“Oh yes!” cried van Rheijn, “I am not at all surprised to find you commercial men in ecstasies about that man and about his book. To all grumblers it is of course meat and drink.”
“Let me tell you, my good fellow,” said Grenits, “that those whom you call grumblers have had good cause given them for discontent.”
“Come, come,” said the other, “you talk very finely; but after all they are only a pitiful handful of very tame insurgents. Depend upon it we shall manage very easily to keep order among them.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Grenits, bitterly, “that is the old stock phrase. It was used some little time ago by certain organs of the Dutch press when the people, exasperated by vexatious extortions, strove—by perfectly legitimate means mind you—to resist acts of arbitrary injustice and exaction on the part of the Dutch Government.
“Tame insurgents!” continued he, vehemently. “Tame insurgents! By heaven! let them not at home taunt us much longer with that name. A very little more, and they will be at their wits’ end to deal with an insurrection which will prove itself anything but tame. Don’t let them forget, yonder, that, to carry on a miserable war like that at Atjeh, they had to sweep up the scum of Europe; for you know that Dutch heroism in our towns at home made the poor wretches whom they manage to press for that service sing the pleasant refrain:
‘My life is pain and woe,
To Atjeh I will go …’ ”
“Grenits, Grenits!” cried Verstork, trying to calm his friend’s growing excitement.
“Yes,” said he, “my dear Verstork, I am wrong and I am going too far, I have very nearly done. But those heedless words, ‘tame insurgents,’ have worked a great deal more mischief than those who first uttered them could possibly foresee. They have proved to us that, in our lawful resistance to extortion, we have nothing to expect but only contempt and abuse. May God in his mercy protect Holland! But I have good reason to know that if a man were to arise amongst us possessed of the necessary talent for organisation, and one who, at the same time, had sufficient tact to gather around him all that discontent which at present is powerless because it is divided amongst itself—If such a man, I say, were to arise who could make the most of the utter state of perplexity they are in yonder—we, the ‘tame insurgents,’ would make our mother country pass through very evil days indeed!”