The Henson Journals

[131]

Wednesday, December 24th, 1924.

I finished reading trough the book given me by Mrs Dillon – "The lost Dominion" by Al. Carthill. It is brilliant, and, alas, convincing. India is a lost dominion. The attempt to rear a democratic system of the Western type on the foundations of child–marriage and caste is foredoomed to utter failure. I was sure of that before I read the book. The writer's tone is not pleasing, and he allows himself in [sic] occasional references to Christianity which are needlessly offensive. There are also some gratuitously gross expressions here and there. But it is on the whole a powerful piece of work.

I sent out copies of the Charge to divers laymen, including Lords Selborne, Grey, Daryngton, and Phillimore:

Wilson sent me a china owl, similar to that which adorns his own table.

Derry sent me "Poems of Today", a volume of verse by contemporary "poets", published by the English Association. There is a deep shadow of sadness on its pages, for many of the names of the authors are familiar as those of young men who fell in the Great War. The first pages which arrested my notice carried poems by "E. Wyndham Tennant", and 'William Noel Hodgson'. I remember the first as a glorious boy of twelve, coming with his mother to see us in Dean's Yard: the last was one of the older boys of Durham School, when I was Dean.

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