neutral as it had during the First World War. When the Soviet Union invaded Finland in November he traveled there to cover the conflict, working as a war correspondent for the , the and the . Afterwards he wrote a book about it, titled (The Smoldering Fire). Following the conclusion of the war in Finland in March 1940, he returned home and resumed his life as a student at Leiden. He was there at the time of the German invasion of the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. Roelfzema joined the Dutch army reserve, but the Netherlands was overrun by the German army in five days, bringing the war to a close before he was deployed. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fled to London to establish the government in exile there. Roelfzema continued his studies during the occupation and became involved in the Dutch underground. In October the faculty at Leiden received a letter demanding to know if they were of Jewish heritage. On 23 November all the Jewish staff at the university were dismissed. The dean of the Law School, Professor Rudolph Cleveringa, gave a speech on 26 November 1940 condemning these dismissals. He and several other of the law professors were arrested. This instigated a 48-hour strike by the students. In response the Germans closed the university. In February 1941 Roelfzema wrote his 'Leids manifesto', which criticized German demands of excluding the Jewish students from the student societies. It called upon the students of Leiden to resist the policies of the German occupiers. At his own expense he had it printed, and during the night of 14/15 February Roelfzema and eleven of his compatriots posted it all over Leiden. Ten days later the board of the university made a request of the students that they resist the German occupiers no further. Roelfzema wrote a reply on 6 March, pledging in principle to commit no more opposition at the university. In April he was arrested by the secret police and held for a week at the notorious "Orange hotel", a political prison run by the Germans in Scheveningen. In the midst of the unrest and disruption, the Germans re-opened the University of Leiden for ten days. As it happened Roelfzema had been studying hard and took this opportunity to take exams. Taking his exams in formal tuxedo, as was the custom of his student society Minerva, he passed and was