Word: wilhelmina
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Fifteen years after Wilhelmina ascended the throne World War I began. The British blockade induced a grave food shortage. Trade was completely disrupted and the country was overrun with refugees. Dutch ships were sunk and by 1918 what ships still floated abroad had been seized by the Allies. Only bright spots on The Netherlands' horizon were that: 1) although the Germans considered invading the country, they eventually decided against it, partly because the Dutch had effectively remodeled their land defenses, partly because Germany, already at the Belgian Channel ports, had money and used it to buy supplies in neutral...
...provinces, which lie next to Belgium. This was averted not only by the Queen's dramatic tour of these provinces but also by the presence in Versailles of two South African statesmen of Boer origin, Generals Colin Graham Botha and Jan Christiaan Smuts. They remembered that it was Wilhelmina who in 1900 defied the British by sending a Dutch warship to pick up Boer Leader Paul Kruger and bring him to safety in Europe...
Realism. No one has given Wilhelmina more trouble in recent years than Adolf Hitler, and from no ruler has the Führer taken, at times, such straight talk. She protested in a personal letter to Herr Hitler the death sentence passed on Marinus van Der Lubbe, the Dutch Communist, for his alleged part in the famed Reichstag fire. When the Nazis confiscated the passports of German bridesmaids and guests to her daughter's wedding, she stated with quiet directness: "This is the marriage of my daughter to the man she loves, whom I have found worthy...
Rich at Home. In the course of Wilhelmina's reign The Netherlands' population has risen from 5,000,000 to 8,500,000. More important, the country has changed from a predominantly agricultural to an increasingly industrial nation. Cheese, butter and tulip bulbs are still important exports, just as windmills, wooden shoes, dikes are still a part of the Dutch landscape. But more typical of The Netherlands in the 20th Century are its huge international banks, its thriving merchants, its busy manufacturers...
...islands, home of orangutans, Komodo dragons, hornbills and headhunters, producer of pearls, spices, rare woods, stretches 1,300 miles from North to South, 3,000 from East to West and are inhabited by 60,000,000 brown-bodied souls, not counting some 1,500,000 Asiatics and Europeans. Queen Wilhelmina has never visited her Eastern Empire (although one of New Guinea's highest peaks is named for her), but she can hardly fail to appreciate what a windfall came to her little country the day in 1602 when daring adventurers of the Dutch East India...