The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-06-08
QUEEN AND PRINCE INDIGNANT OVER
 CONDITIONS FOUND
 IN LONDON SUMS
s'Terrible," Says the Queen; ''Damnable," Says Prince of Wales Following a Trip of Personal
 Inspection
By HAYDEN CHURCH.

London, May 29.-(SpeciaI)-If the 1oathsome slums that disgrace London and other great British cities are not swept away during the next few years and replaced by dwellings in which the working classes can live in comfort and cleanliness, and at rentals within their means, it will certainly not be the fault of King George and QueeN Mary, tor of the heir to the throne, the Prince Of Wales.
 There is no more urgent after-the-war question facing Great Britain than this one of housing, of replacing the mean and dingy novels and rookeries in which ESQ large a percentage of the masses of the population are forced to exist and for l the occupancy of which they are fleeced ! hy greedy landlords by homes in which they can take pride. Recent events have slade it plain that no one realizes this more acutely than King George and his big hearted, sympathetic and extreme ly practical minded consort, Queen Mary
 The queen, as a matter of fact has been the prime mover of late in bringing fhe question of the better housing of the working classes to the fore and seeplng it there, and her lead in this direction IS already being followed in a fashion that is likely to have important reblts.
 Ever since she and her husband came to the throne, the queen has shown, III a characteristically practical fashion that the welfare and happiness of the num- blest of her subjects lie very near to her heart and are the frequent subject or her thought and quite recently an elo- nuent appeal which came to her notiee gave this royal woman, good mother anu experienced housewife the opportunity for which she had been seeking of making personal study of the whole question oi housing with view to it's solution.
 The appeal mentioned was made by notable man and extraordinary charae- ter who is perhaps as well qualified as any person in Englard to give testiinons ps to the conditions under which the sIum-dwelers of England live He Is l.ieutenant Colonel William John Lewis, a former army officer with fine re- cord and the father of a hero son who gave his life at Gallipoli. For the past six years he has been mayor of Bethnal Green, a dingy, poverty-strlcKen Eas' End district which contains some of the foulest slums to be found in this rich metropolis And that is saying some thing. Bethnal Green, which is near neighbor to Shoreditch, another drab re- zion largely consisting of sluns, IS only a quarter of an hours walk from the 1ap- ulously wealthy "city'' of London, the bub of the financial and commercial world of England, yet in some or the streets of Bethnal Green Road people live in houses which, as it was expressed to me the other day, no English master or hounds would dream of using as sta- ble for his hunters.
 lieutenant Colonel Lewis knows Beth- nal Green inside and out. He lives there: He is not one of the wealthy mayors or the British metropolis. N is just the secretary of the Working Mems club, in Pollard Row, a grimy thorough1are which runs down beside the Red church in Bethnal Green Road. He lives Tn little house. in a row of little houses Just bevond the club. But Colonel Lewls does moi need a splendid house to make him a splendid kind of man. Bethnal Green re warded his tireless work on behalf of It's inhabitants by making him mayor SIX wears ago, and it has kept him mayor ever since It is not an exaggeratlon 10 say that the colonel lives for Bethnal Green.
 For many years he and many others have been bringing pressure to pear on +be London county council, the body that 5uns the administrative affairs Of the metropolis, to tear down the slums of