Thursday, 11 January

Dull, 10°C

Eisenhower went to the Netherlands yesterday and learnt that the Dutch now have an army of sixty thousand men, but their military hardware is poor. If the United States could supply them with ammunitions, it was hoped that three divisions could be formed within this year. The Dutch Prime Minister, Willem Drees, is completely a Socialist, and absolutely not enthusiastic about reorganization in the army. The troops which were evacuated from the Dutch Netherlands recently were one hundred and twenty thousand men in total.  Their service was overdue so many of them retired from the army. Also, they have no experience at all in mechanized warfare and need to be retrained. So, one can see the work of Eisenhower in Europe would be difficult.