51 Guns

For over a month, enough shiny brass blank cartridges for a 101-gun salute have been piled by the saluting batteries of every Dutch army post from Amsterdam to Bali. They were to signal that Crown Princess Juliana had given the House of Orange its first male heir in generations. Last week the batteries finally boomed out but the Government saved 50 shells from each, for like her mother and grandmother before her, Crown Princess Juliana's first baby was a 51-gun, blue-eyed, fair-haired girl.

Even more money was saved by worried department-store owners and souvenir manufacturers. Forgetting their Princess' national trait of doing things thoroughly, but slowly, thousands of souvenir baby spoons, mugs, cups and porringers had been made, almost all of them marked "January 1938." Days passed with no news from rural Soesdijk Palace before which stood a silent crowd, forbidden by palace officials to shout, or even to stamp their feet to keep warm. Finally with less than 24 hours of January left to make the birthday mugs legitimate, the Princess' Princess was born.

Juliana took it calmly. Fortnight before the baby was born she telephoned a friend in London: "Why everybody is making such a fuss as to whether I'm going to have a boy or not, I can't understand. I don't care myself. I'm going to have a dozen children, and sooner or later I'll have a boy."

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