THE CHURCH AND THE STRIKE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19844, 17 July 1926, Page 10

THE CHURCH AND THE STRIKE.

Clerical intervention in industrial disputes is sometimes resented or deprecated. There may be a feeling that it is liable to be futile and wide of the mark, so to say. And yet, surely, the Church, in its wide range as “the company of all faithful Christians,” has its legitimate part to act in times ot national disturbance and trouble. It acted the part efficiently during the Great War, and the smaller, but very serious, dispute in Great Britain, which has been baffling all conciliatory endeavours for nearly three months, should not be beyond its province. Tbe conference between representative bishops, free church leaders, and Mr Cook and Mr Smith, “to discuss the possibility of a just coal settlement,” may help in bringing about tho pacific consummation so devoutly to be desired. Some weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury proffered his offices in the good cause. Dr Davidson is a wise ecclesiastical statesman. Ho has always worked in the safe and sane tradition of his father-in-law, Archbishop Tait. In his seventyninth year ho might crown an honourable career with a patriotic achievement. Though not a member of the Conference, ho has bestowed upon it his benedictory sanction. It may be remarked, incidentally, that the Nonconformist leaders are on a complete intellectual level nowadays with the chiefs of the Established Church, and thoir participation in the conference would be the more valuable because they may be in closer touch with the industrial populace than tho bishops are. If a permanent settlement is to be attained, the agreement must not be arranged on rigidly economic lines. Transient schemes might be patched up, but a lasting contract is required, and this can only be reached by an invincible pressure of moral sentiment. Anger and vindictiveness must be banished, and recognition of human kinship should be the governing motive. There

may seem to be a commonplace quality in these observations, but (said George Eliot) “life, with all its eccentricities, is full of commonplace.” The good sense and good humour which have been displayed in England and Scotland throughout the struggle have been in harmony with the spirit of the movement initiated by Archbishop Davidson. There is no solid reason why the movement should come to nothing.