JAVA: I Deeply Regret

Queen Wilhelmina, looking tired and strained, had a word for her seething Indonesian subjects last week. In her first speech from the throne in six years, she addressed them across the distant barricades. Promising—as she had promised before (TIME, Dec. 14, 1942)—partnership in a “Netherlands Commonwealth,” she said: “Ideas of revenge do not possess us, nor does the establishment of colonial domination. . . .

“I am greatly concerned about Java. I follow the fate of the innumerable children, women and men . . . who are in danger of their lives and still not liberated from the threat of the confused masses. I deeply regret the sorrows that will inevitably have been inflicted upon the population of Java before order and tranquility have been restored. . . .”