PEOPLE'S DEVOTION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 136, 10 May 1945, Page 6

PEOPLE'S DEVOTION

LOVE FOR ROYAL FAMILY TOUR OF LONDON STREETS. (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Roc. 11.40 a.m.) LONDON, May 9. The King and Queen and the Princesses appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace shortly hefore 1 p.m. (Greenwich mean time) and received round after

round of cheers from the crowds

around the Palaco railings. In the afternoon the Royal Family left the Palace in an open car for a tour of East End. The Mall was lined with dense crowds of people waiting to get a glimpse of Their Majesties. The crowds, while waiting in the vicinity of the Palace, sang to tne music of Army bands. The ovation as the Royal Family passed through the crowds was comparable only to the Coronation celebrations.

The drive through the cheering crowds lasted two and a half hours. In the East End they received the biggest welcome of their reign. Their car drove at a crawl while men and women waved, cheered and beat on the car windows with red, white and blue emblems and threw red, white and blue streamers. The King and

Queen waved and smiled continually

They made their first stop at Bethnal Green, where they inspected a site where a V-bomb had destroyed three buildings of dwellings with a deathroll of moro than 130. The crowd was so enthusiastic that Their Majesties were mobbed and A.R.P. officials were obliged to force a way for them back to their car. The cuowd sang the National Anthem while the King and Queen looked at the ruins. Both made anxious inquiries about housing conditions and expressed the hone that homes would be built as speedily as possible. Dense crowds gathered all along the route from the Palace to the East End and back.

The King and Queen reappeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony after their tour and a crowd almost as large as last night's collected outside the gu'tes, and a roar of "We want the King!" went up from thousands of people. The Coldstream Guards' Band played marches until the Royal party's appearance.