Reply to a telegram from the tenth annual meeting of the Dutch Federation of Young Men’s Associations on Reformed Principles. Kuyper had received a telegram expressing the federation’s warm affection “now that you are so ignobly assailed by another part of the Dutch youth.” The allusion was to W. van Oosterwijk Bruyn, chairman and then honorary chairman of the Dutch Federation of Young Men’s Associations. In the federation’s yearbook of 1898, titled “Christophilus,” Van Oosterwijk Bruyn had given expression to his organization’s rivalry with the Dutch Federation of Young Men’s Associations on Reformed Principles. Chairman J.E. Vonkenberg (1869–1934) cited Van Oosterwijk Bruyn’s contribution as demonstrating that his young men’s associations “find their point of unity in this dogma: ‘Against the Calvinists and above all against Dr. Kuyper.’”

Kuyper’s spouse had already telegrammed her thanks for the friendly telegram from the annual meeting with a report that the “professor is in Brussels.” Upon returning home Kuyper himself wrote another letter of thanks. The telegram and the letter were both printed in the Jaarboekje voor 1899. His written expression of thanks had already been printed in Het Gereformeerd Jongelingsblad, no. 33, June 10, 1898.