Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-07-06
MANY DESERVING
GERMAN ARMY
Holland Filled With Refugees
From Kaiser's "War Ma
chine; Many Spies, Too

The Hague, Netherlands. July 8.
Thousands of deserters, mostly
from the Germany army, now are
swelling the streams of refugees
pouring into Holland from adjoining
countries. Holland has become a
great place of refuge for fugitives
fleeing from the terrors of the Ger
man front, food hardships or the
German military regime.
So numerous have these war
refugees become that a weekly peri
odical, called THE Combat" has
been esta blished at Amsterdam to
carry on a revolutionary socialist
propaganda among them. A Society
of Deserters has ben formed in Hol-
land, apparently by German agents,
IN order to discover the names of
deserters and exert pressure on their
families to induce them to return
to Germany. Returning 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 an
other.
These refugees, deserters and
government agents, added to escap-
ing prisoners of war of virtually ev-
cry Entente nationality, fugitive
Poles and other peoples of Eastern
Europe, fleeing from forced labor
and other evils, have swelled the
immigration flood until the problem
of what disposition to make of these
foreigners has become acute in Hol-
land.
Proud of Hospitality
Proud of its traditional hospital
ity, Holland opened its frontiers
freely to all corners. but public
opinion and the government has dis
covered that there are formidable
dangers inherent in this aggregation
of Immigrants.
What might not happen, Holland
ers often ask themselves, If Holland
suddenly became involved in the war
with all these vast numbers of for
eisners spread all over the country
many of them of the worst or at
least of the most doubtful char
aetcr?
vjatsoaHR ~ vn shrd ltaun taun
Infectious disease repeatedly has
been introduced. The great exodus
of Relgians 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 prison.
ers-of-war from infected German
camps and others occasionally in
troduced diseases like spotted fever
and meningitis. In each case the
disease was quickly checked.
The Prime Minister, Cort van der
Linden. announced a few days ago
that the increased influx, and the
bodily condition of persons entering
the country, had necessitated more
drastic sanitary measures. Barracks
arc 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
he disinfected, while q camp is to
he erected for the accommodation
of dangerous or undesirable ele-
ments among deserters. As regards
the national danger, the Minister of
War, Major General n. Bosbom, en-
deavored to reassure public opinion
in parliament a few days ago by
n Adeclaring that. if Holland became
inN olVed in the war. it would be
made evident that the government
was far more conversant with the
position as regards foreigners, and
had taken far more adequate pre-
cautionary measures, than most peo,
pie thought.