Eric had an engagingly boyish, at times almost infantile, sense of humour. He delighted in a stock of comic stories which he retailed with inexhaustible relish both for their formal nearness and for their garnered wisdom. Among these was a dialogue between three men in a railway-carriage:—

First man: ‘What lights are those?’

Second man: ‘They’re the lights of Hanwell.’

First man: ‘How strange they look!’

Third man: ‘Not half so strange as the lights of the train look from Hanwell!’

Perhaps this unassuming little allegory may enlighten the chequered history of the Money-changers from its thwarted beginnings in 1916 to its recent and painful aftermath in 1949.

rA representation of the turning-out of the money-changers has been chosen for a war memorial, for it commemorates the most just of all wars—the war of Justice against Cupidity—a war raged by Christ Himself.’

The sculptor had long dreamed of a great monument which should embody this struggle and at the same time be his crowning achievement. The original design—for a bronze group in the round—done in 1916 for a competition as a monument for L.C.C. employees, was rejected. It may be seen reproduced in Eric Gill published by Ernest Benn in 1927; it is also extant in a wood engraving. The upsurging rhythm of this bronze group is finer than the more geometrical movement of the relief ultimately carved in stone at Leeds.

We are all of us unconsciously influenced by the atmosphere or climate of thought of the world in which we live, though upbringing and mature thought may have taught us to analyse and at least partially discount this influence where it runs counter to the principles of our Faith. The children who come to us come from this same atmosphere; with some their upbringing in a truly Catholic home has gone far to fortify them against the absorption of what is bad in the atmosphere of the modern world, but with many more this is by no means so, and our main educational problem is how to train them in such a way that they grow up to judge the world in which they will have to live by a scale of values drawn, not from the general climate of opinion of that world, but from the principles of their Faith applied to the problems of every-day living.

It would be an impossible task to give a complete analysis of the elements which go to make up the atmosphere or climate of thought which the children who come to us begin to breathe long before they come to the age of reason, and which they will almost inevitably absorb completely, unless they are fortified against it by their homes or their schools or, better still, by both.

Lord Ponsonby ofShulbrede ended a debate on Euthanasia in the House of Lords on 1st December, 1936 with these words: ‘If the vote is against me, no doubt the discussion will continue in the country and at some future date will be taken up again’. The subject was in fact re-opened recently by the Dean of St Paul’s, who said, ‘Surveying the arguments for and against, I have come to the conclusion that the proposal of this Society (The Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society) is quite in accordance with the Christian conception of human right and duty.’ The Archbishop of Canterbury has dissociated himself from this opinion. And in the House of Lords debate on the subject last November, the Archbishop of York has expressed the strongest opposition

Euthanasia today signifies the termination of life by painless means for the purpose of ending severe suffering. It is enough to say that easy dying is not quite the same thing as a good death or dying well.

Dr Killick Millard, a retired Medical Officer of Health and secretary of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society, has said that ‘patients qualifying for mercy killing—we prefer to call it merciful release—would mainly be cases of incurable and inoperable cancer.’