The Henson Journals

[76]

Friday, June 15th, 1917.

1047th day

The ladies went off after breakfast: and I walked to the bank & changed a cheque. Returning I was way–laid by Rushworth in a conversational mood. He told me that his father, when he lay dying warned him against the Freemasons, as folk who tended to drunkenness! I bought an old "Bible Box" from him. He said it dated from about 1650. Then I fell in with a Canadian trooper, & carried him along with me to the Deanery. He told me his name was Mitchell Pearce – and that he was the only son of a widowed mother & but 18 years old. Also that his desire was finally to be ordained. I kept him to lunch and had some talk with him. He was in Shorncliffe when the air raid on Folkestone took place. He says that 34 Canadians were killed & many wounded. I attended a meeting of the Sherburn Trustees and came in at the end of our economic committee. The three mining folk were again in possession, & discussed the behaviour of the church with much candour. They made a kind of appeal to the Dean of Durham!!

[77]

They complain that the Labour movement gets no help from the Church i.e. the clergy, and that the social influence of the latter is cast in the scales against the effort to improve the workman's lot. I reply that the main reason for whatsoever amount of truth there may be in this plea comes from the fact that the Labour Movement has now definitely become in principle & objective Socialist, & the clergy are mostly unconverted to Socialism. They seem quite unable to contemplate the possibility that they themselves may be mistaken, or wrong.

I walked and talked with Cruickshank, & worsened my cold thereby.

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