LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE BOER WAR AND THE FUTURE OF HOLLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sul,—There is an aspect of the present conflict in the Trans- vaal which deserves more notice in the English Press than it has received. I refer to its bearing on the future of Holland. The enthusiasm of the latter country for the cause of the Boers needs no explanation. We in England would show a similar enthusiasm for our own kith and kin in Australia or elsewhere, however wrong and ill- judged their policy might have been. The sympathy of the Swiss for the Boers is due to the fact that the Press of Berne and Geneva, as I can attest from some study of it, has steadily ignored the grievances of the Out- landers, and represented the Boers as merely engaged in a struggle for independence, and ourselves as the aggressors. But why should the Germans display such extraordinary virulence against us ? Politically they can hardly be called a free nation, and a nation that within the abort space of five years grabbed the half of Denmark, and after a war cynically precipitated by means of a forged telegram grabbed Alsace- Lorraine, a nation which holds down these stolen provinces and Posen as well by brute force, and whose Sovereign adver- tises himself as the bosom friend of theTurkish assassin,—what righ:, has such a nation to lecture us in the name of liberty A glance at the map of Europe serves to explain this new-born ardour of the German for the Boers. The great German rivers debouch through Holland. They are valuable waterways for German commerce, and with the exception of Hamburg and Bremen, all the harbours through which the sea-borne commerce of Germany would naturally pass belong to Holland. It is as if Norfolk and Suffolk on one side of England, or Devon and Cornwall on the other, were sovereign Powers, independent of and contingently hostile to England. What is more, Holland has vast colonies left to her, with enormous but as yet undeveloped resources. Her West Indian dependencies alone contain over twenty million souls. The possession of these would be of incredible value to Germany, and she hankers after them. The Boer War, with the moral rapture between ourselves and Holland so lamentably entailed by it, is a true Godsend to hungry Germany ; and no wonder that she has seized the opportunity in order to try to convince the Dutch on her own borders that Codlin is the friend, not Short. She hopes by noisy demonstrations of friendship, which, like the cor- responding display of love for the Turk, cost her nothing save moral dignity, to draw the Dutch into her net. She hopes to make a peaceful conquest of them. It would cost too much to pick a quarrel with Holland, as she did with Denmark, and despoil her by force ; deglutition by dint of sympathy is a cheaper process. The Germans are, as a rule, careful to present themselves to the Dutch as disinterested friends anxious to defend them against the aggressive greed of Great Britain. Their Press is, therefore, on the whole very discreet in its references to the future of Holland. Nevertheless, the cloven hoof occasionally shows itself, and
in a particularly naked manner in the issue of the Miinchner Neueste Nachrichten for January 18th. This is the most in- fluential journal in Bavaria, and we may be certain that if Bavaria to the extreme south-east of the German Empire entertains such opinions as those enunciated in the following extract from its leading article, then in Prussia and Saxony and the Rhinelands they must be still more popular and wide- spread. This is the passage :— "The strides made by the German people in population, in energy, and in education demand the creation of that greater Germany beyond the seas of which Billow has spoken. Prince Bisrnark used to dwell on the increase among us of an educated proletariat, but we do not believe that any regress is possible in this respect. Rather we look forward to the future for the chance of turning this very excess of educated men to account for the happiness of our nation. They must find employment in German colonies. The preceding remarks demonstrate how essential it is to draw together our young and flourishing Empire by means of a common Customs Union into a closer connection with the ruins of the Dutch Colonial Empire, especially in the East Indies."
The "preceding remarks" consist of a dissertation on our Indian Empire, in which the wealth which accrues to England therefrom is somewhat exaggerated. The writer allows that German goods are admitted into India on the same terms as English, but is barely content with that. He twits us with having no real English settlements or colony in India, as if Englishmen could settle in that climate. He also dwells on the fact that without the Cape, without the predominance of our sea-power in the South Asiatic seas, most of all without our prestige, we should not be safe in India. The corollary then drawn by the German writer from all this is the necessity of absorbing the Dutch colonies, and, we suppose, the Cape and Transvaal as well, as a new field to be exploited by the "educated proletariat" of the Father. land. It would be interesting to know how Holland in her heart of hearts regards this project ; but it looks very much as if Dr. Leyds and President Kruger together may end by entangling their little mother-country in the meshes of the German net. The Dutch who have sedulously fomented Boer animosity to England will only have themselves to thank when their liberties and colonies vanish down the German maw. We shall not help them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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