The Henson Journals

[154]

Tuesday, March 6th, 1928.

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Lord Peel spoke about the difficult question which has been raised in connection with the Basle Mission. [and advised me to be very cautious in discussing it with George Craik, who is the Chairman of the Company which holds the Mission property in West Africa. The Mission now claims purchase–money and compensation. These claims could not be satisfied without a large expenditure of public money, perhaps as much as £1,000,000, unless the Company, as seems equitable, since it acquired the property without payment & has enjoyed it since, be held responsible for the payment.] The question is complicated by the fact that the Basle Mission works in India as well as S. Africa, and in both it holds property. Thus the Government of India is concerned with the question. I hold these exploiting companies in great dislike, and find it difficult to give much credit to their voluble assertions of philanthropy and patriotism. They embody a paradox by their very constitution. To serve God and Mammon at the same time is not more possible for Companies of men than for individuals.

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My rejoinder to Cardinal Bourne appeared in the Times, and I received a good many compliments on it from the Bishop. It does, I think, read effectively, and I hardly see what reply his Eminence can make. Probably his under–studies will start some red–herrings in order to divert the public from the actual issues. I spent the day at Lambeth, where we dealt with the difficult and inflaming subject of 'Perpetual Reservation'. The Archbishop of Canterbury made it very evident that he was "weakening, & inclined to hoist the white flag. After much talking, we agreed by 30 votes to 6 on a revised form of the Rubrick, which satisfied his Grace's scruples, and did not go beyond the "explanatory" chapter, which were announced in the Archbishop's letter as the only changes we could rightly make. Frere made a speech which was a sufficient excuse for the worst apprehensions of the Protestants. There is no good faith in the Anglo–Catholics, even those who were loudest in their protestations of loyalty are secretly intending to develop their lawless policy under cover of the new Rubrick!

I dined at the Athenaeum.