t cordial and friendly. There were dinners and dances
and court receptions and fancy-dress balls--all of a discreet and
moderate joyousness which New York and Newport, perhaps even Chicago and
Hot Springs, would have called tame and rustic. The weather, for the
first time in several years, was clear, cold, and full of sunshine. The
canals were frozen. Everybody, from grandparents to grandchildren,
including the Crown Princess Juliana, went on skates, which greatly
added to the gayety of the nation.

At the same time there was plenty of work to do. The affairs of the
legation had to be straightened out; the sending of despatches and the
carrying out of instructions speeded up; the arrangements for a proposed
international congress on education in the autumn of 1914, forwarded;
the Bryan treaty for a year of investigation before the beginning of
hostilities--the so-called "Stop-Look-Listen" treaty--modified and
helped through; and the thousand and one minor, unforeseen jobs that
fall on a diplomatic chief carefully attended to.

II

Through all this time the barometer stood at "Set Fair." The new Dutch
Ministry, which Mr. Cort van der Linden, a wise and eloquent philosophic
liberal, had formed on the mandate of the Queen, seemed to have the
confidence of the Parliament. Although it had no pledged majority of any
party or bloc behind it, the announcement of its simple programme of
"carrying out the wishes of the majority of the voters as expressed in
the last election," met with approval on every side. The
"Anti-Revolutionary" lion lay down with the "Christian-Historical"
lamb; the "Liberal" bear and the "Clerical" cow fed together; and the
sucking "Social-Democrat" laid his hand on the "Reactionary" adder's
den. It was idyllic. Real progress looked nearly possible.

The international sky was clear except for the one big cloud, which had
been there so long that the world had grown used to it. The Great Powers
kept up the mad race of armaments, purchasing mutual terror at the price
of billions of dollars every year.

Now the pace was quickened, but the race remained the same, with Germany
still in the lead. Her new army bill of 1912 provided for a peace
strength of 870,000 men, and a war strength of 5,400,000 men. Russia
followed with a bill raising the term of military service from three to
three and a half years; France with a bill raising the term of service
from two to three years (but this was not until in Jun