"Many wars during the last 1900 years have borne the stamp of wars of religion. In most cases justifiably, yet not always so. The very fact that struggles of extermination could be carried out at all for a religious conviction shows to what degree the Germanic peoples had been successfully alienated from their original character. Respect for religious belief was just as natural to the pagan Germanic peoples as to the later Arians; only the assertion of the claim by the Roman church that it alone offered salvation hardened the European heart and necessarily called forth defensive struggles in the opposing camp which, since likewise conducted for an alien natured form, resulted in spiritual narrow mindedness (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Puritanism). But in spite of everything, most of the struggles by leading heroes of our history were conducted less for theological principles of belief about Jesus, Mary, the nature of the holy ghost, purgatory and so on, than for character values. The churches of all denominations declared: as the faith, so the man. This was necessary for every church, and promised success, since in this way the value of a man was made dependent on its coercive principles, and men were thus spiritually enchained to the chosen church organization. On the other hand the Nordic European creed - whether consciously or unconsciously - has always been: as the man, so his belief. More exactly put, as the nature or content of his belief."