Down to the Hook of Holland went good Queen Wilhelmina and had a good cry with Crown Princess Juliana who rushed home from England last week at news of the death by heart failure of her father, Dutch Prince Consort Henry (TIME, July 9). The two women drove at once to The Hague and sat an hour with the corpse. In this sad hour Dutch proletarians might have buried their quarrel with Her Majesty's Government over recent dole payment cuts. Instead they chose to erupt at Amsterdam in savage riots which spread through 17 districts and forced Her Majesty to order out troops with machine-guns and tanks.
Canny Dutchmen, the rioters began by looting sellers of building supplies, built high bullet-proof barricades. They screamed charges that the stinginess of Her Majesty's Government is an outrage and the recent cut of the dole to an average of $6 per unemployed family per week is a crime. A group of Communist Deputies rushed to the government offices shouting, "We demand to see the Minister of Interior!"
"Go and stop the riots," they were told. ''Then perhaps His Excellency will see you."
As 500 grim Dutch troops and state police moved into Amsterdam they got the order: "Show no quarter."
Civilians ran for cover as officers roared "Get off the streets!" An old woman in a black bonnet jaywalked directly in front. From mourning Her Majesty had to turn to machine-guns of a Dutch platoon. She went down with two bullets in her back. "Merciful Jesus!" cried a householder. "She was deaf."
"Keep your windows closed!" was the next order, to discourage snipers. Dutch troopers enforced it by firing with abandon into every open window they saw in the strike districts. Then tanks arrived. Cr-r-r-unch—down went the workmen's barricades and bayonet work began in earnest. On the fourth night Amsterdam's hospitals were full and eight deaths had been chalked up but the "Dole Riot" seemed about over.
When a dike bursts or God otherwise afflicts her people Queen Wilhelmina is at once upon the scene. Last week she left Amsterdam to her devoted troops and police and went on with preparations to give Consort Henry the sort of funeral he had said he wanted. When he came as a bridegroom to Holland in 1901, Prince Henry, fourth son of the late reigning Duke of Mecklenburg, was considered by the Dutch people most handsome but too frivolous. He introduced boar hunting and Dutch farmers were furious. But Prince Henry proved adaptable. He learned to sit expressionless beside Her Majesty in the State Coach, looking neither to right nor left, while she did the bowing and smiling. Dutchmen nodded grave approval when the Queen was reported to have said: "At home, I am a devoted wife to him but in government he is my loyal subject." During his 30's the Prince Consort, stricken with rheumatism and neurasthenia, suffered long periods of despondency, turned his mind to Boy Scouts and the Red Cross. His dying request: "I desire a white funeral." Queen Wilhelmina announced that on the day of the funeral this week she and Crown Princess Juliana will wear white and the Prince Consort's white hearse will be drawn by white horses.