Golden Age, December 16, 1936
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The Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE
in this issue
PUBLIC EDUCATION —
THE BULWARK OF LIBERTY
FLAG SALUTING
(Part 2)
PERTINENT COMMENT
IN THE PRESS
CHRIST DIETH NO MORE
14,300 CITATIONS
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Vol. XVIII - No. 450
December 16, 1936 CONTENTS
PUBLIC EDUCATION—THE BULWARK OF LIBERTY 163
The Jesuit Super-Patriots 163
Professional Patriots at Washington 164
Ignorant Old Women of D.A.R. 165
Influence of the Clergy 165
Many Retarding Factors 166
Much Worse Insults to the Flag 166
Massachusetts Stands Disgraced 167
Emmanuel F. Vandam, Educator 168
Those Dangerous (?) Teachers 168
The Great Teacher and Underteachers 169
A Few Serious Educational Items 169
And Some Not So Serious 170
Lynn Waxes Sarcastic 170
America’s New Schoolmistress 171
The Feeneys and the Kellys 172
Education Since the World War 172
A Casual Philosopher 173
HISTORY OF THE U.S.A. (As rewritten by Ambrogio Mussi) 174
CANADA, ECUADOR, AND IN BETWEEN 176
Unhappy Orangemen in Ontario 176
Broun Removes Admiral’s Hide 176
Blackowski’s Black Eyeski 176
FLAG SALUTING (Part 2) 177
PERTINENT COMMENT IN THE PRESS 178
“The Best Antidote” 178
When the Craze Hit Chicago 179
Triumph of the Mean 180
Honest Men Among the Crooks 180
Real Public Opinion 182
FRANCE, IRELAND, DENMARK 183
Thompson Machine Guns for French Fascists 183
Scotch-Irish in Every Camp 183
Denmark’s Proposed Great Bridges 183
EGYPT, ETHIOPIA, AUSTRIA, ITALY 184
Wondering When Time Will Be Up 184
Motu Proprio 184
Decimating the Ethiopians 184
Death for Socialists in Austria 184
TURKEY, GREECE, ALBANIA, HUNGARY, ESTONIA 185
Turks Will Bridge Bosporus 185
Desperate Conditions in Hungary 185
Estonia Survived “Fuehrer” Fever 185
RUSSIA, PERSIA, CHINA, JAPAN, AUSTRALIA 186
Protestantism Dead in Australia 186
CHRIST DIETH NO MORE 187
The “Catholic” Interpretation 187
Bible-Reading Not Encouraged 188
The All-Sufficient Sacrifice 190
14,300 CITATIONS IN THE 16 BOOKS 190
CARTOONS
My son, they have taken all. I have nothing to give you now, save an old, broken heart 163
C’m on, you brats; here’s y’r dinner 167
The New Teacher 171
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The Golden Age
Volume XVIII Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, December 16, 1936 Number 450
Public Education—The Bulwark of Liberty
RALPH E. DUGDALE, superintendent of Toledo (Ohio) schools, said of the public school that it is “the one bulwark of liberty left”. But the worst of it is that even that is not left. One by one the Roman Hierarchy has taken over all America had, government, army, navy, press, radio, films, etc.; and in some states the public school system, as in Pennsylvania, for example, is indirectly under papal control. Nothing is left, and the inquisition is on. Walter Huston, of Seattle, Washington, was selected by Owen D. Young and other national leaders, in the year 1929, as America’s brightest boy. Huston was then 16 years of age. The tests were nation-wide. At the expense of the leaders he was sent to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years, graduating in 1933. Unable to find any job where he could start as a chemist, he is now working in his home city as a laborer. This is no disgrace, and it does not mean that he will remain a laborer; it merely shows how hard it is for the young, now, to get a place in the world. By some the present generation of youth is referred to as the “lost generation” because it is a generation with no opportunities and has absolutely no hope except in the kingdom of Jehovah God.
The agitation against agitators is wholly an attempt to prevent unrest by choking discussion. Those with a good-sized pile (and don’t inquire too closely how they got it) want to preserve America by making it illegal to be an American.
The Texas Court of Appeals ruled as follows: The privilege of writing one’s views is recorded and protected, and at the same time accountability to the law is demanded for the abuse of the privilege. It has been said that the privilege which is thus protected in the organic law of the land is almost universally regarded, not only as highly important, but as being essential to the very existence and perpetuity of free government.
In America one of the greatest privileges the people have is to kick about the poor quality of the stuff sent out over WJZ and other radio stations specializing in the peculiar kind of jazz that appeals to the National Broadcasting Company. At Nuremberg, Germany, a woman was sent to prison for five months because she dared criticize the programs sent out by the German government’s radio stations.
My son, they have taken all. I have nothing to give you now, save an old, broken heart.
The Jesuit Super-Patriots
“This brand of super-patriot who attacks every idea which he finds displeasing by calling it ‘Communistic’ has already done a great deal to undermine truly American ideals by his strategy of boring from within. He doesn’t attack free speech openly; he contents himself with attacking those who exercise their right of free speech by intimating that they receive their orders from an alien power. He hasn’t the courage to attack the American public school directly; he effectively hamstrings it by limiting the teachers’ academic freedom with silly loyalty oaths and enforced lip service to the American flag, ignoring the fact that it is not the flag itself but the glorious ideals for which it stands that should be rendered homage.”—Asbury Park (N. J.) Press.
Lynn, Massachusetts, is still only five miles from Salem, the scene of the witch-burnings. The Lynn school board has just dismissed Miss Cora Foster, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, a faithful and capable school teacher in their midst for 40 years. The reason for her dismissal is that the Lynn school board is under the thumb of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and Miss Foster loves God and refuses to worship the flag.
“Massachusetts school superintendents in convention at the State Teachers’ College at Bridgewater heard an address by a man who has studied educational systems in many parts of the world. The speaker was Dr. Isaac L. Kandel, of the Teachers’ College of Columbia University.
“Dr. Kandel said that education has become ‘outright propaganda’ in Italy, Japan, Russia and Germany.
“Many Americans think that it could not happen here. What these Americans overlook is that official throttling of education in foreign countries did not come with one swoop. In Italy, for example, it started with a teachers’ oath law.
“Thus many an American will sit back until a day comes when patrioteers have sunk their fangs deeply into education and just will not let go. Then there will be trouble.”—Boston Traveler.
Almost anybody with an ounce of brains can see that nothing is gained by trying to force young people into outward professions of loyalty, but how surprised some of these professional patrioteers in Massachusetts would be if they attended [college] chapel and heard seniors pledge “allegiance” by saying “liberty and justice for the rich” instead of “liberty and justice for all”. So the very thing they intend to guard against they are encouraging by their idiotic laws. The boys that are thus gleefully substituting Communistic phrases for the words demanded are not the children of Jehovah’s witnesses, but the evidence is in this office that the substituted phrases are being used in Massachusetts schools.
“This is not the Massachusetts which wrote its name so luminously in American history. It is not the Massachusetts of Samuel Adams and Faneuil hall and the birth of the revolution against royal tyranny. The loss cannot be accounted other than a national one.”—Editorial in St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Massachusetts’ refusal to repeal the teachers’ oath flag bill.
Dr. John L. Tildsley, who wrote the New York city oath requirement as a prerequisite to a high-school diploma, now admits that a pupil cannot be made loyal by a statute, and that a student with an “easy” conscience, who is not loyal, would sign the oath quicker than anyone else.
Professional Patriots at Washington
Professional patriots at Washington have made 700 janitors swear that they did not mop the floor armed with red mopsticks, and 117 clerks that if they used red ink they are sorry. Kindergarten teachers, woodcraftsmen and basket-weavers have sworn that they did not work any Communism into their courses. Having done this, the school employees were given their wages, and the country is safe once more, except from the feeble-minded politicians.
Calling attention to the legislation of the District of Columbia whereby each month a teacher must swear that in the month for which he is paid he has taught nothing about Communism, the Forth Worth Press then declares that in a poll of representative Americans from Maine to California 62 percent were in favor of schools’ teaching the facts about all forms of government, including Communism and Fascism, and 59 percent were in favor of college teachers’ freely expressing their views on all subjects, including government and religion. The Press then says:
Apparently, therefore, three out of every five of us want our children to learn what is going on in the living world today, to face their age without either blinders or rose-colored glasses, to see things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, that are going on about them.
A subscriber in general very well pleased indeed with David Wilkie’s article on Fascism thinks it incorrect to say that Communism is an alternative of Fascism, and goes on to explain:
The Communist is a proletarian of any race, creed or color, not necessarily an Irishman or a Catholic.
He is fighting for emancipation from starvation, and has his hand full doing that little thing. Communism is not a secret thing, as is the Knights of Columbus, or the Masons, or the Ku Klux Klan. The Communist party takes no orders from the pope of Rome. The pope has waged a continuous warfare of propaganda against the Soviet. Last Labor Day, the first of May, in our little old town of Tacoma, Washington, the Communists had a parade which started at 15th and Commerce streets, and as the parade was being formed there were seven or eight priests from St. Leo's on the job to see that none of their parish lined up.
Ignorant Old Women of the D.A.R.
Professing to be real Americans, the old women of the Daughters of the American Revolution have done much, very much, to overthrow public education in the United States. Louis M. Hacker, lecturer on economics at Columbia University, in an address to teachers at Philadelphia, said:
It is time that these busybodies are told what their ancestors fought for. The members of the D.A.R. are being unfaithful to the memories of those ancestors. It is time this organization stopped its witch-hunting and terrorizing of teachers by its campaign for loyalty oaths. Many of the members of today, had they been alive in 1776, would have been Tories and connived with the British for the suppression of the rebels.
Referring to the un-American women of the D.A.R., Professor George S. Counts of Teachers College, Columbia University, said of them that they are "too ignorant of American history and American ideals to know what they are doing. Their patriotism is a combination of thinly veiled snobbery and protection of privilege". These D.A.R. give the true American a pain in the neck. It is not "Who was your dad?" or "Who was your granddad?" that counts, but "Who are you?"
There is nothing much funnier in life than somebody of very ordinary clay and very limited intelligence who imagines that because his or her grandfather wore overalls gracefully in 1776, therefore he, she or it is 'some punkins'. The real Americans get a big kick out of laughing at these substitutes for regular folks. Said H. J. Kaley in the Pittsburgh Press:
I believe I have found the solution to a question that has always puzzled me, to wit, Why did George Washington die childless? The Greatest Revolutionist of them all must have foreseen the ignominy of being the progenitor of a potential D.A.R.
If the revolutionists who made this U.S.A. had been aware that one of the by-products was to be such an organization, one cannot but believe they would have preferred to save their time and let George Rex keep the country.
At this mossback organization's current meeting at Washington these effete descendants of America's real he-men took meticulous pains to go on record against each and every bit of proposed forward-looking legislation on the calendar and as meticulously in favor of every Fascist-inspired proposal.
The aristocratic (?) members of this organization are not only living in the America of a century and a half ago but also on a reputation of 150 years ago. Ever since their inception it is impossible to point out a single instance in which they have benefited America—rather have they been a hindrance, a detriment and, frankly, a pain.
These good Americans, these best Americans, these super-Americans, have consistently opposed every forward step America has taken.
If these good ladies had inherited intelligence along with their pin, they should have become, ere this, aware that America will continue forward in spite of their efforts to retard. When are they going to wake up to the fact that intelligent and thinking Americans are almost universally opposed to everything they advocate?
America needs so many good things to be done. The need of constructive thought is crying. If these super-patriots with their anti-bellum mentalities are unable to contribute anything beneficial, at least they should be kind enough to go back to their super-patriotic knitting.
The writer is not a D.A.R nor a G.O.P. nor any X.Y.Z., but feels he is qualified to recognize real Americanism and to criticize the phoney after standing in French mud up to his knees.
Influence of the Clergy
The clergy are professedly teachers of the Word of God. Their influence is mostly evil for the reason that they neglect the Scriptures. Noticing this four college boys, in the Tacoma News Tribune, addressed the clergy of that city as follows:
We college students are often accused of losing faith in God, religion, prayer, and the church through our education; and the accusations often seem painfully just. The Freshmen who enter college intending for the ministry leave as graduates completely indifferent to spiritual values—ignorant of religious matters.
Most of the students work hard six days of the week; when Sunday comes, those who are already disgusted with church attend services, expecting to hear a sermon—and are forced to endure a lecture. They expect to obtain much-needed spiritual nourishment, and are handed fireside hours and book-reports and plays—which is often the only thing the church has to offer. Spiritual things are made secondary to temporal matters, in the same churches which are dedicated to "Feed my sheep." The thing we students lose faith in is not the religion, but the way that religion is portrayed by the church and its leaders!
Our advice to pastors is this: Dispense with your fireside hour and your dances and socials and concentrate on giving us God, and you will find the students—those who really think—flocking back to your standards. We want to hear live sermons from men who have really experienced religion—for we want to experience it ourselves. From now on: We Would See Jesus!
Lutheran ministers of Cincinnati have presented formal charges that some high-school teachers are telling pupils that man descended from the anthropoid ape and that Jehovah, the great Creator, is a tribal deity and not the true God. Wonder just where the flag-salute issue comes in on this. Do the same teachers that insist that man is an ape and Jehovah God a tribal deity choke pupils that insist on giving God the first place in their hearts and for that reason refuse to bow to the flag? Or do they do that only in the province of the Roman church ruled over by Mr. Margiotti, attorney general of Pennsylvania?
Many Retarding Factors
The lawyers (and doctors) come in for just criticism in their attitude toward education. They seem to act as if afraid others will find out how little they know. The New Current Digest pokes fun at legal terminology:
A lawyer thus illustrates the language of his craft: "If a man were to give another an orange, he would simply say: 'Have an orange.' But when the transaction is intrusted to a lawyer to be put in writing he adopts this form: 'I hereby give and convey to you, all and singular, my estate and interests, right, title, claim and advantages of and in said orange, together with all its rind, juice, pulp and pips, and all rights and advantages therein, with full power to bite, cut, suck and otherwise to eat the same or give the same away with or without the rind, skin, juice, pulp or pips, anything hereinbefore or hereinafter or in any other means of whatever nature or kind whatsoever to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.' And then another lawyer comes along and takes it away from you."
Bus salesmen in recent years have done much to give the cause of popular education a black eye: Before centralization all the schools of Trumansburg, N.Y., cost $27,000 a year. Now, with a ten-percent increase in attendance, the centralized school costs $75,000 a year. Under the centralized plan the children get no better instruction than before; they are away from home much longer; they do not get enough sleep. But the change was good for the bus-makers, even if it was hard on the parents. Americans rush into everything with a whoop and hurrah before doing any figuring as to how they are going to get out. And that is the way they are plunging headlong into Fascism, with its concomitants of Catholic Action and the Inquisition.
Politicians have done incalculable harm to popular education, and will do far worse soon. What with drunken guards, and as many as twelve cases of whisky brought in at one time, the Tennessee State Reform School for Boys has been one of the worst places in the Western world. The grand jury picked twenty boys at random and found almost every one bearing scars and lacerations. Boy after boy testified to being beaten with wagon spokes or with the lash until they begged for death. Examining the noonday lunch for the inmates the jurors found cockroaches in the bread and flies in the pudding. Forty inmates fled within a few days to get away from the beast that managed the place. He quit.
The mere fact that a boy is in college does not necessarily imply that he has any common sense or ever will have any, and when the boys do outrageous things they themselves hurt education terribly with an indignant public. There is never any telling what a college boy will do. A group from the Harvard University funny magazine, the Lampoon, visited Washington and at 4:00 in the morning ran a red flag up over the building of the United States Supreme Court. Then they knotted the halyards in such a way that when the police got on the job they had to burn the flag, that being the only way they could get it down.
Much Worse Insults to the Flag
The foregoing escapade was bad enough, but the things the Jesuits have inspired have been so much worse that there is no comparison possible.
One method of destroying American schools is that now used of singling out teachers to take oaths, direct flag-waving and breast-beating, and thus drive out of the profession as many self-respecting members as can find a way out.
The Jesuits care not how it is done, only that it is done. Do they hate education? Look at their work in South America and Spain.
Representatives of Jews, Catholics and Protestants are running up and down the country, like a hen with her head cut off, shouting "Tolerance", yet as a result of their own activities the Jesuits, acting for all three groups, are to blame for a great wave of intolerance sweeping over the country. All this pretended new and profound interest in the U.S. flag is complete, perfect and unadulterated bunk.
California has no law on this subject, yet when Jehovah's witnesses, hard pressed by the intolerant advocates of "tolerance", opened a school at El Nido, that state, where their little ones could study in peace, somebody stirred up 120 citizens to send delegates to call on the board of supervisors and demand that the school be closed. May the Lord save decent people from the hands of those that claim to be tolerant.
Probably yielding to Jesuit pressure, the attorney general of Ohio has now ruled that school boards may demand that school children salute the flag, and if they refuse they may be expelled or disciplined otherwise.
Massachusetts (of which more anon) has disgraced the United States, and disgraced civilization itself, with its nonsensical efforts to substitute Fascist salutes for intelligent appreciation of the flag representing America.
C'm on, you brats; here's y'r dinner.
Massachusetts Stands Disgraced
Invited to spend his vacation in Massachusetts, Harry Phillips, prominent Pacific Coast publicity man, said to his prospective hosts:
We are quite interested to note in your letter:
If you have youngsters why not plan to put them in camp here, or keep them with you?
Merely as a parent I believe that New England would be a good place to keep youngsters away from. When it is necessary to obtain salute and pledges of allegiance to the American flag by compulsory state laws it would seem to us to be a direct reflection upon the loyalty of every citizen who resides in a community where such a law is necessary. If the attitude of the state of Massachusetts, with its compulsory flag saluting law, represents the cultural background of America and the literary and religious center of these United States all we can say is, give us less of such culture, literary and religious centers.
Before they get through with it the businessmen of Massachusetts are going to find what Germany has found: that kowtowing to the Roman Hierarchy in everything has its disadvantages.
In 1932, on Washington's Birthday, national editress Elsie Robinson said, in part, concerning the United States flag: "Those once noble folds, consecrated by the blood and tears of our heroic dead, are wrapped today, as camouflage, about entrenched greediness and selfishness, viciousness and vileness, cowardice and cruelty." This is far worse than anything Jehovah's witnesses have ever said, yet Elsie confused the witnesses with the Reds and scolded them all round in the Detroit Times. Elsie is just like anybody else who tries to say a lot about something of which she knows nothing.
The Frackville Egges are some eggs. Here is nearly a column in the Reading Eagle saying that the Reverend Walter H. Egge, Frackville, national chaplain of the P.O.S. of A., says "he believes students refusing to salute the flag should be denied the privilege of attending public school"; and then Doctor Tyler Dennett, president of Williams College, Massachusetts, and one of the most capable educators in the United States, wants to know, "Where, pray, on God's green earth should you put a child who declined to salute the flag unless it be in an American public school?" The Frackville Egges are some eggs.
Emmanuel F. Vandam, Educator
Emmanuel F. Vandam, educator, is assistant superintendent of schools of Brooklyn, N. Y. That means that, for the borough of Brooklyn, with a population of 2,785,159, he is the chief executive in control of educational work in that great field. When called upon by two ladies, with free copies of The Golden Age Nos. 420, 421, 422, he stated that he had issued instructions that no periodicals or literature of any kind may be accepted by principals or any member of the school staff. This is not in Borneo, but in the United States.
Then this man of wisdom, pointing to the subscription price on the inside front cover, claimed that presentation of the three magazines to him or to others is canvassing, even when the magazines were given away free. When handed the three free copies he flatly refused to accept them, but they were left on his desk. The Scriptures do not say that in Jesus' day some wild man went running throughout Palestine warning the people to put cotton in their ears, for fear they might get an idea; and therefore no parallel immediately suggests itself. But if Brooklyn wants that kind of educator, then that is the kind it wants.
Trying to work his way into the public eye, Jos. R. Hanley, member of the New York state senate, said: "We want every man and every woman to honor that flag and to salute it voluntarily and respect it voluntarily. But if they do not salute and respect it voluntarily, by the eternal God, we will make them respect it involuntarily." Hanley, not Hitler, speaking. Referring to Hanley's speech, the Reverend M. Huyett Sangree, pastor of Wellsville (N. Y.) Congregational church, said:
"Some people consider themselves patriotic if they salute the flag. Then they are free to loot the national treasury, to corrupt the ballot, to fatten on the public works contracts, to cheat the army supply department, to use their fellow citizens for their own enrichment, or to waste the national resources at will to fill their own pockets. The godly people of Rome were its best citizens, even though they would not bow to the emperor's statue. The godly citizens of America are its best citizens, even if they can't salute the flag."
A good many level-headed Americans caught on to this flag-saluting racket right away; the circulation of a few million Loyalty booklets helped mightily, and so did Judge Rutherford's world-wide broadcast of February 23, 1936, on the same subject. Hale Tennant handles the flag-saluting fakirs sarcastically in the Benton Harbor (Mich.) News-Palladium, and it is good to read. He says:
Those Dangerous (?) Teachers
THOSE DANGEROUS (?) TEACHERS
Every honest American ought to rejoice that an all-wise and infallible legislature has clamped down on these teachers and makes them swear a special oath of allegiance to the constitution. They all ought to be fingerprinted, and a brand on their forehead wouldn't be too bad, so that when their nefariousness catches up with them, we can recognize these silk-winged birds of prey.
Of course, gamblers, fakers, white-collar thieves, pickpockets, bandits, murderers, stuffed-shirt pirates, usurers, confidence men, racketeers, panderers, shyster lawyers, kidnapers, swindlers, grave robbers, freebooters, gangsters, munition merchants of death, war mongers, yellow newspaper publishers, monopoly leeches, and all that generation of vipers—they are all right. Their touch may be a little indelicate and their technique not so highly polished, but they are kindred spirits to our exalted captains of industry, and we can bank on their loyalty. We do not have to make them swear a special oath of allegiance. But these mild-eyed, soft-voiced, gentle-handed teachers, look out for them. They are the real menace to the anchors of our civilization.
By way of contrast with intelligent commentators on the subject, the Hudson Dispatch (Union City, N. J.) says:
If their interpretation of the Bible is the only creed, to the exclusion of saluting the flag, as others do gladly, it is time for Jehovah's witnesses to find a country where that kind of thing will be tolerated; either that, or go to some remote part of the world where they may have a country all their own.
Can you imagine some preacher coming into a school some day and invoking the Lord's blessing because the teacher has been forbidden to tell something she knows is true, the parents know is true, and many of the children themselves also know is true? Well, how about this?—At London, Ontario, a teacher told her pupils the truth about Santa Claus. They told their parents. Their parents told the board of education, and the administrator of schools served notice on the teacher that any further telling of the truth on this subject would not be tolerated.
The Great Teacher and Underteachers
“Dear Teacher, patient with our childish ways, teach us the common things of common days. While careless hands the dog-eared pages turn, teach us the easy things, so hard to learn—the Truth, that needs no learning to declare; pure, white-souled Truth, than noonday sun more fair; and faith, that midst all fears and woes sings on the children’s lips. Well, Teacher knows, and Love, that hath ten million times been told—Love, that is older than the world is old—Love, that will live when [Satan’s world is] dead—when these great little lessons have been said, then heaven and earth in one great school will meet, learning old lessons at the Teacher’s feet.”—By Robert Burdette, in 1914.
Parents cannot shift to others their duty to instruct their children about God. This was the advice given to a parent who came into the office to inquire about sending his children to Sunday school. A study in The Harp was suggested; the man was not overconfident of results, but obtained three extra copies of The Harp and started for home. Three weeks later he made a trip of eighty miles to call at the office and explain that on the third Sunday his oldest boy told him he had learned more in the three Sundays than in all the lessons he had previously had in the “church” Sunday school.
Young Bill of British Columbia, four years old, child of a Golden Age reader, was with his mother on a C.P.R. steamship from Vancouver island to the mainland. Playing with some toys, Bill was addressed by a smiling male passenger, “Well, sonny, Santa has come early for you.” Said Bill, “Santa is the Devil, and the Christmas tree is of the Devil, too.” The passenger went down and out for the count. On another occasion, playing with some alphabet blocks, young Bill was shown by a well-meaning adult how to spell “Santa”. Bill promptly and vigorously rearranged the blocks to spell “Satan”, and the adult gave up in despair. Bill’s dad is a happy dad.
Bobby Hoffman, six years old, at his home in Jacksonville, Florida, hears much talk about witnessing. Recently, at school, his hand went up for attention. Teacher asked, “What is it, Bobby?” Bobby: “Did you ever read any of Judge Rutherford’s books?” Teacher: “Yes, Bobby, I have The Harp, Light One and Two, and the Government booklet.” When Bobby arrived home and told his mother about it she asked him how he came to ask the question. In all seriousness he replied, “Oh, I thought it would be a good time to give a little witness.”
A fond mother in Ohio, writing in about her six-year-old son’s experiences in refusal to salute the flag, says of him that he wants “to be a cowboy in the Kingdom, to ride a lion and not shoot anything”. He is in a fair way to get his wish.
A mother witnessing with a portable phonograph at a small town in Missouri was invited to come to the high school and put on a few records. She accepted the invitation, played one musical and two lecture records, and left nine booklets. The principal, a ‘church worker’, later gathered up the booklets and burned them. Shortly after it was found that he had gambled away his own earnings and that of other teachers, and fled the town in disgrace.
A Few Serious Educational Items
The Codex Sinaiticus, bought from Russia for £100,000, has been rebound. All the pages have been flattened and carefully patched, and the experts say the present binding will last at least another 500 years.
The British Museum, to accommodate new books, adds a mile of shelves a year. A new catalogue is being made, which it is estimated may be completed by 1958. It will make about 220 volumes, and will list more than 4,000,000 books.
One of Jehovah’s witnesses draws attention to Luke 22:44, that it does not say that Christ sweat blood, even though He may have done so, but merely that “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”. Luke was a physician. He was making a comparison, and there is no reason to put into the account any more than actually appears in it.
Beginning with 1936 botany will be taught to 135 blind pupils at the Indiana State School for the Blind, the first time this was ever attempted, and a truly great achievement. Extensive Braille labels will be attached to each plant and tree, and the blind will be taught from textbooks and by touch how to identify the species.
In New York city there are now mothers of thirty-six nationalities studying English, and sixty women are now in high-school classes as a result of the campaign launched twenty years ago to educate the foreign-born.
Today 220,000,000 persons speak English, 170,000,000 Russian, 90,000,000 German, 45,000,000 Italian, 45,000,000 French, 24,000,000 Turkish. English is now spoken by eleven times as many persons as 100 years ago.
Former Governor Alfred E. Smith urges piano and violin lessons for the children of the poor, attesting the benefits he himself received from such instruction when a youth. It gives boys and girls a hunger for something finer in their lives, and keeps them out of mischief.
New York city has a juvenile judge that is worth having. Instead of sentencing bad boys to jail, to make them worse, he sentences them to read good books, which he names, and to send him their reviews. He is getting results.
A. L. Potter, of Kansas, thinks it would be a good idea to change the old motto,
"Children should be seen, and not heard,"
to make it read, more in accord with the times:
"Children should be seen, and not hurt."
And Some Not So Serious
The cartoonist says: "I remember with the heaviest of hearts the tears of joy in my father's eyes as he escorted me determinedly to the railroad station and gave me a final word of advice. 'Son,' said he, 'don't be too hard on the world when you go forth to scratch for yourself; take a bath every Saturday night, and don't always look as though you're trying to swallow all the air in creation. Close your mouth once in a while: you might get your teeth sunburned."
The Boston Globe man said Eve 8 (ate) and Adam 2 (too); total 10. Not content with that he said that Eve 8 and Adam 8; total 16. Also that Eve 8 and Adam 82; total 90. And that Eve 81 and Adam 812; total 893. And that Eve 814 herself and Adam 8124 himself; total 8,938. And, finally, and worst of all, that Eve 8142 know how it tasted, and Adam 28142 know what it was like; total 36,284. Summing it all up, it seems that Eve 89,061 and Adam 837,170; or a grand total of 972,462. This last sentence, y'unnerstan', was fixed up in the office of The Golden Age, but it seems all O.K.
A grammarian inquires: "Is it not within reason that the word 'within' within Luke 17:21 is not 'within' within God's truth, within His Word, within His mind, but is 'within' only within translations; so 'within' is 'within' only within man's mind and is not 'within' within truth, but 'within' is 'within' within error, and so 'within' is without truth?" This is all sad, but so.
A subscriber now living in New York tells of a beating her son received in Pennsylvania ten years ago for losing a pencil. She says: "At 18 his hands shake so he can hardly write. Before the beatings, two in two days, he was a plump, healthy, normal child. The instrument of torture was a wooden paddle with round holes in it. From the back of his neck to the turn of his hips he was black and blue, and swollen until the flesh stood up an inch above its normal condition. Where the holes were in the paddle were big round black welts the size of a quarter. The boy's nervous system was ruined."
Typhoid serum and diphtheria toxin were administered to the pupils of Hahira Consolidated School, Hahira, Georgia, and a few hours later approximately 100 collapsed and scores of others were desperately ill. A fine time was had by all.
Lynn Waxes Sarcastic
A. L. Lynn, of California, drawing attention to the Scripture record that the early primitive Christians had all things in common, waxes sarcastic at the alleged Christians of today who are so excited about what is going on in Russia. He says of the early Christians:
They kept their belief strictly to themselves, never offending anybody by mentioning it, least of all the religious leaders of their day. These early primitive Christians went direct to heaven on flowery beds of ease, never being persecuted at all, especially those that entertained the Romans in their great Colosseum on celebration days.
"They" gladly joined up, each and every one of them, with Constantine the Great, at the Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, this being the date when the pure virgin bride of Christ had her first date or marriage to her first earthly king, to do his will and bidding. The kingdom of God immediately came, and his will was then, for the first time, immediately done on earth as it is in heaven. The Christians then for the first time gladly went out to help kill or take possession of the heathen, thus strengthening the kingdom of God on earth, the Holy Roman Empire.
The Dark Ages, which then followed, are a myth, and no one was ever persecuted or put to death for having a copy of the Scriptures in his possession, not for at least 1200 years, anyway. During all that time people were openly encouraged to meet above ground for the study of the Word of God; hence there never was any cause for the "Reformation" which followed the above-mentioned Reign of The Bride of Christ in Temporal Power.
Following the "Reformation", Christians always got along together in the bonds of Christian love, never having persecuted or tortured one another to death in the name of their Redeemer. That was a mere fairy tale regarding our various forefathers' coming over here to America in order that they might have religious liberty—for themselves. Christians were never known to have prayed to the same God for one another's destruction and then gone out and shot one another to pieces in answer to their prayers, when their various earthly kings went to war against each other. It was never mentioned in the prophecies of the Bible, least of all in the 17th and 18th chapters of Revelation, that they would ever do such things.
The Christians' Gospel has always and ever been one of "peace on earth, good will toward men". They have always been "the light of the world", having always witnessed to the nations when they were doing or about to do anything that was contrary to the Higher Law and which would lead them into wars, pestilence, famine, sorrow and death.
In other words, the pure espoused virgin bride of Christ, with the backing or consent of her various and numerous earthly kings and favorites, has never been known to persecute, mob or torture to death anyone in the name of Christ, least of all, those that witness to his Word of Truth. Inventors and scientists have always been perfectly free to bless mankind with their inventions and knowledge. The inventor of the telescope was free to let the world know how many moons Jupiter had, etc.
The New Teacher
America's New Schoolmistress
America's new schoolmistress is the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, famous "educator" of Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia and other countries where not half the people can read and write and where a very large proportion of the property, by hook or by crook, got into the possession of priests who, for a consideration, will virtually accept bribes countenancing any crime under the sun. The one unforgivable crime, under this New Deal, will be to say or even to think anything at all against the worst gang of racketeers this side of hades, the infamous "church" of the Inquisition. All history shows that this gang is never contented, never satisfied. What they got yesterday by threats, coercion, boycott or worse, they boldly claim today as a God-given right, and go on from that to demand still more unreasonable things. As an instance, take this teachers' oath law and flag racket.
Having discovered by means of the Teachers' Oath Law of Massachusetts (repeal of which has been demanded by the Smith College chapter of the American Association of University Professors) that there is a way by which the Hierarchy can "get" Jehovah's witnesses, the tools of the Hierarchy are losing no time in getting wheels in motion to spread the same legislation to other states.
Thus, Rhode Island has a model teachers' pledge already, without the signing of which, before a notary, no teacher can procure employment, but this does not satisfy the Hierarchy, nor, and that is quite incidental, Lawrence A. Mooney, department commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who may or may not be a Papist. In a column-and-a-half statement in the Providence Tribune Mooney ridicules the following pledge, insisting that it is not sufficient. To be perfectly frank about it, what Mooney is seeking is a statute law, a Fascist law, under the cover of which the Inquisition may proceed in Rhode Island as it has already proceeded in the states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Washington. The oath now actually in operation in Rhode Island is as follows:
"I, as a teacher and citizen, pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to the State of Rhode Island and to the American public school system.
"I solemnly promise to support the constitution and laws of Nation and State, to teach, by precept and example, respect for the flag, obedience to the laws and allegiance to the government of the United States.
"I further affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of a teacher in the State of Rhode Island according to the best of my ability."
Rhode Island, and which does not suit Mr. Mooney or the pope, is:
I, as a teacher and citizen, pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to the State of Rhode Island and to the American public school system.
I solemnly promise to support the Constitution and laws of nation and State, to acquaint myself with the laws of the State relating to public education, also the regulations and instructions of my official superiors, and faithfully to carry them out.
I further promise to protect the school rights of my pupils, to conserve the democracy of school citizenship, to honor public education as a principle of free government, to respect the profession of education as public service, and to observe its ethical principles and rules of professional conduct.
I pledge myself to neglect no opportunity to teach the children committed to my care loyalty to the nation and State, honor to the flag, obedience to law and government, respect for public servants entrusted for the time being with the functions of government, faith in government by the people, fealty to the civic principles of freedom, equal rights and human brotherhood, and the duty of every citizen to render service for the common welfare.
I shall endeavor to exemplify in my own life and conduct in and out of school the social virtues of fairness, kindliness and service as ideals of good citizenship.
I affirm, in recognition of my official obligations, that, though as a citizen I have the right of personal opinion, as a teacher of the public's children I have no right, either in school hours or in the presence of my pupils out of school hours, to express opinions that conflict with honor to country, loyalty to American ideals, and obedience to and respect for the laws of nation and State.
In all this I pledge my sacred honor and subscribe to a solemn oath that I will faithfully perform to the best of my ability all the duties of the office of teacher in the public schools.
The Feeneys and the Kellys
At Larksville, Pennsylvania, a conscientious boy, a victim of heart illness and twenty-two months in bed with it, was expelled from the public school for quoting Exodus 20:2-5 and standing by it. His teacher was a Miss Kelly, and the superintendent of the schools was a Mr. Feeney; and if they are Catholics that explains it all very well. Can somebody tell why it is that just one type of people in America, with one type of religion, are more narrow-minded and hateful and oppressive than any other? The lad in question was not one of Jehovah's witnesses, nor were his parents, but they had evidently been reading and thinking on the literature of God's kingdom which the witnesses put out.
At the Walkersville (Frederick county, Md.) public school an experiment will be made in religious education. It is an experiment in the wrong direction. Though made under the nominal guidance of so-called "Protestants", it is playing directly into the hands of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and quite likely the experiment was made at its suggestion.
Former supreme court justice Daniel F. Cohalan, addressing the Catholic Electric Workers' Union in New York, said that "the Catholics of the United States must insist on the right to have their children receive religious instruction in the public schools". Guess who the teachers of "religion" will be, and what they will teach.
The North Dakota supreme court, overruling the lower court, decided that Roman Catholic nuns may wear their ecclesiastical garb in schools of the state, so long as they obey the instructions of their superior school officials.
Governor Lehman has signed the bill permitting municipalities in New York state to provide bus service for children attending parochial schools. The principle back of the bill is that there are in New York state, say 210, different religious denominations, and if each one desired to have its own school for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and other like essentials, then each community would need to provide 210 kinds of bus service.
Two Catholic boys, tired of the junk taught them in a parochial school in Indianapolis, poured kerosene on the stairs and set fire to their Holy Angels Catholic school in that city. They wore gloves, so the police would not see their fingerprints, but got caught anyway.
Now that Rome has seized the movies, and every act and scene must in some way boost the Roman propaganda, feelers are being put out that the government should support free movies for the children, on the ground that children absorb and remember a surprisingly large portion of what they see filmed and tend to accept as true what they see on the screen. Those who doubt that Gog, prime minister of the Devil, is bent on capturing the world for Rome, and has the trick nearly turned, have a big surprise coming shortly.
Education Since the World War
The American Civil Liberties Union declares that in the years since the World War more laws have been passed interfering with teaching in public schools than in all America’s previous history; more college professors have been dismissed or disciplined because of their views than in any other similar period in American history; meaningless formal patriotic exercises, flag-saluting and conventional instruction in the Constitution are required by law; special oaths of loyalty to the Constitution, not required of other public servants, are exacted from teachers in twenty states, and in many of them from teachers in private schools as well; history textbooks have been revised to make past history square with today’s prejudices; teachers’ unions are often opposed, and in some cases outlawed; more student papers and liberal clubs in colleges have been censored than in any similar period.
Byron N. Scott, Democrat, of California, Hearst’s home state, thinks he knows where much of the trouble lies. It isn’t with the teachers. He said, on the floor of Congress:
This woefully underpaid, overworked, much-maligned group of men and women that has suffered so much from the malicious attacks of William Randolph Hearst and his silly sycophants, both paid and unpaid, has done more to build up the proper concepts of citizenship than the pseudo-patriots will ever be able to tear down.
I think it a whole lot better to praise the school teacher than to pay lip service or to play into the hands of what I consider the greatest menace to democracy and liberty in this country—William Randolph Hearst.
I took an oath to support the Constitution when I started to teach school. I thought it was rather silly then, but that was before Mr. Hearst started his “Red scare, 1935 edition.”
Today that oath has become a matter of persecution. Persecution of American citizens at the instigation of William Randolph Hearst, who never acted under the stimulus of a decent motive in his life.
The American Federation of Teachers, at its convention in Philadelphia, in August, urged a boycott of all Hearst newspapers and other media of publicity, following the preamble given below:
Whereas William Randolph Hearst, through his control of numerous agencies of communication, such as newspapers, magazines, movies, news reels and radio, has attempted to pollute the minds of the American people through distortion of facts on all vital matters to such a degree that Senator Norris was led to characterize Hearst papers as ‘the sewer system of American journalism’, and
Whereas he is an avowed foe of the child labor amendment and is one of the biggest employers of child labor, and
Whereas he has been a constant enemy of academic freedom and of honest and courageous teachers and has been a motivating force in loyalty oath legislation and red riders, and
Whereas he is the bitter enemy of trade union principle and has throughout his career, both as editor and employer, fought all efforts of workers to better their conditions, and has conducted such vicious campaigns to malign and cripple trade union efforts that he was denounced publicly by the late Samuel Gompers, president of A.F. of L., and
Whereas he is the chief proponent of Fascism in this country, as evidenced by his campaign against free speech, his soft pedaling of the Black Legion crimes, his expressed and open admiration of Hitler and Mussolini and their policies, and his use of all the resources at his command for the dissemination of Fascist propaganda; and
Whereas he is the outstanding jingoist of the country and has used his powerful resources in attempts to entangle this country in imperialistic wars;
A Casual Philosopher
A philosopher who prefers to remain unknown casually dashed off the following meditation, and carelessly permitted it to fall into the hands of The Golden Age.
With reference to Catholic and pseudo-Protestant enthusiasts for flag-saluting. To persons trained in the Catholic tradition, whether they are Catholics themselves or not, genuflections, salutes, formal prayers, breast-beating, cross-making and cross-worship, kneeling on the knees and lying on the floor before images, pictures, signs, symbols, mean everything.
The inner convictions, the principles involved, the inharmonv of such acts with the commandments of God do not particularly matter to persons so instructed. To them it looks perfectly proper that one who refuses to salute a flag (or a cross, or church building, etc., etc.) should be severely punished. It matters not in the least that one who takes such a stand may have excellent reasons, conscientious scruples and high moral standards.
To the person trained in the Catholic tradition and indoctrinated in the Catholic religio-political organization all these things are secondary to gestures, if, indeed, they matter at all. Can we blame them greatly if after having had these views drummed into them from the cradle they object when someone who has a free spirit and sincere heart balks at meaningless attitudes, salutes and postures? Is it right to persecute them for their fixed and probably unalterable inhibitions and prejudices? Certainly not.
Of course, when it comes to letting such persons have any position of responsibility or instruct children, or ---
History of the U.S.A. (Past, Present and Future)
(As Rewritten by AMBROGIO MUSSI, not to be confused with Ambrogio Batti)
1. Da peelagrim, da Hugenot anda da Quake, dey run away froma da clutch ofa da Inquiseesh'n. In America he'sa try to build it up a new nation. He'sa talk abouta da freedom of a conscience and to worship Almighty God. Butta datta isa heresia, heh heh! Boin'em up onna da stake-a!
2. Da Nation's grow pooty fast. Da peoplea stilla believa deesa tripe abouta leeberty. He'sa theenk that papa the'sa sleep and he no catcha dem. Ha-hah! Patricka Henry he's a say, "Geeva me leeberty or-a geeva me dett." Ha-ha, and he's a getta da dett weetha eenteresta!!
3. Tommaso Jeff'sonno— to da stake-a! He'sa write da Declarashe ofa Indipendenza. Deesa documento is heretical, anda anti-Cattolico, He'sa makea a fina torch.
4. Da signers ofa da Declarashe of Indipendenza—to da stake-a! Dey become foolish, dey theenka da Cattolica Hierarchia is-a take-a this anti-tyrant stuffa lyina down! Dey make-a fine-a streeta lamp in Citta vaticano.
5. To da stake-a witha Giorgio de Wash'! He'sa leada da nation, and he'sa warn againsta da foreign power—hah! Thatsa me' Shoo, Mike! He'sa smells pooty goot as a cinder. Da people leeberty'sa go pf—fpft, joost like-a datta!
6. Abramo Linco'! He'sa warna da nation against a dark cloud-a from Roma! Ha-ha-ha! I betcha he'sa holla like-a hell onna da rack—anda feela betta witha 17 yards ofa flame down heesa troat.
7. Organiza da Black Legione, Amer. Leg., D.A.R., Hearst, etc. Da leeberty she'sa persecute to deaths; da Conscience, She'sa ravish anda dead. Jehovah's witnesses, ha-ha! Dey go to da jail, da torture chambers, da concentrashe campo.
8. Today, da Cattolica Action in U.S., she'sa inventa machina (Pat. Apld. For) to make-a patriotti. Da Leetle Gianta Flag Saluter in every home. You can-a changea da symbols to saluta da Flagga, da saints, da pope, da Devil, and a Hitler, Mussolina, and so on. No hava machinea, no saluta da flagga; no saluta da flagga and he'sa go to jail, keeka him outa from school—keeka him!
9. Cattolica Action, she'sa do anything stoppa Jehovah witness truth. We no stop at molder! Dees'a people to pulla da Giorgio De Wash' stuff arounda here. We are da bigga Cheesu.
10. Ambrose Mussi himself, who rewrote this history of the United States, he is so popular that when two page boys were overcome by a foul odor and dropped his twenty-yard train the adoring multitude let it drag in the mud and some of the local boys sat on it and tried to filch a ride. A collection is being "lifted" to put wheels on it.
--otherwise exercise their discretion or lack of it in public matters, it would seem that people with at least some measure of sanity would take steps to see that they are excluded, not indeed because of religious convictions, but because their mental conditioning has been such as to make them untrustworthy in matters of real moment.
They cannot be depended upon to judge fairly, impartially and sanely. They cannot be trusted to do right merely for the sake of doing right, or to discern the really important principles that make this nation, or made this nation a really free people. Free people, with balanced judgment and solid principles, cannot afford to entrust matters of public safety and welfare to persons who, however much they are to be pitied (if and when), certainly should not be entrusted with responsibilities which would not be with equal readiness committed to a two-year-old child.
The foregoing is undoubtedly true. The Hierarchy's practices and methods upon its subjects blunt the moral faculties, and are intended to do so. A diligent study of the Scriptures and of all the literature of Jehovah's Kingdom, and of all past history of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and of all its present tendencies and influences in the earth, leaves not one good thing to be said of it. Its influences are wholly bad, wholly corrupt, wholly degrading and demoralizing, and bring, inevitably, poverty, ignorance and ruin in its wake. It would be an offense against God to say a decent thing of it, or of the Devil, its author and general manager.
Fire Extinguishers as Premiums?
An unfriend in Massachusetts sent in a year's subscription for the G.A. and then was mean enough to say: "Would it be possible for you to give a fire extinguisher as a premium with the G.A. subscription? I find lately that every time a G.A. is dropped in the letter box it is so hot that it fills the hall with smoke." Now, what do you suppose is in the head of a man to make him write like that? Nothing?
Returning to a more hopeful and more happy subject, here is a letter enclosing two snapshots of the 22 youngsters at one of the Kingdom Schools.* One of the youngsters is the teacher, indicated by a towering height of perhaps three inches above the tallest pupil; all are smiling and happy; her smile is one of the happiest. The letter, from one of the backers of this school ('way out in an immense big house in the country, far away from every distracting sight or sound), is good to read:
I know you are very busy, but I thought I would write and let you know how everything is coming along with the Kingdom School.* The School will be there again this year. The kiddies can hardly wait. It begins next month on Labor Day. About 5 more pupils will be enrolled.
Your prediction concerning Bro. & Sister Jones' farm (where the school is held) producing abundantly has come true. All their neighbors' tomato plants froze, but not theirs. As a result they do not know what to do with all their produce. Wally buys a lot of it for the store, and then they have other means of selling it, but even so they donated a whole truckload of beans, tomatoes, corn, etc., to the Pioneer Camp at Philadelphia. In fact, their nicest produce went down there.
My sister and I and Sister Jones are papering and painting inside so everything will be housecleaned by school time.
All the children came back last year from school needing reducing exercises, as the food there was so good and plentiful they did not know when to stop eating.
We have as yet found no lawyer to take our case; none with any courage around here, I guess. Been having trouble in our territory and right now have three cases pending.
Am enclosing some pictures taken the last week of school. Expect to have the same teacher. You can hardly tell her from the children. Don't they all look healthy?
And the answer is that they do. Jehovah God is interested in the education of these little folks that in the fall of 1935 so courageously took their stand on His side. Happy is their portion now, and with every prospect that their happiness will continue forever.
* In the fall of 1935, in various places, children of Jehovah's witnesses, governed by the Word of God at Deuteronomy 12: 3-5, declined to bow down to or salute any man-made flag. This, which was purely an act of obedience to Jehovah God, and not an act of disrespect to any government or any people, caused their expulsion from school in certain places, and made necessary, on the part of the witnesses, the establishment of so-called "Kingdom Schools", where their children might obtain the rudiments of an education. This letter is in regard to one such school, established in a rural district of eastern Pennsylvania. In this rural district there was one of these sudden outbursts of Roman Catholic flag-waving "patriotism". Members of the school board, including one Hoppes, insisted that the Jones family hereinbefore mentioned must compel their children to salute the flag. Mrs. Jones stood silent for a time and then drew the board member's attention to the fact that in 1917 when he was drafted for service he had hid in the hay and refused to come out even to eat, and had finally got exemption on the ground that he was an experienced farmer and his parents were invalids. For eighteen years thereafter Hoppes worked on a telephone job and both parents had worked on the farm. The Jones children were expelled. This shows the absolute bunk back of this enforced patriotism scheme. The true patriots will mind their own business; the Romanists and sneaks will make a loud noise, for public effect, and for selfish reasons only.
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