The Holland Society of New York - Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 177 text:

1 31 our friends of St. AndreW's dignify the H aggis. We Would have made it the glory of this occasion, but Gscar declared his chef .declined to put it on the menu! fApplcmse.Q We clasp fraternal hands With St. George, With its one hundred and eighteen years, only less ancient than , St. AndreW's and St. Patrick's though We are not always quite sure Where We are at when We are With Englishmen! We strike up our National Anthem, but While our voices rise, singing, M y C owntry, '15 is of Thee! they shout in the same' tune, God Scwe the King! and with that pernicious acquisitiveness that leads them to claim everything in sight, they appear to think the hymn belonged to them ,before We had any country at all! ,And see hovvthey mix us up in studying Eng- lish history! Was 'King Egbert a Saxon or 'an Englishman? Was Canute, when the sea ,obeyed him Cor did he only give the order ?j an English- man or a Dane? Was William the Conqueror an Englishman or a Frenchman? Was William the Third an Englishman or a Dutchman? And is St. George, after all, only a branch of the Holland Society? We of the Holland Society have a special grievance against St. George for seeking to deteriorate Dutch blood! The distin- guishing provision of our constitution is that We trace our eligibility as members back through the male line to the Dutchman of 1675. ' But theSe Englishmen-and the New Englanders Were the Worst of the lot--laid traps for O111' fa-'UhG1'S and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and in- veigled them into marrying British maids and Yankee girls, and even Widows, and- as a conse-

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I 33 ' ' ancestors were mingled with our own of the Holland Society, as together they first fought for home and country in pioneer days, and braved the battle on the banks of the Mohawk as on the Connecticut and on Massachusetts Bay. Of course, we never can forget to honor the Re- volutionary, descendants, the Sonsrof the Revolu- tion, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the Revolution, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and if our banquet could have been 'postponed a week or two later, the Sons and Daughters of the Panama Revolution! And finally, last and best of all, the Society of the Daughters of Holland, the only really, truly, sure-enough, sister society--we throw our arms around and embrace them all! CGrea,t GPPZause.Q The great event ofthe year to us Dutchmen in New York was the celebration of the 2 goth, Anni- versary of the granting of our city charter by Peter Stuyvesant, and the great event of the cele- bration was the discovery of a new historian of the Dutch! Fifty years ago Dr. Motley, a New Englander, wrote his Rise of the Dutch Republic, and the series succeeding it, and some people 's hearts were stirred with his descriptions of what had been wrought on that handbreadth of sand dunes about the Zuyder Zee. Thirty years later Douglas Campbell of this State, ' ' without a drop of Dutch blood in his veins, as he declared, published The Puritan in H ollaud, Euglaud, cmd America, and attempted to prove that for many of the best things that have benefited the world, we are 1n- debted to those Netherlanders who plucked 3 territory from the sea and a people from bondage., This new historian who has now appeared 11-HS