Political Life
After his return to the Netherlands in 1909, he was elected as an Anti Revolutionary Party Member of Parliament for the district Sneek. (Before 1918, the Dutch voting system was the same as the British)
In 1911, he was appointed Minister of War and revised the Dutch Selective Service System. From 1914 to 1922 he served as CEO for the Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij (BPM). In 1925, he also became CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. In May 1918 he acted as an intermediary between the British and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to arrange an armistice, resulting in the Kaiser getting refuge in The Netherlands.
Read more about this topic: Hendrikus Colijn
Famous quotes containing the words political life, political and/or life:
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“I’ll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork.”
—Irving Brecher, U.S. screenwriter, and Edward Buzzell. J. Cheever Loophole (Groucho Marx)