Chapter XX
The Army and Navy
Although the Dutch maintained their independence in the sixteenth century against the most formidable regular army in Europe, and also did their fair share of fighting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they have long ceased to aspire to the rank of a military Power. The separation from Belgium in 1830-31 put an end to the Orange policy of creating a powerful Netherland State from Lorraine to the North Sea which could hold its own with either France or Prussia, and since that period Holland has gradually sunk, and seemingly without discontent, into the position of a third-rate Power. This has taken place without any apparent loss of the old love of independence, but it has necessarily been accompanied by a diminution not only of the military spirit, but of military efficiency and readiness. The spectacle of immense armies of millions of men in the neighbouring States seems to have produced a sense of helplessness among the people of the Netherlands, and to have led them to believe that resistance, were it needful, would be futile. The inglorious campaign of 1794, when Pichegru occupied Holland almost without a blow, serves as a sort of object-lesson to demonstrate the hopelessness of any attempt at resistance, instead of the creditable campaign of 1793; when the Dutch expelled Dumouriez from their country. Curiously enough, the Transvaal War has revived national hope and confidence by showing what a well-armed people without military training can do when standing on the defensive. Time is necessary to prove whether this new sentiment will remove the fatalistic feeling of helplessness that has been creeping over Dutch public men, and brace them to efforts worthy of their ancestry.
The sense of impotency has not been confined to the land forces alone. In that matter it was felt that a nation of less than five millions could not compete with those that numbered forty and fifty millions. But the same sentiment exists also with regard to maritime power, where the competition is not of men, but of money. The immense navies of modern days, and the enormous cost of their maintenance and renovation, seem to exclude small States from the rank of naval Powers. Holland, with the finest material for manning a navy of any Continental State, can be no exception to the general rule. Her little navy is a model of efficiency, her small cruisers of 5000 tons are not surpassed by any of the same size, and the morale of her officers, one may not doubt, is worthy of the service that produced not only the Ruyters and Tromps of old days, but Suffren, our most able opponent during the long Napoleonic struggle. None the less, the Dutch navy remains a small navy quite overshadowed by the immense organizations of the present age, and without any possible chance of competing with them.
This self-evident fact exercises a depressing influence on Dutch opinion, which has latterly shown a marked desire to ally the country with some other. An alliance with Belgium, that of the North and South Netherlanders, the old Union of the Provinces broken in 1583 and imperfectly restored from 1815 to 1830, would be hailed with delight. The difficulty of attaining this consolidation of Netherland opinion and resources, on account of pronounced religious differences, has resulted in the formation of a considerable body of opinion favourable to an alliance with Germany. For the moment, events in South Africa have placed the old English party in a hopeless minority.
Although the Dutch possess in probably an unabated degree all the sturdy characteristics that distinguished them of old, it seems as if prosperity had somewhat blunted the edge of patriotism, at least to the extent of rendering them unwilling to submit to the hardships of the conscription, when fully applied to the whole people. As the consequence the Dutch do not come under the head of an armed nation, and the war effective of their army is less than 70,000 men.
The regulations applying to the army are based on the law of 1861, which was modified in one important particular by an Act of 1898. The army was to be raised partly by conscription and partly by voluntary enlistment. The annual contingent by conscription was fixed at 11,000 men. Every man became liable to conscription at the age of nineteen, but as the right of purchasing exemption continued in force until the Act of 1898 referred to, all well-to-do persons so minded escaped from the obligation of military service. At the same time its conditions were made as light as possible. Nominally the conscripts had to serve for five years, but in reality they remained one year with the colours, and afterwards were called out for only six weeks' training during each of the four subsequent years. The regular army thus obtained mustered on a peace footing 26,000 men and 2000 officers, and on a war footing 68,000 officers and men and 108 guns, excluding fortress artillery. Considering the interests entrusted to its charge, the Dutch army must be pronounced the weakest of any State possessing colonies--a position of no inconsiderable importance from the historical and political point of view.
It will be said, no doubt, that Holland possesses other land forces besides her regular army, and this is true, but they are by the admission of the Dutch themselves ill organized and not up to the level of their duties. There is the Schutterij, or National Volunteer force--perhaps Militia would be a more correct term, because the law creating it is based on compulsion. The law organizing the Schutterij was passed in April, 1827, by which ail males were required to serve in it between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, and from thirty to thirty-five in the Schutterij reserve. An active division is formed out of unmarried men and widowers without children. This division would be mobilized immediately on the outbreak of war, and would take its place alongside the regular army. It probably numbers five thousand men out of the total of 45,000 active Schutterij. The reserve Schutterij does not exceed 40,000, but behind ail these is what is termed indifferently the Landsturm, or the levee en masse. There is only one defect in this arrangement, which is that by far the larger portion of the population has never had any military training except that given to the Schutterij, which is practically none at all. A levee en masse in Holland would have precisely the value, and no more, that it would have in any other non-military State which either did not possess a regular army of adequate efficiency and strength, or which had not passed its population through the ranks of a conscript army.
The Dutch Schutterij is ostensibly based on the model of the Swiss Rifle Clubs, and the obligatory part of its service relates to rifle-practice at the targets, but there the similarity ends. There is no room to question the efficiency of the Swiss marksmen, and the tests applied are very severe. But in Holland the practice is very different. The Schutterij meetings are made the excuse for jollity, eating and drinking. They are rather picnics than assemblies for the serious purpose of qualifying as national defenders. Even in marksmanship the ranges are so short, and the efficiency expected so meagre, that the military value of this civic force is exceedingly dubious. It could only be compared with that of the Garde Civique of Belgium, and with neither the Swiss Rifle Corps nor our own Volunteers.
Curiously enough, there is, however, an offshoot of the Schutterij based also on the old organization of an ancient guild called the "Sharpshooters." Its members are supposed to be good shots, or at least to take pains to become so, and they practise at something approaching long ranges. But it is a very limited and somewhat exclusive organization based on a considerable subscription. It is the society or club of well-to-do persons with a bent towards rifle-practice. An application to the Schutterij of the obligations forming part of the voluntary and self-imposed conditions accepted by the Sharpshooters would, no doubt, add much to its efficiency, and might in time give Holland a serviceable auxiliary corps of riflemen.