Between the devil and the deep blue sea - University of Canterbury

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charities. On 28 October, the sum was raised to f3 million?05 By the end of the war, care of
refugee civilians cost the state f42 million, a huge sum even in today's tenns. 206 The costs
were simply too high for private institutions to cover. Unlike France, which claimed a
phenomenal 400 million francs from Belgium for care of refugees during the war, the Dutch
never asked Belgium for compensation?07 However, they did intend to send France a bill
for looking after its refugees. 2os
CONCLUSION
In part because it expected the war to be over quickly, the Dutch military
underestimated how highly arduous upholding neutrality would be. The human and material
resources involved in successfully implementing neutrality regulations, especially with
regard to internment, placed a great strain on its capabilities. Combined with ongoing
responsibilities for non-military matters, such as civilian refugees and, as we will see,
smuggling, the anned forces struggled to keep enough soldiers mobilised for strategic ends.
Yet the government kept assigning greater responsibility to the aImed forces for
maintaining both internal and external neutrality as well as public order. As a result, the
Commander-in-Chief could no longer sustain the tenuous balance between defence and
neutrality, which tilted overwhelmingly in favour of the latter.
205 Provincial Governor to all mayors in South Holland, 23 October 1914, in SAD, "Commissie voor de aankoop van
levensmiddelen voor belgische vluchtelingen 1914 - 1919" [Commission for the acquisition of foodstuffs for Belgian
refugees 1914 - 1919] archive no. 144, inventory no. 1; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, DOClIll1enten voor de Ecol1omische
Crisis 1914, p. 261.
206 Heuvel-Strasser, "Vluchtelingenzorg of vreemdelingenbeleid" p. 203.
207 Kramers, "Internering in Nederland 1914 - 1918" p. 23. This is in sharp contrast to another author who asserts that
France did not ask to be compensated for looking after Belgian refugees (Tallier, "De Belgische vluchtelingen" p.
30).
208 Provincial Governor to all mayors in the South Holland, 18 December 1918, in SAD, "Commissie voor de
aankoop van levensmiddelen" archive no. 144, inventory no. 2.