The Dutch have interpreted this strictly as giving the joint commission control only over the pilotage (two concurrent services) and over keeping the channels open and properly marked and buoyed. The Belgians, on the other hand, have contended that the commission should have cognizance of matters upon which the extent and security of the channels depend, such as diking, drainage, encroachments on the river and its accessory waters, etc., their ground being that the Scheldt constitutes a single hydrographic problem, no portion of which can be properly treated without reference to the whole. They allege the failure to make sufficient modern improvements on the western Scheldt because of the indifference of the Dutch authorities, and they also complain of the serious difficulties of drainage in Belgian Flanders caused by raising the level of the Dutch lands between it and the Scheldt. Being interested in the use of the river to a far greater degree than the Dutch, the Belgians find it intolerable to be dependent on Dutch consent to every act of maintenance or improvement. Belgium pays the entire cost of improvements, but the consent of Holland is necessary. Thus the Terneuzen canal, which connects Ghent with the Scheldt, was built by Dutch engineers but at Belgium’s expense, and the Dutch portion does not correspond to the portion south of the frontier. Holland’s position throughout is essentially negative. The Scheldt furthers no major interest of hers; she has no important towns along its banks, no foreign trade which it carries; its improvement benefits only a commercial rival. In time of war Holland interprets her sovereignty as compelling her to close the river to belligerents. In August 1914 English reënforcements were thus forbidden to relieve Antwerp, although their purpose was to maintain Belgian neutrality, while Belgian troops were denied exit by the river and forced, to the number of several thousand, to suffer internment in Holland. Such control of the river nullifies the centre of Belgium’s defensive system at Antwerp; it might also permit the turning of her Flemish defences in case of a war with Holland. The Dutch maintain that the neutrality of the Scheldt during the Great War was of real assistance to the Allies, who would otherwise have suffered from German submarine bases along its banks; but the Belgians point out that the closing of the river in war destroys at one blow the whole foreign commerce of Antwerp, a result that might ensue even in a war in which Holland was a party and Belgium neutral.