Shortly before the fall of France, there appeared in La Vie Intellectuelle a striking article by a French historian, G. de Reynold. The writer was then living in the centre of Europe and was thus very favourably placed to study current events. Many of his reflections are as relevant to-day as they were in 1940, and might prove of interest to a larger public. It is with this object in view that I would like to refer to them here.

De Reynold begins his article by putting forward the opinion that Europe, geographically speaking, can scarcely be considered a continent; her space is too restricted, her peoples too mixed and individual to produce a homogeneous civilisation. She is more in the nature of an Asiatic peninsula. Had it not been for Christianity she would by this time have been absorbed by Asia; yet we find her still the ombril of the world, fitted by Providence for a high and unique destiny. With Europe’s natural order and arrangement— easy access to the sea and splendid internal lines of communication— it is only when Christianity weakens within her borders that a general disintegration occurs—and M. de Reynold is of opinion that should there ever be total apostasy it would be a sure presage of death, a death heralded by a long agony. The weakening in Christian beliefs has always been the forerunner of some Asiatic assault, or at any rate of the imminent danger of such a thrust. This danger is enhanced by the fact that the Asiatic conception of Empire, ever since the days of Diocletian, has exercised a distorting and sinister influence on the European conception of the Imperium Romanum. Asia is a continent of ‘worlds,’ its pattern is the Empire, whereas Europe is composed of nations and its pattern is the ‘kingdom.’