“DYING EUROPE” CONDEMNED

Southland Times, Issue 23513, 20 May 1938, Page 2

“DYING EUROPE” CONDEMNED

BISHOP’S COMMENT ON GROWING PANIC LONDON, April 10. Europe, “more savage than for a thousand year,” is dying. This is the judgment of Dr Henry A. Wilson, Bishop of Chelmsford, who, writing in his Diocesan Chronicle, declares: “A civilization which can give birth to the shameful presecution of the Jews, the spraying of mustard gas upon Abyssinian villages, the lying and dishonesty which make a mock of treaties and agreements, is a civilization not worth preserving. Western civilization must be cleansed or else it had better make way for something better. “A panic closely resembling insanity is running like an epidemic over the whole world, crushing out all the chivalry, decency and humanity in human nature. “We used to hear a great deal about the progress and enlightenment produced by civilization and education. These refining influences are now proved to be absolutely futile in effecting any real change for the better in human nature. “An unbiased judge would be driven to the conclusion that Europe is a much more savage place than it has been for perhaps one thousand years. “It is strange, for instance, to read that during the Crimean War, Russia, the most backward nation in Europe, continued to pay the interest on its foreign loans to the very nations it was fighting against. This was not considered at the time to be anything extraordinary. The idea never seemed to have occurred that a nation at war was justified in breaking its pledges. - “Massacres like those of the general population at Guernica, and women and children in Barcelona, have no parallels in past history; probably even the blood-curdling records of the doings of the Tartars and Huns had some redeeming spark of courage and pity for the defenceless. “History has taught us again and again that the only real basis upon which a moral appeal can be built is religion. “The Western civilization which we are warned will disappear in the next war is a mere by-product of Christianity. _ It cannot continue to exist unless Christianity is present to bring it to the birth, day by day, and to nourish it continually. “It -will not require a war to kill it; it is dying, if not already dead, in more than one European country.”