Word: prewar
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Then came the amendments. Indiana's Homer Capehart wanted the loan reduced to $1.5 billion. California's William F. Knowland tried to bar the loan until U.S. production had reached prewar levels and the budget showed a surplus. Vermont's George Aiken suggested another: wipe out the British Empire preference system...
Fuel is still scarce. Wilhelmina, like her subjects, got only half a ton of coal last winter. But production in the Limburg mines is coming back; in 1947 it should reach seven-ninths of the prewar output, and be almost normal...
...more important that the Dutch concentrate on getting back their prewar share of the world's ocean trade, because that would bring foreign exchange to buy raw materials to reconstruct, expand. The U.S. loan negotiations had gone smoothly -$200,000,000, half of it from Washington, half from private U.S. banks. The interest rate, 2¼%, expressed U.S. confidence in The Netherlands' future...
...relief sent Holland. The Danes gave Bernhard and Juliana the prized Order of the Elephant. Grateful but rueful, Bernhard commented privately: "There are two kinds of decorations-those for valor and those for banqueting; I get all the eating decorations." Wilhelmina, who used to disapprove of Bernhard's prewar frivolity (he even drank cocktails on Sunday) now thinks so much of him that she lets him smoke in her dining room...
...Dutch know that they have a hard road ahead. Viewing their Indonesian empire more as businessmen than as politicians, they are quite willing to give it political independence, assuming that the Indonesians will not disturb heavy Dutch investments (prewar estimate: nearly $2 billion). They feel keenly that they cannot be isolated or made immune from the ideological and economic storms that trouble the world. But the Dutch also remember that they have faced danger for centuries-the danger of the sea and the danger of a land divided by intense religious differences. They count on Wilhelmina to help them through...