The Henson Journals

[167]

Friday, July 25th, 1930.

[struck through] Lord Hanworth expressed himself very despondently on the economic and political situation. He shares Geoffrey Dawson's opinion that, thanks to Beaverbrook's action, the Unionist party will come to grief in the next Election, & Labour established more firmly in power with consequences of the utmost gravity to the Empire. The problem of unemployment grows more difficult of solution daily: & yet unless some solution can be found, the ruin of Britain cannot be averted. [end]

This morning in the Conference I came into collision with Headlam. He has, on the whole, behaved himself with remarkable moderation: and his evident mastership of the questions at issue when the Orthodox Churches of the East are under consideration, has facilitated in his Sub–Committee that complete subservience to his opinions which is the condition under which alone he will carry himself with civility. But this morning, in the Committee itself, he could not count on this condition, and his arrogant manner was noted with repugnance.

[168]

In my box at Lambeth I found a letter from the News Editor of the Daily Herald inviting me to address through its means a 'frank message' to the Durham Miners who hold their Gala tomorrow. The time did not allow of my doing this, but I did write a brief letter to the Editor.

[struck through] Ella and I dined with Dame Beatrice Lyall, a dominating and loquacious female, who rules the Mothers Union, & is a prominent member of the London County Council. Her son, a heavy youth who is said to be about to publish a book, spoke rather interestingly about the situation in Italy & Spain. He thought that there was no stability in Mussolini's regime: and that the monarchy in Spain was intensely unpopular. Mr Lyall, a big florid–faced man with a genial voice & hearty manner, called my attention to a chair which, he said, had been sat on by William III on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne. He showed me also a noble Chippendale ward–robe which also had been purchased in Ireland: where the ruin of the gentry has brought much furniture into the market. [end]

[169]

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[struck through] While I was writing a letter to Brooke Westcott in the Athenaeum, Baldwin came in, and talked to me in the friendliest fashion. I congratulated him on his appointment to the Chancellorship of Cambridge, and he confessed to great satisfaction on that appointment. We spoke of Lord Beaverbrook. He said that B. was the son of a Canadian Presbytarian minister, and still retains much of the obsolete theology in which he was reared. Thus, though far from being personally a good man, he had an almost fanatical assurance of his success in the course to which he supposed himself to be Divinely led. This accords with what Geoffrey Dawson said at Grillions about Beaverbrook. He belongs to that queer class of dissolute Calvinists, who find no difficulty in combining a firm belief in the Divine Favour with an insolent contempt for the Divine Laws. Baldwin spoke with much anxiety about the situation in India, where he thought there was some ground for fearing that Las Irarin was too incredulous of human baseness, & too sanguine of success, to be wholly adequate to the situation. [end]

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