The Henson Journals
Fri 7 November 1930
Volume 51, Pages 150 to 151
[150]
Friday, November 7th, 1930.
The bright frosty weather continues but it is not quite so cold. I worked at the notes for the speech on "Sexual Morality" – the choice is between being indecent to the point of obscenity or decent to the point of platitudinous conventionalism – but with small result, for I suffered from giddiness, which persisted even though I went out for an hour.
Cyril Clarke writes to me from Canada – very egotistic and very affectionate, perhaps the first is in the circumstances inevitable, and the last is not necefsarily insincere.
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Charles went with me to Redcar, where I was the 'principal speaker' at a great meeting of men in the Pier Assembly Hall organized by the C.E.M.S. The Archbishop of York presided, & made an excellent little speech in winding up the meeting. Woolcombe, the Bishop of Whitby proposed a vote of thanks to me in the familiar fashion of fatuous flattery. Why will men go out of their way to add to the crushing weight of humbug, under which the world is sinking? The Mayor of Redcar seconded. We came away after the meeting & reached he Castle at 5 minutes before 11 o'clock.
[151]
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I was interested in the audience at Redcar. There were many grey and bald heads, but also a considerable number which were neither. As it was an open meeting there was no means of knowing how many of the men present were members of the C.E.M.S., a society for which I have ever had a very mean opinion. For, in spite of annual conventions of an imposing character, I have never been able to discover that it does anything. Woolcombe's speech seemed to me the merest claptrap. Speaking as the newly elected President, he dilated on the value of prayer–meetings, and illustrated his words by some very unconvincing allegations of what he had known respecting them in Bethnal Green. I cannot think that the revival of religion is to be looked for in that direction. Temple said some good things e.g. he pointed out the misery of life, often concluding in suicide, as it is pictured in the panic fiction of our time. If human happiness be a desirable or a legitimate object, it is not likely to be attained along the lines of the demoralized individualism which modern writes advocate. He plainly "enjoys the papacy", and both looks the part, and plays it with remarkable ability.