Consolation, January 31, 1945

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Contents

When Hitler Lost the War

The Invisible Bridge

En Route to Stalingrad

“Demon Obsession Manifest

The Russians Wish to Live

Liberation of France

, Collaborationists

I Business as Usual

‘Who Discovered Brazil?

- “Thy Word Is Truth”

Why the Righteous Suffer

(Ine Way to Find the Sheep

Good News from Ohio

Industrious, Liberty-loving Belgium

.Nonviolent Treatment of the Insane

California’s Superlative Weather

Why Should the Church "Wish to Be a

Political State?

The Statue Turned Black—Maybe

Archbishop Spellman and the Pope

■ Watchtower “Saleswomen”

Out for the First Time

John Chrysostom—Golden-mouthed and

Golden-hearted

Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”

Practical Illustrations of Bodies of

Talks (Part One)

Babooning Southward

Published every other Wednesday by WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, INC> 117 Adams St., Brooklyn 1. N. Y„ U. 8. A.

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In Brief

The Communist bogeyman

♦ Most persons are familiar with the scriptures which say of the early church that “all that believed were together, and had all things -common’' (Acts 2:44), and that “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.”—Acts 4: 32.

Now that the Russian people have tried the same experiment, and have given it up, and it is no longer an issue anywhere in the world, maybe a few things can be said on the tremendous propaganda against Communism which was waged by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Why did they do it?

The answer is simple. The Hierarchy is for itself first, last, and all the time, and for the common people never, at any time. It always sides with the aristocracy if there is one; it sides with those that have the money, if there are such; it sides with those that have power, and never with the underdog. This is true in Spain, Argentina, and in every other country. In Germany Will Try It Again, page 151, Sigrid Schultz explains:

If ever hypocrisy profited by gullibility on a gigantic scale, German hypocrisy did in rearming behind the general, blinding fear of Communism in the rest of the world. Behind, too, the allied fear that if pushed too far, the defeated colossus of Germany would join with the revolutionary colossus of Soviet Russia. Back of this curtain of fear, the Germans worked with impunity.

Quite probably the entire campaign of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy against Communism was to give Germany a chance to rearm and make its second attempt to grab the world.' All the Big Business crowd and all the Allied governments knew what Germany was doing in its armament factories while the pope was shrieking against Communism.

consolation

CONSOLATION

“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A.jS'.F.

Volume XXV Brooklyn, N. Y„ Wednesday, January 31, 1945 Number 662

When Hitler Lost the War

Adolf Hitler, Jesuit-trained, vyis making rapid progress toward the re-establishment of the “Holy Roman Empire”. He, and his fellow Jesuits, had destroyed the German republic shortly after he became chancellor, January 30, 1933. They destroyed the Austrian republic when he entered Vienna, March 12, 1938. They destroyed the Czechoslovak republic when he entered Prague, October 1, 1938. They destroyed the Spanish republic when their man Franco entered Madrid, March 28, 1939. They destroyed the Polish republic when their armies entered Warsaw, September 27, 1939. They destroyed the French republic when they entered Paris, June 14, 1940.

They lost the war, however (except as the pope may be able to induce a negotiated peace), when they invaded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, June 22, 1941. For Hitler it was a fatal error. The Muscovite republic, with its area of 8,819,791 square miles, and its population of 192,695,710, is the largest country in the world, having, as it does, one-sixth of earth's land surface. It embraces almost every climate, many and great rivers, every mineral and other natural resource, almost every variety of timber, every character of cereal, vegetable and fruit lands. It has the stupendous total of 1,037,400,000 acres suitable for cultivation, of which one-eighth is under cultivation. It contains 49 recognized nationalities.

Except for the bellowings of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the plutocrat press the United States has always gotten along nicely with Russia.

This may be quickly discerned from the

census of 1940, wherein the birthplaces

of foreign-born citizens were shown thus:

Italy

1,623,580

Germany

1,237,772

Canada

1,044,119

Russia

1,040,884

Poland

993,479

Ireland

678,447

England

621,975

Things He Didn’t Know

Since he lost the war Hitler has complained that he did not know Russia was so well prepared to meet his attack. The reason why he did not know what was going on was that there were virtually no Roman Catholic priests in the country to keep him posted. Now all the world is aware that in ten years the output of Soviet industry has shown a sixfold increase. The state industries, which include all of the most important enterprises, account for more than 99.97 percent of the total industrial output of the country. The government drafts annually about 1,000,000 youths for industrial training, after which they work for the state for four consecutive years. There are 243,000 collective farms, operated by 18,800,000 households. That makes about 77 families, or, say, 400 persons, to a farm.

The Russians have a penchant for getting along with each other. Is there anything wrong about that? A few years ago Big Business, prodded along by Big Church, would have screamed “Bolshevism” clear across the top of the paper, in letters three inches high, if one had even dared to ask the question. Now they meekly admit that in the production of iron ore in 1938, the last year for which the figures are available, the largest producers were as follows:

France 32,600,000 long tons

United States 28,400,000 long tons

'' Russia 26,000,000 long tons

jA.ll others together 74,000,000 long tons ' In t£e productibn of manganese in the same year Russia yielded 2,273,000 - metric tons out of a world total of - 5,200,000 tons.*

. Within two years from the time Hitler hopped into Russia Uncle Sam had also arrived with $2,444,000,000 in lend-lease materials of all kinds, including plenty of 32-ounce kersey overcoating and overcoats for the Russian soldiers, and these had more to do with defeating the Germans on the cold eastern front than can be quickly imagined. It was one good-natured giant backing up another in a fight for the liberty of both.

The Disarmament Conference

Several years ago, and, no doubt, you remember it well, there was a disarmament conference at Geneva. At that conference Maxim Litvinoff, now Soviet ambassador at Washington, but then acting as spokesman for the Russian people, made the suggestion that all the . armies and navies be disbanded. The proposal was sneered at and treated with contempt by International Murderers, Inc., who longed for the world to be once again where it is now. .

After that conference the Russians trained a million youths in topography and map reading, a million and a half in the care of horses, and many thousands in the care of airplanes. They taught five million housekeepers, factory workers, school children and collectivist farmers how to put on gas masks, how to degasify rooms, how to gather debris after bomb explosions and how to extinguish fires started by incendiary bombs. The OGPU knew what was coming, and so did Stalin. That is why he offered to stand by Czechoslovakia when Chamberlain backed up International Murderers, Inc., at Munich. They divided Russia into eight industrial units, and six of the eight units they put in Asia, so as to have as much as possible to fall back on when the Germans should go over the top eastward.

Finally the Germans came, but there were Russians in every forest and on every hilltop. As the tanks came along they were met with a barrage of bottles filled with benzine, with stoppers of tow or raw cotton soaked in the same fluid. With two bottles, one aimed at the front and one at the rear, and with the stoppers lighted just before they were thrown, a single Russian infantry battalion claims to have destroyed 100 tanks in a month, by putting the motor out of action or exploding the fuel tank.

The Germans got within twenty miles of Moscow but never arrived. They were stopped by a flaming barrier of hay, straw and other combustibles. No soldier wants to walk into a huge fire; and they didn’t. Hitler was honest enough to admit that his men had run into unexpected and immeasurable difficulties, and that the Russians had far more equipment than he had imagined.

The Invisible Bridge

One of the reasons why the Germans left several million men in Russia is that they were met with a combination of courage, resourcefulness and determination seldom equaled. An illustration of this was the successful building of an invisible bridge within 150 yards of German sentries, enabling tanks to cross a river and open an offensive where least expected. The bridge, with its top two feet under water, was put together at night by men standing chest deep in freezing water, and without the sound of a hammer. It takes a combination of brains and grit to do a thing like that.

After the Stalingrad siege was lifted, resulting in a loss to the Germans of 500,000 men and an immense booty in planes, tanks, guns, rifles, trucks and railroad cars, the Cossacks began riding again, and as they were in their home land, and are at home in the saddle, they made the retreat back across Russia a terrible experience for the disheartened Germans. Often the Cossacks rode 100 miles in a day to strike their blows. They penetrated where other troops could not go. In one instance 118 tanks were surrendered to the cavalry at one time. Tn 140 days after the retreat started the Russians drove the Germans back 435 miles, regained 185,328 square miles of territory and, when winter came, were halfway from Stalingrad to Berlin. It is best not to chase a bear into his den unless you have decided what to do if he turns around and starts in the other direction.

The CIO News reports that most of the workers in Russian factories are women; that they are flocking into the factories, freight yards and repair shops of railroads and steamers in astonishing numbers, and with a good degree of adaptability to their new duties as well.

The London Lancet tells how the Russian nurses have stood up to their job. They have helped to build hospitals, cut down trees, square timbers, make window frames, and dig foundations. The British surgeons marveled when they were taken to a forest, were passed through an entrance, and at length found themselves in a thousand-bed hospital with trees projecting through the roof. Most of this was the work of nurses.

En Route to Stalingrad

At Taganrog, when the Germans arrived on their way to Stalingrad, a woman bookkeeper volunteered to show the German commandant and his staff the best house in town. They moved into a well-furnished house for the night, and during that night the house was blown up, the 50 officers were buried in the wreckage, and the woman escaped.

At both Kiev and Odessa, just before the Germans came in, the Russians planted time bombs, with fatal results to those who were present when they exploded. At Kiev fires were started which demolished twTenty blocks in the center of the city, and at Odessa a single bomb killed fifty Axis army and navy officers. German officials expressed the belief that the bombs were exploded by radio impulses, which is not improbable. This would seem extremely likely to be the case in Odessa, where the bomb exploded four days after the Russians had removed from the city every man, woman and child, and every piece of military or industrial equipment that could be of any value to an invading army. By the way, the evacuation of Odessa in that manner on the single day of October 16, 1942, was in itself a very remarkable occurrence.

In their retreat eastward the Soviet armies destroyed all waterworks, electric power stations and factories. Bridges, railways, houses and entire villages were obliterated in a belt sixty miles wide. The Germans found it almost impossible to get fuel to the front. The Russians let the tanks pass, then killed the drivers and set fire to the fuel. Some 37,000,000 fled with the Russian armies toward the Urals and the Volga. As the great dam at Dnepropetrovsk was blown up there were 3,500 around it trying to cross and follow the army; all these were killed by the explosion. The flood which followed raised the Water level of the Dnieper river fifteen feet, and this took the lives of 6,500 more.

When the Russians withdrew from Smolensk they left behind them only 20,000 people in what had been a city of 160,000 population. Fully ninety percent of the buildings had been reduced to smoking ruins. There were numerous instances in which bombers loaded an old plane with dynamite and sent it head on into the target. The bomber, of course, was killed with the explosion which followed the impact, but there is no way of standing off such an attack.

In the first three months of the invasion the Germans lost a million men a month.

The Soviet Palace, which was to have been 115 feet taller than the Empire Sjtate building, was demolished because the iron which would have been used in its construction was needed for the war. '■The Palace was to have had at its top a fe25-foot figure of Lenin, and thus would have been an idol on a stupendous scale. It is best that the thing'was never built.

' Could Not Endure the Cold

As the Germans got farther into ’Russia they found that they could not endure the cold. The Hamburger Frem-denblatt acknowledged that the German soldiers had endured hardships exceeding anything previously experienced; supply columns were unable to reach the front-line troops; the soldiers lost weight and many of them, reached a state of physical and mental collapse.

Not only could the soldiers not endure weather 57 degrees below zero, but before the roads froze up they were in such condition from the rains that automobiles went in to their hubs and could be pulled out only by teams of six to eight oxen. This called for more food, which they could not spare. But when one is out to rob his neighbor’s house, one cannot be too particular about how much it costs to get there.

In the effort to make the withdrawal from Russia palatable to the German people, who have been brought to ruin by this Jesuit misadventure, a German broadcast before the withdrawal made this statement:

Gray is the country, gray is the sky, everything gray and empty. With its aspect of forlornness, the whole country is frightening. The road to Moscow resembles one vast soaked sponge along which men, horses and lorries slog along painfully and strenuously, Slowly they move, dragging themselves step by step. Time after time they are bogged down. This is Russia. ”

But the country which looked so forbidding to the Germans looks good >to those who make it their home and who are fighting for the right to live-along the lines of the four freedoms without asking any permits from either Hitler or Pacelli. An American officer who acted as an observer reports the patience of the Russian soldier as boundless; notes his endurance, good humor under hardship, capacity for fighting on an empty stomach and under difficulties, and his steadiness under defeat and adversity. Like other soldiers, the Russians need good officers, but they never get panic-stricken, and they can stand the cold better than any other soldiers on earth.

Massacres of Civilians

In the fall of 1942, when the German invasion of Russia was under way, Prime Minister Churchill, in an address in Edinburgh, Scotland, said that the Germans shot 54,000 civilians, men, women and children, the day they entered Kiev. Readers, that is not war. That is demonism. That, is the foretold loosing of the demons among men in the last days of Satan’s empire on earth. And, without a question in the world, every regiment of Hitler’s soldiers that engaged in such devilish work had a “chaplain” along to encourage and bless the murderers. Mr. Churchill is usually very careful about his statements. In his book World Crisis, volume 4, page 75, written before this war, he is alleged to have said, by way of emphasizing the coming deluge;

The Bolshevist "Red Lords” of Russia have killed: 28 bishops, 1,219 priests, 6,000 professional teachers, 9,000 doctors, 12,950 landowners, 54,000 officers, 70,000 policemen, 193,000 workingmen, 260,000 soldiers, 355,250 intellectuals and professional men, 815,000 peasants. ■

Fourteen months after Mr. Churchill made his declaration that on their way into Russia the Germans had, in the single city of Kiev, shot 54,000 civilians, including women and children, the Russians hanged four criminals in Kharkov for such crimes committed in that city. It is probable that the confessions which these men made before they were hanged were extorted by prison methods which reflect no credit upon those who obtained them,.but, anyway, here is what these men said just before they were executed:

Mikhail Petrovich Bulanov, Russian chauffeur for the German Gestapo, testified that sick and starving children were mowed down with automatic guns as they cried, “Daddy, don't kill us, we want to live.” Russian children commonly address strangers as “daddy”.

Police Corporal Reinhold Ratzlaw testified that he participated in the beating of Russians and in such tortures as pulling hair out of the men’s beards and sticking pins into the women; and he also operated an automobile in which Russians were put to death from carbon monoxide gas. He estimated 35,000 killed in Kharkov city and province in this manner; 35,000 at Kiev; 8,000 at Zhitomir; 4,000 at Lubni. He declared that in what he did he was carrying out the orders of his chiefs.

Hans Ritz, Nazi storm trooper, testified that he helped falsify documents which led to the execution of hundreds of innocent Russians, and that he himself, in fulfillment of his orders, took a gun and fired into the people. This information is in an Associated Press dispatch from London, published in the Baltimore Sun, admittedly the most honest newspaper in the United States.

Demon Obsession Manifest

Another five months passed by and in May, 1944, came a report, published in the New York Times, of matters of which the Soviet Academy of Scientists took, note when, as physicians, or otherwise, they re-entered the cities from which the Germans had been expelled. As you read, ask yourself, Are these things the work of soldiers, or are they the work of demons, devils, that have taken possession of the minds and bodies of humans that have yielded themselves, as have Hitler and his associates, to their full control?

At Arteinovsk, in pursuance of the planned extermination of the population of occupied territories, the head of the public health department forbade the townspeople to send food to prisoners * of war dying of starvation in his hospital, and when withdrawal became necessary nineteen public health centers of all sorts, including a children’s hospital, a children’s tuberculosis sanatorium, an infants’ home and eleven nurseries, were blown up.

At Stalino and four other Russian cities all medical schools and research institutions were plundered and destroyed.

At Kremenchug camp for prisoners of war the food was purposely kept beneath the starvation level, so that the mortality rate from exhaustion and starvation was 300 a day. At this same camp twenty-one Russian physicians were stripped to their underclothes and forced to dig a pit. The filth from the camp latrines was then poured into the pit, and then the physicians themselves were driven into the pit and shot. In this camp, at another time, another Russian physician, Dr. Bulochnik, was beaten, his arms broken, his eyes gouged out with a pen, and his pelvis broken; this was done by Dr. Orland, the head doctor of the prisoners’ war camp.

Have You Had Enough?

Have you had enough to convince you that the Devil and the demons are loose, antj that they will stop at nothing? There is plenty more. At one time, in the same camp, eighty prisoners of war were shot, among them two university teachers. All the Jewish doctors in the occupied regions were shot.

Especially devilish was the job done at the village of Gastogayevskaya. There the German police detained forty children, all of them under thirteen years of age, and pumped all the blood out

■ of them for their use in blood banks. Of course, all the children died. If you were a wounded soldier, dying for such devils as Hitler and his cronies, would you • want to live if you knew that some little boy or little girl had been robbed of life for you in such an unspeakably s-eontemptible and horrible manner?

• j At Orel seventeen men were poisoned v with mustard gas, then hospitalized and frequently photographed so that, when the stage of gas warfare is reached, . "■ there will be at hand scientific data to

1 know how it is to be conducted to get

‘the most vicious results.

The Information Bulletin, of 8 or 16 pages, published three times weekly by ‘ the Russian Embassy at Washington, . gives endless information on, this horrible' subject. From these, two paragraphs are selected from recent issues:

In the two and one-half years of German occupation 25,000 persons were shot or starved to death in Nikolayev. They were buried in common graves. Eyewitnesses state that about three months ago the Hitlerites tried to cover up their crimes. They opened up the graves, dragged out the bodies, poured petrol on them and set them on fire. For an entire month the heavy smell of burning flesh hung over the eity. Then the fascists shot all hostages and prisoners who had been forced to do this work.

About 40,000 civilians were put to death by the Gestapo [at Krivoi Rog]; they were shot in gullies outside the town, near the coal pits and around the brick-kilns. Others were sent to Germany or left to rot in concentration camps. A large eamp for war prisoners was set up in the military area. Here behind two rows of barbed-wire Red army men and civilians were herded into dirty, ramshackle barracks. No medical help for the sick and wounded was available. Hunger, festering wounds, and filthy rags giving no protection against the cold brought slow death to them.

The Russians Wish to Live

The Russians wish to live, and they would be more than human if they failed

to resent such things as just narrated. If you were a Russian, how would you have felt if you discovered the following document, which was found at Bryansk!—

Order No. 15, Headquarters of the Hungarian Group of Occupation Troops. Indenti-fication marks for Soviet War Prisoners. Escaping Soviet war prisoners frequently discard their identification marks, thus rendering identification as Soviet prisoners impossible. To prevent this, the general staff of the German armed forces has ordered that the design of a sloping cross be burned on the underside of the left arm of the prisoner with lunar caustic.

The Russians have lots of friends in the Balkans, and when they came to the Carpathians their friends within the German lines lit a chain of beacons that guided them to the passes through which lay their access to the Hungarian plains beyond.

Radio heckling has become a fine art. Some Russian who speaks German perfectly stands at attention when Goebbels or some other German propagandist puts out his product over the radio. The Russian knows the exact wave length of the station to which he is listening. At length the German speaker pauses for breath, and the instant he does so the listener is astonished to hear the comment, ‘Tt’s all lies!” or .“Do you expect people to believe that!” or “This fairy tale will be continued tomorrow” or some other equally devastating comment. The result is that the listeners of the Berlin broadcasts do not know what to believe; but they did not know it anyway, even before the new system of interruption and heckling was installed.

The German noise gun turned out to be a flop. The soldiers facing the Nazi troops soon got to know the difference between real noise of battle and the same sounds when tremendously amplified and put on phonograph records. Moreover, the German soldiers were affected adversely by these tremendous noises put forth in their midst. The actual noise of

battle is enough to quail the stoutest heart. It has been observed that frightened dogs find the noise so terrifying that they often jump into rivers and swim across them to get away from such devilish environment.

Stalin Is a Capable Man

Stalin is a capable man. True, he studied for the priesthood, because he wanted an education; but that was the only way he could obtain it. He never helped to operate the religious racket. He knows when to act. He dissolved the Comintern at the right time. Everything in a sixth of the world belongs to the people as a whole. That is enough to satisfy any man, for a while at least. Through Orlemanski, after he had re-established the Russian Orthodox Church, he played hide-and-seek with the pope. No politician today leaves the biggest political racket entirely untouched, and Stalin as a politician is as clever as Churchill or Roosevelt.

The smartest thing Stalin did as a politician was to solemnly announce to the world that hereafter the sixteen republics that go to make up Soviet Russia shall each raise its own army units and deal directly with other countries. By that adroit move the Finns, Letts, Poles and others have their fears dispelled, and feel as safe as Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand feel in relation to the British Commonwealth of Nations, or as the 48 states feel with respect to the United States.

At Teheran Stalin offered the toast:

Without American production, the United Nations could never have won the war.

Long before that, and a month before Pearl Harbor, Stalin startled his guests at a banquet in Moscow, at which British and American guests were present, when he raised his glass for a toast to President Roosevelt and said:

May God help him in his task.

In the following address Stalin gives in temperate language a statement of why the Jesuits have lost out in their plans to grab the world:

There can be no doubt that the idea of defense of one’s country, for the sake of which our people are fighting, must produce and is actually producing in our army heroes who are cementing the Red army, whereas the idea of seizure and plunder of a foreign country, for the sake of which the Germans are actually waging war, must give rise and actually is giving rise in the German army to professional robbers deprived of any moral principles and the deterioration of the German army.

Secondly, advancing inland • into our country, the German army is getting far away from the German rear, is compelled to act in hostile surroundings, is compelled to create a new rear in a foreign country, which, moreover, is being undermined by our partisans, who are utterly disorganizing the supplies to the German army. This compels it to fear its own rear and kills its faith in the firmness of its position, at a time when our army, operating in its native surroundings, enjoys the uninterrupted support of its rear, is ensured of its supply of man power, munitions and foodstuffs and is firmly confident in its rear. That is why our army has turned out to be stronger than the Germans expected, and the German army weaker than could have been supposed judging from the boastful publicity of the German invaders.

70,000 Tons of Hurricane Apples

WHEN the hurricane that hit Brooklyn September 14, 1944, went through Massachusetts a few hours later, it blew 70,000 tons of apples off the trees at Littleton, 32 miles west of Boston. But

JANUARY 31, 1845

New Englanders are frugal and industrious. In jig time those apples were cider; and New Englanders enjoy fresh cider, even if a hurricane does help to make it.

r.

Liberation, of France

WHEN the dawn broke over France on the morning of January 1,1944, it'was to the masses of her people just another dark day. Not because the feternal sun of our heavens failed to beam forth with its usual splendor, but rather because the thick clouds of the > Conqueror hung so heavily over those once free people. For more than three 'r ~~ years now this pall of slavish darkness i had covered the land. And, with the com-jng in of a new year with still no sign of deliverance from under the brutal totalitarian yoke, surely it must have seemed to the French people to be an exceptionally dark New Year’s Day.

It is impossible to describe the hardships and sweat, the toil and tears, the sorrow and suffering that these people of France had experienced. How long would their bodies ache from lack of the necessary things of life? Not many of her children over five years of age had milk, and as a whole the children . were attaining only 65 percent of their normal growth. Exorbitant prices due to the black market were the common thing. Shoes selling as high as 3,000 francs ($60) were things not uncommon. How long would their minds be fed on the husks of foreign propaganda? Paper used by the daily pre§s had shrunk from 300,000 tons in 1939 to 60,000 tons in 1944. How long would they groan under the cruel tortures of the German inquisition? Family life was far from normal for some 800,000 French civilians. Fathers and sons had been drafted and deported to work in Germany. The question that was muttered .under the breath of every freedom-loving Frenchman was, “How long before liberation comes?”

No answer to these questions was heard for six months, until the explosions on the shores of Normandy, June 6. Events then moved fast, and it appeared to many that it would be but a question of weeks and France would again live and breathe as the free democracy she for four long years had hoped to be.

Four-Year Cost

Totalitarian rule is expensive. The cost that France paid in indemnities for the support of such oppressive rule, as computed by the New York Times (October 29, 1944), is staggering.

The French Government paid Germany and Italy a war indemnity totaling 946,000,000,000 francs ($18,920,000,000 at the present rate of exchange) during the four years of occupation, official estimates revealed today, an amount nearly six times as great as the total expenditures of the nation in World War I.

Even a high percentage of the locomotives and rolling stock of railroads' were requisitioned by the Germans and used in its campaigns in Russia. France, once a strong nation, had been weakened with sickness and death. Some figures on this appeared in the New York Times (June 15, 1944):

A year ago deaths from tuberculosis were up 60 percent' over prewar levels. Doctors recorded that manual workers were below prewar weights by twenty to thirty pounds. One-third of the school children made no gain in weight in a year. Newborn babies weighed an average of less than six pounds. Since 1940 deaths have exceeded births by three or four times the prewar rate of 35,000.

The blood-chilling atrocities committed against the helpless French will never be itemized, but can be summed up by counting the graves of those unfortunate men and women who were executed-—75,000 or more!

Invasion of France

The invasion of France by the Allied armies had a twofold purpose. First, the driving out of the demonic Nazi hordes, and, second, the alleviating of both the mental and physical agonies of the French people. The prosecution of the primary purpose progressed with the landings on the shores of France. The surge of battle quickly passed from west to east over that country. But it left in its wake a deplorable condition among the French populace. With inflation and black-market bandits robbing and pillaging the people on every hand, the struggle for existence continued. Francis Aldbam, writing in the Vancouver Daily Province (October 27,1944), says:

Inflation in France was started and deliberately encouraged by the Germans of the occupation. It was already rampant in Paris when the Provisional Government moved in. None knew better than the German that it is easier to start inflation than to stop it. Overcrowded Paris is today a fertile breeding ground of speculators and black marketeers. . . . Food and clothes and the simple comforts are disappearing from the markets as soon as they are placed on sale. One orange or a gallon of gasoline will command a price equivalent to $1.50. Cigarettes are anything up to $4 a packet. Until there are enough of these to go ’round, the black market will flourish, especially when the people have no faith in the value of their currency.

Another thing that aggravated the money situation was the fact that the Nazis before leaving flooded France with phoney American money bearing on it the forged signature of Morgenthau.

This chaotic financial condition, however, in no way affected the money-men of France, the high financiers. Seldom does such bracket of society suffer either under democratic or totalitarian rule. Why? Because they are always “patriotic”—patriotic to any thing or any cause that will further their interests. Says the New York Weekly People (September 16,1944):

The German officers themselves took it for granted that all French capitalists were collaborators with German capitalism. The general report of American newspapermen in France is that of John Chabot Smith in the New York Herald Tribune on August 23: “The collaborators were mostly large property owners, whose leaders were Fascists who would stop at nothing.” And that of Carey Longmire in the New York Post, September 6: “The men of money were too often the collaborationists, and the people of France know it.”

True, some of the financial collaborators are brought to trial, but, as a class, they escape the tribunals of retribution. It is a great mystery to most persons how the International Bankers of France could prosper under Nazi rule, and then not suffer from inflation along with their fellow-countrymen. Enlightening, therefore, it is to read Drew Pearson’s report in the Washington Merry-Go-Round:

Added details of State Department cooperation with Vichy leak out, and make sad reading. Latest chapter is how the big bankers in Paris knew in advance about the American landing in North Africa and transferred their funds there, 25 billion francs, or $350,000,000. After sneaking this sum out of France, the bankers, with aid of their friend U. S. Minister liobert Murphy, brought pressure to raise the exchange rate on the franc—and succeeded. This increased holdings of the State Department’s banking friends to $525,000,000.

Since the fall of France, Germany has been taking over French property from Jews, labor unions and refugees who had fled. Preparing for a- long-term throttle-hold on France, they worked carefully, sought to avoid litigation in French courts after the war. They arranged details through certain French banks. Jewish, union and refugee property was ordered taken and given to the banks. Germans bought the property from the banks, paying in francs. But the francs were taken out of the “Occupation Francs” which the Bank of France paid to Germany every day, for cost of occupation; so actually the deals cost the Nazis nothing.

The French bankers, permitted to keep the purchase price, amassed huge profits, which were transferred to North Africa before our landing. . . . Overnight, the French banking clique made $175,000,000!

■ But, remember, there were only a few individuals who reaped this harvest. The masses had sunk down into a deplorable condition of poverty and want by the time the Allied armies reached Paris.

"Military conquests and victories are not necessarily political ones. The driv-u.ing of the Germanic armies out of France , Iwas only part of the task of liberation.

The secondary phase was the relief of ' the suffering of the multitudes and the restoration of peace and order. The . "■ policy of the Allies was to turn this * difficult job over to the French people ‘themselves. Probably no greater task has ever been undertaken by the French than that of extricating themselves from the mire of political and ecclesiastical confusion in which they are now bogged down.. Internally, France is a mass of parties, sects, and cults, with a cross section showing streaks of communistic and atheistic strata. We see, therefore, that to unify and weld France into a strong and powerful nation is a colossal undertaking.

Collaborationists

The ones responsible, in a large part, for the four agonizing years were the collaborationists, French “Quislings”, Fascists, and “fifth columnists”. There can never be unity in France so long as this element is dispersed throughout its society. The problem, therefore, of first concern to the new French government was the rounding up and cleaning out of these traitors. Strange as it may seem to some, we find high on the list of conspirators the dignitaries of that age-old and “venerable” politicoreligious organization, the Roman Catholic Church. Not “small fry” like parish priests, by any means, but golddecked nuncios, red-capped cardinals, and purple-robed archbishops, men who are in constant touch with, and do the explicit bidding of the pope of Rome.

It was therefore sensational liberation news to read a two-column article appearing in the Columbus Citizen of September 9, 1944, In part, it reads: French to Request Cardinal to Resign

Government Contends High Church Official Sided with Nazis in Paris

Paris, Sept. 9.—While shots rang out in Notre Dame as Gen. De Gaulle and other French generals gathered to attend Paris’ first liberation ceremony, another drama was progressing in the sacristy of the great cathedral which may bring an upset in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in France.

It was at that moment that Msgr. Beaussart, archbishop of Notre Dame, learned that when relations arc formally established between the new French government and the Vatican, the papal nuncio will be asked to request his resignation and that of Emmanuel Celestin Cardinal Suhard, archbishop of Paris.

Your correspondent is able to reveal this historic incident on the authority of Father Bruckberger, a Dominican priest of the French Forces of the Interior, who conducted services at Notre Dame on Saturday, Aug. 26, when Vichy militiamen attempted to assassinate Gen. De Gaulle and his colleagues.

Father Bruckberger points out that the French church is divided between those who accepted the Vichy regime and collaboration with the Germans, and those who refused to have anything to do with the Germans officially. He describes both the cardinal’s and the archbishop’s activities during the German occupation as far exceeding their duties as leaders of the Catholic hierarchy in France. Official German services, he says, were held in Notre Dame with the archbishop officiating, with German priests participating, and with special pews reserved for the German high command. On more than one occasion, he says—and others confirm this—the church was closed to all but Germans. . . .

This record of events, as set forth by Father Bruckberger, is a necessary background for the situation which will arise when the Vatican is requested to ask for the resignations of Cardinal Suhard and Msgr. Beaussart. Bruckberger emphasizes that the rift in the church is a matter of personalities. He, as a priest, believed it impossible to serve both his God and the Germans. To him, as

to many others, Vichy was synonymous with Germany.

There you have it, a cardinal and an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church “far exceeding their duties”, i.e., going out of their way to give comfort and succor to the German high command, who were directly responsible for the sorrow7 and suffering inflicted by the Nazi army of occupation.

Following closely on the heels of the •above news dispatch appeared this one in the Columbus Citizen (September 23, 1944):

The Catholic Church issue in France took a new angle Sunday when Cardinal Suhard of Paris stood beside Archbishop Francis J. Spellman of New York at a mass held for American troops at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

As reported, the French provisional government intends to make a formal request to the Vatican for the resignation of Cardinal Suhard and Msgr. Beaussart, auxiliary bishop of Paris, owing to their activities during German occupation.

On Aug. 25, when Gens. De Gaulle, Jaeques-Philippe Leeler, Alphonse Juin and Joseph-Pierre Koenig attended a special Te Deum service at the cathedral, the Paris Resistance government prevented the cardinal from attending by throwing a police cordon around his residence.

Both prelates are accused by French Catholics of going out of their way and exceeding their episcopal duties in their reception of the Germans.

On the following Sunday, the cardinal held a special service in Notre Dame for American troops. The service was arranged between the cardinal and a U. S. Army chaplain who did not consult French authorities. This created an unfortunate impression among Resistance people.

Last Saturday, Combat, a Resistance newspaper, carried a strong editorial on the subject of the church. In the first paragraph the editor wrote:

“Although many prelates, like Msgr. Saliege of Toulouse, upheld the honor of their faith and of their country, a minority of dignitaries displayed, during the occupation, an attitude against the interests of the nation. In Paris, Cardinal Suhard was one of these.”

The French recall that until Sunday, when he accompanied Archbishop Spellman to Notre Dame, the cardinal’s last big public appearance was at the funeral of Philippe Henriot, assassinated Vichyite minister of information. On that occasion he eulogized Henriot, who had called on the French to resist the Allies and to help the Germans. They find it unfitting that the same churchman should receive the Americans and an American archbishop.

The Free French found it “unfitting”, but the American archbishop, Spellman, didn’t. Rather suspicious, isn’t it, why an American archbishop who is the chief chaplain of the army and navy should be so chummy with an outright collaborationist, one whose last big public appearance was for the purpose of eulogizing Philippe Henriot? And wdio w'as Henriot? The Vancouver Daily Province (June 30, 1944) tells us that he was the “Vichy minister of information, of the known and avowed Fascist extremists, the righthand man of Joseph Darnand, the ‘’Himmler of France’. He helped to send a million Frenchmen to work as Hitler’s slaves in Germany. He had contributed to the death of innumerable French patriots of the underground and had had complicity in the murder by the Gestapo of many innocent hostages”. This was the man whose hands were stained with innocent French blood, the man whom a cardinal and prince of the Catholic Hierarchy publicly praised and extolled.

It is not as easy as one might think to get rid of collaborationists who wear hideously long black skirts that cover up their true identity. And the French government found it out. Three months after the resignation of Cardinal Suhard was requested this distinguished gentleman was still in Paris. How does it come? A line in the New York Times (December 10, 1944) gives the answer: “Since the liberation of France there has been a quiet rapprochement between the

episcopate and the Resistance movemerits.” No longer do we see this celebrated cardinal as a seditious collaborationist giving succor to the Nazi high command. No, he has changed his makeup and plays the role of a French patriot. Tie speaks out in favor of French ’Reforms, presumably the reforms urged ay the Resistance movement, in the v New York Times (December 3, 1944) the report on this was published. .

r Emmanuel Celestin Cardinal Suhard, arch-i bishop of Paris, spoke today in favor of those social changes that the French call “reforms of structure” and that have been urged by the Resistance movement and by the Catholic Democrats, who are strongly represented in the government.

Without specifying the character of reforms he advocated, the cardinal, writing in the Semaine Religieix.se, asked: “How could the church not view favorably what tends toward the disappearance of the proletariat? And since it appears that the proletariat is the direct product of the Liberal capitalist system, why may not the church desire that reforms of structure be applied to that system?” . . , ■ The cardinal said the church would encourage movements like the Catholic Action and Catholic Trade Unions and the employers’ associations in seeking a solution of this social problem “for the good of France, for the union of her sons and for the good of souls”.

The cardinal couches his proposals in shady language, but still it is plain that he is in favor of tearing down the Liberal capitalistic system. He is heartily in favor of (French) Fascism. And furthermore, Suhard said, “the church would encourage movements like the Catholic Action and Catholic Trade Unions” to do the job. We in America know what that means, for here we have seen these groups in action for the accomplishment of Jesuit Catholic aims.

Suhard showed that this was more than a friendly gesture on his part and that he really meant business. He was willing to play ball with the new government, and he had his own ball team, a “new Catholic political group, called the Popular1 Republican movement”. The article above mentioned from the Times of December 3 continues:

At a meeting last Monday of the now Catholic political group, called the Popular Republican movement, a manifesto was adopted that spoke still more specifically of the kind of reforms these Catholic leaders desired.

This movement “affirmed its revolutionary purpose”. It specified that the revolution it desired presupposed “transformations in the* structure of the state” and a “planned economy directed by a state freed from powers of money”.

It presupposed, also, according to the manifesto, “the nationalization of key industries, of private monopolies and of credit” and the participation of trade unions in the direction of the nation’s economy and of industrial undertakings.

This program, following on the lines of the program adopted last March by the National Council of Resistance in which the whole' range of parties from Catholics and Conservatives to Communists were represented, reflected the thought of those Catholics who arc most conspicuous now in the politics of France and who find much common ground between themselves and the Socialists.

Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who is an ardent Catholic, said at Lille Oct. 1 that it was no longer possible “to permit those concentrations of interest called trusts” and that the state must take over the direction of the “great sources of common wealth”. This his government has done in taking steps toward the nationalization of mines producing two-thirds of the coal of France.

It is such a program and such measures as these that the phrase, “reforms of structure,” denotes in France today, and the cardinal doubtless used the phrase with full consciousness of the implication it bore for his readers. The cardinal long has been regarded as highly conservative.

Now, after tracing the snakelike maneuvers of these cunning ecclesiastics through the last six months of entangled French diplomatic underbrush, where

do we find the Catholic church in France at the end of 1944? ‘

Business as Usual

If you are a manufacturer and your salesman is in a fight with the customer because the customer doesn’t like your merchandise, all you have to do is to send around another salesman. At least this is the business policy of the Vatican, as we read in a recent IJ.P. dispatch:

Borne, Dec. 6 (U.P.)-—The Vatican has reached an agreement with the French Provisional Government by which Mgr, Valerio Valeri, papal nuncio in Paris, and several French bishops accused of collaboration with the Germans will retire and normal French-Vatican diplomatic relations will be reestablished, it was said authoritatively today.

The French Government had demanded the recall of Mgr. Valeri on the ground that he was unacceptable because of his previous accreditation to the Vichy regime. The removal of certain bishops had also been demanded.

Informants said that the Vatican had refused to accede to the French demand. However, they added, after long negotiation by Mgr. Pierre Theas with French officials, an agreement had been reached by which the prelates involved would voluntarily retire.

Mgr. Valeri will return here because “his mission has ended”, it was said, and the bishops will give up their dioceses. This will mean a diplomatic change by the Vatican from relations with Vichy to relations with the new French Government. The Vatican, it was said, will preserve its neutral position and the final result, it was hoped, will be entirely friendly relations between the Vatican and France.

Gen. Chari es de G aulle had especially objected to Mgr. Valeri on the ground that he had been a friend of Marshal Henri-Phiiippe Petain, it was understood.

So you see everything is fixed up. The Vatican will continue to peddle its goods, wares and merchandise as it formerly did under German occupation.

To the Frenchman in the street this seems like a complete somersault on the

part of the Vatican, from Petain to De Gaulle in one flip. The fact is that such diplomatic intrigue is all in the day’s work at the “holy” city. The Papacy is the oldest, most crafty, tricky, sly, and slippery (or should we say slimy?) political organization in the world. She has for generations carried on her ' nefarious and illicit relations with the kings and potentates of the world. As a harlot has many paramours, who are among themselves deadly enemies, so likewise has this apostate and adulterous system whose headquarters are in Rome. ■

But what about these men recalled “unofficially” by the Vatican? What about the papal nuncio Valeri? Wilt he be reproved and disciplined for his collaboration with the Nazis and their puppet Petain? Traitors are usually court-martialed and decapitated in a hurry.

On the third anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7, when there was a burning desire for the punishment of traitorous criminals, Americans were shocked to read in the New York Times of that date, in an article dealing with the recall of Valeri, the following:

Monsignor Valeri is expected to receive a much higher rank in papal diplomacy and has been mentioned as the next secretary of state. Cardinal Suhard, it is believed, will remain in Paris.

Even those with a little sense of justice wonder why men like Henri Chamberlin, alias Lafont, Pierre Bony, and Paul Clavie, members of the French Gestapo, are brought before Paris courts of justice to answer for their heinous crimes while a dignitary guilty of atrocities against the French republic is given “a much higher rank in papal diplomacy”. And when we say the prelates of Rome are guilty of the worst atrocities we mean it. The hirelings of the French republic were guilty of embezzlement, theft, torture, rape, and murder, all of which deserve the full penalty and punishment of the law with-

out mercy. These underlings were, comparatively speaking, only paupers in the practice of crime, for they were perpetrated against individuals. But what were the crimes of the Catholic HieT-' archy that eclipse such glaring atrocities r as those just mentioned? In addition to \those already mentioned there are a few more listed in the New York Times of v December 10, 1944.

One churchman, Albert Dutoit, bishop of Arras, was arrested on a charge that, during i the German occupation, he published in a ..church bulletin articles against the Allies and the Resistance forces. Another, Francois Au-vity, bishop of Mende, apologized in a public pastoral letter for having , advised French youths that it was a patriotic duty to accept forced labor in Germany. A third, Emmanuel Celestin Cardinal Su hard, archbishop of Paris, has defended himself in a pastoral letter and in the press against charges that he had supported the Vichy regime and-had acted as an intermediary when Pierre Laval returned to office two years ago.

These charges sound mild and soft, but when we consider the far-reaching results of such official fifth-column work it is apparent that not a few individuals were their victims, but rather we see that whole communities, yes, the whole nation had been beaten and tortured, raped and murdered, by reason of these gentlemen of the Gold and Red and Purple, who know only too well the art of refined crime in its highest form.

Truly France has suffered untold miseries.-Nor is she yet delivered from the furnace of affliction. She’ has, of course, had the external German military heel removed from her neck. And relief, though limited, is reaching her in the way of food and clothing. Her monetary system is being repaired slowly, and her railroads are being reconditioned. But internally France is far from being restored to a nation of free . and happy people. The tenacious tenta- ' cles of the Papal system seem to encircle her tighter than ever. There are, however, forces within her veins that will continue to fight off this virulent disease. And it is hoped that some day the people of France ■will be for ever liberated.

Who Discovered Brazil ?

REFERRING to the article “Brazil’s

Place in Paradise”, in Consolation No. 654: the articles in the encyclopedias Americana and Britannica, written in 1903, were never revised, and give Pinzon the honor that belongs to Pedro Alvarez Cabral. In Volume 1 of South American Republics, by Thomas C. Dawson, secretary of the United States legation to Brazil, pp. 300-301, I quote:

In January, 1500, Vincente Yanez Pinzon, who had commanded the Nina on the first voyage of Columbus, saw land in the neighborhood of Cape St. Roque. Bound westward, he bore away to the west and north, following the prevailing winds and currents as far as the Orange Cape, the present extreme northern limit of Brazil. He was, therefore, the discoverer of the great estuary which forms the mouth of the Amazon. He named it the “Fresh-Water Sea”, because the great river freshens the open ocean far out of the sight of land, but he did not ascend, nor even see, the river proper. It is also claimed on good evidence that, six months before Pinzon, another Spanish navigator, Alonzon de Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci, had made the South American coast not far from Cape St. Roque; and that a month later still another, Diego de Lepe, did the same. None of these Spanish voyages produced any results. They were not reported until after the news of Cabral’s discovery had been solemnly promulgated to the courts of Europe, and were soon forgotten. The honor of making Brazil known to Europe belongs to Cabral just as certainly as that of discovering America does to Columbus.

And so I put the facts before you, and if some day you should go to Brazil, please do not forget them.—John J. Vieira, Jr., California.

Why the Righteous Suffer

IT HAS pleased Almighty God to prepare the members of the kingdom of heaven under adverse conditions. The righteous sons of God have never been popular with this world. During the entire “Christian era”, so called, they have suffered much persecution. They have been counted as the offscouring among men. From what source could we reasonably expect persecution and adversity to come upon true Christians? From the Devil and his organization, of course. Why? Because God declared in Bden that there must be enmity between the seed of His “woman”, which seed is His Kingdom class, and the seed of the Serpent, which seed is the Devil’s organization. (Genesis 3:15) We are not left in doubt as to who constitutes the seed or children of the Devil.

When Jesus Christ was on earth those who persecuted Him were religious scribes, Pharisees and priests, together composing the clergy of that day and claiming to be representatives of Jehovah God. They were hypocrites. Jesus said they were. That class exalted themselves, even as religious clergymen do today. They posed as men of great righteousness. To them Jesus said: “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.” (Matthew 23:13,14) These same hypocrites claimed to be the sons of God; but Jesus plainly said to them: “Ye are of your father the devil.”—John 8:44.

There is a period in world history known as the time of “The Inquisition”. In that period of time the ecclesiastical courts were organized in certain countries, and men were haled before these tribunals and charged with the crime of “heresy”. They were put through a mock trial and subjected to all manner of wicked torture to compel them to confess a senseless creed. Who was responsible for this cruel treatment of Christians? The clergy, who claimed to be the representatives of God and of Christ, but who in truth and in fact represented the Devil. They were hypocrites.

But persecuting was not confined to the Roman Papal system. In due course the Protestants resorted to like persecution. Call to mind the “reformer” John Calvin, the father of the Presbyterians. He signed the death warrant of Michael ' Servetus and had him slowly roasted to death at the stake because he did not agree with the so-called “orthodox” doctrines of that religious system, such as “the trinity”. All the wicked persecution that has been inflicted upon Christ Jesus and His followers has been done by the clergy or at the instigation of the clergy, who hypocritically claim to represent the God of love and also His beloved Son Christ Jesus.

The Serpent, the Devil, the father of these religious systems, was the real inducing cause for such persecution. Those ecclesiastical systems, particularly the clergy and the principal ones of their flocks, are and ever have been a part of the world which is under the control of Satan the enemy. These have taught conflicting doctrines and have fought among themselves, until someone would come forward with the truth of God’s Word. Then they combine under the direction of their father the Devil to fight against such one.

Persecution and sufferings are not to be desired by anyone. Everyone would rather dwell in peace and in happiness. Jesus and His true followers have been s-,persecuted because of their loyalty and 'J faithfulness -to God. This being true, and God being all powerful and being the very expression of love, why would He permit His beloved Son and His •• ~ faithful followers to suffer persecution ’ at the hands of the Devil and his seed * or representatives?

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