HOLLAND'S PEACE ARMY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 122, 16 October 1914, Page 6

HOLLAND'S PEACE ARMY.

250,000 MEN WAITING ON THE i' FRONTIER. ANXIOUS TIMES FOR THE I'OI'UI LACE. Writing from Rotterdam on August 2.jth, tho spucial correspondent of tihe ■Daily News and Leader says:— Holland's task wJi!ile the rest of the world fights is t«o beep her army fit. It is a task entirely without precedent on such a scala. A stato of armed neutrality is no joke, and may be diardly lees painful tilian war itself. Down on the frontier, in maiy, cases fifty, in some tfg mucli as one hundred miles removed from a DuWiih town of any sizu, there aa - e of a million men waiting. Iti is an army half as large again as tihe English, expeditioatary foroe, and lias to be fed, clothed and maintained by a population of about one-sixth that of England and Wales. It is an army with nothing to do but watch. There aro no victories to celebrate, no iheroic demto to l>e done. In the strict sense of tihe word, there is not event an enemy to keep an eye on. Holland has no enemy a.t. present. I doubt if history has over before witnessed such a spectacle? ;is this of the fjreat. jKilient, watchful army of 'lllie Mctlieilaiiils driven liks an arrow-head with the outer ed;?> 300 miles deeo into t'lie licart, of war-stricken kingdxniis, from Antwerp to Aix-la-Ohajielle, aii.i f. I/in Aix-la-Chant-llr to Kinden.

It is an army of |muc<\ a eonxadU' Lion in twins.

Alhl 'sill's anil;,", always ill peril, but never called upon to tight, lias to be kept hi a si at a of perfect litnnss for six moMw, qxfl'haps for longer. 1 b'j!ieve.:lhal if any peopln in (lie world ;I , ilo it i'lie Dutch dX'o'ili' can, 'but it 13 a tusk that might well appear superhuman. Ceaseless ha I'tlliy, less great than, if the country were at war lias to be mainjiiiii'i! day and and iiiily those wlio (as Ls someliiwyj tin; ea.Sc with journalists) liave tried to be ceaselessly vigilarrt for, say; twelve (hours, v,'i:lli nothing to do but keep tilie n.u'ves quiet know what that means.

There is a temptation either to become shiek or overstrung. and in t.lic pr<i*ml. ca.se -botill conditions would be equality dangerous. "Nerves" 011 the Dutch frontier at. midnisj'lit might 'be tile firs': step toward* Oiell at noon. Slackncss in a singlo regiment prove the .tiny hole in the dyke that, lets; in the nee-a-ii. $0 far the men have borne, t l llO strain and the boredom alike with, -adiinirable cheerfulness. We have been allows il to nm down to 111? frontier to .-ec asimitieh for ounselves. lint now the gri,f> of war is tightening;, and an order has just been given for the expulsion of any foreign journalist found near the linen. The, .silent army must do its noble dutv unwutched! and unpraised. J he only difference between the position of the troops to-day and their poS'lion should it. come to war is that so long a ls ipmiee 'holds. motlliers, wives null •sweethearts can obtain passes to visit their men-folk at the front. -Every, Sunday hi particular trains and boats are ipaeki'd with eager, anxious woirten, many of thmn in .L'lie aural districts' wearing the elaborate headdresses and (fold ornaments that rill survive itiie Dutch peasantry.