The Henson Journals

[223]

Friday, December 2nd, 1927.

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Two statements in yesterday's Times may, perhaps, indicate that there is more uncertainty about the voting on the Prayer Book Resolution than the protagonists on either side admit. The Bishop of Norwich had a letter in which he disclaimed the statement attributed to him viz: that he had secured promises from 100 peers that they would vote against the Resolution: and an announcement is made in the political gossip column that it was understood that about 150 peers were opposed to the Prayer Book as revised. This, of course, may be a ruse designed to make sure that the friends of the new Prayer Book don't fail to turn up. Lord Lamington spoke to me about the P.B. which he evidently dislikes. He said that my letter had persuaded him to vote for it, but that he had many misgivings. Would the Bishops enforce the Law? He, & many other peers, could only support the Resolution on the assumption that they would. But would they? or, could they, if they would? I could but reply that, if reasonable time were given, discipline would be restored, but that the notion that an immediate end of indiscipline could be secured, was equally irrational & doomed to disappointment. Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, is reported to be intending to oppose the resolution. He is both weighty and persuasive: &, if he speaks at the end of the debate, he will carry votes. I think it might be wise for me to make a frank statement of the difficulties which the Bishops have to face – the considerable 'vested interests' of lawlessness, the shortage of men, the public sympathy with clerical law–breaking, and the indifference of a secularized people to all ecclesiastical concerns. An appeal to the House, not to add to these difficulties by humiliating the Episcopal Bench, & refusing it the measure which it asks for as indispensable, might be effective: but, of course, it might not!!

[224]

I spent the day in listening to a garrulous octogenarian named Mead, who has presided over a metropolitan Police Court for 38 years, and to two probation workers who are also Police Court Missionnaries. These good women on the whole impressed me well. They gave no encouragement whatever to the fashionable sentimental theory of the prostitute's history. Not under–payment compelling an unhappy girl to supplement her wages by selling herself, but love of excitement & pleasure, & also, in many cases, a deliberate preference for the prostitute's life are the main causes which recruit that dolorous host. There is very little success in efforts to restore the 'fallen': though many, when they are tired of the life, marry and settle down. The whole story is sordid and debasing from whatever angle it is regarded. No romance, or self–sacrifice, or generosity of any kind redeem the squalid & monotonous annals of prostitution. I was puzzled at the very large numbers of non–prostitutes convicted of indecency in Hyde Park, but it was explained to me that most of these were "courting couples", whose ardour of mutual attachment was such that it crossed the boundary line of public decency. The one really new point raised today was the preposterous character of the Court of Appeal, which the Law provides. It is the London Quarter Sessions, a body of 750 justices, the great majority of whom are totally ignorant of law. They work by a system of rotation, which carefully avoids any preference to such qualified justices as exist in the number.

[225]

"The right–reverent prelate, the Bishop of Norwich, is careful to assure us that he is a neophyte in controversy. He reminds me of those uncontaminated aborigines who, when brought for the first time into contact with European Civilization, acquire with fatal facility its distinctive & deadly vices. For his Lordship's controversial methods are such as would do credit to the most accomplished controversialist. Indeed, his method of what may be called polemics with limited liability is most effective. It enables him to inflict the utmost injury on his opponents with the minimum of danger to himself."

Would it be prudent for me to deal with Norwich in this way? He deserves it: but, then, it might alienate voters.

I dined in Park Lane with mine host & hostess, & another & very pleasant lady, whose name I have already forgotten. Lady S. talked with her usual amiable recklessness about the appointment to Canterbury, which she had properly assigned to Lang: with less propriety she assigned his succession to me: but I said that there could be little reason why a Bishop of Durham should care to become Archbishop of York, especially in these days, when the higher the office, the more invidious and laborious the duties attached to it!