Word: geers
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...Netherlands Cabinet held a special meeting under old Premier Dirk Jan de Geer, decided that it would cancel all Army leaves. Since the usual Army leave is four days a month, this increased the Army's strength by some 10% to 400,000 men. The usually phlegmatic Dutch thought it necessary to point out that frozen canals were a very good defense indeed, since troops could be machine-gunned crossing them. It sounded like whistling in the dark...
...they "must now say whether they are willing to oppose English power politics." Most of the talk of neutral battlefields-both German and British-was aimed at Scandinavia, but The Netherlands was also under pressure. In a shaky New Year's broadcast shaky old Premier Dirk Jan de Geer exclaimed...
Premier: Dr. Dirk Jan de Geer...
Into Jonkheer de Geer's Cabinet went the mistake-makers, representatives of parties holding 73 of the Lower Chamber's 100 seats. Only die-hard Tories, Communists and Nazis were left out. There were two members of the Christian Historical Party, two Catholics, two Socialists, four independents. Bald, scholarly Johan Willem Albarda, head of the Socialist Party in the Lower Chamber for 14 years, became Minister of Public Works, thus leading the Socialists into a Netherlands Cabinet for the first time despite that party's regular claim to 20% of the country's vote...
...alarmed at the calamities mounting up for The Netherlands' empire-four Cabinet crises in three months, a threat to the rich Netherlands Indies with every increase of Japanese influence in Asia, pressure from Germany, a mounting financial panic at home. Two days after they took office Jonkheer de Geer's gravity was justified. The Netherlands' leading investment banking house closed its doors...