In May 1918, he acted as an intermediary between the British and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to arrange an armistice, resulting in the Wilhelm gaining refuge in the Netherlands. Business life In 1910, the Holland Dakota Landbouw Compagnie was established, with Hendrikus Colijn and his brother Arie Colijn as the primary shareholders. From 1914 to 1922, he served as CEO for the Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij (BPM). In 1925, he also became CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. Prime minister In 1922, he accepted the political leadership of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (Calvinist) from Abraham Kuyper. Only one year later, he succeeded the resigning Dirk Jan de Geer as Minister of Finance. In 1925, Colijn also became prime minister, but a year later, he had to step down when the House of Representatives accepted a resolution by Gerrit Hendrik Kersten of the Protestant Reformed Political Party that called for diplomatic ties with the Vatican to be broken. That was unacceptable to the Roman Catholic State Party, which was then in government. Colijn then returned to the Senate and from 1927 to 1929 served as head of the Dutch delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva. At the election of 1929, he was elected for the House of Representatives, and he immediately became parliamentary leader of his party. That proved to be a success sincr at the election of 1933, the ARP gained two seats, and Colijn became prime minister again. From 1933 to 1939, he served four more times as prime minister. During the 1930ss, his government faced the effects of the Great Depression, which took a heavy toll on the Netherlands. Colijn's government responded to the economic crisis with a strict protectionist policy, which continued to weaken the Dutch economy. Colijn's decision to adhere to the gold standard until 1936, long after most of the trading partners of the Netherlands had dropped it, was very unpopular with those in favour of government fiat money. In 1939, his last cabinet, with Protestant and liberal ministers but without Catholic ministers, lasted only three days before a government crisis. He resigned as prime minister on 10 August, only three weeks before the outbreak of World War II. World War II and death After the Dutch defeat in the Battle of the Netherlands in 1940, he published an essay entitled "On the Border of Two Worlds" (Op de Grens van Twee Werelden) in which