It were well if all the world had the Dutch system of regulating homes, and the Dutch plans for society were adopted. Homes consist largely of children, and the Dutch, among other industries, know how to make homes in which to properly rear children. Mr. Ackerman tells me he was the youngest of fourteen, and said that in his day, that was not extrordinary for Dutch families. In this country, with the wide, unpeopled, stretches of territory, much vaster than our wildest dreams, we are already complaining that there is not room enough for our growing humanity. We are puzzling ourselves about the future of the generations to come. The Dutch have solved that problem. Instead of complaining of the scarcity of land and the over-abundance of people for the land, they have reclaimed land from the ocean, and have enabled the Dutch homes to increase, without creating misery, squalor and social distress in large centers. Holland is preeminently a country of homes, there being in that land, that which more 2than any other has, the element capable of solving the perplexity of our day, the social problem. I must not forget that also in other respects, Holland is a home country.

We have learned from eloquent lips that Holland has at all times been the home, extending welcome to the persecuted. When no other country dared to open the gate of hospitality to the Jews, when Spain ignoring their services to state and country, had thrown them into undeserved misery, it was little Holland, defying Madrid and Isabella, that received them with a hearty welcome and with assurances of protection.

About forty years ago the father of the speaker had an audience with the Dutch king, thanking him for having recognized the principles of religious liberty. My father called attention to the story of Holland, glorious in many things, but nowhere more illustrious than by the reflected light of that page of its doings inscribed with legend. "Religious liberty," said King William II to my father, "Tell your citizens that the most loyal 3citizens of my realm have been Jews." "But," said my father to him, "Your Majesty, why should they not be?" It was Holland which was the first of all nations of Europe that made them feel for the first time that the Jews had not in consequence of religion, forfeited their inalienable rights of humanity. The best citizens of Holland have among them, the descendants of those that were persecuted in Spain. Modern science, and modern thought, has no name more illustrious than Baruch Spinoza, Jew and Dutchman.

When the powers of darkness threatened to deprive that brilliant man of the privilege of speech, it was again Holland which protected him, and while assassins lurked in the streets of Amsterdam, ready to cut short the career of this torch-bearer of light, it was under the kindly protection of the Dutch emblem, that he worked out his system of thought fundamental to modern scientific investigation. Holland resisting Spain, bodily and spiritually, spread the teachings of modern thought. She was the torch-bearer of light because this country was the first free home of the sciences. Nations of home builders are always in the van of those who are pioneers in civilization. Look at Dutch art. What is the great characteristic of it? The 4homely themes are lifted up to the heights of symbolic suggestion. It is not like Italian art, glorious in tints and colors, creating for the moment the overwhelming sense of the power of man who has breathed upon the canvas the symphonies of glorious hues; it is not like German art, deep and mystical; not like French art, often frivol us and light; it has a character of its own. It is the story of the Dutch home, the Dutch home as the cynosure of happiness, built on the realization of human obligation and reciprocal responsibilities. They say the Hollanders are phlegmatic; it is true. They are not mercurial. That is the secret of Holland's conservation, it springs from the home, it is the very condition of Dutch progress, of Dutch progress, of Dutch liberty and Dutch love for looking forward together towards greater emancipation. Mercurial nations toy with liberty; they flirt with freedom. The French worship liberty and fraternity on paper, the Americans talk largely of liberty. We carry fraternity and equality on our lips. And yet we become a nation of sheep, allowing the rogues and rascals to shear us without as much as a murmur. Things happen in America to which even the Turks in Constantinople would not submit. While professedly loving liberty, we are all engrossed in making our way in the world. The spirit of self sacrifice has gone out 5of us and we want to change every four weeks or four months, because perhaps "change" is not plentiful in our pocketbooks. Every four years we look for a new nostrum, such a nostrum as no druggist would carry in his drug store, a patent medicine he would refuse to handle. We are like children, spasmodically talking about politics, and then very eager that somebody else govern us, and then we complain if we have statesmen in Springfield (God save the name) who should not be in Springfield but in Joliet. And in Chicago we have such political manipulators as that immortal statesman, Hinky Dink, of the first ward, is master of.

Do you suppose that in Holland, where there are Dutch homes, such things would be tolerated? No, the Dutchman is phlegmatic, and will stand much, but he does not flirt with liberty. He is married to liberty and he wants his wife, and he himself, to carry on this marriage with all the obligations and responsibilities, and therefore the Dutch cities are well governed and the government of the nation is a model one. It does not matter if we do have a queen as a figurehead of our government she is a permanent president.

She has less power than our president in Washington. She cannot interfere with legislation. The will of the people is at once made effective. They do not elect a parliament there and allow eleven or twelve months to elapse before calling it together, but immediately convene after the general election; thus they can have a change whenever the people desire one. Holland is, in fact, a republic of constitutional government, creating rights for and exacting duties from each citizen. It is rather a phlegmatic conservatism, but under it the condition of the Dutch works better than does the mercurial system of our American nation. I believe that the backbone of the American nation has been the element that came over with the puritans. They were also phlegmatic. They got ahead because they could resist and would fight for their rights.

Holland risked the very existence of its country when invaded by an enemy. They threatened to cut down the dykes rather than submit to the invader. That is heroic phlegmatism, but this heroic phlegmatism, has always been carried by the Dutch into the home and the nation. Another thing which the Dutch home illustrates is cleanliness. They do not merely say that cleanliness 7is next to Godliness. There is nothing more inspiring than the morning housecleaning in Holland, and perhaps you all have suffered before you escaped the wrath of the Dutch maid in making her house as clean as possible. In Philadelphia they have also a passion for water. The Dutch may perhaps object to taking his water inwardly and will not do it without a silent grumble. The Dutchman may take his gin by preference, but outwardly he applies water most liberally. What could be better for Chicago than to have a Dutch housecleaning? They built out into the ocean to make new land, but they are now of the opinion that mud in the street is real estate in the wrong place. Let us have a little Dutch in Chicago and clean up in this city and make our influence felt. I am proud to have been with you to-night. The flag I learned to love was your flag. My America adopted the colors of Holland.

I thank you for your attention, and I hope my words have not bothered you too much. Mr. Lloyd left us because he was afraid he would lose his train. I am afraid I have lost the train of my thoughts.

By Dr. Emil G. Hirsch.