BISHOP JULIUS.

Press, Volume XIIX, Issue 14553, 2 January 1913, Page 10

BISHOP JULIUS.

HIS TRIP TO ENGLAND.

WEALTH AND POVERTY

(PRESS ASSOCIATION T*£LltG*RA*U.)

WELLINGTON, January I

Bishop Julius, of Christchurch, arrived in Wellington this evening by the Warriraoo from Sydney on his return from a visit to E-igland. During his stay in Sydney Bishop Julius performed the unveiling ceremony in connection with the dedication of tho sanctuary window at St. Matthew's, I'addington.

Somo interesting remarks were made by Bishop Julius oefore the members of the Commonwealth Club, who entertained him at Adelaide. Ho said he left New Zealand and went to England, through Canada. Ho was a Londoner, having had charge of a

parish there some years ago. On his recent visit he found that enormous changes had taken place for the better in London. He well remembered what Snowhill, the Smithficld cattle market, and tho places in the East end were once like, but he found that the dens had disappeared, and that their places had been taken by great buildings and broad streets. One would naturally say that the position of the people must be vastly improved, but when he made enquiries in his old parish he found that the condition was really no better than when ho left. Certainly J here were no slums in the old sense, but many of the houses wero almost as bad as slums, and several families lived in one house.

Going around London two things forced themselves under his notice— the inordinate luxury on one hand aud the miserable poverty on the other. Those conditions had always existed, but he had not noticed tiit-:;i in su-jh coatrast as ho caw them on this tezt trip. The luxury resembled that of the American type, and was mostly ostentatious and provocative of every kind of bitterness. On the other side was poverty, which was the same to*-day as it had ever been, but so far as he could see it was a great deal more bitter than in the days gone by. Poor people were, in a measure, hopeless, although efforts were made from t:me to time to relieve the position. People flocked in from other cities and fi led up the void, so that London was no better for the work done. The poverty that existed was a terrible sight. He expected the tune would come when it would be difficult to secure the interference of the military in industrial strikes in tho Old Country.

He journeyed to Glasgow and back to London through Durham, and was struck with the enormous contrast between the huge parks through which he passed, and the large-areas that were not being made use of, and miserable crowded cities and towns in which houses were not fit to sling a cat in. Little shops and small institutions in England' had come to an end. and great concerns were swiftly taking the bread out of the mouths of tho smaller tradesmen.