RAMBLINGS IN EUROPE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9072, 17 November 1909, Page 7

RAMBLINGS IN EUROPE.

1 NORTHERN GERMANY. 1 WAR ROADS. j DENMARK AND DAIRYING. AN EARLY PALMERSTONIAN. j (By H. T. B. Dkew.) j There isn't much recompense for a cy- \ cle ride over the northern portion of Germany, or, for the matter of that, over ; the western portion. The country is . mostly flat, forest clad, peaty, oom-oov- ; erud and uninteresting. There is littlo that is picturesque about the Prussian. It is the Prussian who has been responsible for the welding together of the • Gorman Empire—a hard, pushing, enter- ' prising business individual. Prussian boys want to be men at twelve —their fathers want the business of the universe. : The artistic German lives in thp south. ; The blonde Saxon Is altogether a lovable i creature.

Yet here in the north no traveller could have better treatment. All the hotels along the principal roads^ havo at least one porter who speaks English. On the roads that lead to the ports you see German foresight. The roads are invariably paved in the middle with cabbie. Yet The little traflic here ridicules the expense. What is it for '! To ensure the passage of thousands of tons of guns, ammunition, commissariat, and men and horses over boggy country in enow or rain should war break out. All the roads to the western coast are thus paved. We saw the highway to Kiel, the great naval port, being similarly treated. In this northern country you realise how much more Germany could do to develop her agriculture. Dairying is in progress, but it is poor, very poor, dairying. Dirt predominates. The cows are a. mixture of breeds. There is no attempt at scientific dairying, and no creameries come into view. The agriculture also, the cropping of oats and wheat, is more or less prefunctory. Germany's whole attention is directed to the development of commercial and manufacturing interests. For the present at least the agricultural and landed interests in political circles have given place to commerce and manufacture. A few years ago this wasn't eo. How keen must have been the pain to Denmark when the Prussian wrenched away pretty, peaceful, Schleswig Holstein ! No part of Germany is finer. Here you get among beautiful fiords that steal far inland up sedge-tipped valleys. Towns, quaint and old, appear in the evening afterglow —tall spires up-raised to the blue-beyond—across peaceful bays. Great forests of noble beeches clothed in summer foliage hold in their whispering fastnesses the secrets and sorrows of the land. Here also you come among pleasanter dairy sconce. The Holsteincr, though cut off from Denmark before the day of the hitter's great dairy development, yet still knows a good deal worth knowing about dairying.

Then you pass on nothward into Den mark.

You usually look sideways for fortifications when in the vicinity of a frontier. You don't sec any on the Danish frontiers. For many years past—since the last disastrous war with Germany in the 60's, in the- days, by-thc-by, when Mr Monrad. the parent of the well-known Karere family, was Premier—all Denmark's available revenue hae boon devoted to internal development. Now she is discussing the advisability of fortifying her frontiers. Special sessions of Parliament have recently been called over the matter. If she fortiiies, Germany will have to play a similar move. But. Denmark, . already pretty heavily taxed— principally on incomes—doesn't liko to undertake the strait), Then., also, *he has no fleet. One or two obsolete men-of-war lie idle in the Copenhagen harbour unmanned, because the recurring expense is too great. Danes like the British —they hate the Germans—but they don't rely upon us in time of trouble, because they remember that England it was who stole their fleet one dark night. They show you the boom that enterprising British sailors broke through on that memorable occasion.

From a balloon Denmark might look like an irregular chese-bourd. Flat to monotony, her universally good land is i'oaded and laned in every direction, in more senses than one she is a de-fenceluss h.nd. Here and there you see- a garden hedge, but rarely a line of fencing.

The cows—cows are the chief landscape decoration in Denmark —are kept from roaming by tether-ropes and iron pine. You see lines of up to fifty of them tethered across a paddock. The fodder they eat is rich thick clover. . Men move them further into it at certain times of a, day. They arc milked at their tethere by men and maids. The maids, generally—especially on the large estates — came from Poland and Sweden. Danish cowe in. summer give three yields—at 4 a.m., 11 a.m. and at 4 p.m. In winter of course the stable is their home, from which at milking time they are led to the milking-shed, where their headstalls are clicked to chains attached to posts. Danish cows don't know what a "bail" is.

The house on the roadside ie a quiet little affair, square, of brick, with a picturesque thatched gable- roof, windowsills invariably decorated with flower pots, and walls of cream colour. Tho farms and outbuildings form a square, one portion of which is tho dwellinghouse, another the dairy, " another the stable, pigsty, fowihoueo and so on. Some of the older buildings sujjgoet Holland —house and dairy and barn in one straight length. The women and children speak cleanliness and happy contentment. Womenkind apparently count far more hero than in Germany.

Where there is a dairy farm there are pigs and fowls. Denmark's export of these two side lines is enormoue. New Zealand dairymen might well study what Denmark does in this direction. Generally you see a bicycle somewhere handy to the house. No nation in the world cycles so much as the Danes. Few nations have such flat, excellent roads.

They soem just tho people for co-opera-tion"; not too competitive or pushing; kindly disposed to one another; intensely patriotic; and in their enterprise more colonial-like than most nations.

Are their dairies object Icesone to other countries ? To some countries perhaps, but not to New Zealand. Our regulations would not pass the rank-and-filo Danish dairies, which are built on the "equarcblock" system. Our regulations won't allow a pigsty to bo in a milking-shed, or a manure heap to etand up against a dairy or milking-shed half the year. There are many reasons why Danish dairy farms cannot bo taken ae models.

As in New Zealand you can never find a spare cup of milk at the farms. You ask for a drink and they givu you a glass of home-brewed alo. Every pound of milk goes to the creamery. Creameries are everywhere—co-operative creameries. Each creamery sends its own van, or lorry, round the roads* to collect the milk cans and to ro-distributc them, and the skim milk afterwards —after the skim has been pasteurised. The Now Zealand practise of each supplier running his own milk to the creamery ie unknown. In the course of ramblings all over the Danish Islands I saw many phases of dairying- and met with considerable kindness from the Danes. I also met Mr J. H. Monrad. who years ago endeavoured to make the cheese industry pay at Bunnythorpo. Since those days ho has edited dairy journals in New York, and is now correspondent in Copenhagen for two American papers. The Government, largely rely upon him to show accredited visitors around Denmark. To his complete library of da/ry literature I was greatly indebted.