At The Sign Of The Perfect Ashlar

At the Sign of the Perfect Ashlar

Some weeks ago the Craft was startled by an announcement that the Grand Lodge of Italy had resolved that the Society should no longer be secret . Thereupon a vigorous protest arose , with the result that on the question being submitted to a vote of the Craft in Italy 11 , 5 88 supported the proposal , while 72 , 590 were in favour of maintaining the existing order of things .

« 3 ' s '» « S » The movement originated , it is said , through brethren of standing in the official world and in society in Rome , who find the profession of Masonry inconvenient and embarrasing when the Roman Catholic Church condemns it so fiercely , whereas if the meetings and the ritual were no longer secret this

hostility would vanish . It was Clement XII . who first banned the Craft in 173 8 on no other ground . People did not mind in those days . Francis I . of Austria became a Freemason just afterwards , though his wife , Maria Theresa , strongly protested .

« 3 » •¦ $ > « 3 » Amongst the clerical upholders of the Craft there is no one who takes a higher place than the Deputy Grand Master and the Grand Superintendent of the Royal Arch for Durham . A contemporary says : —" The ' ancient and loyal' City of Durham boasts of having amongst its residents the Reverend

Henry Baker Tristram , LL . D ., Canon of its grand old Cathedral and brother of the well-known Dr . Tristram , Chancellor of the Diocese of London . A distinguished ornament of the Low Church party , it has surprised many that he has not ere now graced the Episcopal Bench . A

Tory of the old school , he is in his element in the thick of a political campaign , and in his capacity of Deputy Grand Master of Freemasonry for the Province of Durham , he is an enthusiast in the Craft , and thoroughly sinks the clerical element in the ' good-fellowship ' of the fourth degree of the

Order . He is , moreover , a traveller of European celebrity , and author of several delighful books of travel . Whatever he takes in hand , he puts into it his whole heart and soul . "

a full private in the London Rifle Brigade were extremely amusing , for it appeared that he discharged all the duties of that position with his customary zeal except that he could not brush his own boots . He , however , made up for it by carrying extra water for the rations !

Bro . R . Clay Sudlow , who replied to the toast of " The Emulation Lodge of Improvement , " made his audience acquainted with the reward—a silver match-box , suitably engraved—which he offers to any member of a lodge of instruction who performs a ceremony without a slip . Bro . J . D . Langton , P . D . G . D . C , was happy in his response

for " The Grand Officers , " who , he said , amongst their multifarious duties , considered their presence at such gatherings as the one in question not the least interesting of their functions .

& 4 > © The principles of Freemasonry have in few places , we venture to assert , at any rate during the last half century , been put to a severer test than in South Africa during the present war , but that those principles have not failed to be upheld wherever possible has already been

many tunes placed on record . On the word of no less an authority than Bro . Dr . Conan Doyle , we have been told that it has often transpired that when the captors and the captured in warfare have found that a mutual Masonic bond existed between them , their relations have been more friendly and considerate the one to the other ; the wounded man , if

a Mason , has been more kindly treated ; shedding of blood has ceased , if but for a time , while the mystic signs of Masonry were exchanged . Freemasonry is not a proselytising body , but , strong in its weakness in this respect , it may be said , without fear of exaggeration , to have lifted the principle

of the universal brotherhood of man out of the mist of utopian theory or pious dogma into the sunshine of substantial fact and actual reality .

HRO . JIAJOR-UKXKEAL SIR IIKXHV Jl . I . KSMK RUXDI . K . Bro . Major-General Sir Henry McLeod Leslie Rundle , to give him his full name , who will shortly return to this country from South Africahas not , during the heavy

, operations entailed in his command of the Eighth Division of the South African Field Force , allowed his Wardenship of the Grand Lodge of England to be in any degree a sinecure . It is related by a member of his personal staff that in the intervals which occurred between the gigantic

treks which were necessary during the campaign in the Orange River Colony , the General whenever possible visited the lodge at Harrismith—the Southern Cross , Xo . 1778—and encouraged by his presence there the cause of Masonry in that necessarily distressed district .

v £ n i ( J ? . itjjV Born in that county which owns Buller for its son , namely Devonshire , at Newton Abbot , General Rundle comes of parents connected with the Naval , service , his father being a Naval Captain , and his mother the daughter of a Commander in the Navy . He was educated at the Royal Military

Academy , Woolwich , and entered the Army in 1876 . Fontyears later he was ordered to the Transvaal , when the—to us—most interesting juncture of his life was reached , for it was in the year 1880 , that at the age of twenty-four , he was initiated into English Freemasonry in the Transvaal Lodge ,

No . 1747 , at Pretoria . It was the year after , in 1881 , as most of us will well remember , that the first Boer War broke out , and General , then Lieutenant Rundle , had his first experiences of . our present antagonists .