Consolation, November 21, 1945

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Contents

In Brief

The Harlot Press

The Ad-less Paper

Put Not Your Trust in Man

Freedom Still Given Lip-Serviee

Baily Oklahoman Sticks Foot in It

Summing It All Up

Plowed Up His Cabbages

The Omitted Commandment

Aviation Progress ,

Jet-propelled and Other Planes

Questioned on Freedom ol Worship

“That House at the End of the' Lane” J 4

Comforting Those That Mourn

“Thy Word Is Truth”

“Put Off the Old Man”

The Ohio State Assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses

*^A Stranger Goes to Church”

Witnessing in Canton Valais, Switzerland

John Knox, Scottish Reformer

“Bloody Mary” Takes Over

The Hour of Victory

The Closing Years

“Ye Have Heard of the Patience of Job”

Published every other Wednesday by WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, INC.

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The Pipe Line and the Ledo Road

♦ Everybody knows about the Burma Road into China, and how the Japanese gained control of it, and how thereafter the only way that the Allies could get supplies through was to send them by air. Many know, too, about the Ledo Road, sometimes called the Stillwell Road, and how this road, 1,044 miles from India intoChina, was put through one of the most difficult parts of the world in 25 months. It should be generally known that this road, one of the greatest engineering feats of the U.S. Army, was built largely by Negro troops. Of the 15,000-U.S. soldiers used in the work, it is calculated that at least 65 percent were Negroes, and that it cost the lives of 6 percent or 7 percent of the workers. But the men built the road. .

The pipe line that was used to build the road is mentioned last, but, by right, it belongs at the head of the list, for without it the road could not have been constructed in so short a time. That pipe line, when it is finished,-will be the longest pipe line in existence, i.c., around 2,000 miles, but ever since the fall of 1944 motor fuel has been flowing through it at the rate of thousands of tons a month, so that the highway builders could operate their machines.

Killing of Masons in Belgium

♦ On or about the first of January,' 1945, ■when the Germans and their Catholic comrades the Rexists saw that the war had been lost in Belgium, twelve prominent Masons were killed by assassination. The cowardly Gestapo and quislings that did the* killings did not have the courage to work singly; for it seems that at least two of them participated in each murder. In one case six assassins entered a man’s apartment to do the deed, and even then they did such a poor job of it that the man they sought to kill lived for two days after they left.

CONSOLATION

“And in His name shall the nations hope.’’—Matthew 12:21, A.(S'.V.

Volume XXVII Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, November 21, 1045 Number 6S3

~ ~ '■ ' —v; ■-•.-■■■■■ i ......

The Harlot Press .

THE oldest newspaper in the United States is the Hartford Courant, which has a record of continuous publication since , 1754. The Courant was eleven years old when the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought, and the story of that battle was published in its columns as news. The next event of note to appear in its pages as news was the signing of the Declaration of Independence, followed after an interval of years by the account of the drawing up of the Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights, including the very important right of the “freedom of the press”, which was but a way of saying that people had the right to print and circulate, to receive and read information and opinion without (let or hindrance.

News traveled but slowly in those days, and for a good while thereafter. When, for example, the steamboat Lexington burned in Long Island sound and a hundred persons lost their lives, January 13, 1840, the news of that catastrophe was in print and on the streets only after three days. When Queen Victoria paid a visit to Napoleon III of France in 1855, the report of her reception there was printed twelve days later in the New York Times, There was no Atlantic cable then.

A short time ago the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company made a study of typical metropolitan land small-town newspapers of some fifty years before, comparing them with similar papers of today. They found that today’s newspaper readers get from 250 to 500 percent as much information as did their great-grandparents. And it comes to thein in language that is more easily understood. That the results are appreciated is indicated in the fact that while in 1850 there was but one copy of a daily paper to every sixth, family in the United States, today each family receives an average of 1£ papers daily; a ratio of 7J to 1.

The subscription price of a newspaper does not begin to pay for the paper stock itself. Gathering the news, preparing the copy, setting the type, and other costs, mount into the millions annually in the case of the larger dailies, and they do not receive government subsidies these days.

The paper alone of a copy of the Sunday Times is worth at least 8 cents. A copy of the daily Times, wages of employees, salaries of writers, taken into consideration, together with other costs, would cost the reader 50c. The paper sells for 3c, as yet. Other metropolitan newspapers operate similarly, the difference between the cost and what the reader pays being made up by advertising revenue.

Effect on Freedom '

Aside from the fact that the great financial investments of the larger newspapers throughout the country make them “big business”, their dependence on advertisers as the chief source of their income tends to limit the “freedom of the press”. Secretary Ickes, some years ago, made the statement that the power interests once used a $25,000,000-a-year propaganda fund to oppose government ownership of utilities with the aid of the newspapers.

The metropolitan press never exposed the abuses of the meat-packing industry, or of any other industry that advertised in its pages. It could not "afford” to do so- '

Wishing to sell plenty of aluminum sulphate, one of the worst things a human can take into his system, the American Cyanamid Company advertised as follows in a full-page advertisement in Newsweek not so long ago:

One of the most important materials used in the treatment of water at filtration plants is aluminum sulphate, or “alum”, as it is usually called'. Most natural waters carry great quantities of organic and inorganic matter in suspension, which must’ be coagulated before it can be removed. The addition of alum to the water results in the formation of small insoluble particles about which the impurities collect. Like snowballs rolling down hill, these nuclei grow larger and larger as the minute particles of “Hoc” gather about them and they sink to the bottom. Thus is the water “swept” clean of foreign matter and rendered sparklingly clear and colorless.

It is not likely that the magazine will publish the findings of Doctors Betts, Le Hunt Cooper, Spira and others on the dangers of alum and aluminum cooking utensils. Advertising pays!

In New York city a poor bus company was making a little more than $2,000,000 a year. The employees heard about it, and tried to get a shorter work week than 56 hours, also a little more money and longer vacations. The bus company busted into the newspapers with $50,000 worth of advertising explaining that they just could not possibly afford the wage increases. It was positively wonderful how the newspapers reached the same conclusion. The $50,000 worth of advertising was effective. 1

How advertising and the income derived from it is likely to affect freedom of the press is indicated clearly in a statement by Arthur Hays Sulzberger, of the New York Times, in 1936. He said:

The New York Times this year has unquestionably lost a large amount of adver-tising—and we wish we had it—-because of the support of President Roosevelt during the campaign. We were accused of being traitors and communists. Some advertisers were frank enough to tell us that they would not spend a dollar with a newspaper that represented such subversive interest. Such pressure applied before election can legitimately be classified as an effort to influence our opinion. .

The Pews of Philadelphia are multimillionaire oil operators. In 1935 the Pews bought the Farm Journal, and in 1943 the’ Pathfinder, popular among farmers. They own other publications too, but their names do not appear in them. These papers go regularly to 4,000,000 farmers and are intended to serve the interests, not of the farmer, but of the Pew family. There is much in them that will appeal to the farmer, of course. But when it comes to important issues, especially political ones, things that would really help the farmers are talked down. They are offered something “just as good”, a substitute for real reforms.

The Ad~less Paper

Recognizing the practical impossibility of getting unbiased news in papers controlled or influenced by advertisers of the big business variety, the ad-less paper has “made its appearance. It just omits advertisements altogether and derives its income from the reader, who must, of course, pay more for his paper. An early experiment in ad-less journalism was made in Chicago, the Day Book making its appearance in 1911, published by E. W. Scripps. It continued until June, 1917, when the cost of paper became too great on account of the war, and its continuation became impractical. As it was, the Day Book ran up a deficit of $100,000 over a period of five years. It took a rich man to make the experiment. Obviously it was not a success.

consolation

A more recent venture in the field of ad-less publishing had its beginning in New York some six years ago. The paper was called PM, because published in the afternoon. The size was smaller than the regular newspapers, and its cost w^is 5c. An early prospectus on PWsaid, * We are against people who push other people around just for the fun of pushing, wheth- • er they flourish in this country or abroad. We are against fraud and deceit, greed and cruelty, and will seek to expose their practitioners.

That’s what PM said, but it fell down on a story dealing with Jehovah’s witnesses and their persecutors. Jehovah’s witnesses seemed to be an unpopular minority, and PM wrote accordingly.

Another ad Jess paper is In Fact, published weekly. It crowds a lot of information into four small pages, 8^" x 11", limiting its coverage to matters ignored or suppressed by the regular papers. Tn a recent issue it made mention of a suit to be filed against the other ad-less paper, PM, for allegedly misrepresenting the position of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union in connection with a strike. It seems that the paper was pushing the union around, figuratively speaking, and doing so with malice aforethought.

The ad-less paper has little chance in the face of the tremendous power of the regular press, which continues to depend on advertising revenue. The character of the advertising itself leaves much to be desired. The Federal Trade Commission polices the worst types of advertising and goes after abuses that are altogether too raw. Wm. E. Humphrey, a member of the commission, said, “The publication of fraudulent advertising costs the American people $500,000,000 annually." ‘Another observer who knew what he was talking about was Hex G. Tugwell. He said, “Branding, elaborate packaging, inflated claims . , . exaggerated ballyhoo ... It is doubtful if nine-tenths1 of our sales effort and expenses [aggregating $2,000,000,000 annually]

serve any social purpose.” That means that $1,800,000,000 is social waste. Of course, those who are the recipients of a good part of this tidy sum, the newspapers, do not consider it a waste.

Put Not Your Trust in Man

It is something of a shock to learn ' that one’s favorite newspaper or magazine is leading one in the wrong direction. The biggest and most popular magazine in the world today is Reader’s Digest, with its circulation of over 7,000,000 and claiming readers more than 40,000,000 in number. The influence of such a periodical, for good or evil, is tremendous. The owner, being a man of means, is interested in holding on to what he has, and getting more. It is not too surprising, therefore, that DeWitt Wallace, owner and publisher of Reader's Digest, should publish reactionary, anti-labor and native Fascist propaganda, nicely sandwiched in between human interest stories that have built up the largest circulation the world has ever seen. It is reported that Air. Wallace told his staff that he did not want to see Hitler defeated. He is quoted as saying:

Wc do not want Germany completely defeated. I think Germany should be beaten up a bit . . . But I do not want Germany smashed. What will become of the continent of Europe if Hitler is killed and Fascism completely eradicated? The Russians will conquer all of Europe. Therefore our policy should be to whip Hitler to the point where he recognizes we are the biggest power in the world, and then keep Hitler in Europe to police the continent and maintain order. We also need a little Fascism in the United States to keep this country in order. WTe need a certain type of Fascism here to keep radicals out and radical systems and philosophies from making any headway ...

Prominent among the editors of Reader’s Digest is Paul Palmer, who previously edited the American Mercury and who introduced American Fascism ,to that magazine before joining Beader's

Digest. While Reader's Digest is supposed to contain only selections from other magazines, it actually furnishes much of the material itself. The New Yorker magazine decided to end its agreement permitting the Reader1 s Digest to reprint New Yo rker material. It pointed out that Reader1 s Digest was no longer merely a reprint magazine. It wrote: '

. Feb. 9, 1944

To Our Contributors:

The New Yorker has not renewed its agreement with the Reader's Digest this year and has decided that no permission will be given the Digest to reprint our text or pictures . . .

The Digest started out as a reprint magazine, but grew into something quite different. Nowadays a large proportion of its contents is frankly original with the Digest and not presented as reprint material; and of the stuff that is presented as reprint material much actually originates in the office of the Digest and then gets farmed out to some other magazine for first publication. The effect of this (apart from spreading a lot of money around) is that the Digest is beginning to generate a,considerable fraction of the contents of American magazines. This gives us the creeps, as does any centralization of genius. The fact seems to be that some publications are already as good as subsidized by the Digest.

DeWitt Wallace manages to get into Reader's Digest (and other magazines) what he wants in the way of labor-baiting, anti-Semitism and pro-Fascism by having articles along those lines prepared and planted in such magazines as can be persuaded (by various means) to take them, and then having Reader's Digest take them over (de novo, as it were) entire or trimmed.

In 1942 George Seldes, of In gan to expose the Reader’s Digest. Thereafter scores of other publications attacked and denounced its methods. No one could object to a party newspaper’s fighting for its party, but the Reader’s Digest was claimed to be impartial and was trying to get its issues into the schools to be used by the children in the higher grades as a fair and honest magazine. Its use in the schools began to be opposed strenuously. A paper that was publishing Nazi articles . and was approved by the Nazi propaganda depart- _ ment was not fit reading for the schools.'

Readers Digest, carrying no advertisements, could have espoused the cause of the average man and of the truth. Instead it crusaded for Fascism. Articles smearing the things that would benefit the people were written by men well paid for their willingness to stultify themselves. A journalist like Stanley High may sometimes say to Mr. Wallace that his suggestion for a story is unacceptable, and that he could not possibly do it. Then Mr. Wallace raises the price $500 and Mr, High does the article as he is told to do it.

Mention of Stanley High calls to mind the story he did on Jehovah’s witnesses for the Saturday Evening Post at a time when Jehovah’s witnesses were viciously persecuted. The article was a contemptible attack upon a minority, though High had mingled himself with the witnesses at their convention as a good fellow and had been shown every consideration. He was getting facts, which he did not publish. Incidentally the story made mention of a supposed family of Witnesses and published their picture. It turned out that the family were not Witnesses and knew little about them. Since the Witnesses "were maligned in the High article, the family referred to sued the Post for $40,000 damages in a circuit court.

Since then the Saturday Evening Post has advanced its price 100 percent. It is doubtful that it was worth its original price. If all its articles are as ^authentic” and “objective” as High’s vicious article about Jehovah’s witnesses, a wise man would not read the magazine if paid to do so. Senator Prentiss M. Brown, of Michigan, commenting on this price increase, said:

Only a few days ago the Post announced a 100-percent increase in its subscription price —an increase of from 5 to 10 cents a week. Liberty, Collier’s and other magazines have followed suit. This means a tremendous sum taken from consumers each year. I have not seen any editorial comment condemning these magazines for profiteering. But when farmers ask a 10-percent increase, or workers seek a 5-eent-an-hour raise, they are bitterly condemned by both the magazines and newspapers, ... it comes with poor grace for these magazines which are getting so much to denounce workers and farmers for demanding so little.

And it has been wonderful how the common herd continue to buy, subscribe for and read papers and periodicals that hold them in supreme contempt. That is probably because the common people are unwilling to suspect others of the vicious fraud that is being practiced. But as . Lincoln has said, “You can fool some of the people all the time, and you can fool all tire people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Freedom Still Given Lip-Service

Freedom of the press still receives lipservice, and for commercial reasons the press itself demands freedom, though using that freedom primarily for its own selfish gain, At the time of the New York World’s Fair four statues were placed in prominent positions, representing the four great freedoms. The then president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association called freedom of the press the key of the four, so exalting it above freedom of worship. He said that without freedom of the press freedom of assembly, of religion (worship) and of speech must fall. That, if conceded, places an even greater responsibility on the shoulders of “The Lords of the Press” (as Seldes calls them). They will have to give an accounting at Armageddon.

When freedom of the press is threatened from non-profitable causes publishers leap into the fray with a will. Thus, when the St, Louis Post-Dispatch was fined $2,000 and two of its employees were jailed for writing an editorial and publishing a cartoon in criticism of a local judge, all the newspapers forthwith came to the rescue. They saw quite clearly that if judges were to be placed beyond the criticism of public opinion it would mean the end of freedom of the press for .them, and even scoundrels like Martin T. Manton would go on unpunished. Commenting on the case the New Orleans States said, “It is preferable for a newspaper to be in contempt of the courts than to be in contempt of the people.” The Post-Dispatch itself said, emphatically:

If a newspaper is to be gagged by being haled into court to answer a charge of contempt whenever a judge has felt the sting of editorial criticism, that means the end of the power of the press to tell the people about the failures and evils of their courts.. That means the end of freedom of the press. We do not believe that American courts or the American people will accept such a revolutionary departure from American principle. On behalf of American newspapers in general, big and little, rich and poor, powerful and obscure, we accept this challenge.

The Post-Dispatch will continue honestly, fairly and sincerely to criticize the courts.

The Post-Dispatch will not be intimidated. The Post-Dispatch will not be shackled. The Post-Dispatch will not be gagged.

Speaking on the subject of liberty of the pr&ss, the late Wm, Allen White remarked :

If the publisher, merely greedy for either profits or power, feels that as long as . he stands for the pay roll he is free to eolor the news he sells (which means to peddle poison) he violates his good will and eventually wrecks his property. The investing newspaper publisher is only influential as long as the public believes in his integrity. He is on leash to his readers. When his readers leave his advertisers follow.

However, if the advertisers leave first (and they don’t hesitate to do so if it suits their purpose), then whatf

The story of Ken is an example. Says The Nation;

The joy in the editors’ offices was more than balanced by the gloom in Ken's advertising department. . . . Consumers’ Union . telephoned it would take a page, but the shouts of victory from the advertising solicitors turned to groans when the manager 1 decided that a Consumers’ Union announcement would further repel commercial manufacturers. No advertising agency, no big business house appeared willing to be on either friendly or commercial terms with a publication that admitted it favored the liberal and labor movement in America. “All that the [advertising] agencies are asking,” one of the solicitors told me, “is that the policy be changed to anti-labor and anti-liberal.” . . .

• Shortly afterward Smart burst into my office white with fury. “Who told you to write those Legion articles?” he shouted. <fYou did,” I replied. “Well, d----it, I’ve been trying to

sign up the Prudential Life for three years; they keep saying Esquine isn’t their type. So I’m about to land them for Ken when you write a piece saying a' bunch of bankers formed the Legion and control it, and Franklin D’Olier of the Prudential Life is one of this royal family. We haven’t a chance to get this ad if we run your Legion series.” The series is now in the wastebasket. Naturally I told the story around the office. Every advertising man eould tie or cap it. The Esquire office classic is about a writer who mentioned an Englishman putting plain water instead of soda into his whiskey, “as most Englishmen do.” The story passed the editors, and got .into proof. At the last minute, however, it was caught. “As most Englishmen do” came out, and the author was summoned. “Cracks like that will ruin us,” one of the business heads shouted at him. '‘Do you realize what that would have cost us? White Rock, $50,000; Canada Dry, $50,000; Hoffman Beverages— don’t you think when you write ?”

I got along famously with the advertising, circulation and business departments. I liked the new cynicism which pervaded their offices, as: it once did the city room—before the guild arrived. “If journalists are a lot of prosti-.8 ' tutes,” one of the advertising solicitors said, “what are we ? We’re the dung collectors.”

“Daily Oklahoman*’ Sticks Foot in It

The big newspapers are all Big Business enterprises, therefore unfriendly and unfair to Labor. The Oklahoma Publishing Company, at a most inopportune time for the unity of the country, started a campaign against Labor in the columns of the Oklahoma City Times and the Daily Oklahoman, which it owyis. It was accredited with responsibility for sending tens of thousands of telegrams, letters and postcards to Washington, in five or six standard forms, demanding the outlawing of strikes. The joke of it is that when the campaign started there had not been a strike in Oklahoma in over three months and when the speaker of ^he House, Sam Rayburn, of Texas, denounced the fake campaign he presented figures that on the day he spoke there were 7,500,000 busily at work in war industries and only 100 men on strike in the entire nation.

In January, 1942, in the United States the time lost by strikes was four one-thousandths- of one percent of the time worked. The British strike record since Dunkirk amounts to.one day per man in 15 years of work. Yet newspapers agitated for anti-strike legislation.

The press, which has always lied so atrociously about Jehovah’s witnesses, to please the Hierarchy, also lies about Labor, to please Big Business. For many weeks, while there were around 6,000,000 men and women engaged in defense work the newspapers tried to make out that everything was being held up by strikes, when, as a matter of fact, about one person in 2;000 was actually out, according to the government’s own figures.

Summing It All Up x

The foregoing has given some tangible proofs of the willingness, or rather the eagerness, of the press to prostitute itself for the sake of gain. That it is entitled to the distinction of being known

as the Harlot Press is not left in doubt. The opinion, based on knowledge, of two able and well-known writers draws this discussion to a conclusion.

H. L. Mencken, who is on the editorial staff of the ablest newspaper in the United States, the Baltimore Sun, voices his convictions as follows:

What I desire to say is simply this: That to the best of my knowledge and belief, the average' American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but ten times worse—ten times as ignorant, ten times as unfair and tyrannical, ten times as complaisant and pusillanimous, and ten times as devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, ph ar is a-ieal, pecksniffian, fraudulent, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd and dishonest.

Alas, alas! I understate it horribly. The average newspaper, especially the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist ho op-jump er, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluoid valentines, and the honor of a policestation lawyer.

Mr. Mencken’s opinion of t|ie press is far better than itfe treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses would warrant; but let it stand. One would not wish to encourage a kindly and temperate and capable man like Mr. Mencken to say anything harsh; now, would one ?

The other writer, w’ho has also had extensive knowledge and experience of the ways of newspaperdom, is Theodore Dreiser. He speaks in vein similar to that of Mencken, saying:

Having worked on eight different American newspapers in my twenties, from Chicago and St. Louis to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York, you know that I must have had firsthand knowledge of the import of money or corporation control in the case of each and every one of the papers I worked for. To be sent out on a story, work hard to get the facts, write the same, turn them into the city editor or chief copy reader, and the same day or the next find the same altered, or the whole story killed, proved to be a familiar experience. In. Pittsburgh you couldn't talk about the steel masters and their cruelties. In Philadelphia, not a word could be said in favor of striking miners, or [against] the social or money masters of the city. In Chicago, the big politicians and the big families -were sacred. In New York wealth (society), never poverty, must be played up.

Working for the New York World, and due to a clear knowledge of its method, I one day made a solemn pact with myself there and then to quit the Harlot Press, as I had named it to myself, for good—never again to take a reporter’s job on any newspaper anywhere, even though I starved. And I did so quit, and fairly approached starvation before I eut into the editorial and magazine field, where, at last, little food or much, I could write what I knew to be so, and sell at least enough to be able to live. And since then the so-called Free Press has been to me and remains, as I have repeatedly stated, the Harlot Press, the Kept Press, the Corporation-controlled Press, etc., etc.

It is but time to remark, in conclusion, that, bad as the American pressis, the press of other lands is even worse. Yet, as the American press professes to be free as is no other, it must be that it is what it is from choice and because it values its profits more highly than virtue;. The title “Harlot Press", therefore, is a fitting and proper one. It is richly deserved. The people are beginning to realize that they cannot put their trust in these supposed channels of news, and, while they still take the daily papers, they no longer take them seriously.

Plowed Up His Cabbages

♦ When Sam Puglise, Luling, La., found he was going to get only $1.0.50 a ton for his field of cabbages that had cost him a lot of hard work, and when he found that the consumers of the cabbage would have to pay $70 a ton for the same food, he just got into his tractor and ’plowed the whole crop under ground. Do you much blame him?

The Omitted Commandment

JEHOVAH God gave Moses ten commandments, not nine. The "Roman Catholic Hierarchy omits the second one altogether, but splits the tenth one into two parts so as to make “ten” anyway, even if one is omitted. The omitted one reads:

Thou shaft not make unto thee a graven -image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I Jehovah thy' God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that1 love me and keep my commandments.—Exodus 20: 4-6, Am. Stan. Ver.

God’s Word amounts to nothing in the eyes of a man who has been deceived into thinking that lie can order the Almighty to leave His throne and come down and be sacrificed any time he sees fit to order Him to do so. Hence it need not surprise any one that in Germany the bishops urged the saluting of the swastika and the heiling of Hitler, nor that they advocate the same principle here. The way the “Most Reverend” John T. McNicholas, archbishop of Cincinnati, puts it in regard to a practice started by the Protestant paper Youth's Companion is:

The practice of saluting the flag of our country has always been approved by the authorities of the church. We wish to encourage this practice in all the schools of this archdiocese in recognition of our patriotic duty and as a sign and pledge of our love for our country, which protects and defends us.

Disobedience to the commandments is a. serious thing. It isn’t so long since there was a good deal of public excitement because in a certain chapel the virgin Mary was represented in a stained-glass window as holding in her arms a modern warship and service men were represented as kneeling in adoration of her and what she held. The battleship was taken out and the "Infant Jesus” put in its place, but it would be just as wrong to disobey in the second instance as in the first. When the Scriptures say, "In the name of Jesus every knee should bend” (Philippians 2:10, Diaglott), the reference is to His high office as the one and only means by which man can approach God.—Acts 4:12.

When Sense Went Berserk

It is hardly to be supposed that any body of men would deliberately go contrary to God’s commands, if they knew what they were, but in the top of the dome of St. Peter’s cathedral is what purports to be a painting of “God the Father”. “He is pictured as a rather old man with a flowing gray beard. It is impossible to see it excepting through field glasses, which I used.” So said a Missouri nurse who saw it in July, 1944. A direct violation of the commandment, and a double insult to the One who gave it.

So one can conceive the mental fog that caused the Pennsylvania Veterans of Foreign Wars at their annual encampment in Pittsburgh in 1943 not only to propose violating the commandment but to compel everybody else to violate it or else, the same newspaper that stated that the "Reverend” Thomas D. Roche, of St. Philomena’s Catholic church, Pittsburgh, was the chaplain of the organization had this interesting paragraph: ,

One of the highlights of the encampment was the passage of the resolution aimed at Jehovah’s witnesses whose right to refuse to salute the flag has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court. In their resolution, the Veterans asked that Congress amend the constitution and require every American to salute the flag.

This might be a good place to quote a scripture that is right to the point:

Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, saekbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of [hierarchy] musiek, yc fall down and worship the image which I have made, well; but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands Daniel 3:15. *

In Camden, N.J., Bishop M. J. Eustice, in what was intended to be a reproof to his flock, but really was to their credit and to his discredit, said:

In Catholic homes of other days holy pictures and statues were seen in all or most of the rooms. That is not so today.

It shows that in America, at least, the people do some thinking on their own account, and do not fall for every idea of other people.

In Italy the people are positively encouraged to ■worship images. The proofreaders on the New York Times must have been sickened when they had to read about a priest marching past Vesuvius bearing an image of St. John, and which act tvas supposed to stop a volcanic eruption. There was no more sense to that one than the one sent back from Malta by another mawkish newspaperman, and published in the Milwaukee Journal. It went like this:

The story is that the statue came to Malta by an act of God. It was being carried in a Spanish ship to the east in the sixteenth century and storms forced the captain to put into Malta. Every time he tried to put to sea again he was blown back. Not until he had pin sen ted the statue to the new Maltese church, then building, was he able to depart safely. He was never seen again, but the statue remained to become part of Maltese history. ■

Can you blame the Milwaukee man who sent-in that clipping for decorating that paragraph with his own comment of "Ha! ha!”’? ■

Aviation Progress

SOME faint idea of the efficiency of modern aviation may be gathered from the record of the Fireball Express, flying between Miami, Florida, and Karachi, India, via Brazil, the African Gold Coast, Egypt, and Aden, at the mouth of the Red sea. War was on. Planes were limited in number; so the very fast schedule of ten days for the round trip was fixed as the mark which the aviators w’ould try to set for themselves. During its first year of operation 7,000,000 miles were flown, the ocean was crossed more than 1,200 times, 40,000,000 ton-miles of cargo, mail and passengers were carried, and not one passenger was injured. On one occasion the round trip between Miami and Karachi was made in 6 days 10 hours 15 minutes.

NOVEMBER St, 1940

Toward the close of the European war planes were leaving the United States for Europe every twenty minutes. One aviator who had made the trip more than a hundred times stated that in a single night he counted twenty-three planes passing in the opposite direction, and found by inquiry that there had been twenty-six. He stated that there were so many planes in the sky that planes in ' each direction had to be careful to maintain their specified altitudes, in order to escape collisions, and that there had been many narrow escapes from such collisions. He found that the greatest danger was that of the aviator’s getting sleepy. '

It is ■well knowm that the average person is actually safer on a railroad train than he is in his own home; there are

not so many risks. And now the same thing is claimed for aviation. Radar devices permit an airman to see objectives through darkness, clouds and artificial smoke. Also, he knows just what the weather is all the way across the ocean. The planes in flight report the weather hourly, and the assembled information is in the hands of the aviator as he leaves port, and throughout his flight.

What TVas Done for Russia ,

At hand is a picture of about a hundred planes (81 in the picture, ■which is incomplete) waiting at Fairbanks, Alaska, to be flown via Siberia to Russia. Tn the year 1941 America could and did send to Russia 150 planes; that was all that could be spared; the next year the number was 2,500: in 1943 it was 5,150, and thereafter it was as many as Russia needed or could use to advantage. About half the planes were ferried by air. Another item that may be mentioned here, though not about aviation, is that under lend-lease the United States had before the European war ended sent Soviet Russia 588,000 tons of wheat or wheat flour, 510,000 tons of canned meat, 356,000 tons of vegetable oils, 62,000 tons of canned or dried milk, and 17,000 tons of seeds with which to begin life anew.

New York city is determined to be a center of world aviation, and is now rapidly bringing to completion at Idlewild, within the city, and at a cost of $71,000,000, the finest airport in the world. The project contemplates 900 schedules daily.. There will be several each day to London, Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Mexico city. There will be daily schedules to Scandinavia, Russia,' Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, and the Far East.

Everything to the south is scheduled to go straight from New YTork to the destination. The line to Capetown wall go via Azores, Dakar, Monrovia, Leopoldville, and Johannesburg. Next to it is the line to Hamilton, in the Bermudas, and then, swinging westward in fan shape, the following routes are projected: (a) San Juan, Port of Spain, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires; (b) Trujillo, Caracas, Port of Spain, Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires; (c) Nassau, Kingston, Balboa (or Barranquilla) and Santiago, Chile; (d) Miami, Havana: (e) Tampa, Guatemala city; (f) New Orleans, Mexico city.

In the construction work on New York’s airport’s 4,495 acres, more than 1,100 buildings were either dismantled or removed. Careful calculations have been made‘as to ■what may be expected in the way of mail, passengers, and freight, and it is predicted that much of the future long-distance travel about the world will be by air.

Jet-propelled and Other Planes

The jet engine adds 100 miles or more an hour to the speed of airplanes, enabling the aviator to put 550 miles behind him in one hour. That is nearly, but not quite, ten miles a minute; actually, a little over nine miles a minute, or slightly over 800 feet a second. The first plane to go aloft (at Kitty ITa-wk, North Carolina, in 1903) -weighed 750 pounds, wrnnt up off the. sands 800 feet for 59 seconds and traveled thirty miles an hour. It had a 12-horsepower motor.

On November 14, 1944, a Lancaster bomber made the trip of 3,100 miles across the Atlantic in 10 hours 15 minutes, which ivas an hour off the previous record. But the new Pan /American clippers, being built by the Consolidated Vultee Company, are expected to make the flights from New- York to London in nine hours, and to carry 204 passengers and seven tons of freight. They have six engines, with pusher propellers on the trailing edges of the wings. The wingspan is 230 feet. There are two decks -with staterooms, sections, lounges and retiring rooms for the 204 passengers, an electric system sufficient for 500 people, and heating equipment enough for a 40-Toom apartment house. The tail is the height of a live-story building.

On January 10, 1945, a Boeing Superfortress broke the record by carrying a 20,000-pound pay load from Seattle to ’ "Washington in a nonstop flight of 6 hours 3 minutes 50 seconds. It flew at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Those on board said that they could have brought an even larger pay load, but they were-in a hurry, Evidently!

Holding out for high tariffs, the planes are retarding the carriage of freight by air: but that will correct itself. Mention is made of a fur coat’s being sent through in a night from New York to Dallas, at a cost of only $3. Anybody who could afford the coat could certainly afford the $3 to get it where it was wanted. Mention is also made of fresh shrimp, Gulf oysters and other sea food being sent from New Orleans to Chicago, the rate having been dropped from 31^ cents a pound to 19 cents. That is still several times too high.

There is now direct air mail between the United States and Geneva, Switzerland; and that means passengers and freight will go soon.

With the bursting of the Pacelli-Hitler bubble, and the dissolution of Hirohito’s that followed, the government of the United States, through its Reconstruction Finance Corporation, as early as March 25, 1945, was offering for sale 3,000 Primary Trainers planes, which averaged to cost $9,000 each. The prices asked were $875 to $2,400, depending on condition. An item in the New York Times remarks that all these planes have powerful engines and are thus expensive to maintain. But it shows that private aviation is at the door. The same item mentions that the demand for gliders and helicopters is weak. It seems that people w'ho wish to travel by air want to go in a hurry, and no fooling about it.

Questioned on Freedom of Worship

HORTLY after V-E day, the topic under discussion in our civics class at high school was ‘'The Four Freedoms”. The teacher asked, “If you are given complete freedom of religion, what is your duty toward your fellow citizen?” Called upon to answer, I replied that if one is given complete freedom of religion he should not abridge the rights of others to worship as they please. Agreeing on the answer given, the teacher added that in a previous class that day there had been a heated discussion over a bsent” known as Jehovah’s witnesses. Immediately, those who knew that I was one of Jehovah’s witnesses turned their attention toward me. Whispers could be heard from everyone. Promptly a discussion about Jehovah’s witnesses began.

Asking for comments, three pupils gave favorable remarks about us. One of the pupils that commented was one w'ho had been with me in grammar school when I w'as expelled for refusing to salute the flag. This is what he said: “I.

NOVEMBER 21, 1945 don’t believe as Jehovah’s witnesses do, but I know’ that they are law’-abiding. I know' some of ;them and they are nice people. If they don’t infringe our rights of worship, we shouldn’t try to stop their work or persecute them.” A. pupil then asked w'hat Jehovah’s witnesses believe. In trying to explain, the teacher said, “1 don’t know exactly, as I have never had the opportunity to talk to one of them, but as I understand it, they’ base their teachings on the Bible.” Following this, another pupil said that our .work may he all right, but that we arc too persistent w'hen we go to the doors with our books and phonographs.

I hadn’t said anything until.this time, but now I raised my hand. Seeing my hand raised, the teacher asked me W’hat I thought about Jehovah’s witnesses, and whether or not I thought they w'ere too persistent in their efforts of preaching. My answer was: “Speaking with experience, I know that is not true about Jehovah’s witnesses’ being persistent,

for I myself am one of Jehovah’s wit7 nesses.” At this statement, disorder prevailed in the class. Of a class of thirty-six, about half are French Catholics, the rest being Greek and English. I was then asked to explain the nature of our work, and did so the best I could. Asked why we did not salute the flag, I gave our Scriptural standing on that question. Asked whether wTe claimed to interpret the Scriptures, I answered in the negative, adding that that was done by Jehovah himself, and that for any man or group of men to claim to interpret the Bible was blaspheming Jehovah and His Word. _ .

By this time the period was over, but the teacher held me over to explain how it happened that I was one of Jehovah’s witnesses. I told her that my parents were once members of the Catholic Church, but that, in acquiring a knowledge of His Word, they came to realize that they had been misled. So they took their stand for Jehovah and since then have been preaching His name and kingdom. To their children they taught the truths of the Scriptures and in due time they too took their stand. The teacher then said that she would like to get together and discuss more thoroughly Jehovah’s witnesses; but no definite arrangements could be made.

On the following Monday, I brought to class with me Consolation No. 669, and the God and the State and "The Kingdom of God Is Nigh’’ booklets and presented these to the teacher. I asked her to let me know when she finished reading them, to let me know whether or not she enjoyed them. Upon inquiring this week, she said she hadn’t had time as yet, though her husband has read them. However, I expect an answer soon. It seems that since I had this experience my classmates have been friendlier to me. I thank Jehovah for having had the privilege of proclaiming His name and kingdom to my schoolmates.—A young Kingdom publisher, New Hampshire.

“That House at the End of the Lane”

ONCE in a service meeting some one got up and asked the speaker, “How long must one go to a door before he gives the person up?” The chairman said, “Well, they came around to my house seven years.” And that reminds me of a witness who went to a house at the end of a lane, at the end of her territory, for nine years. The children of that household were rude. The parents and the grandmother were rude. Once, after all that time, she had worked every house in her territory but the house up the lane.

Bertha sat on a rock at the beginning of the lane, in the shade of a tree. The day was hot and she was exhausted. She said to herself that she would work that house some other day, tomorrow perhaps; it wouldn’t be any use anyway. But she knew if she didn’t go up there she would not sleep that night. Why? Because she knew the Lord could not say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” So she got up from the rock and slowly dragged herself up the lane.

Lo and behold, the door opened before she reached the bottom step, and the grandmother said pleasantly, “Won’t you come in?” Bertha recovered quickly from this shock and went in. The grandmother was alone and all interest. She wanted to know many things. Bertha supplied the information and secured a book study. Soon all the family w7as studying. And it took them just three months to get baptized. Bertha never gets tired going up the lane any more.

When I get weary of well doing, I always think of that house at the end of the lane, and I just cannot quit. I cannot but think of the Lord’s sheep, “away oh the mountains wild and bare, away from the tender Shepherd’s eare.”

We who are mothers have sojne deeply touching experiences in these days. To my partner in the field work one mother ' said, “You wouldn’t know how a mother feels who has lost her boy; you kept out of it.” Ruth felt very tender toward her and replied, “Perhaps, maybe, I do know how you feel, because, you see, I have two boys in the service over there; one is in Germany and the other is in Burma.” The lady was startled and a good deal surprised. She took a different attitude. The two had much in common, the one who needed comfort and the one assigned by the Lord to “comfort all that mourn”.

In January I received a letter from my brother, who had just returned from the Philippines. He had been missing for three years. I thought he might have been in a-Japanese prison, but it developed that he was one of the Guerrilla underground leaders. I was so overjoyed to know that he was back that I didn’t feel like asking questions _ or trying to find out anything. I went right out in the service to show my appreciation; and when telling a Sunday-school teacher about it, both of us shed a couple of tears, I think. ,

I called at another big stone house that day and for the first time I was invited inside. We had a wonderful visit, tempered with the appalling news of the loss of her boy. A friend of hers had known the Eisenhowers, and I told her his mother was a witness. I also told her many of Jehovah’s witnesses had relatives in the war, and some of these mothers had lost their sons, too. She wanted to know how they took it, and I told her that Jehovah is able to raise them from the dead, and all of our hopes, every last one of them, are in Him.

There is a colored couple in my territory. I could never get in close touch with them. She and her husband had adopted two boys, part Indian and part some other race. When I came this last time she clasped to her bosom a letter from one of them which had been written three days before he was killed in action. She had pictures of him in his plane; he was a fine-looking young lieutenant. In all my territory I have not witnessed such grief. I gave her an invitation to come and hear “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth”. She and her husband came, and they took particular notice of how the witnesses genuinely love their colored brethren as much as themselves.

Comforting Those That Mourn

On this day when I had so many experiences it was my privilege to comfort a very distraught mother, whose husband had left with another woman; and she had several children about her feet, no food in the house, and not a cent of money. Somewhere in Alaska or Greenland her only son lay sick, the last time she had heard from him. And just before I arrived she had received a telephone call from her older, daughter, who was an expectant mother, and who told her that her husband had also fled with another woman, though he had first had the audacity to drive to the house with the woman, to get his clothes. The daughter had begged the mother to come and get her, saying that she knew she was going to die if left alone, because the ordeal was too great.

The one thing that this last lady said that impressed me most was:

I had pinned all my hopes on Mr. Roosevelt, and now that he is dead I felt utterly crushed. But, you know, I picked up my Bible after that and read a scripture and it said we should not put our trust in man, but in God.

As I went to the car I remembered that I had not taken her name for my back-call list. I went back, and she had already spread The Watchtower on the table and had begun to read it. She gave melter name, and now I can hardly wait to get back and see how she .progresses.

Have you ever found one sheep? Isn’t the joy exquisite when you watch him devour the Kingdom food?—Contributed, Arizona.

’Tut Off the Old Man”

THE religious sects, Catholic and ' Protestant, say they must “Christianize” the postwar world. Here, then, is the standard of righteousness to which they must get all men to conform, according to the Christian apostle Paul, as recorded in his epistle, Colossians 3:5-10; and we ask, Can the sects make , men do this?

“So put to death those members that are on earth: sexual vice, impurity, appetite, evil desire, and lust (-which is as bad as idolatry), things that bring down God’s anger on the sons of disobedience. Once you moved among them, when you lived in them; but off with them all now, off with anger, rage, malice, slander, foul talk! Tell no lies to one another; you have stripped off the old nature [the old man] with its practices, and put on the new nature [the new man], which is renewed in the likeness of its Creator.”—Moffatt’s translation.

Though the religious sects cannot prevail upon men to do the above things, yet the apostle Paul counsels those who profess to be Christians and who are genuinely such to do the above things respecting their individual selves. He gives particular directions on how we should proceed to carry out the Christian’s vow of consecration to God, to be dead to this present evil world and to live only for the coming new world of righteousness under its heavenly kingdom. It will be noticed that Paul does not counsel for us any retirement from this world and its busy affairs and cares to some cloisters, monasteries or nunneries : but, taking God’s consecrated people wherever they may be on earth, Paul

advises us respecting the methods by which we can best get the desired results of ‘putting to death’ or mortifying wrong appetites, desires, etc., which are rooted and grounded in fallen human flesh or earthly human nature. He mentions such besetments of the flesh, commencing with the more gross and ending with the most subtle. .

. “Sexual vice,” or “fornication”, was very prevalent in the apostle’s day, and he wanted the Christians then and now to recognize this gross, prominent evil, and then in connection with it notice other evils which they might be much more likely to overlook. First of these in order is “impurity” or “uncleanness”. This word means everything that is not pure, not chaste, not holy, not clean.

If a good many consecrated Christians might feel it was useless to mention to them so gross an evil and sin as sexual vice or fornication, they will be forced to admit that, in their imperfect condition, they require guarding, counseling, on the score of impurity or uncleanness. This reminds us of Christ’s words to His disciples on the night before He was hoisted on a tree to die. He said to the ready-tongued Peter, when proposing to wash Peter’s feet, “Ye are clean, but not all.” (John 13:10) Christ knew Judas among them had an unclean heart to betray Him to the religious priests and clergymen for thirty pieces of silver. Consecrated Christians are properly clean of heart, pure of heart; but their members which touch the earth, their sensibilities and passions which come in contact with the defiled things of this world, need cleansing, need ‘washing with water through the Word’. All filth, all uncleanness, every “spot and wrinkle”, needs attention, and Christ’s “precious blood” is the antidote for every stain.

“Appetite” or “inordinate affection”, one of the things Paul mentions, signifies earthly or animal passions. Christians must mortify these, that is, deaden them, not only seeking not to cultivate, enliven, or arouse such passions either in themselves or in others, but, on the com trary, seeking to deaden these as well as cultivating the higher, nobler .joys and sentiments. “Evil desire” or “evil concupiscence” is the desire for forbidden things and is a step higher in Paul’s list of evil tendencies that should be rooted out and put to death. It is not sufficient that we acknowledge sin in its various forms to be evil and that we resolve we will strive against it because it is under the Lord’s ban. In addition to this we are to root out of our hearts every longing or desire for everything not thoroughly approved by the Lord (rod. Oh, what a cleansing this would mean in the heart and lives, and especially in the thoughts, of manyr naming the name of Christ! Many, failing to note this point and to follow the apostle’s admonition, find themselves continually beset by temptations, because, while outwardly avoiding gross immoralities, they secretly harbor sympathies for things condemned, desiring that they might have them, if only they were not forbidden.

Paul declares “lust” or “covetousness” to be a species of idolatry. Some will set their affections upon wife, or husband, or parents, or children, or upon a good name before the public, to such an extent that when testings come as to whether they love these more than they love Jehovah God and His Christ their conduct proves that they have given to these earthly good things a degree of love beyond that which they have accorded to God and Christ.

Paul next enumerates certain alterations of disposition 'which consecrated Christians should attempt and, so far as possible, accomplish; namely, the putting off and away of all the following: “anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy [ slander], filthy communication out of your mouth.” At first thought such correction of life might seem to be unnecessary to mention as being too coarse and entirely opposed to every true Christian principle; but as you scrutinize the matter you may find that Paul really takes into his. list nearly all the weaknesses of the flesh which beset even those who have become “new creatures in Christ”.

What is more common with professing Christians than to become angry? How many there are who have named the name of Christ who have malicious or at least unkind thoughts respecting others and who harbor these, and sometimes let them influence their conduct! How many there are who indulge in evilspeaking, that is, blasphemy or slander against creatures,*if not against GodF This is often done in such a way as not only to deceive the hearer but also’to deceive the speaker as respects his real intention in speaking of others discreditably, unkindly, disparagingly. What a place, too, earth would be if all the “filthy communication out of your mouth”, “foul talk” or impure language, were avoided and eliminated ! Every professing Christian should see to it that henceforth every word that proceeds from his mouth shall be such as will minister grace to the hearers, such words as will do only good and be edifying. “Let no bad word pass your lips, but only such speech as is good for edification, as occasion may require, words that are gracious and a means of grace to those who hear them.” (Ephesians 4:29, Moffatt) The apostle Paul therefore urges upon Christians, first, the purifying of their hearts, and then general candor, truthfulness, one to the other. That means honesty of speech and practice.

Such corrections of life are urged as the reasonable and proper outcome of Christian transformation from the fallen human self to the likeness of the Creator, by being renewed in knowledge of Christ Jesus, who has revealed the Creator to us.

The Lord loves the pure in heart; and he who is gracious in speech—the king is his friend.—-Proverbs 22:11, An American Translation.

Views of the Ohio state Assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses at Cleveland, September 29, 30. (1) The Auditorium, with topic of the public discourse, “Be Glad, Ye Nations.” (2) Group of Jehovah’s tiding-hearers, about to go out on the streets distributing invitations to the public talk. (3-5) Witnesses handing out the invitations to the publie meeting. (6) View of part of the audience at the opening of the Assembly, with T. J. Sullivan delivering the lecture. .

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