XI
LETTER TO FREDERIK VAN EEDEN
My dear Friend,
You offer me the hospitality of your paper De Amsterdammer. I thank you and accept. It is good to take one's stand with those free souls who resist the unrestrained fury of national passions. In this hideous struggle, with which the conflicting peoples are rending Europe, let us at least preserve our flag, and rally round that. We must re-create European opinion. That is our first duty. Among these millions who are only conscious of being Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen, Russians, English, etc., let us strive to be men, who, rising above the selfish aims of short-lived nations, do not loose sight of the interests of civilisation as a whole—that civilisation which each race mistakenly identifies with its own, to destroy that of the others. I wish your noble country,[1] which has always preserved
135
- ↑ Holland
