Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1919 — HOLLAND LAND OF PRIMNESS [ARTICLE]

HOLLAND LAND OF PRIMNESS

American Visitor Attracted by Neat Appearance and General Cleanli n«u Everywhere Noticeable. Holland and the Hollanders are aa unlike France as two countries can be. Corp. David Ramseur writes in the Indianapolis Star. The rural districts of Holland look like one big formal garden and the cities of Holland look as if they had been cast In a huge mold. set .down carefully and scoured and polished every day. — But France - looks more like a country expressly designed to please the eye. and the cities of France, more helter-skelter, reflect the temperamental spirit of the French. A small city in France neglects whole streets and districts in order that one spot, one park, cathedral or building, may be beiutiful. But in Holland the idea seems to be to make It all substantial and neat and that Is why wherever one goes inßdttei' dam or The Hague he finds the same orderly rows upon rows of apartment houses or business blocks with the same little staid parkways and parks that somehow remind one of the oldfashioned “best rooms” of a generation ago. I have covered Rotterdam and The Hague, and in neither city have I found a district that corresponds to our tenement * districts or that was characterized by the squalor or dirt of the poorer sections of our American cities. I found districts where poor people lived and where the houses were not so good, but even those poorer people looked clean and their houses were clean, the streets and clean, just as in the better districts. In Holland it is the men who wear the best clothes; it is the men who are the better looking; the best shops are for men, the tobacco shops of Rotterdam are gorgeous, there is no other word, they rival in splendor even the jewelry shops, of Fifth avenue, New York. The shops for men’s wear are much more attractive than those for women’s wear and everything there seems to be of men and for men. In Rotterdam one would not, as he would i£ a French town, drop into a case or store and start jollying the madarae or mademoiselle and playing with the youngsters. I rather think that if we did that over there the stolid Dutch frau would call for help and one of the solemn-looking policemen who stalk about the street would escort us to the local jail. Those things aren’t done in Rotterdam.