exclusion of women and foreigners ("Decision 4: Members will also be selected based on physical characteristics: only native men are eligible."). Members approached by the media for comments, reacted annoyed on the leaking of, and/or their membership of, the Republican Society, refused to respond or desired to remain anonymous. In the media, especially De Telegraaf that ran the headline "Leave our royal house alone!", and also from politics, including prime minister Wim Kok, the reaction was generally overwhelmingly negative. However, de Young Democrats and Young Socialists enthusiastically sought to join the Society, and hold nationwide discussions on monarchy and republic; the Youth Organisation Freedom and Democracy stated they were in favour of a purely ceremonial kingship "according to the Swedish model". Regrouping Knapen, who had distanced himself from the Society soon after its foundation, accused De Telegraaf and de Volkskrant of taking the Society way too seriously, and called the media controversy a "farce". Van Amerongen, however, stood up defiantly in De Groene Amsterdammer, in which he indeed explained "Decision 4" to be a mere joke, but the republican initiative as a whole "extremely serious" and "serious in every sense", and provided more legitimacy for the cause. He primarily rebuked De Telegraaf, accusing it of hypocrisy by first calling the emergence of the Republican Society "barely noteworthy", before filling page after page about it for an entire week, and write down reviling remarks from several famous Dutch people addressed to the republicans (singer Gerard Joling called them "traitors"). Some like historian Anton van Hooff joined the ranks of the Society, other republicans such as Socialist Party leader Jan Marijnissen did not (no 'conspiratory clubs'), but did support having a public nationwide debate on the monarchy, which in their opinion unjustly appeared to be a taboo subject. Several politicians and commentators proceeded to sweeten the issue, which, despite the serious undertone, appeared to be a partially "derailed joke", because the prankish remarks in Vinken's minutes such as "Decision 4" were unintentionally taken seriously in print. Although the existence of the Republican Society was revealed prematurely and rather clumsily, it succeeded in having the form of government debated nationally. One year later, the media no longer wrote about the royal house without criticism, and the membership of the Republican Society grew rapidly. Growth and competition During its first anniversary in September 1997, the Republican Society itself sought publicity by showing a new,