CATHOLICS IN HOLLAND

New Zealand Tablet, 13 August 1914, Page 17

CATHOLICS IN HOLLAND

A MYSTERIOUS ATTACK

There appeared in the Times of last Thursday an article of some length, the character of which should appeal,; 1 think, to the curiosity of Catholics in this country (writes Hilaire Belloc, in the Tablet). Briefly, the gist of this article was that the Dutch were tired of tolerating the Catholics in their midst, and were projiosing to withdraw from them the ordinary privileges and rights of citizenship. At the same' time it implied that the Catholic body in Holland was something alien and eccentric. It further implied that this body had in some way offended by its intolerance (or some other vice) the mass of their fellow-citizens. I trust I shall not be thought extravagant if I beg the. Catholic reader to linger a. little over this incident. What is the significance of such an article appearang with such a temper in such a place, and at this moment ? English people know very little about Holland : the country, though a neighboring one, is not much mentioned in the English daily press. The foreign information furnished nowadays to that press is always meagre, often inaccurate, and generally uninteresting. Even if Holland were a country in which we had been taught to take exceptional interest, it would surely be a remarkable thing to discover one day in our newspaper our principal newspaper—as the chief news from' that country, a proposal to revive the persecution of the Church ! Lastly, it must seem especially remarkable that so great an effort should be made to misrepresent in one important particular a country about which, as a rule, we hear nothing. Who was Behind it? Why on earth was such an article written What was its motive? Who was behind it? I shall ask the reader before I sign this article to sec whether an answer cannot be found to those questions. But first let me describe in somewhat more detail, the singularity of this thing. We have the Catholics in Holland spoken about as though they were some alien body, irritating to the mass of the Dutch people, and about to be restricted in their activities on account of this friction between their eccentric selves and the bulk of their fellowcitizens. Now, let it be noted at once that this is wild nonsense. It is unfortunately the kind of nonsense which the writer must have known very well would go down with English readers, for most educated Englishmen think of Holland as an heroic Protestant community, which established its freedom after a struggle with the Catholic tyranny of Spain. Most educated Englishmen, of tire class that reads the Times, would be surprised to hear that there was any considerable Catholic body in Holland at all. Let us contrast with this conventional view (upon which the article in the Times deliberately played) the statistical truth. Holland is one of those countries in which a religious census is taken. The first thing we note about that census is that the total population registered as Protestant is not much over one-half. That sounds startling, but it is perfectly true. The number of people who write themselves down Protestant (including the children and dependents, whom they include as Protestant in their returns) is three million and a-third, out of a total population of nearly six million. (In 1909, 5,858,175.) The remainder are made up of Jews, of a fraction that do not give their creed, and of the very large body of Catholics. The next point we note is that this large body of Catholics amounts to far more than one-third of the whole population of the State, and stands to the declared Protestant population almost exactly in the proportion of 60 to 100. I particularly emphasise those figures, because they form so striking a. contrast to the ‘ suggestio falsi,’ and the ‘ supressio veri ’ of the'article in question.

Holland's Bill wark. But even these general statistics, striking as they are, give us but an imperfect idea of the correspondence between the two religions. he Upper Valley of the Meuse, which is Holland’s bulwark against a ipilitary advance from Germany, which has about it all the important character of a frontier under modern international circumstances, and which is represented by the Province of Limburg, is entirely Catholic. Of its whole population only 2 per cent, are not Catholic. • The largo province of North Brabant, which is virtually the lower course of the Meuse, is Catholic, save for sonic 8 per cent, of its population. And, in general, the south of the country is as Catholic, one may say, as any district to be found in Europe. But there is more than this. It might well be that while the southern and south-eastern districts were Catholic, there was a clean division between north and south. It might well lie that while agricultural southern Holland was Catholic, northern and commercial Holland would be found entirely Protestant. It is nothing of the sort. The two provinces in which the commercial life of Holland is centred are North Holland and South Holland. 'The former, with Amsterdam for its chief town, the latter with Rotterdam and the capital. While in North Holland there are nearly 30 Catholics to every 50 Protestants (to be accurate, 30.7 to 51.46), in South Holland the Catholics are in number more than a third of the total number of the Protestants. If we take a province highly typical of the country as a whole, central in position, famous at once for its agricultural produce and for its commercial activity Gcldcrland—-Catholics are to Protestants very nearly as 23 is to 40. There is only one small district in the country, and that remote and of little economic or political importance, in the extreme north, which is strikingly Protestant. The little corner beyond the Zuyder Zee, represented by the three small provinces of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe—the districts which have throughout history, been furthest separated from the influence of civilisation. One might analyse the national statistics of Holland in further detail and show what a large and solid proportion of Dutch life in the professions, in commerce, and in the public services is Catholic. But I think enough has already been presented to show that the conception of Holland as a Protestant country troubled by some small and irritant Catholic minority is ridiculous. The Dutch are essentially a community wherein the two religions, though not equally balanced, divide the life of the nation between them. Why? Now, why, under such circumstances, should an article so astonishingly misleading have appeared in the Time. ? What business has this country and its press (which hardly concerns itself with Dutch affairs once in a year) to be disturbed by so extraordinary an appeal ? We are suddenly asked to sympathise with some vague proposal for restricting the elementary rights of this very largo minority of the Dutch' people; our attention is directed towards a supposed grievance felt by the mass of Dutchmen against their Catholic fellowcitizens : and while no specific act is mentioned, the reader is given to understand that the presence of Catholicism in Holland has become irksome beyond endurance. Why this amazing outburst ? I may venture to suggest a reply, I think, upon the analogy of all similar press campaigns of the immediate past, that this article in the Times is part of what is vulgarly called a ‘ try-on.’ It must have been noted that whenever an attack is planned upon the Church in any part of Europe—as, for instance, over the Ferrer business in Spain—the campaign is conducted upon the lines of suggestion. The public is not first told certain facts upon which it can make up its mind. It is first indoctrinated with a mental attitude with which the facts, when they come to be known, will be made to fit. And this process of suggestion is conducted, of course, through the cosmopolitan press: In the Tribuna, of

Rome; or the New Free Press, of Vienna, or the Togblatt, of Berlin, or the Matin, of Paris (they are all as like one another as a row of peas ; they are all of them financial, all of them cosmopolitan), the process of indoctrination is begun ; and 1 suggest that’ this article in the Times is to be used and quoted abroad as an example of English opinion upon a policy which will bo attempted in the near future. What is that policy ? In reply to that last question, I will make a last suggestion. I conceive that the cosmopolitan forces arrayed against the Catholic Church are discounting an approaching change in the government of Belgium. The Catholic majority in that country is small. It depends to some extent upon a system of plural voting. It is complicated and weakened by the quarrel between the industrial and the agricultural, the French speaking and the Flemish interests. Belgium is, and has long been, the sanctuary of Catholic institutions driven from their own country by persecution. Should Belgium fail, Holland, under her present laws, would afford a further sanctuary. It is proposed to close this issue. At least, that is the way in which I read this to me otherwise inexplicable ‘ kite ’ flown the other day in the Times.