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> So precious has clothing become in The Netherlands that coats are chained and locked to the walls in public buildings. The price for a skinned cat is $2.40. By credit restrictions and excessive taxation the Germans are liquidating all Dutch business firms. Nazi commissioners have been placed in charge of three big corporations, all experienced in colonization through connections with The Netherlands East Indies. Hollanders see this change as the tip-off on how the Nazis expect to organize the resettlement of 3,000,000 Dutch citizens in the German-occupied parts of eastern Europe. Such a move would give Dutch farmlands and businesses to Germans, in effect make The Netherlands a Niedermark, or province of the Reich.
The Day. Against such oppressions and threats to their fatherland the Dutch have only their stubbornness—and a hope. The hope is that a second front will liberate them. To prepare for it they keep up liaison with the British and refuse to reveal hidden arms supplies. In some areas families have been moved inland; in others the Dutch have clashed violently with occupying troops trying to remove all Hollanders from possible Nazi points of counterinvasion.
If a second front comes, the Dutch want only one thing—a day for themselves. Patting little black notebooks containing the names of traitors, and particularly their despised Nazi overlords, Dutchmen talk about that day. They call it Guillotineeringsdag—Guillotine Day.
*A hostage (original meaning: stranger) is a person held as: 1) security for obedience to an occupying army, payment of ransom, fines, etc.; 2) a means of preventing civilian acts of war. The retributive slaughter of hostages has been revived, after long disuse, from an accepted war policy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Even holding hostages as security for the carrying out of a treaty has been outlawed since the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle in 1748.