[William John Robert Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington] Autograph Letter Signed and two Typed Letters Signed (all three 'Hartington') to L. W. Hodson, discussing Mussolini, Lloyd George, League of Nations, Anglo-Catholics, countryside abuses.

All three items in very good condition, on lightly-aged paper. Third letter in its envelope, addressed to Hodson at Bradbourne Hall, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. ONE: Despite the letterhead written from Italy, as the text shows. 4pp., 12mo. Typed. The 'stress of the election' has delayed his response. 'I am writing now in the train from Naples to Rome and everything I have seen since has helped to convince me that you are right. Mussoline [sic] in this country would be a man after your own heart. He has pulled things round wonderfully and has the whole country, except organised Labour, solidly behind him at present, but he is making a lot of enemies. Last week he attacked 36,000 railwaymen and said that he would sack more unless the railway service improved, which it has done, but I do not suppose that many of the 36,000 will vote for him!' He discusses 'the French action in the Ruhr', and asks Hodson's opinion, before continuing: 'I hate Lloyd George like poison, but it was very difficult for me to attack him like I should like to have done as I had a very large number of supporters who believed in him. I did go for him pretty strongly at my annual meeting in the summer, but I got so many disapproving letters that I said no more.' Perhaps he should have 'pitched it a bit stronger'. 'Things look very bad all round now: exchanges are worse than ever and there does not seem to be muc hope of their settling down.' He concludes by asking Hodston to write to him at Chatsworth on his return. 'I do sometimes feel it difficult to believe in the League of Nations, but I dread the idea of Europe remaining permanently an armed camp and, in fact, do not see how an already overweighted civilsation is going to stand it. The League seems to me the only chance of reduccing armaments to the dimension of a police force.' TWO: 4pp., 12mo. In autograph. He agrees with Hodson 'that the Anglo-Catholics have for the most part build and endowed their own Churches and that they have done good work in

districts', and feels that that is the reason why they have not been disciplined by the bishops. 'But again and again I have known a congregation forced into the chapel and out of the Church when a clergyman who has what they think, perhaps wrongly, Popish tendencies, has come into their parish.' He discusses the issue of 'Nonconformist Chapels' further, and continues: 'I have seen too much of Popery in Ireland not to dread anything in the least like it'. His chief objection to the movement is 'that I abominate the doctrine which, it seems to me, the Anglo-Catholics would like to get the Church of England to adopt. | It may be that I do not understand it properly, but I have been in Anglo-Catholic churches (by accident) and have been horrified. He dislikes 'very heartily such things as the Adoration of the Virgin Mary and Holy water, which seem to me impositions, if harmless ones, but the whole theory of Transubstantiation strikes me as really monstrous'. THREE: 2pp., 4to. Typed. Discussing the 'tragedy' of 'the destruction of the amenities of the countryside', with reference to 'such nuisances as arise from quarries etc' and the role off the County Council.