A flooding provoked the largest evacuation ever mobilized in the Netherlands: 250,000 people were forced to flee their homes in Limburg and Gelderland.

Fifty years after World War II, something like the blitzkrieg returned to Nijmegen last week. Dutch soldiers swarmed around the city as low-flying helicopters thundered overhead. The scenes reflected the kind of combat the Dutch know best: struggling with the elements as an onslaught of water threatened to submerge vast…

The army of The Netherlands is fully unionized. The union started off by demanding better pay for underpaid conscripts and soon began pushing for better working and living conditions.

Aside from the comic-strip troops of Al Capp’s Lower Slobbovia or the G.I.s who stumble through maneuvers at Camp Swampy with Beetle Bailey, the 70,000-man army of The Netherlands is probably the raunchiest-looking fighting force in the world. In startling contrast to the red-jacketed guardsmen who stand stiffly at attention…

Thousands of jobs go unmanned in Europe, like in the Netherlands (150,000). The Dutch recently discharged 6,000 soldiers from military duty to work on construction jobs.

WESTERN EUROPE

Every Monday morning a Turkish Airlines plane lumbers to a stop at a Belgian military airfield near Charleroi, and out step 50 tanned and slightly bewildered Turks. Clutching yellow envelopes containing their X-ray pictures, they are welcomed with sweet Turk ish cigarettes, fruit juices, a round of speeches…

The Dutch, a hardheaded people, know no better alternative to “the Russian threat” and “the German problem,” and approved to hand over control of its army to the EDC.

In the 17th century Senate building in The Hague, Dutch Foreign Minister Johan Beyen last week asked his country’s elder statesmen to hand over control of The Netherlands’ proud little army and 20,000-man air force to a supranational authority that does not yet exist. The European Army (EDC) has never…

The Netherlands became the second member nation to approve the six-nation European Army EDC (European Defense Community).

Never before had prospects of a six-nation European Army (EDC) seemed less hopeful. Convinced that the Soviet menace is waning fast, Europeans no longer felt the need to surrender some of their own sovereignty, or to permit 400,000 Germans to join them in a common uniform. The drive toward European…