time in its history the Congress of the United States was addressed last week by a reigning Queen. Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, a taller and more regal figure than many of the legislators had been led to expect from her pictures, read her speech in the Senate Chamber. In the name of her 9,000,000 subjects now under German domination in Europe, of her 69,000,000 subjects now under Japanese domination in the Netherlands East Indies, of her 280,000 subjects still free in the Netherlands West Indies, she uttered the Netherlands answer to aggression: ‘Resistance, resistance until the end, resistance in every practicable shape or form.’
The 61-year-old Queen, who ascended the throne when she was 10, came before Congress as part of her official visit to Washington. She was entertained at a state dinner in the White House, received the gift of a 173-foot steel submarine chaser for addition to the Netherlands Navy, visited the tomb of George Washington, attended the President's press conference. As conclusion to her 3-day visit she decorated five American naval officers for gallantry in the battle for the Netherlands East Indies. Before coming to the Capital she had stayed with her daughter, Princess Juliana, and her granddaughters at Lee, Mass.
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The Queen's Address
[Editorial from the Washington Evening Star of August 8, 1942]
A keen and incisive comprehension of the elemental character of representative government in the United States was manifested by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in her address to the Congress on Thursday. No other foreign visitor in recent years has demonstrated a truer understanding than she when she said: ‘Seeing this great democratic assembly, renewing itself at regular intervals and meeting under selfmade rules of law, seems to me a sure guaranty that liberty is forever young and strong and invincible.’
Her Majesty left no doubt as to her meaning. She stipulated: ‘The autocrat, incapable of rejuvenating himself, is every day nearer his end, his regime doomed to die with him.’ The systems of tyranny which Hitler and Mussolini have built, she might have explained, are inverted pyramids, destined to fall when they themselves are snatched away by the unseen hand of fate. Fascism, let it be called by whatever name, is a synthetic creation. It is assembled arbitrarily, adventurously, to serve an immediate, expedient purpose. Nothing of natural growth is to be detected in the perverse dogmas of national socialism. The alleged ‘philosophy’ of Mein Kampf is a hideous hodgepodge of hysterical greed and hatred. A man frustrated, disillusioned, desperately sick produced that vicious book, and the utterances of his Black Shirt partner constitute a symptom of a like disease.
Queen Wilhelmina, had she wished, might have quoted from the poet Shakespeare in illustration of the ephemeral quality of dictatorships. She is familiar with the words put into the mouth of Mark Antony: ‘O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?’ The answer to his questions he himself returns in his
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funeral oration in the forum: ‘But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world; now lies he there. And none so poor to do him reverence.’
It is not thus with the nation for which Her Majesty spoke. Her people ‘cannot breathe in the sullen atmosphere of despotic rule.’ They ‘have developed their free institutions in their own progressive way, in accordance with their high regard for personal and national liberty.’ Freedom of religion and of speech, freedom from fear, and measurable freedom from want they had achieved by the slow processes of honest labor over the years. Now, momentarily, they are ruined by their enemies, but ‘their spirit grows with their hardships and they keep their unflinching belief in their liberation. * * * ‘No surrender’ remains their constant motto. Inside occupied territory and outside, the fight goes on.’ It could not be otherwise. Queen Wilhelmina has contributed to eventual victory by her exposition of the basic endowment which all civilized communities share.
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A Royal Visitor
[Editorial from the New York Times of June 24, 1942]
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who arrived in Ottawa last week, went yesterday to Lee in western Massachusetts to visit her daughter, Princess Juliana, and her grandchildren. In time she will be a guest at the White House. It is to be hoped that the people of this city, founded by Netherlanders, will have the pleasure of seeing a woman and a ruler whom they have learned to admire and respect. She came to the throne when she was not yet 10. Until she was of age in 1898 the Queen Mother was Regent. In the fall she will have been Queen 44 years.
She is the oldest living sovereign. She can remember the accession of Wilhelm II, later and so long her country's guest. Before the German savages despoiled it, the Netherlands was one of the most fortunate of lands, a country in the city, with prosperity and content widely distributed. Quiet, pious, cultivated, simple, averse to show, a friend of the bicycle, the Queen was faithful to every duty and exercised at times such a just influence as a constitutional monarch may. She was an admirer of Queen Victoria and won much of the legendary popularity of the earlier Queen.
From the treacherous onslaught of Hitler she took refuge in England, following the advice of her Cabinet. In the dark days of the overthrow of her kingdom and her empire we have come to know her. We have been privileged to hear her voice. Her tranquil courage has never abated. Americans honor her and her subjects, whether they are enduring hardship and oppression with stout hearts in the home country or in the vast island possessions they have lost for a time; whether they are fighting in the forces of the United Nations or sailing on the submarine-infested seas or exiles here or otherwhere. The Dutch have played a great and heroic part on the world's stage. They have been trained of old in calamity and resistance. They will hold out till the hour of victory.
In this persistence they can only gain by the example their Queen has set. A symbol who is also an admirable person in her own right, she is a rallying point for freedom.
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The Fighting Spirit of a Queen
[Editorial from the New York Herald Tribune of August 9, 1942]
The American people have sensed in Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands a combination of common sense, shrewdness, and wisdom that rank her as a person of distinction in her own right. We know only too well how often the heads of royal houses have had a
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one-sided training. Their lives have been so full of pageantry that they have had little sense of realism. They have been so dependent on others that they have had little occasion to develop their own individualities.
Queen Wilhelmina, although very much of an individualist, and known for her forthright views, has never in any sense ruled as a personal monarch. But she has been a Queen whose advice and opinions have been sought and welcomed by her own constitutional administrators. A fine intelligence, backed by the determination and tenacity traditionally associated with her people, have made her a power in world affairs in her own name. She knows in intimate detail the fate that awaits the world if Germany wins. This is why in her address to Congress on Thursday she called for ‘resistance, resistance until the very end, resistance in every practicable shape or form’ on the part of all the United Nations. In the days that lie ahead this advice will have to be often repeated.
The fact that Queen Wilhelmina is not the first Dutch ruler to see an all-powerful enemy apparently irremovably entrenched in the Netherlands is, of course, in itself an element of encouragement. The Dutch have previously driven out invaders in the face of overwhelming odds. They will do it again. And they will do it because the fighting spirit which their present Queen displays is in every Hollander worthy of the name.
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Welcoming Queen Wilhelmina
[Editorial from the New York Herald Tribune of July 15, 1942]
In welcoming Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, the people of New York are at the same time paying tribute to the distinguished ruler of a brave people and renewing the sentimental tie that binds this city to the country of its first settlers. It is two and a half centuries since the Dutch flag last flew officially over the little port of New Amsterdam. Only a few names of families and streets survive as reminders that Dutch was once the language of Manhattan. The descendants of the Dutch have for generations intermarried with the descendants of other racial stock. Their cultural ties have long been more with England and France than with Holland.
But New Yorkers, regardless of origin, are proud of the modest Dutch beginnings of this enormous polyglot metropolitan center. When, two years ago last May, the Nazis followed up the rape of Norway with the crushing of Holland and Belgium, New Yorkers felt that the war had come even closer to them than before. As they read of the brutalities perpetrated in the Low Countries, and the magnificent resistance of the Dutch during and after their defeat, they realized that a Dutch heritage is something to be proud of. In the person of the Queen of the Netherlands they see the embodiment of that determination never to yield and that readiness to look upon adversity as merely a transitory evil which are characteristic of the Dutch people. Her Majesty has long been recognized as one of the ablest and shrewdest of Europe's sovereigns. For the moment her people are helpless and their fighting strength is crippled. But their spirit is still stanch, and the time will come-we hope in the not-too-distant future-when Dutch soldiers with their allies of the other United Nations will bring home a crushing defeat to the Axis powers.
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No Surrender!
[Editorial from the Christian Science Monitor of August 7, 1942]
In a year when nations give visiting rulers submarine chasers instead of gold keys or ornamental fetes, it was both fitting and useful for the Netherlands' beloved Queen to stand Thursday on the rostrum of the United States Senate to address America's lawmakers.
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‘Inside occupied territory and outside, the fight goes on,’ she reassured the American people. And it is no secret that after 2 years of occupation the Nazis feel less secure than ever in the country they had thought would readily become part of their colonization scheme. Quietly, persistently, doggedly, the people of the Lowlands have so hamstrung the plans of the invaders that the chaos in Holland is such as has never been known before. Yet the Dutch underground movement is well organized-so well organized that the German commander now threatens the death penalty to anyone found on the streets in case of an invasion.
It has become quite apparent that archflattery cannot cajole nor ruthlessness conquer this sturdy nation. From the East Indies to the West, incidents accumulate to prove their motto remains ‘No surrender.’ And from Batavia to Rotterdam Queen Wilhelmina's words spoken from Washington will be found strengthening and supporting individuals in their determined fight for democracy. Support is felt, too, in her message that ‘liberty is forever young and strong and invincible.’ The United States is proud to be united by friendship and in its war effort with this brave people.
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The Queen's Speech
[Editorial from the Indianapolis (Ind.) News of August 7, 1942]
A forthright queen spoke forthright words before the United States Congress yesterday. Wilhelmina is beloved in her native Holland because she, like all true Hollanders, loves freedom. ‘Seeing this great democratic assembly,’ said the queen, who was the first woman sovereign ever to appear officially before Congress, ‘renewing itself at regular intervals and meeting under self-made rules of law, seems to me a sure guaranty that liberty is forever young and strong and invincible, whereas the autocrat, incapable of rejuvenating himself, is every day nearer to his end, his regime doomed to die with him.’
The queen then graciously added, ‘Where and what would the world be today were it not for the United States of America? My people everywhere feel as I do, those 9,000,000 of my compatriots in Europe and the some 70,000,000 in Asia and in the Western Hemisphere. Imagine what it means for a libertyloving country to be in bondage.’ She then pledged: ‘Resistance, resistance until the end, resistance in every practicable shape or form. If in the material sense my people have been ruined by the enemy, their spirit grows with their hardships. Democracy is our most precious heritage. We cannot breathe in the sullen atmosphere of despotic rule.’
Queen Wilhelmina traced the development of free institutions and the guaranties of freedom, which has paralleled their coming into being in the United States and England. She proudly linked Holland's military performances with those of kindred United Nations, and well she might, for the world will always remember the heroism of the Dutch, not only in their homeland but in the Pacific.
Holland's honest peace aims were unequivocatingly and brilliantly presented. ‘We have adhered to the Atlantic Charter, and our lend-lease agreement with the United States points the way to wise international economic planning. We want nothing that does not belong to us. We want to resume our place as an independent nation, and we accept the responsibilities resulting from that situation. Above all, we want to see suitable measures taken in order that henceforth no nation may think it can, with impunity, break its pledged word or attack others. United we stand, and united we will achieve victory.’
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Visit of Her Majesty, Queen Wilhelmina, of the Netherlands
[From the Washington Evening Star of August 5, 1942] Welcome Guest
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands is assured of a cordial welcome in the Capital of the United States. She comes to Washington as the lawful representative of a people with whom great numbers of Americans are affiliated through ties of blood. Her presence here testifies to the understanding which exists between her government and that headed by President Roosevelt, himself a Hollander by descent. She speaks for what was once ‘the happiest country in Europe,’ the republic sponsored by William the Silent, a martyr in the cause of human freedom. Her right to her throne is unaffected by the occupation of her inheritance by ruthless enemies. She is a reigning sovereign, a personification of the principle of constitutional monarchy. In that role and in her own personal character as one of the truly great women of modern times she will be received.
The Queen was born August 31, 1880, and succeeded her father, King William III, when she was 10. She was educated under the direction of a noble mother-the beloved Regent, Queen Emma. Her ‘inauguration’ occurred on September 6, 1898, and she wedded the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on February 7, 1901. One child-the Crown Princess Juliana-was the issue of her marriage. The royal family always has been deservedly popular with Netherlanders of all classes. Americans who have traveled in Holland can testify to Her Majesty's leadership of her people. She wears the crown by merit, not merely by accident of inheritance. When the German armies crossed her boundaries on May 10, 1940, they disturbed an administration which had lasted longer than any other then extant upon the Continent. Wilhelmina was the senior ‘chief of state’ on that tragic date. She remains the legitimate ruler of the Dutch nation and its dependencies. Her American contemporaries greet and applaud her as such, and they particularly salute her for the courage and the fortitude which she demonstrates in the prevailing crisis.
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[From the Washington Post of August 7, 1942]
Queen Wilhelmina
We are accustomed to talk of the people in the occupied countries as the ‘silenced’ folk. But the Hollanders, whose Queen is now in Washington, are far from silent. Judging from the latest reports, they are making life most unpleasant for their Nazi overlords. Deprived of arms, unable to organize in the open, they must keep up the good fight either individually or in groups. Dutchmen are apt to loiter near the canals, waiting for night to come, when they might settle accounts with strolling Germans. A push, and the dark waterway swallows up the hated oppressors.
The hostility of the womenfolk cannot perhaps be so final, but it carries such a whiplash that Seyss-Inquart, the Nazis' civil administrator, in an outburst of anger, once called them ‘courteous scoundrels.’ No doubt girl shoppers in the stores are still making way for the German customers with the elaborate and sarcastic explanation that ‘they must be in a hurry to get to England.’ Perhaps there is more organized revolt underground than we think. At any rate, the Dutch are being prepared for the establishment of a second front, so that, when the army of liberation appears, they can fight at its side. That they will fight, and fight with all their strength, is the common testimony.
The respect and affection of the Dutch people for Queen Wilhelmina has been intensified now that she is in exile. She commands this high regard because she is the
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symbol of the living sovereignty of the Netherlands. But the Queen has earned it, too. Not for her any exemption from sacrifice when the people in the early days of the war were deprived of comforts and conveniences. She felt that the higher the position the more should be the sense of responsibility and of example. To her, privilege consisted in the denial of privilege. So she rode a bicycle when the people were called upon to be sparing with gas. No wonder the House of Orange has thriven on this kind of leadership principle. If the good Queen were questioned about her role, no doubt she would explain her conduct, with her accustomed simplicity, by saying that she was only a true daughter of Holland. She is, indeed. And Holland has grown great on the virtue and the quality that the royal house has exemplified.
These characteristics are forces which no Nazi occupation can overlay. On the contrary, they provide the strong right arm of Holland in adversity, and the pledge of deliverance. ‘Peace,’ said one of her greatest sons, Spinoza, ‘is not mere absence of war, but a virtue which arises from strength of soul.’ Holland drew upon this strength of soul to bring up her ‘lebensraum’ from the bottom of the sea. She drew upon it to make the tiny herring yield one of the highest living standards in Europe. So will she draw upon it one day to get rid of the Nazi yoke, and then she will once again enjoy a true peace.
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