Behind the Mirrors; The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington/Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality

by the Author of ‘The Mirrors of Washington.’ New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1922. 8vo, x + 236 pp. $2.50.

by a Gentleman with a Duster, Author of ‘The Mirrors of Downing Street.’ With an Introduction by Kirsopp Lake. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1922. 8vo, xxi+229 pp. $2.50.

So long as the two anonymous authors of The Mirrors of Downing Street and The Mirrors of Washington continue to produce books simultaneously, their works are likely to be bracketed together—especially if the titles continue to suggest superficial resemblances. It is easy to establish a connection between Mirrors and Windows, but the subtitles are disconcerting: we are not prepared to find the ’Psychology of Disintegration’ in ’Studies in Religious Personality.’ Yet an ingenious reader may perhaps discover it there.

The principal conclusions at which the author of Behind tin Mirrors arrives are that the agencies for government in this country have broken down, that government by party leaders, government by business, and government by one man have all been tried at Washington and have failed; that now government by public opinion is being tried and is failing; that the Farm Bloc is the most vital force in public life to-day, and that, if other similar blocs representing the various interests of the people arise and divide the government among them, we are likely to have a good deal better government than that which now exists. These ideas the author serves up with smartness and tartness. Probably after the Farm Bloc has exercised its power for a year or two we shall have another anonymous volume from him ridiculing the Farm-Bloc illusion as bitingly as he now ridicules the business-man illusion, the Progress illusion, the super-president illusion, the Hughes illusion, the Hoover illusion, the Washington-Conference illusion. For he is one who enjoys exposing the incapacity, hypocrisy, and absurdity of those in places of prominence or power. Skill in detraction constitutes a large part of his stock in trade.

One wearies of so much carping and censoriousness, however pungent the phrasing may sometimes be. And it is not always pungent; it furnishes many illustrations of the fact that smartness can never altogether shake off its inevitable shabby companions — stupidity and bad taste. One example will suffice: ‘Cleveland was a fat man who used long Latin words. He was also the first Democratic Chief Executive in more than thirty years. What else?’

Accuracy is not to be expected of a gossip. Yet a journalist who professes familiarity with Washington life should know that Harry Lane Wilson, not Huntington Wilson, was the Ambassador to Mexico who incurred President Wilson’s enmity. This writer attributes to President Wilson’s ‘well-known bitterness against Huntington Wilson,’ the ‘Ambassador to Mexico, his refusal to appoint Huntington Wilson’s son to a place in the consular service. How much truth is there in the other anecdotes, each one with a sting in it, that the book copiously retails?

As the author of Behind the Mirrors plumes himself on his caustic wit, so the author of Painted Windows clearly prides himself on his urbanity. His sketches of twelve of the contemporary leaders of religious thought in England are excessively urbane; one becomes a little surfeited by their suavity. To be sure, there is one awkward lapse from it when he defines his purpose: ’By means of a study in religious personality, I seek in these pages to discover a reason for the present rather ignoble situation of the church in the affections of men.’ But a reading of the twelve sketches discloses the innocence of his intention; he does not ascribe the ignoble situation of the church to any ignoble traits in its leaders. The trouble lies in the failure of religion to ‘speak with one voice’; it has its traditionalists and its modernists, its formalists and its evangelists, who are pulling and hauling in different directions; among the leaders are some who, like Bishop Henson, distrust social reformers and others who, like Dr. Orchard and Miss Royden, are primarily social reformers; there are some who, like Dr. Jacks, would introduce radiance and joy into the religious life and others, like Bishop Gore, who have ‘no feeling of radiance, no sense of a living serenity.’ Having demonstrated in his twelve portraits the lack of coördination in religious teaching and practice, the author appeals to all the religious schools to raise their definition of the word faith, so that it shall mean ‘making use of belief — belief that the spiritual alone is the real.’ He thinks that out of such general revision, if it could be undertaken, unity of effort would come, and that the church needs to attain unity of effort if it is to teach the world.

ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER.