" CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM "
Sta,—It is true, as your correspondent, Lady Simon, says, that many British citizens " stand outside of religious bodies of all persuasions." But any one of these who fails to see that our civilisation is, in so far as it is civilised, a Christian civilisation is lacking in the historic sense. We are fighting to preserve the good things in that Christian civilisation.
Your correspondent cannot surely maintain seriously that paganism, "roughly speaking, stands for primitive aboriginal beliefs," for I take it that she would not class the thinkers of Greece and Rome as primitive aborigines.
It might be more correct to speak of the thing we are fighting as "neo-paganism "; but is that quibble worth while? Apart from the fact that the philosophies of the Nazis and the Communists are defi- nitely anti-Christian, the Nazis desire a return to primitive aboriginal pagan beliefs, and the Communists with their clean-sweep of all religion go back even farther.
It is true that there are Christian people on the wrong side. There were Christian people opposed to Franco. And it is true that we have many on our side who uphold the principles either of Hitler or Stalin. We have, alas, as your correspondent states, a large number of intelligentsia who are infected with pagan beliefs—as, for instance, those hostile to the Christian family. Our social life is infected. We have, as a nation, and as individuals, fallen lamentably short of the Christian ideal.
Yet, for all our sins, we have been chosen to fight for God. Why should the great mass of us who believe in God, however we may have failed Him, be so cowardly as to say that we are fighting for an
ethical hypothesis?—Yours faithfully, W. R. TITTERTON. 2 Doughty Street, W.C. 1.
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