Last week the Nieuw Amsterdam set sail to cross the Atlantic and arrived faster than expected in New York.

On a chilly May midnight long after the hour when they usually go to bed, thousands of good Dutchmen packed Rotterdam’s quays. The well-to-do in their American automobiles — with headlights glaring and horns shrieking—formed a traffic jam for a mile along the River Maas. The middle-to-do on bicycles…