Riots in Holland The rioting in Amsterdam round the end
of last week entailed a death-roll of six and about 60 cases of more or less serious injury, and was only quelled after three days' disturbance and a certain amount of firing. Subsequent attempts to repeat it at Rotterdain found the Government prepared, and were nipped in the bud. The origins seem to have been purely economic. The occasion was a " cut " in the dole to the unemployed, of which the Communists took advantage for purposes of agitation. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are great ports with (as is usual in great ports) an exceedingly poor proletariat at the bottom of their scale. Correspondingly they have always included a certain number of desperate extremists —" Anarchists " in the old days, " Communists " now. These are entirely unrepresentative of general Dutch life and opinion. But the world economic crisis has fallen with extreme severity on Dutch trading, and the misery among the poorest dockside classes is acute.
Previous page
