NATION'S SILENT HOMAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 9

NATION'S SILENT HOMAGE.

ENDLESS QUEUE AT WESTMINSTER.

ALL CLASSES PASS IN MOURNING.

United Press Association.—Copyright.— Rec. 11 a.ni

LONDON, January 24. Hundreds of people eager to pay homage to the late King Ueorge attempted to queue up last night in readiness for the opening of Westminster Hall at 8 a.m. to-day. Many arrived with camp stools, rugs and vacuum flasks.

police refused to permit a queue to be formed and continued moving on those who arrived. Most of them were women who insisted upon being the first to enter the hall and frequently returned.

Finally, toward midnight, a queue was allowed. It soon stretched half a mile and was continually growing.

As Big Ben tolled the hour of eight this morning the great doors of Hall were flung open and a seemingly endless queue of mourners began to move forward, the men removing their hats and the women lowering their heads.

The first to enter was an elderly man who had waited outside since midnight. He said, "I wanted to make sure of seeing my King once more."

Every type of Londoner was represented. Smartly-dre_ssed women stood beside tram drivers returning from work on night shift and labourers on the way to work. There were hundreds of civil servants anxious to pay early homage to their late Sovereign before proceeding to their offices in Whitehall.

It v/as remarked that whereas most of the people were composed before .they entered the hall, few came away without signs of grief. Women declared that it was too impressive for words and hard to realise after such a solemn experience that one was back again to the workaday world.

Mourners filed three abreast past either side of the great catafalque. It is estimated that 6500 passed in the first hour just a handful of the millions who will make a four days' pilgrimage from the whole of Britain.

The mourners were so well marshalled and passed so rapidly through the hall that there was little or no queue by 1 0 a.m., when classes of school children began to arrive. As they left the hall nearly all the children were crying. As the morning wore on, the queue became so long that the rate of movement was speeded up to 250 a minute. By noon over 25,000 had filed through the hall, yet the queue was more than a mile long and was ever increasing. It extended beyond Lambeth Bridge, necessitating a diversion of traffic.

Inside the hall the solemn silence was broken only by the shuffling of feet in the awe-inspiring pilgrimage. The guard is changed hourly. It is a simple ceremony and the orders are given in subdued voices.

Many invalids, unmindful of their own distress, wheeled their chairs past the catafalque, or else hobbled by slowly on sticks or crutches.