Mr. Nicholson continues to show, towards the general reading public, that instructive patience which the permanent civil servant must show to his transitory chief. He carries on, in his biography of Dwight Morrow, that implicit instruction in the control of world affairs which he began in the trilogy on Lord Carnock, the Peace Conference, and Lord Curzon.

But his subject here is very different and very unexpected. There is no adumbration, in the story of Lord Carnock, the perfect English civil servant and statesman; in the story of that magnificent aristocrat and administrator, Curzon; no adumbration of the story of the American school-master’s son, who became partner in J. P. Morgan’s, Ambassador to Mexico, was close to being Secretary of State to Mr. Hoover, whose prestige, at the time of his premature death, aged 58, clearly foreshadowed the Presidency, and whom Mr. Nicholson feels bound to call “the completely civilized man.”

There is just one connecting link between this book and the preceding Trilogy, and it is the reason for Mr. Nicholson’s writing it. All four books praise men who sought to attain to a mastery of the technique of world affairs, who sought, in fact, to know the true state of things, who were determined to discard notions preconceived to the accurate, orderly, sympathetic knowledge of them, and who were confident that their intelligences were capable of mastering the jungle-like complexity that faced them. Otherwise, this book differs—by a world—from its predecessors. The scene swings from European Diplomacy to Transatlantic Commerce, from Petersburg to Pittsburg, from Whitehall to Wall Street.

Art both religious and profane has remembered the curse of the serpent: ‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen. iii, 15). In pagan art we see the agony of man in Laocoon, in Christian art we see the triumph of the Blessed Mother of God. Amongst many strange cults we see man appeasing the serpent in idolatrous worship, but Christianity has crushed its power for evil. It is in this light, however summarily we may dismiss the legends of hagiography, that we can read their origin, which is in casting out devils and the powers of darkness. Most critics, we presume, would consider the many stories of saints driving away snakes as allegories of their triumph over sin, but there are still no snakes in Ireland whereas Great Britain retains the unpleasant viper. This driving out of serpents occurs in the biographies of more than a score of saints, of whom fourteen are of France, Britain, or Ireland.

There is little ease in a world so rich in forms and still in process, the end of which for every part is waste and death. Buds must break, maggots must breed, and man may not curse though his heart must break, and even at last his reason. This is not evil, for why should it be otherwise? The heart of the wise is where there is mourning: and the heart of fools where there is mirth.

Still the death of one is the birth of another; what is lost on the roundabouts is gained on the swings. The wiser heart will withdraw from mourning as well as from mirth, and without personal ache will consider the balance of loss and gain in the general scheme. Wherefore I left off and my heart renounced labouring any more under the sun.

Vain hope, for we are in the world and labour we must if we are to live, making and destroying, pleasing and hurting ourselves and others. So many things, and all so different: all can be at peace only when all are still. But all are moving, and better so. They cannot be still. A time of love, and a time of hatred. A time of war, and a time of peace.

Violence is inevitable. We are part of the world and needs must join in the making and the breaking: cut down our trees, kill our cattle, deny our friends. Be not over just.

Why, then, should we not fight and hasten the death of others to postpone our own?

The distinctive position of the Anglican communion consists in its claim to be at once Catholic while non-Roman, Reformed while non-Protestant. For the maintenance of this claim nothing is more crucial than the vindication of the reality of its Orders and Sacraments. The more the importance of the idea of the Church is re-discovered and reappreciated, the more important is seen to be the reality of the Eucharist and the Liturgy. Hence Anglicans have come to realize that if their Orders and Eucharist are open to question, their very existence as a Church becomes equally problematical.

The intervention of Pope Leo XIII in this question of the validity of Anglican Orders and the decision of his Bull Apostolicae Curae are familiar to all. Equally familiar is the fact that there are some who hold that neither the intervention nor the decision were final, either because they maintain that, in view of what some Catholic theologians themselves have said regarding the relative and practical character of the Bull, the judgment was not irreversible, or because they dispute the accuracy of the matters of fact on which the unfavourable judgment was based. In this way the majority of Anglican ecclesiastics and scholars are accustomed to contest the historical argument on which Catholics rely.