Round-up information in the neutral European nations. In The NL. the earth was hard as brick; canals and flooded lands, which Holland counts on to defend her, were sheets of ice.

Late last August Europe went through its last great pre-war crisis—terminated by war in Poland and the west. Late last November Europe went through another less spectacular crisis—terminated by war in Finland. Last week Europe was in the midst of another crisis.

The seriousness of the latest crisis…

Nazi ships near Curaçao are forced to anchor outside Willemstad’s drawbridged harbor, because the Dutch are afraid they might sabotage oil stored in the islands by Royal Dutch Co.

In November 1861, when the U. S. Civil War was just getting going. Captain Charles Wilkes of the Union Navy, commanding the screw sloop San Jacinto, fired a shot across the bows of the British Royal Mail packet Trent as she steamed along the Bahama Channel. The Trent hove to…

Queen Wilhelmina speeched about “a radical renewal in the life of every individual,” which was heard in Manhattan and in perhaps 500 U.S. cities.

In The Hague one day last week, a devout Calvinist (with Buchmanite leanings) stepped up to a microphone and radiorated. Said Wilhelmina, Queen of The Netherlands: “In our present time the very first need is that of a radical renewal in the life of every individual. This only can be…

Panic seized in Europe. The Dutch fear military weakness, strategic importance of the country for Germany, and the greatest internal danger, the Dutch Nazi-Party.

Restless spring had come at last to Europe, and last week Europe’s peoples were on the move. The tall fighting people of Germany marched into Denmark and Norway and some of the peaceful people of those countries—refugees, frightened liberals, Jews—fled to Sweden. From Malmö in Sweden, a short…

The Netherlands did not arrest Anton Mussert, but old Dutch General Jonkheer W. Roell. They also began raiding Dutch Nazis’ homes for arms and uniforms.

“Major Quisling,” said the London Times last week, “has added a new word to the English language. . . . Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous. Visually it has the supreme merit of beginning with a Q, which (with one august exception) has long seemed…

Japan said it would protect the islands of the NL.-Indies, in case powers might threaten her. Netherlands Foreign Minister said that the NL.-Indies wanted no protection from anybody.

Prettiest seat on the fence from which Japan, Russia and Italy are watching World War II is enjoyed by Japan. Last week she showed every sign of squirming pleasurably upon it—even a few signs of eagerness to climb down.

First of all Tokyo newspapers broke into one of their…

Juliana went to a football match to show how to be calm. Army’s commander in chief, Winckelman ordered the licensing of publishers and sellers of all printed matter.

For the first time in her pious life, plump Princess Juliana turned up at a Sunday football game in Amsterdam last week—to show her nervous countrymen how to be calm in a crisis. To show that the crisis was passing, the Army ordered that monthly four-day leaves be resumed…

Dutch military authorities arrested 21 fifth columnists. Premier De Geer said they were dangerous to the peace and security of the NL. Nazi Chief Anton Adrian Mussert was not arrested.

After watching their fifth column’s maneuvers for three weeks (TIME, May 6 et ante), Dutch military authorities last week swooped down on suspect strongholds in The Hague, Haarlem, Amsterdam. They carted away and interned 21 Nazis, Communists, etc., including National Socialist Party Editor M. M. Rost van Tonninggen, member of…

The U.S. faces a changing world. Germany invaded the NL. In the West-Indies refineries are protected by the French. In the East-Indies German ships were seized by the Dutch.

We . . . believe in a civilization of construction and not of destruction. . . . Can we continue our peaceful construction if all the other continents embrace by preference or by compulsion a wholly different principle of life?

That question President Roosevelt last week asked of 2,500 delegates…

Report on Nazi invasion of The Netherlands. The Dutch were forced back to their secondary Grebbe Line.

On the evening of May 9 last week, Adolf Hitler went to a cinema in Berlin, a sentimental musical film like The Student Prince. His No. 2 man, Field Marshal Hermann Goring, and Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels attended the premiere of Cavour, a play on which Benito Mussolini, onetime…

With The Netherlands at war, Japan might cut off the supply of rubber and tin from The Netherlands-Indies, from where the U. S. gets major portions of the two strategic materials.

Far out on the Pacific last week lay the U. S. battle fleet, its maneuvers completed, its next job not yet laid out. Beyond the battle fleet and across the Pacific many a U. S. businessman cast an uneasy mind’s eye. For south and east from the foot of Thailand…

At 6:58 p.m. on May 14, The Netherlands was told she had capitulated, General Winkelman announced.

The little Dutch boy who saved his country by plugging the dike with his fist was missing last week. His duty this time would have been to blow up the Moerdijk Bridge, longest on the Continent, connecting Rotterdam and the heart of The Netherlands with south Holland across the…

Months prior to the invasion the Dutch quietly and succesfully moved their valuable possessions outside the country.

Last week the wry-crossed flag of Germany floated blood-red over counting houses and office buildings where Continental Europe’s No. 1 commercial nation. The Netherlands, had transacted the rich business of her vast empire. But bare as a tooth socket was many a captured vault and till. For months their contents…

Nazi invaders drove Wilhelmina to England. Most notable refugee of World War I, Wilhelm II, did not fled and stayed in The Netherlands.

n 1918 the most notable refugee of World War I reached safety in The Netherlands, just in time, settled at Doom. Last week the world was significantly reminded that Adolf Hitler regards World

War II as the continuation of World War I when, at his special orders, his mechanical cavalry…

Reporters returning to Berlin saw life went on in the NL., but admitted that the Protestant Dutch taught all Europe 350 years ago that foreign domination could be resisted and overthrown.

Last week tall, tart Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von Falkenhausen, who as Chiang Kai-shek’s chief military adviser once taught Chinese troops to goose-step, took over the military Government of the Low Countries for Adolf Hitler. At the same time Berlin let it be known that Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart of Austria…