A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 119, 18 May 1909, Page 2

A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR.

SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS. [PBOM OT7R CORRESPONDENT.] WELLINGTON, Saturday. Wellington is being visited by a very distinguished English literary man, Br Hodgkins, D.O.L. an<d Litt. D., .whose, name is well known as that of the author of that truly monumental historical work, "Italy and1 Her Invaders." The doctor, who is a genial, highly cultured, gentleman of .between 50 arid 60 years of,age, is ,here partly for pleasure and partly in connection with an oversea mission from the English Society of Friends, or "Quakers" as they are familiarly called. On Saturday night he adr dressed a conference of the Friends) including delegates from .other parts, of the Dominion. He said that there were some who held that the result of the great spiritual struggle now going on would be that, before the end of this century, the civilised world would become either Roman Catholic or agnostic. Much as he would dread the supremacy of Rome, the latter alternative would be far more appalling, but the Society of Friends, by standing up for their own free and simple Faith, should be an important link in the great chain of causation that would save the world from either of those disasters. Many in the other free churches were helped and encouraged through knowing that the Society of Friends subsisted without visible sacraments and without any vestigo of a priesthood. - In the course of a brief conversa^tion with Dr Hodgkins last week I gathered that he and his party (including his wife and daughter), are greatly delighted with what they have seen of the Australian ' Colonies and New Zealand. The lack of any open poverty, the general state of comfort and content, impressed him very much. Of course, true to the Quaker creed, he is opposed to armaments and to wars, but it is evident that he regards a defence of a man's home a$ a rightful and proper thing to be studied. He is greatly interested in the immigration question, but does not approve, of the Old Country shovelling her wastrels* and incompetents into Australasia. He favours , rather an immigration policy by special settlements of picked men and women, with a knowledge or taste for country life, and it is on the Card that one result of his visit to New Zealand -may be an attempt to form a special settlement of English people belonging to his particular religious sect.