The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-11-19 00:00:00

"CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME!"

The Daily Tdegraph, in • leader, evoking a spirt of
charity for all who need It at the present time, but
more especially the widows and orphans of those who
were lost in the ill-fated Captain, says
_ . . . '

. _
Great Britain at this moment stands absent-minded,
gazing upon the prodigious contest which is waged so near
at hand. Physiologists my that It le Impossible to have
tee distinct pains at the same moment—one of them effaces
the other ; and it has been argued that the eyes can see,
and the mind can think, only one thing at a time. Such
Is the case with the British public at the present hour: tie
gaze is riveted upon the battle-fields of the Contirient, and
especially on that grim line round Paris, from which the
thunder and lightning that will bring the end are expected
to come. Have there been murders, accidents, Im-
portant political or social events among us during the
autumn? The public scarcely knows—it has not had leisure
to notice; for what are petty human tregedies, or small
dlsmters, what are Education Acta and Voysey trials, to the
mighty apasm of history beyond the Channel? A letter
which we recently printed from the Secretaries of "the
Captain Widow and Orphan Fund" places this absent-
mindedness of the population in the very atronged, light.
Here was • great ship of war, the pride and boast of the
British Navy for strength and armament, which, in • summer
storm, thanks to the disastrous oversight displayed in her
construction, rolled over and milk in the Spanish waters. at
any other period, how such a calamity would have fixed
all our attention! What could move pity more—
what could more thoroughly aroma the 110rIVIV a.d
charity of a maritime people like oureelvet—than the
Cruel fate of those live hundred blue Jackets and their
officers, with gallant Burgoyne and the enthusiastic inventor
who gave us the turret ;system. A child could realise the
piteous nature of the catastrophe—could underhand how
the great 'hip, once peat her point of safety must have wal-
lowed over, choking her crew in their bertha, scalding and
suffocating the firemen, converting the proud ironclad into •
huge and hideous coffin, which sank, with smothered cries and
awful screaming of the steam and imprisoned air into the dark
sea-grave. Had charity been asked, at any time of peace, for
the widows and orphans of Gust haplesss company of Christian
men, how freely it would have been given! With both
hands, "heaped up and pressed together, and running over,"
the measure of English pity would have been filled. There
would have been • universal desire, that, as the loss of the
Royal George was embalmed in a poet's song, so the loss of ,
the Captain should have been remembered by the people's
sympathy. . . .

Nor lilt the " Captain Fond' alone which suffers by this
public absorption. A crowd of applicants, too numerous to
be reproduced, besiege us for space to tell how the various
ageimies of relit f tad themselves all but overlooked is con-
aequence of the war. . . .

We will not quote the proverb, "Charity begins at home,"
because, in the truest and sweetest sense, every spot is a
" borne" to real charity. Were the sums lent out of &in-
land to the sick and wounded all that there was to give,
even then the rich by giving, and the poor by going without
glft• would have contributed together to • "liturgy" of
humanity which could not be better conceived, But we
know thst there into such danger of drying up the stream
of liberality here. Its main channel will run on full slaver,
to spite of the branch diverted to those melancholy scenes of
strife.

.11e gives twice who gives soon," the light saw says; but
this year the English people must give a;on and give
twice too." In the ledger of their charities, which be sure
a Divine AccountanbGeneral balance., they must write off
their beneficences t the victims of the war, as something
between themselves and Illstory, and unbutton their pockets
for the winter applicants here, as if the purse had never let
been opened. Lot not France and Germany be cooled in their
admiration if us by hearing, that, while we raised princely
sums for foreigners, we could not muster motor,, to
provide for the widows and orphan. of the Captain.
Neither let the lives which have been saved to German
and French homes be contrasted with lives lost at home for
want of attention to the sorrows which are always among
us One hand of England has been opened towards her
neighbour, beyond the sea ; let the other hand know nothing
at ail about this, but give an If there had been no previous
giving. Otherwl., it will rather be " the poor and those
who have none to help them " that sell have contributed
those gwitermal sums, and we should witness a pathetic Mut-
tration of the sentence, " he that bath none, from him shall
be taken that which he seemed to have."