leaders to the nation and since treasonably violated and repudiated by
them. He explains the progress of this repudiation with an intimate
"inside" knowledge of facts which the Mormon leaders now deny. And he
exposes the horror of conditions in Utah today as no other man in
America could expose them--for his life has been spent in combating the
influences of which these conditions are the result; and he understands
the present situation as a doctor understands the last stages of a
disease which he has been for years vainly endeavoring to check.

But aside from all this--aside from his exposure of the Mormon
despotism, his study of the degradation of a modern community, or his
secret history of the Church's dark policies in "sacred places"--he
relates a story that is full of the most astonishing curiosities of
human character and of dramatic situations that are almost mediaeval in
their religious aspects. He goes from interviews with Cleveland or Blame
to discuss American politics with men who believe themselves in direct
communication with God--who talk and act like the patriarchs of the Old
Testament--who accept their own thoughts as the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, and deliver their personal decisions, reverently, as the Will of
the Lord. He shows men and women ready to suffer any martyrdom in
defense of a doctrine of polygamy that is a continual unhappiness and
cross upon them. He depicts the social life of the most peculiar sect
that has ever lived in a Western civilization. He writes--
unconsciously, and for the first time that it has ever been written--
the naive, colossal drama of modern Mormonism.

H. J. O'H.