Consolation, September 15, 1943
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Contents
Censorship .
Prostrate Before Catholic Censor
An Expose
The "Purity Seal”
Making Themselves at Home in France
? A Great Munitions Output
i Killing Off the Grandpas
Famine Stalks Through France
France’s Only Hope
Slaves of the Herren vol k
Look! Look! Look!
Grasped at a Straw
Strictly Taboo
"Thy Word Is Truth”
Why Must the Perfect One Diet
Did Jesus Mean What He Said?
The Doings at St. Paul
The Vatican Is the Center
How About Mariolatry?
"Vain Repetitions, as the Heathen Do” 21
The One-sided Junk Business
Every Mass Is Unscriptural
Statement re Nicotinic Acid
They Believed and Were Baptized
A Triumph over Persecution
Presenting "This Gospel of the Kingdom”
Openings for Refutation
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“The Wild West”
♦ We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful, rolling hills, the winding streams with tangled growth as “wild”. Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness”; only to him was the land “infested” with .“wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the East came and, with brutal frenzy, heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved, was it “wild” to us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that, for us, the “wild West” began. —Chief Standing Bear, of the Sioux Indians, in his biography. New York Times.
Four-Year-Old Jacqueline
♦ Four-year-old Jacqueline Clement, of New Orleans, was born prematurely, and in the early days of her life her weight dropped from 2 pounds 3i ounces to less than 2 pounds. For eight weeks she lived in an incubator, swathed in gauze, bedded down in cotton, and kept in 97-degree heat. For a long time she was fed four drops of milk every two hours. Now she is 40 inches tall and weighs 34 pounds, and they don’t feed her with 'an eye-dropper any more either. Jacqueline likes this world now tiptop, and would like to stay here permanently. And maybe she will; and here is hoping she does.
Social Security for Crippled Youth
♦ Uncle Sam and the states go fifty-fifty in doing what they can for some 300,000 crippled children under the Social Security Act. It is a good work, bringing hope and cheer to the paralyzed, disfigured, burned, harelipped, and other unfortunates. In Germany, under arrangements now in effect there, most of these would be put to death.
CONSOLATION
“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A. R.V.
VolumoXXIV Brooklyn, N. Y-, Wednesday, September 15, 1943 Number 626
Censorship
THE ability of man to communicate his ideas to others has ever been the measure of his progress and enlightenment. In those sad instances recorded in the pages of history where freedom to communicate has been stifled and restricted, the invariable result has been that the people are afflicted and suffer under ignorance, superstition and religion. In bright contrast, those cases where man has been allowed freely to communicate with his neighbor are themselves an eloquent testimony in support of the necessity for keeping open the channels of communication. The arch enemy of this freedom of expression ever ha^ been, and still is, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Records of history (themselves now “banned” and kept away from the public) show that in the early stages of the development of the printing press it was the open purpose of the Hierarchy to destroy this new invention that showed “horrifying” possibilities of causing enlightenment among the common people. They reasoned that when used by persons outside the Catholic priesthood it would surely result in a wave of “heresy”. Immediately presses began to be destroyed by mobs, while the printers themselves mysteriously disappeared.
...Ko. measures were deemed too brutal to put down this menace to Catholicism; for these were the dark days known as the “Inquisition”, when bodies of men and women were tortured on the racks, “heretics” burned at the stake, and entire towns massacred, all at the instance and under the direction of the Roman pontiff SEPTEMBER 15, 1943 at the Vatican. But, by the grace of Jehovah God, this movement did not succeed, and out of it grew the Reformation, bringing in the era of “Protestantism”. These sincere persons, whom the' Hierarchy labeled “heretics”, began to print Bibles in the popular languages and the light of truth began to dispel the darkness of the superstition and hate with which" the Roman clergy had enshrouded the people. This nettled the priesthood as nothing else ever had, and, in 1832, Pope Gregory XVI demonstrated his attitude concerning the matter in his encyclical letter sent to his “sheep” the world over:
“That pest, of all others most to be dreaded in a state, unbridled liberty of opinion . . . Hither tends that worst and never sufficiently to be exeerated and detested liberty of the press, for the diffusion of all manner of writings, which some so loudly contend for, and so actively promote.”
As it became obvious that she could not summarily obliterate by sheer force and brutality the spreading use of the printing press, other measures had to. be adopted. Pressure was at once applied to rulers and monarchs to license and censor the press, and to appoint the members of the Hierarchy as the head censors, thus accomplishing indirectly that which they had failed to accomplish directly. So powerful was their influence that even after England had broken away from the Roman Catholic domination, under the reign of Henry VIII, the institution of appointing the clergy as the censors of the press continued. The Licensing Act, adopted under the reign
» 3
of Queen Elizabeth and especially rigidly, enforced by the Court of the Star Chamber in 1586, provided that no one was permitted to print anything until if had been “seen and allowed” by the archbishop of Canterbury. A fierce and constant battle -was waged by the printers against this tyranny, but it was not until 1695 that they gained enough power to defeat the renewal of the law. ■
When the American colonies were established, the people were well acquainted with the evils of a controlled press, and accordingly, when they formed the United States government, they soon adopted into the fundamental law a “Bill of Rights” for the special protection of the liberty of American citizens to communicate with one another.
The passing of a century has not improved the philosophy of the Hierarchy, and today as the nation is straining every nerve in the global conflict, they have seized on the tension of political circumstances to renew their unholy campaign to throttle the freedom of the press by grabbing hold of the office of public censor.
Tn 1940, in the United States, the American Hierarchy declared a civil war against Jehovah’s witnesses, a Christian group of American citizens, and the accounts of brutal mobbings that followed have shocked every honest person in the country. Newspaper stories reporting the thousands of petty arrests over the country resulting from official interference with the work of Jehovah’s witnesses would fill a boxcar, while the major cases of importance carried to the highest courts of the land in defense of the “Four Freedoms” have filled the law journals of the nation. These records are mute and conclusive evidence of the determination of the Catholic church to stamp out by violence, where necessary, the liberty of communication, which freedom was considered of sufficient importance to be declared the basic objective of the “Atlantic Charter”. -
That the Hierarchy succeeded -by 4 •
“strong arm” measures to circumscribe the freedom of expression long enjoyed by Americans over the radio networks is now apparent to all beyond question, and programs frowned upon by the Hierarchy are banned from the broadcasting chains today.
Prostrate Before Catholic Censor
Furthermore, the motion-picture industry is entirely prostrate at the feet of . the Catholic censor, who, openly sponsored by the Hierarchy, passes every foot of film that is released by Hollywood. (This is the probable reason for the mass of religious drivel that now crowds the theaters nation-wide.) Joseph Ignatius Breen, a Jesuit-schooled representative of the Vatican, filled the position of official movie censor. The Saturday Evening Post for December 24,1938, page 47, says of him:
. And when Joe finishes telling them [the producers], they’re told and there is no appeal. If they try to put anything into a picture that he doesn’t like, it will not get the Purity Seal and the company will be fined $25,000, and without the Purity Seal 98 percent of the theaters in America will not run the picture . . . Breen and his associates pass on nearly all original material before it is bought by the studios.... Finally the rough cut of the finished film is seen and criticized by Breen and his associates, and anything he objects to must be taken out. ... Joe Breen ... is warning the producers that they can play hide and seek with women’s clubs, Y.M.C.A.’s, Jews, Mormons, Quakers and any and all Protestants, but whatever they do, they are not to tangle with the Roman Catholic Church.
The motion-picture industry is presently involved in what may prove to be a costly struggle. According to Drew Pearson’s syndicated “Washington Merry-Go-Round” for January 13, 1943, published in the nation’s leading newspapers, Paramount has spent two million dollars producing a movie version of Ernest Hemingway’s book For Whom the Bell Tolls, but, says the column,
' CONSOLATION “Strenuous objections have been voiced to Paramount by the Francisco Franco Fascist government and it seems probable that the film will never reach the American public. . . . Nobody ever dreamed that Franco’s hand was that strong inside the U.S.A. But the State Department is for him; also the Rockefeller committee is not enthusiastic about the picture’s release. But, most important of all, the Vatican’s disapproval is the real reason why Tor Whom the Bell Tolls’ will probably not be shown.”
An Expose
However, the latest move of the Hierarchy is probably the most daring of all her attempts to control communication. She is- now establishing herself as the censor of the United States mails and all printed matter produced in this country.
An expose appearing in the March 25, 1943, issue of Drew Pearson’s “Washington Merry-Go-Round” fits perfectly into the picture of the Hierarchy’s past attempts to throttle the free press. Her plan is to establish herself as censor of printed matter that is sent through the mails and then use her power as a club to censor out all printed matter that is offensive to Catholic doctrine. Without pulling any punches, the article states:
Efficient Postmaster General Frank Walker has got himself into a situation whereby certain zealots of the church to which he belongs have become unofficial censors of American magazines. And Frank is playing into their hands. :
The situation has gone so far that scores of American magazines, before going to press, send their manuscripts to the representative of Bishop John F. Noll, of the Catholic National Organization for Decent Literature, where they are examined.
The Post Office Department has the authority to revoke the second-class mailing privilege of all printed matter it deems to be dangerous to public health, morals or national safety, and in the past SEPTEMBER 15, 1943 this power has been sparingly used. As long as this power is thus used as intended and is kept free from religious or political pressure, it is plainly a legitimate exercise of governmental restriction. To perform this function, Postmaster General Walker has appointed for the Post Office Department a special three-man committee, whose task it is to examine the literature mailed under the second-class privilege and ban those deemed to be “unmailable”. According to Mr. Pearson, the personnel of the com- -mittee is “W. C. O’Brien, Catholic; John J. Gregory, Catholic; and Calvin W. Hassell, Episcopalian”.
Apparently, this Post Office committee’s principal function has degenerated into rubber-stamping the recommendations from the Catholic National Organization for Decent Literature, which organization has no official affiliar tion with any government department outside of the government located at Vatican City, Italy, and, of course, the organization dances to the tune piped by the little man wearing the triple crown, at that stronghold of Fascism. Ironically, the headquarters of the organization in Washington, D.C., is located in a sizable new building built especially for such activities, having a solid stone front with no windows, but in large letters engraved across the modern exterior is the single motto, “Ye are the light of the world.”
The “Purity Seat”
But the activities of the organization belie the motto. Fearing that the organization will put their publication on the banned list, editors of many magazines rush their manuscripts to the organization for their ‘holy stamp of benediction’, or “Purity Seal”. The material is then carefully censored and parts out of harmony with Catholic doctrine are deleted. The office goes into the most minute details in examining the manuscript. For instance, one editor was required to change the line “his lips pressed hers” to “his lips touched hers”.
A letter from the Washington office to Bishop Noll, in Indiana, quoted in Mr. Pearson’s column, shows how the system operates:
Your Excellency:
During the past week, Mr. Selinka, Counsel •for the Dell Publishing Co., brought to me a Revised dummy of Modern Romances Magazine. Since they made the changes which I suggested I have already written to your excellency that this magazine does not violate the code.
Mr. William H. Fawcett, accompanied by the new editorial director of their Confession magazine, Mr. William H. Lingel, called on me with the dummy of Romantic Story. I carefully read this dummy, made a few minor changes in it, but had to object to one of the stories. Mr. Lingel assured me that this story and the others I objected to would be changed.
I talked to Mr. Hassel, counsel in the solici-Ubr’s office of the Post Office Department. He told that the following magazines had been cited for hearings to show cause why their second-class mailing privileges should not be revoked. They are Special Detective Cases, Romantic Story, Crime Confession. I shall, of course, attend these hearings.
The Post Office Department is apparently trying to avoid as much publicity as possible with regard to these hearings because no news releases were sent out naming the magazines or. giving the dates and times of the hearings.
Most respectfully yours, [Signed] William Smith.
The postmaster general, who is also the head of the National Democratic Party as successor to James A. Farley, vigorously denied that the recommendation of his fellow churchmen had any influence on the decisions of his department ; but once again the facts speak for themselves. The N.O.D.L. Acolyte, the official organ of the organization, said recently: "Postmaster General Aids N.O.D.L. Campaign — The U.S. Post Office Department has recently revoked the second-class mailing privilege to certain magazines. The department is to be commended for its vigilance and efficiency in citing these magazines and in refusing to grant second-class mailing privileges to offensive publications.” On the long list of magazines which followed, all but two had just appeared on the Hierarchy’s “banned” list!
In the face of this fact, the “bishop” himself had the courage to make a public denial in the United States Congress two days after the expose appeared in the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” ’ The “bishop” had one of his political henchmen, a congressman from Indiana, read a long letter from the “bishop” to Congress. Without denying the suspicious circumstance of the nearly 100-percent similarity of the N.O.D.L. banned list of periodicals, the letter read: “It may not be out of place to remind you that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is just as sympathetic toward the National Organization for Decent Literature as is the United States Post Office Department. If it has not suppressed many very lewd periodicals it is only because it is not within its province to prosecute. It must leave that to the Federal Courts.”
The (fbishop” readily admits that the organization encourages publishers to submit their manuscripts for Catholic censorship, saying in his letter, “You leave the impression on the readers of your column that the Washington office of the National Organization for Decent Literature requires publishers to send dummies of forthcoming issues for examination, while the fact is that those publishers who submit dummies have themselves requested the privilege of doing so, because they claim they actually want stories containing incidents of illicit love to be inspected before going to press with them.”
Unless we are to conclude that the Hierarchy has become a recognized expert in the held of “illicit love” and a technical adviser for publishers of spiced romance stories, then the only reasonable answer is that the publishers have begun to realize that unless they do as the motion-picture producers have done
and submit themselves to the absolute control of the Roman Hierarchy, they will be put on the Catholic banned list, which, as past experience has ably demonstrated, means prompt loss of the mailing privilege by official Post Office action. Without the mailing privilege the magazine cannot be circulated and the press may just as well cease to run.
There is no reason for thinking that the Hierarchy will stop in its campaign of censorship when it has throttled the “lewd and salacious” magazines, but, having thus found a foothold in the departments of government itself, and constituted as the official censor, it will logically and undoubtedly attempt to push straight ahead to suppress and destroy all publications that carry matter not approved by the Roman “church”. If the Hierarchy succeeds in her attempt to blindfold the American congressmen to what she is doing in the departments of the American government by reading to them reassuring avowals of purity, then she will have accomplished her age-old purpose of making herself the custodian of all news, knowledge and information, rationing out such portions thereof as may suit her fancy, but, above all, to see that the people are kept on a strict diet of Vatican-prepared provender, served Roman style. This is precisely the same system that was nurtured by the old “Holy Roman Empire”, and now in its twentieth-century world campaign the Hierarchy is seeking to re-establish and revive this unholy system on a scale undreamed of by- the ancient popes.
In the totalitarian countries where this has been accomplished, the miseries of the people who are forced to live day by day on manufactured propaganda should serve as a lesson to the American people who are yet in position to stop this insidious encroachment on the fundamental liberties which they have steadfastly defended since the inception of democracy.
Making Themselves
THERE seems to be no danger of the French people’s getting lonely, now that they are under Nazi domination. The Nazis have such taking ways. For example, once again they have taken Alsace. Their real reason for taking it is that Alsace is so lovely. The idea is that if your neighbor has something that is nice, and he likes it, you go and take it away from him, because you like nice things yourself. That’s simple. Anybody ought to be able to understand a thing like that.
When the children of Alsace and Lorraine go to school, they study both French and German, from the time they are seven years old. Their studies are all carried on in both languages, and, as their parents may and probably do speak a third language, Alsatian, that gives the little folks plenty to think about. In the adjoining province of
SEPTEMBER 16, 1943
at Home in France
Lorraine, the language of the home is one of the German dialects. So here js one of the most beautiful spots in the world, inhabited by a peace-loving people, that habitually makes itself at home in four languages, and, as it is on the border between two great countries, it is in for trouble in a big way whenever a European war starts. Beautiful scenery, superb cooking, exquisite wines and alluring architecture all appeal to the Nazis, and so, not having any better excuse than that they wanted these provinces for themselves, they duly annexed them once more, the same as in 1871-1918.
As soon as the Nazi war lords had France in their power, the workers in the factories suddenly and inevitably found themselves busy, day and night, making things that would help their new masters become their permanent
7 ones. The famous French silk factories suddenly found . themselves weaving thousands of yards of the finest, toughest unweighted silk. That is not for gowns for the ladies. Bless you, no. The women of France will be in luck if they can get suits of overalls. This silk is for the ^making of parachutes, wherewith Adolf, the paper hanger, hopes to land his parachute troops in Britain. Also, the famous French cork cutters found themselves busy day and night making life belts. Somebody seems to have figured it out that if you intend to invade Britain by boat, it might be a good Thing to have a life preserver along.
A Great Munitions Output
All over Europe the production of war munitions for the Axis powers has been stepped up, and France, which was held back from an adequate output while the land was still a republic, is running her war plants day and night, to make sure that Adolf has enough weapons. The factory workers often slave twelve to fourteen hours a day, and a ten-hour working day is considered short.
The Big Business crowd is well pleased. All they are interested in is iponey. The Germans can print plenty of that, and the German bankers and industrialists are taking over one plant after another with surprising rapidity. Quite frequently, German directors are added to the boards of what were formerly competing companies. There is a German director on the board of the Bank of France. Writing on this subject, A. C. Cummings says, in the Vancouver Daily Province for November 9, 1942:
Now, through, the treachery of Laval and a section of French bankers and industrialists who preferred Hitler to Premier Blum and the Popular Front (which tried to nationalize the French armament plants), the whole of large-scale French industry has been harnessed to the Hun war chariot without much trouble beyond occasional sabotage.
There has been sabotage. Of course there has. But it is a dangerous business. The story was published of what took place in the Graff arms factories near Paris. The workers entered into a plot to steal each a quantity of greasy waste each day. At length, after a good-sized pile had been assembled in a far corner of the plant, it was set afire and all the workers ran to see the blaze. When the company police arrived the workers got in their way and seized their hose, pulling in different directions. Those not in the original mixup remained behind, hauled out their own waste piles, and soon had the entire plant ablaze. .
Of course, the Germans that were looking for munitions from the Graff plant (and scores of other plants treated similarly) were not going to stand for a thing like that. So they began to seize and shoot hostages. At Nantes 50 hostages were done to death, including old men, cripples, two women, and some that were hardly more than children. Just plain murder, and beastly murder at that; cowardly and contemptible beyond the reach of adjectives.
Killing Off the Grandpas
After a pause the head murderers at Paris, the so-called “German authorities”, announced that thereafter if a certain man is wanted, and if he is hot betrayed to them within ten days, they will shoot his father, brothers, cousins, brothers-in-law, and even his grandfathers, set the women relatives at forced labor, and put the children in “approved” homes. Ever hear about the Inquisition t That is it, 1943 style. Opportunity is provided for traitors to save their own hides temporarily by squealing on fellow workmen, and, sad to say, they have even helped to track them down, according to the United Press.
Those that operate the Inquisition get to enjoy the sufferings of their victims, and add to them in any way in their power. A unique way was found to execute French prisoners of war. This is
CONSOLATION
the way it was done: Several trainloads of Russian civilians 18 to 65 years of age were transported across Germany in freight cars, which were opened only twice a week for hygienic reasons, and to give the living something to eat. Out of 2,800 arrivals at one camp, the majority weighed from 90 to 100 pounds. In most of the cattle cars, holding fifty men each, thirty arrived dead. In camp they died at the rate of fifty a day for the first eight days, and at the rate of twenty a day thereafter. As soon as they died, the bodies were stripped and thrown out of the barracks. Here is where the French prisoners of war came in. It was their job to remove the bodies by truck and dump them into a common grave. As the French prisoners had no way of disinfecting themselves, typhus soon broke out. Of course, that meant wholesale annihilations.
It may be said, however, that, hard as is the lot of the French, it is not as hard as that of the Poles. The poor Polish prisoners receive nothing from their families. The reason for this is that their families have been deliberately broken up. The fathers are sent to one place, the mothers to another, and the children to a third. The family members have little hope of ever being able to find one another again. How vicious I
Famine Stalks Through France
A.gentleman connected with the Unitarian Service Committee,' Howard L. Brooks, had the privilege of being in Unoccupied France for a period of six months in the year 1941 and has written a book on the subject, entitled “Prisoners of Hope”. In that book he tells of a visit which he personally made to a children’s concentration camp at Rivesaltes, where 4,000 little folks were being robbed of their freedom and growing up in filth, hunger and misery. He mentions one little girl, eight years of age, that he saw hanging on the edge of a garbage can. He says of her that “her feet were not touching the ground, and her head had disappeared over the top as she dug with pitiful eagerness into its depths”. She died of cholera a few days later.
The Effect on the People
You see. It is now or never for the Jesuits, There isn’t any price they would not make humanity pay, only that, at the end, the “whore” that they serve may have her final ride upon ‘the beast that was, and is not, and yet is, and shall again be present.’—Revelation 17: 8,11.
Even a year ago they were glad to get rats and poodles for food in Unoccupied France; and certainly conditions are no better now. Imprisonment for five or ten years and fines of 100,000 francs to 5,000,000 francs are prescribed for any persons who willfully permit food supplies to perish. So, in France, they are not plowing under any pigs. That pigplowing stunt seems quite a way back, does it not?
When the American armada landed in Algiers, and the Germans at once took over . Unoccupied France, the horrible conditions already existing in that unhappy land became immediately worse. In the three days preceding December 18, 1942, only three persons were permitted to enter France from Switzerland, and these were admitted only because they had diplomatic passports. In other -words, the country did not see how it was going to feed those that were already there, and so dreaded to admit others.
These and other tyrannies too numerous to mention have not made the “New Order” of Pacelli and Hitler popular with anybody that has either a heart or a brain. A good example of this was when Dr. Goebbels thought to frighten the Swiss by showing what happened to the Canadians when they landed at Dieppe. When the film went on at Zurich, the operator had to take it off and put on something else. The people of Zurich speak German, but they are Swiss. They whistled, cat-called and shouted “Shame”, “Filthy swine,” and “Show the stuff
somewhere else'’. If Hitler ever gets the chance, he will make the people of Zurich pay for that a thousandfold.
The French people are up against it ih terrible shape. They suffer from the British and American air raids, even though they consider them necessary. tThey hate the Italian government for * stabbing them in the back in their darkest hour. They hate Vatican City, which they rightly suspect to be at the bottom of all their troubles. Despite all the whitewash so constantly applied, many of them hate and distrust old Mr. Petain. The labor unions hate him because, while continuing them in. existence, he has issued a decree providing for a prison term of five years and a fine of 10,000 francs for anyone attempting to engage in collective bargaining. What is the use of having a labor union if it cannot do one single thing to improve the condition of its members or to seek redress of grievances ? The French are fair-minded and they hate any government that is so pitiless as to cause human creatures (50 or 60 Jews) to deliberately hang themselves en masse w|ien they found they could not escape from the country into Switzerland. This took place at Sete, a coastal city of southeastern France. Not a single Jew remained alive.
Only Two Choices
It is openly proclaimed that the French have only two choices. They must be either “collaborationists” or “terrorists”. A “terrorist”, it is explained, is one that does not work hand in hand with the “New Order” of Pacelli and Hitler. No attention is paid to the wishes of the French people to be free to choose their own form of government. When did the Roman Catholic Hierarchy ever encourage the people to have a voice in anything?
There are some rewards to those who go over to the “collaborationists”. Whether the‘ facts are correct or not is not known, but German sources claim that a French worker who goes to Ger. 10
many can send back home up to $85 a month if he is married, and two-thirds as much if he is single. Consider what an inducement that is when living is so high. What do the people do that have no incomes? They starve.
The “terrorists”, so called, if they have any hopes of deliverance, have them in the activities of Britain and America. An instance of these activities was the British raid on the submarine base at St. Nazaire, France. The main object of the attack was to make unusable the large dry dock, the only one on the French Atlantic coast capable of accommodating so large a ship as, for example, the German battleship Tirpitz. This dock is the only one outside of Germany, Genoa and Singapore capable of taking the Tirpitz. It was built for the Normandie. A British raid put it out of commission for a year.
The story of the raid makes a thrilling tale. The British came at midnight and rammed the destroyer Campbelltown into the dock gate. The ship was then deserted and the commandos attempted their get-away to Britain. Two of the British officers were caught by the Germans, who asked if the ship contained explosives. The answer was that it did not. To test their good faith, the Germans asked them if they would accompany a party which was going to inspect the destroyer. They immediately agreed and accompanied a party of high German naval officers on board. No sooner were they on board, than the Campbelltown and the dock gate blew up and the two British officers and all the Germans who were aboard were instantly killed. Fighting then broke out between the Germans and the French and such commandos as could not get away. This fighting lasted for three and a half days. Though the French must have known that without weapons and without officers to lead them they could only be slain by their well-armed and well-officered lords and masters, to die rather than yield to the hated Nazis, their visitors
CONSOLATION
from Deutschland Ueber Alles, now making themselves so much at home in France, was preferable.
Frances Only Hope
France’s only hope is not in the brave British spies who have done such thrilling things. Some who speak French and German fluently have waylaid German soldiers and officers and stolen their uniforms. They have joined German regiments as Germans without their identity being discovered. In one instance a British officer disguised as a German officer marched a large detachment of German troops out on the parade ground at Lorient just in time to get them' machine-gunned by British aviators. Of course, if they get caught, they die. But one has to be willing to die today if one wishes to accomplish anything worth while.
It may be that there are some French Fascists that think it worth while to betray their countrymen into the hands of Paceili and Hitler, and are willing to die even in such an abominable cause. Before the present war, a company of them raided a police barracks at Dieppe and escaped with twenty rifles. The rifles were found in possession of a Fascist shopkeeper. The case went to a Fascist magistrate, who refused to act. This was while the Fascists were getting ready for the great betrayal actually pulled off in the spring of 1940. When the war broke out, the chateaux of Gaille Fontaine, near Dieppe, was a huge arsenal all ready for the use of Hitler, Paceili and those in on their rotten deal, for earth’s domination.
France’s only hope and earth’s only hope is in none of the things that, have been named, but it is in The Theocracy; and in these trying hours some of the French people cannot fail to remember some of the things that they have heard at the hands of Jehovah’s witnesses. In October, 1934, the members of the jury of the Paris exhibition of Modern Comfort were so impressed with the richness of the revelations contained in the Watchtower publications and were so anxious to do justice to the work of moral sanitation undertaken by this philanthropic society that they awarded them the beautiful diploma, The Di-plome de Hors Concours, which means that this work is above competition and in a class by itself. When the old "whore” goes to her eternal destruction in Armageddon there will be some Frenchmen and some of their unwelcome visitors from the East that will know that there is a God in heaven unmatched in any way by the god of Paceili and Hitler, the “god of this world”, the Devil, the prince of darkness.
Slaves of the
ONLY by luring or forcibly drafting between four and five million workers into his war factories has Hitler been able to maintain German war production for the fourth winter of war in Europe. He has had to make good his enormous losses on the Russian front.
A year ago Nazi propaganda was explaining how when Russia was “annihilated” all Europe would be organized by the Germans into one great region of economic “collaboration”. There would be assured trade and markets for all; of SEPTEMBER 18,1943
Herrenvolk
course under Nazi control. Big industrial leaders, especially among the French, swallowed these specious promises.
Today this make-believe has been dropped. Now it is openly admitted in Germany that the war is one for loot and lordship and that the (fherrenvolk” are to be the bosses of the continent whatever happens.
What it means to be the slaves of these bosses is told by some of those who have escaped recently. Enticed by handsome promises of good pay and good
food from their own starving and looted countries, they have spent six months or a year in Germany. When, as in the case of neutrals (Swedes and Portuguese, for instance), they have returned home, this is what they tell, according to reliable evidence reaching London:
i The Germans first lure them with flittering promises of high wages, good quarters and good food. If, as in France and Belgium, this does not bring the workers,-the factories are forcibly closed and the idle employees again offered jobs in Germany. In Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, workmen and workwomen are offered nothing. They are forcibly abducted and placed in Nazi factories, particularly in those the Royal Air Force is likely to bomb.
When a batch of volunteers for Germany leaves France, as some thousands have done, in search of work and food, they find themselves herded like cattle into trains. Their baggage is taken from them and is usually “missing” after customs inspection at the German frontier. Once inside Germany the Nazi guards throw off the mask of politeness and order the new arrivals about as roughly as if they were dogs. Anyone protesting is promptly arrested.
“Homes”, and “hostels” turn out to be dirty barracks. Food is inferior and ill-served. Washing is almost impossible, as there is no soap in Germany—only substitutes. If disillusioned poor folk repudiate their contracts of employment and try to return to their own countries, they find themselves unable to use the German money given them without special permission from the banks.
To keep order the Nazis employ blackguards, some with a criminal record. Over each group of workers in a factory is a spy-overseer, who imposes a fine for every small breach of the rules or error in workmanship. Husbands and wives, despite Nazi pledges to the contrary, are separated and the men sent to the Rhineland, where they run the risk of death by bombing.
German workers in a factory where foreigners are employed take care that the heaviest and dirtiest work is put upon them. Only the Germans who hate Hitler—and they are more numerous than is generally believed—behave decently to the newcomers. They explain how greatly they have suffered in food shortages, long hours of work, service in the army, loss of relatives by death in battle or in the bombed cities; and how they long for the war to end. But the spies are everywhere and they can do nothing.
A 10-hour working day is the rule in all factories. Holidays are impossible, as there is no transport. On rest days there is only the dirty barracks peopled by all the nationalities of Europe. Everyone fears to say what he thinks.
"To get out of Germany today,” says a returned Portuguese worker, "is like getting out of hell. It is better to kill oneself than to return there.”—A. C. Cummings, in Vancouver Daily Province, Nov. 23, 1942.
Look! Look! Look!
To the Editor [of Look]:
Generally speaking, one can always answer articles in your magazine that one disagrees with, and get by with it. In the past you have done a lot of good work for which you should be commended, such as attacking the Nazi spies, 12
and showing them up long before the war, and also showing up “Father Coughlin” to be the Jew-baiter and racketeer that he is, though I’ve wondered sometimes if a doubt ever came into your mind as to why the pope had never kicked the “Father" out of office, since it is a well-known fact even among
CONSOLATION
Catholics that his activities were not aboveboard.
However, after reading your article “Hitler's War against the Catholic Church”,1 I just have to let off some steam. Surely you don't believe all that, even though you print it. After all, you have access to a lot more information than most of us. Or do you see what’s coming and want to save your skin? Only you can answer that. But have some regard for the people and don't keep them in the dark. After all, news is for the interest, convenience, and necessity of the public.
Did you know that in 1940 several Catholic bishops in Chicago sent a letter to, the pope asking that he excommunicate Hitler, and that the said letter was ignored? Would the apostles have kept Judas in their midst after he betrayed Jesus? Even Liberty magazine once brought out that Hitler was a Catholic. In the Philadelphia Record I read an article by Fritz Thyssen (the Catholic who helped to put Hitler in power and later got kicked out for his trouble) in which he said: “Hitler, a born Catholic, was an admirer of the political sagacity of the Catholic Church, if we are to believe Mein Kampf. At the beginning of the regime, he endeavored to reach an agreement with the Church. He concluded a concordat with the Vatican. In this Vice-Chancellor von Papen was the moving spirit. The concordat was the first treaty concluded by the new regime,'-' A further quotation from the same article: “Germany’s new status will not be a mere reversion to the past. It will not mean a return to a sort of German federation or ‘Holy Roman Empire’ composed of tiny principalities. I can see but one solution: namely, that Catholic Germany should become a Catholic monarchy." ■ - ■
From the New York Journal American, of Monday, June 9, 1941, I quote: “Rome, June 9—(UP). An editorial in the Turin newspaper Stampa said today Germany and Italy are organizing a new European Order in conformity with the principles laid down in the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, to which Pope Pius called attention in his June 1st speech. Postwar Europe, the editorial said, will be a group of states whose national sentiments will be subordinated to a Greater Europe. The new order already is being placed in operation, it added.”
Grasped at a Straw
From the Philadelphia Daily News an article by James Chambers, dated from London, Dec. 1, 1942 (UP), is headlined as follows: “Nazis Woo Aid of Pope to Hold Italy in Line.” Also, from an article in the Philadelphia Record by Pierre Lazareff and Waverley Root, I quote the following: “Mussolini’s last straw of hope is the Vatican. He has been carrying on negotiations with the Holy See to use its moral influence with the Italian people to preserve the regime if its existence should be threatened by an unfavorable continuation of the war. Those negotiations are reported nearly concluded.”
Also, the (AP) of March 13, 1942, headlined, an article from Washington as follows: “The State Department has disclosed that it has made representations to the Vatican objecting to the establishment of relations between Japan and the Holy See, asked by Japan. A spokesman said the department’s communication was to inform the Vatican that this country’s attitude to such relations would be unfavorable and that they would be regarded with suspicion because Japan had no interest in Catholicism. The State Department believed that such a move was made solely to stir up trouble.” .
At the-time it happened it was in the newspapers where a Bishop Tiso personally went to see Hitler to hand over Slovakia to Germany. Bishop Tiso is how'the premier of said country and is .still a bishop of the Roman Catholic
Church. No wonder the Hierarchy has to print smokescreen articles such as the one in your magazine, or the people over here will get wise to the fact that they Really love the dictator type of govern. ment as was- stated in the Associated k Press article of July 18,1940, (from the i Philadelphia Record) “Vatican’s At-4 titude Pleases Germany — Statement
Galled Favorable Toward Totalitarian Rule. Vatican City, July 18 (AP). Praise in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano recently for ‘Good Marshal’ Henri Philippe Petain, chief of the new French State, attracted the attention of diplomats here in view of the Vatican’s previous attitude toward totalitarian regimes. Authorities decline to comment on the newspaper’s observations [they always refuse to clarify things simply] which included a statement that the ‘principle of authority’ is higher than the human will,” (And here I add that this means you must obey the orders of the Hierarchy whether you want to or not.) To further quote from the same article: “German foreign office circles expressed marked satisfaction today over what they regarded as a complete about-face by the Vatican in its position toward totalitarian states.”
Here’s a wireless printed in the New York Times from Berne, Switzerland, Oct. 5,1942: “Emanuel Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, issued in the name of the Church yesterday an appeal to the people to support with frank and complete loyalty the government of Henri Philippe Petain. The Archbishop of Toulouse in a statement reaffirms his loyalty to Marshal Petain.” As most everyone now knows, Petain, Laval and others had already cooked up a deal to sell France down the river, and this is supported by many columnists such as Drew Pearson, Robert S. Allen, H. R. Knickerbocker and others. I could here give many quotations from their articles which I have before me, but it seems that it should be such a well-known fact
by now that it would be useless to state it over and over again. - ': .
The Associated Press headlines an article from Dublin, Eire, September 27, 1942, as follows; “Cardinal Assails Allied Troops in Northern Ireland.” “The partition of Ireland,” he said, “was a flagrant and intolerable injustice against Catholics doomed to live under the narrow and unjust domination of the Belfast Parliament and executive.”
I even have one picture from your magazine (I don’t know which issue) with these words under the picture of a German church in Brazil: “Propaganda from the pulpits of German churches in Brazil reached such a height that authorities forbade sermons in German. Knowing. that priests and pastors had the respect or the people, Hitler’s agents won many of them with free visits to the Fatherland.” ■
From Havana, Cuba, November 10, 1942, the (UP) reports the execution or a Nazi spy there and states; “As he crossed the firing line Luning kissed a cross held up by one of the priests and was embraced by the priest, Father Angel Reyes.”
The (AP) of December 15, 1942, reported from Detroit that “Father Glighaerie Moraru and Father Stephan Opreanu, Rumanian Orthodox priests, indicted by a federal grand jury last month on charges they refused to register as agents of a foreign power, were released on bonds of $10,000 each today.”
Philadelphia Record—New York Times Foreign Service—reports an interesting item from Rome, June 16, 1940, part of which I here quote: "Monsignor Carlo Margotti, Archbishop of Gorizia, in a pastoral letter today urged the Italian people and clergy to obey and trust Premier Mussolini in the war which he is waging for the welfare of the Italian people.” So far the letter has not appeared in Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper. .(This in ease the winds don’t blow favorably; then they can always go the other way.) The
archbishop is quoted as urging all Italians “to lift our reverent thoughts to the [then] ever victorious King and Emperor and to the [then] undefeated Duce, to whom we have entrusted the fate of our armies and of the whole nation—may God always bless and protect them”.
Here's just one more from the Philadelphia Record, Tuesday, September 17, 1940: "Vatican City, Sept. 16.—D.N.B., official Nazi news agency, announced Aug. 27th that a pledge of loyalty to Adolf Hitler adopted by the Catholic bishops at Fulda would be read from the pulpits after the war." (DNB claimed the pledge would say that the Church in Germany was “indebted to German troops for the [then] victorious advance, and that without the successful warding off of enemy invasion by German Armed Forces German Catholics could not have pursued so quietly and undisturbed their church work and ministerial duties". At the head of the article you see the same old dope, as follows: “The letter was submitted to the Vatican for approval last month. Very little has leaked out about the Conference because of the Vatican’s reticence in disclosing information, and there is still great curiosity in German Catholic circles. It is believed the Vatican has refused to sanction the releasing of the letter because of the war, [Not knowing for sure that totalitarianism would win, in other words.] It was pointed out the Holy See thought it was better to avoid any official pronouncement until the end of the war, which will, presumably, permit the Vatican to ascertain what will be the attitude of the German Government toward Catholicism in general and German Catholics in particular.”
Strictly Taboo
Of course, Mr. Editor, you couldn’t print this letter. [Nor did he.—Editor of Consolation] If you did, you would no longer have a Look magazine; and that in itself is proof of the fact that there SEPTEMBER 16,1M3 is no freedom of the press when the Hierarchy is involved, and the subject immediately becomes controversial when a taboo, like disagreeing with them, comes up. Yet all the statements quoted herein are from mostly Catholic-owned papers and by Catholics,—articles that have slipped through from time to time. None of the quotations are my own. It is to refute these slip-ups that articles such as the one now appearing in Look have come out.
All this is proof of the fact that the truth is at the bottom; for no organization minds in the least being attacked when they know it can be refuted.
Recently the Federal Council of Churches got up enough courage to register a weak protest that in all the talks about “Peace with Justice” after the war they were left more or less out of the picture (as they have been for years).
Look at the movies, you’ll find a fat priest trying to look sanctimonious in every one of them. One has only to read history, or an encyclopedia, to find out that their appearance is only a cloak.
As to the persecution of the Jews, Hitler only copied the Hierarchy. For example, Pope Innocent III, and Pius V, both decreed that the Jews should be expelled out of their midst and Christians shouldn’t marry them; also, they should be marked with certain signs, etc.
For years Jehovah’s witnesses have been telling the people these things, showing religion to be the racket that it is, and that God’s Kingdom is the only real hope of the people.—Daniel 2: 44.
Your magazine, along with hundreds of others, has assailed them and painted them as rabid fanatics, etc., because they have courage enough to tell the truth and take the consequences; which very few editors and newspapers do, because of being afraid of the powerful Hierarchy. Remember that Jesus was killed by religionists because He exposed them.—H. L. Stamps, Pennsylvania. [Written January 1,1943]
t ■ ■
i
Why Must the Perfect One Die?
THE Son of God, on earth as a perfect
Man, died, being “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”. (John 1:29) In the eyes of those that stood by at the death scene He died as a sinner, nailed to a tree between thieves, under the charge of disloyalty to the worldly political powers, yet wholly innocent, harmless, and without sin. (Hebrews 7:26) Yet, thereby, He fulfilled what the prophet of God had foretold of Him long in advance, in that He “poured out his. soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many.”—Isaiah 53:12.
Why should the great, the good, the pure, the sinless Man die in such an ignominious manner as this? Was there no other means whereby man could gain life ? Sacred Scripture answers that there is no other way whereby man could get life. Due to his sin divine justice demanded the life of the perfect man Adam and took that life. Divine justice could receive nothing as a substitute for the sacrificed perfect human life except the life of a perfect human creature. Adam was sentenced to destruction because he was a willful sinner and rebelled against God. The one who would redeem the life right which Adam lost for all his offspring must die, without sin though appearing as a sinner. All this Jesus did, at Calvary.
It is important to examine this reason for Jesus’ coming to earth, growing to manhood’s estate, and dying. Speaking the words of Jesus beforehand, the psalmist-prophet said: “Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart,” (Psalm 40: 7, 8; Hebrews 10: 7-10) Thus we see He came to do God’s will, the primary part of which was to vindicate Jehovah’s name; and the secondary part, to redeem obedient humankind. There-, fore Jesus said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”—John 10:10.
Speaking concerning His church of spiritual Israelites, Jesus likened His humanity to bread. He said: “I am that bread of life. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” (John 6: 48, 50, 55, 57) By this we understand that Jesus gave up His human life in order that the value thereof might be presented to divine justice in heaven as the great ransom price. To eat means to partake of food to satisfy hunger and live. He who hungers for righteousness and partakes of the value of Jesus’ sacrifice by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and doing the Father’s will, that one will gain-life and will thus satisfy his hunger. The apostle Paul makes it clear that Jesus’ death was for the benefit of all believing and obedient men, when he wrote: “The man Christ Jesus . . . gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” “Jesus ... by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”—-1 Timothy 2: 5, 6; Hebrews 2:9.
“Sin is the transgression of the law.” (1 John 3: 4) “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6: 23) Adam transgressed the divine law, and this penalty of death came upon him, and all his offspring were born under condemnation and without right to life. Jesus the perfect Man permitted His life to be taken that it might be used to redeem for the believing and obedient ones of Adam’s offspring the forfeited life-right, that they might
have a full opportunity to acquire eternal life. Hence His perfect human life was made an offering' for sin, or a sin-offering- .
Many centuries ago Jehovah God foreshadowed this great transaction, and this adds to the importance of it. In fact, without the sacrifice of Jesus it would have been impossible for any of the human race ever to live at all. Looking back, then, at the typical picture of Israel’s yearly atonement day described at Leviticus, chapter 16, we see that the bullock and the Lord’s goat slain on that day of sacrifice pictured Jesus the perfect man at the age of thirty years when He was baptized. That day the area of the court surrounding the tabernacle or temple pictured the condition of perfect humanity acceptable to God. Therefore the bullock and the Lord’s goat slain in the court foreshadowed or pictured the fact that the perfect man Jesus died on earth in that condition as a perfect man. By His death He provided the ransom price. He did this to carry out His Father Jehovah’s purpose. •'
After the bullock was slain its blood was put into a vessel and the high priest carried it therein into the inner sanctuary, or Most Holy, of the tabernacle, where it was sprinkled before the mercy seat of the sacred ark of the covenant. The same thing was done later with the blood of the Lord’s goat. The high priest’s appearance with the blood in the Most Holy pictures Christ Jesus the High Priest, resurrected to life divine, appearing in heaven itself in the presence of God, there to present the merit of His sacrifice as the sin-offering on behalf of humankind.—Hebrew’s 9: 24.
The Scriptures clearly show that Jesus is the antitypical bullock for His church and the antitypical Lord’s goat for believing humans who receive life on earth under God’s kingdom. “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” He “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the W'ili SEPTEMBER 15, 1543 of God and our Father”. God “hath made him to be sin [a sin-offering] for us, who knew no sin pthat we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”—1 Corinthians 15: 3; Galatians 1:4; 2 Corinthians' 5: 21; Bomans 8:3.
The law and its ceremonies that' God gave to the Israelites merely foreshadowed what great things Christ Jesus would do.—Hebrew’s 10:1 ; 8: 5.
Back there in the type, the slaying of the bullock and Lord’s goat and the carrying of their blood into the Most Holy as a sin-offering foreshadowed the fact that the remission of humankind’s sins could be accomplished only through the blood of the perfect sacrifice. “Without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins]. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with [blood of] these; ‘ but the heavenly things themselves wdth better sacrifices than these.” (Hebrews 9: 22, 23) The patterns here referred to are the tabernacle, w’hich pictured the heavenly condition; and the high priest’s entrance into the Most Holy thereof with the victims’ blood pictured Christ Jesus entering heaven above. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” —Hebrews 9:24.
When Jesus died at Calvary He provided the sin-offering or ransom price, because His was the death of a perfect . human exactly corresponding with the perfect humanity of Adam. Adam’s death, how’ever, w’as the result of a forfeited right to live. Jesus’ death was a sacrifice. Adam became a sinner and died such. Jesus remained perfect, holy, and w’ithout sin; and while He died on the tree, yet by His death He did not forfeit the right to live as a human creature. By dying He reduced His perfect human life to an asset that might thereafter, be presented to God to be used to release believing and faithful humans from the death due to Adam.
t)id Jesus Mean What He Said?
And when thon prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the comers of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward [gratified vanity]. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, . pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall
t reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do.
—Matthew 6: 5-7.
IN VIEW of the above statements of
Jesus Christ, the Son of Almighty God, what would you think of the information that in an American city one of the most prominent ecclesiastics in the whole world used an altar 102 feet long by 54 feet wide and 53 feet high, and that in the same city a priest made the sign of the cross 51- times at one performance!
…