Religion: Vicar Green Points a Moral

When a London hospital chaplain recently appealed for books, tobacco and other comforts for Nazi prisoners of war, many a sporting Briton responded. But not the Rev. Harold Green, vicar of Ipswich’s St. Nicholas’ Church. Wrote he: “Having seen your tenderhearted request for comforts for the blasphemers of God and butchers of men, I herewith send a small comfort which I am sure will be good for them. . . .” The Vicar’s contribution was a tin of rat poison.

“Idle and ill-mannered jesting … deplorable especially in a clergyman,” observed the vicar’s bishop last week. But Vicar Green was not particularly upset by the censure. He was, in fact, quite busy reading some 300 approving letters. He also had a call from a Canadian soldier representing 900 wounded Canadians; they wanted the vicar to know they were for him.

Explaining that he had merely wanted “to point a moral,” Vicar Green added: “These Nazis, who have been guilty of every kind of villainy, should not be pampered. I repeatedly pray ‘God save us from ourselves.’ We must be the chosen race or we could never perpetrate the idiocies we do and survive.”