PAGAN MISSIONARIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20689, 11 April 1929, Page 13

PAGAN MISSIONARIES.

WAR ON CHRISTIANITY. LUDENDORFF AND WIFE. WORSHIP OP ANCIENT GODS. Field-Marshal Ludendorffi, one of the leaders of Germany's armies during the war, recently completed arrangements for a gigantic missionary campaign through Germany, in which he and Dr Mathilda Ludeudorff, his wife, would, it was announced, tour the length and breadth of the Fatherland, calling on the German people to renounce Christianity, and return to the worship of its ancient pagan gods. General Ludendorff and his wife, as stated in a cablegram, hare begun their campaign. General Ludendorff, since his , retirement from military life to his castle at Luclwlgshoehc, near Munich, after the war, has, as was hitherto known only to a few of the initiated, recently become the apostle of a new religion, of which his wife is the high priestess. The “ high priestess ” a few weeks ago published a book, entitled “Deutscher Gott Glaube” (German God Creed), in which she condemns Christianity as “ a foreign cult unsuited to the German character.” “Through many thousands of years,” Frau Ludendorff declares, “ our forefathers were a strong and forceful people with high moral standards, sound In body and soul. About 1100 years ago a system of wholesale murder to extirpate >rr forefathers of Germanic faith was instituted. Thousands and thousands were killed because they preferred death to abjuring the faith of their fathers'. About 1000 years ago their resistance was finally broken, and pur true national religion was henceforth represented as the work of the devil. “ Now, 1000 years after this terrible catastrophe, we find our people living in the deepest moral abandonment, in GodIcssness, in dull religious indifference, or rigid ritualism. The number of those who succeed in living according to the precepts of the foreign creed of Christianity is negligible. “ At last, however, in this hour of dour national need, the recognition'of the sanctity of our race and the sanctity of our racial gods have once more awakened. Nothing can prevent us Germans from returning during the coming century to the worship of the gods of our fathers.” Frau Ludenorff’s book is full of references to the mythology of pagan Germany, to the goddess Hoi, to Wotan, to Asa, and other heroic deities known to the present generation of Germans chiefly through performances of Wagnerian opera. Frau Ludcndorffi’s biblc is the Edna,’ the great Scandinavian collection of Norse folklore written down in Runic characters during the 11th and 13th centuries. In the Edda she has discovered the prophecy of Germany's present plight, but also the gospel of Germany’s future salvation. The greatest enemies of the German people, according to the Ludendorffs, arc the Jews, the Jesuits, and the Frecraastons. General Ludendorff has vowed to devote his great military brain to waging a ruthless war on these “ insidious foes.” It was stated that for the purposes of their campaign the two missionaries hal decided to divide the subject field of their programme so that Frau Ludendorff should deal mainly with* the theological side of their creed while the general, as befits an old soldier, would load the attack on the Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, and other “ infidels.” The general and. his wife say they have no intention for the present of inciting their flock to practise the ancient rituals of their savage forbears. They ' hope, however, that when the ground' for the great Germanic reformation has been sufficiently prepared it will fall to their apostolic successor to lead the German people out of the “ heretical /a-Gormanic churches” back into the pagan customs of their forefathers.