ite simple and easy. I handed to Her Majesty the
commendatory epistle of the President (beginning, as usual, "Great and
good friend") and made a short speech in English, according to the
regulations. The Queen, accepting the letter, made a brief friendly
reply in French, which is the language of the court, and passed at once
into an informal conversation in English. She speaks both languages
fluently and well. Her first inquiry, according to royal custom, was
about family matters; the number of the children; the health of the
household; the finding of a comfortable house to live in at The Hague,
and so on. There is something very homely and human in the good manners
of a real court. Then the Queen asked about the Dutch immigrants in
America, especially in recent times--were they good citizens? I answered
that we counted them among the best, especially strong in agriculture
and in furniture-making, where I had seen many of them in the famous
shops of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Queen smiled, and said that the
Netherlands, being a small country, did not want to lose too many of her
good people.

The impression left upon me by this first interview, and deepened by all
that followed, was that Queen Wilhelmina is a woman admirably fit for
her task. Her natural shyness of temperament is sometimes misinterpreted
as a haughty reserve. But that is not correct. She is, in fact, most
sincere and straightforward, devoted to her duty and very intelligent in
doing it, one of the ablest and sanest crowned heads in Europe, an
altogether good ruler for the very democratic country of the
Netherlands.

We settled down in the home which I had rented at The Hague. It was a
big, dignified house on the principal street, the Lange Voorhout, which
is almost like a park, with four rows of trees down the middle. Our
house had once been the palace of the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, a princess
of the Orange-Nassau family. But it was not at all showy, only
comfortable and large. This was fortunate for our country when the rush
of fugitive American tourists came at the beginning of the war, for
every room on the first floor, and the biggest room on the second floor,
were crowded with the work that we had to do for them.

But during the first winter everything went smoothly; there was no hurry
and no crowding. The Queen came back to her town palace. The rounds of
ceremonial visits were ground out. The Hague people and our diplomatic
colleagues were mos