Does Europe Face the Fate of the Fabled Atlantis?

1916

By Dr. Paul Schlieman
Grandson of the Famous Archeologist and Discoverer of Ancient Troy

The war in Europe has filled the world with horror. There are no wars in the past that can be compared with it. It surpasses by far the greatest calamities that ever have befallen mankind. Yet with all that there is another side to the question. There is a cosmic organism besides the one of the individual. Nature cares nothing for the joys and sorrows of the individual. The reason of nature has no relation to that of the man. The war with all its brutalities must be looked upon as a manifestation of natural forces — a cyclone of nature.

It was just as unavoidable as an earthquake. There was a cosmic reason for it. Every great mind foresaw it. It was necessary to what we call evolution.

Nations and countries, like individuals, have their lives and tragedies. Atlantis was a great continent, inhabited by a powerful and civilized nation when the rest of the world was merged in barbarism. Atlantis colonized Egypt and Central America. When at the zenith of their power the Atlanteans became involved in a war such as has befallen Europe, the whole continent was submerged and sank in the sea. All great calamities of nature follow a certain kind of war. When a social organism is poisoned by a wrong doctrine of life, the sooner it dies the better. Like the civilization of the Atlanteans, this of the Europeans is decadent and doomed. The vitality of every living body depends upon its spiritual not its physical constitution.

As much as we may pity the individual who suffers in such cosmic calamities, still we should be glad of the tempest that cleans nature from human rubbish and decadence. The cosmic will has no mercy upon any individual, because in going against nature the individual ignored the cosmic will. The European war is a gigantic purging process of evolution. The present European war was unavoidable, because the social soul of Europe was sick. Nothing but destruction could end such a sickness. The European disease was best reflected in the art and literature that preceded the war. With every year the paintings grew more abnormal and ugly. The music of the Germans, French and English was all discords and unpleasing noise.

The "culture" of Europe came to a climax of artificialities. The government of Europe became materialistic and militaristic.

On the one hand the Christian church, on the other the naked industrialism undermined the old Culture. The logic that invented the printing press and steam engine could not be reconciled with legendary religion. The Christian church that had been of such influence during the feudal period of social life, lost its grip when industrial civilization was created. Money in the one hand — the Bible in the other — this was the picture of a typical Kulturtraeger of Europe. The fatal paradox was to profess belief in the doctrines of Christianity and to make money at the same time in the way most of that money was made. The contradiction of the two doctrines can be considered as the logical cause of the materialistic education, the logical cause of the lack of spiritual ideals.

Before a fool dies he goes crazy. Europe went crazy before the war. Rome went crazy before her fall. The rubbish of materialistic civilization grew so poisonous that it needed an immediate cleaning up.

The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah has befallen Europe. But this is not all.

I fear that a great cosmic calamity will follow the war, a calamity of the kind that made an end to Atlantis. My reasons for this fear are well founded.

I consider that serious results will follow the concentration of enormous destructive energies on the comparatively narrow battlefield. Never in human history have there been employed such energies. All the thousands of guns and millions of rifles that are used every day represent a large percentage of the gas-producing instruments of the world. This means an abnormal transformation of physical energy into a chemical one. It means millions of cubic yards of an abnormal and violent change of elements. What will be its ultimate effect upon the atmosphere and vegetation no one as yet can tell. It may change the meteorologic balance to such an extent that either arctic colds, tropic heats or excessive rains will affect life seriously. This may result either in failure of crops or in epidemics not known to science.

On the other hand, it is a scientific possibility that the abnormal use of explosives will affect the gravitational and rotational laws of the earth. A microscopic change of the earth's axis would result in gigantic disturbances of nature.

My theory of the vanishing of Atlantis leads me, as it led my grandfather, to the conclusion that the inhabitants of that continent made use of the volcanic destructive powers of earth for a long time. When they abused these powers the great calamity occurred. I fear that the abnormal accumulation of metals around the war districts will cause abnormal events of nature. These metals have been brought together from all parts of the world. It is estimated that the United States alone has shipped more than a million tons of war materials to the warring nations. Much of these are metals, particularly iron, copper and lead. To my estimate the surface of the earth around the war district is fifteen million tons heavier than usual. This excessive weight is produced by metals.

It is not only the weight, but the magnetism of earth that is influenced by the presence of these metals.

When I consider the abnormal use of explosives, the abnormal weight and accumulation of metals in the European war, together with the certain change of the magnetic powers, I can easily understand the insignificant reaction that is needed to bring about a second catastrophe similar to that of Atlantis. The same geologic energy that swallowed Atlantis can swallow also war-ridden Europe. To sink the surface of Europe a few hundred feet means nothing to the ordinary forces of nature.

Man in his pride of invention sneers at nature. The explosives that he employs for destroying his fellow-man are stolen from nature. Defying the laws of nature, man defies and destroys himself. I do not need to speak of the terrible threat from the hastily dug, shallow graves of the millions that are murdered in this war.

The physical and spiritual phenomena of this human struggle point to the conclusion that Europe is facing a continental and cosmic catastrophe.

—The Lincoln Daily Star, Lincoln, NE, Jan. 23, 1916, p. 4, society/fashion section.