4 DECEMBER 1926, Page 3

The real answer to all this was made by Sir

Vansittart Bowater, who asked what the Bill was for if it did not threaten the churches. At present the churches were safe enough. Through other speeches there ran strongly the feeling that the churches were not the exclusive pro- perty of the ecclesiastical authority. In the division the Bill was defeated by 124 votes to 27. Although we are relieved by this decision the fact remains that the city churches are insufficiently used. The Rev. W. F. Geikie-Cobb, in a letter to the Times, has made the interesting proposal that various City churches should be allotted. as the headquarters of special organizations. Some years. ago Mr. Geikie-Cobb suggested that his own Church, St. Ethelburga, might be _attached to a Divinity Chair at King's College. Everybody knows how All nallows Church has become a kind of headquarters of To H. Why should not other churches. become the headquarters of missionary societies as Mr. Geikie-Cobb suggests, or of the Boy Scouts, of ecclesiastical music, ecclesiastical art, and so on ? * *