Editorial Standard May 7 - 57 Netherlands Recovery Financial journals report that last week the government of the Netherlands sent eight million dollars to the United States and paid off the last installment of a 20 million dollar bond issue of 1947. The news should please friends of the little country all over the world, because the repayment of the loan reflects the prosperity the Dutch are enjoying. The money was borrowed to rebuild the country from the ruin in which it was left by the destructive and brutal Germans as well as to reinforce the country's economy. Although many of the scars of the German occupation and destruction have vanished, we doubt that the Netherlands people will ever forget the German outrages in the thrifty little kingdom. The crimes of the Nazis should never be forgotten — nor forgiven. Many persons wondered how the Netherlands could recover from the war damage and the loss of the Netherlands Indies, but the recovery has been surprising. TJie production stands at 159 today compared with 59 just before the bonds were sold in the United States. The figures testify to the character and industry of the people Utah and Nevada Standard May 7 - 57 Historian Walter Prescott Webb has the satisfaction of knowing his article in Harper's has inspired more congressional speech making and discussion than any other article published thus far in 1957. The interest aroused is caused by the strong opinions about the West, which is more proof that people like to read opinion. Several lawmakers, including Sen. Wallace Bennett of Utah, have discussed the article and we have read what they had to say about it. However, the real flavor of the essay can only be had from reading it. Let us read, for example, the Webb comment on Utah and Nevada as follows: "This talent for making the most of little has produced two strange western societies, one good and one bad. The good society is that of the Mormons in Utah, a rejected people with a bizarre religion who sought peace in the desert, took the bee as their symbol, and created by their hivelike industry something admirable. "The other society of more recent vintage sprang up in a similar desert, but took a different direction. No state has less to recommend it than Nevada. It is all desert and once its minerals were depleted, it had little chance of prosperity and hardly enough people to maintain a state government. It solved its problem by creating an oasis of iniquity and license in a sea of moral inhibitions. It provided a haven in the desert to which all could come who wanted to gamble, divorce or fornicate . . . its population shortly doubled and it has the highest Income per capita of any state in the union. Nevada is what it is today because of what it did not have yesterday." Utah, it would seem, has no reason to assail Dr. Webb. He has done well by Utah. We suspect, however, some Nevadans are unhappy.