The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-03-26
IUNVE|L MONUMENT ID JULIEN VICTORIA Ceremony Will Usher in the Great Coronation
 -e MOURNING TIME OVER Speculation Is Rife Regarding the New Era in English Society.
 Australian Expedition
 Is Planned
MOURNING TIME OVER


 act as a curtain raiser to the magnificent coronation festivities that have already l put the stald old city on London into state of feverish excitement. small army of workmen are already taking down the scaffolding around the Victoria monument that has for 50 long been an eyesore to the royal residents at Buck l ingham, and the Lord Chahmberlan's de-
 partment is busy preparing the pro- gramme of the unveiing, which will be l conducted with all the pomp of full state ceremony, owing to the presence of the Kaiser and Kaiserin and their daugh-
 ter, besides every member of the British royal family, representatives of all Euro
 pean courts and the whole corps diplo- matique.
 As the Kaiser and Kaserin will stay
 few days with King George and Queen Mary court ball may be given in honor
 of Princess Victoria Louise and there will be a dramatic entertainment at the
 Royal theatre in Drury Lane on Wednes-
 day, May +, which will be attended by the whole court and their royal and im-
 perial guests.
 l Now that the long period of official
 mourning is over English society passes | the threshold of new era, but what it's
 influence is to be must necessarily re-
 main, for the moment, matter of spec
 ulation.
 l It is long since a comparatively young
 king and queen have reigned in England. | fA 1yfr and GI1nn 1axyo or,Ir xrar past the meridian of life when they came l to the throne and their court and entour- age were chiefly composed of their con temporaries, who, for the most part had
 not only left the amusement of early youth behind them, but whose sons and
 daughters were married and had families
 of their own. Nevertheless King Edward,
 who had at heart the revival of social
 activities in the interest of the communi- l ty at large, encouraged his greater sub
 jects to give the example Tn the matter of entertainment and himself attended
 balls and like functions, In which he could
 scarcely be supposed to find much per
 sonal diversion. | In fact his share of such amusements was generally limited to the royal quad rille, after which he retired to q quiet
 rubber of bridge. Unquestionably bril-
 liant though 1t was, the Buckingham pal l ace environment was naturally composed 1 of men and women of an age more or
 less nearly approaching that of the sover-
 eigns. Very young people of either sex
 had but little part or lot therein, and by l the force of circumstances they remained
 to.a great extent In the background idup- ing the last reign It is on record that
 at a ball some i've or six years ago the
 majority of the ladies present had at- tained to the dignity of ofsgrandmotherhood.
 With the kind and queen very much younger than their predecessors on the
 throne a more youthful atmosphere will certainly surround the court than has
 been the case for some time past. Their
 majesties' personal friends and the mem
 bers of their household are for the most
 part5very nearly. of an age with them
 selves, and in two or three years time, when the Prince of Wales and his sister. | Princess Mary, are old enough to particl- pate in social gaities the younger element
 will come to the front in a way which
 has not been seen at the English court
 since the days3of George III.
 MT. Douglas Nfawson, who accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his Antarctic 1 expedition and shared its greatest dangers and successes is now in London com
 rleting arrangements for an Australian
 expedition to the south
 | Scientific research and the discovery of commercial possibilities are its main ob- iects. For this MT. Mawson is exception
 ally well equipped. He is a gradute in
 mining engineering and when he joined. the Shakleton expedition he was lecturer
 in mineraiogy and petrology at Adelaide
 university.
 "This is not a south pole expedition" said Mir Mawson to me. What we want
 to do is to establish 2400 miles of unknown
 coast line and fix 1t on the map. West of Cape Adere de Caussberg. the German l Antarctic expedition's headquarters, and
 beyond 1t the coast line of the Antarctic | continent is unknown. There may, how ever, be possibilities in it. and Australia
 should have the chance of these" 1 Dr. Mawson hopes to start in November and spend two summers and one winter
 on the expedition The cost, it is esti- mated. will be about s9O0.oo0, and this sum
 is being raised in Australia. Thirty thou l sand dollars was subscribed in five days l In Bermondsey, within stones throw i of Tower bridge, stands church crypt
 which is a charnal house. Eight hundred mouldering coffns are packed away in | the crypt with only thin layer of earth above them. and the clergy are now ap- plying to the local government board to have them refnONeu.
 'There may be anything up to 1000 cos | fins in the crypt said one of the clergy | today. "No one can say positively how many there are. You can only estimate | the number. They are packed away, one above the other, like biscuits in a tin. At the top is a thin layer of earth. don't think this top coating of earth was more than a foot in depth, and now it is little more substantial than sprinkling of gravel in places. The wooden collins have long since moudered away and now the lead shells are dropping to pieces. No burias have taken place in the crypt for the last 70 years, am told, 1t Is most extraordinary that collins should ever have been buried in that fashion in the crypt. These are not coffns which have been moved into crypt from the churchyard because when the church. yard was cleared of the dead the bodies were transferred to a cemetery in the country
 The church yard is now one of the open spaces in the borough. In the sum- | mer it is swarming with children. and it 1 Is a scandal that this practically open crypt should be in their midst" Birmingham. the very stronghold of protection in England, Joseph Chamber lain impregnable castle, Is to have the rails for the extension of its street car system made in Germany and all the free trade papers of England are having fun of the city council, that to save an amount of s45oO have awarded the con tract of supplying the rails after satis- flying itself that wages paid the German AL