Golden Age, March 24, 1937

Download: PDF — Golden Age, March 24, 1937

The Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

in this issue

SHALL THE SUPREME COURT BE JUNKED?

every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy

one dollar a year

Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XVIII - No. 457

March 24, 1937 CONTENTS

CONGRESS AND THE HIERARCHY 387

(SHALL THE SUPREME COURT BE JUNKED?)

Ridicule in the Press 387

Encouraged by the President 388

Entitled to Respect 388

Judges Make Mistakes 389

The Last Bulwark of Liberty 389

Pressure on Mr. Roosevelt 390

Where the People Look for Justice 390

Hierarchy Claims the Credit 391

Who Wants a Subservient Judiciary? 392

Force Instead of Constitution 392

Why All the Haste? 393

An Unimpeached Bench 393

Freedom of Speech 394

Americans Detest Autocrats 394

Criticism of Court Is Proper 395

A Striking Contrast 395

Mass Murder Contemplated 397

A Confession of Hypocrisy 397

False Doctrines Destroy Faith 399

Judge Rutherford Explains the Bible 399

Rome Proud of Her Murders 400

A Menace and Curse to Society 400

Hint at Guillotining the Court 402

A Petition of 2,500,000 403

Debauched Public Officials 403

A Petition of 2,630,000 404

Radio Stations Buffaloed 404

Some Pertinent Questions 404

Some More Questions 406

Hear the Word of Jehovah 406

EXPOSED (A) 401

REPORT OF FACTS FROM GERMANY 408

EVENTS IN SWEDEN 410

No Field for the Hierarchy 410

A Land of Refuge 410

DORGAN STILL AT IT 411

"What Protection?" 411

"ORIGINAL SIN" AND VINDICATION 412

Individual Responsibility 412

The Soul That Sinneth Shall Die 412

"He Shall Surely Live" 413

Must Continue in Righteousness 414

The Wicked 414

CARTOONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Sixty-seven old men against nine 387

Statue of Liberty—latest design 388

The last bulwark of liberty 389

Window Dressing 390

Take a look at the record 391

The waiter who didn't get any tip 392

A stubborn convert 393

"Make a chain" 395

Gadgets to inspire love for Hierarchy 397

The Crusaders—Yesterday and Today 398

"He's one of us" 399

—and so they were married— 400

Farley the hook 402

Judge Rutherford's letter to President Roosevelt still unanswered 406

Published every other Wednesday by

GOLDEN AGE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A.

Clayton J. Woodworth President Nathan H. Knorr Vice President

Charles E. Wagner Secretary and Treasurer

FIVE CENTS A COPY

$1 a year, United States; $1.25 to Canada and all other countries.

NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS

REMITTANCES: For your own safety, remit by postal or express money order. When coin or currency is lost in the ordinary mails, there is no redress. Remittances from countries other than those named below may be made to the Brooklyn office, but only by INTERNATIONAL postal money order.

RECEIPT of a new or renewal subscription will be acknowledged only when requested. NOTICE OF EXPIRATION is sent with the journal one month before subscription expires. Please renew promptly to avoid loss of copies.

SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS direct to us rather than to the post office. Your request should reach us at least two weeks before the date of issue with which it is to take effect. Send your old as well as the new address. Copies will not be forwarded by the post office to your new address unless extra postage is provided by you.

Published also in Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish.

OFFICES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES

British: 34 Craven Terrace, London, W. 2, England

Canadian: 40 Irwin Avenue, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada

Australasian: 7 Beresford Road, Strathfield, N. S. W., Australia

South African: Boston House, Cape Town, South Africa

Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879.

The Golden Age

Volume XVIII Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, March 24, 1937 Number 457

Congress and the Hierarchy

(Shall The Supreme Court Be Junked?)

THE Supreme Court of Austria is Kurt von Schuschnigg; of Germany, Adolf Hitler; of Hungary, Nicholas Horthy; of Italy, Benito Mussolini; of Poland, Edward Smigly-Rydz; of Portugal, Antonio Salazar; of Vatican City, Achille Ratti.

All of these men believe that when the Roman Hierarchy speaks it speaks with the voice of God; that its will is therefore supreme.

Other men would like to be the Supreme Court, each of the country where he rules, or seeks to rule as dictator: Oswald Mosley in Great Britain, Leon Degrelle in Belgium, Francois de la Rocque in France, Francisco Franco in Spain, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States of America. All of these men are either Roman Catholics or are of Roman Catholic leanings. Three of Mr. Roosevelt's sons have had private interviews with the pope within the past year or so.

The present question before Congress is as to whether the sixty-seven old men of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy (the majority of them Italians) will be the Supreme Court of the United States, or will America continue to have its own court, independent of both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Ratti.

Sixty-seven old men against nine

Wishing to be the Supreme Court of the United States himself, or to have it completely subservient to his will, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has permitted the influence of his high office to be used against the citadel of American liberty.

Ridicule in the Press

Taking their cue from Mr. Roosevelt, newspaper and magazine writers have vied with one another in ridiculing "The Nine Old Men"; the chief justice as "The Man on the Flying Trapeze"; the "Supreme Court as Stumbling Block of Progress"; whose "Judges Read Constitution in Light of Their Own Prejudices". Some of the headlines are "Sentiment Ties Them to the Past", "Their Divine Right to End," "The Power of the Five Oldest Men to Shackle the Will of Congress," "High Court Self-Conscious Under Scrutiny," "Pen Pictures of Justices," "From War, Pestilence and Supreme Court Decisions, O Lord, Deliver Us," "British Courts Long Ago Shorn," "Hoover's Mistake Elevated Hughes to Supreme Court Post," "Amendment Is Unnecessary, 'General' Johnson Declares," "Dred Scott Decision Cited," "Anti-Congress Ruling on Slavery Led to Civil War, He Recalls; Roosevelt's Suggested Peaceful Plan for Court "Reform Held Preferable Method," "Nine Old Men in Black Robes," etc., etc.

These headlines have fed the American public with articles bearing such statements as follow:

The Court has been too busy running errands for our big corporate interests to pay much attention to fundamental human rights or civil liberties.—New York Post.

The serious observer today cannot doubt that the Supreme Court majority is standing in the path of social progress.—The Nation.

All ruffled up by President Roosevelt’s proposal to clip its wings, the Supreme Court has barred reporters from the section of its building used by the justices.—People’s Press.

Encouraged by the President

This disparagement of the Supreme Court of the United States is alleged in the public press itself not only to have been encouraged by the president, but he is reputed to have made special preparation for similar disparagement to be broadcast by radio. The following is from the New York Times:

As a sign of the President’s stand against any compromise, especially on the proposal that would permit him to name six Justices of the Supreme Court to replace or supplement those past 70 years of age, the administration forces prepared to press the radio barrage through which they hope to line up popular sentiment in favor of the plan.

Senator Minton’s address was considered so important a part of the administration’s campaign for the judiciary proposals that President Roosevelt set back the time for his speech at the James A. Farley testimonial dinner to clear the air for it.

Mr. Roosevelt would have done well, before stooping to such a means of dishonoring an integral part of the United States Government, and its highest judicial arm, to remember the words of Senator Schall, deceased, who, speaking of Mr. Roosevelt’s own administration and its facility for propaganda, said:

Never before in the history of this nation has our government stooped to such lying and deceit as we have witnessed in Washington during the past two years. Fully 99 percent of all the statements issued by these Government press agencies are falsehoods. . . . Every day a dozen or more of these untrue statements are handed to the press and radio, printed and broadcast as truth.

Entitled to Respect

The Supreme Court of the United States is entitled to the respect of the president, who, at the most, occupies office eight years, while the members of the Supreme Court hold office for life. Unlike the 67 old men at Vatican City, they did not select themselves nor pay initially $1,000,000 each for their office; they were selected by some president for their ability and trustworthiness, and confirmed by the United States Senate for the same reason.

Statue of Liberty—latest design

Not only did Mr. Roosevelt personally make way for Senator Minton, as above stated, but his attorney general, Homer S. Cummings, also attacked the Supreme Court by radio, and Senator Carter Glass, of Virginia, characterized that as “the most evasive, disingenuous and misleading statement” he had ever read on any grave public program.

Adolf Hitler, by the mandate of 98.8 percent of the German people [compelled by bludgeon methods to vote Hitler’s way], is the Supreme Court of Germany. They had to vote for him or lose their jobs and get beaten up. Benito Mussolini, by the mandate of 10,000,000 voters, with only 15,000 daring to oppose, is the Supreme Court of Italy. No doubt Mr. Roosevelt is of the opinion that by the mandate of $4,800,000,000 of the people's money to be spent for wages of WPA workers and relief, as an inducement for them to vote, he is entitled to be the Supreme Court of the United States. He errs.

Judges Make Mistakes

Judges sometimes make mistakes; so do congresses; so do presidents. There are people still living who can remember when William Randolph Hearst, without adequate reason, plunged the United States into war with Spain, because, so many people have always believed, the Congress of that time had not the intestinal fortitude to face the fact that the Maine was blown up from the inside. Hearst's money also is used to help pay Mussolini's expenses.

There was no more reason for the United States to declare war against Spain than for it to declare war against Japan because a bunch of destroyers were ineptly piled up on some rocks in the Pacific off California.

Others can remember when, in 1917, Woodrow Wilson forgot his promise to keep America out of the World War. However, he could and did remember the promise made to the French minister of foreign affairs, Gabriel Hanotaux, by Sharp and Bacon, those efficient representatives of the J. P. Morgan Company, that they would guarantee to put the United States into the war on the side of the Allies if France would only continue to fight. Congress was lame there also.

It is not so very long since a considerable number of Congressmen were afraid of every utterance of Michigan's imported whirling dervish, and Coughlin is alleged to have actually influenced or altered legislation. Congressmen are supposed to keep their heads, not to be led around by the nose.

This is what the Washington Herald thinks of recreants to duty, not among Supreme Court judges, but in Congress itself.

The dictatorship in Washington has already made striking progress toward the practical abolishment of Congress. It draws the laws which it desires Congress to pass, sends them in for rubber stamp approval and the formalism of enactment, orders the servile Administration majority to disregard doubts as to the constitutionality of its rescripts—and jams them through, regardless of the duties or functions of representatives elected by the people. When the history of these insane years is written, the historian will duly note how men like Speaker Byrns in the House, and Senators, utterly recreant to their trust, like Harrison, Robinson and sundry others, have led the Gadarene swine down the slope of constitutional surrender into the abyss. These men might have made themselves illustrious by defending the prerogatives of Congress—the high council of the nation—against Executive invasion, but they have chosen the ignoble role of self-interested capitulation rather than a firm stand for the right. Verily they will have their reward, should the liberties of America prove lost beyond recovery. The smile and patronage of the Executive, now so courted and rejoiced in, will have turned to ashes. There will be bitterness and remorse instead—because these unfaithful guardians of the people's rights are destined to reap contempt and scorn—the contempt of an America again awake.

The Last Bulwark of Liberty

The Supreme Court has stood for one hundred and fifty years as the strong bulwark of American liberty, and the American people have more confidence in it than they could have in either a president or a congress, because its decisions are guided entirely by law, the people's own In the hue and cry many seem to forget that the Supreme Court does not make law: it merely decides in accordance with the law; a vast difference. Necessity is the argument of tyrants and of slaves, not of freemen. If the people are convinced that the Constitution needs changing, they have the machinery for changing it, and know how to use it, too. It did not take them long to get rid of Prohibition when they set about it.

Why be in such a rush to remove the last thing that stands between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a full-fledged dictatorship in which his will, like Hitler’s or Mussolini’s, would be the sole law of the land? Mr. Roosevelt himself stated this matter very well in 1930, when he was governor of New York State:

Were it possible to find “master minds” so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost godlike in their ability to hold the scales of justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interests of the country; but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history.

Window dressing. "Oh, Frankie, it’s the same suit Adolf and Benito wore when they started out—and you’re so becoming in it. Now where’s them nine old men?”

Pressure on Mr. Roosevelt

No honest man can deny that Mr. Roosevelt is in a trying position. He himself painted the picture very well in his inaugural address when he said:

In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called “polite society” half a century ago. I see millions denied education, recreation and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children. I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions. I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

Naturally, he would like to correct this condition, and to have the reputation of having corrected it, but there are men equally honest and equally capable who believe he will fail in his efforts and plunge the country into a very much worse condition, in which all personal liberty will be at an end.

One would think Mr. Roosevelt would pause before he proceeds any further with the destruction of an instrument of liberty, the United States Constitution, described by so able a statesman as William E. Gladstone as a document that is “the most remarkable ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man”.

Where the People Look for Justice

Does not Mr. Roosevelt know what every lawyer knows, that the time of the Supreme Court is largely taken up with questions appertaining to the invasions of the rights of the people by those who think they are divinely appointed to invade them? The humblest Negro can count on the Supreme Court to protect him from ordered and disordered legislative, executive or judicial violence anywhere, as was recently demonstrated in the Scottsboro (Ala.) cases.

It is the confident expectation of all liberatively living and truth-loving Americans that when Tom Mooney’s case finally gets to the United States Supreme Court he will be granted the justice which has been so persistently, willfully, crookedly and maliciously denied to him in California. If Mr. Roosevelt, or some succeeding dictator, usurps the functions of that court, Mooney and all other Americans can as well forget the government of their fathers; it will have ceased to exist.

Just here it seems apropos to quote the historian Macaulay’s prophecy of America’s end, and one wonders if he could have foreseen Mr. Roosevelt’s internal attack upon a co-ordinate branch of the government when he said:

Your republic will be pillaged and ravaged in the twentieth century just as the Roman Empire was by the barbarians of the fifth century, with this difference: that the devastators of the Roman Empire came from abroad, while your barbarians will be the people of your own country and the product of your own institutions.

The Constitution is unfortunate in that, in its present form, it does not specify the number of judges for the Supreme Court, but the one man, now Chief Justice Hughes, who had had experience on that bench, and was at the time of writing his book The Supreme Court of the United States not then on the bench, made it clear that he believed nine justices were enough.

Mr. Roosevelt seized upon the vulnerable point to overthrow the United States Government. He would shamelessly pack the court so that he may direct its decisions. If he succeeds, America will again become rich by practicing birth control among sows, throwing away millions of sucking pigs, jailing people who raise or sell unstamped potatoes, or who grow too much cotton or do any of a million other things they wish to do. Tailors will be jailed for charging 5c too little for pressing a vest, etc.

Take a look at the record

Hierarchy Claims the Credit

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy claims the credit for this “New Deal” program of ‘enriching the nation’, and perhaps they are entitled to it. In A.D. 301 Emperor Diocletian fixed a uniform price for each commodity and for every form of labor or professional service throughout the Roman empire, with the death penalty for violation. It is claimed that the business depression which followed lasted for 1200 years; but that is doubtful.

It has been widely published that at Washington there is a general feeling that the president’s plan lacks candor, that it aims to pack the court with Administration men, that it means dictatorship, that it usurps the balance of power of the two other branches of the government, that it aims at a Supreme Court which will amend the Constitution by judicial interpretation instead of in the lawful manner, that it is attempting to force retirement of justices at a time when their reasoning powers are at their best, and that the plan was not advanced during the campaign.

Before he was re-elected Mr. Roosevelt was on record as saying of his previously rejected methods of usurping the power of the States, “If this doesn’t work, we will try something else.” The day after the NRA was found unconstitutional the president made it clear to Paul Block, publisher, that he intended to pack the court, to make them decide as he wishes.

It would have been the noble thing, the upright thing, for Mr. Roosevelt, when he was campaigning for re-election, to make it perfectly clear to the voters that he intended to pack the Supreme Court. Had he done so, it is quite possible that some of the $4,800,000,000 might even have risked their WPA jobs and voted differently than they did.

Mr. Roosevelt has plenty of sympathizers with his present plans of using force instead of reason. Thus the chief of police of West Point, Ga., bought machine guns and turned them over to local textile manufacturers. He may have had personal scruples against spilling blood himself, but was perfectly willing to co-operate with those who did not have such scruples.

If the people of the United States are not willing to trust the judgment of nine experienced justices, will they be more ready to accept the judgment of one executive who has usurped their functions? Who will be the American umpire if every time the umpire makes a decision the executive does not like, the executive decides to have a new umpire?

The waiter who didn't get any tip at all on a big deal—and he's still waiting

Who Wants a Subservient Judiciary?

When legislation has been enacted and its enforcement follows it is only reasonable that those who think their rights have been infringed should have courts of refuge and a supreme court to decide if the fundamental law of the land is involved. The Supreme Court does not pass upon every case that it is asked to consider, nor is it necessary that it should, but it does stand, always, as the court of last resort for the common man, the man whose ancestors built the United States out of a wilderness.

If the people want to correct the Constitution, let them go about it in a lawful way, but surely not by destroying their own fundamental law and placing themselves in the tender care of any dictator, no matter how pleasant his personality may be. Usurpers always smile—at first.

The New York Sun goes directly to the point when it says of Mr. Roosevelt:

If he has the power over Congress to pass the bill [packing the court with six more men], and if he then appoints six young and ardent New Dealers to the court, there can be no power in the land to prevent him from doing exactly what he wishes with national affairs.

A writer in the Baltimore Sun, referring to the shameless way in which this proposed packing of the Supreme Court was announced, said:

The president’s message amounts to no less than a proposal disguised by a covering of words as thin as gossamer—to change the membership of the Supreme Court from an impartial body of men to minions of his own choosing who will be expected to perform their duties in a manner pleasing to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The depths of mental and moral dishonesty have been touched.

Force Instead of Constitution

The president's well-known intimacy with Oswald Mosley indicates his tendency toward Fascism (Catholic Action). And there is the same disingenuousness that is characteristic elsewhere of this modern-day attempt to substitute force and propaganda for the will of the people—democracy.

Would any American come out in the open and admit that he wants a judiciary patterned after Adolf Hitler’s, which must decide as he wishes? Or after Stalin’s, where the prisoners sign their death warrants before they come into court at all? It is freely admitted at Washington that nothing has ever disturbed the thinkers down there as much as the proposals to subordinate the Supreme Court to the president. The statement, sometimes made, that Mr. Roosevelt is too nice a man to want to do such a thing, is foolish. He is actually DOING it.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle says that Mr. Roosevelt's proposals are "shocking almost beyond words". Senator George, of Georgia, says, "A subservient judiciary is worse than no judiciary at all."

Why All the Haste?

The president's argument that the number of Supreme Court justices has been changed at various times in the past is no argument now, for no proof exists or is possible that the Supreme Court is not clearing its calendar every year. Why all the rush? If it is desired to permanently change the number of men on the bench, why not go about it by constitutional amendment, so that all the people may have a say on the subject?

It is an easy thing for a gang of wreckers to pull down a building that was raised by the combined skill and effort of conscientious and able workmen.

The amendment to the Constitution proposed by Senator Borah is a good one, section three of which reads:

“No State shall make or enforce any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the State or the government for a redress of grievances.”

While the amendment would give the States the right to handle their own social and economic problems, it would prohibit them from interfering with fundamental rights of individuals, God-given and constitutionally acknowledged.

Mr. Roosevelt's policies, unannounced before his first election, placed on the statute books 10,000 pages of pronouncements intended to have the force of law. Their impartial and thorough enforcement would have turned the United States into one vast prison, like Germany. No policy has been pursued that shows any respect for the Constitution which Mr. Roosevelt has twice sworn to support, and for which he has as much respect as for the horse and buggy of his ancestors. His policies would change the U. S. government from its proper position of servant of the people to that of master of the people. The citizen, instead of being a free man, would be a subject.

Sister Jezebel says she's afraid he'll prove a stubborn convert

Ex-Senator James A. Reed, of Missouri, a man of experience and ability, said of the presidential march toward Fascism (Catholic Action):

I unhesitatingly say that our march away from Constitutional government and toward the swamps and morasses of Communism, Bolshevism and Fascism, from liberty to tyranny, has been more rapid than similar revolutions in Russia, in Germany and in Italy. Between that crimson flood and the liberties of the American people, standing on guard as did Horatius, Lartius and Herminius at the bridge, are the nine venerable justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. How long will nature spare them? and if it does happily so keep them with us, how long will it be until the present Administration if continued in power will pack the Supreme Court with additional judges, all of them New Dealers? That, I assert, is in contemplation; that, I assert, has been threatened.

An Unimpeached Bench

It has not hitherto appeared that the judges of the Supreme Court have been deterred in performing their duties by reason of influence exercised by either religionists or politicians. An American can say that, and hold up his head when he says it. And the very keystone of AmerAmerican liberty lies in the fact that it is just such a judiciary. A really great president would not abuse the highest court of the land by insinuating or declaring that its judgment is inferior to his own, nor use the insulting language that they are "clinging tenaciously to the appearance of adequacy".

Do not the American people still need one unimpeached and unimpeachable court, when representatives of a great coal and iron company can beat a college professor into insensibility, rob him of his money and watch and threaten to kill him if he does not "quit meddling with our business"?

Do they not need something besides a president when that official will give a cousin, a Catholic clergyman, an order on the chief code expert of the Government to supply information which even the president himself cannot legally possess?

Frank E. Gannett, publisher, says, pungently and truthfully:

The president is mistaken, if he thinks he can conceal his real purpose of packing, influencing and controlling the Supreme Court by confusing that objective with a long dissertation on the slow action of our various courts. The Supreme Court has been the anchor that has held America safe through many storms. Its absolute independence and integrity must never be in doubt.

Freedom of Speech

The Supreme Court stands consistently for freedom of speech. One of the very men (Chief Justice Hughes), whom Mr. Roosevelt would like to relegate to oblivion, recently wrote the opinion that:

The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the republic, the very foundation of Constitutional government.

The court decided that no one can be legally imprisoned for advocating doctrines which he believes to be true, nor be arrested for taking part in meetings in which no direct incitement to violence occurs. In other words, Mr. President, your fellow citizens command you that you do not interfere with their rights to express themselves freely and fully on any subject in which they are interested, and they do not wish you, and will not permit you, to pack the Supreme Court with men that will merely do your will on this subject of free speech.

Fascism (Catholic Action) is afraid of free speech. Indications of this are manifest at Washington, where the politicians trust nobody and tap the wires of all their subordinates, so they can listen in—confessional style—but without openly granting "absolution" or less time in "purgatory".

Does America need freedom of speech? Take a look at Tampa, where an American citizen, candidate for president, was about to speak, and a man wearing an American Legion cap tore down the American flag from the speaker's stand. Take a look at Terre Haute, where the mayor and chief of police locked the same man up as a vagrant so that he might not say to the citizens what he came there to say to them. The United States Supreme Court would neither have torn down this flag nor locked this man up. They would have let him express himself; they are Americans.

Americans Detest Autocrats

Americans detest autocrats. They like the fun of trying to think things out for themselves; they don't want to be bossed; they don't want to be tyrannized; they are willing to listen to anybody, but they don't want him to think they are married to him and have to listen or leave home.

They have noticed that when any bunch of rascals wishes to try to deprive them of their liberties, their first pass is to start off with a preamble professing their complete admiration and acceptance of the American principles of free speech and a free press. Usurpers figure that the suckers will bite better if they have some bait.

Mussolini wants every Italian to think as he does. Hitler demands that every German think as he does. Do Americans want that? Nix. Give the college presidents credit for knowing something. They are much alarmed over world progress away from freedom. Dr. Joseph S. Ames, retiring president of Johns Hopkins University, said of this tendency both in Europe and America, "The menace is real and pressing."

James Rowland Angell, then president of Yale University, went into detail:

Despite some apparent advantages in the conduct of the practical affairs of life, with increase of comfort and happiness for certain portions at least of the population, freedom of thought and speech and conscience, freedom of religious belief and worship, begin to disappear. Terrorism supervenes. Men dare not utter their honest convictions. The universities are emasculated. Ruthless racial discrimination is imposed. Great scholars are banished. Freedom of teaching is outlawed, and in place of true temples of the spirit of truth, one finds propaganda factories.

Criticism of Court Is Proper

Inasmuch as it has always been recognized in America that a man should be free to express his views concerning any organization or public institution, it follows that it is the prerogative of the people to express themselves concerning the Supreme Court or any other organization or concerning any public official; even though their criticism is entirely wrong, that is no reason why a gag should be put in a man's mouth, and he be denied the opportunity to speak. Freedom of speech and freedom of publication is a necessary thing among a free people.

It would seem, however, that a decent regard for the highest court of the land would make for DECENT criticisms. It was not necessary for the New York Post to declare in scareheads two columns wide and three captions deep, "Hughes Still Unable to Forget Loss of Election to Wilson." How can the Post be so sure of what Mr. Hughes can forget? The Post also stated that Mr. Hughes said he had resigned from the State Department to recoup his personal fortune. Is that any disgrace? Why make it seem so?

"Make a chain; for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence."—Ezekiel 7: 23.

The present administration has resorted to petty persecution of Justice Vandevanter on a technicality of his alleged failure to affix the required $1 stamp on his hunting permit until the day after he paid $10 to $12 for his hunting license and went hunting.

Governor Earle, of Pennsylvania, has made criticisms of the Supreme Court that are unworthy of a governor. He had the right to do it, but his statement that the present court has been concerning itself with technicalities and forgetting the interests of the people is a lie. And governors should not lie.

It is hard to pick perfect judges. Brandeis and McReynolds, liberal and tory, were picked by Wilson; Stone and Sutherland, liberal and tory, were named by Coolidge; Cardozo and Roberts, liberal and tory, were appointees of Hoover. These presidents struck a good batting average.

A Striking Contrast

Long ago there was established in Italy a religious organization that has spread out from that country until it has reached every nation under the sun. While the people are induced to believe that this religious organization is looking after spiritual things, in truth and in fact it has been the most devilish political organization of all time.

That organization—and The Golden Age declares this not without factual reason and proof—is most keenly interested and concerned in President Roosevelt's disposition of the Supreme Court issue. That organization's un-American designs upon the United States were stated by its official spokesmen in this land at the very beginning of this century, and from those sinister aims against the liberties and institutions of this country it has never retreated. Its steady increase in political power and position in this country proves rather its unswerving pursuit of its objectives, and that with success. Now, with Roosevelt re-elected to office as a result of its own strategy through its key politicians, it realizes that its supreme moment has come, for what?

On September 26, 1900, a federation of all Catholic societies in America was formed, to wit, "for the avowed purpose of influencing legislation and securing what the Catholics claim are their rights" in America.

At the annual meeting of the Catholic Young Men's National Union in Brooklyn, September 26, a resolution was adopted to form a great federation of all the societies of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States for political purposes. Last spring Bishop McFaul of Trenton, N. J., told the Ancient Order of Hibernians that the Roman Catholics of America were fools not to organize into one solid mass and make their power felt in the politics of this country; there were 2,000,000 Roman Catholic voters, and if they were united for political action they could make this country a Roman Catholic nation.

This federation has now been formed by the following societies: The Knights of Columbus, the Knights of St. John, the Catholic Benevolent Legion, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union, the Irish-American Societies, the German-American Societies, the Catholic Knights of America, the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America; . . . Besides these organizations there are scores of others of less prominence.

The federation is formed for the avowed purpose of influencing legislation and securing what the Catholics claim are their rights.

The convention, which met in the Park Theater, Brooklyn, was the largest gathering in the history of the Young Men's National Union, and it was addressed by leading priests and laymen from all parts of the country. . . . The convention unanimously approved the plan of federation and appointed committees to carry it into effect. By this means tens of thousands of men of the Catholic faith will be brought under one national head, and this stalwart body of men will have a strong influence on national legislation.—Brooklyn Eagle.

Having possession of the cities, the Romanists now reach out to gain control in national affairs. "We must make America Catholic," said Archbishop Ireland at the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in the United States, which was held in Baltimore, November 10, 1889. "We must make America Catholic. As we love our church, it suffices to mention the work and our cry shall be, God wills it, and our hearts shall leap towards it with Crusader enthusiasm." . . . "Why should we fear or hesitate?" he continued, with glowing fervor and proud boasting. "We number ten millions—a powerful army if the forces be well marshaled and their latent strength be brought into action. Catholics in America are loyal to their church and devoted to her leaders. Their labors and their victories in the first century of their history show what they are capable of in the coming century, when they are conscious of their power and are under complete hierarchical organization."—The Converted Catholic of New York.

Said the National Catholic Register:

It is God's plan that the Holy Father of Rome should be the temporal and spiritual head of his kingdom on earth. . . . God has doubly blessed the Catholic Church of America by placing one of its most faithful sons at the right hand of President Wilson. Next to the President, Hon. Joseph Tumulty, a Knight of Columbus of the 3rd degree, wields the greatest political power of any man in America; and as a true Catholic he is exercising the greatest trust which God has given into his hands for the glory of the holy church.

Tumulty then; Farley and Tumulty now. At the Democratic "Victory Dinner", addressed by President Roosevelt March 4, Farley sat at his right, and Tumulty, chairman of the dinner committee, at his left.

There is but one institution in the United States definitely committed to the suppression of freedom of speech on "religious" matters. The identity of that institution is so self-evident that it is unnecessary to mention it by name. Safely ensconced in the cradle of liberty, and granted greater freedom of action here than elsewhere in the world, it yet presumes to deny to others what was so cheerfully accorded. It is of record that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has officially denounced freedom of speech as a great error.

Not only does the Roman Catholic Hierarchy claim the right to do all the thinking on "religious" questions, but in effect it demands the right to censor all addresses that go out over the radio to the people, and wherever it has been able to do so it has not hesitated to put censorship into effect.

In the same editorials the Catholic press claims to stand by the American principle of free discussion of subjects of public interest, while at the same time demanding that they first have opportunity to censor what is to be said.

Mass Murder Seriously Contemplated

Hilaire Belloc, prominent Roman Catholic writer, expresses wonderment at the attacks on the Supreme Court. Do not be deceived. This same writer says in his book Living Philosophies (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1925), page 292:

I suggest a conflict between the Catholic church and other forces of the modern world is imminent. Whether we have yet heard the first clash or not is debatable. Whether a recognized and violent open battle will be waged a short time hence or not until after a life-time or more, no one can tell. But it is coming. That which is not Catholic in the modern world is not only tending towards, it is racing towards a new set of laws, a new condition of the civic mind which is incompatible with Catholicism. There can not but be an atmosphere created in which, in the long run, either Catholicism will not be able to live, or its opponents will not be able to live.

And here is one from a Catholic magazine, The Rambler:

You [Protestants] ask if he [Roman Catholic] were lord in the land, and you were in a minority, if not in number, yet in power, what would he do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend upon circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism he would tolerate you: if expedient, he would imprison you, banish you, fine you: possibly he might even hang you. But be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of the glorious principles of civil and religious liberty.

A few of the gadgets used a few centuries ago to inspire love for the Hierarchy

A Confession of Hypocrisy

In June, 1888, Pope Leo XIII, referring to the Roman Hierarchy’s claim to the liberty to do with the lives and possessions of others whatever it may see fit to do, said, of liberty in general, as understood by other men:

Although, in the extraordinary conditions of these times, the Church usually acquiesces in certain modern liberties, she does so not as preferring them in themselves, but because she judges it expedient to permit them until happier times enable her to exercise her own liberty.

In Italy there are somewhat less than 42,000,000 people, with 37 cardinals to look after them. In the rest of the world there are alleged to be some 290,000,000 Catholics with a quota of 29 cardinals to look after them. When you have figured out why it takes almost ten times as many cardinals to look after a given number of Italians as it does to look after any other people of earth; you will know why the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is the cleverest Italian racket, and indeed the cleverest racket of any nationality, that has ever been pulled off. And you will know, too, why all the popes are Italians. No other nationality is clever enough to work the racket from one generation to another and one century to another without a spill.

It may be that some of the simple-minded wonder why the Hierarchy, with so much to say against Communism, does not have something to say against Fascism, with its wars on innocent people, conquest of territory, concentration camps, whippings, beheadings, murders, purges, sterilizations, training of infant soldiers, and religious intolerance. The reason is that the Hierarchy not only has nothing against Fascism, but is the very heart and center of it.

In an address at Des Moines, Iowa, Dr. Howard Gray Brownson, of Dowling [Roman Catholic] College, acknowledged that:

Without Catholic support Fascism would disintegrate in Catholic Italy, Austria, Spain, France and Hungary. Today, in the year 1936, as in the past, there comes a time when Christian civilization must defend itself even by force—and that force finds expression in Fascism.

The Crusades—Yesterday and Today (See next issue for details)

LIBERTY

GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE

CIVIL WAR

Yesterday—Whenever the pope quarreled with anyone now, he called for a crusade, until the word ceased to mean anything but an attempt to give flavor to an unpleasant civil war.—H. G. Wells, Outline of History, page 645.

The German and Italian peoples have already been violated, and their voice silenced, their liberty, their self-respect, their very lives, crushed by the pope's newest crusaders, the Fascists and Nazis.

HIERARCHY

PAPAL TYRANNY

In the United States and Great Britain, unremitting efforts are being pushed to crush the spirit of freedom and inquiry, and to bring these great nations under the diabolical tyranny of the Roman pontiff, with lies and Jesuitical deception, if possible; with violence and civil war if necessary. Russia is being assailed because she chooses to remain alienated from the beastly interference of the pope and the Hierarchy.

TODAY

HELP! COMMUNISTS!

THE ENRAGED PEOPLES OF EUROPE

HIERARCHY

A world-wide crusade is even now threatening civilization, the crimes of the clergy having turned men against them. The words "Communist" and "Bolshevist" have been substituted for the words "heretic" and "Saracen".

In Spain today these Papal madmen (see No. 455, February 24, 1937, issue of The Golden Age for particulars) are outdoing in violence, violation, torture and ferocity the black deeds of the earlier Crusaders. As a sample, on Christmas eve, while the pope was addressing the world with a hypocritical peace talk, his gunners were shelling Madrid.

HIERARCHY

SPANISH WAR

With this ghastly civil strife and world disaster in prospect, instigated by the pope and Catholic Action; to bolster their ebbing power, they have the gall to plead for "peace with justice"—no doubt the same kind as was meted out to Ethiopia by the pope's stooge, Mussolini.

--False Doctrines Destroy Faith

The false doctrines taught by the Roman Hierarchy have destroyed the faith of the people in God and in His Word, have turned them away from Jehovah and destroyed their opportunity of life. The great majority of vicious criminals have been thus deceived, and they support the false doctrines exposed by Judge Rutherford.

What the Hierarchy can do where it has undisputed sway may be seen in what it has done in Spain and in Mexico. In both of these lands it had absolute monopoly of education and almost of property, and left the people with nothing.

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy has used the name of Jehovah God and of Jesus Christ falsely and hypocritically, and has relied upon false doctrines, preached in the name of the Lord, to rob the people of their hard-earned money.

Aside from the United States Supreme Court, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has exercised its influence so tremendously over the politicians and the lesser judiciary that the latter have been induced to put on the soft pedal and say nothing about what is truly the greatest menace today, not only of America, but of Spain and every other republic on earth.

At every public function today some Roman Catholic prelate has a prominent part, despite the fact that only 15 percent of the population are Catholics. A very great number of all the appointees of the Administration, including nine of the president’s secretarial staff, are Catholics, as are or were the majority at Annapolis and West Point. Jesuits in office and Jesuit degrees to Protestants in office are common. Roosevelt is alleged to carry a crucifix in his pocket.

November 3 he was re-elected; November 4 he told thousands, “We are going forward together”; November 5 he entertained Cardinal Pacelli at Hyde Park; November 6 they were in Washington together; November 7 Pacelli sailed back to Rome to his job as Papal secretary of state.

“He’s one of us”

Judge Rutherford Explains the Bible

Judge Rutherford has written, and the truly Christian organization of which he is president has printed and circulated more than 230,000,000 books explaining the Bible; they are in 73 languages. Note the figures. Nothing like this was ever done in the history of the world. This work is not of man, but of God, whose power alone could have accomplished such a work in twenty short years.

Jehovah’s witnesses, using the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in carrying out its chartered purpose “to disseminate Bible truths”, adopted from the beginning and have used extensively until now the modern method of radio broadcasting. For many years, in the United States and many other countries, the Society has used hundreds of stations. Each week the voice of the Society’s principal speaker, Judge Rutherford, has been heard declaring for public information the wholesome and constructive explanations of Biblical prophecies well known to millions of listeners.

“Watch Tower Programs,” as those presentations have come to be popularly recognized, have kindled in many the desire to read and understand the Word of Almighty God, with the result that multitudes have begun to see a marked difference exists between the truth of God’s Word and the religion taught by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.

The dissemination of Bible truths exposes the age-old racket of the Hierarchy. The name and the supremacy of Almighty God, Jehovah, and the allegiance now due His King of kings, Christ Jesus, are constantly held before the one who listens to Judge Rutherford; and by reason of that fact the "pastures" of the Hierarchy are being spoiled. Naturally the "shepherds" howl.

FASCISM

JOAN PUBLIC

-AND SO THEY WERE MARRIED-

TOTALITARIAN ROMAN CATHOLIC STATES

The Supreme Court has declared the United States a Christian country. Sticking closely to the Scriptures, as every true Christian must do, Judge Rutherford has produced the evidence from the Bible that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is a terrible racket which has robbed the people. He has shown up the political influence of that religious institution, which has the unmitigated hardihood to proclaim that "no one has the right to worship God in his own way".

Rome Proud of Her Murders and Tortures

As late as 1913 Cardinal Mannix, of Australia, still living and still active, made the astounding statement that the Roman Catholic Church claims the right to use in every period those means which she deems necessary and expedient. Nor will she admit that she has exceeded her rights, having recourse to physical punishment, so long as this is effective to the end in view.

Clemenceau, the great French statesman, himself once a Catholic, had it right when he said: If the Roman Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, then instead of founding a brotherhood of love, Christ has only succeeded in founding a society of cruelty and blood.

The Hierarchy is so powerful that it has closed the mouths of many and prevented them from speaking against it. It has put the clamps on many radio stations and coerced them and thus restrained them from broadcasting the truth. This has been done in every part of the United States. Just to cite one of the scores of instances:

The Minneapolis Star carried a leading scare-head clear across its front page that threats were made to blow up radio station WDGY if it broadcast any more of Judge Rutherford's speeches. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society then sought to insert a page advertisement in the Star, at a cost of around $500, offering $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those making the threats. The advertisement was refused, but Mr. Finney (guess his "church"), local editor of the Star, thought it would be possible to prosecute Judge Rutherford if WDGY were blown up as a result of such threats' having been made.

A Menace and Curse to Society

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy is a menace and a curse to decent and tolerant people wherever it shows its head. Not only has it employed threats against businessmen, politicians, owners

(Continued on page 402) Exposed

(A)

A five-minute talk by Judge Rutherford

TO ENABLE sincere persons to discern the difference between false teachings and indisputable truths, a series of lectures, based upon absolute authority, has been recorded for reproduction. This is the beginning of the series. It is suggested that you carefully consider each one of these recorded speeches, because they will be beneficial to you.

A doctrine taught by men and handed down by oral delivery from ancestors to posterity is called tradition. For centuries men have promulgated traditional theories and the common people have accepted them as true because the men teaching such traditions occupy high positions among the people. For this reason the confidence of the people is easily gained and they are likewise easily imposed upon.

An honest person desires to know the truth because falsehood works to his injury. To first gain one’s confidence and then to induce that person to believe a false representation which affects his liberty, property or life is a work of fraud upon the person deceived.

The original liar and author of fraud and deception is Satan, the Devil. He has induced men to publicly teach falsehoods which directly affect the liberty, property and life of the people, and thereby millions of sincere and credulous persons have been deceived, defrauded and greatly injured. Falsehoods are veiled for the purpose of deceiving the people.

The truth uncovers fraud, thereby enabling honest persons to protect themselves. Jesus Christ, the great exponent of truth, said concerning God’s Word as contained in the Bible: “Thy word is truth.” (John 17:17) He also said: “There is nothing veiled which will not be uncovered, nor secret which will not become known.”—Matthew 10: 26, Weymouth.

For centuries the people have been deceived and defrauded by being induced to believe falsehoods, but the time must come when the truth is made known, thereby enabling honest persons to avoid that which works to their injury. That time has now come because it is God’s due time.

Carefully consider the following with an unbiased mind, and let every question be determined by God’s Word, which is the truth.

Men who deceive the public never desire their statements or teachings to be publicly discussed, for fear the truth will expose them to ridicule and contempt. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy is composed of a body of men, the controlling power of which members resides in Italy, and which Hierarchy rules over millions of sincere people whom the Hierarchy designates as “the Catholic population”. The Hierarchy vigorously opposes the use of the radio to broadcast any Bible truths that expose them and their fraudulent teachings; and to prevent the people from hearing the truth they resort to all manner of wrongful practices. The Hierarchy have made public the following charge: “Judge Rutherford attacks the Catholic church, misrepresents her teachings, and foments religious hatred and bigotry.”

The charge is false. Responding to that charge 2,630,000 of the “Catholic population” and of other sincere persons signed a petition demanding a public debate of the Roman Catholic teachings, and that a high official of the Catholic Hierarchy support such charges and defend the Catholic teachings. The petition had a wide publication throughout the United States, a copy being served upon high officials of the Hierarchy. Being unable to make good their wrongful charge the Hierarchy have flatly refused to publicly debate and defend the teachings of the Catholic organization. They have spurned your petition.

For the benefit of the millions who signed the petition, and others who desire to learn the truth, I here cite the principal teachings of the Catholic church and discuss the same. I contend that such doctrines hereinafter named, and which are taught by the Catholic organization, find no support in the Bible, but are based upon the theories of men and the tradition of men, and therefore are false and injurious to the liberty, property and life of the people.

(To be continued)

[The foregoing is one of a series of recorded talks by Judge Rutherford on important issues of this day. The phonograph records may be run on the ordinary type of machine and are being widely used for passing imimportant information on to relatives, friends, and neighbors near and far. The Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, 117 Adams St., Brooklyn, N. Y., are the distributors of these unusual records, and inquiries may be addressed to them direct or in care of The Golden Age.]

Congress and the Hierarchy

(Continued from page 400)

of radio stations, halls and other things, to prevent the proclamation of the truth (of which many pages of details have been published in this magazine from time to time), but it has induced the burning of many books published to explain the truth, and these include even the Bible itself.

This same wicked institution is now the real one that is carrying on a racket to turn the people away from the principles of the American government and to turn them away from God.

It is the Roman Catholic Hierarchy that, whatever may be its claims, wants the destruction of the Supreme Court of the United States in order that the government may be ruled by a dictator exactly as Italy and Germany are now ruled. The Hierarchy has a hook in the nose of Roosevelt and is the real power behind the throne.

ALL I AM OR EVER HOPE TO BE I OWE TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY

ALL I AM OR EVER HOPE TO BE I OWE TO ME DEAR AULD MITHER FARLEY

JOHN PUBLIC

FAKE SOCIAL REFORMS

DICTATOR MANIA

SUPREME COURT CURB

PROGRAM WORLD CONTROL

LIBERTY

Farley the hook

That "hook" is James Aloysius Farley, the man who conferred with the Hierarchy’s head at Vatican City, the man who is and for a long time has been chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the man who is acclaimed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his close associates as "the greatest organizer of modern times". That same man, James Aloysius Farley, publicly knelt and kissed the ring of a fellow creature, the so-called "secretary of state" of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, Eugene Pacelli, when visiting in the United States in the autumn of 1936. Roosevelt of today, unlike Roosevelt of yesterday, accepts with complacent smiles each bouquet thrown at him by the Hierarchy's agents.

To the Hierarchy's principal agent and "contact" man in the United States, James Aloysius Farley, the president owes his place in the White House, as he openly admits.*

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy has induced ignorant people to believe that the Supreme Court of the United States is their enemy, that is, the enemy of the people, and thus it calculates on creating a situation that will result in the destruction of the Court and the liberties of the people.

Hint at Guillotining the Supreme Court

It seems incredible that anybody, even in fun, could hint at guillotining the members of the United States Supreme Court; but just what could have been in the minds of the Democratic National Committee when it published the following in the March (1936) number of the Democratic Digest?—

The original guillotine which decapitated Louis XVI, loyal friend of the American colonies when they needed

* See New York Sun and other metropolitan papers' accounts of the magnificent and gorgeous affair arranged and attended by Roosevelt and other high government officials during week of February 14, 1937, for the single and only purpose: to honor James Aloysius Farley; and which Roosevelt, in his speech at that affair, stated was properly labeled merely "Jim Farley and his friends".

a friend, was sold in France on St. Valentine’s Day for $167. With American liberties at stake, it might not be inappropriate to buy that guillotine and set it up in front of the new judicial temple which frowns across the park that separates it from the Capitol.

A Petition of 2,500,000

In January, 1934, a petition signed by two and one-half million persons, residing in all States of the Union, was presented to the Congress of the United States. It was the largest petition as to number of signers that had been presented up to that time to any American Congress.

In keeping with its sinister practices, the Hierarchy caused to be published in its so-called “religious” newspapers and magazines, in all parts of the world, the false representation that the names signed to that huge petition were obtained by fraud. That infamous lie was widely circulated in that manner both prior to and after the presentation of the petition to Congress.

Additionally, agents of the Hierarchy attempted to have that lie officially noticed by the committees of Congress before which representatives of Jehovah’s witnesses and representatives of various political, religious and commercial organizations bitterly opposed to the work of Jehovah’s witnesses were called to testify during hearings that extended over many days in the spring of 1934.*

* See Record of hearings, Committee on Merchant Marine, Radio, and Fisheries, House of Representatives, Seventy-third Congress, second session, on H. R. 7986; and Record of hearings, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, on H. R. 8301.

…