I was much struck with the apparent lack of loyalty to the queen. In England everybody is loyal to King Edward because he not only represents the sovereignty of the nation, but he stands for the English constitution, rights of parliament and the people, and the king is the result of centuries of English thought and political action. But the Dutch have been without a king most of their history and they don’t feel the reverence for the crown that the English do. Wilhelmina is not very popular, and her husband, who is a second-rate German prince that never mixes with the people and is said to be mean to his wife, is not liked at all. The Dutch cities have practical self-government, and it would not be surprising if after the death of Wilhelmina or in the event of some political upheaval the Dutch Republic would be revived on a broader basis than before.
Rotterdam, Holland, Aug. 3, 1905.
To-day we came to Delft, where the Delft china does not come from any more, and from there to Rotterdam in a canal-boat. Riding in a canal-boat is a very pleasant way of traveling. If you want to get off, the boat simply runs up close to the bank and you make it with a jump—one jump is better than two. You glide along through the pastures and back yards and see the women scrubbing, the men smoking and the dogs pulling the carts. When you come to a low bridge everybody lies down flat until the boat is beyond it. Our canal-boat was propelled by steam, and we went flying along at the rate of five or six miles an hour, but still with plenty of time to inspect the country and visit with the people on the other boats if we could only have talked their language. As a cure for nervousness or as an antidote for being in a hurry I recommend a trip on a canal-boat.
Delft is a quaint old town, with old churches and clean canals. Two hundred years ago the manufacture of porcelain made the town famous, but for a hundred years the business was suspended and now most of the Delft china is made in New Jersey. Recently a factory has been started and real Delft ware can be obtained, but the American kind is just as good.
The canal-boat brought us through the town of Schiedam, where the celebrated Dutch “schnapps” is made. They tell me schnapps is closely related to that brand of American whisky which will make a man climb a tree. There are 200 distilleries in Schiedam. The Dutch are given to strong drinks rather than beer. The result is that the Dutch get wildly and meanly drunk, whereas the Germans merely get fat.
Near Rotterdam we canalled by Delfthaven. This is the place from which the Pilgrims sailed for North America in 1620. They stopped en route in England, but their original start was from here. They had come to Holland from England in order to secure freedom of worship, but they were still Englishmen and did not want to become Dutch. So they secured a promise that they would not be disturbed in the New World, and left their Holland home. If they had stayed in Delfthaven there would have been no New England, no Bunker Hill, no United States. But they did not stay.
THE KINGDOM OF BELGIUM.