Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-11-23
BY C. PATRICK THOMPSON.

TINE recent conference of the
princes of Englands Established
Church at Lambeth, the arch
i bishops palace in London, hav-
ing failed to say anything any
one can take hold of about birth con-
troll, divorce, suicide. capital punishment
and sundry2 other burning questions OF
the age, the dean has taken the now
empty field and stated a few opinions.
No need to say which dean. There is
only one in Christendom where tremen-
douS controversies are concerned. and he
Is our old friend William Ralph Inge,
D. D., dean of st. Pauls Cathedral (the
metropolitan steeple house of the Brit
ish Empire), the greatest scholar In the
church and its enfant terrible.
Wherever the prelates feared to tread
the dean has since rushed in, recording,
by way of an address at oxford and a
book che had both bombs in his study
drawer while the conference sat- and
awaited only q strategic moment to
heave them, just what he thought
about everything the church assembly
had evaded, shrunk from, skated over
or compromised upon for Safety's sake.
Speaks Out on Birth Control.
Birth control? A qualified approval.
Self killing? A man dying in agony
demned criminal should be allowed to
choose his own method Of passing out
and execute himself Modern looseneSS
and laxity of morals? Mainly due to
revolt against Mrs. Grundy and reaction
from excessive repression OF the Victo-
rian age, which may have been chaste,
but certainly was hypocritical.
Mankind proclaimed the dean, will
never be willing entirely to give up this
fNe An - IAA rrrr-l%
for this. And he went on to suggest an
entirely new basis for marriage. assert
ing, with all his great authority as a
scholar and theologian, that those Angli-
cans who maintain that by Christian
law marriage is indissoluble are making
q claim that Is historically untenable
and which practice of the Christian
churches in all ages has proved un-
workable
England agreed that the official church
assembly had announced nothing to say
of any particular moment, but that the
dean had said mouthful-indeed sew
eral mouthfuls.
He always does This is his speciality
and the root cause of his great fame.
He IS a SenSationalist, but in the Lu-
therian and Voltairean and not In the
cheap clap-trap sense. You may ridi-
cule him, curse him, attack him, but
you Cdn uelLn6T DISMISS MN nor ignore
him. for he Is the greatest scholar in
the English Church and also her great
est controversialist, her most effective
champion in the struggle against Rome,
her most impressive prose writer, her
most brilliant ironiSt and her most
formidable political polemist.
Bernard Shaw, who admires his learn
ing and intellectual honesty, has praised
his gentle and noble character" and
his mind 80 splendidly efficient" and
pronounced him at once England'S great
est churchman and her greatest free
thinker. st. John IRVINE has announced
with reverence that he reads everything
that man writes"
Rebecca West CriticizeS.
On the other hand, Rebecca West has
accused him publicly Of liking strife and
bloodshed. of popularizing malignity, of
chattering inadvertently, of injecting
stream Of poison into public opinion, Of
picking up any straws and rag of nom
sense that help man to think con-
temptuously of his brothers and of being
as morbid as anybody could be and re-
main sane And she suggested that II
he were psyche analyzed 1t would prob
ably be found that his outlook on life
was conditioned by a severe chastiSe-
ment he had experienced early in life
at the hand Of some member Of the
working class, with whom" concluded