The Henson Journals

[177]

Friday, October 15th, 1920.

The sermon for the University of Glasgow is even more baffling. To choose a subject is difficult enough: to compose a sermon is almost impracticable. The sinister turn taken by the Labour dispute adds to my difficulties: for everybody's mind will be filled with the Strike. Several letters have reached me from Scotland and America enquiring whether I can indeed be the author of the opinions on Prohibition which the Brewers have published far & wide. So far as I can see the Brewers have done no violence to the letters of mine which they quote. No doubt their emphasis is not the same as mine; and their motive must needs be very different: but I am agreed with them as to the intrinsic unsoundness of the principle & policy of Prohibition.

Mr Serres called to take me for a walk. Before starting I made use of his services as a witness to my signature on a number of documents sent on to me by Wilson. Our walk was curtailed by the rain which began to fall steadily as the afternoon drew towards evening.

The "Times" reports that my successor was enthroned yesterday as Bishop of Hereford. I begin to feel impatient at the long delay in my own enthronement. We are drifting into the Castle, and so to speak, putting our necks into the noose. But α) the great House is in our hands: β) our furniture must go somewhere γ) we have nowhere else to live δ) the abandonment of the old historic home ought not to be decided upon except on plain grounds of necessity.

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