Wales "Gagged"?

An indignant young man and a genial, flabby-handed oldster conferred, last week in the Prime Minister's Room of the House of Commons, without witnesses, without prior notice to the press. Edward of Wales told Stanley Baldwin about his recent tour of the North English coal fields, described scenes of bitter misery and awful squalor which had caused H. R. H. to exclaim (TIME, Feb. 11): "This is ghastly! I never thought things were so bad!" "A ghastly mess. . . ." Presumably the heir to the throne used equally strong language, last week, to the Prime Minister. What would Stanley Baldwin do about it all, wondered Britons.

Oldster Baldwin did nothing overt, last week, but presently the press was informed that youngster Wales would not make his announced trip to South Wales, where the poverty and near famine of unemployed miners is even more notorious than in the North. Rightly or wrongly correspondents thought that the Prime Minister's large, flabby hand had stayed the Prince.

Copies of the official report of H. R. H.'s tour by his private secretary. Sir Godfrey Thomas, were confidentially passed out to Cabinet Ministers, during the week, but not published. Seldom has a suppression seemed more inept.

It gave the Laborites a chance to cry: "Baldwin has gagged the Prince!" It lent a ring of truth to the comment of Labor's Daily Herald:

"The facts of what the Prince saw are unpalatable both to the Government and to the powerful interests that support the present administration. The Prince of Wales is distinctly unpopular with the mine owners. Something like consternation has been caused among them at what the Prince revealed on his tour. It is a serious coincidence that almost before the Prince returned to London a regular newspaper barrage was laid down [by the Conservatives] with a view to discounting as far as possible the facts as to the condition of the miners that were put under the searchlight of the Prince's inquiry."

With a Parliamentary election looming for next June, jubilant Laborite candidates prepared, last week, to shout from every platform in England that their Conservative opponents have "gagged" H. R. H. The deplorable process of dragging the Crown into the election was even begun in the House of Commons, when Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard Bury, M. P. [Conservative] insinuated that some* miners prefer living on the dole to work, a chorus of Laborites shouted: "Liar! Sit down! You have insulted the heir to the throne!"

*Referring to a disturbance of last week at the Nine-Mile-Point Colliery, in Monmouthshire, Wales. There union miners sought to prevent four "blacklegs" (scabs) from working, but were dispersed by a police charge and clubbing. The incident was as far as possible from being typical, since nearly all the 200,000 unemployed miners are not on strike, but literally begging for work from employers who claim that overproduction and German competition make it unprofitable to operate their mines.