The Henson Journals

[11]

Tuesday, April 3rd, 1917.

974th day

Snowing heavily. It cleared up about noon, & there was sun, & a thaw. But the aspect of everything is wintry indeed. I attended Mattins: paid the wages: wrote letters: read the papers &c. – an ill–spent day. After dinner I read to Ella extracts from the Official Report of the Armenian massacres. The scale and intensity of the cruelty are almost unbelievable: but the performances of the Germans in France are fully equal in barbarity. A certain number of insulting letters come to me daily, most are evidently the work of "shop–boy ritualists", but some indicate a superior social type. I wrote to Hodder & Stoughton suggesting that they should publish the "trilogy" of sermons preached in the "City Temple" and in S. Sepulchre's with an "Introduction". The occasion was of sufficient interest to make it important that as much emphasis as possible should be placed upon it. I attended Evensong. The poverty of the male voices was painfully apparent in the Handel Anthem. Cruickshank told me that he had read the "City Temple" sermons, and thought them very good. On the whole I think the general verdict on those discourses is quite as favourable as I have any right to expect.

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