Awake!, September 22, 1949
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Television’s Triple Challenge
To movies, radio, home
Total Peace in a New World
This old world’s practice of total war to give way to a peace that penetrates all fronts of human living
Berlin Still Skivers in the Cold War
But lifting of the blockade brings a breathing spell
Is Blood Transfusion Scriptural?
k Ancient Egyptians practiced it
s long before modem medical science
SEPTEMBER 22, 1949 semimonthly
THE’MISSION OF TH(8 JOURNAL
News sources that are able to keep you awake to the vital issues of our times must be unfettered by censorship and selfish interests. “Awake f' has no fetters. It recognizes facte, faces facte, free io publish facts. It is not bound by political ambitions or obligations; it is unhampered by advertisers whose toes must not be tread upon; 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 I** 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 comers of the earth their■ uncensored, on-the-ebenes reports come to you through these columns. This jdurtial’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 coverage is as broad as the earth and as high as the heavens,
“Awake I” pledges itself to righteous principles, to exposing hidden foes and subtle dangers, to championing freedom for all, to comforting mourners and strengthening those disheartened by the failures of a delinquent world, reflecting sure hope for the establishment of a righteous New World,
Get acquainted with “Awake 1*’ Keep awake by reading "Awake T*
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CONTENTS
Television's Triple Challenge
to Movies, Radio, Home
Television Races Beyond Forecasts
Problems Posed by Television
Effect on Radio and Home Life
Total Peace in a New World
Total War Before Total Peace
Peace Within Man
Peace Between God and Man
Henpecked Husbands
Berlin Still Shivers in the Cold War
Breathing Space During the Cold War 14
Buddhism's Twin Sister
Quick Glimpse of a Venezuelan Market
Jersey Justice, Low and High
Battle over Medical Care Thickens
Controversy Splits the AMA
Charges Against AMA
World Catastrophe Through Patriotism
“All Their Eggs in One Basket"
"Thy Word Is Truth"
Is Blood Transfusion Scriptural f
"Patriotic" Mobsters Fail in New Zealand 27 Watching the World
/WVAKElf
it is high. time to awake.’—Romans 13:11 if
Volume XXX Brooklyn, N. Y.( September 22, 1949 Number 18
TELEVISION’S TRIPLE CHALLENGE To Movies, Radio, Home
A MILLION and a half people now own television sets which they will tell you about and demonstrate as happily as they would show you the new baby.
But for a variety of reasons, including expense, inaccessibility to telecasting stations, and disappointment with programs and reception, the majority of families might be catalogued by television sales firms as “prospects, decision reserved”.
On the other hand, for many crowned heads of radio and the movies, the rise of television has already developed an ominous roar. The public may pleasurably dabble in the lapping waters, but for them, the tide's increase—projected at 3 million receiving seta by 1950, and 400 sending stations by 1951—is like viewing from your beach house the approach of a tidal wave. The chief though silent lamenters in Hollywood, where words were never rare and speechlessness is well-nigh scandalous, have lately resorted to the harried politician's “No. comment” to queries.
Pained most acutely are the Big Five in the film industry, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century-Fox, Loew's Inc. (Metro-G-oldwyn-Mayer), and RKO (“so classified because of their control of the theater chains”), the multimillion-dollar picture producers. So rich from former exploits that, quipped one writer, a Big Five executive could not afford the time to pick up a five-dollar bill if he dropped it, they sire now reportedly weeping m theixushampagne.
While the threat to the standard radio broadcasters has been equal to if not more imminent than the menace to the movie monopoly, the transition or conversion to television, which many have commenced, does not offer such thorny problems. In addition, Television’s challenge comes at a time when the cinema combine has other headaches: dwindling home revenue, loss of foreign markets, and the unfavorable U. S. Supreme Court decision on ownership of theater chains. Laden with astronomical overhead and unaccustomed to economies, the major companies can only enter the new and admittedly promising field of making inexpensive half-hour films for television, after severe flesh pounding and painful prunings.
Movies for Telecasting
To bring this point home it is necessary only to remember that according to production. head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, Dore Schary, a picture cost of “only $1,500,000 isn’t excessiye these days”, while Jerry Fairbanks, Ine., and Hal Roach, formerly famed for their comedies and educational shorts, for example, have turned to the production of “television film quickies” at a few thousand dollars for a half-hour show. It is not always easy to sell 30-minute shorts to television sponsors for these prices;
so it is easily seen that markets are now, as far as television advertisers are concerned, and may likely always he, nonexistent for million-dollar films.
At the present outlook, television, far from supplanting the motion picture, will undoubtedly stimulate its production. Short-sighted American magnates, Who have refused to release any but the oldest films for telecasting, have been surprised at the eager reception of ten-ana fifteen-year-olds. They were even more horrified at the release recently of 52 British films, most of which the movie monopoly had excluded from exhibition in America, and which featured such fine actors as James Mason and Gracie Fields, for telecasting in this country.
Do these rumblings portend a breach in the censorship barrier also? Will others, to fulfill the expanding need for films for television, which some estimate may reach ten times the present demand for all types of films, turn their talents to this field? Will they then dare to risk the unusual, the varied, the factual, the edifying, breaking through the tiresome-ly circumscribed Hollywood mode? Life’s interests are not limited to "boy meets girl”, religious processions, distortions of history, implausible dilemmas of fortune’s handsome and curvaceous^ sagas of the West, played with the repetitiousness of creative sterility. May the people now begin to learn how to use newly designed jacks, home modernizing, first-aid procedure, practical landscaping, carpentering, sales approach, public speaking, as well as receiving novel entertainment, all by the effective audio-yisual method? In a word, will the puolic, so much exploited and restricted to religiously censored movie fare, now get a break?
Most authorities believe that telecasts will constitute almost one-half of film presentations. “Motion pictures,” opined Eric Johnston, president of Motion Picture Association, ‘‘in my judgment will be the sturdy backbone of television. I think the overwhelming bulk of television programming will be built on motion pictures for two principal reasons: (1) their guarantee of technical and pro-gramming perfection, and (2) the assurance of repeat performance and wider distribution, which they can bring television.”
Points to Ponder
Problems of production bombard <flive show” dramas. Half-hour plays require 20 hours or more for rehearsal, permit only about as much change of locale as an actor can make in a minute, make script impossible and whispered promptings worse .with consequent strains on players’ unexceptional memories, allow no "retakes”, magnify mistakes, are impractical for circuit exhibitions. Furthermore, when the telecast reaches the receiver it is a motion picture, whether it originates from televising “live” actors or not.
Consequently it is not the demand for pictures that television will curtail. The publicity director of Jerry Fairbanks stated that their company alone last year produced the equivalent of 57 feature pictures, chiefly for television. Compared on a footage basis this exceeds the output of any of the major companies, who, all together, produced an estimated 375 films in 1948. Admittedly the masters of technique, the major studios apparently fear the change-over, if they attempt it, to Jess expensive productions, and loss of theater audience.
“Whistlers in the dark” count on “the gregarious instinct” to maintain theater attendance, even when television has flooded the country with 1,000 stations and a 60,000,000 audience anticipated in five to six years. Others, including the magnate Samuel Goldwyn, look to “phonevision”—a device for sending “called for” feature pictures over individual telephone line at a fee collected with the regular billing—to prevent the dispersion of filmdonfs status quo.
However much or little these factors.
A.W AKE!
may modify future changes in public custom, they will not dam one popular trend: If you can see a good movie at home, it will take a much better one to cause you to breast wind, weather, parking problems, traffic hazards, and spend time and money to go out. Indeed the omens are very good for some changes, very interesting to a public buffeted and regimented in their movie fare*
BABY GROWS UP1
A burning question of related interest concerns the course of C a t h o 1 i e censorship of the movies. Television is under the control of the Federal Communications Commission. Already the FCC has issued the dictum forbidding ownership of more than five television stations by a single interest. Paramount, which had invested in DuMont and KTLA and indicated its intention of further entering the field of television, observed the official frown. For this or other reasons two of the Big Five have attempted no invasion of the television field. If then by failure to dominate the television industry, control of the cinema passes frem the hands of the Big Five, what will happen to their self-imposed censorship, placed so cravenly in the hands of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy? Will the Breen office, which kept the major companies cowering in the religious corner, be able to force its dictatorship on the FCC?
Television Races Beyond Forecasts
Even such enthusiastic developers as David Sarnoff, board chairman of RCA, and called the “Father of American Television” did not envision the full scope of postwar television expansion. In his epochal speech of September, 1947, when there were only 13 stations on the air, his predicted total of 750,000 receiving sets distributed by the end of 1948 encountered some disbelief. Thirty-three percent beyond General Sarnoff’s figure, the year's close saw approximately a million receivers in operation. Still leaping ahead, the flood is given another startling measure by the New York Times of April 24,1949:
Today there are 1,500,000 seta, with a regular audience of upward of $000,000. Id one year the number of stations has jumped from sixteen to sixty-four, making television available to 40 percent of the country’s population. . . . By the end of this year it is estimated that 3,000,000 receivers will be in use, and by the end of next year 6,000,000. With
the opening of coast-to-coast network service, expected in 1953 at the latest, television looks forward in four years to serving 19,000,000 families an<l a total audience of better than 50,000,000. In six’years the number of stations is expected to reach 1,000.
Merlin H. Aylesworth, first president of NBC, estimated in Look, April 26, 1949, that "by the end of the year 4,000,000 homes will have television” and that . from New York a “coaxial cable will reach the West Coast early next year”.
Television^ Beginnings
The idea of transmitting light and shadow by electricity was suggested as early as 1873, when a telegraph operator noticed that his transmitter worked differently on sunny days from the way it worked on cloudy days. Twenty-five million dollars and much labor, study and research gave the .idea a concentrated treatment to solve the technical problems of television just jip to the close of 1946. Londoners, however^ as early as 1912, witnessed at Selfridges Department Store the first public debut of television carried over wires. Progress slowed for many years. It was not until 1928 that General Electric televised the first great news event—Al Smith accepting the nomination for the presidency.
Up until the 1930’s the machinery for television was so heavy that one exhibition collapsed a Baltimore stage. All this ended with the development of the cathode-ray tubes, credited to Vladimir Zworykin and Philo T. Farnsworth. Yet amusing defects pestered the manufacturer. At times the entire picture dissolved in a snowstorm effect An actor often appeared in duplicate or triplicate. At times the back of an actor would stick to a chair while the front of him would get up and walk across the stage, the intermediate part stretching out like an accordion. In another case the red sash of a dancer televised the same color as the background. On the receiving set she 'performed her number with a large section sawed out of her waist. While television still has several types of interference, particularly from generators of near-by airplanes, the images are often very clear-cut. Plans are presently under way to commercially produce sets that transmit color, although some years may elapse before they reach the general market.
Theaters and producers have been quick to adapt television for screen exhibition. Paramount in New York, about a year ago, presented “the first fullscreen theater telecast of a news event” —a Brooklyn prize fight; In June, 1948, "Twentieth Century Fox, using equipment developed in collaboration with RCA and Warner Brothers, successfully projected the Louis-Walcott fight on the screen of the Fox Theater in Philadelphia. This was the first time that a major news or sporting event originating at a distant point—in this case New York—was projected directly on a theater screen in another city.” By 1952, it is expected, most important theaters will have television screens. For theater screen presentation the telecast is either enlairged by lens or “kinetoscoped (filmed) and almost instantaneously fed through the regular projector.
Problems Posed by Television
Since virtually every part of television is four or five times as expensive as radio, and since few sponsors feel that they can get returns comparable to news or radio advertising, television is still in the red. NBC's television loss is said to equal $13,000 per day. In order to reach only a fraction of radio's audience, the telecasting sponsor must pay more for time than in radio. One New York affiliate of a telecasting network charges $1,500 for an evening's hour, while the comparable radio charge is $1,400. In addition, the sponsor must pay for show productions which in the case of the Ford Television Theater run to $20,000 for each performance.
However, the effectiveness of the sight ^and sound advertisement is capturing the attention of large-budget advertisers. Radio Best states that the Coca Cola Company has canceled three of its radio shows. ffThe money is going in video.” Application of the adage that a picture is worth ten thousand words may lead theaters to telecast movie trailers (previews) to lure the alleged forty percent of the population who do not attend. Reputable advertisers are apt to be able to present a more accurate display or demonstration of their product This field is beckoning, particularly as the number of set owners multiplies,
Besides money, television takes a lot of room on the air. The effort to accommodate many stations to the air, without interference, has called forth diligent effort and vast research, “Because it transmits both sight and sound the television station requires a channel 6,000 kilocycles wide. The channel of a radio station is ten kilocycles.” The band formerly used exclusively for teleyision, the very high frequency band (VHF), has been found inadequate as accommodating
only about 7 stations to a locality* Now another band, the ultra high frequency band (UHF), has been approved by FCC. The opening of this band will permit “sufficient stations to provide a television system comparable to today's radio setup”. It is said that present sets can be adapted for use on the new band for about $50,
When will television come to the ratals t Again expense makes the answer difficult. Television signals can usually be picked up only from 50 to 100 miles from the station telecasting. In connecting distant towns in networks the signal of such tremendous band width must be carried by a special conductor called a coaxial cable. Only recently the East was connected with the Middle West as far as St, Louis.
In addition to extending the networks to the West, full coverage of the United States includes the installation of relay towers or the flying of airplanes on fixed courses. The system of picking up signals by planes and retelecasting is called “stratovision”. By this method, one scientist believes, transoceanic hookups will be achieved.
Effect on Radio and Home Life
As far as radio is concerned the forecasts of its life expectancy are constantly shortened. A year ago the’patent was thought to have ten or fifteen more years to go. Comes now a bulletin just released by Broadcasting that a poll of the "majority” of 35 leaders in "radio, television, advertising, and allied fields”, “people who are close' to the picture/’ thought that by 1954 television will practically supplant radio. Aylesworth predicted that ^within three years the broadcast of sound, or ear radio, over giant networks will be wiped out. Powerful network television will take its place”. This transition is going to be costly. A modest radio station costs $100,000.. A modest television station costs a million dollars. .
When this scientific “child” has the SEPTEMBER S2f 1949
run of the house, what then! What about the effect on human children brought up under the influence of a continuous show in the living room! At present it is said they sit justas goggle-eyed before sporting events as they do at Howdy Doody o» the Lucky Pup. One set owner complained that now his two young daughters are doing nothing but wrestling. Whether the children are at last forced to take time for homework, and whether father ever rebels against endless television guests and the inevitable coldspam dinners, it is certain that the new gimmick will affect American life profoundly.
The day is hastened by cheaper sets. Radio Best says that the best equipment obtainable costs only $500, that any price paid above that is charged for cabinet accessories, finish, etc. Sets with small screens can be purchased for $100. As an integral part of American life television will likely develop its opportunities for intimate appeal to the family group. The householder will probably be drawn in more as a participator than in audience’ of the show. International telecasts may encourage good-wilL
Exposure of the insincere campaign demagoguery and ballyhoo, revealed more readily under the camera eye, may affect the political picture. The same searching scrutiny may embarrass the correspondent accustomed to slant and garble his news stories. Specifically, may not the vast size of the conventions of Jehovah's witnesses, usually belittled by the press, appear through television in their true perspective! May not Jehovah let the joyful, beautiful young faces, speaking gracious . words, light up some of the despondent homes seeking comfort! In this changing world of crisis, television may indeed open up a more truthfully anatomical dissection of life, and release it to public gaze. Just how it eventually may be used by the Maker of light and sound will be interestedly watched by all true Christians.
TRIS old world bows under the yofcfi of total war. The promised New World will flourish with totalpeaoe, Peace is as sure as tomorrow's stmrise, and just as independent of men. This may come as a shock to the vanity, a blow to the ego of pompous worldlings of the atomic age; but they must take it regardless, else the nursing of wounded pride may be the forerunner of their permanent fall. Not from the bowels of any of man’s international peace machinery will a warless world come, but from the womb of Jehovah ^God’s universal organization has already sprung the Prince of Peace whose righteous rule will eventually han war. That government of peace will not be committed into the hands of imperfect men to administer, but it will supplant man rule by politicians with God rule through Christ Jesus.—Isaiah 9: 6,7; Daniel 2: 44,
The total peace of the New World wil. be ushered in through righteous tota war. Men should not object to this. They justify their carnage by the peace they promise will follow, but which never seems to quite catch up to mankind. However, the promised peace that follows hard on the heels of righteous war will overtake the generation now living on the earth. Bible chronology puts its finger on our generation as the one to see physical facts foretold to come in the “last days’’. Those with eyes and ears ihat see and hear, please consider.
Revelation 6:2-8 focuses notice on what are popularly known as the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse”. It depicts
Christ Jesus at the time of His ^wthronement riding forth on His - righteous war mount, conquering : and to conquer. His first act was to w£ge war in heaven against Satan and his demons, and those evil ones were cast to the vicinity of earth, where they bring woe after wm upon mankind. Several prophecieet show that at Christ’s enthronement the nations would be angry and fight—Revelation 11:15,1$; tSkt*12; Psalms 2 and 83.
Wvrf Famthe, Pestilence
After the white horse comes a /horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword”. In 1914 and thereafter this red horse of war has run wild, pounding the seas of humanity with its steel-shod hoofs, leaving in its bloody wake millions of maimed and dying and dead. This notches Jesus’ words at Matthew 24: 3,7 that at His enthronement in heaven nation would rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Right on time, when the Gentile ?¥mes ended in 1914 and Christ’s reign began, World War I broke over the earth and the red horse of war ran wild.
After the red horse, 'T,o a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his nand. And I heard a voice . - . say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” Food wag to be scarce, rationed, doled out in small quantities. The black horse of famine was to ride in the wake of the red horse of war, and the facts show that from and after 1914 famine has claimed more lives than war. Only three years ago it was widely published that one-fourth of the world, some 500,(XX),(XXJ persons, were starving. Again this matches Jesus’ words at Matthew 24 predicting famine.
And He also said there would be unprecedented pestilence, and in Revelation 6 we see after the black horse of famine comes a “pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell [the grave] followed with him'\ Since 1914 the pale horse of pestilence has wasted humanity worse than war and famine. Even the advances of modem medical science have failed to overhaul the runaway horse of pestilence, have failed to stem the rising tide of plague and disease. Cholera, polio, cancer, heart disease, and many others, are knocking over victims as never before in man’s history, and the psychiatrists recently said that the mere publicity given to the mounting toll of such killers as cancer and heart disease is turning the people pale and sick and neurotic with fear.
Does this not dovetail with Jesus’ prophecy that there would be "upon the earth 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”? (Luke 21: 25,26) Since Satan and his demons were shaken out of heaven to this earth they have been bombarding men with woe after calamitous woe. War, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, racial prejudice and religious hate, these are but a few. Without needlessly consuming space to point out a parallel at once obvious, read the following description of the "last days” and note how our times match:
Mark this, there are hard times coming in the last days. For men will be selfish, fond of money, boastful, haughty, abusive disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreverent, callous, relentless, scurrilous, dissolute, and savage; they will hate goodness, they will be treacherous, reckless and conceited, preferring pleasure to God—for though they keep SEPTEMBER 22, 1949
up a form of [true] religion, they will have nothing to do with it as a force. Avoid all &ruch. Bad characters and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and deceived themselves,—-2 Timothy 3:1-5,13, Moffatt*
Total War Before Total Peace
After Jehovah God through Hiff witnesses has given full warning and called attention to the signs marking the ‘‘last days”, then "‘shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be”. (Matthew 24:21) That tribulation will be the righteous war of Armageddon, a total war that will open the portals to total peace, It is not a needless slaughter on' God’s part. It is realistic, practical- His purpose is to create a new world, not repair and . repaint this old one. He does not purpose to put a new patch on an old garment; the entire will be new.
Would you plant a garden in a weedpatch? This world has become a weed-patch, a hotbed of bloody militarism, grafting politicians, cheating commercial giants, hypocritical religious parasites, treacherous'trucebreakers, immoral delinquents and hardened criminals. And in their midst they cultivate such thorns and thistles and poisonous plants as racial hate, religions prejudice, blasphemous dogma, creature-worship, athe-lam, and that silly, silly myth of evolution. This wicked world has become a global weedpatch infested with insects and pests, and Jehovah God will plow it under to make way for a completely new world of total peace!
Over the hill of Armageddon will unfold'vistas of peace, limitless horizons of peace. Abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth. How war-weary humanity will delight itself in the haven of peace that will encompass the globe! And it will be a peace far surpassing the dreams of men and nations. Peace on every front. Total peace.
Peace Between Men, Animate, Earth
Peace between men. Now men and nations beat plowshares and pruninghooks into weapons, make scientific study, of warfare, and burst into a red explosion of cftrnage that gives the world a bloodbath. But none of that folly in the New World!—“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into prumnghooks: nation shall not lift u$ a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more/3 (Micah 4:3,4) The red horse of war will he stabled forever 1
Peace between men and animals. Now men trap and slaughter, vivisect and torture animals, kill for mere sport rather than for necessary food, till the very scent of man strikes terror in animal hearts and sends them flying for cover. And in the woods some animals prey on men. But this enmity will vanish in the New World: “In that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the ^eld, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely/’—Hosea 2:18.
Peace among the animals themselves. Now they prey upon one another, in a constant hunt to kill that they might live. Only through death of others is the road
to life for themselves. Not so in the post Armageddon world: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox " (Isaiah 11:6,7) Even the roaring lion turns vegetarian!
Peace between man and the earth. When man was expelled from Eden he was told that the ground would bring forth thorns and thistles and that only by the sweat of his brow would he be able to wrest his food from the earth. It has been a constant battle against poor soil, crop failure, drought, weeds, thorns anjl thistles, insects and plant disease, for man to eke food from the ground to stave off famine. But after Armageddon the promise will apply: “Instead of the thorn shall come np the fir tree, and instead of the brier snail come up the myrtle tree. . , . Then shall the earth yield her increase." (Isaiah 55:13; Psalm 67:6) No more will the black horse of famine trample life from millions of bodies?
Peace Within Man
Peace between man and his own body. As soon as man is born body cells are used up and must be replaced. While young he wages a winning war, making more cells than die oft, and as a result grows in size. After maturity he holds his own for some twenty years, renewing the cells about as fast as they are consumed. But as old age approaches and vigor wanes, his body cells perish faster than they are replaced, and muscle shrinks, skin shrivels, bones become brittle, senses dull. Degeneration catches the creature and death inexorably takes over. If he does hot die of old ago, war or famine or pestilence cuts off his existence. Constantly the body fights disease, but in the end bows to death.
But no waging of losing warfare to
A TF A K E I disease and degeneration and death in Jehovah's new world! Flesh will return to the freshness of childhood, and stay that Way. No inhabitant will then say he is sick, for Jehovah will bring in health and cure and heal all diseases. Death itself will be destroyed as eternal life triumphs. (Job 33:25; Psalm 103:3; Isaiah 33:24; Jeremiah 33:6; Revelation 21:4) Stabled to no more ride roughshod over suffering humanity, the red horse and black horse and pale horse and the grave that followed after lose forever their power “to kill men with sword and famine and plague”—Revelation 6:8, Jfo/-fait.
Peace between mind and flesh. Now men may be fully set in their minds to do good, but the good intentions often return void, mockingly. The mind may be righteously disposed, directed by God's Word, desirous above all else of living up to requirements; only to fail in the face of the lusts of fallen flesh. Willing mind and spirit, but weak flesh of imperfection! Even this conflict will end, victory over sin coming from God through Christj as perfection of mind and body bring peace to this internal battleground. The apostle Paul put it in forceful simplicity, as follows:
We know that the law is spiritual, but I am physical, sold into slavery to sin. I do not understand what I am doing, for I do not do what 1 want to do; I do things that I hate. But if I do what I do not want to do, I acknowledge that the law is right. In reality, it is not I that do these things; it is sin, which has possession of me. For I know that nothing good resides in that is, in my physical self; I can will, but I cannot dp what is right. I do not do the good things that I want to do; I do the wrong things that 1 do not want to do. But if I do the things that I do not want to do, it is not I that am acting, it is sin, which has possession of me, I find the law to be that I who want tx
do right am dogged by what is wrong. My inner nature agrees with the divine law, but all through my body I see another principle in conflict with the law of my reason, which makes me a prisoner to thot Isw of sin that runs through my body. What a wretched man I am! Who can save me from this doomed body? Thank God! it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord!—Romans 7:14-25, An Amer. Trans.
Peace Between God and Man
This victory over fallen flesh opens the way for peace on the most vital front— peace between God and man, Alienated for scores of centuries by the disobedience of the first pair, mankind will be restored to perfection and peaceful relations with God by t\e obedience and ransoming death of the man Christ Jesus. In the new world of righteousness to soon overspread this earth 'everything that hath breath will praise Jehovah God'. (Psalm 150: 6) Then, total peace!
But even during this time of unprecedented woe peace is possible. It is the "peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) Possessors of this peace do not have the fear of the future that now causes distress of unctions and perplexity and heart failures. They see the woes today and know that they come from Satan the Devil, that they are the death-throes of "this present evil world”, that they are the foretold signs that soon Jehovah God's glorious new world will shine through to dispel forever the gloomy darkness that hangs like a pall over the peoples of earth. Those who have eyes to see these things and ears to hear them look up and lift up their heads and rejoice. They know that men of good-will of this generation have prospects of surviving the death of this old world of total war and living eternally in the new world of total peace.—Luke 21: 28-32*
SEPTEMBER 22, 1949
Henpecked Husbands
C A few months ago scientists of the Harvard Medical School declared that during all periods of life males are weaker in health than females. This they Bay holds true throughout the animal kingdom. Moreover, in
an” were in this porportion she might weigh anywhere between 3,000 and 15,000 pounds! That’s more than just “pleasingly plump”, The life of a male mantis is so perilous, it is said, that while he is in the
the society of many lower forms of animals the male occupies a humble state of servitude, and in some cases they have no more performed their occupational duties of fertilizing the eg^s than they are killed or devoured by the stronger of the species, the female,
C According to Natural History magazine, the males of many species look after the eggs as nursemaids, while the females attend all the social functions, The papa bowfin, a fresh-water fish, must stay at home and guard the e^gs. The mother of a saltwater fish found in Asiatic waters hangs her fresh-laid eggs on the head of the father, who must carry them until hatched. The male of a- European frog winds a chain of eggs around his legs and *in-cubates them in solitary confinement. The male of the little sea horses catches the eggs from his mistress with his pelvic fins and carries them until they hatch.
C The poor “henpecked" husband of the catfish family has to carry his wife’s eggs in his mouth for weeks, during which time he goes without food; the abused thing I In the case of a South American frog he carries the eggs in his vocal pouch, and while this allows him to eat, yet he cannot (fblow his horn” or pipe his complaint. Moreover, he has to carry them long after they hatch and all through the tadpole stage before they hop out of papa’s big mouth.
C Female scorpions, spiders and mantiees carry matters to the extreme. Unless the male beats a quick'retreat after fathering the next generation he is liable to be gobbled up by his own mistress. A»d no wonder, since in many cases the ladies, if they can be called that, are 20, 50 or 100 times as big as their husbands. Think of it, if man’s ‘fiittle womvery act of giving life to 300 eggs his wife may lean backward and absent-mindedly bite off his * head. The queenly honeybee is more refined in her murders, delegating the job to the worker bees of the hive.
C Many other dwarf males, whose mistresses want to dominate the household, decide they might as well take it easy and live the life of a parasite while the female rustles for a living. For example, the male of a certain worm-like marine creature, being a wee mite only one-fifteenth the size of the female, climbs on board her proboscis, works his way into her mouth, and finally finds a little recess in the excretory duct where he lives until his services are needed to fertilize the eggs as they pass out. C In another case where the female Mr-self feeds as a parasite in the gill chambers of shrimps, the male would never find her unless he tagged along on her apron strings. So as a parasite on a parasite the male takes up living quarters in the posterior appendages of the female before she enters the shrimp. At an early stage the male angle fish that lives halfway down in the ocean, grips ahold a giant female with his mouth and hangs on until he grows solid to her skin. In one ease a 4-inch male was found living on a AO-inch female. C Statistics on the human race show that on the average the so-called * ‘weaker” female sex is healthier and outlives the male. Then there is the case of a woman in Washington, D.C., who was fined $125 for beating up her husband and throwing him on the sidewalk. From all of this one wonders whether it is feminine weakness or masculine strength that requires, according to Dr, J, A Holmes, two females to raise a male child—its mother and its wife!.
ifisJa. the - Coil War
WHEN in the year 1945 Berlin was taken over by the four powers of occupation—U. S. A., Great Britain, Russia, and at last France—the four seemed to be of one heart and one mind. But Big Four warmth soon chilled and the cold war broke out. The crisis was brought to its climax by the introduction of the Western mark as separate currency for Western Germany, and thereafter the introduction of they Eastern mark in Eastern Germany arid for the whole of Berlin, as the Russians declared. Therewith they claimed the economic control over the whole ciiyTwith the argument tha^ Berlin be a part of the Eastern zone. The Western powers raised the objection that the Western sectors belong to the West, and they introduced the Western mark in Berlin.
The political structure of the whole city as well as the so far existing commercial communication between Eastern and Western Germany now became strongly influenced and more and more stagnating by these two different currencies, caused by political and commercial stubbornness. The exchange of goods between East and West ceased fully, because the Russians clamped on their blockade and Western Berlin became an island; or, as the Western Berlin press expressed it. “the besieged fortress of the cold war?*
The Airbridge
Even in normal times it is a problem to supply three and a half million in a city with food, fuel and clothing. So when the West
SEPTEMBER 22, 1949
era powers answered the blockade with the declaration that they would feed their sectors by airplane,
the Eastern press responded with roaring laughter. Daily the papers wrote of the impossibility of such an undertaking. But what in the beginning seemed to be a dream became a matter of course. In summer of 1948, thousands of people stood round the airfields in Berlin, Tempelhof and Gatow, but in spring 1949 the airbridge was no more a sensation.
In the beginning not only the Russians and the masses standing under Russian rule doubted that it would be possible to bring the necessary amount of goods to Berlin, but also many of the* people of Western Berlin were quite prepared that the enterprise would end in a failure and they would come under the power of the Soviets. Even after the airbridge had functioned nine months, the Eastern press announced that the ‘/rats were leaving the ship”, meaning that the responsible politicians and economists were moving into Western Germany.
But when the airbridge had served its purpose for some time, the Western Allies suddenly raised the daily food rations of the population, to show the efficiency of their enterprise. This provoked the Russians to raise the rations as well in their sector, and, at the same time, they invited the Western Berliners to get their food from them; and, since winter was at the door, they offered 18 hundredweight of coal per household* But, astonishing as it seems, only very few people made use of this offer.
After the Western powers had improved the two airfields in Gatow and Tempelhof (American) and erected a third airfield in the French sector, they really proved that it is possible not only to feed two million people by means of the airbridge, but also to transport the necessary coal for the production of electricity, packed in sacks in the Ruhr district and brought into Berlin by airplane, One of the Berlin papers, Per Abend (The Evening), reported on April 6, 1949, that in March, 1949, 100,000 tons of coal had been brought into the city, against 17,000 in the beginning. If the neutral observer stood outside one of.the blocked airfields, especially in Tempelhof, nearly in the center of Berlin, he was able to watch a really splendid achievement* The constant landing and starting with the employment of radio communication and the radar instruments is proof of an organization that can be compared to the clockwork of a chronometer.
Everything possible is transported over the airbridge. AH kinds of victuals, iron and steel for handicraft and industry, coal, petrol and raw oil for autos and machinery for the production of light, papers in large rolls for the many daily papers of Western Berlin, textiles, shoes, etc. Yes,’ as unbelievable as it sounds, even thousands of young trees for the replanting of Berlin's famous park the “Tiergarten" have been brought over by plane, <hin spite of the fact that there are in the surroundings of Berlin many nursery gardens, from where enough trees could be brought into Berlin in a few minutes. Much of the goods, however, are flowing into the secret channels of the black market. In spite of the strong guard much finds its way into the hated East.
The enormous costs of the airbridge are borne partly by the Allies, and partly
by the taxpayers of Western Germany and Berlin. While the unprejudiced observer acknowledges the efficiency of the airbridge, the latter is in reality—after the Western powers declared themselves the defenders of the Western democracy —a question of prestige. At the same time it is a splendid military training for the pilots in blind and night flights. It is a demonstration of Western power, a showcase of Western democracy toward an advancing Eastern enemy.
Breathing Space During the Cold War
When in the first days of May rumors about the lifting of the blockade went through the world, hundreds of thousands of Berlin’s citizens just smiled in skepticism and said: “We do hear the message, but believe it we cannot P Too often they had been disappointed by the many vetoes and Nfa's (no's) or the Russians. But when on May 12 the turnpikes at the control-points of the zone boundary went up, there was new hope.
Their eyes were turned toward Paris, where in fruitless discussions the four ministers of foreign affairs made efforts to end another one of the many unsuccessful conferences “successfully”, Was it not that one of the points in the program concerned their city? The only success of the many public and secret conferences during several weeks seems to be the.very doubtful product of the “modus vivendi” with regard to Berlin, the Russians binding themselves not to inflict a blockade again.
What was it that made the Russians yield? Doubtless the airbridge, which naw existed a whole year, had given the proof that the Western powers are not to be pushed out of Berlin unless by force of arms. Furthermore, the industries of the Russian-occupied zone urgently needed raw materials, tools and parts of machinery manufactured in Western Germany, to be able to meet the requirements of the Russian power of occupation, namely, to procure more toward the
A costs of reparations. It even seems that the ceasing of the blockade permits a breathing space in the cold war, whereby both parties want to gain time.
There will be no peace treaty made with Germany for the time being. Germany and Berlin must further on remain split up in two spheres of interest, in spite of the tremendous propaganda of “unity and just peace”. The Western powers announce; “Germany must become free, peaceful, industrious, healthy and prosperous I This is the main object of the American politics” (McCloy, July 2,1949, in a press conference) With help of the EBP (the Marshall Plan) they want to filter new vigor into the living corpse of Germany and to continue using Berlin as a showcase for Western power, Western standard of living and Western democracy. On the other hand, the East believes in the victory of the communistic idea by propaganda, by the failure of the Marshall Plan, by elimination of free expression of one’s opinion and by spying and ruling the people with all means of a system of totalitarian power.
Even with the blockade lifted, the Americans and the British did not think of withdrawing the airbridge. “The time of its discontinuance is a military question.” (McCloy, July 2 in Berlin) After the cessation of the blockade trains and thousands of motor vehicles, in addition to the average 800 to 1,000 airplanes daily, bring coal, food (even all kinds of luxuries), clothing and all sorts of articles for daily use. The Russians have agreed to allow daily 16 goods trains to roll into Berlin.
But sure enough, they try to keep control over the import. While the consignments for the German Economy Commission, which is under their control, never are refused, the trains carrying mail and motor vehicles with Western Berlin as destination are stopped and led to the Eastern sector for .“control”. Both parties overwhelm each other with protests, SEPTEMBER 22t 1949
repiyofs about breaches of contracts. Manifestly the Russians do not want the abundance of goods in the Western world to have any detrimental propagandistic $ifect. Motorists report that when passing the Russian zone on the highroads hungry begging children try to block their way to get something of the load which their vehicles carry.
Strike of the Railway Men
The railway in Germany, which used to be an institution of the state, is now under the control of the Russians in the whole of the Eastern zone and in Eastern and Western Berlin. The payment of the employees of this institution was made in Eastern marks. But because the Western Berliners—since the introduction of the Western mark as sole means of payment in their sectors—have to meet their liabilities in Western money, 16,000 railwaymen living in Western Berlin came into the position that they practically get only one-sixth of their wages. (The Western mark has much higher purchasing power, and many exchange their Eastern money—in the proportion of 6 to 1—at the money changers in the streets.) Therefore they requested the payment of their wages to 100 percent m Western marks, acknowledgment of their independent union by the Russian railway management, and no reprisals toward the strikers.
This strike lasted five weeks. As a result the electrical city railway inside the Western sectors and all railway lines crossing Berlin were idle. The Russians tried to end this strike by force in ordering thousands of policemen out of the Russian zone into Berlin. Shots fell and there were dead and wounded. But the 16,000 railwaymen remained steadfast under the protection.of the Western powers. But there was danger that the Parisian Conference would become impossible, and therefore the Western military commanders gave the order to break up the strike. The railwaymen have the as-suranee, indeed, tha, their wages paid in Western marks, but neither has their organization been acknowledged nor do they have fail protection against the measures of reprisal from their Russian-controlled employer.
The end of the strike creates the foundation for regulated railway eommuni-eatoon upon the one-traek railway Unes from Western Germany to Berlin, but there is no guarantee for an unlimited import without control and a possible confiscation of the goods by the Russians. The blockade may start again at any time.—Awake! correspondent in Germany.
Buddhism’s Twin Sister
V The following is quoted from Papery, the Foe of the- Church and of the Republic, by Joseph 8. Van Dyke, pages 98-100:
“That Romanism is indeed the twin sister of the Buddhist religion none surely can deny. A comparison of the two will force conviction upon even the most incredulous. Antedating Christianity by several centuries, and spreading over all the countries inhabited by what are now known as the Indo-European races, Buddhism has ever had, and now has, precisely those features which mark the Papal Church, consisting partly of maxims of morality and partly of dogmas of faith on subjects transcending the reach of reason, it rests conjointly on the authority of certain sacred books and the decisions of early councils—called, like Rome's oecumenical, and blindly venerated.
“The worshippers of Buddha in Burmah, Siam, and the Chinese Empire-—numbering more than the adherents of any other religious system known in either ancient or modern times—have their relics and their images, the objects of supreme veneration; their temples costing fabulous sums of mc&ey; their saints canonized by ecclesiastical authority; their priests with shaven heads, vowing chastity, poverty and obedience; their wax candles burning night and day; their penances and self-inflicted tortures; their endless traditions, and hair-splitting moral distinctions; and even their confessional.
“They have also their Lent, when for four or five weeks all the people are supposed to live on vegetables and fruits; their acts of merit, repetition of prayers, fasting, offerings to the images, celibacy, voluntary poverty, enforced devotions, and munificent gifts* to temples, monasteries and idols. Even the rosary, a string of beads used in saying prayers, and supposed by Papists to be a device specially revealed to St. Dominic, is part of the sacred machinery of the devout Buddhist. *1? “And their monasteries, into which priests retire from the world, and engage in the instruction of the young, especially in the mysteries of their sacred books, almost startle one by their close resemblance to those of Popery. And to see the worshippers of Buddha, each with a rosary in his hand, pmstmte themselves before an image And repeat their prayers, whilst priests in gaudy vestments, bowing before lighted candies, mutter their incantations in a language which has long since ceased to be spoken, forces upon even the least reflecting the conviction that though Rome has ever claimed the power of working miracles, she has shown little inventive genius.
“Not even are shrines and sacred, places a monopoly with Rome. There are plenty of them, and pilgrims- too, in India. And why not, since they have their preaching friars, spending their time alternatively in sacred oratory and in begging- Nay, even modern miracles, though by no means so numerous, and certainly not so astounding, are performed by Rome’s elder sister.
If “And to complete the picture, they have their infallible pontiff. At Lhfissa, as well as at Rome, dwells one whom the faithful make believe cannot jerr when speaking ex cathedrd. With two infaj-libles, one in Asia and one in Europe, the world certainly ought not to err in faith and morale I"
Quick Glim
Market
HAVE you often wished that you could just drop everything and hop an airplane for one of those lazy tropical countries you have read about and see for yourself the many queer customs and habits of a simple people who enjoy life as much as we Americans ,
with our burdens of modern civilization?
Let us board the modern magic carpet, a twin-motored plane of the Pan American World Airways at Miami at breakfast time and fly southward. About three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day we come into view of one of the wealthiest countries in South America, Venezuela, a country that is distinguished by the fact that it has no national debt
■ Our first approach is a view of Lake Maracaibo, which is shaped like a bottle ready to be filled from the Gulf of Maracaibo. It is a larger lake than we can possibly imagine even from our high aerial view, for it covers 8,000 square miles, and from the narrow entrance at the Gulf to the far end is a distance of 125 miles, and at its widest point it is over 70 miles across.
Lake Maracaibo has taken on an international interest today because of its great yield of oil, making it one of the largest, producers of petroleum in the world. It was discovered in 1499 by a Spanish explorer, Alonso de Ojeda. On entering the lake he and his fellow explorers noticed the thatched huts oh stilts—Indian villages which had been built out in the shallow waters*as a protection from their rival enemies and the wild animals that roamed the region. Because these lake dwellings reminded the
SEPTEMBER 22, 1949
explorers of the Venetian waterways, they called the country Venezuela, meaning “Little Venice”,
As we step out of the plane at Maracaibo, second-largest city in Venezuela, a gust of hot, humid air strikes us in the face. We feel as though we were stepping into the middle of a frying pan.
The Market, Place
What we want mostly to see is the market place, an institution which will be passing away with the encroachment of modern civilization. We’ go direct to the water front where there are two huge mercados, a Spanish word for “markets”. These are large covered buildings containing dozens of booths where one can buy the many varieties of tropical fruits and vegetables that are brought down from the mountains.
There are also sections where cheese is sold, and farther along is the meat market, where hung-up pieces of bloody meat are arranged in rows and oir the counters are the tails, eyes, brains and livers of the animals, which the natives relish. Sandwiched in oetween these booths are tiny restaurant stalls where the farmers stop to get a plate of fried meat or black beans and strips of plantain fried in oil, a fruit very much resembling the banana but larger. The stench of Jhis indoor market makes us want to get outside.
We walk along the streets, or calles as they are called in Spanish, where there are dozens of canvas-roofed stalls. Their wares are spread far out into the street, and every article from safety pins to expensive cameras, from birds and
17 ducklings to lambs, kids and little pigs can be bought. As we linger at one of these stands a little Indian boy tugs at oar clothing sad begs for money. We are told that the Indians depend on begging for their means of support, and the children are early trained to hold out their hand to evesy passer-by. The women have suspended from a band around their forehead or top of their head large, heavy bags filled with food that the good people of Maracaibo have given them.
We are almost startled as we find ourselves staring at the Indian women with painted faces. Many have their entire cheeks and chin covered with a thick paint of either bright red, orange, brown or black. It is difficult to find an explanation of the custom, because when questioned they will merely say, "To protect our faces from the sun/' Many natives believe it is a mark of their civil state, that is, whether they are virgins, married, or widows. Their long flowing gowns made from brightly colored cotton or rayon have large Bertha collars and long, loose sleeves. They often have a trim of fancy braid or rickrack, and a flounce af the bottom that drags the dirty streets except when they lift it up as was the custom of society in the days gone by. On their sandals are large pompons made from brightly colored wool yarn.
There is ever-changing scenery in the market streets. Instead of waiting for the city to install park benches for the weary shopper, the Indian women gather up their loose-flowing gowns and squat right down on the sidewalks and sit on their "haunches” for long periods. There are the ever-present photographers with their painted backgrounds and little stiff chairs waiting to take your picture and develop it while you wait. Tnere are the coffee venders selling tiny cups of strong, black coffee. Down the road comes a burro ambling through the dust, half hidden under the load of his rider and two large barrels filled with bakery goods for sale.
Primitive Bookkeeping
We decide we have seen enough of the market, so we take a ride out to the outlying sections of the eity and stop in to visit a small corner grocery store. There we find they still use primitive methods of bookkeeping. There are a couple dozen small bottles hanging on hooks, partially filled with kernels qf corn. Each bottle represents a customer, and each Kernel of corn represents a unit of currency. Each time the customer makes a charge purchase the kernels are dropped into the bottle, and at the end of the month, when the customer comes in to pay his bill, the bottle is emptied on the counter, the kernels are counted and the bill is paid.
As we turn away from the little grocery store we look out over the neighborhood and see hundreds of little houses broiling in the sun. Some are made of cardboard, others from large wooden boxes, cement, brick and clay. Glistening in the heat are the roofs of tin and tile.
Riding back to the airport we note the many new beautiful homes and modern buildings being erected by commercial houses, modem hospitals, paved streets, clubhouses, and small parks. For a moment (We forget that we are in South America and feel as though we were driving along a boulevard in Florida.
As the sun sets on a busy day we have time to feast our eyes on the beautiful flowering trees of the tropics. We see many beautiful flamboyant trees with their bright orange flowers, the lovely orchid trees and the bougainvillaea of purple and red alongside, the stately palms, all of which makes us glad that nature will not change its customs as will the customs of these fascinating people we saw in the market today. The increase of wealth derived from the discovery of oil will soon make the primitive market place of today but a picture in our album of memory.—Awake! correspondent in Venezuela.
Jersey Justice, Low and High
rHE ease of the “Trenton Six” dates back to January 27,1948. On that day a second* hand furniture dealer and his wife were attacked in a petty holdup and as a result the husband died the next day. The wife said the attackers were three white men or light-skinned Negroes. Another witness testified he saw only two teenage Negroes leave the store. During the next two weeks special police squads made an intensive search for the killers, and in the end rounded up, not two, not three, hut six Negroes, none of whom were teen-agers. These, it was announced, had confessed to the murder,
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