The Henson Journals

[306]

Thursday, May 27th, 1926.

Last night the heat was exhausting, though rain fell heavily almost without intermission. I had a miserable time, and started the day in a very dilapidated condition.

Before breakfast I wrote to Jimmie, who is now at the Castle with the other Ordination candidates.

Lloyd–George's apologia as indicated in his speech yesterday is a violent, detailed, & extraordinarily unfair attack on the Government, to whom he allots the principal fault for the General Strike and the Coal Stoppage, and an ostentatious approval the Archbishop of Canterbury's hapless essay in peace–making. He also denounced the British Gazette with great energy.

[His patriotism is essentially identical with that of Cleon. I must needs compassionate Cantuar under the catastrophe of his approbation.]

Meanwhile, this coal–stoppage continues, & there is no symptom of a settlement anywhere. That pig–headed Yorkshireman, Herbert Smith, on whose intelligence & good sense we have so often been urged to rely, uses language of imbecile obstinacy, and prophesies a protracted conflict. Coal–orders from abroad are being cancelled and transferred. The Russian money has arrived, & the miners, who refuse to work an additional hour, are eager to take it!

[307]

Fearne brought me flowers from the Castle – pansies, peonies and white broom. The sight of them added fuel to the flame of my longing to get away from the desolating prospect of slate roofs on which now mine eyes must needs look.

Sir Thomas Oliver spent half an hour with me: he was one of the company who went with Lord Scarborough and the Knights of St John, to visit the historic scenes of the Order's record. He says that the voyage was most successful, and that everybody was charmed with Lord S., whose conduct of the religious functions was greatly admired. I inquired how he had been impressed by what he had seen in Palestine, and he replied that he was astonished at the progress that had been made: that the Jewish colonies were flourishing and extending: that the troubles about the ill quality of the immigrants from Europe had been overcome: &, generally that the Zionist experiment was succeeding.

Cruickshank came to see me. He is something more than disposed to approve the Archbishop's ill–starred action during the Strike: but he is constitutionally incapable of seeing any economic or social issue in due perspective: and his political prejudices are as potent as they are for the most part unreasonable. Nevertheless, he is a very loveable creature.

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