“If they don’t increase their Army”
WE were inclined at the beginning of this war to be a little unreasonable in our demands on the sympathy of the neutral nations. This was particularly the case with Holland, whose geographical position with regard to Belgium and to ourselves is a most delicate one. We did not always consider sufficiently what too lively an expression of opinion friendly to the Allies might cost the Dutch. They saw themselves, three years ago, watched through the peep-holes of their eastern frontier by a neighbor without pity, without scruple, and without decency. To have given the Germans an opportunity of attacking them unawares would have been to see the tulips of Haarlem trampled into mud and the church-windows of Gouda smashed; to let the libraries of Leyden be pillaged and the art-treasures of The Hague be carried off to Berlin; to find the cathedral tower of Utrecht used as a target for cannon, and the canals of Amsterdam choked with the corpses of Dutch women and children. What Belgium has endured would be poured out in fourfold horror upon Holland. No wonder that the Dutch are prudent in their language, circumspect in their actions.
Moreover, till the autumn of 1914, Holland had cultivated a pacific spirit. She did not believe in military danger, and through the masses of the people there ran a kind of resentment against the army, as a body of men paid out of the taxes for doing nothing. In all this Holland was wittingly the opposite of her ferocious and gigantic neighbor. But all this is over now. Raemaekers shows us the sturdy Dutch soldier, with his back turned to wheedling German whisperers, guarding the long eastern frontier beyond the Maas. Holland has been roused out of her opiate dream of non-resistance, and she vibrates with heroic echoes from Ypres and from Dixmude. She is fully aware that she is called upon to be the arbiter of her own destiny, and that she must meet force with force. Holland is safe so long as she prepares her own defense, for Germany never attacks unless she believes herself to be sure of victory. She knows that the Dutch have “increased their army,” and that the hour of “easy” and insolent conquest is over.
Religion and Patriotism
THIS horrible war that has been sprung upon us has taught the Empire many useful lessons. It has been a revelation in character value. In the long piping time of peace, before grim-visaged war broke in upon us, we were much too self-centered. Colonials and others returning from our overseas dominions to the “Old Country” did not hesitate to say how appalled they were by the wealth and how shocked they were by the uses to which it was being put in England.
It seemed to them, coming home from the simple life to the lap of luxury, that men and women in England were living to pile up colossal wealth and to bask in the sunshine of newspaper notoriety. I might continue in this strain for pages more, but that is not my purpose. What I do want to say is that, as soon as the tocsin of war was heard across the silver sea, and the bugle-call of duty was sounded, these same club-loungers and society-loafers rolled up, rallying to the flag as though they had been born for nothing else. In the story of England’s life only will the headline “Five Millions of Volunteers to the Colors” be read, topping the chapter telling of this European war to our children’s children.