RAILWAY STRIKE IN HOLLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12240, 8 April 1903, Page 5

RAILWAY STRIKE IN HOLLAND.

TRAINS. GUARDED BY TROOPS. By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.

Amsterdam, April 6. As a protest against the anti-strike law all the Hollanders engaged in land-transport have struck. Troops guard the railways, quays, and the foreign expresses run under military protection. The shipping staffs are also beginning to strike.

" The labonr troubles now landing 1 in Holland," 6ayß the .rilot or February 28, " deserve more attention than they are receiving from the English d.xiij press. The recent strike of railway men in sympathy with tto Amsterdam dockets seems to have been a mere rehearsal of a much more extensive movement, originally planned lor the tourist season of last year, but reserved for some future occasion; sad the Government have resolved to frustrate it by the organisation of a railway brigade in th: Army, as in Italy, which 'would be called out to maintain the service when the regular railway servants left their work. The Bill for this purpose is now before the States-General, together with a Bill making strikes by public servants penal, and protecting free lat mr; and another for the appointment of a Comm'siou of Inquiry into the railway system with ?, view, 'it may be conjectured, to its nationalisation. The railway men and the trade unions threaten a general strike whenever the two first teem likely to pass. hast Saturday night a meeting was held in Amsterdam, representing 50 unions, with an aggregate of 90,000 members, which appointed a Uefe ice Committee to conduct the agitation against the Bill, and, whenever it shall F.sem necessary, to give the signal for a general strike. The Government has made extensive naval and military preparations, but it is hardly probable that the strike will be successful. The movement is under Socialist direction, and the mass of the Dutch nation is eminently anti-Socialist. It may. however, lead to complications if it interferes with the transit of the German mails to or from England via Flushing. A grievance against the £>iitch Government is just what the Pan-German fanatics want mast."