Untitled

Evening Star, Issue 14116, 20 July 1909, Page 4

Thebe are great doings at the heart of the Empire, and great reThe Navy, joicings over the presence in the Thames of the mighty Navy that maintains the Mother Isle inviolate. It may sound strangely to the young people of this Dominion to hear that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the Old Land who have never seen a battleship. Our children, are apt to think that the people of the United Kingdom have ships of war constantly within view. They read and are told so much of the Navy and of British seamen and the multitude of ships that ply around its coasts and on its rivers that the colonist comes to think that the leviathans that guard Old England’s shores are as familiar to “home-keeping youths” as gum trees and tussocks are to him. This is far from the reality. Although travelling is cheap and the distances are short, there are millions of Britons, possibly, who, though they have the will, have not the means to visit a seaport. Nor would they gain much if they had. The Imperial Government, possibly the citizens as well, have never made half enough of the Navy. It is not so very long ago that “the Army” was the chief, as it was the first, toast at all public functions. No attempts were mad© tc cultivate an intelligent interest in the Navy and its doings. Anything approaching the spectacular was regarded as theatrical, if not unhwinmiiv. There were few harbors, fewer suitable ports, and even less places of accommodation. Though there remains roach to do, it can to-day be affirmed that the spirit at the back of this official and popular reticence has vastly changed of lecent years, “Let the people see what they pay for,” said Lord Charles Beresford on one occasion, ahd he personally has always thrown his ships open for inspection. And so it is that Governments are realising how roach can be dime in this direction, and what immense results will follow on the personal and practical association of the men and women who pay to be defended and those who defend them. This in part is why London and the country round about have tamed out in their scores of thousands to gaa» at and visit the magnificent line of battleships that extends for twenty miles along the coast and up the Thames, and why the men behind the guns are to parade through the main streets of the City, to receive a civic welcome from the citizens and to lunch at the Guildhall.

Among the last of the published writings of Batter George Tyrrell, A Lay whose death was recently Priesthood, advised by cable, is an article in the ‘Contemporary Review’ on the dearth of clergy and its causes, fig an—-

*** y ' * [maL The essay is an eloqncalb, serious, and remarkable plea for a more of the intelligent or - qualified' layman of good character and repute in the work of the Qfinrch. There should, he says, be a ▼°h>nta* , y as well as a profession! body of Christian workers, teachers, and preachers “of men who gain their living like other citizens, and dmrote their leisure to the service of the Church.” We cannot do . more than direct attention to the article and commend its subject matter to those interested. The rev. -'father, it is hardly necessary to say, handles his theme with characteristic boklness and ' directness, and to those Nonconformist Churches who for many years have utilised in the pulpit and other Christian offices the- services of their lay adherents, Father Terrell’s arguments will come as an unlookedf°r_ endorsement of the wisdom of t-Wp policy. By one of those coincidences that are always coming to light, about the same time the ‘Contemporary’ article was being written Mr George Harwood, M.P delivered an address before the Churchmen s Union, London, on ‘Some Dangers of tiie Clerical Tafe.,’ Its argument throughout was similar to that-of Father Tyrrell’s. Hr Harwood for years has worked as a curate in Manchester, and also followed his own secular bumness of a cOtton-spin-ner. One result of his experience is that he is strongly persuaded that the Church of England, winch has so large a number of gifted and leisured mem m her communion, is Losing ground owing to her blindness in not accepting and utilising the means of service that are at her command. The subject is of more titan passing importance, and on© of which we shall probably hear more.