The Henson Journals

[7]

Tuesday, June 22nd, 1926.

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This completes six weeks since the operation. I think a bolder mobility might safely be adventured. However I don't want to "spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar".

Lord Londonderry replies to my enquiry about Robin. He is evidently much moved by his only son's narrow escape. He adds some characteristic observations on the Vicar of Dawdon, whose luckless and tactless letters on the miners' wages gave him much offence. It will not be easy for me to do away with this prejudice. The truth is that what his Lordship calls 'Socialism' is the mental habit of practically all the younger clergy and nonconformist ministers. They have not considered, still less deliberately approved, the economic system so described, but they are carried away by a sentimental and irresponsible altruism, and have lost the habit, perhaps even the power, of clear thinking. When the Primate and Bishops are unable to stand up against the popular stream, it is not surprising that the inferior clergy are carried along by it. None the less, it is natural that coal–owners, who, (as is certainly Londonderry's case,) are sincerely desirous of doing their duty as best they can, should resent the vague & ill–informed emotionalism of the clergy.

[8]

It appears that Robin was himself driving when the accident happened. His companion, a Danish gentleman, de Bille, whose acquaintance I possessed when living in Westminster, has died of the injuries he received. This must add greatly to Robin's distress. He himself, according to Ld Londonderry, was "almost unscathed".

My letter appeared on the front page of the Times, where it fills about 3/4ths of a column. It reads rather sternly, but will be none the less effective for that.

The Report of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission is made the subject of the first leader in the Times in which the Bishop of Durham's dissent from the proposed constitution of the Final Court is noted. It is, I must needs think, both surprising & regrettable that Ernest Worcester, Canon H. A. Wilson, and others, who might be called either State Churchmen or Evangelicals, should have separated themselves from me in my dissent; and I take some blame to myself for the fact, since my non–attendance at the meetings of the Commission (largely but not wholly involuntary) was probably in no small measure the cause. The power to think clearly is very rare, and not less rare is the will to act independently. Sometimes I am disposed to attribute this latter phenomenon to the influence of the public school system, which exalts beyond everything else the habit of corporate complaisance, miscalled loyalty. Rutherford used to congratulate me on the fact that I had never been through the de–personalizing mill of a public school.

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