THE NETHERLANDS: Newer Cabinet

In London The Netherlands Government in Exile also underwent a political crisis. Pieter S. Gerbrandy, Holland’s Premier since 1940, resigned. Promptly Queen Wilhelmina whisked him back to form a “broader” government.

As in Belgium, the Resistance and hunger were behind the crisis. In Maastricht, liberated Holland’s biggest city, underground fighters (Stoottroepen, meaning shock troops) charged three prominent citizens with collaboration, clapped them into jail. When Interior Minister Jacob Burger protested against indiscriminate purging, the Stoottroepen of both occupied and liberated Holland forced his resignation.

But in Holland, as in Belgium, political unrest began in the stomach. The Government organ, Voice of The Netherlands, reported: in Nazi-held Holland. 4,500,000 persons now get daily food rations of 450 to 650 calories—or, roughly, “one-third of what the human body needs to keep alive while doing nothing, one-fifth of what it needs while exerting itself. . . . This is plain famine—stark, inescapable. … It just means death. It kills.”