The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-06 00:00:00

ANT:CI ATIONS OF THE WAR.

(7;
fro?
time
imth
ee Special Correspondent of the Morning Herald).
COLOGNE, June 2.
were not very pressing I should gladly
have lingered a few days longer in Holland. In the
appearance and even in the language of the people
of that country there is a remarkable similitude to
the look and speech of the men of North Britain.
There is the same quiet, calm, undemonstrative
manner ; the same determined obstinacy of cha-
racter. But while
Nve
modern have
agencies changed,
l
unifying influence of
like the Danes, in most of their old
custtillonemdpse,rlhltatcivillee,
stood still. The similarity of language is very
striking. If you sit at a long table at Amsterdam
and listen to the hum of conversation between the
second course and the cigars you think you hear
Englishmen speaking
inthe watiledopcoennhfusagieonn
boyf
aa
w
dream. I recollect before I knee, a word of the
ssimilar Danish
rfeeling,
language
being struck
except that the Danish tongue
seemed more like our own than the Dutch, and
that what resembled a dream-like confusion of
the latter was in the former like the early attempts
of English children to pronounce their mother
tongue. In Denmark you see the " bairns " sec_
tionately patted on their white heads and carried by
the hand on Sundays to the " kirke," and in Holland
a bill on a house tells an Englishman at once it is to
let or to " hire," for we can scarcely misunderstand
these words which so puzzle a Frenchman. Dit
to kuur. Jan still waits at the tavern, pre-
serving the name for centuries, and stout men, with
broad, grave faces, say without a smile, Jan een
sneeuwballetje"--" John, a little snow-ball," which
you find means a glass of gin and a lump of sugar.
These Dutch love final idleness, and yet they are
the most industrious people in the world. Were
they a dozen feet higher above the sea, and some
two or three hundred miles more to the south, I am
sure they would bask in the sun all the summer days
as indolently as the Italians of the bay of Naples.
But they had to war with nature and with the most
terrible and persevering of foes in the pitiless sea.
They conquered, but they cannot sleep at their posts,
for that dread enemy is still at the gate. Cunningly
they contrived, too, to rule water by air, and more
than half the vast ungainly windmills you see, with
their sails like the arms of giants braving defiance to
the enemy from the walls of their castles, are used
to turn hydraulic wheels and pump the water from
the land. Their thrift is wonderful, and the quiint
old furniture of days anterior to the time of our Wil-
liam the Third is shown you in hundreds of houses,
browner, but as polished and as perfect as when it
was put down at the door from the passing canal
boat. The cleanly appearance of the serving-
women is remarkable, but I understand every one
of them puts up a little money by the year's end,
and their only extravagance is in making an annual
visit to their village fair, or kermesse as the Dutch
call it. These gatherings are supposed to be strange
scenes of wild gaiety and dissipation. But, bless
your soul, you seldom hear a loud laugh, and never
a loud word at such assemblies of imaginary wild-
ness. A Dutch holiday, like a great many other
good things, is probably the more keenly, because
the more silently, enjoyed. The great ambition of
the little plump serving-wench, who goes to kermesse
is to be attended by a bachelor. The handsome
lasses obtain such a companion easily enough in
Holland as in every other country. Plainer damsels
—I blush for Dutch want of gallantry—are obliged
to hire a beau and pay all expenses. But the most
singular instance of the national thrift, even in
love, which is generally generous, is that very often
two girls club together and hire between them one
handsome Jan, as an escort. But with all this, as
I commenced by saying, they are a people that love
indolenoke when they can afford it, a quality peculiar
to sailors and to amphibious human beings like the
Dutch. Whenever a man makes a little fortune his
ambition is to build or buy a formal, many-win-
dowed villa near one of the large towns. He writes
the name of his beloved dwelling outside, and the
frequent title he gives the trim palace of his affec-
tions shows it is meant in his mind to be a very
Castle of Indolence. " Lust in rust" may be noted
as a favourite name of residence. In our language
it means literally, " Pleasure and rest." Yes, rest
after toil ; this is the Dutchman's ambition, and all
the day long you will see him idly smoking his pipe
or looking out upon the road, or wandering
slowly- amid his gorgeous tulip beds. Flowers are
still cultivated, almost as a passion, in Holland.
Haarlem, to this hour, holds high rank in floricul-
ture, and though the days of the tulipomania arelong
passed, and a root of the favoured flower no longer
fetches its 13,000 florins, there are rare specimens
still, which may bring their £lO apiece. Of course
the sums paid in former days for a "Semper Augus-
tus" or an "Admiral Liefkenshoek" were but the
gambling prices of the strangest speculative mad-
ness on record. But at the present moment there
is something pressing upon the Dutchman's mind
besides Lust in rust, or Kermesse, or tulip-beds, or
windmills, or even the cattle-plague or cholera. If

is Limbourg. The Icing of Holland holds hard by
Luxembourg, but I think he would gladly give that
Duchy of the Ardennes to get his Dukedom of
Limbourg out of the German Confederation. Hol-

stein was in the Confederation, hence Prussia now
has it, or must have it. Limbourg lies still more
conveniently alongside the ambitious kingdom, and
as Schleswig will go with Holstein, and Jutland, too,
in a few years, so the rest of Holland may follow
Limbourg to round off King William's dominions
to the German sea. Language is no impediment ;

it is only the difference between high and low Dutch.

If I had not observed it personally, I could not have
believed the feeling that exists at Amsterdam to-

wards Prussia, or, rather, it is fair to say, towards
the ambitious Minister of that Power. One who
properly and conscientiously performs his duty in
my capacity must not seek information among his
equals alone ; he must throw himself amongst all
classes. The merchants of Amsterdam are positively
desponding to weakness. They profess not to be-
lieve in coming war, but at the same time they
say they do not see how it is to be avoided. They
groan at the name of Bismarck, and consider him
the worst and most dangerous of men. In those
strange, subterranean beer-shops, too, where minor
clerks and working men drain the acrid fluid from
awkward glass mugs, which they scarcely see
through the vapour of tobacco-smoke, one not only
hears the same language, but may distinguish
through the haze the whitewashed walls, halfbla
of
ened with rough but cleverly-drawn caricaturesiltroops
the Minister and his King, and the compelled
and
of the Landwehr dragged from .
children by cords from before,
alsnsisthe tea-gardens
bay-
onets of the regulars behind.
call the little man Bismarck
the
they fire at a mark and
t. i t
him. t t assisted r bly
saw
two
and doubly rejoice when they hit
and one in a great
little boys fighting in
th:llah, I'll Bismarck you !"
fury said to the otheri,rium,
I found the personal
Passing through
Belgium,
Minister not to be so
feeling towards the
intense, but the fear
of him to be greater by far
Emperor himself. But in
than of the French
in there has been 1
Belgium from the begi nng a Strong
belief, especially 1
n high places, that there will be
nO war-
Nevertheless in the kingdom of Leopold
11. all necessary preparations and precautions are
being quietly made. The Belgian army is not only
larger in numbers than the Dutch, but it appears to
me to be better disciplined and better appointed.
There is much imitation of the French, even to an
exaggerated and unmanly squeezing of the officers'
waists, and the force of the two kingdoms of the
Netherlands will be sure to form an admirable con-
tingent to some great Power, though in itself, of
course, tillable to stand a month against either

c- (.

Prussia or France. There seems to me to be midi
difference of character, too, between the Dutch and
Belgians. The former would cut their dykes, sub-
merge their country, and ruin their present prosperity
to preserve an independence for which they battled
80 years unceasingly against the old Spaniards.
But neither the country nor the people of Belgium
is suited to a guerilla war or to any protracted cam-
paign of defence. There is not a single rallying
point in the country, the unfinished and unarmed
state of the new ramparts of Antwerp rendering
that fortress as yet but a trap. Time in warfare is
everything, and very few of the small states com-
prehend this. But as I have given you the parti-
culars in a rough way of the Dutch army, I may as
well resolve the Belgian force into a few figures.
The artillery consists of 4 horse batteries (flying),
of 580 men ; 15 field batteries, of 1,470 men ; and
24 garrison batteries, of 1,752 men ; making a total,
kith men at depot, of nearly 4,000 effective gunners,
1,507 horses, and 152 guns. The train, engineers,
&c., will add about 1,200 men to this number. Of
cavalry there are two regiments of mounted Chas-
seurs of 10 squadrons and two depot squadrons ;
four very smart regiments of Lancers—making up
20 squadrons and four depot squadrons; and the
Guides (one of the finest regiments in Europe),
consisting of six squadrons, and one at the depot.
At the Cavalry School there is also a sort of staff
of two squadrons, and there is the mounted gen-
darmerie of nine companies. A Belgian squadron
of horse counts 130 men, exclusive of officers, and
115 horses. The infantry is in full proportionate
numbers. It consists of a regiment of Carabineers
(four battalions or 24 companies), two regiments of
Foot Chasseurs (six battalions or 36 companies),
one regiment of Grenadiers (three battalions or 18
companies), and 12 regiments of the line of 36 bat-
talions, divided into 216 companies. There are,
further, 32 battalions of reserve of ,128 companies.
Each company of Belgian infantry counts 146 men,
exclusive of officers ; and a battalion consists of 876
Gendarmery,6,s Artillery,
brank and file. The armed regular force of Belgium
may therefore thus be summed up :—lnfantry,
30
74e,n53,818re5.
Tgurainnne,rsa;n.o Cavalry; and
and
•
Sappers and Engine
r Corps,
839 ; or a grand total
of 86,272 fighting men. By a law passed June 8,
1852, this number is increased in case of war to
100,000. But at the moment it may be more inte-
resting to know the state of public feeling in Rhenish
Prussia, from which I write, than the minute parti-
culars of the forces which each State may now or
hereafter bring into the field. Amongst all whom I
have as yet met the universal and openly expressed
desire is for peace, and Count Bismarck seems
equally detested here as in Amsterdam, and more so
than in Brussels. Some few there are, who still con-
demning war, are more just in attributing honest
and even liberal intentions to the famous Minister.
They say in his heart he wishes for an united and a
free Germany, but that he can only accomplish his
wishes by seeming to play into the hands of the
Feudal party. This view of the Minister's character
is evidently farfetched. His birth, his early educa-
tion, his antecedents, his often expressed desire that
all great cities were destroyed as the hotbeds of Ra-
dicalism, give the lie to auy justly grounded suspi-
cion of insincerity on his part. He is far too bold,
and I will say too great, a man to lie otherwise than
diplomatically ; and • for my part, however I may
condemn his ambition, I honour him far more highly
than I do the men who abuse him and still have not
the manliness to pull him down—who scandalously
deplore the ill success of his would-be assassin, and
yet fear to lift an open fingeragainst him themselves.
As to the results of the conference, a minority are
beginning to hope it may result in a settlement. But
the great majority shake their heads and say, even
if the King of Prussia begins to tremble at the mon-
ster his Minister has evoked, that the public feeling
and splendid military position of Austria will render
that power too haughty to yield an inch before Flo-
rence and Berlin in her grasp.

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