On Holland

Ihave recently had occasion to visit a country I had never visited before j though it is one of the nearest to us in geography, and quite the nearest in history. I knew nothing about Holland except from pictures, and it was natural that the first impression should be that it had stolen its landscapes from the National Gallery. Perhaps, indeed, the National Gallery ought really to be called the International Gallery. It is odd in these days of the cant of cosmopolitanism, when so many things are called international that will always be national, that we should make such a patriotic claim for a place full of foreign pictures. A collection of Raphaels and Rembrandts is called the National Gallery, while a little shop in a little village is called the International Stores. But it struck me that the fact of the Dutch genius having reached its highest glory in painting does make an important distinction between that country and our own, which is in many ways so similar. Holland has been described by her painters, and England by her poets. This has made the island State yet more insular. The one mode of expression is necessarily more cosmopolitan than the other. Pictures need not be translated. Poems cannot be translated. "The moan of doves in immemorial elms, the murmur of innumerable bees," is perfectly inaudible to anybody who does not know English. But Hobbema's Avenue stands open to all tourists, and is not blocked by a fence against anyone who does not know Dutch or Flemish. The Dutch do indeed improve their advantage by talking half-a-dozen languages very well 5 but that is never quite the same thing. The duty of patriots is to make comprehensible the love of country 3 and the difficulty with poets is that they can only talk their native tongue 3 which is like a secret language of lovers.

I had a very inadequate idea of the grandeur of Holland, which has something of the grandeur of Venice. Amsterdam, indeed, is very like Venice 3 but I myself, having long improved my mind with sensational fiction of the Opprenheim order, had only vaguely associated it with diamonds and Jews, and persons who murder the Jews to obtain the diamonds. But the traveller walks rather amid the ruins of a great State than the restrictions of a small one. Everywhere is the sort of magnificence that always marks an aristocracy founded on colonies and commerce, which marked Venice in the sixteenth and England in the eightenth century j the private houses like palaces, and the personal genius for portrait-painting. But as Dutch dignity is connected with Dutch decay, an Englishman looks at it with an un-

MARIN COUNTY FREE LIBRARY SAN RAFAEL. CALIFORNIA quiet mind. It is as though he looked not at things of the past, but of the future.

Of course, when we speak of England falling to the position of Holland, we must allow for those who might fairly talk of England rising to the position of Holland. It is by no means unlikely that Holland is now happier than England. It is quite certain that in a general way the small nations are now happier than the great nations. It may be dull to be a Switzer as compared with being a Frenchman, which has always been in all ages a very exciting occupation. But it is certainly probable that Switzer-land is better governed than France j though France is better governed than many of the modern industrial States. Switzerland is better governed because it is easier to govern. It has none of the problems of militarism, of frontiers, of foreign policy, of great traditional controversies about religion and politics. It may or may not be better to be a French citizen than a Swiss citizen j it is certainly safer to be a Swiss peasant than to be a French peasant. The Danes have much more solid prosperity now that they are peasants 3 though it is possible that they had more international influence and importance when they were pirates.

It is certain that the Dutch had more international influence and importance when they were merchant seamen and colonists, which, in those days especially, sometimes approximated to being pirates. But it is by no means certain that the Dutch have not more comfort and contentment now. This preliminary proviso must be made and admitted before any such criticism. There is a perfectly serious historical and economic case for anybody who says that by far the brightest hope for a great nation now is that by luck or skill it may somehow become a small one.

Nevertheless, nearly every normal person does feel, rightly or wrongly, that he wishes to keep his own great nation great, very much as any man would wish to allow his father to keep the position of a gentleman, however sincerely he himself might have praised the position of a peasant. These things are not easy to analyse, but they are even jess easy to ignore. The thing is perhaps most accurately taught in a casual turn of phrase in the old and spirited verses about the British soldier in China.

The Englishman feels that not through htm shall England come to shame, or even to diminishment. If it be indeed better for his country to fall, the thing shall be done either by a providence that is wiser, or by a posterity that is baser than he. The thing shall come from a heaven above him or from an abyss very much beneath 3 but not from the man himself in the momentous hour of the fate of his fatherland.

As Victor Hugo said, when his old enemy, Louis Napoleon, surrendered at Sedan, "Any prophet who had foreseen it would have been a traitor."

Perhaps the morality of the thing is simple enough after all^ and there move through my mind old phrases, about things of which it may be written that they come, but woe unto them by whom they come! However this may be, most men feel — and certainly I feel — that such an ancient glory should not abdicate. But by the same instinct I felt, with a shiver of realism, that it has lately come nearer and nearer to abdication. Holland only went the way that every great State has gone of which the greatness was purely commercial and colonial j which did not, when the time came, take thought for peasantry and popular religion, and all the more rooted things. Goldsmith, in The Vicar of Wakefield^ pointed out that the mercantile aristocracies of England and Holland were alike forgetting the populace. England was then in her noon of glory, and Holland in her sunset J and that was a hundred years ago. The mark of this mercantile decline is that it is always gradual and almost unconscious. The Dutch cities contain hotels that were once obviously aristocratic mansions j but our own aristocratic mansions are already being turned into hotels. There are Rembrandts in the National Gallery j but the "Blue Boy" is already in the United States.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act 3 but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. If I treated the matter merely as one of necessity and the nature of things, I should say that England was following her sister States of Venice and Holland. If I had ever talked all the mean materialism about living nations and dying nations, I should say that England was certainly dying. But I do not believe that a nation dies save by suicide. To the very last every problem is a problem of will 5 and if we will we can be whole. But it involves facing our own failures as well as counting our successes j it means not depending entirely on commerce and colonies 3 it means balancing our mercantile morals with more peasant religion and peasant equality j it means ceasing to be content to rule the sea, and making some sort of effort to return to the land.