The Henson Journals

[16]

Wednesday, November 3rd, 1920.

"Prussianized Germany was at once the newest and the most antiquated thing in Western Europe. She was the best and the wickedest state of her time."

Wells.

This might serve as an epitaph on the grave of the German Empire. It is an oracle of warning for our own people who (under the conditions of the XXth–century) are repeating the supreme delusion of Germany in the XIXth. The Bible describes the error as "forgetting God". The scheme of social organisation adopted by Bolshevists in Russia, and by "Labour" in England tolerates at most, but never includes Religion, while stimulating the material and intellectual factors almost fanatically. And Religion, in spite of all the practical inconveniences attaching to a frank recognition of the fact, does, broadly & generally, stand for morality. Hence modern civilization which is, in principle and procedure, incorrigibly secularist, is stricken with an incurable moral weakness. It can never depend on its agents. It is weak in its foundations, & committed to the hopeless task of averting an ultimate crash by ever more elaborate arrangements for 'shoring up' its cracking fabric. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" is the mocking legend written across its provision for multiplying inspectors, and inspectors of inspectors, the futile hierarchy of democratic safeguards against personal failure!

[17]

I went to the Deanery, and said Goodbye to Marion, who returned to London. Then I presided at a meeting of the Diocesan Refuge & Preventive Association, when Miss Honeyburn's resignation was accepted, & arrangements made for appointing a successor. Then I lunched at the Castle, and read the papers. Ella had tea with me, & then we motored to Sunderland. Here we dined with the Mayor (Alderman Vint) and afterwards attended a function in the Town Hall. Three addresses were presented from the Corporation, the Ruridecanal Conference, and the Nonconformist ministers. I replied in a speech of some length. It was, indeed, too heavy and too long; but it is hard to vary my words in returning thanks for compliments, which are always excessive & sometimes grotesque. I spoke of the rôle of the Church in a modern community, of the poverty of the clergy, of the intellectual unrest of the time, of the alleged 'slump in religion'. In fact I "talked large" for a full half hour. The audience, mostly men, listened closely, and applauded when I sate down. Then a good many persons came up, and were presented to me by the Town clerk. Modern democracy is curiously addicted to shaking hands! We motored back to Durham, arriving about 9.40 p.m. Two items of public intelligence came in tonight, which are of more than common interest – the Republican candidate is elected President of U.S.A., and the Miners' ballot has approved the settlement.

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