WORLD WAR
A tall young man, dressed in a general's uniform, accompanied by an aide de camp and an elderly statesman, hopped into his car at Brussels after dinner one evening last week and sped through northern Belgium into The Netherlands. Shortly before 11 o'clock the car raced up the Noordiende, one of The Hague's main streets, and stopped abruptly before a small but stately white Palace.
Before long the placid inhabitants of the placid Dutch seat of government were spreading the news that for some unexplained reason—and they feared the reason was ominous—Leopold III, King of the Belgians, was paying an unheralded visit to their Queen Wilhelmina. Despite a constant drizzle, a sizable crowd gathered on the sidewalks outside Her Majesty's little Palace.
Once they glimpsed King Leopold pacing up & down inside, gesticulating while he talked. Later they saw Prince Bernhard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld, husband of Princess Juliana and a member of the Dutch Army General Staff, dash out of the Palace's single entrance, get into a car and leave. At 1:30 a.m. Dutch Foreign Minister Eelco N. van Kleffens left. Gradually the Palace lights went out.
Next day the conferees were at it again early. The mystery and the tension grew. Rumors flew that German troops were about to strike through The Netherlands, that a Nazi ultimatum had been delivered to the Low Countries. Not until nightfall, after Leopold had returned to his own capital, was released the text of an appeal for peace signed by the two sovereigns and sent to George VI of Britain, President Lebrun of France, and Führer Hitler of Germany:
"At this hour of anxiety for the whole world, before the war breaks out on the Western front in all its violence, we have the conviction that it is our duty once again to raise our voice.
"Some time ago the belligerent parties have declared they would not be unwilling to examine a reasonable and well-founded basis for an equitable peace. . . . We are ready to offer them our good offices. . . . We hope our offer will be accepted and that thus the first step will be taken toward establishment of a durable peace."
Why? On August 23, only nine days before Adolf Hitler ordered his Army to invade Poland, Leopold and Wilhelmina, joined by the heads of the three Scandinavian States and Finland and Luxembourg, had offered their "good offices" in mediating Europe's crisis. Five days later the offer was repeated. Since these appeals, then politely rejected, presumably still stood open, observers wondered why the two practical sovereigns found it necessary to renew their peace effort at a time when there was less likelihood than ever before that the belligerents would lay down their arms. Moreover, this new appeal contained no formula for calling off hostilities.
One popular explanation of Leopold's hasty night ride was that Wilhelmina had become perturbed when she read an article by the French political writer René Pinon in Paris' Revue des deux mondes which suggested that Germany, about to pounce on the Dutch, had offered Belgium a piece of The Netherlands in return for Belgian neutrality; that His Majesty rushed to Her Majesty to deny the story personally, and then the royal telegram was drawn up to serve as an excuse for the sudden visit.