Religion: Noble Pacifist

England’s great families furnish able politicians. Unlike great U. S. families, they also turn out great churchmen. Famed for political leaders is the house of Cecil, whose Lord Burghley served Queen Elizabeth and whose Marquess of Salisbury served Queen Victoria. Four of the great Salisbury’s sons went into politics—the late Lord Edward (Egypt), the present Marquess (see p. 13), Lord Hugh (House of Commons), Lord Robert (League of Nations). A fifth son went into the church. Last September U. S. hostesses fluttered, U. S. churchmen threw open their pulpits, at the arrival of Rt. Rev. Lord Rupert Ernest William Gascoyne-Cecil, 69, Bishop of Exeter. An ”Ambassador of Peace and Good Will” like his League-of-Nations brother, the Lord Bishop came to preach.

Tall (6 ft. 3 in.) and possessed of an immense curly grey beard, His Lordship has the high Salisbury forehead for which his father was famed. Long rector of Hatfield. Herts, seat of the Cecils, he became rural dean of Hertford in 1904, honorary chaplain to King Edward VII in 1909. Asquith appointed him in 1916 Bishop of Exeter, a vast diocese about which the noble Bishop motors and occasionally bicycles, his long square coattails flapping about his gaitered legs. An old Etonian and Oxonian, he drinks dozens of cups of tea daily, is conservative in politics, lofty high church in theology. To the U. S. the Lord Bishop brought his tall, weathered wife, Lady William (Florence Mary Bootle-Wilbraham) Cecil. They toured New England, visited Philadelphia and Princeton, flew to Richmond. In Chicago last fortnight the Bishop of Exeter addressed the Sunday Evening Club on peace, the subject which—with disarmament, cancellation, hands-across-the-sea— he has been preaching everywhere. Then he returned to Manhattan, where earlier he had been seen, gaitered and shovel-hatted, walking on Fifth Avenue in the early morning and once, at 7 a. m., reading his Bible in Central Park, although he had been to a late party the night before.

In Manhattan last week His Lordship hailed the U. S. as the leader of the Anglo-Saxon race which had created the “greatest of the Western civilizations.” Said he: “America will face incredible prosperity once the world has accepted the great truths that we must live and govern our nations, not for ourselves, but for others.” His Lordship also took part in the 17th annual Good Will Congress of the World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches. Present were Germany’s onetime Foreign Minister Julius Curtius, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Editor Michael Williams of The Commonweal, Editor Charles Clayton Morrison of The Christian Century, and many another good-willster. Said Exeter’s Bishop: “When we have a just world, when every one feels secure of food, clothing and housing, we will have a contented world.” On Armistice Day the Good Will Congress held its talk for two minutes at 11 a. m. Elsewhere many a memorial was dedicated. Nothing is more abhorrent to the gentle, aristocratic Lord Bishop of Exeter. War monuments, and any kind of war talk, he hates bitterly. The World War took three of his sons, maimed a fourth for life.