An entire realm of human activity will be obliterated in an act of wholesale abdication to machines.
His flight from approaching British troops was described in the local press, somewhat unfairly, as a cowardly act of abdication.
Some of the men later said that they felt this was an act of cowardice, an abdication.
AMSTERDAM — To the cheers of tens of thousands of people crammed shoulder to shoulder outside the royal palace here, Willem-Alexander of the House of Orange-Nassau became the Netherlands' first king in 123 years on Tuesday as his mother, Queen Beatrix, ended a 33-year reign with the stroke of a pen, signing the act of abdication in an ornate chamber at the palace.
Upon delivering the abdication document to a messenger, he said: "Here you have my act of abdication, I'm returning to Europe and leaving a country that I loved very much, and still love".
The act of abdication was signed in the Royal Palace on Dam Square in central Amsterdam, which is full of orange-clad crowds, many wearing inflatable orange crowns.
Three historical documents signed at the château were the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV (1685); the concordat between France and Rome (1814); and (in the same year) Napoleon's act of abdication.
To-day the Act of Abdication will be passed by both Houses of Parliament, and to-night King Edward will give it the royal assent - his last act as King.
The act that defined her for history — her suicide — should be regarded as an act of political courage, not of maternal abdication: They were such different creatures — but there could be other solutions other than suicide.
