Some of Europe’s best mines are being shuttered; the Dutch State Mines are diversifying, already earn more from chemicals than from coal, and are retraining miners to make Daf cars.

Europe’s coal miners, who are as politically potent and as well protected as America’s farmers, are in a querulous mood. In past months, miners have staged angry protest marches in Germany’s Ruhr and battled against truncheon-swinging police in Belgium (toll: two dead). Behind this unrest is an upheaval in the…

The Dutch prepared to open their Zuider Zee dikes if necessary. To give their waters time to rise, the Dutch mined all roads and bridges entering their country from Germany.

Scores, hundreds, thousands of French, British, Germans—seasoned survivors of World War I as well as fresh-faced fodder for World War II— suffered painful, personal wounds or death along the Perl-to-Lauterbourg front last week. So did hundreds of pigs which the French Infantry drove before them to locate and…