April 6, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
13 
The Position in Holland 
By John G. Van der Veer 
(London Editor of the Amsterdam " Telei^raaf.") 
IHA\'E been asked to throw some light on the 
present position in Holland, since rumours about 
certain measures taken last week by the Dutcli 
Government have caused undue misapprehension. 
\\'e Dutchmen here arc just 'as much in the dark as 
anyone else about the true meaninf( of those measures. 
But to me the greatest puzzle is, how any Britons could 
conclude from them that Holland might throw in hvv 
lot with the Central Powers and thereby commit suicide. 
For every sane Dutchman understands quite clearly that 
such and nothing else would be the result of a small 
neutral nation siding with the only aggressive Power. 
The fate of Bulgaria and Turkey has certainly not been 
lost on level-headed Dutchmen, whose love of their inde- 
p.'rfdence, so dearly bought and so stubbornly maintained, 
is historically ingrained in them and will never be rooted 
out. I am not now saying that (icrmany has at the 
present moment any intention of threatening Holland, 
but I do say that the Allies have, since the beginning of 
this war, never, either by word or deed; threatened even 
ntho neutrality of Holland, far less her independence and 
the integrity of her rich Colonies. What Germany might 
have done, had she been able to win the war, is a different 
matter, and I shall refer presently to what leading Ger- 
mans have at various times openly stated about the 
position of Holland. 
The Rumoured Ultimatum 
One further preliminary remark is necessary about 
these rumours. It was reported that after the recent 
Conference held at Paris, the Allies were to have presented 
to Holland an ultimatum to allow the landing of Allied 
troops on Dutch soil apparently for an attack on Ger- 
many's weakest spot. Such delusions have from time to 
time been spread in Holland, but they never had anv 
foundation whatsoever. W'e alwa^'s knew from what 
source these reports came. The large mass of Dutch 
opinion, whose sympathies in this war are, or ought to be 
well known, never paid any heed to them. Personally, I 
iind them so ridiculous that their contradiction is any- 
thing but pleasant to me. But T am fully convinced, 
that nothing was decided at Paris which could in anv 
way cause uneasiness in Holland. The recent measures 
taken by the Dutch Government cannot therefore be 
explained by the totally unfounded fear that the Allies 
might be tempted to do to Holland what Germany did 
to Belgium. 
What then is the true explanation ? To begin with, 
we may be quite sure that any measures taken by our 
Government at the Hague have only one object, and that 
is : To defend at all cost the neutrality of Holland, and 
in case of need her honour and her full independence. 
The Dutch people of to-day have not withdrawn frpm 
the position 0/ their heroic ancestors, to whose " coura- 
geous resistance of historical and chartered liberty to 
foreign despotism " John Lothro Motley paid so warm 
a tribute. We have our small group of pro-Germans, 
whose sympathies run eastward, and are loudly pro- 
claimed in the notorious pro-German weeklv De Toekomst. 
out of all proportion to their influence. Most of our 
people have overwhelming s^Tiipathy with the cause of 
the Allies. Could it be otherwise in a country which 
prides itself on having been the birthplace of the illus- 
trious Hugo Grotius ? We should betray his great 
name by siding with a Power which in this war violated 
all those ma.xims on the conduct of war expounded 
in his master work, The Rights of War and Peace. 
To revert to the measures taken by the Dutch Govern- 
ment, I find in my paper of last Friday the following 
reports issued from the Correspondence-Bureau at The 
Hague : " We learn that for the time being all leave of the 
(Dutch) naval and army forces has been stopped, " 
" The highest military authorities of the naval and 
military forces were busy conferring together." " The 
^linister for Home Affairs had conferences with the 
Director of the Cabinet of the Oueen and with the Minister 
for Foreign Affairs." " It is rumoured that the Chamber 
of Deputies will hold a secret session." And immediately 
underneath these reports I read : " Dr. Bos (the parlia- 
mentary leader of the Dutch party of Liberal Democrats) 
writes (in the organ of that party) : " Not since the begin- 
ning of the war has such an emotion overmastered the 
Dutch people, as that caused bv the torpedoing of tin- 
Tuhanlid. The base attack on a' passenger boat of , <i 
neutral power, without warning and reason, lias stirred 
the cool blood of the Dutchmen to boiling point.". 
Torpedoed Dutch Steamers 
Is that statement the clue to the foregoing reports ? 
I know how deeply the torpedoing of the Dutch 
steamers Tubantia and Palambang has stirred and hurt 
the feelings of our people. And there is no doubt what- 
soever, in Holland, that both these steamers were sunk 
by a German submarine. The sinister attempt to throw 
the blame on the English, failed altogether. The Dut. h 
say rightly : " Why should the English sink Dutch 
steamers, which carried no contraband to or from Cier- 
many." Even in such a case, the Enghsh never sink a 
neutral merchant ship. In the unbiassed and influential 
Dutch monthly De Gids it was stated last December : — 
" Whereas the manner in which England, during this 
war acts at sea will in future not be considered as in 
conflict with the Law of Nations — for that Law, which 
. always mainly consisted of the rights of war, has to reckon 
with changed l)circunistancer and adapt itself to them — 
the way in which Germany tries to rule over any por- 
tion of the open sea is on a totally different level. 
It is certain that the civilised nations will never justify 
such a destruction of human lives and goods, which is also 
ineffective from a military point of view. For that method 
goes completely against the principles of International 
Law, which are based on humanity and military purpose, 
next to the mutual interest of all parties. That Law can 
never adapt itself to German methods of warfare. To 
excuse such action, which runs totally against the customs 
of International Law and against every notion of humanit\", 
the German Government said that it is usually too dan- 
gerous for a submarine to investigate beforehand the ship's 
papers, and that self-preservation compelled their sub- 
marines to act as they do. That may be so, but then the 
German Government ought to have concluded from that 
the simple fact, that such warships are completely unfit 
for the task imposed on them. What, indeed, would 
any sane man sav of a policeman, who without 
any investigation, shoots down an apparently suspicious 
person because he is afraid to talk to him ? " 
Public Opinion 
This was written four months before the sinking, of 
the Tubantia and the Palcmham'^. The reader can judge 
what the Dutch feeling must be after those two tragedies, 
which followed each other so closely. When last spring, 
a German submarine sank the Dutch steamer Medea, 
which brought to England a cargo of such dangerous 
contraband as oranges, the editor of De Gids wrote : 
" If Dutch lives are again lost by such acts, the cup 
of injustice will overflow." And one Dutch subject 
happened to be a Javanese, but that makes no difference. 
And it is a wonder that no more lives were lost with that 
steamer, for the captain, the first officer and some other 
members of her crew had very narrow escapes. Now is it 
not clear that a neutral government cannot allow the 
lives of her subjects to be endangered, while they use 
the open sea in a legal and innocent manner ? The Allies 
have never ruthlessly sunk neutral ships which carry on 
trade at sea, nor have they ever endangered the lives of 
innocent neutral seafarers. How, then, could the measures 
taken bv the Dutch government be interpreted as directed 
against the Allies ? The idea is too ridiculous. 
Neither does any sane Dutchman think that the inde- 
pendence of our country has anything to fear from Eng- 
land and her Allies. On the contrary, the maintenance 
of Dutch neutrality happens to be a vital interest for 
