Consolation, August 20, 1941

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Contents

The “New Order” in America 3

The Popes vs. Jefferson 3

Letting Fascism Down Gently 4

Would Surely Bring the Inquisition 6

Entering War by the Back Door 9

Sniffing the Empire in the Wind 10

The New Government 12

Martyrdom of Maximilian 12

From a 91-Year-Old Jonadab 12

Angus, Mary, and the “Lady” 14

Conspiracy Against Democracy Booklet 16

Following a Scriptural Course 16

Counsel by J. F. Rutherford

Has Messiah Come? 17

Fate of Canada 19

Canada and the Empire 19

Largest Public Transmission 23

“Asleep on the Lip of Vesuvius” 24

Christening of Corvettes 24

Peonage in Oglethorpe County 25

Conspiracy Against the Liberties of

the United States 26

Miscellany 28

British Comment

Summertime — Harvest Prospects — Food

Control — A Bishop Tells His Flock —

Religionists Mingle but Cannot Pray —

Roman Catholics and Trades Unions —

Announcing the Kingdom 29-31

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Notanda

The “New Order” in America

◆ There is one desire that consumes the waking hours of most men today: How to escape disaster? The Bible answers that question and makes it certain that salvation shall not come by the hand of men, nor by governments of men. “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD” (Psalm 3: 8); likewise mercy and vengeance belong to Him.—Psalms 62: 12; 94: 1.

Now stands up a champion who says he will bring a “revival of religion” to protect the “American way of life”. Will these remedies, applied with all the vigor possible by the strongest executive that has ever been permitted in this nation, alleviate the fear and bring back prosperity to a groping people? Let the Bible answer. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”—Psalm 9: 17.

Has America forgotten God? The Lord’s name is sometimes heard mentioned—but read Isaiah 29: 13.

Christ Jesus taught His followers to pray for the kingdom of heaven, otherwise called THE THEOCRACY. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6: 10) Have not all leaders forgotten that this kingdom was to bring about man’s salvation, and not any “deal” or “order”?

Many contemporary expressions show the drift or trend of this country. Only a few see the disaster ahead. The opinions of men, such as have been compiled, indicate no acknowledgment that God’s kingdom is here. Attention is called to the fact evidenced in the following pages that America has forgotten God and is going over entirely to His enemy Totalitarianism, which claims to rule in place and stead of His kingdom. This is pointed out, not to ridicule anyone, but to safeguard the interests of those who wish to seek safety under THE THEOCRACY, which shall rule the world in righteousness.

CONSOLATION

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

Volume XXII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, August 20, 1941 Number 572

The “New Order” in America

(In Two Parts—Part 1)

BY WAY of contrast with totalitarianism, Americans may worship as they please, speak as they please, write and print as they please. They may hold public meetings at which the government is criticized. The government cannot search their houses without warrant, cannot take property without paying for it, cannot quarter soldiers upon them in time of peace, cannot try them for crime except upon due process, must grant them jury trial, cannot hold them in excessive bail or inflict cruel or unusual punishments. These ideals and practices are totally foreign to the entire totalitarian outfit of Hitler, Stalin, Pacelli, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, and all the rest of the criminals in high positions in Europe and Asia. And they are now threatened.

No one looking for evidences that the “new order” of the pope and Hitler is progressing in the United States should have difficulty in finding them. At the very outset of the present regime under Franklin Delano Roosevelt he made the statement, significant in retrospect, that “the rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year”. His methods of accomplishing this rebuilding have been attributed to Papal encyclicals, as witness the following:

John A. Matthews, New Jersey lawyer, urged Fordham graduates to look for their inspiration to the popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, and then said: “The man at the helm of our government today is wedded to this very course. The remarkable parallel between the principles regarding social reconstruction enunciated by the popes and the efforts at national recovery launched under the Christian leadership of President Roosevelt is an earnest that social justice as preached by the sovereign pontiffs can be the ultimate economic salvation of America if Catholic Action will express itself in united prayerful co-operation with honest elected leadership and not in the hopeless program, however sincere, of emotional mobocracy.”*

The Popes vs. Jefferson

In an address at Boston, Governor James M. Curley, addressing an organization of fellow Catholics, said:

“The Roosevelt program is fashioned along the lines of the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI. If anyone had said a century ago that we should so revolutionize our government that we should accept the guidance of ‘our holy father’, Pope Leo XIII, rather than Thomas Jefferson, we should have deemed him a fit subject for a psychiatrist.”

Senator Huey Long said:

Our president of the United States, the knight of the Noumahal, says we are confused because we cannot see just how this thing is going to look when he gets through making it. Why, to be sure! All those millions of hogs they killed; all those cattle they shot down; the milk they poured into the rivers, with the people starving for it; all of the cotton they plowed under, and wool that they burned up, with the people naked because they could not get it; none of us can see just how that is working out.

* Caustic name for American democracy, used by Vatican theologians.

This, however, was not the worst aspect of the “new order” in America. It soon became apparent that progressively the fundamental liberties and rights of Americans under the Constitution were being threatened. Many voices called attention to this trend.

Totalitarianism Impends

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, said in an address at Hotel Biltmore in New York:

The fundamental principles to which we are devoted, the fundamental institutions which we and our English ancestors have been engaged in building for the last 1,000 years, have not only ceased to have influence in strange lands but are being challenged in our own country.

What has become of the old, constructive, forward-looking, historical liberalism? Where are the voices, where the statesmen, where the prophets, the Chathams, the Burkes, the Pitts, the Hamiltons, the Jeffersons, the Madisons, to stand before the whole world and proclaim, defend and interpret those principles written into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States and accepted by the English people without being written into any specific document? Fifty years ago it seemed as if liberty was on the march in most Western countries. Now the resistance to liberty has become so definite, so specific and so terrifying that everything in which we believe, the fundamentals on which our institutions are based, are at stake in this war of ideologies.

Little by little you find this transfer going on, even in liberty-loving countries like France, England and the United States, without any realization that a conflict is in progress between two conflicting principles.

The doctrine of the superiority of the State—now armed with power as never before—is fully conscious of what it is trying to do. Its intention is to wage war on the doctrine of civil, religious, political and economic liberty until the world has been reduced to a state of controlled compulsion. That is the fundamental challenge facing America, Great Britain and the world at the dawn of a new decade.

Letting Fascism Down Gently

Letting Fascism down gently, and America not so gently, the “Reverend Father” Fulton J. Sheen, of Catholic University, Washington, in an address to the judiciary of Brooklyn, said that Americans should beware of “a mental condition by which we judge other peoples by their methods of government”, and, “Human rights existed long before the American democracy, and we have no right to impose our form of government on others.” He did not mention any country America is trying to coerce into accepting its form of government, and he avoided mentioning any government, including his own, that thinks it all right to murder people who disagree with it. To what extent were human rights recognized in the Middle Ages?

President Roosevelt must be credited with giving at least lip service to freedom. And he may mean this according to his lights. Yet he is setting in motion powers which in the opinion of the most forwarding-looking and sincere proponents of humanity and liberty will lead to dictatorship.

William Philip Simms, in an article in the New York World-Telegram of March 20, said:

The “Four Freedoms” which President Roosevelt would make the basis of his new world order are:

Freedom of speech and expression.

Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.

Freedom from want.

Freedom from fear.

The scheme to rebuild the world, as past events have proved again and again, is an intoxicating draught to those who assume they must play an important part in its attainment. God has not asked or commissioned men to build a world or create a new earth. That He will do Himself. It is for men to follow the right. President Roosevelt has ignored the rights of Jehovah’s witnesses, although they appealed to him as Paul appealed to Caesar: It is his treatment of minorities that serves as an infallible indicator of his true caliber. The American Legion, the very agency most active in the persecution of the witnesses, was recommended by the president for national service which its course had shown it to be absolutely unfit for. His act here belied his words.

The president’s appeal to the American people, according to German commentators, copied the style used by Hitler and Mussolini when they started on their way to power. He called upon the people to be satisfied with longer working hours, smaller profits, higher taxes and other sacrifices.

Wm. H. Anderson, in The Monitor of March 22, says:

We have never had a president who resented even legitimate criticism as he has done. To top that, we have never had a president who had so crass and undisciplined a spirit of vindictiveness, leading to open unscrupulous and unprincipled perversion of power for personal ends to discredit those guilty of criticism that got under his skin.

The delegates of the American Bar Association, assembled at Chicago, March 17, urged that the task before Americans is to save the Republic and the limiting of Federal administrative agencies. A committee report quoted the words of Daniel Webster, “The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.” The report said in part:

We are once again the only oasis in the desert of totalitarianism, and there are those among us—some willfully and others ignorantly—who are attempting to poison our wells of liberty.

The task is ours to preserve the Republic, as was recognized by Franklin, while the task of the men who labored at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 was to frame a system of government whereby that Republic could be preserved.

The people of 1776 and 1787 had experienced totalitarianism. They knew its tyranny, its stupidity, its burdens on both body and soul, and, ‘Oliver Wiswells’ to the contrary notwithstanding, it was no mere declaration when Patrick Henry, for instance, declared that he knew not what course others may pursue, but as for him, give him liberty or give him death!

We would further add that it is asserted by most students of government that a good totalitarian government is more efficient than a republican form of government. But this was known to the men of 1776 and 1787 and they aimed at creating a safe government under which liberty for the individual could live!

The Bar Association spoke well. When totalitarian governments claim greater efficiency it is pertinent to ask, Efficiency for what? The plain answer is, Efficiency for oppression.

In this connection the remarks of Senator Burton K. Wheeler in the first session of the 77th Congress are significant. He said:

Nowhere does there exist such fine soil for Fascism as a land economically exhausted and unbalanced by a costly war—and disillusioned by the inevitable tragic post-war awakening. That is the soil in which Fascism flourishes. That is the soil which produced Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. That is the soil which will produce a Hitlerized America,—even though Hitler will be dead and buried.

And a nation at war is almost by definition a regimented nation. It operates on the dictatorship principle. The individual is subordinated to one objective—the waging of war. In consequence, civil liberties are curtailed, censorship imposed, industry taken over, labor’s right to strike abridged or abolished, and all opposition ruthlessly crushed. Already in the United States we are witnessing the abridgments of precious liberties and constitutional guarantees. What will war and a post-war period do to them? The answer is obvious.

Those of us anxious to preserve civil liberties and peace have been subjected to a smear campaign. Never once has fact been answered with fact, or reason with reason. Instead, cries of “pro-Nazi, Hitler agent, anti-Semite” are shouted at the opposition. This is bigotry in its vilest form. This is a return to the monarchical concept that the king can do no wrong.

I have said—and I repeat—that there are men in the world who are far more concerned with the restoration or the preservation of their economic and social status than with the welfare of the masses of the people.

I am not interested in the race or creed of these men. I am concerned—and always have been—with the welfare of the great mass of humanity, with the underprivileged, with the economic and social status of those who are ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. I abhor and oppose those in this country, or in any country in the world, who make a fetish of the persecution of any minority group. I denounce those who play upon the passions and emotions of our people with this kind of medieval mendaciousness.

It is easy to be seen that Senator Wheeler could not possibly merit the favor of the Hierarchy-Hitler combine.

A Study of Dictators

A study of 35 dictators by J. O. Hertzler shows that each has come forward after a period of confusion, and each is a genius combining “diabolical cleverness, arrogance, love for intrigue, unscrupulousness, a bent toward strategy, a fanatical idealism, a hard-shell realism, and the ability to quickly use every advantage”.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., in an address at Ohio State University, stated that his father could have been a dictator in 1933, and ever since (I), but does not wish ever to be one, and that in his opinion his father is the greatest lover of true democracy since Jefferson and Lincoln.

President Roosevelt objected to the occasional government by one man when the Supreme Court by a 5 to 4 decision killed some bill of Congress. At that time he held in high esteem those seven presidents of the United States who never once used the veto. But since then Mr. Roosevelt has vetoed not less than 473 bills, which is almost but not quite ten times as many vetoes (49) as were exercised by all the presidents of the United States in the first 84 years of its history.

And does he love one-man rule now? In 3½ years ending October 7, 1939, his boys in 115 executive agencies handed down 15,000 rules and administrative decisions telling the people what they could or could not do.

In the more than 150 years of history of the United States Government there have been but nine Catholics in the presidential cabinet. Four of these were appointed by the present president.

What with Roosevelt sending a personal ambassador to the pope and Archbishop Spellman sending Willkie to come to him for a six-hour lecture on what a president of the United States is supposed to say and do, and the national chairman of the Republican party of the same faith as Farley and his successor, it appears that the Hierarchy is far more important in America than it should be.

President Roosevelt states that his sending of a personal representative to the Vatican does not constitute the inauguration of formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and then a newspaper at Rome says that the Vatican has decided that Taylor is just as much an ambassador to the “holy see” as the representatives of other nations, and could remain so accredited even after Mr. Roosevelt ceases to be president. Somebody is lying, and the president himself is authority for his recent statement, “The value of truth and sincerity is always stronger than the value of lies and cynicism.” Why would a truthful and truth-loving president send a personal ambassador to represent him at the center of the greatest lie-factory ever inaugurated upon the footstool? Every newspaperman knows that not one thing put forth from Vatican City can be accepted as the absolute truth. It is a settled principle of the Vatican to make lies its refuge in everything.

Would Surely Bring the Inquisition

President Roosevelt declares that what he said four years ago, namely, “No greater thing could come to our land to day than a revival of the spirit of religion,” is still his opinion. It seems too bad that the president does not know any more about the spirit of religion now than he did four years ago; for it is the spirit of intolerance, of persecution, of hypocrisy and of falsehood. Moreover, a revival of the spirit of religion, as it existed when it had universal power in Europe, would necessarily mean a revival of the Inquisition in all its horror.

Referring to the organization that financed Hitler, Franco and Mussolini in their campaigns to spread totalitarianism over the earth, and to the statue or monument they have erected at El Paso, Texas, the president says that what the people of America need is a “revival of religion” and “faith in the everlasting reality of religion”. The poor man did what he could to get them into that when he sent Taylor to the Vatican, but it did not seem to work.

Senator Burton K. Wheeler, of Montana, in an interview for PM, said, in part:

The thing that has bothered me all through about Roosevelt is that he’s said we’ve continually got to give him power. It’s always a grab for power, power, power. What concerned me was not only that he should not take total power, but that he should not want it. And now certainly, if ever, we should avoid the granting of total power.

He wanted to cut the gold content of the dollar, and he got the power to do that. I voted for it, but with a good deal of reluctance. We gave him a stabilization fund of two billions. Then we gave him the tremendous power of public works. He could use this with a lot of his friends to get them to go along with him. You grant me the power to give public works to one man and to deny them to another just across the line and I’ll show you how to control Congress. Then he wanted the Supreme Court to be properly subservient to him. I said to him: “You can get three resignations from the court if you want them.” But that wasn’t enough for him. I like the president, but I argued with him about this and many other issues.

In the ’36 campaign I traveled with Roosevelt on his special train from Washington, D.C., to Colorado Springs and back to Chicago and went over every speech he made. Then I swung back through seven states and wired him that he’d carry every state west of the Mississippi.

The Tulsa Tribune, under date of January 12, refers to the president as a self-perpetuating emergency, saying editorially:

By instinct, and by eight years of performance, Mr. Roosevelt never yields a power that is once, under the plea of “emergency”, put in his hands. He has made himself the perpetuating emergency. Our satellitic congressmen, betraying their trust, have let him do this. Through the eight years Congress has yielded to his demands for expanded power he has constantly demanded more and more and returned none. . . . Let the oil industry, the steel industry, the lumber industry and all the major industries that convert bulk production into refined products pass into the administrative hands of Franklin Roosevelt, who never in his years of civil life built an industry or maintained a pay roll, and you will have an ultimate collapse of our civilization that will lose not only our liberties, but the products of liberty to which the whole world reaches with the empty hands of despair. Labor’s rights will be lost. Let labor look abroad if for a moment it doubts that.

The Dictatorship Bill

The dictatorship bill H.R. No. 1776 makes President Roosevelt a dictator with full power to send American warships and merchant vessels into war zones, to give unlimited funds to any foreign power, to cancel any law on the statute books, to make military alliance with any nation anywhere in the world, to take America into war whenever, wherever and against whomever he chooses, to give away the American navy to any nation, to give away every gun and every bullet in the army to any nation, to give away every American airplane to any nation, to give away all America’s military secrets to any nation, to open American harbors and all their facilities to the warships of any nations engaged in war, and to seize the ships of one country and give them to another.

The American Congress has given away the American nation to one man, and the people love to have it so. Having had democracy, they now wish to be like other nations, say like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece. Those countries are all ruled by one man. It is all the style. It goes with the New Deal. One year Congress gave the president $3,000,000,000 to do with as he saw fit, and another year gave him $4,880,000,000. Now they have finished the job and given him everything.

The president made a clever simile when he suggested to the newspapermen that if his neighbor's house catches fire, and he happens to have 400 to 500 feet of garden hose with which the fire could be put out, he does not ask his neighbor to pay $15 for the hose. Instead, he hooks the hose to the hydrant and his neighbor agrees to replace a damaged section. That is why ships, planes and munitions are being loaned to Britain. It is an emergency.

From the president's radio address of December 30 the following is quoted:

The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world. . . .

Some nations of Europe were bound by solemn non-intervention pacts with Germany. Other nations were assured by Germany that they need never fear invasion. Non-intervention pact or not, the fact remains that they were attacked, overrun, thrown into the modern form of slavery at an hour's notice or even without any notice at all. . . .

The Nazis have proclaimed, time and again, that all other races are their inferiors and therefore subject to their orders.

In a military sense Great Britain and the British Empire are today the spearhead of resistance to world conquest. And they are putting up a fight which will live forever in the story of human gallantry. . . .

We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.

◆ We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future.

Says H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun (and his remarks constitute an interesting commentary on the "fireside chat" foregoing):

Uncle Shylock is beginning Round 2 of the salvation of democracy a great deal less well-heeled than he was when the gong rang for Round 1. On August 2, 1914, he owed but $1,188,235,400, and had a current income large enough to pay it off, if he had so desired, in a few years. Even on April 6, 1917, he owed less than $2,000,000,000, and it was not until June 30 of that year that his debt approached $3,000,000,000. But now he owes more than $50,000,000,000, and his annual expenditures (not counting the new war expenditures) have gone up from less than one billion to nearly ten billion. Moreover, his partner in Christian endeavor, the Hon. John Bull, is even farther from solvency. When the last war started, the public debt of the United Kingdom amounted to but $3,500,000,000, but at the end of the war it was more than ten times as much, and when the present unpleasantness began it was $40,000,000,000. Inasmuch as the population of the United Kingdom is not much more than a third that of the United States, this equals an American debt of at least $110,000,000,000, or approximately double the burden run up on us by the New Deal. Moreover, it does not include the new debt created by the present war, which is costing, according to Sir Frederick Phillips, K.C.M.G., Under Secretary of the British Treasury, the sum of $45,000,000 a day, or say $16,500,000,000 a year.

Entering War by the Back Door

There is more than one way of becoming involved in war. The Milwaukee Journal says accordingly:

The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to declare war. President Roosevelt commits the country to a course which means that Congress will have no choice but war if the enemies of France and Britain engage in reprisals on the United States for our official aid to their foes.

We do not need the words of Virginio Gayda, Mussolini’s unofficial spokesman, to tell us that turning over planes from our navy to their enemies will be accepted by Germany, and any allies she may draw to her side, as war. We know how we should regard it if the case were reversed. The technicality that these planes are “trade-ins” to the Curtiss Co. on new planes not even begun means nothing.

If there is a reason for our taking part in this war, it is that our way of life is threatened. That is as simple a way as we know of saying it is a war for democracy.

Our way of life, our system of democracy, includes a legislature, an executive, a system of courts. President Roosevelt gives the legislature—that is, Congress—the run-around, and the case will not come before the courts.

It is not the American way to enter a war by the back door. It is not American to begin a war for democracy by giving up democracy.

Dr. James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard University, in an address given in New York city, in June, 1940, indicates that everybody is scared—no exceptions. He said:

Many of you are thinking of that threat to freedom which now hangs over us more overwhelmingly today than at any time before—the possibility of complete totalitarian triumph. We all realize the blackness of the shadow cast by the successes of the German arms and the joining with these arms of the powerful support of Italian Fascism. We as people have awakened to the imminence of the threat. There may still be dispute as to the course of immediate action, but there is hardly a citizen who does not realize that human liberty on this continent is now in danger.

Headed for Dictatorship

Frank H. Gannett, publisher of Rochester, N. Y., notes the trend toward dictatorship and says:

Because of distressing economic conditions Washington has been trying to take over control of our lives, our business, our farms and factories. Great bureaus have been built up. Step by step we have departed from the teachings of Jefferson and the fathers of this Republic and have been marching steadily toward control by the State—one-man totalitarian government—and, ultimately, dictatorship.

When the Spanish Republic was dying the traitorous general that marched against Madrid made the statement that he had four columns with him, but there was a fifth column within the city that would at the right time betray it into his hands. Experience shows that in all the republics recently overthrown, Austria, Czechoslovakia and France, this same element has been active. Archbishop McNicholas, in an address in Cincinnati, said, “No true Catholic in this nation belongs to a fifth column.” “True” to whom? “True” to what?

The big objective of the Roman Catholic Church is to see all republics come to an end, so that the world may be governed by dictators of its own choice. This truth is leaking out more and more; so it was quite in order for Cardinal O’Connell to say, in Boston, “There will be no fifth column among the Catholics of America.” But there were fifth columnists in Spain, where the expression originated. And there were fifth columnists in Slovakia, and in the Netherlands, and in Belgium and Flanders, and they were zealous Catholics. So, why is America to be so different?

In a study of Fascist activities in the United States, issued by the American Council on Public Affairs, the noted Italian liberal, Professor Gaetano Salvemini, made the statement that “Italian-speaking Catholic priests, with rare exceptions, are carriers of Fascist prop aganda in the United States”. This, no doubt, is truth.

Sniffing the Empire in the Wind

Sniffing the revival of the “Holy Roman Empire” in the wind the “Right Reverend” Fulton J. Sheen, in an address in Cincinnati, stated that after the World War No. 2 there will probably come a time when rationality, peace and God will take their place. By “peace” Mr. Sheen means that liberty to expose the Hierarchy as the world’s greatest disturber will be at an end, and by the word “God” he means the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, of which the pope, the alleged “Vicar of Christ”, is the center.

In an address at the Manhattan College of the Sacred Heart, New York, the same “Right Reverend” Fulton J. Sheen urged his hearers to “serve as fifth columnists in sweetly betraying others back into the hands of God”, i.e., back into the power of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the pope, the “vicar of Christ”, who is at the Hierarchy’s center. It was a most appropriate figure of speech, and just what is now taking place all over the world on a most tremendous scale.

The real “fifth column” was again marked when E. Haldeman-Julius, in The American Freeman, of August, 1940, said:

The tragic thing about the present situation is that our standard newspapers and magazines daren’t warn the American people against the propaganda of the Jesuits. They’re afraid to tell the people the truth—that there’s a Fifth Column openly conspiring against our freedom and liberalism—the age-old enemy of civilization—the stinking, blood-soaked Roman Catholic Church. Talk about your Nazi Fifth Columnists! They’re chicken-feed alongside the slick, pompous, sacred members of the Hierarchy who are striving to crush our liberal, progressive understanding of democracy and bring in its stead a social order in which the masses will be as enslaved politically and economically as are the minds of the ignorant communicants in the Church. But such Fifth Columnists mustn’t be offended. So our editors shut their eyes (and columns) to the greatest menace facing the American people—the anti-social propaganda of the vicious Catholic Church. And those editors who dare tell the truth about the awful menace to our liberties are made to suffer the penalties of boycott and ostracism because they dare tell the terrible, appalling truth as they see it.

An Easy Way Out

Cardinal Dougherty, instead of acknowledging that Pacelli-Hitler-Mussolini-Franco aggressions have brought about the European war, professes to think that the war-ravaged countries are being chastised because they turned their backs on God. By this reasoning God could be accused of everything the Devil and his imps have ever done. The only god that can be blamed for Hitler’s conduct, or the conduct of Cardinal Dougherty himself in his conspiracy against Judge Rutherford, is “the god of this world”—the Devil.

The Manchester Union quotes a Jesuit priest as asking the question as to how it would be possible for the Catholics with only 22,000,000 voters in the United States to dominate the scene when there are 42,000,000 to 44,000,000 other voters in the country. The subtle impression created by that question is that every Catholic person in the United States down to the latest new born babe is a voter. The facts are that the Catholic population is 15 percent of the population. The other 85 percent are not Catholics. There are almost six times as many non-Catholics in the United States as there are Catholics. If there are 22,000,000 Catholic voters, then there are about 120,000,000 non-Catholic voters. The sum total is the total population of the country, babes and all. It was a typically Jesuit question, the plain intent of which was to deceive the hearers into thinking that the Catholic element is at least three times as powerful as it really is. Stripped of its bluffs, boycotts, mobs and illegal practices, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is one great hollow sham, not really be lieved in by the Hierarchy itself or anybody else.

“Right Reverend” Monsignor Hugh L. McManamin, the gangster that took over the city of Denver on or about June 23-25, 1939, and did all possible to prevent the great name of Jehovah God from being honored there at that time, tells all about the jam America is in. Not naming himself as one of the potent causes, he explains:

This crisis is a complete moral and spiritual breakdown in the nation. America leads the world in all crimes, including murder, robbery, arson and sex offenses.

In an address at Charlottesville, Virginia, the “Reverend” Dr. Joseph B. Code, of the Catholic University of America, at Washington, stated in effect that from now on the priests will do all the thinking and the common people will have no use for their brains. The way he put it was thus: “The cause of European and world-wide chaos is the moral bankruptcy which is the culmination of the enthronement of private judgment, even toward things moral, which began four centuries ago.”

If such is the case, will the irreverend gentleman who is trying to damn all real Protestantism explain why the great majority of criminals come from Catholic homes? Trends in crime, too, indicate that the Rome-inspired “new order” leaves much to be desired. The Uniform Crime Reports, published by the United States Department of Justice, show that in the last ten years there has been a marked decrease in the crimes of murder, manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, and auto theft, while there has been a correspondingly great increase in rape and larceny. Burglary, or breaking and entering, continues about the same from year to year.

Hinsley to the Rescue

All the German bishops, to the last man, announced that they are lined up solidly for Hitler. All the Italian bishops, to the last man, announced that they are lined up solidly for Mussolini. The pope is the last man behind both the German and Italian bishops, but he has to have some one windjammer in Britain to take a religious stand for Britain, and so he has Cardinal Hinsley; not all the bishops in Britain, but just this one.

Hinsley, in a British broadcast, said to the English Catholics, “You are on the side of the angels.” This was just before the German cardinals and bishops told Hitler they wanted him to win, and just before the Italian cardinals and bishops told Mussolini they wanted him to capture the Holy Land. The idea seems to be that in heaven all the angels run around with crosses and beads, German angels in one place, Italian angels in another, and British angels in another.

To try to put the Roman Hierarchy in as favorable a light as possible, at a time when the British are beginning to get their eyes opened to the deal between Pacelli and the dictators, Cardinal Hinsley first had 50,000 bakelite crosses sent out to British soldiers as a “pledge to victory” somewhat like the pledge of Cardinal Verdier in Paris that if Mary would let the French win he would build some new churches in her honor at the expense of the French peasants. Mr. Hinsley says that the English Catholics who are fighting German Catholics and Italian Catholics are “fighting in what has become a Christian crusade”. The idea seems to be that almost all these people claim to be Christians and thus their fight is a Christian fight.

There are only 3,000,000 Catholics in Britain, but Cardinal Hinsley finally ordered 2,500,000 of his bakelite crosses, so that every Protestant soldier might have one, as well as every Catholic, of whom there are not more than 250,000 in the army. He figures that every time a bomb misses a man wearing one of his crosses the man is bound to think the cross had something to do with it. Superstition is always rife in wartime. He thinks the crosses might help the church.

(To be continued) Martyrdom of Maximilian

◆ About the fourth century, many Christians, upon mature consideration, thought it unlawful to bear arms under a heathen emperor. Their reasons were: 1st. They thereby were frequently under the necessity of profaning the Christian sabbath. 2d. That they were obliged, with the rest of the army, frequently to be present at idolatrous sacrifices, before the temples of idols. 3d. That they were compelled to follow the imperial standards, which were dedicated to heathen deities, and bore their representations. Such reasons induced many to refuse to enter into the imperial army, when called upon so to do: for the Roman constitution obliged all young men, of a certain stature, to make several campaigns.

Maximilian, the son of Fabius Victor, being pointed out as a proper person to bear arms, was ordered by Dion, the proconsul, to be measured, that he might be enlisted in the service. Maximilian, however, boldly declared himself a Christian, and refused to do military duty. Being found of the proper height, Dion gave directions that he should be marked as a soldier, according to the usual custom. He, however, strenuously opposed this order, and told Dion that he could not possibly engage in the service. The proconsul instantly replied that he should either serve as a soldier or die for disobedience. “Do as you please with me,” replied Maximilian: “behead me, if you think proper: I am already a soldier of Christ, and cannot serve any other power.”

Dion wishing, however, to save the young man, commanded his father to use his authority over him, in order to persuade him to comply; but Victor coolly replied, “My son knoweth best what he has to do.” Dion again demanded of Maximilian, with some acrimony, if he was yet disposed to receive the mark? To which the young man replied that he had already received the mark of Christ. “Have you?” exclaimed the proconsul in a rage; “then I shall quickly send you to Christ.” “As soon as you please,” answered Maximilian; “that is all I wish or desire.” The proconsul then pronounced this sentence upon him: “That for disobedience in refusing to bear arms, and for professing the Christian faith, he should lose his head.” This sentence he heard with great intrepidity, and exclaimed with apparent rapture, “God be praised.”

At the place of execution, he exhorted those who were Christians to remain so, and such as were not, to embrace a faith which led to eternal salvation. Then, addressing his father with a cheerful countenance, he desired that the military habit intended for him might be given to the executioner; and after taking leave of him, said he hoped that they should meet again, and be happy to all eternity. He then received the fatal stroke which separated his head from his body. The father beheld the execution with amazing fortitude, and saw the head of his son severed from his body, without any emotions except such as seemed to proceed from a conscious pleasure in being the parent of one whose piety and courage rendered him so great an example for Christians to imitate.—History by J. W. Barber, published by Johnson & Brother, Cincinnati, 1851.

From a 91-Year-Old Jonadab

◆ As I sit here alone, yet not alone spiritually, guns going over my head, my thoughts are still spared. What am I doing in return for such a wonderful Jehovah? All He has blessed me with—a long life, the way, too, He has dealt with me, never left me, from helpless babyhood.

Of this group of the “other sheep” of the Lord at Belize, British Honduras, 16 were baptized at 6 a.m. on April 11. The same 16 were at the Memorial that night, but none partook of the emblems.

I was brought up to love and honor the “Church” and all it meant to be—a supposed Christian.

When I went out in the world as a woman things concerning the “Church” became distasteful. I was horrified with forms and ceremonies, bowing to the clergy. Finally I withdrew and tried the then Wesleyans (Methodists) for over fifty years. Even then I was not always satisfied, as there seemed to be something wanting in the inner life.

In the year 1928 two young men brought books to the door. I bought The Harp of God, treated it as a casual book, and put it aside, never dreaming that years after I should use it.

I have been a very hard-worked woman—no time, bringing up a family in a Christian way, as I thought, with prayers, and reading my Bible (mostly the “New Testament” portion) in the dark, not understanding as I do now the lovely old prophets, by the grace of God.

In May, 1939, a witness called on me here with books and phonograph and came in and played to me. I was very greatly stirred, and longed for their next visit, which came, and has continued ever since.

Especially I refer to November 17, 1940, [the day she was immersed] when I surrendered my whole heart and life to Jehovah. I felt intensely happy, and have felt the joy of having done so ever since. But I don’t want a selfish life, old as I am, and anxious to help others in my small way, though only a crumb compared with others. Our thoughts and prayers are with our persecuted sisters and brothers abroad.

Tomorrow will be our little study I am looking forward to; so now adieu. In Jehovah’s strength may we all be bold in doing right to overcome might, that in due time we shall ‘reap if we faint not’.

—A. Rochester, England.

Constable Boyle

♦ At Balclutha, New Zealand, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, a laborer with a wife and two children, was prosecuted by Constable W. S. Boyle and sentenced to one month in jail for preaching the gospel of God’s Kingdom, which gospel is against Boyle’s religion. Name of inciting priest is unknown.

Angus and Mary (see accompanying tale)

London witnesses for The Theocracy, March, 1941

Angus, Mary, and the “Lady”

◆ The following is a conversation which took place between a “lady” and two of our small publishers here in this city. Mary, aged 8 years, and Angus, aged 9 years. They were working with the rest of the company in Jesmond on Saturday afternoon, March 22. It is interesting to note that the territory where we were working is supposed to be such “high class” neighborhood, and, of course, all the inhabitants are great “Christians”; we would say “religionists”! Anyway, Angus McGregor came to a certain door, and on its being opened by the lady of the house he presented his testimony card, asking her to read it, in the usual way. The following explains itself:

Lady (reading card and looking through Watchtower): Has this anything to do with conscientious objectors?

Angus: The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.”

Lady (taking hold of Angus by the arm): Didn’t Jesus whip the evil ones out of the temple?

Angus: Yes, He did, because they were commercializing the temple and making His Father’s house a den of thieves.

Lady: Get out before I kick you out, you damn conscientious objector.

She goes in and Angus leaves her doorstep, but she comes out again just as Mary Hawell is walking up to Angus. She stops Mary and—

Lady: Are you doing the same as this boy is doing?

Mary: Yes.

Lady: Well, you’re doing a very wicked work, and you are against our war effort.

Mary: We are against no war effort. The only war we are interested in is God’s war, and that’s Armageddon.

Lady: This world is God’s temple and we’re putting the evil ones out, such as Hitler. Anyway, the Bible doesn’t tell you you’ve got to do this work.

Mary: Yes, it does, if you read Matthew 24:14.

But she wouldn’t listen to scriptures, and went away saying, “You’re all B—— peacemakers; that’s all you are.”

Two days later Mrs. Hawell, Mary’s mother, had a letter from this individual saying that she doubted the legality of children’s going from door to door selling tracts, and was taking the matter up with the authorities. She had evidently had the quickness of mind (as all servants of the Devil have) to take Mary’s name and address off the back of her testimony card.

From this trailer the Hollis family, pioneers, broadcast the Kingdom Message all over Norway and Belgium. They are now in Liverpool, England.From this trailer the Hollis family, pioneers, broadcast the Kingdom Message all over Norway and Belgium. They are now in Liverpool, England.

London witnesses return from the witness work to their Watchtower study, March, 1941.London witnesses return from the witness work to their Watchtower study, March, 1941.

I thought you might be interested to know of this incident to show how the Devil will persecute the Lord’s people, even through the children. But we thank Jehovah that He has not revealed His marvelous truths to the worldly wise, but to babes.

I enclose one or two photos of Mary and Angus. They were out for 7 hours that Saturday on the work, and each of them placed 3 books and arranged for back-calls. They are both in the same class at school and give a fine witness to the teachers. Yours for The Theocracy, E. F. W., pioneer, England.

British Columbia’s Star Liar

◆ The Tacoma Times says that Crown prosecutor Arthur Leighton of Nanaimo, B.C., “would not enlarge on a charge he made in court here” that Jehovah’s witnesses in Australia were using the radio to inform Axis raiders of the courses taken by British ships in the Pacific, and which had resulted in some British ships’ being lost. If Leighton will kindly send his photograph, Consolation will be glad to publish it and to label it as British Columbia’s star liar. Every item of literature of Jehovah’s witnesses, every phonograph record, and every radio utterance shows that they are the most courageous, most outspoken enemies of the Pacelli-Hitler-Mussolini-Franco-Salazar conspiracy on the earth today. In Europe all Jehovah’s witnesses have been imprisoned by the Axis powers, all of which are under control of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy—as is Leighton himself.

Demonism in Jamaica

◆ Two of Jehovah’s witnesses, conversing on a railway train in Jamaica on the one subject worth discussing, i.e., God’s Kingdom, were assaulted by a fellow passenger, and one of them badly beaten in the face. The aggressor subsequently apologized, admitted his wrongdoing, offered to divide his lunch with the one he had attacked, and seemed genuinely sorry. Thereafter he listened to the Bible discussion for thirty minutes, so that a good witness was given to all the passengers in the car.—K. C. Ellis, Jamaica.

Conspiracy Against Democracy Booklet

◆ I sent a booklet (exposing the fifth column) to a nephew of mine in Peckham, who was mildly interested in the truth but seemed to hold up for some reason. I asked him to read it carefully and return it to me quickly as it is not for circulation. It was ten days before it came back with the following to quote:

“I am very sorry indeed not to have returned the booklet before, but I thought it so good that I took it to the factory where everybody (about 30) quickly read it and passed it round, lunch time, tea time, etc., and we all think it just great. Why don’t your people distribute this to every house in this country?”

I next gave the same booklet to a civil servant here, with the same request to read and let me have back quickly. Two days later he came to me very apologetic. He had evidently read it and started to talk about it at the local inn, so much so that a man who hated Catholicism asked if he might be permitted to read such a booklet. Thereupon the civil servant dashed home and took the booklet down (before closing time).

This was five days ago; so I suspect the booklet is traveling round. Anyway, I accepted his apologies for not returning it, but have asked that it be returned immediately everybody has read it as it really should not be circulated. It seems that by telling him this it makes people read it. I asked him what he himself thinks about it. He replied, “I think the British Government should have 100,000 printed at once and distributed quickly.” This is the first time he has read any of the literature. Needless to say, he’s going to have some more.—Contributed (Britain).

Witnesses Crushed in Netherlands

◆ The United Press reports that the Gestapo dissolved the International Bible Students Association (Jehovah’s witnesses) in Amsterdam on March 9, 1941. That’s what they think!

Following a Scriptural Course

◆ The other day a copy of your booklet Conspiracy Against Democracy was put through our letter box at my friend’s home where I have been staying, and, being a converted Christian and knowing the evil intrigue from the Vatican throughout the world, especially in Protestant countries, I was led to read the contents of this book.

At the beginning I would mention that although I know of the teachings of the Society “Jehovah’s witnesses” and admire your wonderful stand for the Bible and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I do not quite see eye to eye with you on certain minor points, which, of course, are neither here nor there; on the main issue and foundation of your teachings and your desire to assist those whose eyes are blinded by tradition as taught in many places of worship, I am with you wholeheartedly and from now onward the work carried out by your multitude of Christians will be remembered daily at the Throne of Grace.

May I say here and now that of all the books I have read there are none that point the finger so clearly as Conspiracy Against Democracy, and may our heavenly Father bless the writer of that wonderful revelation, which could have been written only through the power of the holy spirit. Yours faithfully, Miss K. Noble, England.

(To be continued)

Finland’s Progress

◆ Finland’s progress until Russia, fifty times its size, began to cry that it was being threatened and oppressed, was most remarkable. Forty years ago it had but 110,629 landowners; now it has more than 500,000. It is as clean as Russia is dirty. The city of Helsinki, built of white stone, is one of the most beautiful anywhere, and the Helsinki railway station is famous over the world. The Finns are famous for music, for athletics, and for paying their debts without squealing, welshing or name-calling.

COUNSEL

by J. F. Rutherford

Has Messiah Come?

"TAKE off the crown; . . . I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." (Prophesied at Ezekiel 21: 26, 27) Today men of the world deny and ignore His coming because they do not see Him with their physical eyes.

No man has ever seen the Devil, but every man has had some experience with him and felt the influence of his unrighteous power. No man has seen God; yet God is the great Giver of every thing that is good, and exercises His power in behalf of His creatures. In God's due time every eye of those alive on earth will discern the presence of the Messiah, Christ Jesus. Nineteen centuries ago He died as a man, and was raised from the dead, however, as a divine spirit creature, possessing immortality, and is "alive for evermore". (See 1 Peter 3: 18, Am. Rev. Ver.; Rev. 1: 18.) "Now the Lord is that Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3: 17) Because it is the man Jesus whose life is given for the world, He must as a man remain dead, but now lives in the spirit. (See John 6: 50, 51.) Jesus said: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." (John 3: 6-8) Human eyes cannot see a spirit.

A spirit person may be present with a human creature and be unobserved. Before Jesus' death He said to His disciples: "Yet a little while, and THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also." (John 14: 19) This is proof conclusive that only those who in the resurrection are "changed" from human to spirit will ever see the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, in His glorious heavenly body. This does not mean, however, that the world will not DISCERN His presence and observe the operation of His just and righteous power. But only those who partake of the "first resurrection", the spirit resurrection, will "see him as he is", because they "shall be like him". (1 John 3: 2) All members of this "new creation" will personally be with the Lord ultimately in heaven; to His apostles, who form a part of the new creation, He said: "I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

The second coming of the Messiah does not mean that He appears as a man and walks about amidst the people as He did when He was on earth as a man to bear witness for Jehovah God and to give His human life as a ransom price for believing mankind. His second coming or presence has to do with the affairs of men, which he takes charge of and will control for the good of mankind. As Satan the Devil has been the invisible overlord of the world for many centuries (2 Corinthians 4: 3, 4), even so Christ Jesus shall be the invisible Overlord of the world after ousting Satan; and although invisible to human eyes He shall control the affairs of the new world, which will be the organization of humankind into a righteous government.

Acts 1: 11 records that when Jesus ascended on high, and His disciples stood gazing upward as He disappeared, the angels of the Lord standing by said to them: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come IN LIKE MANNER as ye have seen him go into heaven." Here the emphasis must be put upon the words "in like manner", not in like body. It was only a small number of witnesses who saw the Lord ascend. "In like manner" would mean that only a small number discern His invisible presence for some time after His return and until His power is manifested at the battle of Armageddon. He went away quietly, and unobserved but by a few, and the testimony of these witnesses was preserved to prove that He did ascend on high. His return is also quiet, and unobserved by human eyes. In His testimony at Revelation 16:15 Jesus said: “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments [identifying him as a true Christian], lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” It is manifest here that the word “thief” is used symbolically to represent the manner of the Lord’s coming. A thief appears, not with the sound of trumpets, but quietly, when men sleep.

Hence the beginning of the Lord’s second presence is while the whole world is asleep, that is, ignorant of what is coming to pass in God’s purpose. Those awake would know of the thief’s approach, and even so those who are spiritually awake and watching the Scriptures and the fulfillment of prophecies in modern-day events, would begin to discern His presence. For this reason Jesus said: “Watch therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” (Matthew 24:42, 43) The apostles had the same understanding. Paul, who often wrote and spoke of the Lord’s coming, said: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch, and be sober.” (1 Thessalonians 5:2-6) Referring to the same thing, the apostle Peter says: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,” in which the old world of Satan with its wicked heavens and earth, or invisible and visible parts, will pass.

The apostles asked Jesus: “What shall be the sign [proof] of thy coming and of the end of the world?” (Matthew 24:3)

If Jesus were going to be visibly present in flesh and burn up the earth as religion teaches, then there would be no need for any sign or proof of it to be given, especially to His disciples. That would be easily seen by the human eyes of all. The question was, How may His followers know the time of His coming or presence and of the end of the world?

Jesus’ answer was that there would be a world war, famines, pestilences, distress of nations, the persecution worldwide of Christians, and the appearing of the totalitarian “abomination of desolation” standing in the place and stead of God’s kingdom by His Messiah. Finally, the battle of Armageddon will bring knowledge to all creation that Jehovah is God and that Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, is King of kings and Lord of lords. The people of earth will not see Christ Jesus with human eyes; yet they will discern His presence, because there will be increased light even unto them by a great demonstration of divine power. They shall mourn because thereof. It is written at Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see [discern] him, and they also which pierced him.” Clouds symbolize trouble. In connection with the Lord’s coming, it is indicated that it will be amidst great trouble, to wit, Armageddon, that His presence will be made known to many.

The people on earth who survive the great battle of Armageddon must be convinced in God’s own way that it is a manifestation of His power and the time of the presence of His King, whom He has placed upon His throne as world ruler. Jesus says: “They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” (Matthew 24:30) This does not mean that the world will see His glorious heavenly body. On the contrary, He said that the world would see Him no more. But at Armageddon He causes His glory and power to be manifested by some ocular demonstration to all the people.

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