NEUTRAL HOLLAND

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 82, 3 October 1914, Page 11

NEUTRAL HOLLAND

ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES PREPARED TO FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE. Holland is learning in this war time the advantages and tMe disadvantages of being a neutral country. Perhaps the advantages are as embarrassing as the disadvantages. With war all around her she has become a place of refuge, a clearing house for telegrams and letters that cannot pass direct from England to Germany, a common platform on which men whose countries are in bitter enmity may meet on the terms of old friendships. Her neutrality has made the arrival within her southern frontier of German or Belgian soldiers, flying from their respective enemies, a rather trying form of enforced hostility. Already a "concentration camp" at Alkmanr has its nucleus of men from both armies, and there is the constant fear that this involuntary hospitality may lead to international complications. No wonder that gallant little Holland is massing her troops in Limburg and North Brabant to drive back the soldiers who, in the heat of flight from battle, seek to be her guests. But there is a kindlier side to neutrality. Here the men of hostile nations meet on a common ground. Som"e of us meet each evening in. the cafe outside the hotel where I am writing. We are a mixed gathering — English, Germans, Belgians, and Dutch — and by common agreement we discuss the war witlr the cold criticism of unaffected onlookers. A FRIENDLY TALK. Opposite me at a little marble table last night were a German business man and a German journalist of wide reputa* tion, who, until the other day, represented a well-known Berlin newspaper in London. With the business man I discuss the probable effects of the war on German trade with the English-speaking nation overseas ; to the journalist I offer some sort of sympathy for his arrest in London and ejectment from England, at the same time balancing, his experience with the story of The Daily -Chronicle correspondent s banishment from Berlin. And so, without heat, though <jione of us seeks to disguise his real sympathies, we are able to meet and gossip on this neutral soil. That in itself is surely a good thing. And there are other ways in which Holland serves Europe by her neutrality. I have met numbers of business men who are staying here for the sole reason that, while communication between England and Germany, by mail or cable, is interrupted, Holland can communicate with either country. Thus busines?" houses in London and Berlin are able to keep in some sort of touch by way of their representative in Amsterdam. Only to-day I was able to relieve tho anxieties of an English family in London by telegraphing to one of their members in Germany, getting from him an assurance of his safety, and then re-telegraphin» the good news to England. So Holland j is becoming the clearing house of that friendly spirit, of commerce and community, that even in war time links aation to nation. PAYING THE PRICE. But Holland is paying the price. It is not for nothing that a little nation, with millions less people than London, has put over 400,000 men under arms. At all costs she will fight for her independence, and among these stolid, silent people there is never a- murmur at the sacrifice It is not only the men who have been called to the colours and the families that are left without breadwinner who are paying the price. All oveiHolland men and women are being turned out of doors, and seeing their homes pulled down, because the buildings, set up under the shadow of forts, interfere with the all-round range of the guns. To-day I met a man who had disappeared from Amsterdam for a couple of days. He told me quite quietly that he had been into tfie country south of here to see how his old parents were getting on. They were farmers. Suddenly at midnight they and their neighbours had notice that within an hour their homes must be pulled down. Imagine what it meant, in the rain and darkness, to pack all the household goods on carts,* to drive horses and cattle along the narrow road that tops the dyke, and to find tho best shelter that can be had at a safe distance from tho forts. It is tho price of independence, and I Holland does not grudge it. A Holland- : er who years ago went to Switzerland to I avoid military service, and had built up a good business there, has just returned ! voluntarily and cheerfully to join the army.. There was a call for volunteers among those men who for various reasons are not liable for military service. In two days the office where applications were received had to be closed, so great was the rush. The students, who are too young for compulsory service, have formed a committee, to_ try and bring pressure on the authorities to accept them for the army, That is the spirit of the people. They know that independence and neutrality have their price as well as their _ privilege, and they are ready to pay it to the'last gasp and guilder.- -Edgar ßowan, in London Daily Chronicle, Kth August.