Part 4 (1/2)
The country of Holland is about the size of the state of Maryland.
One-fourth of its entire area is below the sea level, and its great d.y.k.es were they placed end to end, would make an immense dam more than fifteen hundred miles long and in some places from thirty to sixty feet high. Almost the entire country is a network of ca.n.a.ls. A single one of these ca.n.a.ls cost more than fifteen million dollars and it is less than fifty miles in length.
The faith of these Holland people in times of adversity is one of the wonders of history. For a hundred years they struggled against powerful Spain, but their faith saved them. It is said that at the siege of Leyden they were reduced to such desperate straits that all they had to eat was dogs and cats. In derision they were called ”dog and cat eaters.” They replied to their enemies: ”As long as you hear the bark of a dog or the mew of a cat the city holds. When these are gone we will devour out left arms, retaining the right to defend our homes and our freedom. When all are gone we will set fire to the city and with our wives and children perish rather than see our families destroyed and our religion desecrated.”
Think of it! A country one-half of which is below the level of the water, some of it sixteen feet lower than the ocean, which is only a few miles away! What watchfulness and anxiety bordering upon fear must occupy every moment, both day and night! In a single century there were thirty-five great inundations which literally swallowed up several hundred thousand people. Instead of being disheartened, like ants, they went to work at once to rebuild the d.y.k.es, and with the aid of hundreds of gigantic windmills pumped the water back into the sea.
These windmills are not only used to pump water, but they saw wood, grind corn, crush seeds, make paper, and do about everything else. While they are imperilled all the time by water, they make the water serve them in numerous ways. Their fences are ditches filled with water. How their cattle and horses have been trained to stay in, a small lot surrounded by narrow ditches filled with water which they could easily jump over, is a mystery, but every visitor to Holland has seen it with his own eyes.
These Dutch people are great farmers and stock raisers. As their country has no minerals, the people depend upon agriculture more perhaps than in any other part of the world. Supporting a population of four hundred and seventy people to the square mile, every foot of the land of course is tilled carefully. The main agricultural product is potatoes, of which they raise about one hundred million bushels per annum. Then come oats, twenty million bushels, rye, fifteen million and about a third as much wheat.
The Hollanders build s.h.i.+ps, refine sugar, dredge oysters, distill liquor and brew beer. They manufacture carpets, leather and paper goods, make chocolate, cut diamonds as well as produce gold and silver articles and pottery. The farmer uses his cow like one of the family. He keeps her in the house when the weather is cold, washes and combs her hair more often than his own, and keeps her room as clean as the parlor. She chews her cud contentedly and the only thing about her which is tied up is her tail, which is generally fastened to a beam above to keep it from getting soiled. Of course, milk, b.u.t.ter and cheese are not a small part of the living of these people. Often in a Holland home the sitting room, dining room and sleeping room are one and the same. People often sleep in bunks one above the other like berths on a s.h.i.+p or sleeping car.
The great bird in Holland is the stork, which is kept and given a home because of the service rendered in keeping down toads and frogs. The people who live in the lowest ground make nests for the storks upon posts erected for the purpose, and almost every Dutch city has a pet colony of these birds. The Dutch folk-lore tells of the tragedy of the stork colony away back in the fifteenth century which occurred during the breeding season. The town of Delft caught fire and when the older storks made ready for flight their offspring were too young to fly and too heavy to be carried, and rather than leave their young, the old birds went back to their nests and perished.
The two great recreation amus.e.m.e.nts that everybody engages in are cycling and skating. Roads are good so that the former can be practiced the year around, while the latter, of course, can only be indulged in during the winter time. These people become so skilled on the ice that they can beat an express train, and to skate a hundred miles in an afternoon is an ordinary excursion. Some years ago a record of four miles in five minutes was established which is ”going some” on skates.
In the beginning of winter when the skating season opens, the young men and maidens have a great time going to the city of Gouda. The young men go to buy long pipes and bring them home safely in their mouths or pockets. The fair maidens try to waylay them and break these pipes.
Likewise the maidens purchase brittle cakes and attempt to carry them home in bags without breaking them up, and the young men endeavor to knock the bags from their hands and thus, ”break the cake.” They all have a gay time.
Skating is ruled by a sort of a national society. The fee is so small that everyone can join it. This society decides when skating is safe, marks the routes and employs sweepers to keep these highways clear from snow, etc. Everyone must obey the rules laid down by this society, consequently accidents are rare. One week each year they have a great festival called the ”Kermis,” which is not unlike the old-fas.h.i.+oned carnival in this country. All kinds of amus.e.m.e.nts are engaged in and all have a jolly time. St. Nicholas Day, which occurs on December fifth, is also a great day in Holland, especially for the children.
The largest city in Holland is Amsterdam, which contains more than one-half million people. This is a walled city, but the walls are water in the shape of ca.n.a.ls. There are four of them, the outermost being called the Single or ”Girdle.” Across these ca.n.a.ls are smaller ca.n.a.ls running diagonally and the city itself is as though built on a thousand islands.
These larger ca.n.a.ls are almost filled with s.h.i.+ps of various sizes and boats and barges fill the smaller ones. The city has the appearance of being built on the water, ca.n.a.ls serving the purposes of streets. The ground used to be a great marsh and the entire city is practically built on piles which are driven down sometimes eighty feet.
One great palace in the city stands upon fourteen thousand piles. One would think the buildings would collapse in the course of time, and some of them are all out of shape, but the people are so used to seeing the buildings lean, almost like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that they think nothing about it. Once in awhile the road will give way under a heavily loaded truck, but they pry the load out, repair the roadway, and go ahead as though the highway were built upon solid rock.
That the people of Amsterdam are religious is shown by the fact that there are many large churches in the city. The front of the great palace called the Dam has a hundred windows and only one little insignificant entrance. It has been called ”the palace without a door.” Just across the square is the Exchange with a great portico supported by seventeen columns. Some have called this ”A door without a house.”
Like New York, Amsterdam has its Ghetto, in which more than sixty thousand Jews are packed almost like sardines in a box, and most of these live in the direst poverty and misery imaginable. However, just beside this Ghetto live wealthy Jewish families, and one of the great synagogues is so magnificent that they claim it represents the Temple of Solomon.
As noted above the gigantic task of draining the Zuyder Zee has already been started. This great lake is a hundred miles long and half as wide, and used to be a great forest. Between seven and eight hundred years ago, this forest and some better lands consisting of farm lands and cities, were destroyed by the River Chim. A writer in the Scientific American, quoted in the Literary Digest, says:
”Then Neptune looked down with longing eyes for his own. About the middle of the thirteenth century, the North Sea broke through the upper sand dunes and swept over the land. Hundreds of villages with their inhabitants were engulfed and destroyed. Geographical continuity was obliterated, and Holland found herself cut in two by an ocean eighty-five miles long from north to south, and from ten to forty-five broad. It proved, moreover, quite as treacherously dangerous a sea as that which divided her from Britain.”
The capital city of Holland contains more than a quarter of a million people. Perhaps the most outstanding building in The Hague is the Palace of Peace. It was dedicated August 28, 1913. Something like twenty countries contributed materials for this great building. The granite in the base of the walls came from Norway and Sweden, the marble in the great corridor is Italian; Holland supplied the steps in the great stairway, and the group of statuary at the foot of this stairway came from Argentina.
The stained gla.s.s in the windows of the Court of Law came from Great Britain, and the rosewood in the paneling of the Council Chamber is Brazil's contribution. Turkey and Roumania each supplied carpets, Switzerland furnished the clock, and Belgium the iron work on the door at the main entrance. Our own contribution was a group of statuary in marble and bronze at the first landing of the great stairway. Russia and China furnished vases, j.a.pan sent silken curtains, and France furnished a magnificent painting. Thus the nations builded together and we all hope the dream for which this Palace of Peace stands will soon become a reality. We are glad that the building is now open again.
For more than four years Holland occupied perhaps the most difficult position in which any country was ever placed. Every day of that time she was between the ”devil and the deep sea.” Compelled to be ready for invasion every moment, yet trying to remain strictly neutral, she had the job of feeding hundreds of thousands of refugees. These were anxious months and years, but the Dutch did most remarkably well and kept their heads above water all the time. No people were more happy to see peace come although they were compelled to harbor the greatest enemy civilization ever had.
CHAPTER IX
THE NATION THAT THE WORLD HONORS--BELGIUM
During the world war the eyes of the world were upon Belgium and it is quite fitting that an article be devoted to this little country whom the world honors. Although one of the smallest of all the independent nations yet before the invasion this little country stood eighth in wealth and sixth in export and import trade among the nations. Texas is more then twenty times as large as Belgium. Although not nearly all her land is under cultivation yet she supported seven and a half million people and before the war it is said she had no paupers.
This little country has been called the ”balance wheel of the world's trade.” The city of Antwerp is said to have forty miles of quays--ahead of New York City. When the war broke out Belgium had just completed a ten million dollar ca.n.a.l and had spent eighty million dollars on her waterways. Her commercial and industrial interests were amazing. She had one hundred and eighty factories for the manufacture of arms alone. A single engine factory in Liege turned out two thousand large engines complete, annually. The zinc foundries and cycle works of this one city are world famous.