Because Belgians won’t accept the Dutch paying nonconvertible guilders the Dutch use Marshall Plan dollars to build their railway equipment industry, which works against economic unity.

A struggle to decide the economic shape of Europe is building up. One of the open ing skirmishes was fought last week when eight leading representatives of OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) met in Paris. The engagement was screened by a fog of long technical words and its result…

The Dutch, Indonesians and the U.N. Commission for Indonesia met to put the finishing touches on a Dutch-Indonesian agreement. The Dutch would peacefully return capital Jogjakarta.

In the roof-garden ballroom of Batavia’s elegantly seedy Hotel des Indes, 40 white-suited delegates and aides representing the Dutch, the Indonesians and the U.N. Commission for Indonesia met one evening last week to put the finishing touches on a Dutch-Indonesian agreement. After a quiet 45 minutes in the steamy 90°…

Two bearded, 32-year-old Moslem missionaries in the Hague try to convert Dutch people to the moslem faith. Not rather succesful, in two years, they have made ten Dutch converts.

Early evening crowds thronged the neon-lighted sidewalks of the Spui (The Hague’s Broadway). Many of them were moviegoers, eagerly getting down from busily clanging streetcars to see Song of My Heart, Fallen Idol, or Till the Clouds Roll By. A few, however, drifted unobtrusively towards a second-floor meeting room of…

The Germans started a Dutch opera with native singers and musicians and the Dutch loved it. At war’s end, they decided to keep it.

It took a national military defeat and four years of German rule to make the Dutch take grand opera and like it. It was not that Holland had plugged its dikes against all music: it has long had fine Bach societies and a great symphony orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam…

Twelve nations are signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty, among them, the Netherlands.

Twelve nations are signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Determined to “safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples,” they resolved to “unite their efforts for . . . the preservation…

Delegates assembled for a conference in The Hague to solve the Indonesian problem. Most hopeful aspect was that both sides knew they could not get what they wanted by force.

The Hague blossomed with bronze faces and bright native costumes last week as some 200 Dutch and Indonesian delegates assembled for a round-table conference in The Netherlands’ staid capital. With the U.N.’s Commission for Indonesia looking on, the delegates in The Hague’s ancient Hall of Knights expected to spend…

Because The Netherlands’ economy is geared more closely to Britain’s than to those of her continental allies, the Benelux countries still had no coordinated monetary policy.

Everybody was talking integration. In Paris, ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman had urgently warned Western Europe that it must take steps to integrate its separate economies (TIME, Nov. 7). Barely had Hoffman returned to the U.S., when Secretary of State Dean Acheson took off for Paris. For two days this week he…

After four years of bitter fighting and endless negotiations, it looks as Indonesia would get the freedom it wanted, though both continue to cooperate with each other.

A few hours before dawn, a bleary-eyed night porter at The Hague’s stuffy Hotel des Indes (named for The Netherlands’ once vast and profitable colonies) opened the heavy oaken door for a weary guest, who went promptly to his room, and to sleep. He was slim, patient Jan Herman van…

Electors of one of each 16 states that make up the new federated republic of the United States of Indonesia casted their votes for the U.S.I.’s first President Soekarno, the only candidate.

The ceremonies at Jogjakarta went off with the fine precision of a Javanese ritual dance. The electors took their places around a U-shaped table, behind signs lettered in the republican colors of red and white; each stood for one of the 16 states that make up the new federated republic…

In Amsterdam Juliana ended 340 years of Dutch rule in Indonesia. In Indonesia people removed any rememberance of Dutch colonialism.

In Amsterdam’s Royal Palace one morning last week, 335 frock-coated Dutch and Indonesian officials gathered around a green baize table to hear Juliana, Queen of The Netherlands, end 340 years of Dutch rule in Indonesia. Juliana entered the palace hall followed by her husband, Prince Bernhard. From her crimson-upholstered…

Stikker, a selfcalled multilateral diplomatist, will be the new ’super-boss’ of the OECC, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation.

Two weeks ago, ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman set out for Europe with the avowed intention of seeking some tangible progress on European integration which might impress the U.S. Congress. His program for the 18 Marshall Plan members included: 1) abolition of double pricing (one price for domestic consumption, another for exports)…

A report on Suriname where Prince Bernhard arrived to congratulate the 21 Parliament members on their new autonomy in home affairs.

Circling the Caribbean on a good-will mission, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands last week set his red-nosed, silver-skinned DC-3 down in the only Netherlands territory on the American continent. Surinam, the middle of the three Guianas on South America’s north coast, gave the Prince a gaudily polyglot greeting.

Along the…

Old Dutch commando force leader Raymond Westerling was jailed in Singapore. U.S.I. officials demanded he be sent to Jakarta, to be tried for “crimes perpetrated by him in Indonesia.”

In Istanbul some 30 years ago, a baby was born to a Dutch antique dealer named Westerling and his Greek wife. Frére Adolphe, who afterwards taught young Raymond Westerling in Istanbul’s French Catholic St. Joseph school, recalled that he was “a mild, well-mannered, moon-faced little boy.” Raymond’s later development was…

As the first European sovereign to make a state visit to France since World War II, Queen Juliana of The Netherlands was treated to the full red carpet in Paris.

“There is an intimation at the women’s colleges that a counter-reformation which could become the hope of the Republic may be under way,” Author Bernard De-Voto (Across the Wide Missouri) observed in Harper’s. “Jeans are no longer universal wear and no one now loses caste by washing her neck ….

Should newsmen be licensed as lawyers and doctors are? Proposals to license them are pending in Belgium and The Netherlands.

Should newsmen be licensed as lawyers and doctors are? Proposals to license them are pending in Belgium and The Netherlands, and in Italy journalists must now register with the Ministry of Justice. Last week in Rome, Editor Erwin Canham of the Christian Science Monitor warned an international congress of journalists…