LIFE IN HOLLAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1840, 15 June 1918, Page 1

LIFE IN HOLLAND.

IN'WAR TIME. WHERE ENEMIES MEET ON NEUTRAL GROUND. (By Henry Suydam, the special correspondent of the Brooklyn Eagle, who has been for some months in Holland.) The Dutch, although physically close to the war, assume an expression of intellectual detachment that, smacks of pedantry and has been much misunderstood abroad. When I left Holland a few days ago, just after the Dutch merchant fleet in our harbours had been commandeered, Dutch nationalism was in a state of tense coherence, but the Dutchman was not pro-German. The Dutch people have never been able to see themselves in perspective. They are unreasonably intolerant towards even the mildest cross-currents that have intercepted the placed stream of their existence. But there remains enough evidence that the Dutch, when once their sluggish emotions are aroused, are pro-Entente, and not pro-Ger-man. The hospitality shown to several hundred thousand Belgian refugees, long after the first glamour of exile had worn off, must be remembered. Lately, hundreds of British prisoners of war, who had been in German prison camps for three years and more, arrived in Holland for internment. Simultaneously, a similar group of Germans arrived from England. The official reception by the Dutch Government was equally cordial in each case, but there is a very evident preference for the British soldier.

The Dutch public do not like Germans, especially when in uniform. I have seen Germans walk into a restaurant and the entire company and diners slopped talking and stared, and there was im indefinable bristling of backs.

The condition of the British prisoner of war interned in Holland is naturally a topic of profound interest to English readers, and I maystate that (ho behaviour of these men, under rather difficult circumstances, has been marked by extreme tact and unoblrnsiveness. Not even (bose men who had endured torture at the hands of I heir German captors ever opened their months in complaint. There are, of course, large'numbers of German spies and agents in Holland. The visible Germans — (hose we should call, in America, Hie “dress-snitmen”—are pari of a sinister cosmopolitan crowd that have trailed across Europe during the last three years, as various

small nations .lost their neutrality. During my winter in Holland, I have recognised more than one Gorman agent whom I have seen as a notorious figure in the international intrigues, carried on just within the law, at Bukarest and Sofia, at San Sebastian and Lisbon, and even in the diminutive state of San Marino.

The German organisation in Holland has, of course, no admitted existence. The Dutch Government is never able to detect a given breach of law or international etiquette that- would justify drastic action. But the Boche leaves no stone unturned to win Dutch favour, or secure information of Allied military secrets. Professor Hans Delbrueck intones mild-phrased lectures at the University of Utrecht —that is one form of Germanism; the cafes of Holland are filled with beautiful blonde Boche women —that is another !

One of the prettiest examples of German stage management I have ever experienced occurred in a fashionable hotel in the Hague one evening not long ago. Two young German officers in uniform, doubtless under instructions, walked into a, room where two British officers were having coffe and cigars. The Germans strode up to them, clicked their spurred heels together with a loud report, and bowed. The British officers were corfed to salute, but the Dutch people present remained unimpressed by this blatant form of German politeness. Although the British interned are required to remain within bounds at The Hague, while the Germans are confined to the environs of Rotterdam, there are exceptional occasions when the two meet. I saw two British soldiers pass a Brandenbur-

ger on the street about a, fortnight 'ago, just before the offensive started. There were glares; the German beat, the pavement with his heavy boots; the British coughed rather in the manner of an angry lion; the Dutch policeman waved his white baton vaguely and drew near, and once again Dutch neutrality was saved. I had an opportunity to inspect a camp of German deserters in Holland, but these men are so cowed in spirit that they hesitate to express (heir abhorrence of the system from which they have escaped. Even in Holland they rest under the German shadow. Their viewpoint is almost impossible to obtain, but while a large proportion of them have a fairly definite antagonism to the German Government, there is nothing to show that a German deserter is a decent reformed man merely because he has run away. I was amused to hear many of these ox-soldiers' state that they intended to go to America as soon as the; war is over. The American Government knows enough about Germanism to guard against something that is, after all, as much a strain of race as a perversion of human attitudes. There was a young Bavarian in a» forage-cap, pacing about in the rain, whom I stopped suddenly and asked: “Do you think the German Government will ever pardon deserters V’ He regarded me in a determined way, as it he had been thinking about just that point. Then he bellowed as one would shout an axiom: “If Germany wins, there will be no pardons!” With regard to the general food situation in Holland, I have found food more plentiful in The Hague, at any rate, than in London. There is no lack of sugar or sweets, a fair quantity of meat and bread, but a distinct shortage of tea and cereals. Dutch business men have won

much prosperity out of the war, perhaps more in proportion than the business men of any other country. But (lie wealth is concentrated in a very few hands, and while prices have increased, there has been no compensating rise in wages, as in (he United Kingdom. Moreover, unemployment in Holland is concentrated in peculiar economic areas, as, for example, in Rotterdam, where there is universal unemployment among the shipping workers, who form about ninetenths of the working population. As these men ha ve neither money, work, nor food, hut must stand in long queues in order to procure the smallest; qnanlily of (ripe, (he, Dutch Government are faced with a distinctly dangerous prospect. A Dutch mob has an angry temper, and there may yet come a time* when Holland may experience something of the human antagonisms that have, in a larger sense and method, devastated the greater part of Europe since 1914.