Among some of us, I doubt not, this sudden descent of Europe into hell
brought unbounded surprise; to others, over wide area, it brought the
_Schaden Freude_ of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, I judge, looked
on silently and sorrowfully, in sober thought, seeing sadly the prophecy
of our own souls.

Here is a civilization that has boasted much. Neither Roman nor Arab,
Greek nor Egyptian, Persian nor Mongol ever took himself and his own
perfectness with such disconcerting seriousness as the modern white man.
We whose shame, humiliation, and deep insult his aggrandizement so often
involved were never deceived. We looked at him clearly, with world-old
eyes, and saw simply a human thing, weak and pitiable and cruel, even as
we are and were.

These super-men and world-mastering demi-gods listened, however, to no
low tongues of ours, even when we pointed silently to their feet of
clay. Perhaps we, as folk of simpler soul and more primitive type, have
been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of
white religion. We have curled our lips in something like contempt as we
have witnessed glib apology and weary explanation. Nothing of the sort
deceived us. A nation's religion is its life, and as such white
Christianity is a miserable failure.

Nor would we be unfair in this criticism: We know that we, too, have
failed, as you have, and have rejected many a Buddha, even as you have
denied Christ; but we acknowledge our human frailty, while you, claiming
super-humanity, scoff endlessly at our shortcomings.

The number of white individuals who are practising with even reasonable