Spoken in the informal, no-nonsense style, throughout a 31-year reign, Queen Juliana of The Netherlands told a national television audience that she would abdicate on her 71st birthday.

Juliana prepares to step down

“Everyone who is getting old is sooner or later confronted with the sober fact that powers diminish and that one cannot carry out one’s task as one used to. And then there comes a moment when it’s no longer justified to continue carrying out…

Dutch parliament last week somberly debated whether the 65-year-old royal consort should be prosecuted, but the chamber voted overwhelmingly against prosecution

Like the Watergate scandal from which it once sprouted, the Lockheed scandal seems to have acquired a quality of indestructibility. Even when the charges of corruption are officially denied, they keep reappearing as rumors and innuendoes. Last week, as the scandal once again rippled across Europe, a parliament debated whether…

Prince Bernhard was forced to resign from virtually all his public and official posts after a government commission severely chastized him for “extremely imprudent” dealings with Lockheed.

The Royal House of Orange has held sway in The Netherlands almost without interruption for 400 years, and according to the constitution, its monarch is “inviolable.” Most of Queen Juliana’s royal subjects hoped that the same was true of her dapper, German-born husband Prince Bernhard, 65. When rumors from the…

Even if the prince should be found guilty, the Dutch speculate, he will merely be reprimanded and forced to resign as inspector general of the Dutch army, but Juliana will not abdicate.

By George and all his kin, it will be a royal Bicentennial. In fond, forgiving tribute to the nation that rejected monarchy 200 years ago, nine of Europe’s ten reigning families will have visited the U.S. by year’s end. Preparing for one of the biggest convergences of royalty since the…

The Dutch Justice Ministry has indicated that legal action against Prince Bernhard, who has been accused of taking $1.1 million from Lockheed, is very unlikely.

Elliot Richardson, former Secretary of Defense, former Attorney General, former Ambassador to Britain and present Secretary of Commerce, added another line to his resume last week. He was appointed by President Ford to head a new ten-man panel to probe the damaging issue of foreign bribery by U.S. companies (TIME…

Prime Minister Den Uyl has ordered an investigation of the Peron affair, where Bernhard paid a bribe to dictator Peron. The accusations are another blow to Bernhard’s shaky public image.

Prince Bernhard, the globetrotting royal businessman accused of being on the take in the Lockheed scandal (TIME, Feb. 23), was charged last week with doing some palm greasing of his own. The Netherlands’ leading newspaper, Amsterdam’s Telegraaf, implicated Bernhard in a $12 million bribe paid 25 years ago to the…

Dutchmen are wondering whether their much beloved Queen Juliana will abdicate. There are worries about a concerted leftist effort to turn the royal House of Orange into Pink.

The Lockheed scandal may prove to be the worst thing to happen to the Dutch monarchy since Parliament took over effective governing power from King Willem II in 1848. More and more Dutchmen are wondering whether their much beloved Queen Juliana will abdicate in the wake of accusations that her…

Prince Bernhard had his first meeting with a quickly organized three-man committee appointed by the Dutch Cabinet to investigate charges that he accepted $1.1 million from Lockheed.

The repercussions of foreign bribery by U.S. corporations continued to rattle much of the world last week. In the wake of American probes that have uncovered massive payoffs to foreign businessmen and government officials, especially by Lockheed (TIME cover, Feb. 23), one foreign country after another began cranking up its…

Dutch government publicly identified Prince Bernhard as the “high Dutch official”. The cabinet hastily appointed a special investigative commission.

The unending flow of disclosures of corporate bribes and illegal political contributions to officials in the U.S. and abroad has spread a darkening stain over the global reputation of American business. Throughout the revelations of the past 18 months, however, there was one minor consolation: reports of rampant payoffs by…

A report on the life and work of Prince Bernhard. After the war, the by now tremendously popular “fighting prince” transformed himself into an immensely useful “salesman prince.”

“You can ask me to be cynical about lots of things, but not about the monarchy,” said a student in Amsterdam. The vast majority of the Dutch press and public last week embraced the Prime Minister’s advice to consider Prince Bernhard innocent until proved guilty. That generosity of judgment was…

A former Lockheed employee charged that the prince Bernhard had profited royally from sales of Lockheed’s supersonic Starfighter to The Netherlands. Bernhard denied the charges.

Stories about bribe taking by Prince Bernhard had been floating around Amsterdam since last December. At that time Ernest F. Hauser, an American and former Lockheed employee whose credentials include a criminal record (for fraud), charged that the prince had profited royally from sales of Lockheed’s supersonic Starfighter to The…

The Netherlands is the only European nation under a total Arab oil embargo. Den Uyl was coming under increasing public pressure for the bravely outspoken ways of his government.

THE NETHERLANDS

When Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl arrived at Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium last week to attend the Holland-Belgium soccer match, a chorus of boos and catcalls rose from the capacity crowd of 65,000. A week earlier he probably would have been cheered.

The difference a week made lay…

World Wildlife Fund celebrated their tenth anniversary, under the guidance of softspoken, spectacled Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, the fund’s international president.

It is an odd company. Hairy-nosed wombats in southern Australia. Giant turtles on the Galapagos Islands. Polar bears in the Arctic. What each species shares with the others is an improving prospect for survival due to the efforts of a unique conservation organization. That group is the World Wildlife…

Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands has recently undergone acupuncture in Singapore and immediately felt better.

What do Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, Premier Lon Nol of Cambodia and Columnist James Reston of the New York Times have in common with uncounted, unknown Asians? All have recently undergone acupuncture, the ancient Chinese practice of inserting needles into various parts of the body to treat a…

The arrival of Indonesia’s President Suharto was met with special security measures. It reflects the political tensions among exiled Indonesians in The Netherlands.

The Dutch countryside was in a virtual state of siege. Highways were blocked. The Hague was guarded by helicopters, tanks, bloodhounds and 5,000 state troopers and other police. Could this have been The Netherlands, Europe’s haven of democratic tolerance? “We are taking no chances,” explained a mustachioed constabulary captain. “We…