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 sailles. By the time we have gained our victory, the bungling representatives of a bygone system will be raising eggs and will be keeping bees in the porter's lodge of their former country estates. While men and women who really understand the world in which they live will decide upon the fate of a new commonwealth of nations. Admission to this organization will not be based exclusively upon the export of scrap-iron and the number of shoes a single factory can turn out within a single day. The so-called imponderabilia—the non-essentials, so infinitely more important than the essentials, will weigh heavily when the claims of this nation to an independent existence of its own are brought to the attention of the civilized part of mankind.

We already know what the Czechoslovaks could do within the realm of science and of social improvement. We had long since accepted them as among the foremost of our musical benefactors and within these walls the visitor can now make up his mind as to their demand that within the realm of the pictorial arts too, they stand foremost among those who have been striving after an independantindependent [sic] and original approach towards the age-old problem of seeing nature through a new and original temperament.

And that is all I have to say upon the subject that brings you here today.

I am among those who have always maintained that art should be "sensed" through the eye or the ear and not through the printed word of a literary commentator. Therefore go into these rooms, most welcome visitor, see for yourself and then make up your mind whether you agree with me that this nation, through its painters just as much as through its other men of genius is entitled to work out its own salvation and to reappear once again and more gloriously then ever before as a Country free and independent!

HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON