The universal itch for high speed is surely one of the strangest which ever attacked human beings. Yet it seems to have' existed from the beginning of things—Jehu, for instance, is the synonym for a furious driver. Speaking at the National Safely Congress this week the Duke of Kent said that "as a driver I know the lure of speed and that there is even a lure in danger and in taking a for its own sake." I remember driving with a friend near Windsor Park when the Duke, then Prince George, shot by with the Duke of Gloucester in a long low sports.car, The lure was evidently in full force. But now he has the Duchess, not to mention two children to consider. So he went on to say that he also knew "the persistent dread that somebody's child will suddenly jump from the pavement into the middle of the road." Too many people forget that.
But there are moments when the speed lure may surely be excused. A Miss Kathleen House was held up for exceeding the 30-mile limit at Barnet this week. Her excuse was that she wanted to see her fiance before he went back to work and that she had only got engaged the day before Ancient and Modern" Charles Wesley's hymns, even if you do not know them, shine out with the lustre of true poetry.
England has seldom sunk so low as in. the reign of the first two Georges. The masses of the people were mere animals seething with hatred for their betters. The Church was just a ladder for unscrupulous climbers after wealth. The notorious Bishop Tomline, one of the worst of the climbers, heard that the Bishop of Durham was ill and become so assiduous in inquiries after his health that at last the latter sent out this message: "Tell Bishop Tom-line I am better, But the Bishop of Winchester has a very bad cough if that will do for him."
Wesley turned his attention to the people, and their attention to something better than dreams of revenge on the upper class. The Church of Rome would probably have secured him, as it would have secured General Booth, by making him the founder of a new order of friars. The Church of England in those days denounced him with unsparing virus lence, and roughs were frequently turned on to break up his meetings end attack him. Wesley would never have founded a separate sect if he had been treated differently. He was always an Anglican at heart.
The question whether faith is dying in these days is partly answered by looking back to the days of Wesley,. still more effectually, perhaps, by the animation with which it is continually discussed. The large numbers of young men and girls who, going tramping on Sun-Gays, make a rule of attending one service in whatever village they may pass through, is another answer, as also is the number of churches, like St. Martins in the Fields, St. Matthew's, Great Peter Street, which have succeeded in attaching many young people permanently to their assistance. In such instances it is certainly, as a rule, the: personality of the vicar which counts, as it was with John Wesley. But after all that does not affect the main issue.
While I am on these rather grave topics, mention may be made of a new play, "Glorious Morning," produced this week at the Duchess. A totalitarian state has been established in a certain country, which suppresses all freedom of thought, es-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.