The Henson Journals

[160]

Thursday, February 23rd, 1922.

Three sinister publications arrived by the morning post viz:

1. How Prohibition works in American Cities by Deets Pickett, Research Secretary Board of Temperance, Prohibition & Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

2. Danger Ahead. Socialist & Proletarian Sunday Schools issued by the Research Department of The British Empire Union.

3. The Journal of the Divorce Law Reform Union.

On all three subjects it is extraordinarily difficult to make up one's mind. Every inquirer as to the working of Prohibition reports according to his own evident wish and expectation. It seems quite impossible to get at the truth.

Similarly the undoubted presence of a partisan motive, quickened by the imminence of a general election, makes it difficult to know what precise value to ascribe to the statements about the Socialist and Proletarian Sunday Schools. "The British Empire Union" under the Presidency of Lord Derby is hardly and impartial authority, yet the facts for which it vouches are sufficiently disturbing. These abominable creatures do not appear to have much notion of teaching children. What would be more preposterous as a formula for teaching than this?

Girl: What do you mean when you say you are class conscious?

Boy: Class conscious is the recognition of your commodity status in the bourgeois State.

If the matter were not so tragically serious, this wd be quite ludicrous.

It is difficult to justify a policy of toleration towards institutions which propagate anarchy & vice. Yet the reluctance to "persecute" is almost insurmountable: and the whole "Labour" movement would probably rally to the support of these Schools if any attempt to suppress them were made. We are now finding out the weakness of organized Christianity: As soon as the masses become sufficiently educated to express their mind, we discover that they are in the worst sense pagan.

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