What's the best way to ensure a base class's static constructor is called?

Question

The documentation on static constructors in C# says:

A static constructor is used to initialize any static data, or to perform a particular action

Answer 1

In all of my testing, I was only able to get a call to a dummy member on the base to cause the base to call its static constructor as illustrated:

class Base
{
    static Base()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Base static constructor called.");
    }

    internal static void Initialize() { }
}

class Derived : Base
{
    static Derived()
    {
        Initialize(); //Removing this will cause the Base static constructor not to be executed.
        Console.WriteLine("Derived static constructor called.");
    }

    public static void DoStaticStuff()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Doing static stuff.");
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Derived.DoStaticStuff();
    }
}

The other option was including a static read-only member in the derived typed that did the following:

private static readonly Base myBase = new Base();

This however feels like a hack (although so does the dummy member) just to get the base static constructor to be called.