THE Liverpool Post chides Lord Irwin, who lands at Bombay on Good Friday, because he has postponed his official reception and has expressed his intention of going straight to church. Our contemporary regrets that an Indian Viceroy should prefer his prayers to his official dignity — we suppose that it does seem odd and old-fashioned — and it adds that “by this he will be handicapped all the time he is in India.” We doubt it. The Indians have many religions, but the great majority of them are religious, and a people that has been swayed by a mystic, often perhaps an ill-balanced mystic, like the Mahatma Gandhi, is unlikely to be prejudiced against a ruler who remembers his duty to his God. Indians may be surprised, but they certainly will not be shocked. We much regret that such a comment should appear in a paper with the high traditions of the Liverpool Daily Post, and we have read with pleasure the letters of protest that it has received from its readers. Even responsible newspapers rarely seem able to understand that there are people, sometimes highly placed but generally undistinguished, who take religion seriously. The Johannesburg Sunday Times, for example, in a reference to the recent action of the Bishop of St. Albans in condemning intercommunion with the Nonconformists, refers to differences concerning “merely immaterial matters”! Neither to Catholics nor to pious Nonconformists is the doctrine of the Real Presence and all it implies “immaterial”.
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