TOC H.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18400, 5 June 1925, Page 10

TOC H.

ADDRESS BY FOUNDER. The aims and aspirations of the world famous organisation Toe 11. were the subject of an address delivered in the Y.M.C.A. last night by the Rev. P. T B. Clavton. the founder of the movement, who is at present on a visit to Christehureh. The address, which was illustrated by a number of lantern slides, was delivered to a poor attendance, and Mr Clayton, remarking on this, stated that the audience was the smallest which ho had addressed since leaving England. In the earlier stages of- his lecture, Mr Clayton dealt with the phases of the late war which had led up to the formation of his organisation. It had first been founded in the Ypres salient, during the earlier stages of the. war, and the speaker caused to be throVn on the screen a photo of the first Toe 11. building, the well-known, shell-battered structure in Ypres. The next headquarters of the organisation was in Poperinghe where the chapel had been set up in the loft of one of the houses of the town. Many of the soldiers who had fought and died in the Ypres salient had held Communion there, and the altar —a carpenter's bench which was preserved in England to-day—was probably more sacred than the high altar in St. Paul's Cathedral. Speaking of Gilbert Talbot, the son of the Bishop of Winchester, to whose memory the club had been founded, Mr Clayton said that that gentleman was a man of remarkable ability and would probably have been Prime Minister of England before ho died. His death had caused them to realise that the war was .not some sort of big, rough game, but something of a far more serious nature.

After dealing with the atmosphere in which the club had been formed, the speaker referred to a picture of tho Cenotaph which had been thrown on tho screen. The men who had fallen in the war had not died in order that monuments should be erected to their memory, he said, but a great many people' who erected memorials thought that they had finished with the dead when they had carried out this service. This, of course, was .absurd. The object of Toe H. was to replace th* dead with meu who would live Tip to their memory. Eeferring to the work of the organisation, itself, the speaker said there . were 10,000 members of the club in England today. All these were picked men who carried out all sorts of activities for the good of their fellows. The Association did not work for itself. It was organised to give service to others. Of the work of the organisation itself, tho fourth "compass point"really contained, the text of the matter. This was that a member of Toe H. must pledge himself To spread the Gospel without preaching, it. There were too many people, said Mr Clayton, who preached the Gospel but did, not spread it. The lecturer then went on to detail the work which had already been done, and spoke of the branches which had been set tip throughout the world. The demand made of members, he stated in conclusion, was service.