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Show 1 L4 f 1 ' i ait ' - ' - -pi w fjr ' '; 7 I ''', iSilkIrS 'i if 1 1 r . - -&ss- - sy U - -sgsss' J u YJSW Or A.M3Tf!AM f?OM f?yS? TO maintain their national independence, inde-pendence, to assert their commercial com-mercial supremacy, to resist the encroachment of foreign powers, the men of Holland have endured many wars and achieved great triumphs. The days of these stubborn strifes have gone, for Holland Hol-land no longer has any pre-eminent greatness to defend, no greedy assaults as-saults to repel. From centuries of strenuous effort she has drifted into a quietly prosperous peace, her people well content with the little which they never lack, and bearing with them a dignity and air of simple well-being which are the tokens of their ancestry. ances-try. Yet, unconcerned as they may be with wars and rumors of wars in the world of men, they are still called to the daily exercise of the high courage cour-age of their race, for they have ever at their gates a foe never weary of attack, and they know well that the least relaxation of wariness will bring destruction. The peril of the sea at all seasons Is a thing which no nation known as Holland knows it. These men hold their land and bring It to rich cultivation In the face of the great natural forces of the world. Their country lies below sea level, and Is preserved from ruin by great embankments em-bankments thrown up around the coast and a vast system of canals which make a veritable network of the land. Herein lies the secret of the Dutchman's Dutch-man's greatness of character. He has had no opportunity of becoming enfeebled en-feebled by security. The unceasing conflict with the sea has become knit up into the very fibers of the national spirit, and has given to it a strain of silent self-reliance that could have been born of no other cause. The Dutch landscape reflects the national character in a singularly vivid manner. Narrow roads set with small red bricks, trimly ordered gardens, the little carts drawn by dogs, the cottages with their little rows of burnished bur-nished copper and brass pans and bowls set outside to sweeten In the sun, the poles erected to attract the storks at nesting-time, the miniature windmills for domestic uses, the people peo-ple themselves In their bright blouses and aprons and white sabots, the scrupulous tidiness that prevails everywhere, every-where, all combine to make up tho impression of a toy country where everything Is well ordered and mellow. mel-low. Nowhere is the traveler brought up in sudden and breathless wonder before any gorgeous spectacle, nowhere no-where awed by any sense of feverish activity. Desolation and grandeur are alike absent. A beggar is hardly ever seen, a ruin never. The absence of these and of all pomp of riches makes one forgetful of the inequality of things. And then in the midst of all this pretty unconcern is the everlasting everlast-ing symbol of the Dutchman's strength the sails. There is nothing small about these. They are liberal and workmanlike, full of dignity. Greedy for every breath of wind, they bear the heavily laden barges, beautiful from water-line water-line to masthead, down the great canals from sea to sea. They move with a measured dignity which deepens deep-ens the sense of calm which Is over the whole landscape, and adds to it strength and nobility of character Everything that the Hollander does under the spell of the waters Is in-t in-t formed by a large and generous spirit of power and fitness. If he has to build a house, he attempts to achieve beauty, and becomes ornate and wholly undistinguished; but when he turns his hand to the great windmills ! which girt the sides of his canals, he works by instinct rather than by' design, de-sign, and shows himself to be possessed pos-sessed of a feeling for proportion and line which is impeccable. It is this innate suggestion of beauty beau-ty and Tightness in the canal life of the country that gives to the wonderful wonder-ful calm of the landscape Its crowD- ing glory. Flat pastures sweep out on all sides to a far horizon where lines and colors stand out with singular singu-lar clearness and brilliance. Sleek black and white cattle are confined to their rightful meadows by smaller canals which serve as hedges, for the people have put their mastery over the water to practical uses at every turn. We are shaded by tall trees that are set along either side of the road, and we know that we are in a land of peace, where hurry and clamor would be unseemly. And yet in all this benign quietude there is nothing noth-ing lethargic, for always with us are the great canals with their procession of life, quiet and slow, but resolute and unyielding. For variety and richness rich-ness our English landscape Is unapproachable, unap-proachable, yet in this thing a contrast con-trast is not uninteresting. As we gc through our highways and lanes and woodlands we shall find all the beauty beau-ty and majesty of peace, but the one thing that we shall often miss is movement move-ment and life which is wholly In tune with the surroundings and Is, so to speak, essential to the life of the nation na-tion as a whole. Trains may be thi last, but they destroy the calm Instead In-stead of emphasizing It. Motor car? are both discordant and inessential. Even the pleasure-boats on a rivei lend a suggestion of artificiality. A team on the ploughlands, a shepherd folding his sheep, a field of haymakers hayma-kers or reapers, only in these do we find the life that Is in exact accord with the scene, and these we can only -find at intervals. In Holland, on the other hand, In places the most remote from cities and the sound of markets and commerce, we find always the feeling of seclusion and restfulness heightened and touched to a sense of vitality by the canals and their full-sailed full-sailed barges which form an Integral part of the country's daily life. These canals triumphantly redeem the physical characteristics of the country from the charge of dulness. Holland in its general features is un deniably quaint, but quaintness has a charm which Is not enduring. After a while we begin to tire of the squareness square-ness and orderliness, and to look upon up-on what appeared to be Individuality at first as eccentricity. We grow a little uncomfortable In the land of Lilliput, and fret for change and some patch of wildness. But of the canals we never weary, for in them we see the expression of a nation's character char-acter moulded through centuries of stirring and honorable history. We remember re-member the Dutch ' proverb, "God made the sea, we made the shore," and we feel that these waterways are not only beautiful and charged with color and atmosphere, but symbolical of a people's greatness. The rise and fall of nations is a phenomenon phe-nomenon still unaccounted for and constantly recurring. We know that Rome step by step rose to a splendor the story of which is immortal, but we cannot grasp the secret of this splendor's decay or of the decline of the other great civilizations of the world. We can but accept the fact, and wonder at the r.uined and yet noble no-ble monuments of their greatness that still stand as at once a memory and an Inspiration. When the time comes that the peoples of western Europe have also passed into the shadow of dead glories, we too shall leave something some-thing of our works to bear witness to a greatness that has gone. But Holland Hol-land will be but a recorded history to the new nations of far-off ages. The sea will have prevailed, and the g eat canals, which are as truly the essential essen-tial expression of a resolute and heroic he-roic people as are the paltwes of Venice or the Acropolis of the veek8, will have perished and will bear no testimony. JOHN DRI N K WATER. |