DEAN INGE DEFENDS HIS PEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20089, 4 May 1927, Page 15

DEAN INGE DEFENDS HIS PEN

ARTICLES TO PRESS. Replying as a guest at a luncheon of the Society of Women Journalists to the toast of his health, Dean logo recently defended his action in writing for the press. When ho first began to write for the newspapers a bishop remonstrated with him for making a great mistake in sacrificing his dignity, ho said {according to the London Daily Telegraph). Really, he could not see that any great distinction should be drawn between writing for newspapers that were read by all sorts and conditions of men and addressing a much smaller audience of the same kind from the pulpit or the platform. Writing, indeed, had the great advantage that one might be sure that what one had said would appear, without being subject to misunderstanding by a reporter. Two years ago, in the United States, he had strange experiences with the iournalists of that great country. .The reporters wanteit to know what he thought of the morals of the modern “flapper” as compared with those of her grandmother.— (Laughter.) T could only say,” said the Dean, “that the early indiscretions of the flapper’s grandmother I neither witnessed nor shared.’—(Renewed laughter.) The American papers sent their correspondents to report nisi theological lectures, and they made such a hash of the first one that he thought "hey had sent their baseball reporters by mistake. —(Laughter.) We were becoming more and more a nation of readers, continued Dean Inge, and it became more worth while, on the whole, to address, people through the press than to talk to them by word of mouth. Besides the charge of lowering the dignity of his calling there were other objections he had to meet. He received angry letters calling him a “blackleg” who was taking of the mouths of worthy people who lived by their pens. Some of them contended that he did not make bargains with editors and therefore spoilt the market for them; while others complained that, being rich already, he ought, not to want to make nt>v more money. As to the first of those charges he did not think he had reason to complain of the way he had been treated by editors. But, as to being a rich man, his deanery was worthy only £ISOO a year net, and he had four children, who cost him £IOOO n year to educate. That did not leave him much on which to keep up a house of 20 rooms and to extend that hospitality which was expected of him.