BOMBED WESTMINSTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 116, 19 May 1941, Page 6

BOMBED WESTMINSTER

THE LIFE OF A PEOPLE

POIGNANT WORD PICTURE

A poignant picture of bombed London was drawn by the Venerable W. Bullock, Archdeacon of Wellington, when preaching at the Consecration of St. Jude's Church, Lyall Bay, yesterday morning. In a few hours, he said, crowds of Londoners, officials and workers, who would be off .work for the first time since ' the air • raid of last week, would come to the precincts of Westminster to, gaze upon that cluster of buildings which had been devastated by the implacable bombs of their enemy. If it were about 11 o'clock in the morning, they would hear the strains of sacred music coming from the organ.more freely than ever before, since they would be coming through a gaping hole in the roof as well as through the doors. They would be feeling most painfully that here was something which represented the life of the nation—and which had been hurt. '

This most remarkable set of buildings represented, he went on, the life story of the British people, their hopes, their doings, their aspirations. On the one side was the struggle of the people to make it possible for them to sit down and eat their bread, on the other wa? the holy Sanctuary of God, which had stood there for centuries witnessing that man could not live by bread alone, that man could never love the people unless he found a place " which to hallow with the worship of his Creator and his God.

"I wish." he said, "that we could see the picture as they will see it. We cannot separate one building from the other. It would be impossible to write the history of England without both."