"Dutch people are said to have made a good deal of money out of Germany, up to December or even later, by selling her foodstuffs and other articles at very high prices," I remarked, remembering what I had heard both in England and Germany.
"Somebody certainly has," admitted the Dutchman. "Since August, 1914, our Government has stopped the exportation of wheat, etc., but some German private agents used to buy it and send it to private addresses in Germany; we really don't know what happened to that stuff, and as the prices offered by the Germans were very good, I know that a lot of merchants here were only too glad to make business with them. Now the new customs regulations have completely stopped this, and I can tell you that lately Germany has not managed to get anything through the frontiers. The German agents are still here, as well as in Rotterdam and other towns, but they have realised that it is impossible to send to Germany the foodstuffs, etc., which they have already stored for the purpose, and now they have stopped buying."
* * *
During my last visit to Holland I was struck by a curious phenomenon. Dutch people are very fond of humming a tune. They hum it when they walk, when they read, when on business, while smoking huge cigars. True enough, it is very difficult to detect the tune, as they generally distort it in the most unexpected way, but as everybody seems to be fond of the very same tune at the very same time, after hearing three or four performances you usually get to know what they mean by the series of mewings and mutterings they send out, together with abundant puffs of white smoke. My different visits to Holland have been marked by different favourites in the way of tunes: "Merry Widow" three years ago, then "Dollar Princess," then "El Choclo," then "Dixie," and the last time "Tipperary."
Men, women, and children have really gone Tipperary-mad; they make the most gallant efforts to master the tune, hum it all the time, ask for it in the café or theatre, and put the Tipperary record on the gramophone every night before going to bed.
When at the Hague I saw at a music-hall a revue in which the Tipperary tune returned over and over again like a nightmare, and a Dutchman at my side observed to his wife, who was marking time to the music by alternating movements of her head, causing her corkscrew earrings to rattle to and fro: "Isn't it a charming melody?"
At any rate, the "charming melody" has been officially acknowledged in Holland, and I heard the military band at the Bosch playing it in front of the Royal villa.
"That's a real breach of neutrality," I remarked to a Dutch officer who was with me. "If you are not careful you will have serious trouble with Berlin!"
"Oh, no; we are very neutral. I, personally, am absolutely impartial, and don't care a scrap, for instance, whether Berlin is blown up or burnt down," he answered, repeating, for the hundredth time, a joke which has lately captured Dutch sympathies at least as much as "Tipperary."