BELGIAN SITUATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 166, 15 June 1936, Page 7

BELGIAN SITUATION.

NEW CABINET FORMED. IDEAS POOLED. BRUSSELLS, Juno 13. M. Van Zeeland, the former Prime Minister, has formed a Cabinet consisting of six Socialists, three Liberals, and five Catholics. The strike fever is spreading and the Government have mobilised a reserve corps of gendarmes to prevent the oceupation of factories. The strike situation was so grave that the King urgently summoned M. Van Zeeland to the palace and again asked him to try to form a Government. M. Van Zeeland promised to do his utmost and to have a Government by to-day which would ‘‘face the situation fearlessly.” The King personally appealed to Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal leaders to support M. Van Zeeland. , , , M. Van Zeeland’s Cabinet includes the Socialist leader, M. Vandervelds, as vice-President of the Council. 3 lie programme lias been selected from the best of each party’s programme at the recent election and aims at simplification of legislation, finance for the completion of economic reconstruction, cleaning up politics, and control oi munition works and monopolies such as electricity. It will consider the demand for a 40-hour week, especially in dangerous and unhealthy trades, lnit M. Van Zeeland urges that it should not generally be adopted until other industrial' nations have internationally agreed on it. Troops have taken over police duf.es at Antwerp, where 15,000 docks inid 2000 diamond cutters are on strike. The coal strike at Liege has spread tu the large fields around Mons.

MINERS ON STRIKE. Received .Tune 15. 8.55 a.m. BRUSSELS, June 14. After a fruitless conference at which the conlovvners rejected the miners’ demand for a 10 percent, increase in pay, the miners announced that a general strike will begin on June 15. At Antwerp the tug hands have joined the striking dockers and refuse to assist cargo vessels to leave port.