The people of this country-side were not belligerents. The interests
and sympathies alike of Holland had been so divided that to the end she
remained undecided and passive in the struggle of the world powers. And
everywhere along the roads taken by the marching armies clustered groups
and crowds of impartially observant spectators, women and children in
peculiar white caps and old-fashioned sabots, and elderly, clean-shaven
men quietly thoughtful over their long pipes. They had no fear of their
invaders; the days when 'soldiering' meant bands of licentious looters
had long since passed away....
That watcher among the clouds would have seen a great distribution of
khaki-uniformed men and khaki-painted material over the whole of the
sunken area of Holland. He would have marked the long trains, packed
with men or piled with great guns and war material, creeping slowly,
alert for train-wreckers, along the north-going lines; he would have
seen the Scheldt and Rhine choked with shipping, and pouring out still
more men and still more material; he would have noticed halts and
provisionings and detrainments, and the long, bustling caterpillars of
cavalry and infantry, the maggot-like wagons, the huge beetles of great
guns, crawling under the poplars along the dykes and roads northward,
along ways lined by the neutral, unmolested, ambiguously observant
Dutch.
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