In the course of the afternoon we receive many callers, including Frau von Okoliczany and her daughter, Mevrouw Smeth, and Mirza Rhiza Khan. The Persian delegate tells me that he has been endeavoring to introduce the Latin alphabet into Persia, but that it has met with great opposition, especially among the priests, who declare that it is a sin to make use of any other letters than those in which the Koran is written.
Baron and Baroness d’Estournelles also call on me to-day. We talk about Professor Zorn. D’Estournelles assures me that this German delegate is striving with all his might to bring the matter of the arbitration tribunal to a favorable conclusion: Il pense comme vous et moi.
Now I doubt that. I will go as far as to believe, as Stead states also in the Dagblad, that Professor Zorn is determined that the matter of the arbitration tribunal shall not be shipwrecked; but that he is as radical in his views as D’Estournelles or as I—he himself would repudiate the idea!
June 19. Trip to Amsterdam with a large party. We drove three times around the whole city and hurried through the museums, allowing the pictures by Van Dyck and Franz Hals and Rubens to flash before our eyes. Only before Rembrandt’s great painting, “The Night Watch,” which we had recently seen presented as a living picture, we remained for half an hour in contemplation. At your very first entrance into the suite of galleries it shines upon you from the farthest background. You would think that the sun was shining on it; but its brilliancy comes from its colors.
In the museum is a splendid case filled with Indian treasures, consisting of rings and chains and all sorts of jewels taken as loot from conquered rajahs; therefore simply freebooters’ booty. Mankind does not look upon it as such.
We visit also the diamond-polishing works. A whole house filled with workmen. On every floor a different phase of the transformation which this precious form of carbon goes through before it becomes an ornament. On the top floor, reached by a very narrow wooden staircase, sit the most skillful of the laborers, who give the last finish to the stones. They allow the foreign visitors to look; they explain the processes. The trouble seems too great! What effort and what patience to make this dull, hard substance glitter with a hundred facets!
The manager shows us on a velvet ground the models in crystal of all the largest and most famous diamonds that are in the possession of the various crowned heads,—the Kohinoor and others. I did not heed the names attached to these little globules of glass representing millions in value.
“Since so many diamonds have been mined in the Transvaal,” said one of the polishers, “we can scarcely keep up with our work; and yet there are thousands of us diamond cutters in Amsterdam.”
“Just see!” remarked Herr von Bloch to us, “just see how the world hangs together! Suppose war should break out in the Transvaal, the consequences would be that here in Amsterdam thousands of workingmen’s families would suffer from want!”
We had dinner—all excursions culminate in eating—at a restaurant from which there was a view of a canal full of life and movement. It was a beautiful, lively picture from the open window near which I sat. On the other side of the canal are old houses, truly Dutch in appearance, and a church with a very lofty belfry. Boats and scows were moving up and down heavily laden with flowers,—mainly tulips, roses, and lilies. Suddenly the bells in the tower began to ring; the tones kept interweaving, and for ten minutes a melodious, silver-clear chime of bells continued to play.