The Archbishop of Canterbury delivered an admirable address at the
opening of some new Church schools at Dover on Tuesday. The schools in question were founded by local Churchmen at a cost of 25,000 seven years ago. Later on, when the authori- ties demanded the provision of a thousand more places, 29,000 more was contributed from the same source. But, as the Archbishop went on to show, the school authorities, while insisting on definite religious teaching given by teachers whose qualifications they were definitely allowed to ascertain and test, admitted the full and absolute right on the part of the parent who desired Christian education of another type "to demand that within these walls that teaching shall be given to his child, provided that proper provision can be made." It had further been arranged that every department should have at least one Nonconformist teacher. He thus claimed that they were contradicting by positive fact the allegations con- stantly made against the Church—in letters which he received daily, in newspaper articles and correspondence, and in cam- paign literature—of narrowness, bigotry, and proselytism. To illustrate the controversial methods of those who opposed the system established by the Education Act of 1902, the Arch- bishop described how a "Manual of Doctrine" was pilloried as representing the teaching of the Church in regard to Dissent, although the author had been removed from the headship of a Church of England Training College twenty years ago on account of the views which he eight years later embodied in the Manual. It must not be supposed, however, that the tone of the speech war in the slightest degree combative. It was above all else a wise and kindly attempt to remove the misunderstandings that keep Church- men and Nonconformists from working together to promote the moral and religious well-being of the community.
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