William Temple (1881-1944), archbishop of Canterbury, was an outstanding church and civic leader who by the time he died had achieved world status in the ecumenical movement as one who could speak with insight to statesmen as well as to religious leaders.

Born in 1881 in Exeter, Devon, where his father, Frederick, was bishop, William Temple is unique in having followed in the steps of his father, who became archbishop of Canterbury 16 years after William's birth. He had the traditional education of the English upper classes, at a public (that is, private) school--Rugby--and at an ancient university--Oxford. He was immediately recognized as a man of great gifts and became successively a fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1910; headmaster of another public school--Repton--in 1910; rector of the fashionable St. James, Piccadilly, in the center of London in 1914; a canon of Westminster Abbey (which is a royal "peculiar" and outside the normal...