SPIRIT OF THE NETHERLANDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23761, 14 September 1940, Page 10

SPIRIT OF THE NETHERLANDS

The most notable feature of the message broadcast by the Queen of the Netherlands was its tone of confidence in the future of the people. There was no hint of doubt that they would once again be free, onlj'- a calm discussion of what must be done when they are released from the Nazi yoke. The character and history of the Dutch people, their record of achievements on land and sea, support this noble assumption. Among the few crumbs of information, apart from propaganda, that have come from the lands now under the German heel, there have been suggestions that the Nazis and their Gestapo have found the Dutch the least tractable of the people upon whom they are trying to impose their tyranny. There is nothing new in this. The might of Spain could not subdue them in the sixteenth century. Neither could the House of Austria in the eighteenth. The experience of Britain in South Africa showed that a people predominantly of Dutch stock could be won only by generosity and trust. The stubborn courage and deep-rooted tenacity of this people explain how a country with a population of some 8,700,000 controlled and administered a colonial empire of some 70,000,000. Such qualities do not make a race of helots. Britain has been called the last bastion of European freedom. That is true in the immediate and physical sense, but there are other spiritual bastions. The character of Queen Wilhelmina's people can be trusted to prove one.