Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 226, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1910 — The WATERWAYS of HOLLAND [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The WATERWAYS of HOLLAND

Tp maintain their national indeI pendence, to assert their commercial supremacy, to resist the encroachment of foreign powers, the men of Holland have endured many wars and achieved great triumphs. The ddya of these Stubborn strifes have gone, for Holland no longer has any pre-eminent greatness to defend, no greedy assaults to repel. From centuries of strenuous effort she has drifted into a quietly prosperous peace, her people well content with the little which they never lack, and bearing with them a dignity and air of simple wellbeing which are the tokens of their ancestry. Yet, unconcerned as they may be with wars and rumors of wars In the world of men, they are still to the daily exercise of the high courage of their race, for they have ever at their gates a foe never weary of attaok, and they know well that the least relaxation of wariness will bring destruction. The peril of the sea at all seasons is a thing which no nation knows as well as Holland knows it_ These men hold their land and bring it to rich cultivation In the face of the great natural forces of the world. Their country lies below sea-level, and is preserved from ruin by great embankments thrown up round the coast and a vast system of canals which make a veritable network of the land.

Herein lies the secret of the Dutchman’s greatness of character. He has had no opportunity of becoming enfeebled by security. The unceasing conflict with the sea has become knit up into the very fibers of the national spirit, and has given to it a strain of silent self-reliance that could have been born of no other cause. Silent — for this warfare is not as the warfare of man with man, accompanied by the clash of arms and blare of trumpets—it is carried on from year to year in grim quietness against an enemy that may be repulsed but that can never be destroyed. It was by no mere chance that the country’s hero was •William the Silent The Dutch landscape reflects the national character in a singularly vivid manner. Narrow roads set with Small red bricks, trimly ordered gardens. the little carts drawn by dogs, the cottages with their little rows of burnished copper and brass pans and bowls set outside to sweeten in the sun, the poles erected to attract the storks at nesting time, the miniature windmills for domestic use, the people Ihemselves In their bright blouses and aprons and white sabots, the scrupulous tidiness that prevails everywhere, all combine to make up the impression of a toy country where everything ts well ordered and mellow. Nowhere is the traveler brought up in bidden and breathless wonder before any gorgeous spectacle, nowhere awed by. any sense of feverish activity. Desolation and grandeur are alike absent. A beggar is hardly ever seen, a ruin never. The absence of these and of all pomp of riches makes one forgetful of theinequality of things. And then in the midst of all this pretty unconcern is the everlasting symbol of the Dutchman’s 'strength—the sails. There is nothing small about these. They are liberal and workmanlike, full of dignity. Greedy for every breath of wind, they bear the heavily laden barges, beautiful from water-line to masthead, down the great canals from sea to sea. They move with a measured dignity which deepens the sense of calm which is over the whole landscape, and adds to it strength and mobility of character. Everything that the Hollander does under the spell of the waters is Informed by a large and generous spirit of power and fitness. If he has to build a house, be atjtempts to achieve' beauty, and beicomes ornate and wholly' undlstlngfnished; but when he turns his hand ft* the great Windmills which girt the

sides of his canaiß, he works by instinct rather than by design, and shows himself to be possessed of a feeling for proportion and line which is Impeccable. It is this innate suggestion of beauty and rightness in the canal life of the country that gives to the wonderful calm of the landscape its crownlng glory. Flat pastures sweep out on all sides to a far horizon where lines and colors stand out with singu lar clearness and brilliance. Sleek black and white cattle are confined to their rightful meadows by smaller canals which serve as hedges, for the people have put their mastery over the water to practical uses at every turn. We are shaded by tall trees that are set along either side of the road, and we know that we are in a land of peace, where hurry and clamor would be unseemly. And yet in all this benign quietude there is nothing lethargic, for always with us are the great canals with their procession of life, quiet and slow, but resolute and unyielding. For variety and richness the English landscape is unapproaehable, yet in this thing a contrast is not uninteresting. As we go through our highways and lanes and woodlands we shall find all the beauty and peace, but the one thing that we shall often miss is movement and life which is wholly in tune with the surroundings and Is, so to speak, essential to the life of the nation as a whole. Trains may be this last, but they destroy the calm Instead of emphasizing It Motorcars are both discordant and Inessential. Even the pleasure boats on a river lend a suggestion of artificiality. A team on the ploughlands, a shepherd folding his sheep, a field of haymakers or reapers, only In these do we find the life that is in exact accord with the scene, and these we can only find at Intervals, in Holland, on the other hand, in places the most remote from cities and the sound of markets and commerce we find always the feeling of seclusion and restfulness heightened and touched to a sense of vitality by the canals and their full-sailed barges. These canals triumphantly redeem the physical characteristics of the country from the charge of dullness. It® general features is undenlably quaint, but quaintness has a charm which is not enduring. After a while we begin to tire of the squareness and orderliness, and to look upon what appeared to be Individuality at first as eccentricity. We grow a little uncomfortable In the land of Lilliput, and fret for change and some patch of wildness. But of the canals we never weary, for in them we see the expression of a nation’s character molded through centuries of stirring and honorable history. We remember the Dutch proverb: “God made the sea, we made the shore,” and we feel that these waterways are not only beautiful and charged with color and atmosphere, but symbolical of a people’s greatness.

The Dutch painters, through whom the national genius has found its most forcible and enduring expression, have realized very completely titles strange blend of calm and strength. To look at one of their portrait groups of, say, a body of hospital governors. Is to understand at once that these men conducted their business thoroughly and well, but scornful of undignified haste, and for untroubled repose Van der Meer’s picture of Delft In the gallery at The Hague could not well be surpassed. In the great Dutch paintings we do not find the tranquillity of the open places and luxuriant haunts of nature, but the deep calm of strong life, sober and not highly Imaginative but entirely satisfying in its degree. The rise and fall of nations Is a phenomenon still unaccounted for and constantly recurring. We know that Rome step by step rose to a splendor the glory of which is immortal, but we cannot grasp the secret of’ this splendor’s decay or of the decline of the other great civilizations of the world. We can but accept the fact, and wonder at the ruined and yet noble monuments of their greatness that still stand as at once a memory and an inspiration. When the time comes that the, peoples of western Europe have also passed Into the shadow of dead glories, we too shall leave something of our works to bear witness to a greatness that has gone. But Holland will be but'a recorded history to the new nations of far-off ages. The sea villi have prevailed, the great canals, which are as truly the essential expression of a re*olute and heroic people as are the palaces of Venice or the Acropolis of the Greeks, will have perished and will bear no testimony.

JOHN DRINXWATER.