The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-06-28
GERMAN ARMY DESERTERS FLEE.
 TO HOLLAND
Men Tired of Battling for Teutonic Allies Quit
 Front.

The Hague, Netherlands. June 28- l (Correspondence)-T of de- serters mostly from the German army | now are swelling the stream of re- fugees pouring into Holland from ad- | joining countries. Holland has be- come a great place of refuge for fugi- | tives fleeing from the terrors of the German front, food hardships or. the German military regime.
 So numerous have these war re- fugees become that a, weekly periodi- | cal, called 'sThe Combat has been established at Amsterdam to carry on a revolutionary socialist propaganda among them. A Society of Deserters has been formed in Hol1and,s appar- ently by German agents in order to discover the names of deserters and exert pressure on their families to in- duce them to return to Germany. Re- turning deserters no longer are shot but are sent to the front.
 , The country is overrun by a small army of spies. persons of both sexes
 whose work is to spy into Dutch af- fairs, to spy upon the belligerents and sometimes to spy upon one another. These refugees, deserters and gov ernment agents, added to escaping PllSOAClS Ol WdI OI VlItudlly every Entente nationality, fugitive Poles and other peoples of Eastern Europe. fleeing from forced labor and other flood until the problem of what dispo- sition to make of these foreigners has become acute in Holland.
 There are many decent men among the deserters who. made desperate by the sufferings and slaughter at the front, or rebelling against their gov ernment's system, or policy, have shaken the dust of their fatherland from their feet. Quite number are convalescent men who were ordered back to the front. A great number are undesirab1es to whom many crimes are attributed. Some become snug g1ers but wholesale punishment from the frontier regions now virtually has closed this profession to them. Police
 control of them is very inadequate. Proud of it's traditional hospitality, Holland opened it's frontiers freely to all corners but public opinion and thes government has discovered that there are formidable dangers inherent in this aggregation of immigrants. What might not happen, Holland CTS often ask themselves, if Holland
 suddenly became involved in the war, with all these vast numbers of for eigners spread all over the country, many of them of the worst or at least of the most doubtful character? Infectious diseases repeatedly has been introduced. The great exodus of Belgians brought typhus and dys- entery; Austro- Hungarian emigrants
 from Galicia, on their way to join relatives. in America, and suspected
 smugglers from that province, brought
 smallpox; escaped prisoners of war
 from infected German camps and
 others occasionally introduced di-
 seases like spotted fever and menin-
 gftis. In each case the disease was
 quickly checked.
 Now, however, smallpox has 8 real
 hold in parts of Germany as we'll as
 in countries farther east, and it is
 pointed out how easily this and other
 scourges may be brought across the
 frontier.
 The Prime Minister Cort van der
 Linden, announced few days ago
 that the increased influx, and the
 bodily condition of persons entering
 the country, had necessitated more
 drastic sanitary measures. Barracks
 are to be erected at five different
 points of the frontier, where all Ger
 mans entering the country, of whom
 the great majority are deserters, will
 be disinfected, while camp is to be
 erected for the accommodation of dangerous or undesirable elements
 among deserters. As regards the na
 tiona1 danger, the Minister for War,
 Ma. H. Bosboom, endeavored
 to reassure public opinion in parlia-
 ment a few days ago by declaring that,
 if Holland became involved in the
 war, it would be made evident that
 the government was far more convers-
 ant with the position as regards for
 eigners, and had taken far more ade-
 quate precautionary measures, than
 most people thought.