The Henson Journals

[7]

Wednesday, March 28th, 1917.

968th day

After breakfast Beeching & I walked out for a while to buy newspapers, & to fill our lungs with the sea–air. Then I came back to the hotel, and wrote some letters. Felix Asher arrived from Brighton, and walked with me for an hour before lunch. He is rather oracular & pompous; pretends to be above the issues of ecclesiastical conflicts: & talks with an absence of humour which is rather distressing. As Beeching says, he seems to be intent on working in sermons at every turn, a particularly exasperating performance and as between clergymen quite inexcusable! I suspect that he is the centre of a worshipping ring of women, who stuff him up with the notion that he is the Prophet, on whom the mantle of F. W. Robertson has fallen. He bored me badly! After lunch Ella, Beeching, & I attended a lecture in the Winter Garden by Lovatt Frazer on the Revolutionary Movement in Russia. He said little that has not appeared in the newspapers, but he said it well, and his lecture, which lasted a full hour, held a considerable audience in close attention. It was sufficiently evident that he did not hold very rose–coloured views of the Russian situation. He described the Russians as rather helpless & unintelligible folk, painfully lacking in will–power, and the ready victims of more astute aliens. We were all very indignant with a clergyman, sitting beside Ella, who, alone in the audience, smoked cigarettes without apparently any consciousness of the indecency of his behaviour. He was a middle–aged man who looked superior to such ill–manners, & he was accompanied by a rather squalid looking young woman. On our return to the Hotel, there was a tea–party. Mr Hanks, the Vicar of the Parish, formerly Vicar of Whitechapel, was one of the guests. With him I had some interesting conversation, & promised to send him a copy of my "Lee Lecture". The weather changed towards evening, and it began to rain. Eastbourne has a high reputation, but so far it has hardly succeeded in doing itself justice.

[8]

I was particularly interested in some observations of the Lecturer this afternoon respecting the possible influence of the Russian revolution in facilitating Turkey's retirement from the War. He said that the late Czar's government had "black–mailed the allies into giving Constantinople to Russia", but that the new government would probably be content with the "internationalizing" of the city & state. The Sultan's government might conceivably accept the last, but could never acquiesce in the first. He said also that the granting of autonomy to Finland wd affect most favourably the relations of Russia and Sweden, since self–governing Finland wd serve the purpose of a friendly "buffer–state" between Russia & those northern Swedish provinces which Russia has been supposed to covert.

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