Fonds,' of the
Netherlands Benevolent Society of London. At a dinner given at the
Cannon Street Hotel on May 12, 1874, to celebrate the twenty-fifth year
of the accession of King William III under the presidency of the Dutch
Minister in England, the Count de Bylandt, the guests in a glow of
loyalty and good-fellowship proposed to raise a contribution to be spent
in the purchase of some handsome memorial of the occasion. A happy
inspiration came to the Chairman, and he suggested to his countrymen
that the best of all possible memorials of such an occasion would be to
establish a fund for the relief of poor and worthy Netherlanders in
London and to give it the name of their King. The suggestion was adopted
by acclamation, and the result the 'Koning Willem's Fonds,' from which,
as I find by examining its statutes and its records, gratuitous loans,
precisely identical in their object and under conditions not essentially
different, are made to deserving Hollanders in London.

The 'fonds' is connected with a society doing the usual work of all such
foreign benevolent societies in London. But it is a special fund, and as
I learn from the Annual Report of the Society for January 1889, it has
so far been administered with entire success, and with the result of
enabling not a few honest and industrious Hollanders stranded in London
to make a fair and prosperous start in life. That the fund is
administered in the true practical spirit of the old Low Country
benevolence, and its advantages appreciated as they ought to be, appears
from the statement made by the Treasurer, Mr. Maas, in the Report for
1889, that the number of loans is increasing and the number of donations
decreasing. In 1888 371_l._ were loaned as against 185_l._ in 1887, and
247_l._ given away as against 382_l._ in 1887. I observe, too, that the
Lord Mayor of London, Sir Polydore de Keyser, gave at this annual
meeting as his reason for joining the society which administers this
fund that it had the courage to spend 251_l._ in excess of its assured
income rather than send away the good which came to its door to be
done.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE MARNE

REIMS

No city in France has more to lose and less to gain from the triumph of
the Third Republic over historic France than this ancient, rich, and
royal city of Reims.

The triumph of the Third Republic on the lines laid down by M.
Challemel-Lacour in 1874 and re-affirmed at the elections of 1889, means