BIJLAGE 43
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 stillnes of death, broken only by the
bitter weeping of those who have survived the extinction of their relatives and the
brutal suppression of their rights 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 successfully overcome, faith an
chored 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 and
inevitable deliverance 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.
Oppressed, threatened, watched on every side by a Power that would tear out
all hope from the soul of a 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 a man worthy of his sojourn 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
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