DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

Evening Star, Issue 22362, 11 June 1936, Page 9

DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

REV. C. F. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY MISSION The Rev. C. F. Andrews, who arrived in Dunedin yesterday on his tour of the Dominion to conduct a university mission, was welcomed last night at Allen Hal!. The tour is under the auspices of the Student Christian Movement and the World l Student Federation. Mr Andrews, a fellow of Pembroke College, for some years vice-principal of Wcstcott House, _ Cambridge, and vice-president of Rabindranath Tagoe’s Institution at Santiniketan, Bengal, India, has been prominent in improving tho condition of (living of Indans in all parts of the world, also writing various books on this and similar subjects. Mr Andrews arrived in Dunedin direct from Fiji; which he visited at tho invitation of tbe Indian Association to assist it in meeting land tenure and legislative problems. He will leave on Monday morning to continue his mission in tho other New Zealand university colleges and will visit Australia and India before returning to Great Britain to attend the conference of the World Student Christian Federation in Birmingham in January, and to take theological lectures at Cambridge University. The president of the Otago University branch of the Student Christian Movement (Mr G. H. Boyes) presided at the meeting at which the visitor was welcomed last night, and, in welcoming Mr Andrews, said that his visit to this part of the world had been

made partly at the desire of the Indians in Fiji, which he visited 1 in 1917,'performing a great work in freeing the Indians from the slavery of indentured labour. The Indians had wanted him to visit them again to see the difference which ho had made. The chancellor of the University (Mr W. J. Morrell) also welcomed Mr Andrews, making reference to his distinguished career at Cambridge University. _ Mr Andrews, he said, had seen a vision that had called on him to go in tho service of his Master, and lie had then gone to India. His experience had given him great familiarity ■with students in the East and in the West, and that experience had been revivified by tho thoughts of people in many lands. Bishop Fitchett welcomed Mr Andrews on behalf of the church at large, and good wishes for the success of the mission were also extended by the president of the Otago University Students’ Association (Mr P. Green). Mr Andrews, in reply, said that coming to Dunedin and getting into the atmosphere of a university college was a reminder to him of the long years he had spent at Cambridge University. There, in 1928, 10 years after the conclusion of tho war, he had been asked to preach tho Armistice Day sermon. The text suggested to him had been from Revelation: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth.” He had immediately seen the import of the text, thinking of the terrible divisions between people that had been the cause of the war and envisaging a change in the future. But those divisions had not been eliminated. Race pride was the greatest evil in the world to-day, and colour prejudice had got right into the heart of the church. The divisions in the church and the old earth, with its empire grabbing and with its millionaires on the one side and poverty on the other, must be done away with. Nearly another 10 years after he had drawn attention to these matters in his sermon at Cambridge the divisions in the church had not been reduced. Race and colour prejudice, slums, unemployment, ana greed remained. _ He thought that people were not quite so bad as they had been, but the world nevertheless was in a mess to-day. “ Here in this part of the world you cannot imagine what it is to live on your nerves all the time,” he added, referring to conditions in Europe. The world’s great men were doing acts of indescribable folly and somehow making things worse, and the evil seemed to be going deeper and deeper. “ Literally we are in despair in Europe,” he said. “ Literally we are down on our knees. The best men in England don’t know from one day to another what is going to happen next.” People must get away front man and turn to God, lie continued. He did not want to be sensational, but be only wanted to bring his audience down to realities. Ho wanted everyone to face the facts and in that way, lie trusted, they would come back to God. Only through Him could they find tho way out of their difficulties. “We of the older generation have failed,” he concluded. “ You of tho younger generation have got to succeed.”