The National tribune., 1906-04-19
THE GREAT DUTCH.
Solid Men Who Are Pillars Of the COun.
try's Greatness and Glory.

The GREAT DUICH.
| Solid Men Who Are Pillars Of the C0un.
! try's Greatness and Glory.
Response by John McElroy to a toast
at the Paas Feast of the st. Nicholas
Society. New York, April 16, 1906.
Mr.. POSTMASTER and Gentlemen:
never use that phrase but there comes
| warningly before me one of Du Maui
riers pictures 4 man rising to speak
begins:
Sir Georgius and Gentlemen" One
of his hearers, who probably had been
sat down upon by the Chairman, breaks
in with:
"a proper distinction; a very proper
distinction"
Consequently / always feel an inn
pulse to explain that | also include the
POSTMASTER among the gentlemen, even
| though he gives me heart failure by his
summons to speak.
An old aunt used to begin her SER
mons to us:
"Relatives-and friends"
The Baron Jomini-greatest OF all
military writers-says:
THE Swedish soldiers are the best
infantry in Europe. Let us be thank
full there are so few Of them"
The Dutch people are undoubtedly
the salt of the EARTH but we cannot be
too grateful that there are not more Of
them.
| People who beat the mighty Atlantic
out of n kingdom and bought New York
| for jug of gin and some strings of
glass beads cannot be too strongly ad-
mired.
But we common people, who do not
have Dutch blood in our veins and yet
want some of the real estate and other
good things OF earth, cannot be suffi-
GENTLY grateful to the Almighty that He
has limited the number OF Dutch.
Tom Paine said of the Quakers, that
they pursued guinea with step as
steady as Time and as remorseless as
Death.
| No man on earth knows a good thing
better than a true Dutchman. His step
in pursuit is as steady as the roll of
the hours, and his grip upon it as un-
Shakable as a tax bill
| A year or two ago we saw the mighty
British Empire strained to its founda-
tons by the effort to pry a few thou
sand blue-eyed Dutch Calvinists loose
from the gold reefs and diamond fields
of South Africa.
We cannot take a railroad trip with
out paying tribute to the uncrOwned
Dutchman who is King of the trans
portation system Of the United States.
He exercises a real, vital rule over more
people than a half-dozen of the little
| Kings Of Europe.
| rNeTy Time we HRnt lamp 1t DuTHS
| in honor of another uncrowned Dutch
potentate OF the Standard OIL who is
| dividing up the world like another
Cesar, and getting more tribute from 1t
than all the IL Cesars put together
| Years ago he divided the world East
and West with Russia on oil. Recently
he divided it North and South with
to say that the Italians got the worst
end of the bargain.
What possible show for anything
worth having would there be for the
rest Of us If there were two or three
| times as many Dutch as there are?
| Into whatever town one may go he
will find man with a Van to his name
or similar wooden-shoe index, owning
| the best block on the best corner, doZ-
ing his Sunday mornings in the best
pew in the church, holding mortgages
on his neighbors' property, sleeping
| away the centuries in the cosiest, shad-
lest lot in the cemetery.
| He gets the first choice in everything
| The rest of us must be content with
| seconds and culls.
| Is 1T a wonder that while we are
forced to admire him we are grateful
that he Is not born triplets?
From testy, stout-hearted old Peter
Stuyvesant, with his game-leg, to our
placid, equable President. who is game
all the way through, there has always
| been a large proportion of stalwart
Dutch among that
Small but glorious throng,
Whose hands have pushed this laggard
| world along
All the same, Mr.. POSTMASTER and
gentlemen-again / carefully include
the POSTMASTER among the gentlemen
we owe q vast deal more to the Dutch
| than Is represented by the mortgages
on our real estate, our travelling ex-
penscs or our coal-oil bills.
More than to any other people we
| owe the Dutch for the very genius OF
our Government. Carlyle says that all
our political institutions came out Of
the fens and forests across the English
Channel.
We owe the Dutch for centuries OF
the most heroic struggling for civil and
religious liberty and the Rights of Man.
This made possible the establishment
and maintenance of a Government of
the people, by the people and for the
people upon this continent.
We owe to Dutch blood, Dutch prin-
ciples and training, Dutch firmness Of
character-obstinacy. even-multitudes
Of American citizens Of the highest
type. Men who have stood four-square
to every wind that blew adversely to
the best interests of the country; men
whose solid Dutch grasp upon honor
and righteousness was more unshakable
even than their clutch of material
things: men who in the evil hour stood
as immovably for the right in America
as their fOrefathers stood in their wood
Ell shoes for the right amid the bikes of
the LOwlands.
Such men-of other blood as we'll as
Dutch-are the real pillars of the coun-
try's glory and greatness. Upon them
and their children rest all our hopes for
the future.
/ We count with confidence that they
Will continue to so stand, unterrified
lincorruptible, unawed by influence and
unswerved by gain, until that dread day
when the heavens shall come together
as scroll and the Star-Spangled
Banner be the winding sheet of a burn
ing world.