The net effect of coalitions is usually to dull debates, to narrow ambitions and to blunt the cutting edge of bold politics. In the Netherlands Drees cabinet fell after extending higher taxes.

In most Western European nations these days, no party commands an absolute majority, and most must rule by coalition. The net effect of coalitions is usually to dull debates, to narrow ambitions and to blunt the cutting edge of bold politics. Rivalries that would otherwise be threshed out in the…

Premier Willem Drees, who had run The Netherlands for six uninterrupted years on a welfare-state platform, trotted off to the Queen to resign after a failed rent-increase bill.

Her Majesty Queen Juliana regretted that she would be unable to attend the gala concert of the visiting Philadelphia Orchestra as planned. Late into the evening, Her Majesty would be compelled to spend her time sorting out that most un-Dutch of royal embarrassments: a Cabinet crisis. “A rather unusual phenomenon…

Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees formed a new government and appointed not one but two Foreign Ministers.

Foreign Ministers, perennially harassed characters, often wish they could be in two places at once. The Netherlands last week did its best to make the trick possible. When Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees formed a new government, after a 65-day cabinet crisis, he appointed not one but two Foreign…

For the first time in The Netherlands’ history, the Socialists became the leading party. Vadertje (Little Father) Drees party got 29% of 5,335,064 votes cast.

Willem Drees is the kind of Socialist the Reds denounce as a “Sewer Socialist.” They are right in a way, for Drees would rather give his people sewers today than promise a proletarian heaven in 1984. Starting 39 years ago as a Socialist councilman in The Hague, Drees ascended the…

Dwight Eisenhower traveled thru W. Europe and found out that P.M. Drees is more interested in social progress than in rearmament.

A Paul Revere in a silver Constellation, NATO Commander General Dwight Eisenhower* last week traveled fast and hard across Western Europe.

In Paris, where official appointments begin at 10 a.m., Ike was at Premier René Pleven’s office door at 8. Half an hour later he was at the Quai d’Orsay…