Word: queenly
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Before long the placid inhabitants of the placid Dutch seat of government were spreading the news that for some unexplained reason-and they feared the reason was ominous-Leopold III, King of the Belgians, was paying an unheralded visit to their Queen Wilhelmina. Despite a constant drizzle, a sizable crowd gathered on the sidewalks outside Her Majesty's little Palace...
Last week, with Nazi troops and airplanes still massing just across the frontier, with the Nazi press barraging The Netherlands for not fighting harder against Great Britain's sea blockade, and with a possible Nazi threat about airplanes hanging over Queen Wilhelmina's head (see p. 17), The Netherlands High Command stepped on the starter of its defense engines, set them idling alertly though still strictly in neutral...
Despite reassurances from The Hague and from Brussels, where King Leopold conferred long & often with his ministers and generals after returning from his sudden visit to Queen Wilhelmina, nervousness and foreboding continued through the weekend. Despite repeated German denials, all intelligence reports agreed that Adolf Hitler was planning to move somewhere, soon and suddenly, in the West. Logic for his striking through The Netherlands was compelling. With the Belgian border fortified against him almost as strongly as the French, the Dutch dike was his weakest target. His objective would not necessarily be the turning of the Allied flank but acquisition...
...take Flushing and other coastal points south of the river deltas, enjoying the Dutch flood zone as protection for their right flank from any counterattack. The likelihood of this attack, and its obvious menace to Belgium, was believed last week to have led King Leopold to tell Queen Wilhelmina that if the Germans invaded her land, his troops would have to occupy her southeastern corner to meet them. Also, it was understood, he would invite the British and French to cross Belgium to back...
Otherwise, Bette Davis, except in her scenes with Francis Bacon, ably acted by Donald Crisp, dominates the picture as singlehandedly as Elizabeth dominated England. For though slow-smiling, boyish Errol Flynn in a pair of seven-league boots will flutter more hearts than the Queen's, dramatically he leaves the impression that, in chopping off his head, Elizabeth is performing one of the more sensible acts of her reign...