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Bijlage AXI
RADIOREDE VAN H.M. DE KONINGIN, NA HAAR AANKOMST IN
ENGELAND GERICHT TOT DE GEHELE WERELD
At this immensely grave moment in the history of mankind, black, silent night has settled on yet
another corner of this earth.
Over free Holland the lights have gone out, the wheels of industry and the ploughs of the field that
worked only for the happiness of a peace-loving people have come to a dead stop or are turned to the
grisly uses of a death-bringing conqueror; the voices of freedom, charity, tolerance and religion have
been stilled.
Where only two weeks ago there was a free nation of men and women brought up in the cherished
traditions of Christian civilisation, a nation which itself has been the historical fountain of many
values and ideals honoured by all men of good will, there are now desolation and the stillness of
death, broken only by the bitter weeping of those who have survived the extinction of their relatives
and the brutal suppression of their right and liberties.
Only hope still lives among the smoking ruins, the hope and faith of a God-fearing people which
no human power, however evil, can extinguish faith in the all-conquering might of divine
justice, faith nourished by the proud memories of earlier ordeals manfully borne and in the end
succesfully overcome, faith anchored to the unshakable belief that such injustice as the people of
Holland have suffered cannot endure.
But while the unhappy people of Holland still have their faith in the ultimate an inevitable deliver
ance to cling to, it is of all faiths the most difficult to nourish and to keep alive. For theirs must be a
silent hope and a silent faith. Not for them the solace of a faith openly professed, not for them the
soulstrengthening comfort of a hope shared and proclaimed in open association.
Oppresed, threatened, watched on every side by a Power that would tear out all hope from the
soul of man, they can but pray in the silence of their heavy hearts. Their voice, the voice that through
centuries has helped to spread the gospel of Christianity, of freedom, of tolerance, of enterprise and
thought of human dignity, of all the things that make man worthy of his sejourn on earth, has been
taken away from them.
So it was four centuries ago when religious freedom was at stake. The world knows how the
people of Holland then regained their voice. Thus it will be again. But until the jubilation of the
new dawn they are not spared even this last bitterness of having to keep their flame of hope alive in
the deadly silence of a night whence no voice, no ray of light shall come.
It is because Holland's voice must not, nay, may not, be allowed to remain strangled in these days
of fearful trial for my people that I have taken the supreme decision to transfer the symbol of My
Nation, as it is embodied in My Person and My Government, where it can continue to function as a
living and a vocal force.
At this time of universal suffering I will not speak of the racking heart-searchings which the taking
of this decision has cost one who, only little more than a year ago, was stirred to her very depths
by the generous devotion of a warm-hearted people celebrating the jubilee of a Queen and a woman
who for forty years has tried to serve Her Nation, as she tried to serve it on that day of fateful deci
sions and will try to serve it to her last breath.
I will speak only of the reasons that finally moved me to decide as I did. For there were cold and
weighty reasons militating against the natural sentiment that prompted me and my family to stay and
suffer what my unhappy people were called upon to suffer.
Plans found on the invader on the first day of his wanton assault, confirmed by the action of his
airborne troops, soon made it clear that his first objective was to capture the Royal Family and the
Government, thus to paralyse the country by depriving it of all leadership and legally constituted
authority.
When, soon afterwards, the likelihood had to be faced that the treacherous methods employed by
the enemy would succeed in finally undermining the gallant resistance of the Dutch forces, the
decision could no longer be postponed.
If authority, obeying impulsive sentiment, were to stay for indeed those who, like us, have lived
such days know that it is not concern for personal life or liberty which supplies the driving motive
the voice of Holland, the very symbol of Holland, would have vanished from the earth.
These would be a memory, perhaps quickly fading in these worldshaking times where yesterday's
memory is to-day's oblivion. Unrelieved black silence would have settled on that once happy land
whose people would not even have the hope-giving thought of a Queen and a Government fighting
for their ultimate resurrection, where fighting was still possible.