25 JANUARY 1963, Page 8

Grave Condition

'The stone which the builders refused is be- come the headstone of the corner.' If the Psalms are prophetic there are going to be many red faces in the diocese of London soon. I don't suppose that the inscription For ever in my thoughts would be considered by many to be 'verbose or objectionable': yet, because it falls below the standards of decency' and propriety set up by the Church of England, the whole complicated and rusty machinery of its legal process was set in motion to remove the stone with that offending inscription from a Garden of Remembrance in West Twyford, Middlesex. Not for the first time the C of E has become tangled in its own red tape, and not for the last time does it appear—as the Bishop of Salisbury wrote in The Times----heartless and inhuman.