96 The Ypres Times. FURTHER NEWS OF TOC. H." (In this article the moving spirit of "Toe. H.," PadrJ Clayton, tells us of the wonderful progress of the Movement, and particularly of the fruits of his recent tour of Canada as the guest of Lord Byng of Vimy, the Governor-General.Ed. Y.T.) The English wit who said a year ago that he only knew of two good things that had so far come out of the WarPhillips' rubber soles and Toe. H.," was prophesying more truly than he knew. Toe. H." was born in that sacred semi-circle of ground for which a greater cost was paid in life, and love, and service than for any other cause in the world's history or parcel of ground on the world's surface. News, therefore, of Toe. H.," of this strange growth, with its strange name, may not be unacceptable to members of the Ypres League. During the last two years no Movement has grown more widely or more deeply than that which has sprung from the old white house in Poperinghe and the ruined lace factory in the Rue De Lille at Ypres. Widespread as it now is, it is still at the beginning of its work. What that work is becoming it is not easy to set down as yet in any one phrase or any form of words. Toe. H.," like all living things, and indeed like the Ypres League itself, is among us first and foremost, not to fulfil a programme but to extend a spirit. Of the many thousands who now at one time or another have come in touch with it, through a meeting of one of its posts or branches, or attending one of its guest nights, or even through a friendly encounter with one or other of its ever-growing membership, at home or overseas, there must have come the consciousness that this thing is happening, and happening deeply and fruitfully. It holds the allegiance to-day of a great scattered familymen in the young prime of life, students, school boys, business folk, and factory hands while quietly in the background there are many older folk, fathers and mothers in all shades of society, to whom the name brings comfort in their sorrow and loving pride to uphold their courage. There is no need to tell the readers of the Ypres Times that all this began far back in the furnace of 1915, when the death of Gilbert Talbot took from us one who, had he lived, might have been the great Christian statesman of his time. So it came about that a few months later brotherly love took hold of a great empty house in the heart of the Ypres Salient and, naming it after him, made it in the years that followed a symbol of the true loss of war. However much obscured to-day by grave though lesser issues, it remains eternally true that the sacrifices of war can never be estimated in terms of reparation. The one great crisis of our time is to replace the men who died in the flower of their age to render their example fruitfultheir names enduring their spirit rein carnate in the sons of lesser men. This is a tremendous task to which in 1919 the scattered survivors of the old fellowship of Talbot House addressed themselves. They who aim high shoot high," says an old adage, and no careful observer to-day could fail to be impressed by what has been accomplished during the last three years, and still more by the fact that it is only a beginning. Six years after the siege of Mafeking the Boy Scout Movement began to be widely known, and from it has come since then what is pro bably the greatest benefaction to the cause of boyhood that history can show. Now in the fourth year after the glorious tragedy of Ypres, a work intended to challenge the allegiance of the age just senior to scouting stands on the threshold of a great achievement. In the beginning of 1919, Toe. H." was without a brick that it could call its own. An old address book and a few pounds in the bank were its only visible assets. In 1920-21 first one and then another House was opened in London, and a few groups began elsewhere. In 1922 the Annual Statement of Accounts (just published) shows a total of £27,000 of which £15,000 is an Endowment Fund. It now possesses three great Houses in London and a House at Manchester. Further Houses in Leicester, Bristol, and Glasgow are half completed, and beyond these a series of groupings composed of the best ex-service world, linked in a common task with picked youngsters in almost every great city, stand for something to which it would be difficult to find an adequate analogy.

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1922 | | pagina 14