The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-11-05
CHAOTIC RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS
 NOW PREV.ILI.C IN GERMANY
Situation Unsettled Is To Make Final Outcome Doubt fuI at Time-Other Problems Are Being Solved

That reHigoGs conditions in Ger many are very unsettled is the glst of a report reeciTed by the National Lu- thera.. CCunCl. from Rev. U. A. Fan lIrey. enc of the Lutheran CommIs- sioueTs in Europe.
 The important excerpts are here given:
 Food conditions are a good deal bet ter in Leipzig than they are in EeT- fin. White bread in small quantities is there obtairable, and you can even get butter. The best hotels in Berlin have neither It is 8 pathetic sight here to see men and women of high social standing enter first class hotels with little parcels of cheese and meat and little cups of butter, which they are somehow and somewhere able to purchase and over which they watch as costly treasures, to replenish the very frugal breakfast, which these ho- teis serve. So many men and quite q number of women show the marks of the long period Of starvation, through which they have just passed on their faces. They look five years older, their eyes are sunk, and have bags under them.
 Outwardly, the appearance of Der lin has improved since I first came here. The streets look clean, the shops seem better stocked and today crowds of well dressed and well be- haved people fill the streets. You hear a, good deal of complaint about deterioration of manners and morals. I have seen little of it, though l have tried to make studies in street cars, on trains, in shops and other places where the plain people gather. They treat one another with Q good deal of courtesy and Pastor Schuh has re- peatedly been given a seat in crowded cars by young men and young wo- men. I have seen no drunken people. Sundays the shops are closed, and you cannot even buy 8 cigar. have of ten wondered what the mental state of these people is. It gives one the impression of qudet resignation, of helpless acceptance of the in evitable.
 Everybody Is speaking of the un- avoidabIe breakdown that is coming, and no one seems to know how to pre- vent it. The future of these people looks dark, and they know it. They can see no ray of hope ahead, and so they try to do the best they know: Forget Sometimes one opens his heart to you Recently a lady asked me: Do you think our country will come back, or is this Q dying Ma tion?"
 The question has occurred to me: Will these people in this state of de lection be able successfully to cope with the grave problems which con- front their church life? We are irving to encourage them and hope that our home-church stands soidly hack of us. The condition of the Church here is as indefinite as that of the state and perhaps more so. It Is hard to answer the question, have State and Church been sepa- rated? Some think they have. and others they have not. In the new Constitution of the German Republic / the first paragraph of the section treating of the relation of Church and State says: There is no State Church. This Is undoubtedly said in the sense of a preferred Church with special privileges. No Church is to enjoy any particular privileges all Churches shall have equal rights. And this includes the adherents of any philosophical or ethical doctrine The State, however, assumes and ex- ercises a kind of protectorate over the Church It leaves the property rights of the Church to it's funds and landed estates undlsturbed. It places it's own tax lists at the disposal of the Church, though it compels no body to pay taxes for the Church IL maintains at the Universities, the Theological Faculties and retains re- ugious instruction as regular study in it's public schools, with the ex- ceptior of those where this has al ready been dropped; but it does not