Extract from H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; an authorized biography by Alden Hatch The Hôtel de Bilderberg At a small hotel near Arnhem in the deeply wooded uplands of eastern Holland on May 29, 30, and 31, 1954, a group of eminent statesmen, financiers, and intellectuals from the principal nations of Europe and the United States met together in, perhaps, the most unusual international conference ever held until then. There was absolutely no publicity. The hotel was ringed by security guards, so that not a single journalist got within a mile of the place. The participants were pledged not to repeat publicly what was said in the discussions. Every person present-Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, leaders of political parties, heads of great banks and industrial companies, and representatives of such international organizations as the European Coal and steel Community, as well as academicians-was magically stripped of his office as he entered the door, and became a simple citizen of his country for the duration of the conference. Thus everybody could and did say what he really thought without fear of international, political, or financial repercussions. That meeting and the subsequent ones that stemmed from it, which have had a great if indefinite impact on the history of our times, are, perhaps, int this writers opinion, Prince Bernhards proudest achievement in the field of Western unity and international amity. It was not Bernhards original idea, but had its inception in the brilliant brain of Dr Joseph H. Retinger. Retinger was an extraordinary character who flitted through Europe talking on intimate terms with Prime Ministers, labour leaders, industrial magnates, revolutionaries, and intellectuals-in short, all the non-Communist rulers and would-be rulers of the free nations of Europe. Kraków, in Austrian Poland, was Retingers birthplace; his parents were landed gentry. When he went to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1906, at the age of eighteen, this boy talked his way into the heart of that citys literary and artistic life, and was called friend by such as André Gide, Giraudoux, François Mauriac, Maurice Ravel, and the raffish Marquis Boni de Castellane. When he moved on to England, Herbert Asquith, his wife, outspoken Margot, and Lord Balfour took him into their circle, and his most intimate friend was his fellow-Pole, Joseph Conrad. Retinger had what C. D. Jackson calls a built-in instinct for intrigue and a passionate love for Poland. During World War I his machinations for a free Poland made him uniquely unpopular. The Central Powers put a price on his head, the Allies banned him from all their countries, and the United States threw him into jail. These experiences taught him to be a better diplomat. In World War II Retinger was closely associated with General Sikorsky, head of the Polish Government in Exile, as liaison man with the other exiled Governments. In 1944 General Sir Colin Gubbins of The S.O.E. (the super-secret Special Operations Executive) arranged for him to be parachuted into Poland with several million dollars for the Polish Resistance. At the age of fifty-six Retinger jumped at night into a field in enemy territory, and accomplished his mission. However, his legs became paralysed, probably as a result of the jump, and he had to be spirited out of Poland on a stretcher. From that time until his death in 1960 Dr Retinger devoted his life to his one impassioned, idealistic purpose of uniting and strengthening the Western world against the danger from the East. Jackson says, He was a sort of Eminence grise of Europe, a Talleyrand without portfolio. Certainly he had almost as many adventures as Ian Flemings famous secret-service operative James Bond. Retinger was a frail, delicate little man with a deeply seamed face and quizzical eyes behind blue-tinted spectacles. His big jaw was never still, for he talked volcanically. AFter the parachute jump he always walked with a cane. C.D. jackson, who often clashed with him, said Retinger was a very difficult, very opinionated man who would not take no for an answer and often achieved his purpose by very devious means. But nevertheless he was fearless and determined, a tremendously gallant guy. Though people persist in calling Retinger an eighteenth-century man functioning in the twentieth century, he was not that at all. He cam,e straight out of the Renaissance. Instead of the sceptical, précieuse attitude typical of the eighteenth century, his Jesuitical conviction that the end justified the means, and a Borgian aptitude for intrigue; but the ends he sought were never selfish. They were good. Though his name is virtually unknown except to the initiates, he made more history in his secret way than many a man who moved to the sound of trumpets and the howl of motor-cycle sirens. According to the official publication of the European Centre of Culture, Retinger was the key figure in most of the great European union. The League of European Economic Cooperation (from which evolved the Common Market), the European Movement, and . the European Centre of Culture would not have seen the light without him. The Congress of Europe at The Hague was his doing, and the Council of Europe grew out of that. Being above all a realist, Retinger understood that even a united Europe could not stand by itself without America. In 1952 he became deeply concerned about the rising tide of antAmericanism in practically every country of Western Europe. It was not confined to Communist-in?influenced or left-wing circles, but was equally prevalent among conservatives and liberals. The United States was disliked, feared, and sneered at with a unanimity that was remarkable among the peoples of Europe. This feeling threatened the solidarity of the Western worlds defences against Communism. Retinger was not the type of man to sit wringing his hands. He evolved a brilliant plan for coping with this situation, but he needed powerful assistance to put it into effect. So he asked his friend Dr Paul Rijkens to get him an appointment with Prince Bernhard, who has described their meeting: It all stated when Retinger came to me and sat here in this room and told me about his worries concerning the rising tide of anti-Americanism in Europe. I was worried about it, too. It seemed illogical in the face of the Marshall Plan, military assistance, NATO, etc., which had done so much for all of us. I suppose it was partly the natural human instinct to bite the hand that feeds you, and partly real grievances. I said to him, Yes, youre quite right. Its very bad. Retinger said, Well, would you like to do something about it? And I said, Of course. Sitting on the edge of an easy chair in Bernhards trophy-filled study, with his cane between his spindly legs, his inevitable cigarette burning furiously, and his eyes shooting sparks behind his blue-tinted spectacles, Retinger outlined his plan for bringing about better understanding between the touchy, suspicious Europeans and Americans. It consisted of two parts. The first was to get the leaders of opinion in the most important European countries to make an appraisal of where the Americans were wrong, apart from being rich,m powerful, generous, and rather stupid, and what they could do to put things right. The second was to present this frank critique to leaders of American opinion and give them an opportunity to answer the indictment at a completely private meeting of top-level people from both continents. Bernhard was all for it, but an unusual instinct for caution made him say, It sounds wonderful, but Id like another opinion. Lets find out what van Zeeland thinks about it. (Van Zeeland was Prime Minister of Belgium.) Van Zeeland thought something should be done, and quickly. Reinforced by his approval, Bernhard went to work with Retinger reckoned, could supply the answers. The idea was to get two people from each country who would give the conservative and liberal slant. Then Bernhard, using his personal prestige and royal leverage, induced, with the help of Retinger, who knew practically all of them, most of those selected to co-operate. It was quite a list. Van Zeeland wrote a paper for Belgium, Hugh Gaitskell and Lord Portal spoke for Great Britain, Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi for Italy, Foreign Minister Ole Bjørn Kraft of Denmark for Scandinavia; Guy Mollet (former Socialist Prime Minister) and Conservative Prime Minister Pinay for France, and Max Brauer, Otto Wolff von Amerongen, and Dr Müller for West Germany. Prince Bernhard himself handled the complaints of Holland, with the help of leading Dutch politicians and industrialists. When all the reports came in Bernhard and Retinger found that many people of different countries and different parties gave the same reasons for disliking Americans, although there were, of course, some people with special grouses of their own. Bernhard, Retinger, and Rijkens synthesized the answers into a single report covering the main criticisms. Then Bernhard sent it confidentially to some of his American friends with the proposal that they organize an answer. The election of 1952 was in full swing in the United States, and political brickbats were flying. Nobody had any time for Prince Bernhard. Averell Harriman said, I wont touch it. Its dynamite. Eisenhower said, Great! Id like to use it in the campaign, to which Bernhard replied, Good God, NO! The matter had to go over until after the election. Then Bernhard went to the United States-and, incidentally, got the bad news from Walter Reed. He saw a number of American politicians, and after several more rebuffs he went to his friend Bedell Smith, who was then head of the C.I.A. Smith said, Why the hell didnt you come to me in the first place? Even then things moved slowly. Smith became Under-Secretary of State for newly elected President Eisenhower, and was engulfed in the business of putting a new administration together. He finally turned the matter over to C. D. Jackson, a special assistant to the President, and things really got going. Jackson got in touch with John S. Coleman, President of the Burroughs Corporation of Detroit, who was a member of the newly formed Committee for a National Trade Policy under the presidency of Senator Robert Tafts brother, Charles Taft. This committee undertook to draft an American reply, and a number of private citizens. Other famous Americans were invited. Most of the administration officials ducked nervously, so the American delegation was rather weighted towards industry, but it included such eminent Americans as Joseph E. Johnson, of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, Dean Rusk, then head of the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as David Rockefeller and H.J. Heinz II. All this took time, which is why the first meeting did not take place until May 1954. By then, is spite of Eisenhowers personal popularity, the United States was at an all-time nadir of popularity in Europe. As the Europeans saw it, a soldier was in the White House, even though he was the least militant of military men. The Government was in the hands of the conservative Republican Party for the first time in twenty years. And, worst of all, Senator McCarthy was roaring through the land witch-hunting for Reds. His arrogant stooges had just completed their book-burning tour of American embassies in Europe, and the whole American career image of America, erstwhile land of democracy and freedom, was covered with mud. Under these circumstances it looked as though there would be a heated session at the Hôtel de Bilderberg. Prince Bernhard, who was chairman, said, The meeting was most encouraging because people accepted the idea that there would be no publicity, and everybody could speak for himself, irrespective of his position, quite frankly-and fight! At the memory Prince Bernhards eyes lit up, and he said, It was a beautiful meeting because sparks were flying like crazy between Americans like C. D. Jackson and Britishers like Sir Oliver Franks and Denis Healey and Hugh Gaitskell. Jackson himself described the meeting as follows: It was all very new and different. We were tucked away in a forest way back in Holland. There were no reporters. Tight security with guards all over the hotel. IN the opening hours every one was uneasy, nervous, sniffing each other like strange dogs. They were afraid to talk very much. Prince Bernhard was everywhere using his charming wiles. People began to thaw. Then they began to fight, which was good. The Prince kept things in hand. When feeling got too tense he was able to relax people with just the right witty crack, or assert his authority. Though he is so charming, he is made of pretty stern stuff. When he was to restore order he does so in such a way that no one can take offence. But there is no fooling. Order is restored. Naturally the Europeans were continually needling the Americans about McCarthy. Many of them seemed genuinely fearful that the United States was heading for a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, on the third day, Prince Bernhard announced, Even though it is not on the agenda, there has been so much talk of McCarthyism that, if there is time, I am going to ask Mr Jackson to tell us the American view on that. There was time, and Jackson stood up to address the meeting. He is a big man, well over six feet tall, fourteen stone of muscular weight with a big domed head and a bold, jutting profile; impressive by his stature and his slow, judicial way of speech. Almost in the manner of a university professor, Jackson told his audience a few facts of political life in the United States. He pointed out that in the American system of government and politics, We are certain to get this kind of supercharged, emotional freak from time to time. Then he reached back into history for the same sort of demagogue, telling them of the spectacular but short-lived careers of Father Coughlin and Huey Long. He said that he knew it was hard of Europeans to understand how a Senator of the Presidents own party could say things on the floor of the Senate completely at variance with the Governmentss policy. But, he pointed out, there was no way to stop a United States Senator when he went on a rampage. Party discipline was non-existent in that case. Therefore, Jackson said, the Europeans were right to be interested in this peculiar phenomenon of Senator McCarthy, but wrong to be fearful that he was the first step towards Fascism. Finally Jackson made a rash prediction: Whether McCarthy dies by an assassins bullet or is eliminated in the normal American way of getting rid of boils on the body politic, I prophesy that by the time we hold our next meeting he will be gone from the American scene. The fact that within a comparatively short time McCarthy was rebuked by the Senate and lost virtually all his prestige and power made the Europeans feel that they had heard the truth about America. George McGhee of the United States Department of State says, The really bad misunderstandings between Europeans and Americans were dissipated at the first Bilderberg. Since then there has never been such a sharp division between us and Europe. The first Bilderberg Conference was such a success in promoting real understanding across the Atlantic that its sponsors decided to continue the meetings. A permanent Steering Committee was set up to plan the agenda for future meetings and decide whom to invite according to the subjects to be discussed. Dr Retinger became permanent secretary, until he died and was succeeded by Ernst van der Beugel, who, incidentally, said to the writer, I am allergic to international groups. I attended my first Bilderberg meeting with great reserve, but I was impressed by it and remained impressed. Joseph E. Johnson became the first Secretary on the American side. Otherwise the organization was kept as loose as possible to allow maximum flexibility. To insure this the Steering Committee tries to have a turnover of at least twenty percent. of new faces at each meeting. This was made clear at the outset, so that people who are not asked back every time would not consider it an affront. Combined with this is the unwritten rule that anybody who has ever been to a Bilderberg Conference should be able to feel that he can, in a private capacity, call on any former member he has met. To this end a list of names and addresses is maintained to which all participants have access. This makes possible an expanding continuation of association for people who might not otherwise have met. Three days at a Bilderberg Conference are not only a stimulating but also an extremely exhausting experience, especially for Bernhard and the other members of the Steering Committee. H. J. Heinz II described a typical day: We sit from nine oclock in the table. Right after lunch we go at it again until seven oclock. Fifteen minutes to wash up, and then an executive session of the Steering Committee. That lasts an hour, and then we have dinner. After that we talk some more, informally. Its a fifteen-hour day, at least! Another member of the group said, We meet in such beautiful places, but we never have time to look at the scenery. Since 1954, meetings of the Bilderberg group have been held once a year, sometimes twice. The Steering Committee meets more frequently. The regular sessions are attended by from fifty to eighty people. Each meeting is held in a different country, but follows the same pattern. An entire hotel is taken over and closely guarded. The members all live together, eat and drink together, for three days. Wives are not invited. Dr Rijkens says, More important things are done and better understandings are often arrived at in private conversations at lunch or dinner than in the regular sessions. Through the years we have achieved a sort of brotherhood of friendship and trust. The expenses or each meeting are borne by private subscription in the host country, and Prince Bernhard always presides-though not by his own choice. At the very first meeting he tried rotating the chairmanship, putting van Zeeland in the second day and Mr Coleman the third. It did not work. The other Europeans thought that van Zeeland was too political and the American Democrats felt that Coleman was too old-guard Republican. They all begged him to become permanent chairman. Because he was royal and therefore apolitical, and, furthermore, came from a small nation with no large axes to grind, he was, in fact, the logical choice. In addition every one agreed that he handled the meetings extremely well. Mr Heinz says, If Prince Bernhard had not existed Retinger would have had to invent him. There was also the fact that his royalty gave him considerable leverage in inducing these very eminent men to give up their pressing affairs to attend the meetings. This rather worried Bernhard, who once said to van der Beugel, Is it just snob-appeal that brings them? Van der Beugel answered forthrightly, If you can transfer snobbism into something fine and useful thats good. The authority with which you can ask people to attend meetings is important. On the other hand, you dont get eighty outstanding people to drop everything and go off to a foreign country just for snobbism. The way you manage the thing and the importance of the enterprise are what draws them. Meanwhile Retinger brought in many men of the non-Communist but radical left who might not have responded to an invitation from Prince Bernhard. However, even these would probably not have consented to attend a conference with the men of the conservative right had they not been reassured by having in the chair a completely non-political figure. As Dr Rijkens said No one but Bernhard could have induced such old antagonists as Guy Mollet and Antoine Pinay to sit at the same table. Prince Bernhard in his methodical way prepares very carefully for each meeting by an intensive study of all the subjects on the agenda. Then he takes copious notes at the meetings, and at the end of each session tries to sum up what has been said and perhaps add a few impartial words of his own to clear the air. In spite of his preliminary work, Prince Bernhard confesses, I always go to the meetings with a feeling of great nervousness. There are so many explosive possibilities. But it is always tremendously stimulating and enormously interesting-in fact, great fun. One thing that worries me beforehand is suppose some key person does not show up and the discussions are a flop? We have had very little trouble with that. One meeting Bernhard was particularly nervous about was the one at St Simons Island, Georgia. United States Senator J. William Fulbright, Senator Wiley and several American congressmen were coming for the first time. The rule of the meetings is that each man is allowed five minutes to talk, and at the end of this time the Prince is allowed five minutes to talk, and at the end of this time the Prince begins to make signals. But he generally gives them a minute more before taking action. Once or twice Ive had to be unpleasant to somebody, but that is very difficult for me, he says. It is also difficult to keep a big boy from talking too long. I swing my wristwatch in front of his face and say, Ah, ah, more than five minutes! And if somebody makes a really short speech I say, Now that is wonderful. The shorter the speech the more it sticks in our minds. But that does not always help, you know. Some people are very difficult. At St Simons some of Bernhards American friends said, What are you going to do with the American politicians? You just cant shut up a United States congressman or senator. They arent used to it. Bernhard didnt quite know himself. But before the meeting he went to the American politicians and in his most ingratiating way said, Now, look, gentlemen, my American friends are afraid to tell you this, but we have had this rule about five-minute speeches at all our meetings. So would you be very king and do me a favour, a personal favour, and stick to the rule, because I will be finished for the future if I let you get away with a long speech. They said they would be delighted; no problem at all. It is perfectly O.K. with us. And they never broke the rule at all. The only person I had trouble with was a European. The only meeting, other than the first, at which Bernhard did not preside all the way through was the one in Switzerland in 1960. He arrived from one of his selling trips looking utterly exhausted and with a bad cold. After presiding at the opening session he developed virus pneumonia. He chose E. N. van Kleffens to take the chair. Prince Bernhard says, This satisfied everybody, because van Kleffens had once served as President of the Assembly of the U.N. While the meeting went on Bernhard got sicker and sicker. Meanwhile, back at the Palace, Juliana was becoming very anxious. Professor Nuboer says, I was in the Palace that Saturday evening when the Queen called Prince Bernhard. He was in a very bad mood, and said there was really nothing wrong with him. However, the next morning the Queen telephoned me and said that she had talked to her husband again and that his temperature had gone up. I said, Ill go immediately and ask my colleague Professor Jordan, our specialist on internal medicine, to go with me. Professor Nuboer had made their reservations on K.L.M. and borrowed some money-it was Sunday and the banks were shut-when the Queen called back. Im going with you, she said. Im too worried to stay here. Well go in a military plane. Professor Nuboer says, We found the Prince in the Conference Hotel near Lucerne. The Queen, Jordan, and I kidnapped him, literally kidnapped him. We brought him back in his own plane. A car met us at the airport, and we took him straight to the hospital at Utrecht. He was there for several weeks. The Bilderberg meetings are never dull. Even though the group has become, as McGhee says, like belonging to a fraternity, sparks have flown at nearly every one. At St Simons in 1957 the French, British, and Americans almost came to blows over Suez. At another it was Quemoy and Matsu. The Europeans could understand the American attitude about Formosa, but defending the off-shore islands seemed to them military madness for the sake of tweaking the dragons tail. At least we made them understand the necessity of taking more interest in the Far East, says McGhee. Other hot issues have been the Common Market and British and American attitudes towards it. And Cuba! There is always something to make the sparks fly; and, like lightning, these electrical discharges clear the atmosphere. Any attempt to evaluate the effect of the Bilderberg group is made nearly impossible by the very nature and object of the conferences, which is not to act or even to convince, but rather to enlighten. As Prince Bernhard says, You are not asked to agree, merely to listen. At one point the inevitable lack of concrete results you could put your finger on made Prince Bernhard wonder if its was worth while continuing. He sent out a query to that effect to the members. A storm of protest, especially from the Americans, convinced him that he should go on. Perhaps the only way of arriving at some assessment of the work is to question those participants who play an active role in international affairs. When asked for an example of a Bilderberg accomplishment George McGhee said, I believe you could say the Treaty of Rome, which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at these meetings and aided by the main stream of our discussions there. Prince Bernhard is a great catalyst. The formation of an international corporation to finance industrial development in the Near East is another concrete result. However, the intangible results are admittedly the greatest-the bringing together in friendship, even intimacy, of the leaders from many nations and the effect of their confidential reports on the governments of their countries. An example is the case of the United States during President Eisenhowers administration. When asked if he thought Eisenhower had been influenced by the Bilderberg discussions Prince Bernhard said, I dont know. Of course, I talked to Ike about it when I needed his help to give American officials the green light to come to the conferences. Although C. D. Jackson and Bedell Smith were in favour of it, there were a lot of people in the State Department who thought one should not go. They would not allow their people to come at first. Then after the first meeting they lifted the ban. Anybody could come. The same thing happened with de Gaulle. As to whether Ike paid any attention to the reports of our discussions, I could not say. However, General Eisenhower said to this writer: I always had one of my people go to the Bilderberg Conferences [Dr Gabriel Hauge]. Im in favour of anything-any study of that kind which helps international understanding. The Bilderberg meetings enlightened me; Id get viewpoints from other than official channels. Not that I always agreed with them; there were so many points of view that somebody had to be wrong; but it was still important to know them. The present American Government is even closer to Bilderberg because President Kennedy has virtually staffed the State Department with what C.D. Jackson calls Bilderberg alumni-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Under-Secretary of State George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Dean, and Paul H. Nitse over at Defence. However, the Steering Committee tries to keep a fairly even balance between Republicans and Democrats. Mr Ball recently said, I think the most useful feature of the Bilderberg meetings is the opportunity for responsible people in industry, statecraft, or politics to have a frank discussion where they will not be publicly quoted and are able to give their personal views without their remarks being considered official. This is unique and without parallel. \the character of the meetings has been shaped by the very devoted and astute leadership of Prince Bernhard himself. Without his special position, intelligence and goodwill nothing like this could come about. Then the Under-Secretary of State added, I certainly hope to continue to go the meetings . So does Dean Rusk. The Italian Ambassador in London, Signor Quaroni, said What a pleasant change! In other places diplomats always lie to each other. From Prince Bernhards point of view the Bilderberg group gives him an opportunity to work in private, without violating the parliamentary taboo against royalty mixing in politics, for the unification of Europe and, indeed, of the Atlantic Community as well. He regards this as the best hope of humanity not only in Europe but in all the world. Furthermore, he is highly optimistic about its chances of success. It may be oversimplification, Prince Bernhard said, but I think that with a little bit of goodwill on both sides we will find practical solutions for the British problem, the Commonwealth, and the so-called Outer Seven. We would apply the main lines of the Treaty of Rome in principle with certain provisos. For example, it might take certain countries twenty years to adapt to its pattern of tree movement of labour, free movement of goods and raw materials, the lowest possible customs barriers or none, co-ordination of industry, etc. Id like to see us all agree on basic principles, and then let one man, like Jacques Rueff, with a few helpers, work it out. Big committees always fight. If we could all agree beforehand in principle it would result, without doubt, not in Utopia, but in an extremely strong and healthy Europe. This in turn would bring the United States into the economic community. It would encourage a great deal of free trade throughout the world. Now, the more free trade you have the more difficult you will make it for the new countries of Africa and Asia to set up an autarchy and live in economic isolation, to adopt trade barriers and quotas which after a hundred years or more we are finding out dont pay. From sheer necessity these people will have to join in free trade. And once you get that you can help an underdeveloped county much more easily than if there are a hundred and fifty thousand restrictions. Also it would be easier for them-their national pride-to accept help. That to my mind is the best possible guaranty against Communist influence. Within Europe itself Prince Bernhard would like to go even further than economic union. One thing we need for free exchange of goods is complete interchangeability of money, a common currency. Im flat out for that, he said. And this implies a certain political unity. Here comes our greatest difficulty. for the governments of the free nations are elected by the people, and if they do something the people dont like they are thrown out. It is difficult to re-educate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supra-national body. Then there is, of course, national selfishness, putting internal problems first. For instance, no nation in Europe has met its full NATO quota. There is just so much money, and there are so many things needed inside each country. People dont think European enough or Atlantic enough to put the good of all before party politics or national advantage. This is the tragedy. Due to the freedom and democracy we cherish, we arent able to achieve what we all basically want to do. We dont show the world clearly enough that our way is better than the Communist way, because we quibble and throw bricks at each others heads. Real unity comes only when we are scared-when the Soviets put the pressure on and the issue is war or not war, though I should not say that because it is so old and sad and obvious. . We are moving towards unity, but we crawl like snails when we should run. . Even if Europe moves too slowly towards political unity Prince Bernhard optimistically believes that it will arrive if the whole place is not blown up first. He foresees a United States of Europe in which borders are reduced to an absolute minimum, and there is a common currency, a common financial policy, a common foreign policy, and a common policy of trade. The nations will give up so much of their sovereignty as is necessary to implement this. However, the Prince thinks they will retain their national identities. Each country has its history and traditions, and the cultural, philosophical, and ethical backgrounds of which it can be extremely proud, and which make us what we are, he said. It would be extremely stupid to throw all that away. It would be like blowing up your old house before you get a new one built. I think the nations of the United States of Europe will want to keep their flags and their monarchs, certainly for the first fifty or one hundred years, though in that case the monarchs should be jolly good-there will be more demands on a person than ever before. What I say is lets abolish our borders in the sense that we are not any longer going to curse our neighbours over them, or deep them out, or try to frighten them as we used to do, but let us live across them as brothers, while maintaining our national characteristics, not only for our own advantage, but for the benefit of all. Prince Bernhard in his higher flights of optimism even look to the day, fifty or a hundred hears from now, when the Iron Curtain may be rolled up and put away. He believes that as the old Bolsheviks die off and the young Russians, who have lost the hot crusading fervour of the Marxist Revelation, take over, there will be a return to a more democratic type of socialism and a loosening of discipline that will make it possible to bring those lost lands back into the European sphere. Allen Dulles laughs at me, he says, but I think that the Russians will again become friends with us, as they have been before. For this I know, and even Allen dulles agrees, that Communism inside Russia is not the sacred shibboleth it used to be. A lot of Russians frankly admit that they use it in other countries as propaganda in order to bring them into their sphere. But that in Russia itself it is getting a little out of date. Thats a lovely thought, but when it will come, or if it comes in time, who shall say.. Preceeding extract from: Hatch, Alden, H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; an authorized biography. Subject : Bernhard Leopold, consort of Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands, Harrap, 1962.
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