Consolation, February 28, 1945

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Contents

A Glimpse at Yugoslavia

War Accentuates Every Trouble

'More Sob Material

The Agreement on Tito

What Is Back of Britain’s Impasse in Greece! 8

1 Churchill to Greece

iTerriNe Plight of Hungarian Jews . *

Marvels of Surgery

Brain and Spine Wounds

Magnets Have Been Used

-Fixing Up Arms, Legs, and Wrists

Demons Oppose Necessary Surgery

Among the Exiles

„“Thy Word Is Truth”

Voice Not Heard in the Street

John Noll and the Bible

Printing the Bible

Interpretation of the Bible

The Hierarchy Ideal

Fa^ts About Bible Charges

Union of Church and State

“Not WThere to Lay His Head”

“Teach Me to Do Thy Will” (Illustrated)

Teasing Cost Him His Life

Jerome and Challoner and the Vulgate

Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”

Practical Illustrations of Talk Conclusions 29

The Dawning of the Better World

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In Brief

Coughlin’s ‘Disgraceful Behavior’

♦ Arnold Lunn wrote to the London Catholic Herald giving them two instances of Father Coughlin’s disregard of ■ truth and honesty, and his column-long letter was published with the editorial comment, “We entirely agree that such political behavior as this is disgraceful, and peculiarly disgraceful in the case of a priest.”

In the one instance Coughlin purported to quote a 67-word telegram hut merely quoted the last 19 words of it in such a manner as to make the message seem to say something which the message itself shows was not in the mind of the sender at all. Of the other instance Lunn says:

Fr. Coughlin may be incapable of conscious falsehood, ifor he never tells a lie on purpose or the truth except by accident, He began by assuring me that six Spanish bishops had been expelled from their sees because they were Masons. I asked him for his authority for this statement. He replied, “The Spanish ambassador.” “I know Senor Cardenas,” I replied, “and I hope to see him in Washington.” “I do not mean Cardenas,” said Fr. Coughlin, 'Tie is merely a ‘front’ ambassador, a facade ambassador. Franco’s real ambassador is a Franciscan priest, and it was he who told me about the six bishops.” What is your judgment on the veracity of a priest who quotes the Spanish ambassador as his authority and, when challenged, replies in this vein?

Deeds of Kindness Well Repaid

♦ In the Bronx, New York city, the Lorencin family were kind to a charwoman, who died recently at their home at the age of 73. They did not know that she had any money, but when she died she left them her fortune of $15,000* in cash, together with 100 shares of stock in a copper mine. The people that do kind things sometimes get paid for it, and also the people that do unkind things sometimes get paid for it. •

CONSOLATION

; -

“And in His name shall the nations hope.’’—Matthew 12:21, A.S. V. ___ ____ ’ t ■ - _ ■ _ . . .........................................................................................................................

Volume XXVI Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, February 28, 1945 Number 664

A Glimpse at Yugoslavia

FORMED in the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire, at the conclusion of World War I, Yugoslavia, with its 95,558 square miles, is a little larger than the combined states of New York and Pennsylvania, and, with its 16,200,000 inhabitants in 1940, it has or did have a larger population than is found in those two great states, provided only that New York city is omitted from the total. The people are mostly farmers.

There are estimated to be about 1,000,000 Yugoslavs in the United States. They are well scattered here, and in their native land, which stretches some 550 miles along the eastern shores of the Adriatic sea, and from there half that distance over the Dinaric Alps into the valley of the Danube. The Serbs, described as “dour, uncompromising and brave”, occupy the southeastern part of the country and in 1941 numbered 8,268,108, or just over half the population. There are 6,785,501 Greek Orthodox Catholics in Yugoslavia, and these are mostly Serbs. Their alphabet, styled Cyrillic, is composed of 38 original Greek letters with 10 letters later added, and which is the alphabet of Russia also.

The Croats, described in Leigh White’s book The Long Balkan Night as “cynical and opportunistic”, intermingle with the Serbs in normal times, but live mainly farther north and west. Their number in 1941 was 3,575,894. A large share of Yugoslavia’s 5,217,910 Roman Catholics are Croats, and, though their speech is much the same as that of the

FEBRUARY 2B, 1945

Serbs, they use the Latin alphabet in their written language. The never-ending strife between the Serbs and Croats is not so much due to their different alphabets as to the always tyrannical troublemaking priests in their lust for power. The Croats are priest-ridden.

The Slovenes, numbering 1,246,228,, live at the northern end of the country' and are almost solidly Roman Catholics. They use the Latin alphabet. Scattered around among the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are 2,605,000 Hungarians, Rumanians, Albanians and Turks. In this latest aggregation are included most of the 1,561,166 Mohammedans, 231,169 Protestants and 68,405 Jews that go to make up one of the very intelligent but strife-ridden countries of Europe.

Yugoslavs Appreciate Education

Governor Lausche of Ohio is of Yugoslavian parentage, and of the famous Yugoslavian Nikola Tesla it has been said (and with some degree of heroworship, it must regretfully be admitted) :

Were we to eliminate from our industrial world the results of Tesla’s work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric trains and cars would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills and factories dead and idle. So far-reaching is his work that it has become the warp and woof of industry. Should Tesla’s work be suddenly withdrawn, darkness would prevail and we should slip into barbarism.

Cutting out the oratory and getting down to facts, Tesla was the first to conceive an effective method of utilizing the

3 alternating current, and devoted his long and useful life, not to making money, but to blessing mankind with new and efficient forms of dynamos, transformers, induction coils, condensers, incandescent lamps, etc. At 80 years of age he died in relative poverty in a New York hotel.

At the northern end of the Adriatic sqa Yugoslavia and Italy meet, and the r young folks meet and intermarry, with the usual results. The Yugoslavs claim that they now have 650,000 big and little ' "Yugoslavs in Italy and that they are not ' being fairly treated in respect to education, and that this is especially true in Istria, the peninsula that juts out into the Adriatic between Trieste on its western flank and Fiume at its east at the .extreme upper end of the sea. The particular point of displeasure is that when the Italians have, by superior strength, seized Yugoslav territory, they have compelled the little Yugoslavs to either be educated as Italians or not be educated at all. The queen of Italy promised to remedy this, but by the time it got around to Mussolini the answer was No.

The Catholic Kingdom of Croatia

The Boman Catholic Hierarchy never hesitates to honor a murderer who is one big enough to grab political power, and so, when Hitler was overrunning Europe in the early part of 1941 and the assassin Ante Pavelitch wanted to get a good name for himself by splitting Yugoslavia, it was glad to have a hand in forming the kingdom of Croatia. Pavelitch and his cronies were received by the pope and a deal was fixed up to put an Italian princeling on the throne, but, though the Italian prince Aimone was duly “elected” king, yet he never dared set foot in Croatia, and after thirty months of this nonsensical form of “rulership” Pavelitch turned the ' “kingdom” into a “republic” under the , protection of that “noble” Roman Cath' olic, Adolf Hitler. There is a definite state of war between the Allies and

Hitler’s Croatia, the capital of which was fixed at Zagreb. _

It was in March, 1941, that thejpoli-ticians at Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia proper, tried to get on the Jesuit bandwagon by signing a pact with Germany making Yugoslavia an Axis partner, but on the 27th of that month the boy King Peter II, born September 6, 1923, rose at 2: 30 in the morning, overthrew the regency that had done the job, and ascended the throne. Then trouble began in dead’earnest. On April 6, 1941, Germany’s armies invaded the country; six days later Hungarian armies invaded the country, and subsequently Italian, Bulgarian, Rumanian and Albanian armies also invaded the land and, with the exception of the Rumanians, each engaged in burning, destroying and massacring. King Peter had to light out, first for London and then for Cairo. At the latter place, July 31, 1943, he announced his engagement to Princess Alexandra of Greece, one of the greatgreat-granddaughters oWueen Victoria, and, boylike, he wantSPfo get married right away, and did (March 20, 1944). Wiser heads had suggested to him that he wait a while and see how his king business was going to pan out. But youth knows it all, or thinks it does; and Peter is young. Recently, he tried to grab the throne willy-nilly.

IFar Accentuates Every Trouble

War accentuates every trouble, as may be discerned from the following extracts from the August, 1943, issue of the London magazine The Nineteenth Century and After: .

The Croats, who were liberated from the domination of the Habsburgs by the Allies (including Serbia) in the last war, are now the most ruthless of their enemies. The Croats are Roman Catholics and inclined to clericalism and religious intolerance. Whereas the Serbs, as a whole, were strongly in favor of France and Great Britain, the Croats, some of them willingly, others under duress, were for close association with Germany.

The Croat policy has been to massacre, deport, or convert the Serbs, Conversion, from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism; has had little success. The number of those who have been massacred runs into hundreds of thousands, 600,000, according to one careful estimate. The massacres have been accompanied by bestial cruelties. Ustashis [Croatian militia] gouged out the eyes of many of their victims and carried the eyeballs on strings or in bags, to sell them as mementos.

The Slovenes are Roman Catholic and there is, amongst their clergy, considerable hatred of Greek Orthodoxy.

The entrance of the German, Hungarian, Italian and Bulgarian armies into this situation did not help it any. At hand is a brief dispatch to the New York Times published February 13, 1943:

Ankara, Turkey, Feb, 12. Yugoslav quarters said tonight that 27,000 persons suspected by the Germans of being in sympathy with the Yugoslav patriot, General Draja Mikhailo-vitch, have been executed in Belgrade alone since last September. Three hundred were shot Dec. 24 at Belgrade, and 3,000 were put to death at the village of Jajinci on Christmas Day, they sfid, adding that mass executions of hostages were taking place throughout Serbia.

Racket Operators Should Be Interested

Those that are helping to operate the Christmas racket should be much interested in the dispatch just quoted. They are the same ones that made that concordat with Adolf Hitler and so gave him the go-ahead sign. They are represented as weeping themselves to death over the whole business, but their pictures show them smiling and happy. Here are a few more gems that should help, these yarns about papal sobs:

Belgrade, Nov. 18. (CP-Reuters) (Special to the Vancouver Daily Province) Of the 12,000 Jews in Belgrade before the war only some 20 remain alive in the city. Only about 1,000 escaped. In July, 1941, the scientific extermination of the Belgrade Jews began. A meeting of all Jews was called in the center of Belgrade. They were ranged up according to profession. Every fifth man in each group was taken to the Janitza rifle range and shot. Every time a man was killed in Belgrade, 200 or 300 Jews were called up by the police. The next day their clothes were sent back to their relatives. When men became scarce, women and children were ordered to present themselves, bringing the keys of their flats, with their names and addresses. The women and children were then driven off in lorries to Zemun. Although they knew they were going to certain death they sang as they went, Serbian women in the streets wept.

The women in Belgrade camp were driven by day to Zemun airfield to clear the snow from the runways. Every morning 50 to 60 corpses were carried off from this camp. Drunken soldiers entered the camp in the middle of the night and ordered the women to dress. They were made to bow before gallows and ordered to say prayers. Then after hours of agony they were told, “We shan’t hang you tonight.” Later the Germans brought to tbf camp a closed and sealed lorry with the exhaust pipe leading into it, packed it with Jews and drove it to Janjutza. When the doors were opened only corpses fell out.

More Sob Material

In its issue of October 17, 1943, the Sunday News carried a story by the United Press entitled “30,000 Hostages Slain by Belgrade Torturers” in which a Belgrade physician who had escaped to London declared that Belgrade’s torture chambers are the most diabolical in Europe; and here is something for the public and professional sobbers:

Bodies frequently were strung up from the capital’s lampposts, he said, and some persons have been crucified, nailed alive to their own doors.

Outside of the sobbing fraternity anybody with, any knowledge of history and with even a very little bit of common sense will recognize in these historical facts a replica of the Crusades and Inquisitions.

On December 25, 1942, Pavelitch’s journal Nova H.rvatska shamelessly boasted how the Croats betrayed the Serbs to Pacelli’s friend Hitler:

, The Serbs say now that it was the Croats ivho betrayed them. They are quite right. {The Croats admit betraying the Serbs.] . They [the Croats] took care that nothing was in order, that during the battle nothing was ’ in its place . . . that nothing went the right way, that no one was correctly informed. . . . -The Croats disobeyed orders, wrecked communications, spread panic, purposely missed the target, destroyed tanks and guns. . . . The Croats were the only people in this war who . . . destroyed the Balkan battlefield from ^inside while the German army fought outside.

What the Croats could not do on the inside of the battle lines the Germans did with characteristic efficiency and cruelty;

Twelve Germans were killed outside Kra-gujevats. The German military massacred 4,600 people by way of reprisal. Amongst the victims was an entire school. The boys, with their masters, vrere marched off, ranged against a wall and shot. Some of the smaller boys hardly realized what was happening, . others, in fear, held their copy-books in front of their faces in a pitiful attempt to ward off the German bullets. The Jews and the inoffensive Gypsies were exterminated throughout Yugoslavia, most of them in the gaschambers usually employed to destroy lice.

The Italians took a hand also. On this aspect of the subject Paul B. Anderson, a former Y.M.C.A. secretary engaged in European work, wrote in the Episcopal weekly Living Church:

Terror and massacre indescribable were suffered by tens of thousands of Serbian Orthodox residents in the territories torn from Yugoslavia by the Italians. , . . Regretfully one must mention the un-Christian condoning and even stimulation of these excesses by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy in this area. Reports claim as many as a million of these Orthodox Serbs have now been massacred or driven from Croatian territory.

This Was Not Trouble Enough

This was not trouble enough. The pinnacle was reached by the bitter backbiting and quarreling between Mikhailo-vitch and Tito, both of whom have kept this office flooded with printed matter and circular letters abusing one another and claiming all credit for themselves and all possible discredit for the other in their fight against their common enemy, Germany and the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. .

Both Tito and Mikhailovitch have each claimed that he has 250,000 fighters and each has claimed that the other has but a handful. It is reported that each has resorted to conscription and that both are fighting the Germans and the Croats, and also fighting each other. King Peter’s ,crowd has denounced Tito’s crowd as impostors. Peter himself tried to make peace between the two men. He has some sense.

Tito’s spokesman in Afnerica, Louis Adamic, says that Tito’s cause is “a people’s rising against their diverse enemies, foreign and domestic”, and that “for my part I don’t want to be united with people who are for Nedich and Mikhailovitch, who think that Franco is a great and good man”. Adamic’s papers and booklets are well prepared, printed on good paper and circulated by The United Committee of South-Slavic Americans, Incorporated, with offices at 1010 Park Ave., New York 28, N. Y. Of this organization Adamic is the president.

Mikhailovitch’^ spokesman in America _is The American Serb, published by the Serbian National Defense Council of America, 185 North Wabash Ave., Chicago, Ill. It claims that Adamic is a Slovenian immigrant. This is no disgrace. It also says that he is “a well known Communistic spokesman with key men in many government departments”. This is his right. Rather oddly, Adamic gives the names of 35 Serbs that are backing him up (5 of them have “Rev.” before their names and 2 of them “Dr.”) but The American Serb gives no names. It does not even name an editor.

The Agreement on Tito

It has evidently been agreed between Stalin and Churchill that they are backing Tito’s cause, and not Mikhailovitch’s. It is Uncle Sam’s duty to let European peoples decide their own form of government, and in this case it is Mr. Stalin and Mr. Churchill that do the deciding, apparently, for at least Yugoslavia; and, as there is no Atlantic Charter, and never was any, what is to hinder?

Josip Brozovich (Tito) is, oddly enough, a Croatian; and he is a Communist. If he was a Catholic he must have gotten over it. Before the Spanish war he was a metalworker, but, becoming convinced of the justice of the cause of the Spanish republic as against the hypocritical and bloodthirsty Franco and his religious associates, he helped run the underground railway from east to west by which great numbers of his fellows reached Spain and engaged in the fight for liberty. He twice visited Mikhailovitch to try to settle their differences and arrange for a unified command, but Mikhailovitch refused to go along. '

The next step was to get in touch with the British. This was not hard, and early in 1944 Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph Churchill, landed by para-1 chute in Yugoslavia, and since then British and American supplies have been literally falling into his hands. The dropping is done at night, the locations being indicated by huge bonfires built for the purpose.

There have been terrible hardships in Tito’s campaigns. The first hospitals were beds in peasant cottages, often surrounded by pigs and other domestic animals roaming at large; the only antiseptics, salt and water; the dressings, of old linens; amputations, by hacksaw; the wounded often had to flee or have their throats slit. Instances were of record where the wounded were en route from three weeks to three months before they could have adequate attention. In one instance Tito’s headquarters were seized and he and Major Churchill had a tight squeeze making their escape.

The New Republic speaks well of Tito’s provisional government, saying of it that it “is popular, democratic and representative” and that:

The president of the Provisional Government, Dr. Ivan Ribar, has been a revered democratic leader in Yugoslavia in whose new government after the First World War he participated prominently as chairman of the constituent assembly. All the other members of the Partisan [Tito] government are well known figures inside Yugoslavia, mostly of middle-class origin, a high-eourt judge, a newspaper editor and a priest. They represent all Yugoslav nationalities on an equal basis, including Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, as well as the country’s colorful religious life, the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, Judaism and Mohammedanism.

The published pictures of Tito show him as having large perceptives, a large straight nose, which, to some, indicates that he is powerful and aggressive without being either cruel or weak, and he wears an expression of sadness. The Nazis have offered $50,000 for him, dead or alive. Life magazine says he gives the choice victuals to the privates and puts the officers at the second table. That Russia is the sponsor of Tito is selfevident from the fact that both Adamic and Tito are admittedly out-and-out Communists and officers in the Communist organization.

What Is Back of Britain's Impasse in Greece?

TIE Nazi conquest of Greece brought that ancient land untold misery, but it also resulted in their getting rid of an unwanted king, at least for a time. The 'king, however, had no intention of re, gaining away indefinitely. He would return .when the coast was clear. The ' Greeks for the most part did npt like their king. Not much. He had been re. ■- ~ instated in power by a ruse, after ■* promising to conduct a fair plebiscite, and then had imposed a dictatorship upon the Greek people which lasted for years. No wonder they were not particularly anxious for his return after the departure of the Nazis.

In' August, 1943, the underground movement in Greece sent its representatives to Cairo to insist that the people must decide by vote whether the king should be allowed to return. Prime Minister Emanuel Tsouderos, of the Greek government in exile, placed the men under arrest 1 The underground ' referred to the absent government as “the government in flight” and considered it merely the representative of the wealthy class. On March 31, 1944, a group of army officers called on Tsouderos and told him to resign. He had them jailed by British police, but had to go further by arresting hundreds of civilians and members of the armed forces throughout the Middle East. But the minister of the army concluded that the demand for the resignation of Tsouderos was backed by too many Greets to be ignored, Tsouderos submitted and nominated Venizelos to replace him, but Tsouderos would continue in office until King George II (of Greece), who was in London, accepted the resignation and approved the new premier.

April 3 over three hundred soldiers and civilians took over buildings in Cairo that had housed the Greek military staff’s offices and equipment. The crew'on a destroyer refused to sail “until a new Greek government” was formed. Other ships also revolted. The resistance lasted for three weeks, until British warships covered the ships with their batteries so that men could board the revolting ships and take over. There were some pitched battles, resulting in 10 killed and 43 wounded. The resistance then gave up. About the same time there was trouble in camp of the First Brigade of the Greek army.

After the uprising the Greek government held a conference with the leaders of the underground groups and promised to include them in the cabinet.

Conditions in Greece

Greece is in bad condition. The Nazis destroyed 3,000,000 acres of standing timber, 100,000 homes, and 879 Greek villages. They carried off 20,000 tons of olive oil. Of 13,000,000 acres of land capable of cultivation only 5,000,000 were in use during 1943-1944.

One town, Distomeo, was completely obliterated by the Nazis, and the population, some 1,000 persons, massacred.

Of 25,000 children examined 75 percent proved consumptive.

Meanwhile the major Greek resistance groups were “expending as much energy killing each other as in killing Germans”. So said the New York Times. It stated further:

EAM, largest of the Greek resistance groups and containing both military and political branches, was castigated by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in the House of Commons last week for threatening Greek unity by its failure to fill the governmental posts assigned to it in Lebanon.

The EAM, however, refused to join the government.

As the Germans departed they ravaged the country and warned the Greeks that ten hostages would be killed in retaliation for each attack. Women and children were used as hostages. All means of transport, trucks, and even pack animals, were removed. Harbors were blocked and mined. Essential parts of factory equipment were stolen.

Nearly 500,000 homeless were left “on the doorstep” of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

Inflation resulted in the issuance of bank notes in 10,000,000,000-drachnia denominations. The gold pound was worth 1,000,400,000,000 of these drachmas.

Cabinet Crisis '

' On December 2 a Greek cabinet crisis resulted over a British army proclamation disbanding guerrillas, and six ministers belonging to the- EAM (National Liberation Front) resigned. After the resignation of the six Leftist ministers tanks patrolled the streets of Athens. Forces of the ELAS (armed wing of the EAM) patrolled Athens suburbs.

The next day (Sunday) police bullets mowed down left-wing marchers in parade. A majority of the Athens’police served under the dictatorship of Premier Metaxas before 1941. Many of them were believed to have also served under the German occupation authorities! The marchers included many boys and girls.

Vlavianos, editor of the National Herald, New York Greek-language newspaper, said:

The Greek people fed strongly that disarmament of the Greek resistance (ELAS) while reactionary and royalist military units are permitted to retain their arms, is a step in preparation for the restoration of the monarchy.

December 7 an article by Wm. Philip Simms in the New York World-T elegram remarked;

The third anniversary of Pearl Harbor finds the Allies so dangerously far apart politically that unless Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin soon remedy the situation the Axis may yet win something short of unconditional surrender. . . . Greece is an example of what is threatening Europe.

The Los Angeles Times of December 10 said, in an article “By Poly-zoides”:

Greek Situation Brings Power Polities into Open. British Want Domination in Mediterranean and Russia Demands to Be Top Dog in East. . . .

The movement of the Greek underground, known as the National Liberation Front (EAM) with its military arm of the National Army of Liberation (ELAS), sprang from the very heart of the nation. All parties, factions, groups and individuals joined in it, businessmen, lawyers and doctors, university professors and soldiers, farmers and day laborers, radicals and conservatives, atheists and bishops. And, unfortunately again, a small Communist minority more skillful than the others, more aggressive and more adept to underground operations, soon got the upper hand. . ., . Great Britain now is trying to bolster up the middle classes of Greece, to restore the dignity of the Hellenic flag, which of late had been overshadowed by the Communist standard ... If British policy is repudiated in the Mediterranean, yesterday in Italy, today in Greece, and tomorrow in Egypt, then Britain might as well write off her prestige in the Middle East and even farther east,

Churchill to Greece

The situation in Greece became such that Churchill decided to pay Athens a visit, together with Anthony Eden, who also is interested in the preservation of the British Empire. He denied, however, that he was interfering in Greece’s internal affairs. He had remarked some days before his departure that “democracy is not a harlot to be picked up on the street with a tommy-gun”. Someone else suggested that “neither was democracy a maiden to be ravished in Athens by a Tommy with a lend-lease gun”. Churchill had to back up a little and arrange to deal with those whom he had characterized as an organization of bandits and

political extremists bent upon seizing power in Athens at the point of a tommygum _ .

Well, Churchill and Eden got in such a jam in Greece that they did not know wdiat to do. (There was even an attempt ,made to assassinate Churchill while in fthens.) They did want to help out King eorgg ,11, who is married to Queen ' Victoria’s great-granddaughter, but they could do nothing more than suggest a <- - re'gency, and picked the Greek Orthodox patriarch for the job. The resisters seem 4o have agreed to that. (After all, Stalin came to terms with the Greek church in Russia.) So the matter was submitted to King George in London, who was persuaded to submit.to the arrangement, while still holding to the forlorn hope that he will be able to return to Greece himself in due time. So Damaskinos “rules”. .

But the use of the head of the church in Greece, and of five priests on the committee that holds forth in Yugoslavia (with Stalin’s consent), suggests . that some day, not too far distant, the politicians and militarists will decide that the only thing to do is to let the pope take over for them. Then the fun will begin. -

And what is back of it? Just the desire to hang on to their soft jobs a little longer and to let the one who has always treated them with consideration help them out in the pinch. But sitting on a safety valve, or letting a “regent” sit on it, is not the best vTay to settle the present problem, though it is being tried. In this connection an extract from an article by Anne O’Hare McCormick in the New York Time.? of January 1, will be of interest. She says:

The fact must be faced that the most adventurous and idealistic youth in liberated countries is now embittered and will be easy prey for any demagogue who is ready to exploit its sense of grievance. In every occupied country young people have been urged to fight . . . With liberation comes the command to disband, disarm, obey the law and accept the government established for them—usually by returning exiles who have not shared the experience of occupation. . . . More than lines on the map, these aggrieved and bewildered youths will make the future pattern of Europe. In dealing with them the Allied powers are dealing with the future so far with singular lack of understanding, vision or political sense.

And that lack of understanding finds its most fitting expression in the selection of Pharisaical ecclesiastics to save the day, if possible, for those who have had the lion’s share in the past and are reluctant to let go.

Terrible Plight of Hungarian Jews

HUNGARY is sometimes described, and quite properly, as the center of the center of Europe. The connecting link between eastern and western Europe, and between northern and southern Europe, it has been, until now, a comparatively safe haven of refuge for Jews when pogroms have been started in countries north, south, east or west.

But all this toleration for 1,000,000 decent and useful citizens disappeared in March, 1944, when Hitler seized the - country. Forthwith, the so-called ,cNu-remberg laws” went into effect and Jews were barred from employment, as domestics and in the public services and professions. If one of a person’s grandparents had embraced the Jewish faith, a man could no longer be an attorney or a state or civic employee. ‘

By midsummer, it was generally believed, another million Jews in Hungary would be exterminated, thus bringing to 6,500,000 the number that Hitler had caused to he done to death in the most fiendish fashion. By July ’it was estimated that 400,000 Hungarian Jew’s had been turned over to Hitler and

a± least 100,000 of them slain, the beginning of the end. It is claimed that of Vienna’s 150,000 prewar Jews only 180 are yet alive, and that of Germany’s 600,000 Jews only 5,000 are left.

Of these present and prospective murders Freda Kirchwey says in The Nation (August 26,1944):

Done in cold blood, on a scale more impressive than any battlefield can equal, in centers specially constructed for extermination, this systematic murder of a race is with-■ out example in history. It is too vast and too terrible for the normal mind to grasp; indeed, this is its protection. People react with anger to individual acts of cruelty; they hardly react at all to the impersonal horror of mass murder.

The planned, systematized slaughter of Jews has now been going on for two years, but not even during this period has the tempo of rescue been speeded up. Instead, our government and the British have called conferences to discuss the problem, have set up committees, have issued warnings and appeals. And the Nazis have gone on killing Jews at the rate of about 12,000 a day.

Miss Kirchwey explains that the government that Hitler now has operating Hungary would be willing to spare children under ten years of age, or other Jews who Can obtain British certificates of admission to Palestine or who hold valid visas for other countries. But, as a general rule, most Jews in Hungary are to be exterminated.

Marvels of Surgery

SOME of the skulls of humans who lived thousands of years ago had been trephined, and the bones had healed. The Hindus, centuries before the birth of Christ, knew how to develop a new nose by flaps taken from the forehead. Surgical instruments were recovered from the ruins of Pompeii. Throughout the Dark Ages the practice of surgery was abandoned to barbers and bonesetters, and it was not until about the year 1650 that the world had a surgical college, in France.

During the nineteenth century, with the introduction of anesthesia by the use of ether, etc., the death rate in major operations dropped from 66 percent to 6 percent; which speaks for itself. In other words, the patient had eleven times as good opportunity of coming off from the operating table alive. Sterilization of instruments, trained nurses, rubber gloves; aseptic dressings, immaculate cleanliness, marvelous hospitals, improved instruments, and countless other things, have constantly made for better surgery. The X ray often shows just what must be done to heal a fracture.

• Those who instinctively fight shy of cutting the human body, and there are many such, may get some help and comfort from the fact that ants will amputate the broken limb of one of their number. Those that perform the operation on their comrade know very well that he would rather have six legs than ^o have five, but they figure that it is a nuisance to him to have five and a half legs, since a half leg is no leg at all and is really in the way.

Some Recent Steps

It would have been a pleasure to make that headline read “Some Recent Steps Forward”; but the surgeons cannot always be sure that the newest things will be the most successful. Their motto is, “Be not the first by whom the new is tried, nor yet the last to east the old aside”; and it seems like a good motto. A good surgeon has to keep reading and studying and “practicing”, with perfection always out of reach.

Glass filaments have been used in making sutures with which to sew up wounds. The claim is made that the glass is better

FEBRUARY 88, 1M5

than catgut or silk, which may provide a breeding place for germs, and better than stainless steel or silver wire, which latter have tendencies to crawl about through the tissues. The glass sutures used are composed of 204 invisible fila-r ments, each only 22/100000 of an inch i thick.

* The Russians are reported to be ob-v tainirig remarkable results from hermetic plastering of injured parts, with' / ~ consequent complete healing where ■■ i amputation would formerly have been

. required. Another thing that has brought astonishing results is the feeding of patients while they are on the operating table and the operation is under way. Dr. Henry E. Sigerist, professor of history of medicine, Johns Hopkins Uni-vetsity, explains:

A tube is inserted in the intestine while the patient is on the battalion field hospital operating table. A meal of milk, butter, eggs, sugar, salt and distilled alcohol—the ingredients Of eggnog—is introduced. When natural milk and eggs are not available evaporated milk and distilled water are used. Often the beneficial results of the nourishing meal are apparent immediately. Often color returns to the wounded man’s cheeks, his lips become red and warm and often he falls asleep at the end of the operation.

The Associated Press carried a description of a new method of fighting burns by skin-grafting. Four safetyrazor blades fit into a holder; a screw sets the depth of the skin to be cut; the skin is stretched taut; large grafts of uniform thickness can be cut to pattern and there is little bleeding. This AP dispatch was from Baltimore, and followed by a day, from, the same city, the announcement that one of the Johns Hopkins surgeons had developed a tough and translucent film of medicated cellulose which can be used to shut out infections. The bandage is paper-thin, and pliable, and slightly elastic. Sheets of any size may be made by spraying the emulsion on a smooth surface and allowing the film to dry.

Brain and Spine Wounds

Word leaked through from Berlin, some time back, that brain and spine wounds that would have been hopeless in World War I are now healable. In a certain re-educational room at that limp were eighty men who were being taught like children to read, write, and count; men who had lost one hand were being taught the use of the other, and it was hoped to reinstate some of them in civilian life.

Surgery gives one the creeps, anyway, and so, particularly, it is hard to wax enthusiastic about the pumping of diiodotyrosine-gelatine into a man’s head, to see, by photographs, if he has any tumors or bullets or other things on his brain, or in it. But the surgeons say that they tried it on forty-four eases without harmful effects, and found that it was absorbed in the blood stream and gradually excreted. Maybe it is necessary sometimes. This is just telling about it; that’s all.

Worse and more of it is the statement in the Soviet- War News, published by the Russian Embassy in London, that nerves have been successfully transplanted from corpses into living bodies. Thus, one of the Red army commanders had an arm so torn that a section of the main motor nerve was missing. The nerve was replaced with one taken from a corpse, and the commander made a complete recovery.

It used to be thought that deterioration of the brain sets in about eight minutes after the heart stops beating; but in a Boston hospital the surgeons-kept the brain of a man who ceased breathing during an operation plentifully supplied with oxygen while they manipulated the heart for twenty minutes. The patient left' the hospital in good condition sixty days after the operation.

Wounds in the Heart

At Astoria, N. Y., a 14-year-old boy, Joseph D’Agostino, was “playfully”

CONSOLATION

stabbed in the heart by a playmate who lunged at him with a knife. Joseph was rushed to a hospital, sections of the third and fourth ribs were removed, and the knife wound was closed with two silk stitches. Joseph was expected to recover. Name of the playmate was withheld.

In a Harlem, N. Y., street, after midnight, a youth of 19 was found with a stab wound in his heart. Tie was rushed to a hospital. At 12:45 Dr. Finestone was reached at his home in Far Rockaway (over twenty miles distant) and was asked to rush to the hospital quickly in an effort to save the boy’s life. It was the night of a tremendous downpour of rain, but Dr. Finestone started. Traveling at high speed through the city streets of Brooklyn and New York city, he was shaken and bruised when his car. skidded and almost overturned. He arrived at the hospital in *45 minutes from the time he started, and immediately proceeded with a delicate operation requiring two hours. Six stitches were made in the patient’s heart. Three hours later the young man, who had been placed in an oxygen tent, recovered consciousness and demanded to know where he was and what had happened. He had been attacked by three thieves, but they became frightened and ran, leaving him with $118 in his pocket. It was a wild night for surgeon Finestone.'

With a bullet in his heart, Lloyd Landis, Coatesville, Fa., goes to work as a construction worker. Accidentally shot, a surgeon deftly pulled together the damaged outer wall of the lower part of the heart, and sewed it shut over the bullet. He did not extract the bullet for fear Landis would bleed to death before the wound could be closed.

Two surgeons at the meeting of the American Medical Association, at Atlantic City, claimed to have greatly relieved angina pectoris ’ (neuralgia of the heart) by inserting two teaspoonfnls of talcum powder in the space between the heart muscle and its outer envelope. The operation takes less than an hour, FEBRUARY SB, 1945 relief comes promptly, and in six weeks the patients are back at work. The first patient thus treated remained well thereafter for several years; so said the surgeons.

Magnets Have Been Used

Magnets have been used in surgery; not much, perhaps, but some. In New York city a woman 23 years old thought she was tired of living, and stabbed herself with a 2|-inch needle. The needle went into her heart; but she continued to live on, and, after a while, concluded she had made a mistake. The surgeon found the* needle, using an electronic device to do so; then he removed it, and the woman recovered.

The electronic device last mentioned is designed to locate small pieces of metal in the body by'means of electromagnets. It is a wonder it was not invented sooner. A so-called “finder”, in the form of a pencil, is moved over the wounded area, foreign bodies are attracted and recorded on a dial, and when the maximum attraction is reached the surgeon knows where to look for the metal. The size is determined by X-ray. This device was used to great advantage in the treatment of the wounded after Pearl Harbor.

In the summer of 1943 a 5-year-old boy in Brooklyn swallowed an inch-long lock. Why a boy should want to swallow a padlock is something that only a boy can explain; but, anyway, he did it. There was big excitement in the family; the parents got in touch with their physician ; the physician got in touch with the General Electric Company; they made a special magnet and the vice-president of the company flew with it to New York; the doctor attached the magnet to a stomach tube; the boy swallowed the tube; the lock came up into his esophagus; and there a surgeon of the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn seized the lock’s hasp with an instrument and pulled it out. What an odd kind of thing a boy is, anyway!

Fixing Up Arms, Legs, and Wrists

Where surgery specially shines is in fixing up arms, legs, and wrists. There is a new freezing technique which is saving many wounded limbs. When a leg has been wounded it is not circulation that the leg wants; it is rest, quiet, this is best obtained by a freezing process which decreases the metabolism v of the’wounded member until the blood is able to circulate again and the leg i$ saved.

rt ~ New kneecaps are now made of ten’ dons taken from the patient’s thighs.

* A new transparent plastic, prefabricated to the general shape of the wrist, when placed in, hot water softens enough to be molded to a broken or sprained wrist; it then hardens and stays hard.

Although this keeps the wrist immovable it permits the use of the fingers for writing and other light tasks.

At Toronto a boy smashed into a streetcar with a motorcycle and left on the pavement one leg bone six inches long and a smaller bone. Boys are like that. Police picked up these spare parts and asked the Toronto Military Hospital if they wanted them. They did, because they already had most of the rest of the boy. They put the bones in the refrigerator for ten days, then they boiled them and put them back into the boy, and he recovered and walks again. But boys shouldn’t scatter themselves around over a city like that and expect to be as good as new. It is astonishing how much they can stan^d.

Demons Oppose Necessary Surgery

ONE day this week while I was taking dictation a' letter was given to me which shows a few steps the demons have taken to cause suffering of an innocent child. This particular case is that of a little girl who has bowlegs as a result of rickets. Her sister had previously been afflicted in the same manner, but after treatment at the hospital, adequate diet and surgery, her legs were straightened, with excellent results. The subject of this letter was also scheduled for surgery of the same type. This is a simple operation and not at all dangerous. However, the following information has come to our office after an interview with the mother. I may add that the recommendation for surgery was made three years ago and the mother then was willing.

Now the visitor reports: “Nearly three years have elapsed since the first report of divine answers concerning Betty, and the mother is still firm in her belief that it is the divine will that Betty must not receive surgery. Mrs.------believes in

the efficacy of prayer and depends upon it for all personal needs. Another child was threatened with tuberculosis at the

age of 11. The mother has had Elder Johnson and others pray for her and she is very much better. Her mother says that she has bronchial asthma. Mrs. ------prays about every event or decision concerning the family and, of course, prayed often about Betty. It seemed that her answer was always 'No’ when she prayed about having surgery performed on her. On one occasion while on the way to the hospital, at which time Mrs. •——— expected the hospital to keep the child for surgery, she prayed that the Lord would help her with the decision and, if Betty should not have surgery, that some way be made to permit her to return home. Mrs.------

said the Lord worked through the doctor and he did not keep Betty for surgery that day. [She probably had a runny nose.] Another time, as she was approaching the hospital with Betty, a voice fold her it was wrong and that Betty should not be treated. Therefore she turned around and came back home. She consulted Elder Johnson about the matter and he agreed that they should pray only and not permit surgery.

“Mrs. -—— felt a little uneasy, for fear she was depriving Betty of benefit, sp asked the Lord to tell her what would happen if she permitted surgery for Betty. Immediately she saw a vision of Betty on the operating table and she was dead. Then she knew she should never permit surgery. Another time Mrs.------was uneasy about the deci

sion made and felt she needed additional proof in favor of it. Many of the sisters had spoken to her about Betty, but no brothers had given an opinion concerning her. So Mrs. ----------- prayed that if

she was right in her decision against surgery the Lord send three brothers to speak to her about it. The next time she went to church, before she had been there ten minutes, three brothers came to her and told her never to permit surgery for Betty. The mother is quite certain that Betty will overcome the bowed defect through proper diet and prayer." (I don’t think she will: her family history records two uncles who are achondroplastic dwarfs whom proper treatment would have much benefited.)

It is too bad for Betty, because chanctes are that the demon which always says “No” will be too busy with his many other affairs of meddling to take time to straighten the child’s crippled legs. Betty is only four years old and surgery should be done now to be effective. When Betty gets old enough to think she will hate the “God” wdio refused to let her become like other girls because He ‘didn’t have the power to preserve her life on the operating table’.

I told the woman who was dictating the letter that it was sheer demonism, but she said that some people had peculiar beliefs, no doubt, and that neither logic nor reasoning could sw’erve them and that no matter how peculiar we thought they were they were still entitled to do as they saw fit.—Lorraine Pyles, Indiana.

Among the Exiles

CALLING attention to the fact that there are now a half million Negroes in New York city, and that their opportunities for employment are limited, James H. Hubert, executive director of the New York Urban League, in an address reported in the New York Times, declares that Negroes make up 25 percent of the city’s relief load, and that the chief offenders who discriminate against these unfortunates in the matter of giving them jobs are the big insurance companies, the department stores, and the public utilities. Shame on them!

It isn’t only in Germany that the Negroes are treated unfairly. Maplegrove Cemetery, Kew Gardens, Queens, refused to let a maid be buried in the plot of a mistress she had served faithfully for thirty years. Do you blame the mistress for being indignant? At White Plains, also in New York state, a 15-year-old Negro schoolgirl was awarded $300

FEBRUARY 2B, 1945 damages for expulsion from a skating rink solely on account of her color. The mistress who wished to bury her faithful maid in her own lot should drag the administrators of the Maplegrove Cemetery into the courts to see if they can get away with this act of narrowmindedness at this time.

The Committee for a Jewish Army carried a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, offering 200,000 Jews willing to fight for the Allies on any battlefront, and backing up the offer with a list of 133 American and Palestinian statesmen, educators, editors, authors, journalists, attorneys, scientists, surgeons, actors, radio commentators, motion picture producers, builders, admirals, composers, sculptors and architects acting as a committee, that could not fail to impress any fair-minded man with the high purpose, sincerity and ability of the announced aim.

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V Voice Not Heard in the Street

AT Isaiah 42:1, 2 it is prophesied: _ “See! my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen one, in whom.1 delight. I have put my spirit upon him, He shall bring * forth justice to the nations. He shall not cry, nor shout, nor make his voice heard in the streets.” (Smith-Goodspe.ed Bible Version) This prophecy has been applied against Jehovah’s witnesses as proving unscriptural their field activities, and especially standing upon the street corners and sidewalks offering to passersby the magazines The Watchtower and Consolation. The question, therefore, arises, Is their Christian activity in this way for publishing the message of God’s kingdom Scriptural or not? ,

The determination of the answer depends upon the meaning of the expression, “He shall not . . . make his voice heard in the streets.” The reference here is plainly to the chosen servant of the speaker Jehovah God, who is delighted by the servant’s course of action and who upholds Him for that reason. We are not left to guess as to tile identity of this chosen “servant of Jehovah God, for Jehovah’s own inspired Word plainly identifies the servant for us. We can therefore searchingly scrutinize the activities of Jehovah’s chosen servant and see whether ‘not making his voice heard in the streets’ meant that he did not serve God with his voice in the broad and open places of cities and the countryside. Guiding a consecrated Jew by His inspiring holy spirit, and which Jew was a faithful follower and close watcher of Jehovah’s servant, Jehovah God caused him, the apostle Matthew, to write the following:

“But the Pharisees deft the synagogue and consulted about him, with a view to putting him to death. But Jesus knew of this, and he left that place. And numbers of people followed him about, and he cured them all, and warned them not to say anything about him—in fulfilment of what was said by the prophet Isaiah, ‘Here is my servant whom I have selected, My beloved, who delights my heart! I will endow him with my spirit, and he -will announce a judgment to the heathen. He will not wrangle or make an outcry, and no one will hear his voice in the streets; he will not break off a bent reed, and he will not put out a smoldering wick, until he carries his judgment to success. The heathen will rest their hopes on his name!’ At that time some people brought to him a man blind and dumb, who was possessed by a demon, and he cured him, so that the dumb man could speak and see. And all the crowds of people were astounded, and said, ‘Can this be the Son of David?’”—Matthew 12:14-23, SmithGoodspeed.

An inspired writer of Jehovah God thus points the finger straight at Jesus Christ as the chosen servant foretold by Jehovah’s prophet Isaiah. When Jesus left the synagogue, as above stated, and the people followed Him about and He healed their sick and infirm, can it be claimed that He was not in the open and public places and His voice was not heard in the streets informing the people about the kingdom of Jehovah God? The variety of preaching operations of Christ Jesus is too well known by Bible readers to deny that on this mentioned occasion and on other occasions throughout the three and a half years’ ministry among the Jews, His voice was never heard in the streets. Preaching in the streets does not undignify God’s Kingdom-message. In the book of Proverbs Christ Jesus is personified as wisdom, God’s wisdom; as it is written: “Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God.” (1 Corinthians 1:30, Am.

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Stan. Ver.) Hence, as wisdom personified, chapter eight of Proverbs says of Christ Jesus: “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coining in at the doors. Unto you, 0 men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. , . . The Lord [Jehovah] possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. . . . Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.”—-Proverbs 8:1-30. .

If it was unpleasing to the Lord God and contrary to His Word for the gospel to be presented and preached on the streets, then wisdom would never be personified as crying out God’s message in such places. And yet the Proverbs of divine wisdom again picture the Son of God and His followers and imitators as there letting the Kingdom message be heard. Proverbs 1:20-33 reads: ‘Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: . . . whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”

What, then, does prophecy mean in saying that Jehovah’s chosen Servant, Christ Jesus, would neither lift up nor cause His voice to be heard in the street ? It means that He would not be heard abroad sounding forth His own praises and magnifying himself before men for a public display. He would not thus be like the religious hypocrites, who did make their voice heard in their own praise in the streets and concerning

FEBRUARY 28, 1845 which religious self-praisers Jesus said: “So when you are going to give to charity, do not blow a trumpet before yourself, as the hypocrites do, in the synagogues and the streets, to make people praise them. I tell you, that is all the reward they -will get! When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they like to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the squares, to let people see them. I tell you, that is the only reward they will get!” (Matthew 6:2,5, Goodspeed) This accounts for it that on many occasions Jesus charged those upon whom He performed miraculous cures not to make Him known. He preferred that the power of the truth that He preached, rather than His miraculous works, should draw men to Him as the Messianic Servant who praised Jehovah and did the divine will. —Mark 7:36,37.

However, as for publishing the good news of the kingdom of God, Christ Jesus felt free to do that wherever opportunity and occasion offered, be it even on the public street or the public squares. His apostles .and disciples imitated Him in this freedom of proclaiming God’s message. Not disobediently, therefore, the apostle Paul disputed “in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him”. (Acts 17:17) It is therefore in full keeping with Christ’s perfect example and with all Scripture prophecy that Jehovah’s witnesses who follow in Christ’s steps should station themselves at corners and along the pavements of the streets and display and call out the educational magazines that they distribute. Thereby they are not religiously or hypocritically sounding forth their own praises, but are a spectacle unto the world, unto men and angels, in declaring the name and kingdom of Jehovah by His Christ.. Thereby they are effectively serving the Lord God in obedience to His Chief Servant, Christ Jesus; and Jehovah God is pleased and glorified.

John Noll and the Bible

TN HIS booklet about the Bible John J- Noli, of Fort Wayne, surely goes after those who think a lot of it. Tn passing it may be remarked that John Noll has a number of titles, such as “Bishop” and ?D.D.”, attached to his name; but since Simon Peter, for whom John Noll * claims * to have great respect, never made any use of titles, John himself ... cannot take offense at being treated the ; same way as the Bible treats Peter.

(There is, indeed, no record anywhere that Peter was at any time called “Bishop Simon J’eter, D.D.”, or even “Pope Cephas”, or something similar. Peter was not the type to go in for that sort (jf thing, and he probably was quite familiar with the text of Scripture that says, ‘Let me give no flattering titles unto man.’ (Job 32:21, 22) But to get right back to John Noll and his booklet.

The booklet undertakes first to tell the truth about the Bible. That’s good, if sincere. We find according to the booklet it was ‘just four hundred years from the time Tyndale [more accurately, Coverdale] published his first complete English edition of the Bible’ until John Noll decided to write his booklet. So the booklet is now nine years old, still going strong, and deserving of some attention, especially as it pretty well represents the attitude of the Hierarchy of-Borne toward the subject. The story bears the nihil obstat of “Rev.” T. E. . Dillon, censor libroruin, and John Noll’s own imprimatur.

John Noll says that the English-speaking world was celebrating the event, the publication of Tyndale’s Bible, occasionally with uncomplimentary remarks about the Catholic Church. That, of course, is quite understandable, since the Catholic Church, or its Hierarchy, did everything it could to make an end of both Tyndale and his Bible. But John Noll overlooks that little feature. After an introductory story or anecdote about the sentimentality people feel for the Bible, Noll turns to the Encyclopedia Britannica, from which he selects the story that Pope Datnasus ‘ordered’ St. Jerome, the greatest linguist and Biblical scholar of his times (?), to gather the approved books together and translate them into Latin. Just how the “Bishop” of Rome “ordered” Jerome to do this is not made clear, but it was probably along the lines of the manner in which a pope might now order Sears, Roebuck & Co. to provide him this or that. The past can always be colored by the present, and at great distances outlines are blurred. It is notorious that the very things for which the Roman Catholic Hierarchy -would now claim credit are the things which are sacrificed to its ambitions.

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