This was
bad enough. But the fatal weakness was that so common in rich,
peace-loving societies, where men hate to think of war as possible,
and try to justify their own reluctance to face it either by
high-sounding moral platitudes, or else by a philosophy of
short-sighted materialism. The Dutch were very wealthy. They grew to
believe that they could hire others to do their fighting for them on
land; and on sea, where they did their own fighting, and fought very
well, they refused in time of peace to make ready fleets so efficient,
as either to insure them against the peace being broken, or else to
give them the victory when war came. To be opulent and unarmed is to
secure ease in the present at the almost certain cost of disaster in
the future.
It is therefore easy to see why Holland lost when she did her position
among the powers; but it is far more difficult to explain why at the
same time there should have come at least a partial loss of position
in the world of art and letters. Some spark of divine fire burned
itself out in the national soul. As the line of great statesmen, of
great warriors, by land and sea, came to an end, so the line of the
great Dutch painters ended. The loss of pre-eminence in the schools
followed the loss of pre-eminence in camp and in council chamber.
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