Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 141, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1919 — THRIFTY DUTCHMEN TURNED INTO DESPERADOES BY WAR [ARTICLE]

THRIFTY DUTCHMEN TURNED INTO DESPERADOES BY WAR

Genuine Shock Has Come to Those Who in Old Days Admired Industrious Hollander Whose Only Occupation Now Is in Deeds of Daring and Robbery—Country Is Now Paradise for Thieves.

The Hague.—To tlip.se who knew the Hollander before the war as a quiet, well-behaved, thrifty and industrious soul, content to pursue the even tehor of his way and sticking religiously to orderliness and good behavior, his transformation since the signing of the last November will come as a genuine shock. Crime, in the pre-war days, was at Its minimum in Holland. Her stand- > lng army of some 50,000 was composed of young men who served their allotted time in the military service of their country with the minimum of grumbling, returning cheerfully to the plow, or the dairy, or the fisheries, as soon as their term of army service was over. Except for an ever watchful eye on her frontier? Holland lived a calm, contented existence, turning out her world-famous cheeses and her perhaps, more, infamous gins, her citizens secure in the feeling that theirs was n land where the law was observed, where their chattels were safe even though their front doors remained unlocked and where the infrequent offender against the penal code could not hope to get his full name in the papers, much less his photograph with a pretty border around if. Today all this is changed. From a land of safety Holland has been transformed Into a land of danger and the Hollander —that lk, hp who is represented in the ranks of the plow boy. the driver of the horse or donkey along the tow path, the churner of the butter and the cream, the farm hand or the miller’s assistant —has been transformed into a shiftless, lazy, disorderly ne’er-do-well, whose principal occupation is burglary! , It Is a New Crime. Burglary in Holland was not a usual crime in the pre-war days. That fact makes the present wave of lawlessness all the more striking. The great truth that has dawned upon the country is that the 800,000 Hollanders’ who have been doing military service as ' non-combatants since the beginning of the war have come to hate work and to hate having to provide fqr their own living, after enjoying food, clothing and shelter at government expense for nearly Jive years. When Holland mobilized her young manhood, middle-aged manhood and full-grown manhood during the first six months of the . war, when there was momentary danger of Germany suddenly getting It into her disordered brain to invade and despoil the Netherlands as well as Belgium, the Dutch government provided for the support of the families of the soldiers whom she mobilized as well as for the support of the soldiers themselves. In her well-ordered house, Holland could not see 800,000 families in want because 800,000 male supporters were taken for the defense of the fatherland. She provided this support as punctiliously and as carefully as she provided for the thousands of Belgian and French refugees, who have lived ■on the* country’s bounty from the day of the siege of Antwerp to the day that Marshal Foch handed his fountain pen to the German armistice commissioners and said: “Sign!” With the demobilization that began during the latter days of last November the discharged soldiers found.lt Irksome to resume their duties as family providers Instead of “letflng Wll-

helmina do It.” The plow did not appeal nearly so much as the field equipment along the frontier. The lonjj hikes along the towpaths were not nearly so attractive as the short stretches between sentry posts on the border between Holland’s eastern provinces and the Westphalian or Prussian country. It teas found a hard matter to get the Hollander back into a civilian jOh, not because the job was not there hut because the erstwhile thrifty Dutchman no longer eared for the job. Food Shortage a Cause. For many months now life for the law-abiding Dutchman and his family has been anything but a paradise and the shortage of food has been but a small matter in the grand total of this general unhappiness. The principal thing that has been worrying Holland has been the burglar, who lias since before the Christmas holidays become a sort of national institution, like the cheese and the gin. Acts of violence are of daily, in fact, of hourly, occurrence in country districts as well as in the cities. Not alone must doors be securely locked and bolted at night, but If during the daytime the householder turns his back to lpok over his chickens In the barnyard without first closing his front door he will most likely return to the “pronk kamer” (parlor) only to find every article of Intrinsic value has disappeared. The theft of silverware, jewelry, clothes and even pots and pans from the kitchen is reported to the police In every town and hamlet on an average of once evtry hour during the 24 hours of the day. The flow of complaints is so steady that in most places one man Is assigned to do nothing but record these reports of burglaries. While, of course, It would be unfair to say that every one of the demobilized soldiers has turned burglar after receiving his discharge from the army, it is safe to say lliat of the 800,000 troops has turned its attention to either burglary, petty or grand larceny or highway robbery as a means to keep the wolf from the door without an undue amount of physical exertion. The visitor In Holland, although he is'still much/in the minority because of the passport restrictions, has learned to keep his hand on his wallet pocket and his fingers firmly around the end of a stout cane whenever he ventures out into the street or along a country path, once Holland’s delight and the safest promenade in the wide world. Darirqy Highway Robberiea. The “kwajopgems,” who used to stand In proper awe of the welldressed rqan or woman In the public thoroughfares of the city, now openly and brazenly snatch at watch chains, ladies’ bags or pocket books that are carried /in the hands by the ladies. Nine times In ten the culprit manages to make a clean getaway In the crowd of sympathetic ruffians, who gather quickly at the first sign of disorder in the street. Children sent to the stores by their mothers are often the victims of the thieves, who take away their pennies, and market baskets on the way to the expectant housewives very often go astray and ultimately reach the dens

•of the underworld, now a real menace in the economic and civic life of the Netherlands. The same spirit of disregard of the conventions that obtains throughout the country, as far as the rights of others is concerned, obtains in the nation’s parliament —the Staaten Generaal. .Ultra-bolshevistic members occupy seats in the lower chamber and openly advocate doctrines which, a year before the war began in 1914, would not have been listened to by any self-respecting Dutchman. The self-re-specting Dutchman must listen to these doctrines now, for they are preached on every street corner, from the forums and from the platform of the governing body, whenever the radical wing gets a chance to give voice to its sentiments. Blocked at the Frontier. The government does everything humanly possible to prevent the influx of the radical element from Germany and every day dozens of would-be intruders, be they bolshevist or Sparticus, are turned back at the frontier with the admonition to go East. But many slip through, with the result that this formerly quiet, orderly land is fast being poisoned by the seed of violence that has been planted in its fertile soil from the very day that the -One-time kaiser entered the country as a refugee and the one-time crown prince took up his involuntary abode on the Island of Wieringen. There Is enough of the regular army left to prevent any serious concerted movement by the forces of the malcontents, especially as they are not organized and no leader has yet put in an appearance. The police in the various districts, too, still observe the street discipline of the pre-war days, although they have not been very successful in stamping out the lawlessness that Is everywhere evident, they are, at lealt, holding the unruly element in check and, to a certain degree, holding It in awe of municipal authority. The principal hope of the better educated class of Hollanders lies in an early restoration of the regular channels of food Importation. Now Land of Unrest. Just now the Hollander is anything but tractable. He will drop his hammer, his shovel, his hoe or his churning handle at the drop of a hat or the whisper of a labor agitator. He Imagines that he is the under dog of every man who possesses a nickel more than he does. From a Lund of calm, peaceful, seething quiet, Holland has changed into a land of unrest. It oozes out of the very ground at every step ons takes. Lack of grains keeps the grist mills idle, which consequently fail to provide wqrk for those who might he induced to take up the broken strands, of their tasks and don the snow white of the miller for the blue of the soldier. Stagnation In shipping, owing to the restrictions placed upon the Country by the allies, has had its natural effect upon Holland’s inland waterways commerce, with the result that ttfousands of men who were employed along the numerous canals, both as boatmen and tow drivers, before the war, now find their vocations gone. This Is another important industry which, If It could resume its normal would greatly reduce the number of the unemployed. Over everything, however, looms the one large fact that the formerly correct Hollander could so readily be changed into a man' with criminal instincts and to such an extent as to make the entire country, practically, a burglar’s paradise. J y - , j ~ ' .■ ' • ' . ■