Holland, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

The question of instruction, in Holland as in most countries, is a religious question, which in its turn is the most serious, indeed the only great, question that now agitates the country.

Of the three and a half millions of inhabitants in Holland, a third, as I have remarked, are Catholics, about a hundred thousand are Jews, and the rest are Protestants. The Catholics, who chiefly inhabit the southern provinces of Limbourg and Brabant, are not divided politically as they are in other countries, but form one solid clerical legion,—Papists, Ultramontanists, the most faithful legion of Rome, as the Dutch themselves say—who buy the very straw that the pontiff is supposed to sleep on, and who thunder Italy from the pulpit and the press. This Catholic party, which would have no great strength of itself, gains a certain advantage from the fact that the Protestants are divided into a great many religious sects. There are orthodox Calvinists; Protestants who believe in the revelation, but do not accept certain doctrines of the Church; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without, however, separating themselves from the Protestant Church; others, again, who believe in God, but do not believe in any Church; others—and amongst these are many of the cleverest men—who openly profess atheism. In consequence of this state of things, the Catholic party has a natural ally in the Calvinists, who as fervent believers and inflexible conservers of the religion of their fathers, are much less widely separated from the Catholics than from a large party of those of their own co-religionists. These form, in a certain sense, the clerical wing of Protestantism. Hence in the Netherlands there are Catholics and Calvinists on one side, and on the other a liberal party, while between the two there hovers a vacillating legion that does not allow either side to gain an absolute supremacy. The chief point of contention between the extreme sections is the question of primary instruction, and this reduces itself, on the part of the Catholics and Calvinists, to insistence that so-called mixed schools, in which no special religious instruction is given (so that Catholics and Protestants of all doctrines may support them), shall be superseded by others in which dogmatic instruction is to be given, and that these shall be also supported by the commune under the direction of the state. It is easy to foresee the grave consequences that such a division in the popular educational system would produce—the germs of discord and religious animosity that would be sown, the trouble that would in time arise from separating young people into groups professing different faiths. Up to the present time the principle of mixed schools has prevailed, but the victories of the Liberals have been costly. The Catholics and the Calvinists successively obtained various concessions, and are prepared to obtain yet others. The Catholic party is, in a word, more powerful than the Calvinist party: the one, united and aggressive, gains ground day by day, and it is not unlikely that it will succeed in gaining a victory which, though not lasting, will provoke a violent reaction in the country. Things have come to such a pass that in that very Holland which fought for eighty years against Catholic despotism there are now serious reasons to fear the outbreak of a religious war.

Notwithstanding this state of things, which to the present time has prevented the institution of obligatory instruction demanded by the Liberals, and keeps a great number of Catholic children away from the schools, the education of the lower classes in Holland is in a condition that any European state might envy. In proportion, Holland contains less people who do not know their alphabet than does Prussia. "Of all Europe," as a Dutch writer has said with just pride, although he judges his country severely on other points, "Holland is the land where all such knowledge as is indispensable to civilized man is most widely diffused." I was once greatly surprised, on asking a Dutchman if there were any women-servants who could not read, to hear myself answered, "Well, yes. I remember twenty years ago that my mother had a servant who did not know her alphabet, and we thought it a very strange thing." It is a great satisfaction to a stranger who does not know the language to be sure that if he shows a name on his guide-book to the first street-urchin he meets, the boy will understand it and will try to direct him by gestures.

Talking of Catholics and Calvinists, we arrived at the dunes, and, although we were near the coast, we could not see the ocean. "Holland is a strange country," I said to my friend, "in which everything plays at hide and seek. The façades hide the roofs, the trees hide the houses, the city hides the ships, the banks hide the canals, the mist hides the fields, the dunes hide the sea." "And some day," answered my friend, "the sea will hide everything and all will be ended."

We crossed the downs and advanced toward the coast, where the preparatory works for the opening of the Rotterdam Canal were in progress.

Two dykes, one more than a thousand two hundred meters in length, the other more than two thousand meters long, separated from each other by the space of a kilometer, project into the sea at right angles to the coast. These two dykes, which are built to protect vessels entering the canal, are formed by several rows of enormous palisades made of huge blocks of granite, of fagots, stones, and earth; they are as wide as ten men drawn up in a line. The ocean, which continually washes against them, and at high tide overflows them in many parts, has covered everything,—stones, beams, and fagots, with a stratum of shells as black as ebony, which from a distance seems like a velvet coverlet, giving to these two gigantic bulwarks a severe and magnificent appearance, as if they were a warlike banner unfolded by Holland to celebrate her victory over the waves. At that moment the tide was coming in, and the battle round the extreme end of the dykes was at its height. With what rage did the livid waves avenge themselves for the scorn of those two huge horns of granite that Holland has plunged into the bosom of her enemy! The palisades and the rock foundations were lashed, gnawed, and buffeted on every side; disdainful waters dashed over them and spat upon them with a drizzling rain that hid them like a cloud of dust; then again the waves would flow back like furious writhing serpents. Even the sections far from the struggle were sprinkled by unexpected showers of spray, the advance guard of that endless army, and meanwhile the water kept rising and advancing, forcing the foremost workmen to retire step by step.

On the longest dyke, not very far from shore, they were planting some piles. Workmen with great labor were raising blocks of granite by means of derricks, and others, in groups of ten or fifteen, were removing old beams to make room for new ones. It was glorious to see the fury of the waves lashing the sides of the dyke, and the impassive calm of the workmen, who seemed almost to despise the sea. It crossed my mind that they must be saying in their hearts, as the sailor said to the monster of the Comprachicos in Victor Hugo's romance: "Roar on, old fellow!" A wind which chilled us to the bone blew the long, fair curls of the good Dutchmen into their eyes, and every now and then threw the spray at their feet or on their clothes—vain provocations to which they did not deign to reply even by a frown.

I saw a pile driven into the dyke. It was the trunk of a great tree pointed at one end and supported by two parallel beams, between which a steam-engine drove an enormous iron hammer up and down. The pile had to be driven through several very thick strata of fagots and stones; yet at every blow from the heavy hammer it sunk into the ground, breaking, tearing, and splintering, while it entered the dyke more than a hand's length, as if it were merely a mud hole. Nevertheless, what with adjusting and driving the pile, the operation lasted almost an hour. I thought of the thousands that had been driven, of the thousands still to be driven, of the interminable dykes that defend Holland, of the infinite number that have been overturned and rebuilt and for the first time my mind conceived the grandeur of the undertaking, and a feeling of dismay crept over me as I stood motionless and speechless.