May 29. By way of exception, no party. Spend the evening at home with a group of friends,—Fried, the Grelix couple, the painter Ten Kate, and Novikof. We get a scornful satisfaction in reading aloud a package of extracts from the German nationalistic press. As the various _Neueste Nachrichten_ and the various _Lokalanzeiger_ in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, and elsewhere comment on the Conference, we find unqualified such expressions as “The disgusting drama at The Hague,” “The Conference of Absurdities,” “The noxious nuisance now under way, which must arouse righteous indignation in all right-thinking men and genuine Germans,” “For the development of universal history the comedy at The Hague will signify about as much as a visit from ‘Charley’s Aunt’ would signify in the life of a single individual.” And even _Vorwärts_ (_et tu, Brute!_)—which is not nationalistic but scouts the Conference because it was called together by an autocrat and is composed of aristocrats and bourgeois—even _Vorwärts_ writes: “How long will the augurs restrain themselves before they burst out into Homeric laughter and separate amid the laughter of the world?” Give heed, ye contemporaries! If ye fail to take seriously such a serious work of beneficence, and to remind those who are engaged in it—even though there be among them men of contrary opinion—of the seriousness of their task, to hold them responsible for its accomplishment, to take them at their word,—take care, I say, lest ye yourselves have to repent not amid the laughter but amid the tears of the world! May 30. Excursion to Scheveningen. From the city, which lies in the midst of a garden, you drive a couple of miles through avenues lined all the way with trees, like a park, down to the seashore. Along the way, to right and left, are multitudes of villas behind flowering gardens. In Scheveningen itself, along the shore, multitudes of hotels. Everything as yet is deserted. A cold, salty wind blows from the North Sea, which under a gray sky rolls in gray billows. The wicker chairs are not yet brought down on the beach and the bathing machines are not in their accustomed places. On the broad terrace of the Kurhaus, around the silent music pavilion, already stand countless rows of tables and chairs, but all unoccupied. On the sea no ships or boats are to be seen; the bathing season does not seem to be open yet even for the sea gulls.