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But there is also work to be done—rubber to be tapped in Sumatra, oil to be drilled for in Borneo and Java, tin to be dug in Bangka. Coffee, tea, tobacco, sugar, rice are the more ordinary products; but copra as a basis for facial creams, lizard skins for shoes and handbags, Sumatra wrappers for cigars, cinchona bark for quinine, sandalwood and teakwood, ebony and macassar oil, and even the bare-breasted women of Bali, tourist paradise, do their full share in making this Netherlands overseas a going concern.
One-sixth. To gather in these riches, colonial Dutchmen are rewarded as handsomely as any similar group in the world. In 1935, of 85,000 Europeans earning a living in the East Indies, some 64,000 were taxed on incomes of more than $4,500 a year; 22,500 between $20,000 and $60,000 a year. But more significant was what this trade did to The Netherlands. Dutch investments in the East Indies were valued at $1,158,000,000. And today one-sixth of The Netherlands' population is dependent upon the colonial trade and but for it The Netherlands would probably have a lot more than 400,000 unemployed.
Almost all the well-to-do families in The Netherlands have their East Indian securities, and not the least investor is the House of Orange-Nassau. Century ago King William I invested $1,600,000 in the East. Large profits accrued, the capital multiplied many times again. Wilhelmina, an astute business woman herself, is a large owner of tin mines, just as she has a moneyed finger in the pie of nearly every enterprise of magnitude in Holland. Her income was once estimated at $5,000,000 a year, making her by far the richest monarch of Europe.
Worried. Wilhelmina therefore has every possible stake in getting her country safely through World War II. A devout Christian, she can hardly be in sympathy with the moral or spiritual aims of either Hitler or Hirohito. Orderly, she is excruciatingly shocked by the international disorders of this, her second, World War. Thrifty and patriotic, she must hang on to her and her country's fortunes to the last drop of her Dutch blood. Helpless, about all she can do is keep one face East, one face West, and hope.
*Another famed exile to whom Wilhelmina gave sanctuary was Kaiser Wilhelm II, of Germany, at the close of the first World War. The Allies wanted to get their hands on him and try him. Wilhelmina called the Allied Ambassadors to her presence and lectured them on the rights of asylum.