Awake!, May 8, 1948
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WHITE MAN SCALPS INDIANS’
Tables have been turned with an unholy vengeance
Fear in the Atomic Age
Hovers forebodingly over the seas of restless humanity
Enriched Bread
—for Whose Enrichment?
What are they doing to the staff of life?
’’Divine Healing” Today?
THE MISSION OF THIS JOURNAL
News sources that are able to keep you awake to the vital issues of our times i^ust be unfettered by censorship and selfish interests. *‘Awake I” has no fetters. It recognizes facts, faces facts, is free to publish facte. It is not bound by political ambitions or obligations; it is unhampered by advertisers whose toes must not be trodden on; it is unprejudiced by traditional creeds. This Journal keeps itself free that it may speak freely to you. But it does not abuse its freedom. It maintains integrity- to truth.
Awake!” uses the regular news-channels, but is not dependent on them. Its own correspondents are on all continents, in scores of nations. From the four corners of the earth their uncensored, on* the- scenes reports come to you through these columns. This Journal’s viewpoint is not narrow, but is international. It is read in many nations, in-many languages, by persons of all ages. Through its pages many fields of knowledge pass in review—government, commerce, religion, history, geography, science, social conditions, natural wonders—why, its cover* age is as broad as the earth and as high as the heavens.
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CONTE N'T S
White Man Scalps Indians!
A Close Look at Horror
White Man Wields Tomahawk
Medical and Educational Needs
How Indians Were Robbed of Land
Modern Scalping Operations
The Jungle “Trinity”
Fear in the Atomic Age
Death of a King
The Funeral Procession
Jehovah's witnesses Not “Reds”
Catholic News Flashes
Enriched Bread—for Whose Enrichment? 16
Political Birth of “Enriched” Bread
Should Join the Roman Catholic Union
Calling Dr. Satan, Calling Dr. Satan
“Christian Science” and Spiritism
Hypnotic Healing
Christians Under Roman Rule
“Thy Word Is Truth”
“Divine Healing” TodayT
Venezuela Elects a Leader
Ordering Color by Curve
Watching the World
®/“NbiV it is high time to awake”—Romans 13:1/9)
Volume XXIX Brooklyn, N. Y., May 8, 1948 Number 9
WHITE MAN SCALPS INDIANS!
WHAT do you think of a father who boasts of his generosity and charity toward strangers, when at the same time his own children and dependents are neglected and starving at home ? To say the least, he is a cruel, heartless and wicked father, a scoundrel whose scarlet sins are not made white by all of his generosity! Is it not, therefore, most shocking to hear that the “Great White Father” of America has turned out to be just such a worthless fellow as this ? Yes, Uncle Sam’s charity to foreign nations is very great. He gives millions of dollars to Greece, Turkey and China, pours out billions of dollars for European recovery, and gives away trainloads of food and boatloads of machinery and materials to needy nations. But at the same time he deliberately and knowingly turns his back on thousands of hungry and altogether destitute children in his own country, children of the redskinned North American Indian whom he solemnly vowed would be properly cared for by the government for all time! Nor is this criminal negligence an unavoidable outgrowth of the present postwar confusion. Ever since the white man killed off the early Indians and paid a paltry $24 for Manhattan island he has systematically robbed, persecuted and killed the descendants of the true and original Americans. With great fraud and deception the white man, while posing as the guardian and protector of these defenseless people, has scalped them of their possessions.
The shocking story of the American Indian’s suffering during the past winter has been vividly told by a few newspapers and magazines. “America’s biggest slum,” to quote Will Rogers, Jr., in Look magazine, is the Navajo Indian reservation located in the southwestern part of the United States. It is a “vast concentration camp of desert and non-irrigable land”, where the Indians “are struggling to exist under intolerable conditions of poverty, illiteracy, disease and neglect. They are dying and starving, are sub-underprivileged, because of the abject neglect of their own country—these United States,” according to the Los Angeles Examiner. After speaking of the Indian’s “theoretical privileges”, the New York Herald Tribune says: “In practice, the Navajo has been reduced to squalor and poverty equal to or surpassing the worst war zones of Europe and Asia; he has been deceived, exploited, confined and then virtually ignored by a government which has shrugged aside treaty obligations.” More than a national disgrace, the Indian’s plight has become an international scandal.
But you must visit the interior of the Navajo reservation to fully appreciate how deplorable living conditions really are. It is the largest and worst of the Indian “concentration camps”, and is situated mostly in New Mexico and Arizona, with portions lying in Utah and Colorado. In size its 24,000 square miles is equal to that of West Virginia, or three times the area of Massachusetts. On this reservation is a population of 61,000, about one-sixth of all the Indians in the United States.
A Close Look at Horror
Hunger is the Navajo’s greatest enemy. Whereas the U. S. government sees to it that the defeated Nazis receive 1,500 calories per day, and the Japanese 1,300 calories, the poor Navajo is expected to exist in this “land of plenty” on starvation rations amounting to 1,000 to 1,200 calories, which he gets chiefly from bread, coffee and mutton. The clothes of the Navajo are only rags, and there are not enough of these to keep him warm. It is indeed a pitiful sight to the tenderfooted visitor to see little children walking around on the frozen ground barefooted because they have no shoes. Do you hesitate to enter their homes called hogans? We do not blame you. Made of rough timber covered over with dirt, they look like mud igloos. There are no windows, and only a bole in the side for a door and another in the roof to let the smoke out. There is no furniture. The family sleeps on the floor and the floor is plain dirt. A fire is built right on the floor in the center of the single room. Sanitation is unknown. There are n,o plumbing facilities, no electricity, no transportation, no running water. Often small children carry water for many jjiiles from the nearest creek because their sick parents are not able to walk.
Is it any wonder that the Indians who are forced to live in such loathsome conditions are half-dead from disease? Statistics show that the death rate of the Navajos is from ten to fourteen times as great as the U.S. national average! Their life expectancy is shorter than any other group in America. Half their children die before they reach the age of five.
There is no baby food; so when a mother is not able to nurse her growing baby she starts to feed it green corn. Death from diarrhea is the result Besides having the highest infant diarrhea rate, these Indians have the highest pneumonia rate, the highest tuberculosis rate, and probably the highest venereal disease rate. Another curse that runs riot among these people is trachoma, a form of blindness that cripples a large percentage of the adults, and which is caused by malnutrition during childhood. Other diseases that find the reservation filth fertile soil include typhoid fever, smallpox and diphtheria.
Don’t think for a moment that the Indians live in this muck and downtrodden condition because they are morons. Don’t show your ignorance by saying that Indians are capable of saying only “Ugh f” True, in the last eighty years the Navajos have produced no medical doctors, no college professors, no engineers and no scientists. However, intelligence tests show that Indian children are equal to the standards set for the white man’s children. Hence, the Indian’s backwardness is due entirely to a lack of education. Only 5 percent talk English fluently, 15 percent understand a little English, and SO percent are totally illiterate. Their superstitious demon religion also has a deadening effect on their advancement and learning.
The stench of these putrid reservation conditions has reached to high heaven, and irate citizens who love-justice and equality want to know the cause, in order that a remedy may be found. Why, on the reservation, is there a shortage of food, clothing, housing and transportation? Why is there a lack of medical care, a lack of proper education, and a lack of knowledge of the true and living God?
Why are 61,000 people not able to live in an area three times the size of Massachusetts, which is able to support 4,500,-000? The answer is simple. The reservation is nothing but a vast, wind-swept, sandy wasteland that is practically roadless, waterless and fruitless. Why. do not the Indians go to work in factories ? No factories. Why do they not work in the mines? No mines. Why do they not do more farming? No water. Why do they not raise enough livestock? No grazing land. Why, then, do they not migrate to more fertile country? Because on every hand they are hemmed in by tribal language, custom and religious barriers, and on every side by a selfish and hostile country full of racial prejudice, a country that is too busy with the problems of world domination to give much consideration to these "forgotten people”.
Eighty years ago, when the reservation was set up by treaty, in 1868, there were only 10,000 Indians, and the land was able to support their sheep. But as the population rose and six times as many were squeezed in, the boundaries, instead of being expanded, were actually contracted by land steals. We are told that these conditions of overcrowding have made firewood to disappear, the grass to vanish and soil erosion to set in, until today the reservation is a wasteland. Unlike the eastern seaboard of the United States, the reservation is a desert country. It seldom rains, and there are few wells, and fewer reservoirs. All together there are perhaps 23,000 acres under cultivation. A proposed irrigation project to cost several million dollars would bring water to only an additional 117,000 of the 15,000,000 arid acres.
At one time the land maintained 1,000,000 sheep; but in 1934 “new deal” experts came along and said that the land was overgrazed, and, by government edict, cut the flocks down to between 350,000 and 400,000. Accordingly a family of five or six that requires a flock of 200 to 350 to support itself is limited to 61 sheep.
White Man Wields Tomahawk
Right here, behind all these figures, one sees the shadow of a tomahawk in the white man’s hand, and it is red with red men’s blood. Were the number of sheep cut in half because the land is over-grazed, as the “raw dealers” say (the same imbecilic “experts” who plowed cotton under and killed off pigs) ? or was it because heap-big paleface sheep barons wanted the Indian flocks cut down? The truthfulness of the latter suspicion is strengthened by the rank and odious instances of where white sheepmen glazed their own flocks on the “grassless” Indian reservations I Back in 1936 John Collier, Indian Commissioner at the time, said:
The report of the Department of Agriculture states, and shows by successive examples, that Indian after Indian has been persuaded, through debauchery with whiskey, to surrender his breeding stock and thus to lose his foothold as a livestock man. In exchange for whiskey, systematically peddled to these Indians, Navajo family after Navajo family has given up its foundation stock. Thereupon automatically and systematically, these livestock barons have moved their sheep upon the Indian range. So it has come about in the Pueblo Alto area that the Indian livestock has shrunk from 100,000 to fewer than 37,000. Every Navajo animal that has vanished has been replaced by one or more animals belonging to the "big fellows".
So the land is too nude for Indian sheep, but is O.K. for the white man’s sheep. But this is only one of the many games of cheat at which the Indians have been beaten to the ground and sculped by the ruthless and savage white man. The white traders (and there are about 125 of them) compose another pack of Indian scalp hunters. They buy a $25 yearly license from the state (thus the state becomes a party to their crimes), and then by applying their bartering tactics of lying, stealing and cheating, they rob the Indians of their works of art and sell them to the tourist trade at a fabulous profit, a business with a yearly income of $50,000 to $150,000. The Indian’s skill at weaving blankets and rugs, and fabricating silver and turquoise jewelry, is known the world over. If given a fair return for his labor he could make a living, but not so under the trader’s form of slavery.
Medical and Educational Needs
On the fringes of the reservation there are some life-saving npedical facilities, but nothing to compare with what there should be. In fact, during the last four years it is reported that five of the small hospitals have been closed for lack of funds. Think of it, for the relief of the suffering there is only one doctor, one nurse and one dentist that do any traveling in this sea of misery!
In 1868 the government promised that in the future Indian children would be given the same education given white children; that for every 30 children a school and a teacher would be provided. But what are the facts T Today 90 percent of the Indians can neither read nor write! Deliberate bungling by political grafters has flouted education of the Indian. As an example, in the early 1930’s the government built 50 schoolhouses, many of them miles away from any Indian settlement or water supply. Many of them were never used, and simply crumbled away. In the last twelve years not a single classroom has been added (in fact, some schools have been discontinued), yet the population in this period has increased by 10,000. As a result, today, of the 25,000 children, who are eager to learn, only 5,000 to 7,000 have received any education whatsoever. Even when they go to school, instead of being taught practical things that will lift their standard of living they are taught their native folklore, dancing and weaving, all of which will keep the future generations bound to the reservations and to their primitive superstitions. Indian parents cry in protest against this and beg .that such miseducation be discontinued; but to no avail. "Keep ’em on the reservations,” is the scalpers’ policy! Keep them weaving for the traders 1
The missionaries that have swarmed over the reservations also have made little progress in educating the Indians. Up until World War II, besides the many Protestants, over 1,000 Catholic priests, nuns and lay brothers infested 81 reservations in the United States and Alaska, yet only 2 percent of the Indians have been "Christianized”. Christendom’s cults, instead of uplifting and setting the Indians free with a knowledge of the truth (it is the truth contained in the Bible that makes one free.—Gala-tions 5:1; John 8: 32; 17:17), they have implanted in the Indians more religious superstitions. Why, even the director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions stressed "the Church’s policy of respecting the personality, the language, the customs, and the institutions of the various people with whom she deals”, to quote the Catholic Telegraph-Register. Like the policy of the other exploiters of the Indians, tfie creed of the Hierarchy is: Keep them illiterate and ignorant, do not change their language, their superstitious customs, their hogan-hut institutions, or their demonized medicine-man affliction of the sick. What these modern proselytizing pharisees seem most interested in is their huge slice of money appropriated by the government for Indian education. Nine of these missions will get $185,000 in the next fiscal year.
Wickedness in High Places
Far more responsible for the despoiling of the Indians than the cheating traders, livestock shysters and missionary parasites are the government bureaucrats, both state and federal, that rule the reservations as overlords. Money is appropriated for Indian relief— $100,000,000 has been spent on the Nava-jos during the last 80 years—but by the time it filters through the sticky fingers of government agencies the Indians see very little of it'. For example, 216 federal employees are op the pay roll to look after the work of 33 doctors and nurses in the small Health Department that is assigned to the Navajo reservation.
But one should not get the Idea from this that the Indians are not the recipients of many "blessings” from the “benevolent” government of the "Great White Father”. These true Americans were given their citizenship in 1924, but even to this day they are not allowed to vote in Arizona or New Mexico. They were drafted during the war, some 25,000 of them in violation of the treaties,‘■but as veterans they are denied G.I. loans for new homes. Another 40,000 worked in war plantsj paid sales taxes, income taxes and social security taxes, but they cannot receive a penny of old-age pensions or social security benefits. Why, they are even "honored” by being on the government pay roll. Yes, sir I The big-hearted and over-bounteous Uncle Sam gives his Navajo wards a monthly allowance amounting to something like $64 a year. The head of one family said he got the handsome amount of $8,50 a month. Now, honestly, would you like to he a loyal Indian trying to keep your family on such an allowance with flour costing $8.00 a sack? or would you prefer to be a Nazi enemy well cared for in the American zone?
If the public becomes enraged at this wanton mistreatment handed the Indians an "investigation” is started. Another "inspection” is begun. Another “survey” of the problem is made. As an old Indian once lamented: “All these highly paid people do is ride around all day long in government cars, inspecting us.” Answering the starvation charges, these peanut-brained bureaucrats came up with the magnificent deduction: “The Navajos are not dying of starvation. They are dying of diseases caused by malnutrition.” But which is worse, to die outright of starvation or suffer a slow, hideous death with the prolonged agonies of malnutrition?
No, not all the Indians died this last winter. The majority lived, but it was MiT 8, 1948
only because carloads and truckloads of food and clothing were donated around Christmastime by private charity. About the same time a miserly Congress voted a stingy $500,000 for Indian emergency relief, as a sort of soothing balm for the nationaUguilt that stabs the white man’s conscience.
Row Indians Were Robbed of Land
Stealing valuable land from the Indians is nothing new for the white man. He has been doing it ever since he began colonizing this continent. The very deeds of the land now in the white man’s hands were written with the red man’s blood, the story of which is found on some of the blackest pages of American history. Turn to- the case of the Sioux Indians who were driven into the Black Hills, Powder River and Big Horn country, which is now embraced by portions of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana.
In 1868 the Fort Laramie treaty was drawn up, stipulating that this area was to be a "permanent reservation” and henceforth “no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle or occupy any portion of the same or, without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through the same”. But alas! in less than a year the white man made the treaty a scrap of paper, and General Sherman, noted for his creed that ’only dead Indians are good Indians’, was again making Indians “good”. The white man w’anted to build the Northern Pacific railroad across the Indians’ land, so his surveyors were sent in without permission. General Custer’s palefaced warriors provocatively violated the treaty in 1874 without permission. Prospectors swarmed over the Black Hills in search of yellow gold without permission. Thereafter wholesale scalping campaigns under the command of Generals Crook, Terry, Gibbon and Miles killed off all but a remnant of the Indians in this part of the country.
Finally a commission in 1876 undertook to draw up a new treaty minus a great portion of the land included in the former treaty. In its report the commission said:
While the Indians received us as friends and listened with kind attention to our proposition, we were painfully impressed with their lack of confidence in the pledges of the government. At times they told their story of wrongs with such impressive earnestness that our cheeks crimsoned with shame. In their speeches and recitals of wrongs which their people had suffered at the hands of the whites, the arraignment for gross acts of injustice and fraud, the description of treaties made only to be broken, the doubts and distrusts of our present profession of friendship and good will, were portrayed in colors so vivid and language so terse that admiration and surprise would have kept us silent had not shame and humiliation done so.—Doane Robinson’s History of the Sioux Indians.
George E. Hyde, in his History of the Oglala Sioux Indians, shows us the white man’s teeth which reveal him to be a savage real estate shark:
Under the cloud of war the government had taken the Black Hills, the Powder River lands and the Bighorn country. The pretense of formal agreement and fair payment which Congress had devised to veil this act of robbery did not even deceive the Indians. The chiefs knew that they were being robbed and that they were forced to sign away their lands. Here are beef, flour and blankets (said the United States) for your lands in Laramie Plains and between the forks of the Platte, which we took from you before 1865; and here (said the United States) are the same beef, flour and blankets for your lands in Nebraska which we took before 1870; and (said the United States, with an air of vast generosity) here are the same beef, flour and blankets for the Black Hills, the Powder River, and the Bighorn lands which we are now taking from you. In all fairness, that is very near the true meaning of the “agreement” of 1876, by means of which these last lands were taken from the Sioux.
Other examples could be cited of where the white man has robbed the Indians of 600,000 acres in southern Utah within this twentieth century.
Modern Scalping Operations
Great advances have been made in the art of scalping without drawing blood. Anyone desiring to strike it rich in oil, make a few millions on coal or lumber, or reap a fortune in the salmon business, has only to ape the white man's modern land-stealing tactics. Big mining companies, fish canneries and lumber interests in Alaska have stripped millions of Indian acres of their resources in utter disregard of the treaty rights of the 35,000 Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos in that country. Though bloodless, such wicked deeds are not committed without causing the victims much pain and suffering. Crying out in protest against this rapacious robbery the president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, in a letter to the National Congress of American Indians, said, in part:
Our homes and lands, our fisheries and trees, our trap-lines and reindeer, everything we possess is being seized or threatened by unscrupulous white men, who tell us that what they are doing to us has been approved in Washington. All of the promises that have come to us from Washington are now broken. ... We were promised by President Roosevelt, ‘President Hoover, President Coolidge, President Wilson and even by presidents before their day, that our possessions should always be protected. Now the men in Washington who are supposed to be our protectors say that big corporations can take our trees, our minerals and all our lands without asking permission or paying us. . . .
Why are we suddenly to be made what you call “displaced persons”? Is it because our skins are not as light as yours? But the Declaration of Independence you brought us says that all men are created equal. Your Constitution promises that the property rights of all men—not just white men—shall be safeguarded. And the Bible that you brought us
and translated into our native tongues says that we are all brothers and children of God. It does not say that it is all right for white men to rob from men of copper skin.
From this it is obvious why the scalp-hunters are not interested in the Indians’ learning the “naughty” art of reading. But even those that are not able to read, or not able to write the truth as caustically as the above letter, know that the white man on many occasions has been and is a treaty violator and covenant breaker. “Chief Broken Treaties” is what they dub double-dealing Uncle Sam!
Figures released in 1945 show that under the terms of 389 treaties with the Indians the white man gained possession of 2,600,000 square miles of territory, or 95 percent of the country, at a cost of about 48 cents per acre. Today the land is valued at more than $40,000,000,000.
And let none say that the paleface has reformed because $8,500,000 is being paid by the federal government for 300,000 acres in southeastern Oklahoma that is owned by the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. It is just another bloodless massacre, for in this tract there is more than 769,000,000 tons of high-grade bituminous coal, worth billions of dollars, readily available for mining, and 1,000,000,000 tons more deeper down. Then there is the recent case where the government stole a vast subterranean reservoir of helium gas from the Nava-jos. For this fabulous quantity of rare and precious helium, worth untold millions of dollars, the government paid the poor, half-starved, illiterate and helpless Indians the sporting sum of $147,799.
And so it goes. One Could continue to cite many other overt acts and crimes of wickedness suffered by the native American Indians. As Jim Marshall says in Collier’s magazine, the Indians have been “studied, surveyed, inspected, exhorted, robbed, exploited, bawled out, wept over and ruined almost beyond redemption”.
Let the white man bury the hatchet and repent. Let the officials redeem themselves from this woeful indictment. Let the government that spends billions for foreign relief remember that charity begins at home. Feed the hungry Indians. Give their babies milk. Provide them with sufficient clothing. Give them medical care and attention. Pay them for the stolen lands. Give them back their sheep. Open up their reservations. Develop their land and resources. Let them reap the fruit of their own labors. Remove the exploiters and oppressors. Take away government support of the missions. And, above all, educate them to read and write. All this will at least give them temporary relief. Of course, for permanent relief and a lasting remedy, the American Indians, like all other people of the earth, must put their hope and trust in the glorious, perfect and eternal Theocratic kingdom of Jehovah God and His Christ.
c(5/ie Jungle "Trinity"
Among African religions cnlts there is a vague reference to “Mwari”, the X godhead which embodies the conception of a trinity. Shoroyeshou (elephant Mp7iv ^ea^) the father, the creator, so named because the elephant is the largest fJLA known living thing; Runji, son and preserver, on whom is bestowed the praise name of “needle that sewed not cloth, but stitched the earth”; and Bamarumbi or Banyanchaba, the mother, the intereeder. Sacrifices or offerings are made to Barna-rumbi only, to intercede for mankind with Shoroyeshou and Runji, for they are not approachable directly. Here, then, is more evidence that Christendom’s conception of a three-headed god is not only an offspring of the pagan ideas of the Babylonians, Egyptians and Buddhists (see Awake! January 22, 1948, page 26), but also remarkably resembles this trinity of the tribes of the Dark Continent.
44T T PON the earth.
of fright-
U distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which, are coming on the earth.” Thus Christ Jesus foretold conditions.that would come in the “last days” of Satan’s world, just prior to Armageddon. (Luke 21:25,26; Revelation 16:14-16) Who will deny that the nations are now sorely distressed and perplexed, that the seas of restless humanity are tossed and whipped about by the tempestuous roarings ened political leaders? They unleash upon'the troubled masses of people their windy charges and countercharges, their wars of words, their wars of nerves, .their cold wars. Cold wars that threaten to become shooting wars. But thus far, as one reporter put it, the cold war has only developed into the shooting-off-the-mouth war. Both rulers and ruled have hearts filled with fear, fear for the future of the atomic age.
Listen to the outcries of fear from scattered parts of the world. In Costa Rica “a reign of terror and lawlessness” grips the land, in the throes of revolution (April 6). March 27 Greek Foreign Minister Tsaldaris filed complaint with the United Nations that in Greece there had been “loosed a reign of terror so calculat-ingly cruel as to challenge description”. Also in March Secretary of State Marshall said, “The world is in the midst of a great crisis, inflamed by propaganda, misunderstanding, anger and fear.” He declared Czechoslovakia gripped by a “reign of terror”. Henry Wallace shouted back that President Truman had “set the pattern for a reign of terror” in the United States. On March 15 the New York Daily Mirror said editorially : “This is a new thing for Americans. Fear! Fear in their own land. Fear in their homes. Fear for their children. It is fear born of the disunity in America and the aggressions abroad of an expedient ally turned enemy.”
Next during the mad month of March comes a call for one slave to free another. Anne O’Hare 5 McCormick declared that “the United States, however, must find some way to liberate Europe from fear”.
Last November 10 Albert Deutsch, writing in the New York PM, jabbed at jittery United States for becoming such a nervous nation, saying:
What a nation of gossipmongers we’ve become ! Rumors are flying. Our Congress is being turned into an Assembly of irresponsibles, where tattle and gibble-gabble are accorded the same weight as truth and common sense. As the President’s Committee on Civil Rights expressed it more elegantly the other day, we’ve got a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. We jump like mad, as though the earth beneath us were shaking, every time Stalin sneezes, and we—the world’s most powerful people— see world-wide conflagrations every time the Man in the Kremlin lights his pipe.
On April 12 Trygve Lie, secretary general of the United Nations, said: “Today, as in 1933, too many people are afraid. People are afraid in America. They are afraid in Russia. They are afraid in small countries like my own. And the governments, too, are acting as if they were afraid.” That just about wraps up the entire world in the blanketing tear.
Fear looms ever larger because of World War III that hovers on the horizon, with its unknown terrors of atomic warfare. Tossing the troubled waves of humanity to higher pitches of anxiety and fear, Lieut. Gen. A. C. Wedemeyer, on April 6, asserted: “To be brutally frank the ugly clouds of war are once again gathering on the horizon.” And what those war clouds of the atomic age hold in readiness to downpour on the earth strikes still more fear into the people’s already failing hearts. Recently an aircraft builder, G. L. Martin, excited the nation about radioactive clouds that could be drifted across enemy territory, causing horrible death and widespread desolation. He described the atomic cloud as “the greatest killer of human beings ever devised”. Isn’t that a nice triumph for science? He added, “I wouldn’t want to visit any nation that got a taste of it for a year afterward.” His Baltimore company makes a rocket supposed to rise 235 miles high. Guided missiles with homing devices have been developed, and he boasted: “We can sink the ship even if it is halfway across the Atlantic.” Then there is bacteriological warfare to add its contribution to the mounting war fears of “civilized Christendom”. And if more fear is to be fomented, speak mysteriously of potent cosmic-ray bombs!
Atomic bombs, of course, will play their part, and much more fearfully than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due to subsequent scientific research and development. On this point Dr. Urey, one of the foremost scientists in the atom bomb project, said, April 11: “Atomic bombs have been developed to the point where we can’t expect to use them in large-scale war and have the human race survive.” Previously he had written concerning fear: “I write this to frighten you. I’m a frightened man, myself. All the scientists I know are frightened, frightened for their lives, and frightened for your life. . . . We who have lived for years in the shadow of the atomic bomb are well acquainted with fear, and it is a fear you should share. . . . Freedom from fear? We will eat fear, sleep fear, live in fear, and die in fear.”
Does the United Nations calm these fears? President Truman had expressed confidence that world peace could come by world co-operation through the international organization. That was last December. During March he was reminded of his “confidence”, and he confessed that “his confidence had been somewhat shaken, but that he was still confident of ultimate peace. He added that we must have peace”. Premier Pekkala of Finland was more blunt, saying bitterly of the United Nations: “Hopes of organizing international affairs through this organization have collapsed.”
Does religion calm the rampant fears and soothe restless humanity? On March 28 the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of New York, Charles K. Gilbert, said: “We stand bewildered and afraid before all the baffling problems that now threaten to destroy everything we hold dear.” Catholics are under even greater stress of fear, if we can believe Representative Donald O’Toole, who, on March 19, urged the United States to guarantee the safety of the pope, saying that if anyone should “bring harm to this holy man, it would be a world tragedy”. Because of conditions in Italy he declared that a “terrible fear has been placed in the hearts of more than 25,000,000 Roman Catholics”.
Only true Christianity casts out the paralyzing force of fear. “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” —1 John 4:17,18.
T> ANNOUNCE the death of a king, in most parts of the world, means much publicity to the whole world. It means a great heralding forth through international communication systems. However, in many parts of Africa the death, of A king means little or nothing to the rest of the world; but to the inhabitants of the tribe over which the king ruled it means a great deal.
On December 28,1947, the death, after but a short reign, of Nii Tackie Ta-wiah II, king over the Ga state, occurred, in Accra, the capital city of the Gold Coast. The Ga state, though small, is a very important region stretching from Obutu on. the west to Tema on the east. This stretch of territory occupies a coastline of about fifty miles and embraces some 919 square miles. In all, the population is some 250,000 inhabitants, the greater portion of which are illiterate and only able to speak the Ga native vernacular.
On the day of his death, December 28, the body of the late king was laid, in state, libation was poured by the high fetish priest, there was a volley of rifle fire, and the air was rent by the doleful beating of the drums. This custom of firing the rifle shots when a man of rank dies is to let the long-dead know that an illustrious newcomer is arriving.
Much ceremony was carried out in the preparation of the body before the funeral, and regarding some of these customs the book Religion and Medicine of the Ga People, page 198, paragraph 1, bays: “Immediately a death occurs in a household the first thing that is done, other than wailing and crying, is to call in the old women of the dead man’s father’s family and of his mother’s family also to wash and shave the corpse,” Commenting further, paragraph 5 adds: “The fingernails and toenails of the body are also cut very short before the bathing. This is to remove the risk of mourn-
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And here in the palace the pr libation wore closely followed.
For the three days following his death, numerous relatives, friends and subchiefs poured into the precincts of th$ palace or Mantse We. Outside the palace each day were crowds of natives all performing customs, of a numerous kind. The news of the death had flashed across the country like wildfire, and before the corpse was cold relatives and mourners from distant villages had made their appearance. Day by day the masses flocked to the palace. The noise of wailing, rattling beads on calabashes, dancing and drumming made a racket designed to flatter the vanity of the departed. This mourning procedure was not limited to the relatives of the deceased. Women not bound by blood ties or friendship to the dead person were there the whole day, sustained by purely ceremonial tears." Drinking was ever seen in and around the palace grounds. As merrymaking was carried on, visitors would contribute their money to -the funeral cost. The charges of drinking are, many times, of a crippling nature to the relatives of the deceased; but a lifetime of debt is preferable to an offended dead relative.
At +he conclusion of three days of such revelry, the time arrived for
The Funeral Procession
At the scheduled time, amid the doleful beating of tom-toms, the funeral procession started. Crowded along the burial route were many people, all anxiously awaiting the events to follow. Some people had gained prominent positions along the route, on' the tops of buildings and automobiles. Others were lined in solid ranks along the sidewalk.
The spectators, most of whom were of the Ga state, were attired in the varying native garments. Men of the tribe wore long robes slung loosely over their left shoulder while at the same time exposing the right arm and shoulder naked. Very few of the natives wore anything on their feet, as these things are considered a luxury. Women, likewise in the usual way, with long cloths to their feet, also carried their babies on their backs. Noteworthy among the spectators were also many Mohammedans clad in their typical white gowns. In all, the sight was a mass and blaze of brilliant color.
The procession as it moved into sight was headed by the headsmen of the various tribal communities. These warriors were naked except for a short grass or
calico skirt, sundry necklaces, and anklets of beads and cowries, their faces and bodies painted with white and other colored clays streaked with runnels of sweat. In hands they brandished a cowtail switch. Amid this sight there was great wailing and discordant singing. In the midst of these warriors was the obrafo, that is, a youth with his face horribly blackened and grimacing to the full extent of his talent, capering around and brandishing a short sword, pretending to cut off all his friends’ heads. The obrtafo in ancient times was the executioner who killed human victims to serve the king or mantse in the afterlife. A case of this ritual murder of a native subchief took place a few years ago. It was known as the Kibi murder case. (Commenting on this ancient practice of killing humans to serve the dead in the afterlife, M. F. Field, in the book Religion and Medicine of the Ga People, says: “So far as I can discover Ga human sacrifice generally took the form of burial alive, and victims were usually female. Human beings were never lavish-• ly sacrificed as in Ashanti and Dahomey, possibly because the Ga were always anxious about.keeping up their numbers.”)
Other warriors were in close range of the obrafo. Darting, occasionally staggering from side to side, these warriors carried in their mouths short knives, while in their hands they held headless chickens. Beheading these chickens recalled the ancient practice of slaying humans to pacify the spirits in afterlife.
In close proximity to these followed soldiers attired in red-and-black-striped garments, holding high in the air their rifles, running as they went on their way, shrieking wildly, occasionally bowing, then retreating so as not to get too far ahead of the coffin.
Moving in line along in the procession came the many divisional chiefs, so well identified by the many colorful state umbrellas, carried by their servants.
Then the richly decorated casket or coffin borne on the shoulders of six bearers followed. Not in even motion did it follow along in line- No, not by any means. The coffin was indeed an unruly burden, for it would lurch and plunge forward, and several times spin round, shy, and then “take the bit between its teeth*’ and charge off into side streets. The bearers in facial expression looked suffering and sweating creatures. Tradition has it that if anyone is responsible for the death either by witchcraft, poison, or bad medicine, the coffin will lurch and rush toward the house of the offender and refuse to pass it. The rushing around the town in this way with the coffin is for the purpose of giving the corpse the chance to say “good-bye,J to its friends. It is the last time that the dead man will be able to make people run about for his pleasure, so he takes full advantage of it.
Amid dancing, drums and infectious excitement three children of the late king were carried in an elephant palanquin. The noise of drumming and other music by this time had reached a crescendo.
Trailing still farther in the rear of this palanquin came crowds of relatives and friends of the deceased, and other associates, in ever-increasing numbers as the burial site was neared.
Details as to the last funeral rites administered at the graveside are not definitely known on this occasion, owing to great secrecy of the matter. However, the usual, -customary procedure is outlined for us in the book Religion and Medicine of the Ga People, page 205, from paragraph 1 on:
At the burial place various [fetish priestesses] are possessed and are ready to deliver any messages from the dead chief. Only a few people can squeeze into the little room under which the chief is buried. Food is sprinkled three times on the grave and rum is poured three times with the words: , , , Grandfather, mantse, come and eat. . - . Every ghost, all of you, come and eat. And crush all misfortunes. Give us a good mantse, and abundant meat and com. Hail! Let happiness come.
After all this the officials present call upon the dead mantse in the name of the devastation of the battle of Katamansu, saying that if he knows that his death was caused by any human being he must kill that person, but if it was a natural death that he died , +, he must sleep in peace.
The ideas and traditions of the tribes inhabiting this country are numerous and widely different from one another. Thank God, however, that the customs and precepts of this old world will shortly go and forever make way for that New World, the “world without end”. —Awake! correspondent in Gold Coast.
Jehovah's witnesses Not “Reds”
(So often the false charge is made by ignorant and rabid Catholics that Jehovah’s witnesses arc communists, that it is of more than passing interest to note a statement to the contrary in an official Catholic publication. Gabriel Gagnon, C.Bs.R,, writing on the subject “The Witnesses of Jehovah”, published in the French language magazine Annettes de la BONNE SAINTE ANNE de Beaupre, Quebec, P.Q., September, 1947, says: *It is good not to ignore that Russia is the only land where the witnesses have nut yet been able to implant themselves. The iron curtain of M. Stalin is for them also impenetrable.” However, in Russia there are Witnesses preaching, under difficulty.
Catholic News Flashes
Catholic Conquest of America
“I add, with both hesitation and regret, my feeling that a good deal of what is most reactionary in the political and social life of America
today is directly traceable to the influence of a militant Roman Catholic Church, which is as much the expression of the purposes of a foreign power as any influence exerted by the Communist party. No other body has the same grim responsibility for the tragic fate of the Spanish people. No other body has devoted itself so consistently to poisoning the relations between Russia and the United States. ... It has immense influence over the movie industry. ... It plays a major part in the repression of freedom of speech. ... It is attempting with subtlety and skill to establish a concealed control of trade unions in cities where there is a large Roman Catholic population. I doubt whether there are three Americans today whose authority, direct and indirect, counts for more than that of the cardinal-archbishop of New York. And to this must be added the curious and significant fact that the members of the Roman Catholic Church seem able, like their co-religionists in Great Britain, to obtain pivotal posts in the foreign service. ... Anyone who measures Roman Catholic strength in the United States today with what it was a generation ago cannot fail to be impressed by its growth, as well as perturbed by its direction. Spain apart, I doubt whether there is any country in the world today, in which its authority is greater than in America?’ —Harold Laski, of the British Labor party.
Clearing Hitler’s Catholic Conscience
<L In a letter to Mussolini, June 21, 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of Russia, Hitler gave his reasons for the invasion. He declared: “In conclusion, let me say one more thing, Duce. Since I struggled through to this decision, I again feel spiritually free. The partnership with the Soviet Union, in spite of the complete sincerity of the efforts to bring about a final conciliation, was nevertheless often very irksome to me, for in some way or other it seemed to me to be a break with my whole origin, my concepts, and my former obligations. I am happy now to be relieved of these mental agonies.” Hitler’s friendship with Communism was against his “whole origin” (he was born and raised a Roman Catholic); it was against his “concepts” (he had dreamed of re-establishing the “Holy Roman Empire”); and it was against his “former obligations” (he had signed a concordat of partnership with the Vatican). So by doublecrossing the Russians Hitler felt “spiritually free”.
cAmnesty for Collaborators
C The Catholic cardinals and archbishops of France have asked that the 100,000 Frenchmen convicted of wartime collaboration, and others suspected of the same, be given amnesty. Says the New York Times: “The prelates expressed the belief that France would recover quicker if these persons were relieved of this disability.” What the prelates mean is that France “would recover quicker” to the state of affairs existing when the Vatican-Fascist-Nazi regime under puppet Petain ruled the roost. This Hierarchy request seems to be part of the reported Vatican-sponsored conspiracy to form a “western bloc” of Catholic dominated countries made up of Franco’s Catholic Spain, Salazar’s Catholic Portugal, De Gasperi’s Catholic Italy and De Gaulle’s Catholic France.
&£o More ioc Hallowed Hold-ups
<1 Reports the Denver Post, January 17,1948: “A hallowed custom of thirty years has been discontinued at the Immaculate Conception cathedral. The seat offering of 10 cents a person, formerly collected at the entrance to the aisles by ushers seated at desks, has been abolished, the ‘Very Rev.’ Walter Canaban, rector of the cathedral, announced. ‘The money-changers are no longer at the gates of the temple/ he said. ‘Non-Catholics sometimes thought it strange, and some of the parishioners also objected. We shall depend upon the generosity of the people in the regular offertory collection to make up the difference.’” The money-grabbers inside will hound them to “make up the difference”.
EVEN though the perfect foods of God’s provision in the garden of Eden were no longer accessible to man, the benevolent-Creator made ample provision for the sustenance of His intelligent creatures, in that which the earth would produce: “Thou shalt eat the herb of the field . . . Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground.”—Genesis 3:18, 23.
Among the many herbs or green grasses springing from the soil was one of rich food content, wheat. This staple food has been a means of sustenance for generations of men in all the nations of the earth. So universally has wheat been accepted as a basic article of diet that it has come to be spoken of by many as the staff of life. The first Biblical account of the use of wheat as a main food dates back to the days of Jacob, when it speaks of the wheat harvest.—Genesis 30:14.
In all the many centuries of its use the matter of w’heat enrichment was unknown. Nor is it to be presumed that the users of wheat lost any of its rich food value by its not being “enriched”. And, contrary to the arguments of the votaries of bread enrichment, the earliest users of wheat in its various forms were not cave men of low animalistic temperament and who because of their subnormal mentality gleaned only partial value from the wheat bread they ate. The only dependable and authentic record as to the earliest uses of wheat and other grains as articles of food is to be found in the Bible. From that record wheat was used by men who were of the highest intelligence and were of far finer physique than their progeny of today, Not until this present century was it considered necessary to “enrich” bread.
From its first recorded uses the preparation of wheat to be eaten was most simple. The kernels were sometimes roasted or parched; more rarely the ears were roasted at the fire. The primitive way of grinding the grain was to crush it in a mortar, with a pestle, making the bruised grain, which was eaten without further preparation. Probably it is this, or porridge made from it, that is denoted in the Biblical term “dough”. Generally, however, the grain was ground into meal either fine or coarse. Bread was baked in a bake-oven. The lumps of dough were flattened firmly against the heated wall of the oven or spread on the stove within. At times the loaves were simply placed in the hot ashes or on red-hot stones, in which case care was taken to turn them at the proper time. Frequently cakes were spread with oil; or the dough was mixed with oil or honey.
Such bread was really enriched, but not synthetically. It is certain that food so prepared, while perhaps not pandering to the jaded appetite of today, lost none of its vital mineral and vitamin essentials; it made no claim to being a slo-baked wonder bread, enriched beyond compare.
But Why Enrich?
Simple confession is sometimes unwittingly made in the most naive way. The mere fact of the much advertised enriching of bread is tacit admission that there is need for such enrichment. Hence the naivete of their advertised claim. But does the sun-ripened golden wheat require to be enriched? Ha« not the great Creator placed within the enemical structure of each grain life-sustaining minerals in such balance as to need no artificial enriching? Then why enrich? Or better still, What is being enriched? The claim is made that Vitamins Bj, B2, niacin and iron are added to the flour used, in the main, to make our daily bread. Just see how snowy white the bread is I Note its light fluffiness! Scientific masterbrains have displayed with pride aluminum-f oilwrapped, “enriched” bread 72 days old that possessed “the characteristics of a freshly baked loaf”. Is this the wheaten flour ground from the rich golden kernels? No indeed! It is the almost worthless starchy residue after the highly perishable but invaluable wheat germ and bran have been removed.
This “refined” residue, from the bulk of the kernel, is the white flour universally used today; “exhausted” flour it is termed even by the millers; mummified flour it is in actuality. To be sure, this mummified flour keeps well, in fact, indefinitely; and the reason is simple. In all foods for human consumption, that part which contains the highly specialized life-sustaining elements is always highly perishable. It is this life germ that is so amenable to attack by bacterial invasion and all kinds of pests. Because of this, whole-wheat flour cannot be kept for any length of time before it becomes subject to spoiling through parasitic attack. Parasites do not attack the starchy bulk of the wheat kernel, but they thrive upon the precious wheat germ. Hence, for economic and commercial
VVHOLS
WHBAT
a, 1948
reasons, millers “refine” flour, removing the perishable but vitally nutritious wheat germ and the rich vitamin-containing bran to be used mainly for animal feed. Experimental tests on animals have proved that dogs fed on nothing but white bread will die in two months. Animals lived longer on water alone than on white bread and water.
And yet in view of these undeniably proved facts human creatures have presented to them in all their highly advertised, fanciful forms goods made of “exhausted”, “bleached” white flour; white as driven snow, cakes, cookies, rolls, crackers, refined cereals’and no end of frilly knickknacks, not to mention an “enriched” “wonder” bread. The spurious argument is presented that presentday baker’s bread is far superior to that which grandmother baked. From a commercial baker’s advertisement we quote:
The writer of a typical article starts off by yearning for the good old bread that grandmother used to bake, then charges the baker with taking the good out of bread and putting it into his own pocket. This is all calculated to make people want to rise up and put bakers out of business. Whereas, analysis—from the scientific point of view—of the formula of the bread grandmother usM to bake proves, among other things, that it is woefully lacking in four major nutritional elements: Vitamins B,, B2, niacin and iron. All of which are contained in modern bread. But enough of this bogeyman business. Let’s take a look at bread as an important food. Let’s see what the only people in the world who are in a position to find out know about bread. That is, scientists —who have no axe to grind.
There can be but one reason why grandmother’s bread was so “woefully lacking” in nutri-
tional elements: grandmother’s flour had been deprived of those elements. It is certain the farmer who grew the golden kernels did not remove those elements. The miller is the one who removed that which scientists avow is essential to human nutrition. For purely economic and commercial purposes those elements were removed. And both grandma and her children have had to endure the scourge of nutritional deficiency diseases resulting from “refined”, “exhausted” and mummified white flour. So deleterious an effect did this have upon so many millions that scientists endeavored to step into the breach by producing synthetically vitamins and minerals with which to “enrich” the exhausted flour. This gesture of science presumed to substitute artificially those lifesustaining elements that the Creator placed in the sun-ripened wheat originally, and which the miller had removed to promote his own ease of handling and for commercial gain, * *
Political Birth of "Enriched” Bread
And then, as though adding insult to injury, not only has the wholesome wheat been “exhausted” in the process of refining, thus removing its precious vitamin and mineral content, but, to make it more appealing to the eye, the mummified flour is submitted to further processing: bleaching. In this regard the New York Times of December 29, 1947, has some revealing information from “the only people in the world who are in a position to find out”,
A warning that a chemical widely used to bleach white flour which has been found to produce convulsions and fits in dogs, may also produce subclinieal symptoms in human beings that may manifest themselves as alcoholism or some other form of personality disturbance, was sounded . , . at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . . * The bleaching agent, a gas compound of nitrogen and chlorine, has been found in laboratory tests to convert proteins into a nerve poison. The effects on dogs were produced after feeding them on large amounts of the white bread bleached with this agent. While no clinical effects from eating white bread bleached with the chemical have been observed on humans, this may be due to the fact that the amounts consumed by the average persons are not large enough . . , however, there is a strong possibility that it exerts'a deleterious effect on the nervous system and that it may be a contributory factor in pushing potentially unstable personalities over the line. Persons with tendencies to alcoholism may become active alcoholics as a result of even small effects of the chemical on the nervous system ... 90 percent of the white flour produced in this country during the last twenty years has been bleached by this gas . , . we should provide, without delay, more iron in the education of our children, and less nerve poison in their bread.
If Br. Carlson’s assumption is correct, it would mean that some individuals may become alcoholics as a result of eating white bread bleached by the nitrogen-chlorine gas.
Prior to 1940 most of the well-known nutritional scientists in the United States, 'Britain and Canada were in favor of whole-wheat bread and opposed to “enriching” with synthetics. British and Canadian scientists are still opposed to synthetic bread. American scientists, strangely enough, now call for “enriched” bread. Why?
Scientists have an axiom that “scientific truth knows no boundaries, national or otherwise”. What, then, has interposed itself around the borders of the United States to make axiomatic truth within this nation the very opposite of what it used to be, and what it still is in Canada, Britain and parts of Europe? Something pertaining to the nascent doctrine of bread enrichment has caused a complete face-about by such leading American nutritionists as R. R. Williams, synthesizer of thiamin; Dr. Russel M. Wilder, of the Mayo Clinic; and Dr. W. H. Sebrell, of the United States Public Health Service.
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