The Henson Journals

[262]

Thursday, April 7th, 1921.

Traditions are built up slowly but crumble quickly, just as it takes longer to form in an individual the virtue that will resist temptation than it takes to break down what had seemed to be a settled habit. Seldom can he who has once succumbed to strong inducements be thereafter trusted to stand firm.

Bryce.

A young man named Wilson, a son of the Vicar of St Edmund, Gateshead, came to see me about Ordination. He was educated at Leatherhead; then he served in the ranks; then went to Knutsford: and is now at Queen's reading theology under Canon Streeter. He preferred the odd request, that he might be ordained to the diaconate, and then permitted to go to Persia for 2 years before taking up his work in England. This I refused, advising him to be ordained in the regular way on a parochial title, & to give up the notion of work in Persia.

I motored to Durham to see Harrison, the secretary of the Diocesan Conference.

The evening papers report the failure of the Prime Minister's attempt to re–open negociations between the masters and the men. It really looks like a determined effort to start "revolution" though what the men can gain by it is hard to see. But the heady wine of their windy theories has got into their heads, and nothing can hold them back from (to use Cramp's words) "having a shot at it". Is it another case of "Quos deus vult perdere prius dementat"? [those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad]

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