The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-11
THRIFTY HOLLAND
 LAYING UP MONEY. IN AFTER WAR DAYS
Ravages of Conflict Absent in Land of Canals Clogs Serve For Shoes Rich Peas
 ants Abound
Carpenters World Travels. Copy right 1923, Frank G. Carpenter.)
 Ky FRANK C, CARPENTER

ny FhAAh G. CARPENTER UTRECHT, Holland. Feb. 10.-This is film of Holland after grim Nisaged war hath smoothed it's wrin- kled front" and the people have put on the cloak of nCrmalcy. For the past week or so, 1 have been flying over the brick roads that gridiron this beautiful kingdom, my car rac- ing side by side with the multitudi- nous bicycles that here take the place Of the American flivver; now high above the fields upon the em- hankments that uphold the larger canals filled with barges; and now down inside the dykes that wall the great polders, the former lakes and sWamps that these thrifty Dutch have turned into gardens as fertile as Eden.
 have ridden through the gorgeous fields of Haarlem where the eart-l laughs in flowers" more splendid than Solomon in his glory, and from where each year more than 500O0, ,O00 pounds cf tulips, daffodils and other bulbs go to England and the United States. Since the war, the Dutch have been competing with the green houses of Brussels, Paris and London, and they now send out flowers by airplane, reaching those cities each morning in time for sale side by isde with the blossoms clipped from the gardens hard by.
 Rotterdam and Hague
 l have visited the wide awake city of Amsterdam, the financial center, a huge spider web of canals walled with one hundred thousand houses built upon piles, which in settling have leaned this way and that, so that the quaint old town seems to have gone crazy drunk in it's rich ness.
 l have explored the wide water ways of Rotterdam, the gateway to the Rhine. the Maas and the Scheldt. where the huge ocean liners come to anchor in the midst of the city and something like 6000.0OO tons of ship pIng go in and out every year. l have crossed it's many bridges thousand times buster than was the Rialto of Venice in the days of An tenio and Shyloek, and have watched the crowd going over them including 14000 bicycles and G0,000 pedestrians each day. l have seen it's great har- Dor, and it's shipbuilding works, which made nillionaires just after the armistice, but which now, l am told, are turning rich men to paupers
 
 sion. I have also gone out to the Municipal Aviation field from where Rotterdam expects to compete for the trade of the air as on the Maas she competes for that of the water.
 1 have spent also week in Thel Hague, the most Beautiful residential capital in Europe. where the Dutch government has it's headquarters, and waere Andrew Carnegies red brick and white stone palace points it's crimson finger toward Heaven, crying out as did Jeremiah, the Prophet: Peace! Peace!, when there Is no peace in all the world"
 Holland the Peaceful
 And still l have visited no other land which just now corresponds so well to the words of David the Psalmist:
 Her ways are ways of pleasant ness and all her paths are peace"
 We can see this in a train ride across country from The Hague to Utrecht, the biggest Dutch town of the east. The meadows, each fenced by it's waterways, are spotted with fat black and white Holstein cattle, which make one think of the pie bald sheep and goats that Jacob got for his wage sfrom Laban the son of Bethuel, after serving fourteen long years fer Leah and Rachel. It Y is harvest and the haycocks and grain shocks stand out like little armies, drawn up to watch our train pass. Across the green plain we see the long lines of trees marking the roads. They fence in the land scape as though there were nothing beyond, Here and there Is wind mill, a huge tower with long sail like arms. tossing about through the sky.
 The scenes change every moment. Now we pass meadows, now wheat, now potatoes or turnips. The fields