The number of illegitimate children in the midst of the community was appalling. The absence of a sense of sin, he said, was deplorable.
The number of "forced marriages" was astonishingly large, and it was a melancholy fact that too many imagined that any lapse of virtue was fully atoned for by marriage.
The Church should lift her voice in this matter. They had been silent too long, and this silence was taken partly for acquiescence.
A higher moral tone was required, and no law could do this: the Church must denounce the whole business. They welcomed recent legislation on gambling and drinking. Desecration of the Sabbath was a thing to be regretted.
The Defence Forces, in their recent camps, had been special sinners in this respect, as they seemed to choose Sunday as the day of greatest toil for the men.
• LONDON: The famous Cullinan diamonds, or "The Stars of Africa," as the two largest ones have been called, now form part of the Crown and Sceptre of the Empire, and will be used for the first time in ceremonial when his Majesty is crowned next June. No monarch has ever worn two jewels so valuable.
The late King Edward decided that the large pear shaped diamond should be placed in the sceptre and the smaller one in the crown. Both the sceptre and the crown were made for Charles II.
The jewellers had the difficult task to find space for the diamond, which weighs 516 carats, and at the same time retain the distinctive workmanship of this venerable symbol of kingly power.
The smaller stone, which weighs 309 carats, takes the place of the sapphire added to the crown by George IV, and is immediately under the ruby of the Black Prince.
The crown now contains examples of all the methods of diamond-cutting from the days of Charles II.
• The death of the Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, at the age of 86, removes a figure of quaint originality and high learning.
Professor Mayor possessed one of the finest libraries in Cambridge - all of it, he was fond of saying, bought with the money saved on food.
A bachelor, a tee-totalle and a vegetarian, in his view one could live well on 6d a day, and for some considerable time he reduced his nutrition bill to 2d a day.
When he was completing his magnum opus - his edition of Juvenal - he decided to fast on a progressive scale for the last 48 days of strenuous work, eating only every other day for the first week, every fourth day for the next, and nothing at all for the last fortnight.
When doctors compelled him to surrender the programme at the beginning of the last week, he said: "I never felt so well or so eager for work in my life, and I am convinced that I should have suffered no harm by persevering with it."
- ODT, 17.1.1911.
