INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9173, 22 August 1908, Page 5

INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE.

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association —By Electric I'elegrup Copyright.

HOLLAND AND VENEZUELA. DUTCH MAKING NAVAL PREPARATIONS. Received August 21, 8 25 a.m. THE HAGUE, August 20. The Dutch Government is making naval preparations, but will suspend action against Venezuela until M. de Reuss, the expelled Dutch Minister, arrives at The Hague. An indication of rcrious friction between Holland and Venezuela was given in a cablegram received last week, when it was stated that the Dutch armour jd cruisers Holland and Utrecht were preparing for foreign service, and Hint the cruiser Gelderland w;is already cruising in the Carribbea'i Sea. It will be remembered that last month General Castro, President, and practially dictator, of Venezuela, expelled the Dutch Minister, M. de Reuss, from the capital. It subsequently transpired that President Castro's reason for such a grave action was that M. de Reuss had written an article in a Dutch publication declaring that the President's dictatorial regime was leading to the decadence of Venezuela. That President Castro's action had aroused the anger of the Dutch was exemplified in the Duteh island of Curacoa, off the Venezuelan coast. The Venezuelan consul at Willemstad, the principal town of the island, was attacked by a hostile crowd, and forced to take refuge in the German consulate. Venezuela will soon have quarrels with all the world. Already the United States, France, and Colombia have severed relations with President Castro, and the Dutch Minister has been expelled. Great Britain, too, has serious questions pending with the Government. Germany alone has no dispute. Since the refusal of President Castro to submit to arbitration the claims of American citizens, there has been no diplomatic intercourse between the two countries, and Washington regards it as useless to maintain a mission at Caracas simply to lun the risk of plague, which has now spread inland. President Castro, who nine years ago represented a remote State in the Venezuelan Senate, and who inaugurated a successful revolution to avoid paying his taxes, isniw posing as another Napoleon. His self-imposed task is to expel the foreign capitalists; and this he is doing, and is meanwhile incurring the emnity of several European countries. "My dream," he told a representative of the''Matin," "is to regenerate the Republic of the north of South America, by reuniting them in a common defence aaainst the invasion of the barbarians of Ejrope and of the other America." Further, he declared that if all the Powers were to combine, Venezuela would renviin impregnable as long as.he lived. The treatment for this little country advised by Mr Cullom, President of the United States Committee for Foreign Affairs, 'was "a good spanking."