Consolation, May 14, 1941

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Contents

The "New Order" in Europe (Part 4) 3

"The Duce Is Always Right (!)" 4

Billing Spain for Its Ruin 5

When Mussolini's Bluff Was Called 6

"Ashes of Empire" 8

The Object of the "New Order" 10

British Comment

Popes Are Italians 13

Totalitarian in Essence 14

Bombing—and Suffering 15

Counsel by J. F. Rutherford

New Heavens and Earth 16

Magazine Work at Bakersfield, California 18

The New Government

Roadside Magazine Stand 20

Sheriff Stopped, but Not the Work 21

"Stuffed Shirt Patriots" 22

"Out of the Depths Cried I" 23

"The Saints Preserve" Italy 24

Under the Totalitarian Flag

Patience in Iniquity 25

Without Consulting Parliament 26

Petain and the Pope 27

Prayers to Whom? 28

Prisoners of War at the Vatican 29

"Judgment of God" 29

U. S. Treasury 30

Science 31

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Notanda

Spain—The "New Order" Proving Ground

◆ Ambrose Ratti, otherwise known as Pope Pius XI, was one of the most vicious, hard-hearted, cruel men that ever lived, and well deserves the everlasting destruction into which he went at death. After lending all his powers to the conquest of Ethiopia, he conspired with Mussolini and Hitler to destroy the Spanish Republic, in which destruction he was ably assisted by the governments of Britain and the United States.

The traitor and rebel Franco was lauded to the skies, and was hardly secure in his job when he was plotting for the repossession of Gibraltar, the recapture of which, he says, "is a Spanish mission." This would have the pope's approval. The disintegration of the British Commonwealth of Nations is an integral part of the scheme of the "new order".

Franco the Butcher, sometimes known as Franco the Baby-Killer, is one of the most highly honored men of the "new order". He awarded prizes to outstanding Americans who helped him put over his villainous and murderous treachery against the Spanish Republic. One so honored was Bible-burning Denis J. Cardinal Dougherty, of Philadelphia. Since the Spanish war ended, even the Catholic papers admit among themselves that they lied unmercifully in order to help Franco gain his unworthy objectives.

Spain was a training ground for the "new order" statesmen. There they saw how best to destroy a city; Guernica, for example. A full year after the war closed three-fourths of the children who had been bombed were still suffering from nervous shock. But the nobles and the clergy had to regain their saddles on the backs of the common people at all costs. What the Spanish people needed, so American spokesmen said, was "more religion". They got it when Franco won the war.

CONSOLATION

"And in His name shall the nations hope."—Matthew 12:21, A. R. V.

Volume XXII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, May 14, 1941 Number 565

The "New Order" in Europe (In Four Parts—Part 4)

IN 45 days' fighting in the spring of 1940 there were 80,000 French soldiers slain, 120,000 wounded, and 20,000 are missing. It is claimed that 130 of the 234 French generals were captured and that 30 percent to 35 percent of the French dead and wounded were officers.

The Vichy government announces that the only education allowed young women henceforth will be "courses in child rearing, so that all women must return to their primary and traditional mission, which is to belong to the hearth, to have children, to raise them, and to live only to see that they become strong and useful men and women".

All the world is engaged in shoving the youth around as they please. A dispatch from Vichy mentions that 80,000 French youth were sent to the Alps and national forests of France for eight months' service.

Says the 1941 Yearbook of Jehovah's witnesses: "It is now quite manifest that France is entirely in the hands of the Hierarchy. Shortly after the outbreak of the war in September, 1939, the editor of a humanistic paper in Paris stated to a representative of our Society: 'Now already there are a number of prominent statesmen who see with apprehension that the Hierarchy in France has even now grasped all the powers of government, and that any resistance against this influence is impossible.'"

The "Peaceful" Seizure of Rumania

Ion Antonescu, premier of Rumania, was shown how to do it, and did it. When Hitler grabs or is about to grab a country, one of his standard procedures is to have a plebiscite where everybody that values his neck is told what to vote, so that the record will all be correct. Ion had the people show their confidence in him, as Hitler's choice to rule the country, and 2,490,944 went to the polls and voted for him just like that. The total against him was 2,816 votes. In the days of Pendergast in Kansas City they always used to put in a few for the other side for the looks of the thing; and they even do it in Jersey City.

Antonescu says that the reason why the German troops were "invited" to visit or pass his country was so that the Rumanians themselves could get back to their farms. You see, it's like this, says Ion: the passage of the German troops cost the country only one-tenth as much as it would have cost to retain the country's own soldiers at the border. And besides, he might have added, it wasn't necessary to have the troops guarding anything any more, for now there is nothing for them to guard. All they have to do is to do as they are told, by Hitler.

The Massacres

The St. Louis Star-Times puts it very well when it says that "the sickening mass execution of 64 Rumanian political prisoners, including the former Premier George Argeseanu, is merely routine stuff in Hitler's new Europe. It is all part of Imperial Germany's colonial technique for civilized Europe". The Rumanian diplomats in London resigned in protest with the statement that "Germany is the only one responsible for the wholesale political murders in Rumania".

After the initial murders, and the filling up of the country with German soldiers, there was another wholesale killing, especially of Jews, thousands of whom were butchered, as a regular feature of the European "new order". Subsequently, with that supreme gall that only the Jesuit-trained can manifest, the Rumanians were coolly notified that they would be expected to help establish the "new order" all over Europe, as a mark of their gratitude to the killers and invaders. The seizure of Rumania is a step in the march toward Suez.

By an odd quirk the massacres were accompanied by a serious earthquake which killed great numbers and seriously damaged oil properties, railroads and other public works. When repair work got under way workmen undertook to repair a damaged pillar on the front porch of a former minister of war and found it stuffed with wads of currency. This resulted in the ex-minister's getting a free one-way ride to prison.

The Jews were objects of specially ferocious treatment. In the capital city, Bucharest, a demonized mob invaded the Palestine Bureau, seized the manager and 36 others, took them out into the country into a forest, made them strip naked (in midwinter, at that), and then shot them all.

Afraid he would tell of all the deviltry he had seen, and who was at the bottom of it, the German authorities forbade the American minister to Rumania to leave Bucharest, when the due time had arrived for the invasion of Bulgaria. That is going some; for diplomats are supposed to be exempt from such orders.

"The Duce Is Always Right (?)"

After his famous invited sleeping-car march to Rome, Benito Mussolini was responsible for the preservation of Italy's culture and good name. As a result of his teachings and example, Giacomo Matteotti was castrated without anesthetic (as was done to one of Jehovah's witnesses in Nebraska), and Rosselli was stabbed repeatedly in the kidneys. Many (some say thousands) died after being forced to swallow large quantities of castor oil and being then beaten.

Harold J. Laski, in his book Where Do We Go from Here? says:

The Fascist state, whether in its Italian or German form, offers a certain rhythmical pattern of which the significance is unmistakable. In each state the Fascist leaders were able to build a mass movement; but it is important, also, that they could not under its auspices attain power. Their seizure of the state was in both instances the outcome of a body of understanding unknown to the rank and file of the movement, between the Fascist leaders, on the one hand, and the heads of the army, the civil administration and big business on the other. In both instances also, these latter assumed that they were invoking an ally whom they would be able to dominate for their own purposes. In both cases also they were deceived (double-crossed to you). They assumed that they were calling the Fascist leaders as junior partners in the effort to confine the ambitions of the masses to reasonable proportions. They found, in fact, that they had put themselves under masters whose sole aim was the perpetuation of their own power.

It is notable, also, that, both in Germany and in Italy, the war [had] left, in conjunction with economic crises, not only a great army of unemployed, but also a great mass of declassed adventurers, condottieri of the pen and sword, restless, inured to habits of violence, unable to make a success of their lives within the framework of the societies in which they lived.

Both in Italy and Germany, Fascism begins with the formation of a little band of adventurers. Both in Italy and Germany the little band has at its head a demagogue of genius. Its influence grows because it is able to exploit every grievance of a diseased society. It is luxuriant in its promises. Those who join it are for the most part the petit bourgeois, the youth frustrated in opportunity, the ex-officers (out of jobs), psychopathic men (crackpots) like Streicher and Ley, who can not fit the rules their vocation imposed upon them. Those who support it are the men and women to whom any promise of order and regeneration is the prospect of relief from the insecurity and feverish undiscipline of the times. The little shopkeeper is told that he will be freed from the competition of the big department stores and the co-operative movement. The big industrialist like Thyssen is attracted because of the movement's hostility to Marxism (should read "Communism") as a lever of attack against the trade union and the socialist movement. The farmer is interested by the promise that he will be freed from the tyranny of mortgages. The professional man is moved in the degree to which as lawyer or doctor he is inclined to attribute his failure to the Jews,—and so on and on.

Churchill Describes the Duce

Churchill has the rare knack of being able to say what he means so that he can be understood the first time. He described Mussolini as "the crafty, cold-blooded, black-hearted Italian who had thought to gain an empire on the cheap by stabbing fallen France in the back", and then, in the same address, uttered this gem: "In the Central Mediterranean, the Italian Quisling, who is called Mussolini, and the French Quisling, commonly called Laval, are both in their different ways trying to make their countries into doormats for Hitler and his new order."

Nineteen months after Mussolini said he had no ambitions in Africa he invaded Ethiopia; fourteen years and four months after he said a pan-German movement is the menace of Europe he joined up with Germany and stabbed France in the back; the same length of time after he had loudly protested his appreciation of Britain he declared war on England; in the same month in which he said he did not intend to drag his neighbors, Greece and Egypt, into war he began planning to do so and in three months had invaded Egypt and in another month had invaded Greece. As a liar, however, he is not in Hitler's class.

Billing Spain for Its Ruin

When all the governments of the world conspired together to ruin the Spanish Republic, and hypocritically pretended non-intervention, everybody in the world knew that Italy and Germany were fighting to overthrow that republic and standing squarely behind Pius XI, who promoted that terrible civil war. For the dastardly parts the democracies of the world played in this betrayal of their own cause, they richly deserve what their treachery brought them. Italy now admits it all, lists the millions of items she sent, including 91 warships and 92 steamships which carried the men and materials, acknowledges sinking 72,800 tons of shipping, takes note of the more than 5,000 of her own soldiers killed or permanently disabled, and bills Spain for $275,000,000 to be paid in twenty-four annual payments. This is just to tell both sides that the bill will never be paid. The bones of both Franco and Mussolini will have been picked clean by the dogs and crows long before those 24 years are up.

Since the end of the "civil war" the cost of living in Spain is said to have gone up to four times what it was previously, while wages are but 20-percent higher than they were. Railroads are in chaotic condition, and Spaniards are forbidden to use them to any great extent. Everything the country can produce goes to Germany to pay Hitler for the work he did in saddling Franco on the necks of the people. Mussolini will get nothing.

There is no honor or gratitude between gangsters, and, for that matter, Hitler owes nothing to Mussolini, but, without any question, Italy has been as surely absorbed by Germany as have Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium, France, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria.

Mussolini's star set for ever when the British armies in East Libya captured 150,000 Italians with the loss of only 525 lives of Britishers. No wonder the Italians lost heart, or that their commander Graziani resigned. An Italian general captured at Bardia says that when the Australians attacked they attacked like demons. And maybe they did, at that. The prisoners taken in the Libyan campaign had unusual opportunities to travel. Some were taken to South Africa, some to Australia, and 38,000 of them to India. Some 54,000 were taken to Egypt.

Hitler is said to have made the statement that he never wanted Mussolini to take sides in the war, "that with Benito neutral he didn't need to worry about that sector, but if Il Duce came in he would have to detach 30 German divisions to protect him." So says the columnist Hugh S. Johnson in the New York World-Telegram.

When Mussolini's Bluff Was Called

When Mussolini's bluff was called he began visiting the Italian army; he promoted the prince of Piedmont, the heir to the throne, to be general in the army, and he exchanged felicitations with the king on this transparent put-over. It is plain as day that Mussolini sees that his bluff has been called and is doing what lies in his power to make a good landing.

John T. Whitaker, newspaper correspondent, expelled from Italy, says that no one there has much respect for either Victor Emmanuel or Mussolini. The royal house, to save its hide, is speaking German, because the Germans are everywhere in control. The Japanese ambassador said that though he told the queen he could not speak German, and preferred English, she talked to him twenty minutes in German, of which he did not understand one single word.

Mussolini and his son-in-law, Count Ciano, tried the usual "new order" scheme of bribery of Grecian generals and thought they had it all fixed for the Italians to march across Greece and take Salonika before Hitler could get it. But the Greek generals took Mussolini's money, went to Metaxas and told him all about it, and he told them to be true to their country, but to find out in detail the Italian plan of invasion. They did, and that's one reason why the Italians got such a terrible licking after they got out of Albania on their way to the coveted port of Salonika on the Aegean, now in the hands of Mussolini's jailer—Hitler.

Mussolini visited the Albanian front, and when he found out how blue his soldiers were it made him blue, too; this got out around among the other Italians, and the general result of his visit was that his army fell back in disorder in its very next engagement. His object in visiting the troops was to inspire them to victory. He might better have stayed home.

He encouraged his soldiers in Albania to stand up to the Greek soldiers by the peculiarly Fascistic method of threatening them with death if they retreated. The arrangement was that if they retreated one in every ten soldiers was to be shot. When they have made ten retreats, that finishes the job, unless, in the meantime, some good sharpshooter among them fixes the captain with a potshot and they all surrender in a bunch. But Hitler has conquered Greece.

The heroes of the "new order" abomination make some moves that would shame the manhood of any well-brought-up child of three years of age. For example, when the blackshirt forces heard that the Greeks, with invasions on two fronts, had an earthquake in which thousands of innocent men, women and children had been made homeless in mid-winter, they sent Italian bombing planes to drop bombs among the relief workers.

Destroying the Works of Man

Hard-working, capable men build such works as the Tirso dam, in Sardinia, at the head of the largest artificial lake in Europe, or build such huge works as the great aqueduct across southern Italy, and then along comes some fool like Mussolini and starts a war, and the next thing one knows other brave and capable men undertake the destruction of what was built at such a cost.

The British fleet went right by the Italian fleet when it poured 300 tons of bombs into Genoa, on Sunday morning, February 9, 1941. Pietro Cardinal Boetto, archbishop of Genoa, stigmatized this as "an inhuman act", though he was quite content to bless Mussolini a few weeks previously, along with the other Italian bishops. Indeed, at the same time that he protested the Genoa bombings, this same misrepresentative of Almighty God said that the Lord "will raise his merciful hand above us and will concede a complete triumph to our beloved country". Mussolini had the same idea, but is now virtually a Nazi subject.

Pressure on Mussolini is increasing. As fast as possible he passes it on. The Dodecanese islands are so hard pressed for oil that Italy has been sending them supplies of oil by air. This is, of course, entirely impractical, but British ships are in the way. All imports of coffee, meats, rubber and jute have been cut off since Mussolini shoved the stiletto into France's back on June 10, 1940. Meat is prohibited five days a week; coffee may not be sold; pastry and ice cream may be sold only three days per week; there is rationing of spaghetti, rice and flour; rice and beans must be added to flour in the making of bread. There are heavy penalties upon farmers if they withhold crops from the compulsory storage. Mine owners are fined if they fail to speed up operations. A poor quality of soap is rationed at half a pound per month.

Mussolini Checks Out

The hero of the sleeping-car "march" on Rome is all washed up. The pope referred to him as the "man sent by Providence", and lauded his murderous course in Ethiopia and Spain. The "Most Reverend" Evasio Colli, bishop of Parma, asked that every Italian should get behind this murderer, saying: "May the sure victory of our arms gloriously place the Italian flag on the Holy Sepulcher, and revindicate the glory and rights of the House of Savoy, restorer of harmony among civilized people of Imperial and Christian Rome." Every Italian bishop joined with Evasio in this proposal to turn Palestine over to the jurisdiction of the Vatican. The fact that the Vatican is in direct conspiracy with the totalitarian powers is thus seen.

Eighty-five hundred Italian Jews, 18 percent of all the Jews in Italy, have given up the fight and become "converted" to the Roman Catholic "faith" in order to escape the Inquisition.

Mussolini made a start toward pleasing the pope and his bishops. Tel Aviv is not a military point, but he sent enough planes there to kill 55 children at one time, bringing about a friendly accord between Jews and Arabs not previously in existence for a long time. Since then the Greeks were so very busy chasing him out of Albania, and the Australians chasing him out of Libya, and the South Africans chasing him out of Somaliland and Eritrea and Ethiopia that he has not had time to go ahead with the program. Hitler, not Mussolini, is the pope's winning champion.

The British government officially stated that, since Italian planes helped to bombard London, it reserves full liberty of action regarding Rome, hypocritically described by the pope as the "eternal city". Eternal nothing. When Armageddon is finished there will be nothing left of either Rome or Vatican City but the side walls of the catacombs now beneath them. The tops will have been blown to smithereens.

Bitterly Disillusioned Italians

"In their bitterness the Italians even rail against the church. They say that the present pope has condoned Fascism and accepted a German victory as inevitable." So says John T. Whitaker, famous newspaper correspondent, in a copyrighted dispatch in the New York Post of April 5, 1941. This bitterness, it may be added, is accentuated by the present control of all Italy by the German Gestapo. There are said to be 18 German divisions now actually in control of the peninsula, and they have visited every Italian home, taking away every knife or other weapon that could be used against them by the disappointed and disgusted ex-Fascists.

Drew Pearson and Robert Allen, editors of the “Washington Merry-Go-Round”, usually know what they are talking about, and they report uncensored diplomatic dispatches from Italy as saying that “Italian street crowds salute and cheer when black-shirted troops pass, then curse under their breath afterwards”.

At least some of the friction between the Fascists and Italians is due to the fact that the Fascist militiaman receives six to ten times as much wages per day as the rank and file of the regular army. And that may be one reason why so many Italians have preferred capture to fighting for Mussolini. At Taranto Fascist flyers bombed their own fleet for an hour.

A SLIGHT ERROR.

In an address at Buffalo, N. Y., Dr. Emil Lengyel, of the faculty of New York University, made the statement that “the Italians are voting for peace with their legs”. Not such a bad way to vote when there is no other way open, eh?

The Germans are everywhere, and there is much Italian feeling against them. Discontent is increasing rapidly. German troops fired upon Italians in Milan, killing three officers, known as generals. German troops seek to avoid antagonizing Italian citizens. German censorship now covers all southern Italy and Sicily. Pamphlets reviling Mussolini are being circulated now in Italy, and thousands of the secret police are relaxing their former vigilance, sensing that Mussolini’s end is near.

In Germany the death penalty may be imposed for listening to a foreign broadcast, whereas in Italy the penalty is fixed at but six months’ imprisonment or a fine of 10,000 lire.

The Italian people have a word finito, which means finished, and now a joke among themselves by which they refer to the balcony braggart as Finito Mussolini, instead of Benito Mussolini as hitherto. Benito’s finis many would welcome.

“Ashes of Empire”

Under this heading, the Chicago Daily News of April 4, 1941, carried the following editorial comment:

Italy’s armies have been defeated and routed on every front. Her air force and her navy have been virtually wiped out as effective combat forces; her whole military and naval strength has been rendered impotent; her African possessions have been wrested from her grasp; her ambitions to add European territory to her empire have been thwarted. Even the motherland, which loyal Italians would have defended bravely and effectively, has passed into alien control. The puppet king has been joined by a puppet dictator. Both jump to the orders of the “friendly” invader from north of the Brenner Pass.

Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece

The German greeting “Heil”, with the right arm raised, is obligatory in all schools taken by Hitlerized Hungary from Rumania, and to please Hitler the children are forbidden to study the Hebrew Scriptures or the French or Rumanian language. The word “Hitler” following the word “Heil” has not yet been added, but is the next step in the Abomination, as was shown in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

King Boris, of Bulgaria, is entitled to wear the double cross. It now comes out that six months before the Nazis invaded his country he told them they might do so, and only asked for some time in which to prepare public opinion for the event before it took place.

When Hitler attacked Yugoslavia and Greece, on “Palm Sunday”, April 6, he said in his Order of the Day, “We pray to God that He may lead our soldiers on the path and bless them as hitherto.” Hitler’s god is the Devil, and his prayer went to the Devil and was answered by him.

The official reason for the invasion of Yugoslavia was thus stated by the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop: "Nothing else was demanded of Yugoslavia but the loyal co-operation with the Axis powers in the bringing about of the new European order. It was Germany's only aim to secure a position for Yugoslavia in this new European order, in accordance with Yugoslavia's best interests." This means, in a nutshell, that if you have a neighbor who doesn't want you to be his boss, you go over to his house and blow his brains out.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia, fully accomplished as this is written, was helped forward at the critical moment by fifth columnist work in Roman Catholic Croatia, which broke away at the behest of Hitler.

Some wonder if Hitler did not lose his temper when he ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia. A third of its exports went to Germany as a matter of course, and now the wheat, corn, cattle, pigs, copper, iron and bauxite will be much reduced. The order of the day sounded peevish and childish. The bombing of Belgrade, after it had been declared an open city, only makes the people hate the monster the more. And the Yugoslavs are real fighters even though now defeated.

The German army came down through Bulgaria to the Grecian border with what Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop described as "only the friendliest feelings for the Greek people". After they arrived, they discovered that Britain had landed troops in Greece and that the Greeks, still fighting for life against the entirely uncalled-for invasion by Italy, was "about to erect a new front against Germany in Greece". What this means is that if you start out with a gun and with friendly feelings toward your neighbor, and you find him with his house burning, and he lets anybody try to help put the fire out, then the thing to do is to get out the gat and give him the works. This is the morality of the "new order".

Wild times in Greece, and the Greeks standing up to it like men. First came the unprovoked invasion by the Italians, and efforts of the Greeks to push them into the Adriatic which are now hopeless. Then came the news that Bulgaria had yielded itself to the "new order". And right between these awe-inspiring calamities on the northern border came the earthquake at Larissa, in which 19,000 were made homeless. These things ought to help many Greeks to see that their only hope is in The Theocracy.

Japan and Russia

Japan is firmly tied to the tail of the Fascist kite. The declaration that France would go Fascist was made August 17, 1940. The announcement regarding Japan was a month later, to the day.

There does not seem to be so much honor among thieves as is popularly supposed. While the Japanese were looting China, the Germans entered into a pact with them to 'protect the world from Communism', the Vatican's bogeyman. But at the same time and for long afterward the Germans maintained a numerous and highly-paid expert military commission of advisers in China and are even at this time selling the Chinese war materials to enable them to keep up their fight against the invaders.

The Japanese are doing a land-office business with Germany via Russia. In three weeks 68 Japanese vessels sailed from United States ports with shipments of rags, rosin, industrial diamonds, scrap rubber, mica, wool, hides, cobalt, lead concentrates, molybdenum, quinine, casein, tallow, and castor seeds, but especially cotton, copper and oil-drilling machinery, all of which is useful to Germany. It is estimated that these shipments are loading 100 freight cars a day for transportation through Siberia.

War materials are moving from South America to Germany, and from Mexico to Germany via Japanese vessels to Vladivostok or Port Arthur and thence via the Trans-Siberian railway, which has had to raise its freight rates from 500 percent to 800 percent to keep other trade from interfering with the huge business that has been built up. South American shipments include rubber, hides, castor seeds, crystal rock, and mica, all useful for military purposes. Mercury, of great importance in wartime, has been shipped from Manzanillo, Mexico, in such quantities that the price increased in one year to two and one-half times the former base price.

Some idea of the heavy mails from Germany to the United States via the Trans-Siberian railway may be gathered from the fact that a single Japanese ship which put in at San Pedro, California, brought along more than 4,200 bags of 50 pounds each. That comes to more than 100 tons of mail.

Russia has gained fame by its partnership in thievery with the "new order" heroes and by what may be called "token protests". There are but two powers on the continent of Europe today, Germany and Russia, and they are bosom partners in the robbery of the Baltic States, Poland, and the Balkans. Moreover, a flood of useful war materials flows into Germany over the Trans-Siberian railroad, and neither Germany nor Russia wants that flow to stop. Whenever Germany sees fit to grab a country bordering on Russia, the latter country always makes a "protest" when it is too late to do any good. That was done in the case of Czechoslovakia and again in the case of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

The Object of the "New Order"

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, and president also of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, does not like the looks of the "new order". He says of it: "The object of the so-called 'new order' is specifically declared to displace that social, economic, and political liberty which has been so widely established during the past 300 years and so highly acclaimed by the leaders of the world's thought."

While he still felt some measure of restraint, Hitler had a bill passed in 1933 by the German Reichstag. It was not called a lend-lease bill, but "a law concerning the elimination of distress in Reich and Nation". The object of the law was to make Hitler dictator for four years; then his powers would lapse. You know what took place. He had the Reichstag burned, and now is talking about dictating conditions in all the world for the next one thousand years. So, mah frenz, if you hear the capitol has been burned to the ground you know the reason. "What we need is more religion."

February 1, 1936, over five years ago, Ambassador William E. Dodd, writing in his diary in Berlin, said: "What Europe is to do with 68,000,000 people, bent upon another war, I cannot guess. If all states combine and remain armed to the teeth, the struggle may be delayed, but not actually avoided. Not to form a solid front will mean annexations east, west and north, and 90,000,000 people in the German Reich."

In the spring of 1941 more than one-half of all the people of the world were engaged in war, with the balance expecting to be drawn in shortly.

The courts that in Magdeburg, Germany, sentenced two men to death and one man to twelve years in the penitentiary for making illegal and exorbitant profits on war orders have a big job cut out for them. For instance, they could come over to America and scrutinize closely the prices charged and the service rendered by the Du Ponts, Bethlehem Steel and other firms in 1918 and 1941.

The London Catholic Universe contains an NCWC (Catholic news service) dispatch from Switzerland that the extermination of the insane in Germany is under way, in shacks built for the purpose. The patients are taken out of the institutions in buses the windows of which are painted black, and then are taken to the shacks, locked in, and exposed to the poisonous gases. The first shacks for the purpose were built at the town of Grafeneck in Württemburg. The Universe thinks the aged will follow. They ought to know. This is their baby.

Niemoeller Makes the Headlines

The First Financial Edition of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin (Hearst paper) February 4, 1941, had as its main front-page feature a huge picture of the much-belauded Martin Niemoeller, one time U-boat commander and later a Lutheran minister, confined in a concentration camp for not knuckling under to Hitler. It was accompanied by a headline six columns wide reading, "Hitler May Free Fighting Pastor." Then followed a two-column heading, "Nazi Foe Joins Catholic Faith." That tells you, in a few words, how to get out of a German prison. In fact, it told so much that the very next edition showed the headlines much shrunk and the story abbreviated.

A San Francisco correspondent says: "The final editions showed the handiwork of the Hierarchy: the story was deleted entirely. And none of the other local papers carried the story at all." The Associated Press and International News Service carried the story all over the world. American Catholic papers published it, not seeing what a completely dead give-away it is of their claims that the Roman sect is being persecuted in Germany. It is the heart and soul of the entire Hitler plan.

Niemoeller's case was investigated by the National Catholic Welfare Council, and it reports that he said he has "inwardly become a Catholic" and will make a public profession accordingly when he is released from prison. Should he die in prison he wants a Catholic burial. Niemoeller allegedly so advised Dr. Ungnad, a fellow Protestant minister in Berlin, and his wife allegedly acknowledged the fact as well. Latest reports are that both Niemoeller and his wife deny the allegations and that his denials have been announced from many Protestant pulpits in Berlin. The facts are in question.

End of the Jews in Germany

The California Jewish Voice of February 28, 1941, carried the following dispatch from the Jewish Telegraph Agency:

With Austria now being emptied of its remaining Jews, and with comparatively few of the pre-Hitler Reich Jewish population of 550,000 remaining, the seven-year process of ridding these territories of their Jews is nearing completion, comprising one of the greatest forced exoduses of modern times. Germany's systematic liquidation of its Jewish population has been pushed to unprecedented lengths within the past few weeks, according to official report reaching Washington.

Every night sealed trains have been pouring across the border from occupied into unoccupied France, loaded with German Jews stripped of virtually all their possessions and near starvation. An almost equal number of sealed trains have been shuttled into Nazi-occupied Poland.

The Vichy Government is powerless to halt the stream of trains, packed with miserable human cargo, across its borders. The trains are loaded and sealed in Germany, then shuttled across occupied France into the unoccupied zone. When the Vichy officials break the seal on their side of the border, they find them jammed with German Jews, who in the last few months have consisted almost entirely of old men and women and young children.

The French have persistently made efforts to send the trains back across the border into German-occupied territory, but the Nazis have refused to accept them.

The refugees are being crowded into concentration camps in unoccupied France where conditions have been indescribably miserable for many months. The French Government has been allowing nine francs a day for the subsistence of each refugee, but because of food shortage it has been able to distribute only four francs' worth of food per capita in most of the camps, according to reports reaching here.

The Jews of Vienna will be transported to the Lublin "reservation" in Poland at the rate of 15,000 monthly until the city is "free of Jews", Budapest newspapers reported. The Jewish population of Vienna is about 40,000.

The first group of 1,000 have already been sent to Lublin. The remainder will be transported in 12 trainloads monthly with the aim of "cleaning up" the Austrian capital by June 1.

Austria, Memel, Poland

All the Nazi-overrun states are sweating under their German masters. At one of the food markets in Vienna the housewives who could get neither eggs nor vegetables, despite their ration cards, formed a procession and waved their empty shopping bags shouting sarcastically, "We thank our Führer." Several of them were arrested for thus revealing to others the wrath against the war, which is boiling within, but which was concealed by the words of sarcasm.

Nazi persecutions are unbelievably thorough and swift. There were many Jews in Memel when it was seized, and in thirteen days their property was confiscated, and they were forbidden to buy or sell goods, or to visit restaurants or even Aryan friends at their homes. Moreover, the inhabitants of the city were forbidden to greet Jewish friends when they met them on the street.

All Poles, without exception, must surrender 30 percent of their meager wages under pretext of the reconstruction of their land. This is something new. A burglar comes in, shoots up your place, takes all your valuables, and then makes you pay him 30 percent of your wages until the damage he did is rectified, when all the property becomes his.

It took a Nazi special court in Posen only four hours to hear the cases of and pass death sentences on 13 Poles. That is one every 19 minutes; so it amounts to no more than saying to a man, "We are going to kill you after enacting a brief farce in your presence."

The city of Cracow, Poland, was "Aryanized" by the simple expedient of ordering all Jews not in possession of a valid "identification card" to leave the city immediately, with "severe punishment" for failing to comply with the order. There is nothing to hinder ordering all Protestants to do the same, or all persons of any race, nation, color, religion, education, sex or what not.

The London Sunday Express contains a photograph of a trolley car in the ghetto of some Polish city (probably Warsaw). On the side of the car is painted the sign "Für Juden, Dla Zydów", which means "For Jews". Jews must wear white armlets bearing the Star of David.

Scandinavia

How far the Danish snub can go without danger to the snubbers remains to be seen, but the chief weapon of the Danes thus far has been to cultivate the art of not seeing the German soldiers, and acting as if they did not exist. Their homes are closed to the invaders.

To support Hitler's regime in Norway, and to prevent demonstrations in behalf of the exiled king Haakon, the German military authorities even had boys of 10 to 16 supplied with rifles.

On one of the joint British and Norwegian raids into German-held islands off the coast of Norway eleven German vessels were sunk, 215 Germans were captured, and Norwegians of both kinds, i.e., Quislingists and others, were carried over to Britain, some to prison and others to assist in Britain's fight for liberty.

Many Norwegians are eager to get to Britain so they can join in the fight against the Nazis.

Old customs in regard to declaring and practicing war are as far back as hoopskirts. Berlin assigned Sweden to look after the diplomatic affairs of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norwegian interests in Germany and Denmark, much as an employer would tell a clerk what he wanted him to do. Sweden dared not refuse the empty honor and the responsibility. Both Sweden and Finland can be picked off at any time that Russia and Germany elect. No excuse will be needed, nor will either of these countries dare to disobey the "new order" commands.

Netherlands, Switzerland,—Turkey (?)

In a shipyard in Rotterdam two submarines were nearing completion. The first was manned by Dutch workers, and on its trial run made the trip to Britain and forgot to come back. When the second was launched, only German officers and men were aboard, but when it reached the ocean it went to the bottom and stayed there. Eighteen Netherlanders lost their lives, being shot for these acts of sabotage.

Switzerland is afraid of Germany, and has need to be; her neutrality is lopsided. Weapons taken from Polish troops she turned over to Germany. The Swiss boast that each Swiss citizen has 120 bullets at home which he knows how to use, and that the blowing up of her railway tunnels would be a great calamity to the Nazi and Fascist states.

September 27, 1940, marked the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jesuit order, and it looks as if they had figured on celebrating their fourth centennial by grabbing the whole world; but they did not quite make it—not yet.

Noticing that the French had a big prayer meeting in Notre Dame cathedral and then lost the war, and that the pope had all Catholics pray for the entire month of May for peace, which month was the month of Hitler's greatest conquests, a writer in the Concord Daily Monitor and Patriot has enough humor to propose that it might be a good idea to have six months of prayer for war and then maybe mankind might get somewhere. He has something there, but it needs to be linked with the fact that all prayers of hypocrites go to the Devil (2 Corinthians 4:4), who is about to lose his job and also lose his life in the greatest battle of all time, Armageddon. At that time his "new order" will disappear for ever from the earth. And Pacelli, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, and millions of others, will be just so much dung unfit to be either gathered or buried.—Jeremiah 25:32, 33.

British Comment

By J. Hemery (London)

Popes Are Italians

● "The Papacy has been the enemy of Britain for 400 years."—Judge Rutherford.

"The popes have been Italians for 418 years."—Catholic Herald March 21, 1941.

A Catholic Herald columnist answering to a criticism of the fact that so many of the cardinals of the church are Italians, and the suggestion that it would be pleasing to see an English pope, admits that for the past 418 years each pope has been an Italian. In round numbers that length of time goes back to the time of the Reformation in England, when the rule and all the authority of the pope were cast off, and England was freed from the heavy bondage of the Papacy, and the rule of a foreign power. The light from the Scriptures which flooded western Europe at that time dispersed the veil which had darkened the minds of the people, and they saw that the power which had held them was a gross assumption of authority. Both England and Scotland realized the liberty of a freed people. The Papacy made strenuous efforts to regain its rule, and the profit it had enjoyed from England. Taking the same course as it has lately taken in Spain when it gave "spiritual aid" to Franco in his rebellion, it supported, even if it did not set in motion, the attempted invasion of England when Drake and others, helped by the winds of heaven, smashed the attempt, and England retained its freedom, and the Protestant ruler. The Papacy poses before the world as if it were wholly a spiritual power, and to that end keeps before the world that face which shows its church system; but from its earliest days it has been a center of political action, often, in fact, the center of European politics, and, because it has endured and is always the same, it is not a guess if it is said that more political schemes have been hatched in the Vatican than in all other chancelleries put together.

Totalitarian in Essence

● In essence totalitarian the Papacy has no place for real freedom; its rule is authoritative; the pope the cardinals elect is made the "vicegerent of Christ", and claims to represent Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. Because the Papacy has not had material power to make the nations conform to its rule it has countenanced, and still professes to agree to all forms of government among its many subjects. It looks forward to the time when it shall have such rule in the earth as to be able to impose its will on men.

The freedom of Britain has not been openly assailed since the early days of the Reformation, but in this land as in other lands where freedom from the domination of the pope has been enjoyed, attempts have been made to get back the authority by converting the people to the Roman Catholic church. There is little probability that Britain will return to the former bondage, but the desperate situation of religionists will surely cause many of them to be ready to accept a form of unity with Rome for the salvation of their systems and a hope of reviving religion.

The columnist above referred to has a revealing bit disclosing that the French people know the intrigues of the Papacy, as, in fact, they have good cause to know. He says, "The Catholics of the continent are content to have the rulership of the church in Italian hands"; and admitting this is true also of the French, he adds, "provided it is in the hands of an Italian who can be relied on not to commit the unpardonable enormity of acting in a way judged to be contrary to the interests of France." The French know that their history is a record of a long series of Papal interference with the government of that land. The Papacy being what it is, namely, a human institution, political as well as religious, it should be looked at in that light. It is at once the greatest political system, the greatest religious system, and is probably the richest single institution in the world, a strange combination resulting from its claims and schemes while professing to take the meek and lowly Jesus as its pattern.

There are yet some Protestants in the religious communities. A sturdy opponent of the Papal claims, A. W. Martin, in a letter in one of the weekly journals, warns his fellows. He says, "The Papacy dare not recede from its claims and submission and obedience to Papal authority. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical on the Reunion of Christendom, in 1884, said: 'We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty' . . . Those who do understand the Roman church, as the Reformers certainly did, know it to be the negation of New Testament Christianity." And, as was noted here at the time, the bishop of Chelmsford publicly stated that the popes of Rome had been enemies of Britain since the days of the Reformation; nor would he retract, though his statement made an outcry from some who, while styling themselves as Protestants, are ready to receive the pope as the head of "Christendom" and its various religions.

A New Cry!

● Jehovah’s witnesses are "ranters"; so says Hillaire Belloc in a recent issue of the Roman Catholic Universe. He seems quite pleased to have discovered this idea, which indicates he does not have the fear of Jehovah’s witnesses which has seized the priests and prelates and has excited the Jesuits. Mr. Belloc is England’s No. 1 Catholic literary champion. The Universe, featuring his article, prominently displayed, heads it "Here’s a Health to Ranters". A member of that church sent Mr. Belloc a batch of what he is pleased to call ravings about Messianic writings, one of which has a reference to the Protestant reformers, and he asks, "Why do they (Jehovah's witnesses) quote stereotyped phrases from popular history which are all wrong?" and, "Why do they appeal to Holy Writ before making themselves clear as to why this collection of ancient matter may be accepted as authoritative?" Mr. Belloc is an out-and-out believer in the Roman Catholic church. To him it, and it only, has authority to say what of the ancient writings may be accepted as Holy Writ, and also to say how such as that church accepts are to be understood. To him that church has the authority of Christ, and acts for Him in all things concerning the worship of God. Protestantism is anathema to him, and the historians (as honest as he, and as able) who relate the history of the Reformation are alike the subjects of his protests. To him Protestantism is one of the great mistakes of the centuries, and its decline, with the anticipation of the Papacy's regaining its ascendancy, is gratifying.

To such a "good Roman Catholic" no individual has the privilege, much less the right, to say what the Scriptures say, or certain passages mean; only the pope can thus speak, only the church interpret, and when such a crowd as in his eyes Jehovah's witnesses are carry a definite message from the Scriptures, and show that this is the Word of God clearly told, and especially when that witness is that the kingdom of heaven is now in operation and will soon be fully established as GOD'S THEOCRATIC kingdom, he waves it all aside by saying, rather loftily and a little arrogantly, "Here's health to the ranters."

Mr. Belloc has placed his faith in the Roman church, and he allows it to decide for him what he is to believe, as all "good Catholics" do. The word of God given through Christ to His disciples must first go through filtration by his church, as someday he will know. His amusement aroused by the witness to the Kingdom does not express itself in the mean way taken by the priests of that church: they descend to slanders and lying—they are not amused, but are disturbed and concerned; for the witness about the true relationship of that system to the Word of God is world-wide; it is not confined to Western Europe.

Bombing—and Suffering

● The murderous night bombing continues, with its wanton and indiscriminate destruction of lives and the homes of the people. If it is still hoped by the Nazis to bring panic and such fear as might affect them towards the Government there must be bitter disappointment. As all the world knows, Scotland has had a grievous visitation, but with no more result to the vicious destroyer than he has gained in England. The people everywhere bear up under the awful conditions in a way that, though expected, is yet a surprise and an encouragement to everyone, and show a resolution to continue to do so as long as this phase of what is called "war" shall last. And, too, the adaptation of Londoners to the changed conditions of life is a constant evidence of their resolution to resist the assault on their confidence in Britain's ultimate victory, and the destruction of the murderous gang of men who have seized Europe.

It was certainly thought that the crowding into the shelters at night would bring much disease, and fears of infectious diseases troubled the authorities. But, thanks to the energetic endeavors of the public authorities, guided by the Ministry of Health, the winter, with its long nights, has passed without any epidemics and with no great evidence of loss of health. The numbers of those who seek the Tube and public shelters in the night are considerably less than some months ago, partly by reason of the bombing's being less prolonged, and with some nights none at all, and perhaps because

(Continued on page 18) COUNSEL

New Heavens and Earth

“THE earth abideth for ever.” “Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.” (Ecclesiastes 1:4; Psalm 119:90) In view of these plain statements inspired by the great Creator it is not reasonable to conclude that God would destroy this literal earth. When symbolically used the word earth means the organization of men on this earth into forms of government which rule and control it. The word world as used in Scripture means men organized into forms of government, and operating under the supervision, influence and control of an invisible, spirit overlord. The “heavens” are made up of the creatures invisible to man and constitute the invisible ruling power. The visible part of the world is called “earth” and is composed of men.

When the Creator put His perfect man in Eden and gave him a woman and put the animal creation under man, that constituted the visible part of the then “world”. Lucifer, the spirit creature now called Satan, God made the invisible overlord of man and gave to Lucifer a host of angels that worked with him. Lucifer and his angels constituted the heavens or ruling power invisible to man. That was the first world. Lucifer became wicked and his name was changed to Satan the Devil, and his angels likewise followed him in wickedness.

Earth was filled with violence. God then sent the flood, which destroyed that world, that is, the government invisible and visible, and at the same time killed many creatures. Following the flood men organized governments and again Satan obtained control over them, and that world of wickedness persists until the present day and has become very wicked.

This world, 2 Peter 3:7-12 declares, shall be destroyed by “fire” in the day of the expression of God’s wrath. The word “fire” when used symbolically means destruction. In this connection it is almost certain that its use is both literal and symbolic and describes the disaster that shall come upon the governing or ruling power of this world; and that such destruction has no reference whatsoever to the literal earth.

The rule or government of Satan and his angels shall be completely destroyed and his power over man will be destroyed and the unrighteous governments of the present time shall end for ever. This shall take place in a time of trouble greater than the world has ever heretofore known. That will be the last trouble, for the reason that the righteous rule of Jehovah’s Theocratic Government by Christ Jesus will then control the affairs of the world and continue for ever.

“Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” (2 Peter 3:13) There is a promise of God set forth in the Scriptures which stands pre-eminently above all others. That promise is that God will produce a government that shall rule in righteousness and extend its blessings to those that believe and obey out of all families and nations. God began to give this promise to His friend Abraham when God said to him: “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3; 22:18) This promised seed refers to Christ Jesus and His kingdom. (Galatians 3:8,16) Associated with Christ Jesus in that kingdom will be 144,000 faithful followers, members of “the body of Christ”, aided and supported by a host of angelic creatures. Such will constitute the “new heavens”, because it is the new invisible ruling power that shall rule and control the world of righteousness. At the present time the invisible rule that controls the world of wickedness is Satan and his angels, which rule will soon pass away at Armageddon and be succeeded by Christ’s righteous rule. This means the passing away of the old and the coming in of the new heavens.

Human eyes will never see Jesus Christ the King and His associated members of the Kingdom, because by virtue of their participation in the “first resurrection” to life divine in the spirit such are spirit creatures and not visible to man. That righteous government, however, will have men on earth that will be the official representatives of the Kingdom and will be perfect men and will, of course, be visible to human eyes. These faithful governors will never be kings, but will be rulers under the direction and supervision of the righteous Christ. For this reason Psalm 45:16 speaks of them as “princes in all the earth”. The “new earth” is constituted of these princes, and also the human survivors of the battle of Armageddon known as the “great multitude” (Revelation 7:9-17), and their offspring, and others who shall be made righteous under The Theocratic Government. Who selects those “princes”? There will be no political election for their selection. Long ago God selected them. Many of them are named in Hebrews, chapter eleven. Their selection covered a period of time from Abel to John the Baptist. These men had faith in the promise of God.

Where are these faithful men now? They are dead in the grave, awaiting the resurrection, shortly now. Concerning them it is written, at Hebrews 11:39, 40: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us [the apostle Paul and his fellow Christians], that they without us should not be made perfect.” That means that when the class composing the members of the “new heavens”, and to which the apostle belonged, is completed, then God will raise these faithful men out of death and make them the visible representatives of His kingdom on earth and they will deal directly with the “great multitude” of Armageddon survivors and their subsequent offspring. Therefore it is written, at Isaiah 32:1: “Behold, a king [Christ Jesus] shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.” Otherwise stated, the ruling power will emanate from the unseen or heavenly kingdom, which is the “new heavens”, The Christ, and the orders of the new government will be executed on earth by these faithful princes in the earth, and the entire rule will be righteous. By faith the apostle Peter saw this, and under inspiration and by the spirit of God he wrote. At 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 the apostle Paul speaks of “visions and revelations of the Lord”, wherein “such an one [was] caught up to the third heaven. . . . how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” Centuries before, at Isaiah 65:17, Jehovah had foretold: “For behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.”

The wicked conditions that now exist shall pass away with a great and fiery time of trouble, and then there shall be a new invisible ruling power, and new rulers on the earth, all for the good of obedient man and to the glory of Jehovah God. Now we have come to that great transition from the old wicked rule to the beginning of the new and righteous rule. Already Satan has been cast out of heaven, and the next step is the battle of Armageddon, in which his power and rule will be completely destroyed. Christ Jesus must of necessity begin His royal reign before He could destroy the wicked rule. Those who now refuse to hear the Kingdom message God in His due time will destroy. Those who gladly receive the truth and know and serve Jehovah will be for ever blessed. The new heavens and the new earth will be a complete vindication of the word and name of Jehovah God.

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