DEFEATING THE BARBARIANS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 252, 1 August 1940, Page 4

DEFEATING THE BARBARIANS.

Germany has repudiated European ethics, says the “Church Times.” She has openly and designedly accepted in their place a code of barbaric paganism, and so far from failing to live up to her own standards of conduct, she observes them with a consistency only too farreaching. What Christians believe to be evil, Germany believes to be good. Now, if the people of Great Britain are to wage a successful struggle against Teutonic barbarism, it is well that they should understand something of the nature of that European civilisation of which they are the champions. If Western civilisation is worth preserving at all, it is only worth preserving for the sake of the Christian principles which it embodies. Its only real values are its potential Christian values. The present war has a double object. As many national leaders have asserted during recent months, its aim is both to destroy the menace of barbarism which at. present overshadows all Europe with poisonous exhalations, and also to reconstruct civilised society. Great causes are not won by negatives. Civilisation needs not. merely to be free of Hitlerism but, to have its own superstructure more accurately aligned and more squarely imposed upon its Christion foundation. Therefore the Christian fundamentals must be made more explicit and taught with the authentic note of authority.