THE NETHERLANDS: Double Anniversary

Double Anniversary

Formerly the gloomy, box-shaped, 283-year-old Royal Palace in Amsterdam was without electric lights, central heating and had but two bathtubs, both without running water. Here, as required by the Constitution. Her Majesty, Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria, Queen of The Netherlands. Princess of Orange-Nassau and Duchess of Mecklenburg, has grudgingly spent two weeks each year. Recently, however, the Palace has been completely renovated, modernized. Comfortable inside last week were Her Majesty, Crown Princess Juliana & husband, Prince Bernhard, & seven-month-old daughter, Princess Beatrix Wilhelmina.

Outside the Palace in the tidy, central square, The Dam, thousands of broadfaced Dutchmen, big-bosomed matrons and holiday-garbed children, faces scrubbed red as Edam cheeses, milled about shouting the famed cheer for the House of Orange: “Orange Boven” (“Orange Up!”). Reason for the “cheers was that their beloved Queen last week observed two anniversaries: her 58th birthday and the completion of her 40th year on the throne. Technically. Wilhelmina, Europe’s longest-reigning sovereign,* became Queen 48 years ago on the death of her father, dissolute King Willem Ill, but Queen Mother Emma served as Regent until Wilhelmina reached 18 and was crowned.

To mark Jubilee-Birthday Week, ordinarily placid, sober Netherlanders went wild in celebration. Throughout the diked-in nation spanking wenches danced in the streets till the small hours, workmen, on paid holiday, swizzled smooth Holland gin, and school children, shipped to Amsterdam to view the parades, were treated with pictures of the Queen and slabs of ice cream. Highspots of the week-long festivities: the largest military review The Netherlands has ever seen, witnessed by the Queen (one of her favorite royal duties) : a commemorative service in Amsterdam’s very old Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), where the Queen was crowned in 1898; a march past the Royal Palace, through triumphal arches laden with orange roses, by 10,000 gaudily garbed delegates from-Her Majesty’s 8,500,000 subjects at home, her 60,000,000 subjects scattered through The Netherlands Indies.

To Netherlanders, Royalists to the core, their matronly, plainly dressed Queen is the incarnation of virtue, sense of duty and respect for the Constitution. Forty years a Queen, Wilhelmina has been troubled with only 13 Cabinet changes, a record low for continental Europe. She has always tried to associate the people with her personal joys and sorrows, frequently using the radio to discuss affairs of State and Royal Family.

To The Netherlands, which kept out of war with Great Britain during the Boer War (Netherlanders expressed sympathy for the Boers) and stayed neutral in the World War, the prime issue today is peace. Although The Netherlands is sandwiched against aggressive Germany, and Japan is looking hungrily at the potent Netherlands Indies, Her Majesty radiorated confidently: “The peoples of the world are still suffering the consequences of the World War, but I feel convinced that all dispute and trouble can be settled with good will and united effort.” But shrewd Queen Wilhelmina, with a good share of her $5,000,000 annual income coming from her eastern lands, trusts little in “good will and united effort” to safeguard them. Recently she saw to it that the native garrisons were increased, that a new 8,000-ton cruiser was laid down for service in the Far East and that the number of formidable Dornier flying boats in The Netherlands Indies Naval Air Service was increased to 42. And last month when the U. S. Department of State reported on U. S. shipments of war materials to foreign nations, the biggest shipments, $4,060,073 in June, proved to be to The Netherlands Indies.

*Italy’s King Vittorio Emanuele Ill, 38 years on the throne, is second.