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Show THRIFTY DUTCHMEN TURNED INTO DESPERADOES BY WAR1 Genuine Shock Has Come to Those Who in Old Days Admired Industrious Indus-trious Hollander Whose Only Occupation Now Is in Deeds of Daring and Robbery Country Is Now Paradise for Thieves. helmina do it." The plow did not appeal ap-peal nearly so much as the light field equipment along the frontier. The long 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 AVestphalian or Prussian country. It was found a hard matter to get the Hollander back into a civilian job, not because the job was not there but because the erstwhile erst-while thrifty Dutchman no longer cared 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, bur-glar, who has since before the Christmas Christ-mas holidays become a sort of national nation-al institution, like the cheese and the gin. Acts of violence are of daily, in fact, of hourly, occurrence in the country districts as well as in the cities. Not alone must doors be securely se-curely locked and bolted at night, but If during the daytime the householder household-er turns his back to look 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 aver-age of once every hour during the 24 hours of the day. The flow of complaints com-plaints is so steady that In most places one man Is assigned to do nothing noth-ing but record these reports of burglaries. bur-glaries. While, of course, it would be unfair to say that every one of the demobilized demobil-ized soldiers has turned burglar after receiving his discharge from the army, it Is safe to say that one-half of the 800.000 troops has turned its attention atten-tion 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 wal-let pocket and his fingers firmly around the end of a stout cane whenever when-ever he ventures out Into the street or along a country path, once Holland's Hol-land's delight and the safest promenade prome-nade in the wide world. I The Hague. To those who knew the Hollander before the war as a quiet, well-behaved, thrifty and industrious indus-trious soul, content to pursue the even tenor of his way and sticking religiously religi-ously to orderliness and good behavior, behav-ior, his transformation since the signing sign-ing of the armistice last November will come as a genuine shock. Crime, in the pre-war days, was at Its minimum in Holland. Her standing stand-ing army of some 50,000 was composed com-posed 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, per-haps, more infamous gins, her citizens secure in the feeling that theirs was a land where the law was observed, where their chattels were safe even though their front doors remained unlocked un-locked and where the infrequent offender of-fender against the penal code could not hope to get his full name in the papers, much less his photograph with a pretty border around it. Today all' this is changed. From a land of safety Holland has been transformed trans-formed into a land of danger and the Hollander that Is, he who is represented repre-sented 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 dis-orderly ne'er-do-well, whose principal occup Htlon Is burglary! It Is a New Crime. Burglary in Holland was not a usual ;rlme In the pre-war days. That fact makes the present wave of lawlessness lawless-ness all the more striking. The great truth that has dawned upon the country coun-try 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 for their own living, after enjoying food, clothing cloth-ing and shelter at government expense for nearly five 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 Neth-erlands 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 sup-port of the soldiers themselves. 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 na-tion's parliament the Staaten Gen-eraal. Gen-eraal. Ultra-bolshevistic members occupy oc-cupy 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-respecting 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 hu-manly possible to prevent the influx of the radical element from Germany and every day dozens of would-be Intruders, In-truders, be they bolshevist or Sparti-cus, Sparti-cus, 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 WIerlngen. There is enough of the regular army left to prevent any serious concerted movement by the forces of the malcontents, mal-contents, especially as they are not Daring Highway Robberies. The "kwajongems," who used to stand in proper awe of the well-dressed well-dressed man or woman in the public thoroughfares of tjhe city, now openly and brazenly snatch at watch chains, ladles' bags or pocket books that are carried in the hands by the ladles. 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 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. father-land. She provided this support as punctiliously and as carefully as she provided for the thousands of Belgian end 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 foun-tain pen to the German armistice commissioners com-missioners and said: "Sign!" With the demobilization that began during the latter days of last November Novem-ber the discharged soldiers found it Irksome to resume their duties as family fam-ily providers instead of "letting Wil- 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 suc-cessful In stnmping out the lawlessness lawless-ness that is everywhere evident, they are, at least, holding the unruly element ele-ment in check and, to a certain degree, de-gree, holding it in awe of municipal authority. The principal hope of the better educated clnss 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, ham-mer, his shovel, his hoe or his churning churn-ing 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 po.sses.ses a nickel more than he does. From a land of calm, peaceful, seething quiet, Holland hns changed Into a land of unrest. It oozes out of the very ground at every step one takes. Lack of grains keeps the grist mills Idle, which consequently fall to provide work for those who might be Induced to take up the broken strands of their tasks and don the snow white of the miller for the blue of the soldier. sol-dier. Stagnation in shipping, owing to the restrictions placed upon the country by the allies, has had Its natural effect ef-fect upon Holland's Inland waterways commerce, with the result that thousands thou-sands of men who were employed along the numerous canals, both as boatmen and tow drivers, before the war, now find th."!r vocations gone. This is nnother important industry which, if it could resume Its normal proportions, would greatly reduce tha number of the unemployed. Over everything, however, looms th one large fact that the formerly cor. rect Hollander could so readily h changed Into a man with criminal Instincts In-stincts and to such an extent lis t(J ii' 'i ki' Ihe entire counlry, practici n v t 'wghir'.i iiuredise. |