ianised Europe and the
de-christianised Church.

THE POVERTY OF EUROPEAN CIVILISATION

The poverty of European civilisation has been revealed by this war. The
ugly nakedness of Europe has brought to shame all those who used to bow
before Europe's mask. It was a silken shining mask hiding the inner
ugliness and poverty of Europe. The mask was called: culture,
civilisation, progress, modernism. All was only vanitas vanitatum and
povertas povertatum. When the soul fled away, what remained was empty,
ugly and dangerous. When religion plunged into impotence, then:

Science became a mask of pride.
Art--a mask of vanity.
Politics--a mask of selfishness.
Laws--a mask of greediness.
Theology--a mask of scepticism.
Technical knowledge--a poor surrogate for spirituality.
Journalism--a desperate surrogate for literature.
Literature--a sick nostalgy and a nonsense, a dwarf-acrobacy.
Civilisation--a pretext for imperialism.
Fight for right--an atavistic formula of the primitive creeds.
Morals--the most controversial matter.
Individualism--the second name for egoism and egotism.

Christ--a banished beggar looking for a shelter, while in the royal and
pharisaic palaces lived: Machiavelli, the atheist; Napoleon, the
atheist; Marx, the atheist; and Nietsche, the atheist, imperially ruling
Europe's rulers.

The spirit was wrong and everything became wrong. The spirit of any
civilisation is inspired by its religion, but the spirit of modern
Europe was not inspired by Europe's religion at all. A terrific effort
was made in many quarters to liberate Europe from the spirit of her
religion. The effort-makers forgot one thing, i.e. that no civilisation
ever was liberated from religion and still lived. Whenever this
liberation seemed to be fulfilled, the respective civilisation decayed
and died out, leaving behind barbaric materialism in towns and
superstitions in villages. Europe had to live with Christianity, or to
die in barbaric materialism and superstitions without it. The way to
death was chosen. From Continental Europe first the infection came to
the whole white race. It was there that the dangerous formula was
pointed out: "Beyond good and evil." Other parts of the white world
followed slowly, taking first the path between Good and Evil. Good was
changed for Power. Evil was explained away as Biological Necessity. The
Christian religion, which inspired the