The Henson Journals

[49]

Boxing Day, S. Stephen, December 26th, 1928.

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Dr Basedow, who is a recognised authority on the Australian aborigines, has (v. Times Dec: 24th 1928) made some extremely serious allegations about the proceedings in Australia consequent of the murder of Mr Fred Brookes, a stackman, last August.

"It was officially reported that 17 aborigines were shot during the capture of the alleged murderers, but he had received advices from a trustworthy authority that 30 were shot by various parties, & possibly as many as 70, including men, women, & children ……

In the forties & fifties of last century it was practically an everyday occurrence to shoot aborigines "for sport", & this killing was regarded as nothing more serious than the shooting of emus. But it seemed that history was repeating itself in the recent horrible outrages."

He points out that an exceptionally severe drought had brought the natives to the point of starvation.

"When he visited Central Australia 18 months ago he met blacks who stated that it had not rained for at least 6 or 7 years, & they were living almost entirely on lizards, grubs, and roots. The wild aborigine did not spear the white settler's cattle with any more criminal intent than the white when he shot the native's kangaroos. The pangs of hunger were the cause of the recent outrages in the interior."

[50]

These colonists, who make nothing of murdering the natives, are not likely to be just or considerate in treating the emigrants, whom we send out to work under them. I suspect that the dislike of emigration which is so strong in the minds of our Unemployed may have larger justification than we readily allow. The de–Christianised Englishman, "on the make" outside the influence of public opinion, & the action of the police, is not a very satisfactory exponent of civilization. The emigrant is probably an exasperating person, exacting, unreasonable, incompetent: but he is too often treated with callousness & injustice. We do not sufficiently realize the helplessness of a youth transplanted thousands of miles from home, & planted among strangers, who only care for him as a money–making instrument, & can oppress him with an almost complete impunity. Sometimes I suspect that the bitter anti–Empire feeling of our working people is based on something more respectable than the rhetoric of the agitators. They have access to resources of information about the treatment of emigrants & of natives of which we know nothing.

[51]

I wrote to Troup definitely refusing to let him present himself again as a candidate for Holy Orders. It is hateful to have to do this, but really I don't see that I can do otherwise. Also, I wrote to Noel Lamidey in Melbourne, mentioning the case of the Australian blacks, and asking for any information he could send. After lunch I walked round the Park alone. A hockey match was proceeding in the Inner Park, and a football match in the Outer. Mainly the Park was deserted.

I wrote to Derek Elliott, & sent him a pound to buy himself a Christmas present.

I read Burkitt's Essay on "The Prophets of Israel" in the "New Commentary of Holy Scripture", published by the S.P.C.K. for the E.C.U. It is brilliant & audacious. The pace we travel away from the old orthodoxies grows ever more rapid. What value remains to the patristic writings in view of this changed estimate of Scripture? What authority lingers in the Catholick Church, when its solemn pronouncements & habitual assumptions in respect to the canonical writings are so decisively rejected & disallowed?

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