12 
LAND & WATER 
July 26, 1917 
'ike a bleak estuary, or a land whose dykes have yielded to the 
sea. It is the suggestion of ordered and yet exquisite nature, 
tamed and still beautiful, that is restful and pleasing to the 
eye. Humanity yearns for these pleasant valleys where life is 
easy and the curse of Adam lightened. It is the dreamland 
of romantist writing which one has seen clearly in the paintings 
of old masters. Even the brickyards and factories are no 
blemish ; in fact, veiled by the distance their mellowed 
redness becomes a relief amid the variants of green. It is 
most beautiful in spring, when the great orchards are white 
with cloud/ blossom and yellow kingcups gild the lush 
meadows. 
Heather and Sand-Dunes 
The tableland from which one views the extended valley is 
bare as the lowlands are rich. It is an ocean of brown heather 
rising and falling in long sweeps like Atlantic rollers after a 
storm. But these are rollers with miles between their crests, 
and they are oken displaced by irregular spurs and ridges and 
hillocks. Here and there the heather is shorn away and 
gathered up to use as stable litter, while in exposed places the 
yellow sand triumphs over the sparse vegetation. 
Fir saplings, grown in the more fertile places, are all that 
the soil can nourish. But it is a valuable crop, for the timber, 
cut in about its twentieth year, finds a ready market, chiefly 
as mine props. The brown purplish land, with its sombre 
pine woods hardly varies all the year round, except in August 
days, when the dry heather relents and wakes the dead 
ground to gay life. The pine woods stand grim and change- 
less, like dark armoured infantry awaiting a charge. In the 
summer a few light leaved birches, with feathery crests, fringe 
their ranks, like cavaliers amid a roundhead phalanx. One 
loves the sad hued pines for their immutable constancy. 
When the birches are leafless skeletons, no longer visible, the 
deep green needles patiently defy the onslaught of winter. 
The dumb lowering land extends no welcome to the stranger. 
The natives it seems to tolerate, and they harmonize with its 
severity. But it frowns eternally upon the pleasant valley 
and spurns the black-coated tripper from the plains. He is 
out of place here, dusty, hot and feeble ; too weak to live 
where nature frowns. When nature is warm and beautiful 
she is very tolerant towards mankind, and his vileness is 
hidden, forgotten in the glory of vegetation and lower life. 
It is only in wild places, where less elemental force is expended 
upon the products of the ground, that man is moulded in 
grander form. The men of the hills have ever conquered the 
cities of the plain. 
It is well to pass our easy exile in this country, often 
strangely simihar to our own land. Let the imagination 
wander and one is home once more. English is spoken very 
generally, for the Dutch are excellent linguists. Our sports 
and games are taking a firm hold, and the general sympathy 
of the people is with our cause. They are near enough to the 
frontier to feel y the shadow of frightful ness yet not close 
enough to fraternise with the barbarian, hordes over the 
border. 
The arrival of the English mail has become a rare 
occurrence happening about twice a month. It has at least 
the advantage of placing us beyond the party clamour of 
our press. Ten or fifteen days old papers, .with prognostica- 
tions about events long past, make tedious reading. Per- 
haps one gets a clearer perspective from the less enterprising 
and less mercurial papers of this country. The issues of the 
war are not obscured by a mist of irrelevant politics and person- 
alities. The Dutch critics are shrewd and alert. They are 
not deceived by absurd pretences and bombastic utterances 
on either side. Hollanders are, and have always have been, 
cautious and hard-headed— a little suspicious of dreams. 
Automatically they look for the ulterior motives behind the 
most altruistic deeds and promises. They never humbug 
themselves by the belief that sacrifices are made by statesmen 
out of pure generosity. The worid is not governed 
and seldom even guided by sentiment, and Dutchmen are 
. stubbornly alive to the fact. 
It is strange to live all this time in a land of peace, among 
a people that truly hates war. There is no war party in 
Holland, for war would mean destruction to at least a portion 
of the country, and there is no reason to suppose 
that they would be better treated than were their Belgium 
neighbours. The Dutch are on the very edge of the arena. 
If they fall from their precarious position they will be precipi- 
tated into the heart of the struggle. For them war is no mere 
diplomatic and economic move ; it is a question of life and 
death. But in spite of shadows life goes on outwardly 
unchanged. The army is mobilised, but the soldiers are too 
well behaved to obtrude themselves. The unrestricted 
submarine warfare has certainly affected the country ; fuel is 
scarce, petrol and paraffin are almost unobtainable. Fears of 
famine are expressed in some quarters, and bread cards have 
been issued. But all these things have fallen upon the 
country during the past few months. In 1916 there were 
few signs of the great war. 
By an irony of fate, the. news of the battle of Jutland, 
came during a tennis tournament at' Arnheim, the chief town 
of the province. AH around were familiar English character- 
istics ; the players, men and girls in cool whites, the more 
skilled self-consciously wearing loose blanket coats ; the 
waist-high screens round the important courts ; and the 
spectators seated and standing near, their dresses and sun- 
shades like a bank of bright flowers. It was a charming 
ground, with fifte paviHon, and beyond the courts stately 
beech trees threw their welcome shade. It is at functions like 
these that one realises the close kinship betv/een Hollanders 
•and English. The whole scene might have been laid in the 
tennis club of an English town. The courts were indeed of 
red rubble instead of grass, which grows poorly in the Nether- 
lands, but against that the umpires from their varnished 
. perches called the scores in English. One of our people had 
done well the day before and was playing in a final. We were 
waiting for this set when the news of the sea battle came. 
The German Version 
It was the German version of course; five of our capital ships 
and three armoured cruisers sunk! The German losses two 
small cruisers! Unbelievable! But there was no denial. 
A paper victoryforthe German fleet, and such it has remained. 
In neutral minds the English defeat is half believed in ; at the 
best the battle is regarded as a draw in Germany's favour. 
Our enemies were prompt and clear in their claims, we were 
uncertain and tardy. The Germans blew their trumpet 
loudly ; no matter if the notes were false, they drowned our 
own rather plaintive piping. This year there are hardly any 
tournaments. Balls are very scarce. Golfers, too, are feeling 
the hardships of war. Holland is still a land of pleasing triviali- 
'ties, and this staid race is now frivolous in comparison to 
its death-ridden neighbours. As time passes the danger 
appears to grow less and they hope with increasing confidence 
that they will be able to keep out of the war. 
The country is well organised and capably governed. 
There are few slums, little poverty,, and less crime. Un- 
like the unwieldy nations around her, Holland has less need 
of Armageddon to sweep away the economic, social and 
political abuses and misunderstandings that, even before 
the war, were rending the Great Powers. 
Public School Education 
To the Editor of Land & Water; 
Sir,— I have just been reading in Land & Water of July 
1 2 th an article by Mr. S. P. B. Mais on PubHc School Educa- 
tion. I do not know what experience he has of Public Schools, 
but I was a master at a public school for fifteen years, and 
1 find many of his statements entirely without foundation. 
He says that masters with a high degree, regard that degree 
as the zenith of their achievement, and believe that there is 
nothing for them to learn, that they did not concern them- 
selves with modern history and politics and that they were 
miserably paid. All the statements seem to me the exact 
reverse of the truth. In refuting them I confine myself to 
my own experience, but I am sure that what I say is equally 
true of my colleagues, and of those masters at other public 
schools with whom I was intimately acquainted. 
My " wretchedly inadequate salary " amounted to £1,000 
a year when I went as a master at the age of twenty-three, 
and to ;{3,ooo a year when I left fifteen years afteVwards. 
Although 1 had hard work- I learnt French, German and 
Italian, as a master, and taught all these languages out of 
school hours to my pupils. For six years I taught modern 
history and political science to a class of the higher boys, 
apart from my other work, and immediately after leaving I 
was able to write a number of articles for the Encyclopcedia 
Bntanmca, from the knowledge which I had acquired as a 
master.- With one colleague I read through the whole of the 
Divina Commedia, when our school work was done; with 
four or five others. I made a minute study of medieval 
history. I was no exception to the general rule. It was at 
a public school that Wescott^and Farrer placed themselves 
in the first rank of theologians, and tliat A. C. Benson founded 
the literary, reputation which he has since extended. 
What does Mr. Mais mean ? I really Have not an idea.— 
•Yours faithfully, 
„ . ^ Oscar Browning. 
Pensione Saccaro, Siena, Italy, 
July 17th, 1917. 
rl^X '^'2-^ ^^^ been pleased to contribute £200 toward.'s Kin 
ueorge s Fund for Sailors. ' 
