PRIMATE’S SLUM LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 May 1934, Page 9

PRIMATE’S SLUM LIFE

HOW HE BECAME “BOOR DEVIL.’’ LONDON, March 21. The Archbishop of Canterbury revealed some of his early life when he spoke last night at a meeting of the Hampstead Council of Social Welfare, at Hampstead Town Hall. The Prime Minister presided. “When I left Oxford.” said the Archbishop. “I was tilled witli ambitions for a. political career, and 1 went to Yorkshire to make. a. political speech — I won’t say for which party. The train was delayed outside. Leeds Station, and I looked down upon a collection of slums and hovels the like of which I have never seen even in the Eastend of London. “I saw' a black-coated figure moving there, and 1 said to myself, ‘There is a poor devil of a parson spending his life in hovels like those.’ Within less than two years 1 was myself the black-coated parson in charge of those slums. As I saw the trains passing I used to say. with a -smile. ‘I suppose there is some superior young politician there looking down on me and saying “Poor Devil.” ' “Those were the very happiest days of my life,’ and not all the pleasures ol youth could compare with the pleasures of feeling that my life was not wholly spent upon myself.” PREMIER ON SERVICE. The Prime Minister said that the country must have personal service, and on the present generation and its contacts with men ami thoughts and things depended the success that would attend this generation's efforts in opening the road to voluntary ameliorat ion. “I am sometimes alarmed and dis'•o'.iragc'l wlvm I hoar so many people uajing. -wlvm any l rouble arises, Leave it. io tin- Government ' You can havo the ablest, strongest, most

sincere and the most enlightened Government that a country has ever had—l am afraid you are bit short of

it to-day—l laughter I—but even so the Government will never be able to do the work that is required to be done to get. us successfully over the. present days.

“What we want are great, communities of active men and women going about not working as officials but as those who have got in their own souls the call to service and who are prepared to obey that call. “The service given must not be pat ronage service, it must be the service of equality. What we really want is that in every one of their veins and nerves the individuals composing our human society should be alive, not as self-centred entities but as fellows in a. great fellowship.”