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culturalists became famous throughout Europe. They travelled to England to design and plant the gardens of the royal palaces. The gardens of Hampton Court Palace testify to the skill of Dutch landscape gardeners.
The geographical features of a country not only influence men's daily lives but mould the character of a nation. Possessing little land and hemmed in by powerful neighbours, the people of Holland early looked across the seas. Embarking upon those seas which hourly threatened to swamp their country, they ventured to the furthermost parts of the earth to found colonies and to extend their trade. And now, their land overridden, they are fighting to the death to keep those colonies which they founded long ago.
Many tales are told of those who dwell in the Low Countries, of their land dotted with windmills, of their quaint dress, of their language. But a visitor to Holland would notice little uncommon to any populous and prosperous civilised people. Windmills there needs must be, for it is by their use that water is driven back to the sea. Even so Holland is crossed by numerous streams and canals. It is no uncommon thing to see a canal flowing through the midst of a busy thoroughfare, and to see barges and small tugs intermingled with motor vehicles, buses and trams. In residential quarters canals are often made to add to the beauty of the roadway, and are flanked by small trees giving a park-like effect to what would otherwise be a monotonous road. Unlike Venice, the waterways of Holland are not used for passenger traffic but only for the carriage of agricultural produce.
The Dutch language is little understood outside Holland and her colonies. It is a typical Teutonic language, hardly more inflected than English. From the viewpoint of the philologist, Dutch is interesting. As it is very much less inflected than German, its roots are easily discernible and have many affinities to Anglo-Saxon. The works of John Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer abound in words similar to Dutch. Owing, however, to its guttural accent and broad vowel sounds, Dutch is usually not a pleasing language to ears accustomed to the Romance sounds. There is a modern tendency both in Holland and Germany to avoid as far
as possible words of Latin origin. Consequently there appear many compound words which tend to make the language bewildering to the novice. As a medium for expressing thought clearly and em-phatically Dutch is excellent, precisely owing to its homogeneity. Although the language lends itself well to oratory and is easily learnt, it must be admitted that a knowledge of Dutch would hardly repay the labour spent in learning it, so little is it known outside Holland and the Dutch colonies. Nor have the Dutch a literature in any way comparable to that of Germany or the Scandinavian countries. Indeed, so little is Dutch understood that lectures are given as frequently in French as in the vernacular in the Universities of Holland. Every educated Dutchman is a bilinguist, speaking French or English almost as well as his native tongue.
Although the people of the Netherlands possess no great literature, they have made valuable contributions to art. Some of the greatest artists of Europe were men born and bred in the Low Countries. Their name is legion-Hubert and John van Eyck, Robert Campin, Dirk Bouts, Mewling, Mabuse, Pieter Brueghel, Rubens, Van Dyck, Frans Hals, De Hooch, Rembrandt, Hobbema, and a host of other artists of international fame. As a nation of scholars, at the head whom is no less a man than Desiderius Erasmus the Dutch may hold their own with any nation of Europe. Hugo de Groot, or Grotius in the Latinised form of the name, was no less a scholar, jurist and savant than Sir Thomas More. A love of learning is early implanted in the Dutch child. The limitations of his own tongue make the Dutch wish to familiarise themselves with the principal languages of Europe. This explains why the Dutch excel as linguists and in this respect are better perhaps than any other nation of Europe.
Whatever the outcome of the present conflict, it is certain that Holland and her people can never be finally suppressed, for they possess that within them which the bomb cannot blast nor the tank override. We can be confident that a nation that has fought the elements and harnessed their mighty power, which has sailed the seas and founded colonies in the farthest parts of the earth,