The Political Situation
should be joined to the Executive Committee provisionally for the duration of the war. He crossed the frontier and installed his secretariat at The Hague.
From the beginning, under the influence of their leader Troelstra, the Dutch Committee began a persevering campaign for the re-establishment of international relations.
In Entente circles Troelstra was generally considered Germanophile. He denied the accusation energetically. But the least that can be said is that his neutrality certainly looked kindly on the Socialist Democrats of the Central Empires, and that in a country where the Left party were mostly "Ententists" he seemed to have rather a tendency to lean to the other side.
A Scandinavian Socialist said to us, "The Vorstand of Berlin has two branches: one at Copenhagen, the other at The Hague."
We must frankly admit that in their efforts to reconstruct, even at the present hour, international relations, the Dutch and Danish Socialists were influenced chiefly by their wish to put an end to the horrors of a
209
