The Henson Journals

[583]

1st Sunday after Epiphany, January 9th, 1916.

524th day

I wrote letters to Craik, Dobell, Clark, and Askwith before breakfast. At breakfast our conversation turned on various eminent scholars: and Burkitt advanced the interesting, and (to me) novel proposition that the great Cambridge twins, Westcott & Hort, were unsympathetic to junior scholars, and rather discouraged originality. "We grew up under their shadow, like tender plants under a palm–tree" – was a mot which he quoted from one of his own contemporaries. I preached to the troops at the military service. They were very attentive. Also I attended Mattins, & celebrated the H.C. Before lunch I took Burkitt and Baddeley to the observatory to show them the 'English Sion' from that point of view. Dolphin, the ex–consul, & his wife came to lunch. After Evensong, Parr, who was an old Dunelmian and had joined the Serbians at the beginning of the war, & had come through the recent retreat, came to see us. He gives a woeful account of the situation in Serbia. The Serbians are evidently crushed, and are now inclining to 'kiss the rod'. Feeling has turned against England. Germany is believed to have won the war. I inquired as to the working of the Red Cross Missions, and other Relief agencies, dispatched from England. He said that nothing reached the sufferers: everything was embezzled on the way: that the Red Cross Nurses spent their time in 'joy–rides' until the German invasion began, & then left the country. The Italians hated the Serbians, & secretly rejoiced at their ruin. The Albanians attacked the Serbian refugees. The only tolerable person in the Balkans was the Turk. All this was sad hearing: & it was made the more sad by the sombre & disillusioned appearance of the young man himself.

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