FRENCH AND GERMAN OUTLOOK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25566, 20 June 1944, Page 7

FRENCH AND GERMAN OUTLOOK

Speaking at a meeting of the French Protestant Club, Soho square, London, on March 2, Professor Vermeil, of the University of Paris, called attention to the differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism as throwing light upon Western European problems. He stated that Lutheranism was not directly responsible for the crimes of Hitler’s Third Reich, which had swept away every form of Christianity in order to bring back the old so-called heroic paganism. But from the beginning of the sixteenth century Lutheran Germany had lost the meaning of liberty and had been drawn by the industrial revolution towards those unbridled ambitions which provoked the wars of 1914-18 and of to-day. On the other hand, said Professor Vermeil, France possrssed the sense of liberty which Calvinism had given her. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Protestantism was reduced to a small minority, and France remained Catholic and royalist until the advent of free thought and the Republic. Here lay a fundamental difference between France gnd Britain, but they were united by the spirit of liberty which must be brought to life again in France.