HOLLAND'S THREAT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13466, 5 July 1909, Page 2

HOLLAND'S THREAT.

FLOODING i HE COUNTRY AGAINST INVASION. By H. HAjfiLTOx Ftte. We had been talking, my Dutch acquaintance and I, over our coffee and cigars, of all sorts of remote possibilities. "At any rate,' , ho said at last, "if anything is certain, it is this. For the present, happily, we are safe. We have an heir. But should by unhappy fate the Houk> of Orange ever die out, Aye should not consent to be (even nominally) ruled by a German princeling. There are, as you probably know, forty-four pretenders to the throne in the event of there being no Prince or Princess of Orange to succeed " 1 stared at him in amazement. I had heard ot a few ; of a certain Prinre ol Reuss, who is a diplomat; of this Duke and that Grand Duke, and so on. But forty-four pretenders! One imagined the newspapers announcing, ".March of the Pretenders on the Capital. It sounded like a joke. "I am quite serious,' , he went on— and I may remark in passing that J>o is a politician of some note in Holland. "Forty-four, and we do not want any single one of them. If we bad not a Sovereign of the House of Orange, we should not want a King or Queen at all. Our instincts are republican. We are deeply attached to the family which led the way when our country flung off the cruel tyranny of Spain, and which has been closely connected with our history ever since. But if that line failed, we should doubtless become a Republic again. , ' 'That is all very well," I replied; ''but how about the German support ■which a German pretender—and they are almost every one German, you say —would be certain to receive? Your army is small. At most you could only put into the field a little over 100.000 fully trained men. Your fleet could do nothing against a great naval Power. What then?" 'Why this, then, - ' was the quiet answer, but given with a fierce passion of patriotism underlying its quietness. •'We should flood the country, as we did when the French invaded us in 1072. We have fought the sea. We have beaten old Father Neptune further and further back for five, hundred years. But if our liberties were threatened we should call him in to help us as our friend." SIEGE OF LEYDEN. My mind flew back to an earlier date than my friend had mentioned. In imagination I was .in besieged Leyden. All through.the winter (of 1573-4) the brave town had kept the Spanish armies at bay. They had snarled round it for six months, and at last had been driven oil. But suddenly they had come creeping back, and the town was hard put to it for food. There was, however, no talk of surrender. Haarlem had surrendered, and the cold-blooded butchery which followed had sent a shudder. even through a land wc,ll accustomed to Spanish means of "reconciling heretics with God." Besides, William of Orange had promised the town help. He was a man who kept his word. But William was met by unexpected difficulties. August came. The town bad been holding out in reliance on his word since May. He saw that he D-nst take a desperate step. Ho had no army capable of raisi i,| the siege, but he had a fleet, and Leyden was only a few miles from the sea. "Open the dykes," he ordered; "if we cannot relieve the town by land, we will do it by water." On August 3rd t'M» dykes were pierced and ihn st-a flowed in. But still Leyden's a.gony was prolonged. , The wind was contrary. It drove the sea back. Very slowly the water rose, inch by inch. Maddened by hunger and by the loss or their dear ones through pestilence, the townsmen called on their governor to accent the Spanish terms. Then he made that splendid answer which thrills one like a martiitl strain of music even now. "I tell you I have made an oath to keep the city," he said. "Take my body to appease,your hunger. Divide my flesh among you. But exnect no surrender so long as I remain afive." • AH through August, all through September the wind stayed in the wrong quarter. At last," on October 2nd, a north-west gale blew, and the waters covered the land. The darinc Zeelanders brought up their vessels-under the besieging forts, but the. Spaniards had already fled. They had no fancy to etay and be drowned. In terror they retreated before the oncoming tide. Led by the admiral and their heroic governor, the'townspeople, after satisfying their hunger, went to church. But they could not sing the hymn of thanksgiving. The revulsion of feeling, from despair to joy, overcame them The- singing stopped. The people sobbed out their gratitude instead. Well, what Holland lias done before, Holland is prepared, if it became necessary, to do again. I went to the \\aterstant Department to ask for information as to how the country could be flooded now. Since 1877 a separate Minister has been in charge of the very important business of looking after the dykes- and canals, of 'holding the sea and tho rivers in check, and of keeping tho marshes and fens drained. I saw the chief engineer. This large, slowrnpvmg, but clearly quick-witted official, who is responsible more than anybody else for keeping Holland's head above water, smiled benevolently at mc./ "Is it true that we could flood the country? Zekor. Certainly it is true. But I must not tell you how. Surely you would not expect us to give away our strategic secrets. This is a matter most intimately connected with the dedefences of our countiy." A DEFINITE PLAN. Here was a remarkable admission. 1 had expected him to emile and troat mc kindly as a too credulous foreigner. Ji:st<?ad, he gave mc to understand that this possibility of flooding'the country is treated as a serious and necessary measure of defence. "Have we arrangements for letting the water in at any moment I- , Certainly we have But naturally I cannot tell you what they are. Were we to make our plans pubI llc . . n 'f might be prevented at the critical moment from carrying thi^ii How is it that Holland could be so easily submerged? Tho reason is that half the country jios below the level , lot the rivers and the son. .For cen- J tunes Holland has been in the making. ■ Gradually marshes and lakes and fenlands have been turned into dry land Unly seventy years ago the waters of a groat inland sea near Haarlem seventy square miles in extent, woro pumped up and carried away by canals to the ?ea. .Now, where once therewas only water, there is a smiling stretch ot country. 45,000 acres of rieft land with 130 miles of roadways and some sixty bridges over canals. I N hat would be done. then, supposing ' .t were thought better to let in the r" waters than submit to a foreign yoke? Jhe idea that a widespread inundation could be caused by turning a key at Amsterdam is all moonshine is a matter of fact, the sea would be scarcely usod at all. To admit the waves brough the range of sand-dunes, sixty t> cAty foet high, which borders the. -North fcea coast would be very difficult except where there arc canal entl ranees It is mainly, by means of the nrers that the lanrf could b<? deluged. The great embankments which enclose them are so constructed as to make the operation easy. Also, it would be a simple inattor to stop all the pumpin* that is carried on by innumerable wind" mills and steam engines and so allow the superfluous water that is always being earned off to accumulate. That it could be done is certain, md it is far from improbable that in certain circumstances at would be done .tor the Dutch are of a high spirit I where their liberties are at stake