THE AMAZING EAST END

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24636, 18 June 1941, Page 9

THE AMAZING EAST END

The thing that is so amazing in the people of the East End of London just now is the fact that although so many of them have lost everything they valued, thev do not just lie down amidst the ruins and say that life is not worth living, writes the Rev. Percy Ineson. superintendent of the East End Mission, in the British Weekly. In a very wonderful way after the first shock has passed there comes to them a " sure and certain hope " that out of the desolation of the present there will spring something that is worth while. I think that one of the things that I have learnt from these disinherited people of the East End is that real peace and happiness are largely pendent of outward happenings to possessions. I remember standing in the middle of the road on a night in September when the* building in which I had laboured for years, and in which I and my workers lived was a roaring furnace after being struck by bombs. The police and firemen ordered us all awav from the building. There I stood. as far as I knew homeless and deprived of all I to be as bad as that, but for some hours that was supposed to be the position. Looking back, the thing that strikes me 3s how little those possessions end material things I had gathered around me really mattered. Amidst falling debris and the desolation I was aware of the conviction that the real things j that ciade life could not be destroyed.' Thev might burn my pulpit, but thev could only make my message a consuming fire. I had a " sure and certain hope " that all would be well.