Last week 69-year-old Jonkheer Dirk Jan de Geer, leader of The Netherlands' Christian Historical Party, talked like a Dutch uncle to his parliamentary colleagues. They had just turned in a vote of no confidence in old Dr. Hendrikus Colijn, thereby throwing out a Ministry that had lasted two days. Basic issue was unemployment relief: Catholics and Socialists wanted to know why, if the Government could spend $165,000,000 on three new cruisers, it could not spend $17,000,000 on Holland's 350,000 unemployed.
Catholics and Socialists could combine to put conservative Dr. Colijn out, but neither was strong enough to put anyone else in. Traditional parliamentary behavior for such conservatives as Jonkheer de Geer would have been to watch Catholic and Socialist leaders flounder through the attempt, gleefully call attention to each failure, assuming that the increasing confusion would in the long run mean more votes for the Christian Historical Party. Instead, Jonkheer de Geer, who voted against the motion of no confidence, was asked by Queen Wilhelmina to form a Cabinet. Thin, mustached, respected, severe, a shade less conservative than Dr. Colijn, Jonkheer de Geer reluctantly accepted. But, he told his colleagues, the vote of no confidence was a mistake, since it threatened to continue political chaos. "I love my country too much to want those who made this mistake to be compelled to bear its full consequences. At this moment this would be too dangerous from a national as well as an international point of view."
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.
No sudden change of heart brought these strange bedfellows together. They were 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.