One of the 565 members of the crew of the Holland-America liner Rotterdam is a Communist, refused last week in Manhattan to sign the crew's round-robin message of congratulation to Crown Princess Juliana of The Netherlands on the birth of her first child (TIME, Feb. 7). Explained other members of the crew afterward: "We popped that Communist stoker on the nose. The Rotterdam is a royalist ship!"
Meanwhile, at rural Soestdyk, modern-minded Prince Consort Bernhard apparently successfully insisted that his newborn daughter be named Beatrix (which means "She That Makes Happy") Wilhelmina Armgard.
It would vex many solid Netherlanders should they ever find themselves with a Queen having such a name as Beatrix, and Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina was understood to have made last week this firm stipulation: should Princess Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard ever come to the throne it will be as "Queen Wilhelmina."
Chorus of one of the first Dutch popular songs composed to honor the newborn Princess is intelligible only if one knows that a riks is a coin worth 2½ gulden. The chorus:
Beatrix! Beatrix!
This gulden grows into riks!
Not solemn in this joyous week, Netherlanders were rocking with laughter in their cafés at Dutch wags who thought up elaborate jokes like this: A man keeps his hat on as others take theirs off to toast Princess Beatrix, then, just as people begin to give him angry looks, takes off his hat and reveals he is wearing a "baby" hat underneath exactly resembling its "parent."