At the end of the 4th century A.D., the guardians of Roman civilization failed to perceive the danger of the barbarian invasions to the Roman Empire. Leading men were squabbling about theological niceties even as the Goths and the Vandals stood at the gates of Rome.
Except for the great migrations, the Mongols and the Turco-Tatars led a quiet and inoffensive life, grazing their herds on the steppes of Turkestan and Central Asia. During that span of time the great masses of the Chinese and the Indians in Southeast Asia remained silent, living a contemplative, unassertive life, making the best of things as they were, in accordance with their primitive understanding of nature and the traditional organization of classes, rigidly established from times immemorial.
Today the Kremlin [1951] is diligently and silently organizing the Mongols and the Turco-Tatars within and outside of the Asiatic frontiers of Soviet Russia. The college youth, educated in the United States, Great Britain and France, deeply disappointed
by the discrepancies between the noble ideas professed and the evils tolerated and practiced by the West, uses those same ideas to set the Asiatic peoples n motion against European imperialist and capitalist interests, against the exploitation of the people by landed feudalism and the established bureaucracy. By so doing they serve their ideals and at the same time pave their own
Moreover, as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, the principal religions of the Indians, Chinese and other populations inhabiting Southeast Asia, are only religions of social order, mystic creeds have a strong attraction for them. Because of the non-theistic nature of their religion, they are hospitable to foreigners, thoroughly open-minded, without social, tribal and religious prejudice, and ready to learn. The possibilities which this mental disposition represents are shown by the influence Mohammedanism, the imported theistic religion, exercises all over Southeast Asia. Christianity undoubtedly would have captured the minds of the Chinese and Indians, had not the rise of the Islamic Empire in the 7th century blocked its expansion.
Facts and history repudiate the allegation that the peoples of Southeast Asia are hostile to the Christian religion. What they loathe is the preaching of a man-loving God and of the brotherhood of man while there is hatred among the Christian sects and while they are allied with the imperialist exploiters of the native populations. What is abhorrent to them is when Christianity is interested only in gathering fresh members for a particular sect and indulging only in rituals. It is high time leaders of Western civilization showed genuine interesting Christianity and its meaning in history. It is the duty of every person belonging to Western civilization.