f£B* 1953
Economic Blow
Of Dutch Flood
Is Staggering
N. Y. HERALD TRIBUNE
Country's Physical Damage
Alone May Be Treble
Its 1953 Defense Budget
By Don Cook
By Wireless to the Herald Tribune
Copyright, 1953, New York Herald Tribune Inc.
THE HAGUE, Feb. 3.—At the
end of Holland's third day of flood
disaster, the awful magnitude of
the economic catastrophe that has
struck this country is only begin
ning to become apparent.
It is one thing for the United
States to recover from the recur
rent ramapages of the Missouri or
Mississippi Rivers, or for Great
Britain to restore the inundations
of coastal waters with a wealth of
industrial and trading economy to
draw upon. But the Netherlands
has been dealt a blow that hits at
the basis of the country's very life.
Double the Defense Budget
To cite one simple comparison,
the physical damage to the coun
try as a result of the flood waters
that broke through the dikes early
Sunday will run at least twice, and
possibly three times as high as the
entire Netherlands defense budget
for 1953.
The reconstruction, the rebuild
ing of the dikes, the relief of the
homeless, the loss of agricultural
production all must be borne by
the Dutch treasury and the cost of
the floods is expected to run be
tween 3,000,000,000 guilders ($790,-
000,000) and 5,000,000,000 guilders
($1,300,000,000) as against a 1953
defense expenditure which was
planned at 1,70,0,000,000 guilders.
As a result of this, the American
Embassy has literally had to tear
up the briefs it had prepared for
Secretary ofState John Foster
Dulles, who arrives here Friday,
and must start on an entirely new
set of economic, industrial, agri
cultural and defense assumptions.
The flood has knocked out all such
calculations for Holland.
The Netherlands is no longer at
the mercy of mere floods; it now
lies open to the ebb and floow of
North Sea tides. The vast network
of dikes that protected the country
from the sea is broken beyond any
thing the Dutch could have imag
ined possiblegaping holes of fifty,
100 and 300 yards through which
the sea is flowing in and out as it
does in the Hudson River or the
Thames.
Water 20 Miles on All Sides
It is one thing to state the fact
that 1,000 square miles of Holland
-one-sixth of the area of the
countryhas been affected by the
flood, but it is a moving thing to
fly for mile after mile over this
area and see the roofs of the
houses, the cattle huddled in a
lonely barnyard, the stillness of
quiet flood waters, the desolate
spin of a windmill pumping water,
the gaping holes in the sea walls.
At moments, in a low-level flight
today, my plane was poised with
a twenty-mile vista in all direc
tions of nothing but flood waters
dotted with the tops of houses,
trees, the lines of dikes still above
water. Six feet in this low-lying
land is the difference, these last
days, between life and death, be
tween existence and extinction.
