Life and death in the dunes.

Life and death in the dunes. In the Dutch dunes the Germans committed perhaps more crimes than anywhere else in Holland. The dunes protect the Low Countries against the sea, and in three years of extensive work on their "Westwall", the Germans weakened this natural defence in such a way that the land between the Hague and Hook of Holland is in danger of being flooded. Storms and mines destroyed the heads of the piers, too long neglected; the dunes themselves began to move and now they are less than ten yards deep in some places. A sandstorm in the dunes is one of the mosy impressive sights a Dutchman knows, but these storms menace in ore than a hundred-thousand acres of fertile land south of the Hague. Zeeland is flooded, the water destroys slowly house after house in the villages in the old Zuyderzee, where the dike of the oldest polder was blown up by the retreating Germans. The Dutch are far from discouraged, they will be able to overcome their tremendous difficulties, but they feel that this is enough and that no more accidents must happen. The Germans leave a sad heritage in the dunes. They are one enormous piece of cement with underground corridors, casemates and pill-boxes. The brick-pavements of Scheveningen, the Hague's smart bathing-resort were taken away; whole quarters of the Hague were demolished, the furniture was stolen: here in the dunes you find the bricks of the pavements and the houses, the furniture is in the casemates, but the people cannot go and fetch it owing to the mines, that other curse. German prisoners clear them away, but they work in such a way that people are still torn to pieces when they visit the cleared grounds. In one village the number of victims rose in one week from 28 to 36, among whom were some children. They play in the dunes and step on the so-called glass-mines which explode under a weight of three pounds. A british soldier became the hero of a village by saving a child that was sitting on a mine under the eyes of its ter