The Spirit of London

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 2, 3 January 1941, Page 5

The Spirit of London

When the time conics for compiling the intimate history of London through its days as a salient in tho Battle of Britain, writes a correspondent of “The-Times,” the churches, missions and settlements of all denominations in East and Bouth-east London will be indispensable sources for tho historians. They are in the front line themselves, sharing all the daily and nightly risks of the population among whom their work lies. When you talk with the clergyman, ministers and mission workers you learu that their own experiences have been as strange, and often every bit as terrifying, as those of their people. Nevertheless, it is of these people that they speak chiefly—of Ihe wonderful spirit and fortitudo with which they face Hitler’s and Goering’s worst—and of the great work that men and \yoinen belonging to creeds not their own are doing. The warden of a Free Church settlement praises an indomitable elderly vicar living near; a rural dean on the other side of the river receives the same deserved tributes from the superintendent of a Alethodist mission. The work of the Non-conformists evokes similar tributes from the Anglicans. Those are just examples. Common humanity is in these days everywhere recognised as the first and closest of the ties binding the community together.