The slowest de luxe liners on the trans-Atlantic run are big, broad boats sailed by big, broad Dutchmen. Into Manhattan last week hove the S. S. Rotterdam, fresh from a $1,000,000 overhaul.
"Is she any faster?" chorused reporters who think speed is news.
"Well, gentlemen, perhaps a little," said Mynheer Adrian Gips, a director of the Holland America Line. Stoutly he added that nearly all the $1,000,000 had been spent on solid Dutch comfort—more bathrooms, broader cabins, a new swimming pool in what was once cavernous cargo space. There are no boats on any ocean so frequently painted, furiously scrubbed, resolutely polished as the Dutch. On the Rotterdam a relay of tiny Dutch pages, with faces as round and red as Edam cheeses, stand all day and half the night beside the First Class main stairway, to dash forward and flick away the minute specks of dirt left by the shoes of otherwise cleanly ladies and gentlemen.