24 FEBRUARY 1950, Page 5

* * * * I have not seen Queen Mary's

carpet. One reason is that when someone I know went to look at it on Monday the waiting-time at that stage of the queue was an hour and a quarter. This is an interesting phenomenon. The carpet cannot look very different from any other carpet. There can be no special mark of royalty about it. Spectators as they study it have nothing to go on but the official statement—obviously reliable—that Queen Mary did in fact make it. Part of the explanation, no doubt, is that the immense interest aroused is a tribute to the Queen-Mother herself for I.er determina- tion, at the age of eighty, to make her personal contribution to the reduction of the dollar deficit. Her self-sacrificing labour deserves all that and more.