SOURCE: Cogley, John. “Witness: Whittaker Chambers.” Commonweal 56, no. 7 (23 May 1952): 176-77.

In the following review, Cogley derides what he perceives as Chambers's overblown, messianic self-image in Witness.

In the opening pages of Witness Whittaker Chambers writes,

It is a terrible book. It is terrible in what it tells about men. If anything, it is more terrible in what it tells about the world in which you live … Much more than Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers was on trial in the trials of Alger Hiss. Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life...