And to the north is it very likely that the British will be able to tolerate the continued German possession of the Frisian Islands? These islands, and the coast of East Friesland, have had but one use in German hands, and that use has been the preparation of attacks on England. Clearly the British may decide to have no more of such attacks. Every advance in scientific warfare may make them more dangerous and exasperating. The British intend soberly and sanely to do their utmost to make a repetition of the present war impossible. To secure this they may find it necessary to have Germany out of the North Sea. But they have no desire whatever to take either the Frisian Islands or East Friesland, if Holland will save them that trouble.

Now, suppose the Dutch will not think of this now. Suppose, for the want of their aid, the Allies are unable to press the war to the complete regimentation of Germany, what will be the position of Holland in twenty years' time?

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She will stand between England and Germany. A Germany incompletely beaten means an Anglophobe Germany. Belgium and France expanded, recuperated, allied, linked by a common literature and language, may be too formidable for another German attack. So that there is the possibility that in twenty years' time or so Germany, recovering and vindictive, may in some way contrive to hold off France and Belgium, and try her luck against England alone. By that time submarine and aeroplane may be so developed as to render a German attack on England much more hopeful than it is at present, especially by way of the Rhine mouth. What, in the light of the Belgian experience and the new doctrine of a "right of way," will be the outlook for a little isolated Holland, as small as she is now, as a buffer State in such a case.

She has always been claimed as a part of the great Pan-German scheme, and at any time she may find the German heel upon her face, vindictively punishing her for her lack of enthusiasm for Teutonic brotherhood. Hadn't she better get herself a little larger and stronger now; hadn't she better help to make the ending of the German threat more conclusive, and link herself definitely with the grand alliance of the Western Powers? Now she could make a very good bargain indeed. If she inquired she would find Britain ready enough to guarantee the integrity and protection of Holland's colonial empire forever by the British fleet. All the four Western Powers, France, Belgium, Holland, Britain, would be willing to make the most binding pledges for such mutual protection. It is the manifest common-sense of the settlement that they should set up such a collective guarantee. And, in addition, there are those Frisian Islands, and East Friesland, and that dangerous wedge that Germany drives into Holland along the Rhine. It is not difficult to map a very much improved Dutch frontier along the Ems, and thence striking down to the Rhine and meeting the iron country on the left bank of the Rhine, whose annexation and exploitation is Belgium's legitimate compensation for her devastation and sufferings. Here are the makings of a safer Greater Holland! Thousands of Dutchmen must be looking on the map at the present time and thinking such things as this. There, clearly and attractively, is the price of alliance.

The price of neutrality is an intact Holland—and a certain isolation in the years ahead. But still, I admit, a not unhappy Holland, Dutch and free. Until a fresh Anglo-German struggle begins. Yet, be it noted, a Holland a little helpless and friendless if some renascent Asiatic Power should presently covet her Eastern possessions.

The price of participation with Germany, on the other hand, is complete envelopment in the warm embrace of the "good German brotherhood"—the gradual substitution of the German language for the Dutch, and a Germanization of such colonies as the Allies may still leave for Holland, frequent State visits from Kaisers, and the subordination of Dutch mercantile interests to those of Hamburg and Altona and (Germanized) Antwerp. And—the everlasting howling everywhere of "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles."

(No! No! They will never fight for the Germans. No sane people will ever fight for the Germans if they can possibly avoid it. Not even our press censorship, not even the Maximilian Krafts in our silliest weekly papers will provoke Holland to that.)

But I have a sort of feeling, for the reasons I have stated, that even without any serious breach of Dutch neutrality by the Germans, Holland may decide presently to put her troops beside the Belgians. And if, as is always possible, the Germans do make some lumpish onslaught upon Dutch neutrality, then I am convinced that at once that sturdy little country will up and fight like the very devil. And do remarkably well by it.