The Royal House of Orange lives on the prestige won in the battles for freedom and is considered by the group oriented materially as in the west [page 4] (big businessmen, financiers, industrialists, higher officials, and court nobility) as a guarantee for their political predominance and economic positions. Additional motives, based on national conviction, for bourgeois the devotion of the Dutch people to the royal family which is more a matter of habit, cannot be found, unless they think by clinging to the royal family to banish the fear of being overwhelmed by the Reich.

There was no real opposition against the system among the representative bodies of the parliament. In the second chamber there were 4 NSB men among 100 Deputies; Fascist and National Socialist ideas, especially the latter—are tabooed, are considered evidence of being uneducated, and are now branded as the sentiments of traitors. There are concrete indications that NSB were in the uniform of Dutch soldiers intervened in support of the invading troops of the Reich.

In Dutch political life there are almost no personalities of any importance. Somewhat outstanding from the average is the 71 year old Colijn—although his basic character is domineering and energetic, he is completely bound up with western-liberal views and as a decided Calvinist he cannot be won for any National Socialist ideas. Noteworthy is his desire for importance, which might induce him to make a political deal with the occupation power, in which he might be conceited enough to think that he could outwit us and keep a distance from the Reich with the help of the House of Orange.

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The system parties—that is, the Catholic State Party, the Christian People's Party (reformed), the Anti-Revolutionists (Calvinists, descendants of the revolutionary Gueux), the Social Democrats, the Democrats, etc., were entirely undisturbed as far as their party organizations, trade unions, press, etc., were concerned, and their activities were only partly restricted by the state of siege. Apart from a strong horror propaganda against the NSB people, the political factors and the greater part of the population were just biding their time.

The Rightist Parties, especially the NSB, were numerically an unimportant minority, against whom as a matter of course an arrogant rejection prevailed among the intellectuals, the capitalists, and also among the greater part of the officers' corps. This attitude, strengthened by the charge of treason, was carried over to the rest of the population. Of leading men among the Rightists the following are to be mentioned within the framework of the NSB:

Mussert: A liberal nationalist attempting to use Fascist methods, who is in the end afraid of the greater German Reich. His political qualities are not as great as those of an average Gauleiter in the Reich. In the Netherlands he plays a not inconsiderable role with them.

Rost van Tonningen: Ideologically perfectly adequate, adjusted to the Germanic idea and National Socialism, a temperamental and effective speaker yearning [page 6] for activity, does not find his strength in himself but tries to get support and steadiness from third persons.

Count Ansembourg: No outspoken personality, positively valuable in spite of his obligation of creed (Catholic), he is more a tactician and diplomatic mediator.

Geikerken: The representative of Mussert, with strong Walloon mixture, he is certainly a determined opponent of the system with reservations toward the Greater German Reich.