In this connexion it is interesting to add a few words about Dutch Free Masonry. The Dutch Free Masons of the present day are not so much moralists as ethicists. The well-being of the commonwealth based upon the well-being of every member--spiritually, intellectually, and materially--is their threefold aim. They feel and express profound admiration for every form of religious life, utterly indifferent as to the existence or non-existence of any dogma accompanying it, since they freely realize how strong a motive religion is to ethics; they admit Roman Catholics, Orthodox or Modern Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Atheists and Agnostics into their fraternity, no confessional test whatever being put to any one; they only require faithful co-operation towards the general betterment of human society as a whole. The Hebrew Church has also enjoyed perfect freedom ever since the constitution of 1848 made the right of congregation absolute and incontestable. But after being fettered during so many centuries, it took even this energetic and tenacious race some twenty years to shake itself free from the lingering influences of long-protracted restraint. It was only in 1870 that the Netherlands Israelitic Congregation was established; the Portuguese Jews in Holland have a separate governing body. Modern and ancient views clash here, as everywhere else, but the consciousness of their illustrious history, not sullied, but adorned with greater brilliancy by centuries of persecution, becomes gradually more powerful in the mind of the Dutch Jew, and invigorates his natural and national tendency towards the ancient rites and doctrines of his classic creed. Chapter XX The Army and Navy