A speech that Kuyper planned to deliver if there was sufficient time at the sixteenth general meeting of the Association for Higher Education on Reformed Principles, held at Leeuwarden on July 2, 1896. The “reserve address” had to be dropped due to the busy meeting schedule, but it was subsequently published in the proceedings of the meeting.

“De wacht bij het beginsel” plays on a line from the nineteenth-century German song “Wacht am Rhein: Lieb Vaterland kannst ruhig sein, fest steht und treu die Wacht am Rhein.” In the address Kuyper aims to correct what A.F. de Savornin Lohman had said about maintaining the principles of the Vrije Universiteit during the meeting at Seinpost (see 1895.22). Kuyper now expresses his opinion that each member from his own standpoint can take up watch over the principles of the Vrije Universiteit. This never-delivered speech was also published in De Heraut, no. 968, July 12, 1896. See also 1899.18.