Logothete*

Napoleon, at the Pyramids, thrust one hand over his diaphragm, thickened his neck, beetled his brows, said: "Men, from the summits of these Pyramids 40 centuries look down upon you."

A lanky, long-necked clergyman emerges from the Deanery of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, shuts behind him the learning of 40 centuries, gazes wearily down a hill black with automotive traffic, whispers: "Woe, woe is this perverse generation."

Down Ludgate Hill he marches, into Fleet Street, haunt of journalists. A Gentleman with a Duster spies him and makes these notes: "Tall-- ;rigid--lean gray face--heavy-lidded eyes--of an almost Asian deadness--upper lip projects--stonelike-- impassive--like a figure from the pages of Dostoievsky-- like a poor Russian nobleman."

The clergyman crosses over to Chancery Lane, is nearly hit by an omnibus. Says he: "A generation which travels 60 miles an hour must be five times as civilised as one which travels only twelve."

Coming out at the roar of ugly Holborn, he ruminates: Catholicism sat like a sister of mercy by the deathbed of its mother, the ancient Culture. Protestantism was the nurse of a lusty child, modern civilisation." Passing a huge Dissenters' "chapel," he says: "It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally."

His long legs stride into a mews. Before him bulks the British Museum. Says he: "There is no escape from pantheism, and from a creed which, if not pessimistic, is without hope for the future and without consolation in the present, unless we abandon the doctrine of equivalence between God and the world, and return to the theory of a creation by a God who is, in His own being independent of the world and above it."

Running into Bernard Shaw, the clergyman learns that he is "our churchman, our most extraordinary writer and in some very vital respects our most extraordinary man."

In the museum, the clergyman remarks: "It is not certain that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral attainments since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name."

Having business in Westminster, the clergyman takes a taxi. The lions of Trafalgar Square jolt by: "Like other ideals, patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy." Looms the House of Parliament: "The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. . . . Democracy is likely to perish through national bankruptcy. . . . Democracy means a victory of sentiment over reason." Glints Buckingham Palace: "When Christ said 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth,' He was thinking of the British Empire." At last the Abbey: "The Church burned Bruno and imprisoned Galileo. The Church has lived by its monopolies and conquered by its intolerance."

"The worst enemies of Christianity are Christians. A religion will never be destroyed by worldliness, sensuality or malicious wickedness. The world, the flesh and the devil are the natural enemies of the Church, which thrives on the struggle against them. But when traditional orthodoxy provokes the moral indignation of the enlightened conscience, and when it enrages our sense of truth and honesty by demanding our assent to scientific errors which were exploded centuries ago, then indeed the Church is in danger, and its well-disciplined battalions will not save it from disaster."

Finally he sees the Roman Catholic Cathedral. His blood boils:

"The Nation which formulated its determination to manage its own affairs, both sacred and secular, is no more likely to submit to an Italian priest than to a German Kaiser." "The Roman Church is the last survivor of political autocracies." "One might say brutally: there is only one thing against Catholicism--it is an imposture; and there is only one thing in its favor--it works."

So thinks William Ralph Inge, the Very Reverend the Dean of St. Paul's, star logothete of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics, What he thinks of the U.S. is no worse than the rest--but he has never seen the U.S. Next spring he will be here, to lecture at Yale University, to walk- through the cities, to consider the sunsets, to make remarks. Only then will the U.S. know the worst.

*Logothete was once used by Theodore Roosevelt to describe Woodrow Wilson as "word thrower," "phrase maker. "