Religion can be healthy and vital only if a certain tension is maintained between it and the civilization in which it functions. In time this tension is inevitably resolved into some kind of compromise. The tendency of religion to become a conservative social force is partly derived from its ambition to defend the resultant compromise in the name of its original ideal. Thus all partial values, determined by geographic, economic, social and political forces, are given a pseudo-absolute character by the religious elements which entered into the compromise; and their defects are sufficiently obscured and sanctified to make them comparatively impregnable to the attacks of the critics of the status quo. The Russian moujik was more than ordinarily docile under the tyranny of the czars and more than ordinarily patient with the imperfections of his society, because his obedience was claimed not by Russia but by “holy Russia,” the historic incarnation of his religion. In the same way the medieval church became organically involved with feudalism and forced the critics of feudal society to undermine its influence before they could hope to change the feudal social order. Orthodox Protestantism is intimately related to this day with Nordicism, with the racial arrogance of north European peoples. The Ku Klux Klan, which thrives in the hinterlands of America, maintains its influence over simple minds by screening racial prejudice against Slavic, Latin and Semitic peoples behind a devotion to the spiritual treasures of Protestantism and their defense against the fancied peril of allegedly inferior religions. In Ireland the racial pride of Ulstermen expresses itself in a passionate espousal of the Presbyterian religion and a contemptuous attitude toward the Catholicism of the Irish. In modern prewar Germany there was a curious partnership between “Thron und Altar,” the interests of the nationalist German state, as integrated by the Prussian royal house, with the interests of Protestantism. To this day the fanatic monarchists of Germany are also Protestant extremists who imagine that the monarchy was undermined by religiously motivated conspiracies of Jews and Catholics. Incidentally the Lutheran type of Protestantism which flourishes in Germany has always been less intimately aligned with the commercial classes than the Calvinistic sects of other Western nations. While the German socialists include the Lutheran church among the forces of reaction with which they must contend, the church’s real strength is among the peasants and junkers, who are also the strongest support of monarchist opinion and who abhor the democratic liberalism of commercial and industrial Germany as much as they despise socialist radicalism; and they imagine both to be inspired by Semitic designs upon their national integrity. The real inspiration of this liberalism with its emphasis on international conciliation and coöperation is