"Shoot on Sight!"

Anything but placid these days are good Queen Wilhelmina's Netherlands. Sharpshooting soldiers and crunching tanks were needed fortnight ago to crush Communist riots at Amsterdam where eight died and an old deaf woman went down with two bullets in her back (TIME, July 16). Last week more threats of disturbance in Rotterdam caused a large section of the city to be clapped under a state of alarm. In the Crooswyk quarter, where Communists were expected to demonstrate, troops moved in under orders to "Shoot on sight anyone who appears in the streets.'' When it came time for school children to go home the military police were ordered not to shoot at them, but otherwise to make no exceptions.

Two days later Communist Deputies in the Dutch Parliament demanded a debate on the Amsterdam riots and the issue that is breeding trouble: reduction by Her Majesty's Government of dole payments to an average of $6 per unemployed family per week. Boomed Premier Dr. Hendrik Colijn, "We do not consent to debate this issue." By a vote of 58 to 24 he was upheld and scowling Dutch proletarians cursed their Queen.

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