The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-05-25
QUEEN MARY, NEARING n, FINDS HAPPINESS
 IN LEADING OWN LIFE
Simple Dignity of Their Dowager Holds Britons Affections
BY MILTON BRONNER

NEA Service Staff Correspondent
 London. May 25. - "seventy-one and going strong!"
 That will be the unspoken thought of millions of Britons on May 26. for on that day Queen Mary will have passed another milestone in her lifes pilgrimage.
 Now, in her widowhood, the dow- ager Queen rests secure in the con- sciousness that today she is more popular than ever before in her long life. Britons remember her as the model wife and mother; as the wo- man who. with her husband, King George V, kept the cleanest court in the history of Britain; as the sover- eign who tried to interest herself in the doings of all classes of her sub- jects.
 Some years ago, when she christi ened the great steamship Queen Nary at Glasgow, she was unaware of the delicate hearing" of the broadcasting microphone. There fore, millions of Britons heard her say:
 What do do now?" And a few minutes later: Did do 1t all right?"
 Those two queries seem to embody her whole life. She has always been keen to do her duty and equally as keen to know that it has been done fully and properly.
 The British people honor her, too, because of her bravery. In 1886 she suffered two staggering blows. On January 20, after nearly 43 years of happy married life, her husband, King George V, died. Her mothers pride in seeing her eldest-born mount the throne soon was shat tered, when King Edward VIII in- sisted upon marrying Mrs. Ernest Simpson. There were ten anxious days that shook the foundations of the British Empire, eliminating in Edwards abdication December 10.
 Once more Queen Mary rose to the occasion. She began going about to link up the national affections with the royal house of Windsor When she felt sure that all was well and that her son, King George VI, was winning his own way with the people, she withdrew as much as possible from public functions.
 She has begun to live her own life and to do the things she likes to do
 Her period of mourning over, she has gone to the opera, to first nights of plays and films, and she tours London-without pomp and process sional-in the company of her grand daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.
 She visits old friends in their country houses and has old cronies come to tea in Marlborough House in which she lived 28 years ago, when which is once again her own home, with many of the old curtains, car- pets and pictures that are so famil- jar to her.
 Her release from the more formal duties of Queen Consort has given her better opportunity to show the human side of her personality. Last April she unexpectedly visited the stricken areas of South Wales. Now usually, when royalty goes to the homes of the humble, the folk are carefully picked out and forewarn- ed, so they can be all scrubbed up and arrayed in their best bibs and fuckers. But Queen Mary fooled her guides. She motored to Pontypridd, rode through some mean, narrow, poverty-stricken streets and paid surprise visit to a club of the unem- ployed, house in an old granary.
 J. J. Watkins, coatless, collarless and with his sleeves rolled up, was busy saving wood out of which he