Electors of one of each 16 states that make up the new federated republic of the United States of Indonesia casted their votes for the U.S.I.’s first President Soekarno, the only candidate.

The ceremonies at Jogjakarta went off with the fine precision of a Javanese ritual dance. The electors took their places around a U-shaped table, behind signs lettered in the republican colors of red and white; each stood for one of the 16 states that make up the new federated republic…

After four years of bitter fighting and endless negotiations, it looks as Indonesia would get the freedom it wanted, though both continue to cooperate with each other.

A few hours before dawn, a bleary-eyed night porter at The Hague’s stuffy Hotel des Indes (named for The Netherlands’ once vast and profitable colonies) opened the heavy oaken door for a weary guest, who went promptly to his room, and to sleep. He was slim, patient Jan Herman van…

Because The Netherlands’ economy is geared more closely to Britain’s than to those of her continental allies, the Benelux countries still had no coordinated monetary policy.

Everybody was talking integration. In Paris, ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman had urgently warned Western Europe that it must take steps to integrate its separate economies (TIME, Nov. 7). Barely had Hoffman returned to the U.S., when Secretary of State Dean Acheson took off for Paris. For two days this week he…

Delegates assembled for a conference in The Hague to solve the Indonesian problem. Most hopeful aspect was that both sides knew they could not get what they wanted by force.

The Hague blossomed with bronze faces and bright native costumes last week as some 200 Dutch and Indonesian delegates assembled for a round-table conference in The Netherlands’ staid capital. With the U.N.’s Commission for Indonesia looking on, the delegates in The Hague’s ancient Hall of Knights expected to spend…

Twelve nations are signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty, among them, the Netherlands.

Twelve nations are signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Determined to “safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples,” they resolved to “unite their efforts for . . . the preservation…

The Germans started a Dutch opera with native singers and musicians and the Dutch loved it. At war’s end, they decided to keep it.

It took a national military defeat and four years of German rule to make the Dutch take grand opera and like it. It was not that Holland had plugged its dikes against all music: it has long had fine Bach societies and a great symphony orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam…

Two bearded, 32-year-old Moslem missionaries in the Hague try to convert Dutch people to the moslem faith. Not rather succesful, in two years, they have made ten Dutch converts.

Early evening crowds thronged the neon-lighted sidewalks of the Spui (The Hague’s Broadway). Many of them were moviegoers, eagerly getting down from busily clanging streetcars to see Song of My Heart, Fallen Idol, or Till the Clouds Roll By. A few, however, drifted unobtrusively towards a second-floor meeting room of…

The Dutch, Indonesians and the U.N. Commission for Indonesia met to put the finishing touches on a Dutch-Indonesian agreement. The Dutch would peacefully return capital Jogjakarta.

In the roof-garden ballroom of Batavia’s elegantly seedy Hotel des Indes, 40 white-suited delegates and aides representing the Dutch, the Indonesians and the U.N. Commission for Indonesia met one evening last week to put the finishing touches on a Dutch-Indonesian agreement. After a quiet 45 minutes in the steamy 90°…

Because Belgians won’t accept the Dutch paying nonconvertible guilders the Dutch use Marshall Plan dollars to build their railway equipment industry, which works against economic unity.

A struggle to decide the economic shape of Europe is building up. One of the open ing skirmishes was fought last week when eight leading representatives of OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) met in Paris. The engagement was screened by a fog of long technical words and its result…

The famous wonderkapper (miracle barber) in the village of Een attracts a lot of people to his town since he grows hair on bald heads.

The village of Een (pop. 900) used to be just another quiet hamlet in the northern Netherlands. By last week Een had become a bustling mecca for 1,500 once desperate, now hopeful people. Bicycles were stacked up against a lilac tree in the village; cars from every Dutch province thronged…

Peace seemed finally in sight in the long-drawn war between the Dutch and the Indonesian Nationalists. In Batavia, the U.N. Commission for Indonesia announced a cease-fire agreement.

Last week, peace seemed finally in sight in the long-drawn war between the Dutch and the Indonesian Nationalists. In Batavia, the U.N. Commission for Indonesia announced a cease-fire agreement. Worn down by Nationalist guerrilla fighting and worried by Communist advances in Asia, the Dutch had finally given in to the…

The tidy Dutch were checking over the books of Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw Orchestra. But it was not in order: conductor and collaborator Mengelberg, was still down for fl.10,00.

The tidy Dutch were checking over the books of Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw Orchestra. If everything was in order, Conductor Eduard van Beinum’s musicians would get their annual subsidy as usual. But this time everything was distinctly not in order: Van Beinum’s predecessor, the great Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, was still…

At the World Council of Churches in Geneva, which was launced in Amsterdam last august, Dr. Visser ‘t Hooft told that not all of the press comment had been favorable about Amsterdam.

In the 18th Century Chateau de Bossey, which overlooks Lake Geneva, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches met last week to take stock of the world organization which was launched at Amsterdam last August. The committee also found time to denounce “the threats to man’s rights and…

Every citizen of Borculo was working side by side raising 2,200 guilders for the people of Warren, Ark. that was struck low by a tornado, which happened in Borculo in 1925 as well.

Nobody in the little (pop. 6,000) Netherlands town of Borculo knows anyone in Warren, Ark. personally. Nevertheless, last month the farmers, laborers, and shopkeepers of Borculo felt a sudden close kinship with the citizens of Warren. Fat, jolly Burgomaster Paul Drost had just told them what he had heard from…

The Indonesian case before the U.N. Security Council simmered down. The Dutch told the U.N. council that they would cease firing in Indonesia only in their own good time.

The Indonesian case before the U.N. Security Council simmered down. A Dutch representative described the American attitude: “At first, the U.S. reacted like a New England parent surprised by a young man trifling with his daughter’s honor. Now the State Department’s attitude has changed. It became: ‘What are we…