In New York members of a Dutch diamond firm concluded that some of The Netherlands’ skilled cutters had escaped to London and asked to ship cutting equipment.

In their rich, paneled offices off an awninged terrace overlooking the Hudson in downtown Manhattan, officials of the Dutch diamond firm of J. K. Smit & Sons were solemn last week. Amsterdam and their home office were in Nazi hands. So, too, they feared, were snow-haired Johan Smit, head of…

The food situation in the war is troublesome. The Dutch have ruined much of their arable land by opening the dikes against the Nazi invasion.

Its agriculture crippled by just about everything that a hard winter and the perversity of man can do, Europe faces a famine this winter that may well be worse than any ever known in the Old World. No man knew this better than Quaker Herbert Hoover, who 25 years ago…

Wilhelmina, Juliana and her kids left for Canada. A Dutch cruiser brought the war’s first royal refugees to the New World.

With three echoing cheers for Juliana, three more for a free Holland, the plump blue-clad jack-tars of the Dutch cruiser that brought the war’s first royal refugees to the New World last week said good-by to their princesses at Halifax. Immediately, butter-cheeked Juliana, Crown Princess of The Netherlands, and her…

In case the Japanese were to accomplish the creation of a New Order in East Asia the U. S. economy might be severely dislocated.

In December 1938, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, then Premier of Japan, made a famous speech in which he proclaimed that Japan’s aim was the creation of a New Order in East Asia. Ostensibly this meant that the Orient should be for Orientals, working in cooperation with each other; actually, it…

The U.S. might find itself at war with Japan. Such an attack would give the U. S. Britain and The Netherlands as allies.

As Washington talked under its breath last week of the possibility that the U. S. might soon find itself at war with Japan, Admiral Harold Raynsford Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Richardson, Commander in Chief of the U. S. Fleet, and Secretary of Navy Frank Knox conferred in…

Royal Dutch-Shell had virtually agreed, under pressure, to supply Japan with 40% of her oil needs for the next six months out of their Netherlands East Indies wells.

The only important war material which the U. S. has not embargoed against Japan is oil. In the past Japan has bought about 75% of her oil from the U. S.; in the future she may get none. Last week Japan’s eagerness to find other sources for oil before the U. S. gusher goes dry…

It is winter in Europe. There’s a scarce of meat and fish and steel, iron and wood in the Netherlands. 2000 Dutchmen were imprisoned for acts of resistance.

To most of the 130,000,000 U. S. citizens mid-December is a time to make themselves comfortable for the winter: a time to muffle up in warmer clothing, to eat more warming food, to use more fuel, to read more and listen more to the radio, to look out for colds,…

A Japanese mission went to the NL.-Indies to negotiate on oil, which ended unsatisfactory for Japan. Later a Japanese military spokesman said it would give the Dutch “one last chance.”

All the open spaces around the great naval airfield at Surabaya, Java, are set with bamboo stakes, about waist high, their tops whittled razor-sharp. A visiting journalist recently asked what they were for. The commander of the base explained that they were designed as an unpleasant reception for parachutists, and…

Dutch churches have been centres of opposition to the Reich. Pastors and churchmen have been thrown into concentrationcamps.

Twice last week the Christian Cross was raised in captive Europe to defy the will of the conquering Nazis.

In Norway the seven bishops of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, in a letter to the State’s Councilor, issued the boldest public indictment yet launched against the Nazi “new order.” Timed with…

U.S. bankers are troubled with what happens to the frozen assets of countries at war. Most concern the Dutch, who have around $700m. of dollar assets in the U. S.

The world’s biggest bank. Chase National of N. Y., last week was embarked upon an attempt to solve U. S. bankers’ most annoying headache: who controls the U. S. funds of Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Belgian, Latvian and other Russian and Nazi victims? The assets of ten such countries have already…

Japan is on warpath. The exiled Government of The Netherlands learned from Batavia that Japan had served new demands on the East Indies. The Dutch refused.

Japan’s grave-faced Emperor Hirohito last week wrapped himself in a silken robe embroidered with the sacred Paulownia blossom and stepped into the innermost sanctuary of the Imperial Palace to worship his mythological ancestress, the Sun Goddess, celebrating the ascension to the throne 2,601 years ago of his lineal ancestor, the…

The Dutch went on strike and riots broke out and had to be put down by the Nazi’s. Dutchmen faithful to the House of Orange wore orange flowers.

Last week Adolf Hitler’s little conquered peoples kept bravely bucking his “new order” in Europe.

In The Netherlands strikes and riots led to the killing of six civilians in a clash between the police and what Nazis called “disturbers of the peace.” So violent was the atmosphere that the Amsterdam…

It was rumored that trade negotiations between the Netherlands-Indies Japan were near breakup. Minister of Foreign Affairs Kleffens warned they would fight whoever attacked them.

There was more evidence than newspaper talk and statesmen’s declarations last week that Japan was taking some of its military blue chips out of China and staking them against the game farther south. Shanghai reported that Japan was already withdrawing troops from inner China toward the seacoast. Shanghai prophets predicted…