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On her first state appearance after liberation, the once regally gowned Wilhelmina turned up in an old coat and a pair of green woolen gloves. The once socially aloof Wilhelmina invited a Miss Marianne Tellegen to be head of her personal cabinet. Miss Tellegen had no social standing whatever; she had merely been a heroine of the Dutch resistance, living for four years next door to Gestapo headquarters in Utrecht.
Wilhelmina gets around these days more than she ever did. She talks to coal miners and politicians and sailors and wounded resistance men. Every member of her Cabinet knows that she knows more about the Dutch people than he does. One subject defended Wilhelmina with a nationally typical understatement: "She is good to the sick and costs no more than a president."
The 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, smiling in the midst of present want and inconveniences as they tell themselves: "When there is a good woman in the house, joy laughs from the window."