Making Holland Larger.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 September 1922, Page 4

Making Holland Larger.

(By G. Ward Price). HOLLAND. As you travel about Holland, the realisation grows that the country is virtually a water-logged ship, saved only from submersion by persistent pumping. At a Dutch seasfde resort the only hill in the place is the one you go up to get to the beach. Were it not - for that high bank of sand the next tide would sweep on up the ma n street.

The canals which drain the country having necessarily to be on sea level, they, too,, lie high above the heads <:f its inhabitants, banked up by dykes that are almost viaducts. If you make a motor-boat excursion you find yourself afloat oil the level of the roofs o f the farm-houses.

Until 50 years ago the Dutch depended on wind-power for pumping up into the canals that carry off the. water that tries to drown their la.nl. Then steam pumps began to lie used, and many of the windmills were pulled down. The consequence of this was felt severely at. some stages of the war. when neither the Allies nor the Germans were disposed to export coal L> Holland, and there was a threatened shortage of the fuel required to keep the pumps in action. But besides such disadvantages certain benefits belong to the inhabitants of this amphibious country. One is that they can enlarge its territory almost at will. As it is, cattle now graze over wide areas where even SO years ago fishes used to swim. But a bigger scheme still is now on foot which will add to Holland a region as big as the county of London, consisting of farming land as rich as Lincolnshire. The whole of the southern part of the Zuvder Zee is to lie reclaimed, after being 700 years under the water.

For the redemption of this particular area is in the nature of a counteroffensive by the Dutch. On St Elizabeth’s Day in 1223 their hereditary enemy, the North Sea, made a big and successful push. Advancing in a huge tidal wave it swept ever 150 square miles of low-lying farmlands, and formed what lias si lire been the southern part of the Zuvder Zee. Alniiv villages vanished beneath the water and 70.000 people lost their lives. The plan now is to recover all tins land, and besides the economic gain, romantically minded people look forward to finding rich treasures there, ancient hoards cngulled with their owners on that wild night when the North Sea raced over tho land. Some, however,- foretell disastrous results from tampering with Nature s dispensations. Tlie Zuvder Zee, they sav, forms s great drainage basin lor tho whole of Northern Holland; it it is suppressed tlie water that would have flowed off there in time of flood may cause inundations. Tho question is a serious one, for in Holland even great rivers clamber to the sea only hv artificial aid.