Case 2

Our Waifs and Strays Page 93

at the end of the previous year. The number has now increased again.

Finally I have to add that we have increased our number of clerical organising secretaries to the original number we had in the early days of the war, and we hope that the work they are doing and are going to do all over the country will bring to the notice of the church people this great spiritual work which the Church is going officially on behalf of her destitute and orphan children. Looking ahead, I want to say that our great problem will be to keep up the income, and therefore I ask all those who are interested in this work to do their utmost, putting their shoulders on the wheel in order that our income in this year 1922 may not fall behind that of 1921.

The BISHOP OF LONDON : I should like very much to welcome on behalf of the Society Lady Mary Cambridge at one of the first public functions she is going to discharge - the first since the Royal Wedding, I think.

After LADY MARY CAMBRIDGE has received purses on behalf of the Society, she made a short speech in which she said: I wish to thank you very much for the very kind welcome you have given me to-day. It is a great honour and pleasure to be of any small use or help to this most excellent Society. We all know what great and important work it has done, is doing, and has still to do, and we realize that it is not by any means an easy task in these days to keep such a far-reaching and widespread institution in funds. Also, the children of to-day are a very important question, and so let us all do all we can - and more - for the good of this Society which has so many of our future generation in its keeping.

The BISHOP OF LONDON said : I am sure after that excellent speech which we have just heard - we may say Lady Mary's maiden speech - there really is a very little to add. As you have heard it said, this is the seventeenth Meeting at which I have taken the chair. Just imagine, how many new things are there left to say about the Waifs and Strays? But what I feel about it is that this Society speaks for itself, or rather the children speak for themselves. One of our speakers last year (who shall be nameless) mistook the children walking up to present purses for waifs and strays! But we did not mind it a bit ; nor did the children, because those delightful children (who, mind you, contribute nearly £20,000 a year themselves - a marvellous thing to do) are just exactly what we are going to make the others. We are going to make ours as well-clothed, as fat and round and jolly. I am prepared to say that they are just as nice even now! Therefore, I do feel that that procession of children and all it means of hope and prophecy is an address and a sermon in itself and ought to fill us all with hope and courage.

I would like to say two things. First of all, have the loyal citizens taken in what this old Church Society is doing for the State? I will venture to say it is the greatest contribution made by any living set of people to the State, to raise a quarter of a million and bring up 4,000 citizens every year. It was John Ruskin who told us that the real riches of a State are in its men and women, and when you think of what those children might have been - nay, I am bound to say would have been - but for the work of this Society and its hundred and seven beautiful Homes all over the country (it is our small Homes we are so proud of - no great institutions in which children are lost, but Homes in which children are cared for and loved, one by one) you will agree that it is a great contribution of the Church to the State. I have just received a telegram from the first boy found by our dear old friend Prebendary Rudolf - there he is, looking as cheerful as ever.- The man who is now doing very well as a reader at Oxford in the printing trade telegraphs :

"Ex-crossing sweeper greets you, co-workers with God, Who raises poor out of the dust. - J., Society's first boy."

I do hope that the Press and all of you will bring home to your friends the marvellous work that this Society is doing for the country that we love. You, General Seely, will be very much interested to hear that 2,000 children of soldiers and sailors killed in the War were taken at once into our Homes. That is a great contribution to make to the State.

But I must naturally, as a Christian Bishop, emphasise what this Society must men to Christ Himself. If Christianity had one distinguishing thing about everything else, it was to demonstrate to the whole world what the child meant to God. What has come out of those two thousand years of Christianity is that instead of the child being thrown aside, discarded and despised, the child is held to be priceless value in the eyes of God.