The Henson Journals

[148]

Thursday, August 16th, 1917.

1109th day

A fine day after the rain & storm of yesterday most welcome. I received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in S. Gregory's chapel. Also I attended Mattins and Evensong in the Galilee.

For the rest, my day was devoted to the Anson 'Memoirs', not very fruitfully. Payne, once the clerk of works for our restoration or rather repair of the vaulting, now a khaki–clad warrior, came to see me. He looks much the better for his military experience, though he has had no drill being employed indoors. Probably the feeding of the Army is on a far more generous scale than his own home has provided. He has plucked up heart to volunteer for foreign service!

The papers contain the full text of the Pope's appeal to the belligerents to make peace, but the hand of the German Esau is but too apparent. His Holiness speaks of the War as if it were some immense natural catastrophe, which had overwhelmed the nations, & from which only their won wilful pugnacity hindered their escape. That there is a moral interest at stake in the fighting, and that nothing short of Germany's defeat can secure that interest, seems wholly remote from his thinking. He says nothing of Justice, but perhaps pathetically on the miseries of War, and the blessedness of Peace.

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