A Misguided Old Man
The most sensible remark in the House of Lords' debate on the Dean of Canterbury was made by the Archbishop in the course of his wise, dignified and impressive speech. "If the Press could only lose interest in the Dean," Dr. Fisher observed, "everyone would soon do likewise." Such a course could impose on the newspapers a severe self-discipline in the face of almost intolerable provocation, but it is to be hoped none the less that they will take it. If truth is salutary the Lords' debate should prove beneficial to Dr. Hewlett Johnson. He was called by the Archbishop a public nuisance to the Church and State, by the Lord Chancellor a vain and foolish old man, by Earl Jowitt " this turbulent priest," by Lord Winterton the colleague of torturers, by Lord Hailsham a clown in gaiters, by Lord Salisbury a foolish old man, puffed up with conceit, hankering after publicity. All this happens to be true, but none of it probably is sufficient to penetrate to the depths in which the Dean's sensitivity resides. One thing, however, possibly may. That is the Archbishop's disclosure that the Dean was guilty of prevarication little short of mendacity in stating publicly that in making contact with the Christians of China he was fulfilling a mission laid on him by the Archbishop. In fact he had not so much as told the Archbishop that he was going to China. The Dean of Canterbury is a scandal to the Church, but both the Archbishop and the Prime Minister are unquestionably right in insisting that special legislation to deal with his case is out of the question, and that the right course for the future is to ignore as far as possible a person who has persistently and continuously brought into dishonour the high office to which he should never have been appointed, and from which he has not the grace to resign.
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