A VISIT TO ENGLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19235, 26 January 1926, Page 10

A VISIT TO ENGLAND.

RETURN OF CANCTN WILFORD. CHURCH LIFE VERY ACTIVE. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] CHRISTCHTTRCH, Monday. Canon J. R. Wilford, principal of Christ's College Collegiate Department, accompanied by Mrs. Wilford, arrived in Christchurch yesterday, having returned to the Dominion by the Ruahine, after a twelve months' visit to England and the Continent. Canon Wilford had some interesting comment to make upon his travels. While abroad he took the opportunity to visit universities and theological colleges. His travelling in England was done by means of a small car which he purchased on his arrival. They motored over 15,000 miles of roads, and the tyres of the car are still good for thousands more.

" While at Oxford I stood on the quadrangle at Christ Church and saw what the founders of our Christchurch intended Cathedral Square to be," said Canon Wilford. He remarked that neither at Oxford nor at Cambridge, nor, in fact, anywhere at Home, did he find anything quite like College House, but much that made him proud of it. College . House had developed on its own lines, and he had seen nothing to make him think they were wrong. In England ho had endeavoured to engage a sister for St. George's Hospital, and he believed the problem had been solved through his getting in touch with tho Sisterhood of St. Elizabeth, of Hungary, an Order which had been in existence only a decade. A rule which they had of not allowing more than thirteen sisters to stay in one home compelled them to launch out into different dioceses. The work at St. George's Hospital would bo tho first undertaken in an overseas Dominion of tho Empire by the sisterhood. Assistance in the choice of nurses was being given by some of the leading doctors in England, one of whom was Dr. Acland, a relative of- tire Christchurch family, whom Canon Wilford met in the vestry of a London church, in which he had been preaching. Church life was very active in England, he said, and there was an advance on what they saw when there in 1909. The financial "difficulties, however, were as acute as ever.

Industrial conditions were bad in England, and the only hope he saw was; in the unfailing ability of England to "come through." "I dread to think of what is going to be the end of the mining dispute," said Canon WilfordL