Awake!, February 22, 1951
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Sex Madness—Reason Fights the Tide Parents and children can turn back the tide with reason and true wisdom
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Tibet, Strange Land of Antiquity Communist invasion turns attention toward "the roof of the world”
Why the Increasing Tax Load
How much do we actually pay in taxes and why?
Progress with Blood Substitutes
Threat of atomic war prods research 3 in this field
FEBRUARY 22, 1951 semimonthly
THE MISSION OF THIS JOURNAL bfawraaerco thataai abfa^pkeep you awake io the vital loud of our timaa must be unfaiterad by censorship a»d aelflsh interests. “Awake That no fatten. It recognizes facta, facer fact*, |s free to publish facts. It is not bound by political ambitions or obligation*; ft 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 Lt does not abuse Its freedom. It maintains Integrity to tnith.
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CONTENTS
Dollars for Dictators
Sex Madness—-Reason Fights the Tide 5
Sex Goes to School
The True Cause and Right Defense
Tibet, Strange Land of Antiquity
Why the Increasing Tax Load
Extravagance Makes High Taxes
The Government Pork Barrel
Progress with Blood Substitutes
Another Argument for Blood Substitutes 20
Blood Transfusions Imperative?
Might of the “Mites'* The Trumans Sing Shock Waves Shock Cities "Your Word Is Truth"
No Heal Sett-Gain Without Love The Brutal Assassination of
Venezuela's President Regarding Jamaicans and Crickets Watching the World
as r sis a
& “Now it is high time to awake.’—Romans 13:11 of
Vgiumo XXXII Brooklyn, N. Y., February 22, 1951 Number 4
DOLLARS FOR DICTATORS
IN 1940 the world faced the threat of Nazi and Fascist totalitarianism. World War H resulted. In 1950 the world faced the threat of Communist totalitarianism, and in one of the Inconsistencies of world politics the democracies were being pushed into encouraging the fascism that they had fought during the past decade.
Spain’s Fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, was granted a $62,500,000 loan by the U.S. Congress (August 28). Spain was brought into favor in the U. N. October 31. Yet about the same time (October .7) a division of the U. S. State Department published a 951-page volume on “Germany and the Spanish Civil War”, laying bare the part played by Nazi and Fascist interventionists in overthrowing the Spanish republic and establishing Franco.
The documents indicate that planes, guns, Italian divisions, and the German Condor Legion were poured into Spain. This cost Hitler $200 million. It cost Italy 1,000 planes, 6,000 lives and 14 billion lire. Without German and Italian help, the documents show, Franco’s cause might have been lost on several occasions. It was franco’s collaboration with Hitler and Mussolini that prompted the U. N. to resolve, in 1946, to withdraw ambassadors from Madrid and bar Spain in the U. N.
But since that time powerful influences have been at work. Attitudes began to change. In January, 1950, Secretary of
State Dean Acheson said that withdrawal of the ambassador to Spain was a mistake, and the U. S. delegation in the U. N. opened a feverish campaign to have the General Assembly revoke its resolution against Franco’s Fascist government. The U. N. ban against Spain was revoked November 4. President Truman said shortly thereafter that it would be a long, long time before the U. S. sent an ambassador to that country, but then he too changed his mind and on December#27 it was announced that Stanton Griffis had been appointed as the new ambassador.
Agitation in the U. S. Congress to give Spain $100 million (Hitler had gone further, with $200 million) was first rejected, but then congressmen began to change their minds, and finally $62,500,000 was granted to the dictator. President Truman first impounded the money, but then changed his mind on this, too, and granted the gift to Franco. What powerful Influence got behind Acheson and Congress and Truman? What prompted them to believe that supporting Fascist totalitarianism would help fight communist totalitarianism? Senator Morse admitted that a ‘‘powerful lobby” engineered the Spanish loan. (New York Times^ August 2, 1950) Collier's magazine commented editorially (March 25, 1950) : “Generalissimo Francisco Franco . . , has got quite a corps of unofficial press agents in this country.”
Obviously Spain’s chief press agent, although Senator Morse and Collier’s chose to omit identifying it, is the church that Franco has served so well; severely restricting all other forms of worship, and making it the state religion. Anything that helps Franco helps his church.
Do you doubt that a religious organization would exert such pressure? Then let Walter Trohan, writing in the Chicago Tribune (February 19,1950), remove that doubt. He said that particularly during the last ten years political pressure from religious groups has been felt in Washington. He explained that in the early part of 1950 President Truman grumbled to a Republican senator that Catholics and Jews were exerting pressure to enforce /their political beliefs, and then said, “Recognition of Spain is at present one of the main political aims of Catholics. ... In recent weeks the State Department has been shifting toward the Catholic view on Spain.”
But let that church convict itself. The London Catholic Herald (October 6,1950) attempted to convince its readers that the rebirth of militant Spain “is the one great positive development of the 20th century”, and that, had it not been for Franco’s rise to power, Spain would be an integral part of the Soviet military empire. It claimed that “the exclusion of Spain . . . deprives Europe of her chief base, and of the moral and spiritual influence of the most Catholic country in Europe”.
Putting Spain up as the “one great positive development of the 20th century” does not say much for the century! If Spain's totalitarianism is a “moral and spiritual influence”, then the world should shudder with sheer horror at the thought of an immoral influence!
That Franco’s publicity agents are Rome-directed is evident from the general Catholic attitude. Roman Catholic Latin-American countries sponsored the withdrawal of the U. N. ban on Franco. The British ambassador to. Spain in 1939-40, Sir Maurice Peterson, spoke of “English Anglo-Catholics who saw in Franco a saviour of Christendom”.
Belgium had a Protestant majority in Parliament when, in 1946, it proposed the U. N. resolution to withdraw ambassadors from Spain, It had a Catholic majority when, in 1950, it voted in favor of Spain in the U. N.
As to the need of developing Spain’s friendship to gain military bases, Collier’s editor commented, “The democratic allies won two wars in Europe without the aid of Spanish arms or Spanish hospitality. We cannot believe that victory or defeat in another war would hinge on either of those factors. . . . We cannot forget that Franco is the creature and protege of Mussolini and Hitler and that, as such, he is the symbol of an evil which some people seem to have forgotten.”
In 1940 Hitler said that without Italian and German aid “Franco would not exist today”. Hitler no longer gives that aid. Will the day come when historians will say that without U. S. friendship find aid “Franco would not exist today”?
Lovers of freedom in Spain now feel that the democracies have deserted them to fascism. But they should not despair. They have only proved again the truth of the psalmist’s words, “Put not your trust in princes ... in whom there is no help,” but, “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.” (Psalm 146:3-5) The one who has Jehovah for his help does not fret over man’s political blunders, for he knows that God’s kingdom will soon bring a righteous government and blessings to the earth. Then no totalitarian governments of any kind will exist anywhere. Their oppression of the people will then be a thing of the past.
xStear Madness
Parent* and children can turn back the tide with reason and true wisdom
REASON deserts a man gone mad. It
, is the same with a world. Unthought-of things become obsessions; unnatural acts commonplace. Staggered to the knees by total wars, flattened by disease and famine, modern society next finds its wounds infected with the death-dealing.gangrene of sex madness. Forsaken by common sense and captured by empty sophistication, man answers the multiplying bizarre sex crimes by pulling sex out from every dark corner and illuminating it in a blinding glare. The world is fed sex through the eyes, ears, nose, throat and veins until at last rational persons are fed up. Still, sex lunacy zooms, crimes spiral upward and man sinks in the mire.
Can this happen to a twentieth-century “brain age”? Now that the “brain age” is almost dead because of it,_we only waste time with such a query. In their zeal to punish the stork for ever letting the Victorians of two generations ago make that noble and unsuspecting bird a substitute for normal motherhood, the modems have swung the pendulum completely back to the frank, free and open era of the Caesars. In those “good old days” sex was a classical pastime, an indoor sport. Yet at its worst that society was a mere neighborhood scandal compared with today’s global attack of promiscuity.
Now the experts have succeeded in convincing many anxious parents that the stork is a cad and a scoundrel, and that they should give their youngsters the
truth. Well and good, but along comes Junior to ask one short, entirely uninvolved question with no complications. Said Parents’ in May, 1946, “At the first
question that shows any sign of interest in sex matters, even in young children, many mothers who have ‘seen the light’ tend to burden their children with all the minute facts of anatomical sex structure,\of the birth processes and of reproduction so that the children are sometimes overwhelmed, frequently bewildered and occasionally bored.” At this rate, it will hot be surprising if Junior soon drops his comic book with a yawn instead of a laugh and, with a cold, analytical gleam in his eye, decides that "Maggie and Jiggs” are incompatible due to sexual maladjustment.
Listen to Robert Thomas Allen as he is reported in header’s Digest for April, 1950 :
“Uncle Wiggily was coming down the Old Winding Path. Hippity hop! Hippity hop! The sun was shining. The birds were singing. But something was wrong with Uncle Wiggily. Yes, sir! Something was wrong! Uncle Wiggily was sexually maladjusted.
“I haven’t read that yet; but I expect to any day. There’s no reason to suppose that bedtime stories will escape the trend now that sex has found its way into everything else—magazines, newspaper columns, documentary films, advertisements and door-to-door surveys.
“Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but respect for the men and women who took sex out of the root cellar. The airing is good. Let’s be frank about sex. Then let’s forget it For one thing, I want to talk about something else . . .
“We’re not only looking at sex frankly, we’re staring at it until we’re cross-eyed. There has been so much written on it that a lot of young people are going to get the idea that married couples never get out of bed. They do. They have to put out the ashes. They have to go to work and forget about sex in large stretches.”
The apparent reason for the current emphasis on sex is the mounting of sex crimes, which, we are told, are chargeable to the general ignorance of the public concerning sex matters. A teen-age boy ambushes, criminally attacks and kills an eleven-year-old girl. Within approximately fifty days, four Los Angeles, California, women are assaulted, beaten and mutilated. A high-school girl fights desperately and narrowly escapes from a knife-armed stranger who had offered her a ride. A sex-mad pastor is convicted of abusing young girls under his charge in a religious orphanage. Perversion cases multiply. A Hollywood doctor has advocated a “Sex Anonymous” club to help movie celebrities straighten out their love lives in the manner that “Alcoholics Anonymous” has assisted the habitual drunkards. In 1946, Los Angeles reported twenty-four sex murders, Chicago, 157 cases of “indecent liberties", and rape was occurring every forty-five minutes somewhere in the United States.
Is Ignorance the Cause?
Coronet magazine reported concerning Chicago’s youthful sex marauder, William Heirens: “Dr. Foster Kennedy of Bellevue Hospital, one of a board named by the State of Illinois to investigate the notorious case, said: ‘His mother gave the boy his entire sex education in one sentence:
“All sex is dirty; if you touch anyone, you get a disease.” ’ Again and again, parents of sex delinquents voice shock and surprise. Their son was always such a good boy. Why, he had never even been allowed to associate with girls.”
The inference is clear: sex crimes occur largely because of improper sex education. So sex is promptly snatched from cover, made public property and strung out over newspapers, billboards, schoolbooks and every communication source available. But this argument alone simply will not hold water. Surveys by sex education proponents appear to prove that nearly everyone has received either an improper or an incomplete sex training at home. In October, 1948, Time cited a college student’s survey revealing that 100 per cent of a group of married men interviewed and 83 per cent of a group of ex-soldiers had found their early life sex education inadequate. If their figures and their reasoning matched, one might expect a sex criminal on every corner. No, a twisted, possessed mind and an utter disregard for decency are the prime moving parts in the machine of sex crimes. These factors in the most enlightened sex-wise ones will produce evil. Authorities are proving there is no set pattern for measuring all sex offenders.
True, proper instruction is vital, as doctors can readily show. But in this sex-drowned world its source is even more important. Reams of reading material are available; but much of it is mere idle chatter by someone wishing to keep in vogue in times when talking sex is smart. Moving pictures keep doing their bit, sexy novels have increased in popularity, even children's comic books have cut the laughs to accentuate the curves. Advertising has been strangled by the sex octopus. Want to make him pop the question or guarantee that she will say ‘yes’? Then just
switch to the right hair tohfc or tooth paste and you can’t miss! Amusing? Then sober yourself with the fact that a believing public makes possible more and more of the same. What do the million and one available examples add up to prove? That the wallowing world is already staggering and gagging on sex. But still more is demanded. Where now?
Sex Goes to School
Adequate sex education in schools, even among elementary grade children, is be-tog relentlessly pushed by many educators as a last hope for civilization, Those wishing to keep this function in the home argue that If any training is necessary, let the parents have it so they can aid their own children properly.
On the religious front, the Catholic Church has staunchly opposed carrying *ex etacatton into the white
Protestant bodies have largely favored it. hi November, I960, International News Service reported that U. S. Catholic bishops challenged American parents to ‘retain major responsibility for guiding religious vocational and sex education of their children’* Yet this same apparent defender of the home front boasts of its own sex courses in some of Its parochial schools; and, whether parochial or public, many parents have been all too willing to drop their burdens into another lap. They have long done the sajne thing in regard to the “Sunday school”.
Regardless of whatever may be done by the schools, parents of all or of no religions will wisely ask themselves a few pointed questions: Who but the parent will beat know when his child is ready for each progressive step in this important study? Who but the parent can offer all the needed time and patience and understanding? Who but the parent can leel the necessary love for the child to make him see how this quality must dominate the bfotogiM side of life, thus presenting the Instruction in Its true beauty and in its proper reta-tlonshlp to the rest of God’s law as revealed in the Bible? This latter consideration will rank ever uppermost in the minds of all true Christian parents.
The most informed advocates for school sex education usually admit that the home is the EUQerirrc glaca Qt watrocSJjw*, twft. that the school la necessary where parents fad. Quoting the British authority R. Weatherall’s summary of a ministry of education pamphlet, In its December 15, 1945, issue, School and Society said: “Opinion is unanimous, for instance, that the primary duty of giving young children a right and informed attitude toward human reproduction devolves upon the parents. But experience shows that most parents are unable, either on personal grounds or throng'iadk ol adequate "knowledge, properly to fulfill this task; instead, the greater number of them would gladly hand it over to the schools.” But these are markedly treacherous times, and let any who would 'hand over’ this precious parental privilege take heed lest he later have sore regret
Children Threatened by Modernism
To some it may seem incredible that the child could receive wrong or damaging instruction in school. But recall the subtle stealth with which the faith-destroying doctrine of evolution wormed its way into schoolbooks and out of the mouths of rubber-tongued teachers long before it was an accepted school subject anywhere. Many have similarly lived to regret the sectarian confusion of “three-headed gods”, weird purgatories and horrible hell-fires born of sending children to Sunday school for something the parent later wished he himself had taught. If this has been your experience you will know the harm of neglecting such parental duties.
Today the danger is far more actual than imaginary that improper sex instruction lurks even in the halls of “higher learning". Declaims the “modernist” method of combating sex delinquency: ‘If you can’t stop it, approve it.’ Admittedly it is a sure “cure", just as all crime might be snuffed out overnight by simply legalizing it! While the numerical majority still resist this madness, they find themselves writing and talking feverishly to sustain their ranks.
The American Social Hygiene Association, meeting in the Hotel New Yorker on the first of February, 1950, was treated to the spectacle of hearing promiscuity tacitly championed by a Yale professor of anthropology, George P. Murdock. Professor Murdock bluntly predicted that “within three generations” society would condone premarital sex freedom and consider it an aid in the selection of a proper mate. Shocked? Then how do you like to hear that this met with considerable acclaim, even from some clergymen? True, doctors, religious men, biologists and educators who are honest can present no end of proof that physically, morally and mentally there is every advantage to chastity and continence. But the raw fact remains that they are all talking and talking loudly these days ini an effort to convince a wayward world that what was formerly taken for granted is really true. The tide is strong in the way of ruin.
Other hard-to-face facts reek with evidence that the “brain age” of enlightenment has not succeeded where others supposedly failed. Collier’s advertised an article in November, 1948, by calling attention to the fact that 50,000 babies had been born illegitimately to girls of high-school age during the previous year. In England, an education official charged that eleven-and twelve-year-old boys and girls were putting into active practice what they learned about sex in the classroom. In answer to the claim that places where organized sex education is carried on are lowering school-age pregnancies, Presbyterian educator Charles R. Proudfit counters that instead he is informed the "education” has merely better acquainted the delinquents with knowledge of effective safeguards and contraceptives. There is hardly any misconstruing the high-school class in hygiene that, given its choice of topics for open discussion, selected, “How to have sexual intercourse without risking pregnancy.”
The True Cause and Right Defense
Do not forget that modem society, which hears more about sex than any previous generation, is the worst offender by far in immorality. Remember, this world that has for years been thinking sex, eating, sleeping, studying and talking it day and night is all but dead and buried in it. And there is good reason. Properly taught, sex education cannot be divorced from godliness in general. After all, the most compelling reason for morality is its part in Jehovah God’s requirements of those men and women who would win his final approval. Flouting his law is nothing new. Anciently the heathen worshiped sex and on occasion influenced God’s covenant people Israel to likewise succumb to such orgies. Degradation and God’s disfavor fell over the land to the ruinous tune of adultery by the matrons, harlotry on the part of the daughters and sacrifice by the men in company with temple prostitutes. —Hosea 4:12-14, An American Trans.
Christendom, like Israel, while professing godliness, remains deaf to God’s Word and is snared in demonism. Hence, its last days, as foretold, are days of violence and debauchery, egged on by the spirit of driving devils. (2 Timothy 3:1-5; Revelation 16:14-16) The blind weaklings motivated by brute passion rather than brains will consume the crop to the full. The egotistical smart alecs will, in their "enlightenment”, ride along on the band wagon while giving thanks that they are not like other men of former generations. And the simple fool will let his children soak’up what they can where they can for whatever use they may wish to make of it.
The reasoning parents motivated by true love, particularly those devoted to God and his Word, will leave nothing to chance. Whether or not sex education is taught in school, they will see to it that the right knowledge is imparted at home. Unlike the Victorians, they will not deceptively neglect their child’s training now, to blame it on the helpless old stork later. Unlike the modernists, they will not open the door for a barrage of sex hormones, glands and technical terms to rush in, prey upon their offspring’s mind, devour reason and reduce natural instincts to animalism.
Like individuals of sound mind they will reason that where the mind and thoughts are, there the child’s heart will be. Consequently, there also will his footsteps lead him. God’s law states as much, promising the devoted parents that their careful training will yield desirable results. (Deuteronomy 6:7; Proverbs 22:6) Wisely, they will remember and follow the advice of the apostle who said:
"Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are of serious concern, whatever things are righteous, whatever things are chaste, whatever things are lovable, whatever things are well spoken of, whatever virtue there is and whatever praiseworthy thing there is, continue considering these things. The things which you learned as well as accepted and heard and saw in connection with me, practice these; and the God of peace will be with you.” —Philippians 4:8, 9, New World Trans.
qrniBJBTr
By 1‘Awake!" correspondent In India
LOST amid the snow-peaked ramparts of The Himalayas, almost forgotten by the greater portion of the world around her, apparently reposing in calm placidity at 16,000 feet above sea level, is the strangest land in the world—Tibet. The recent
--Strange Land
communist invasion of this quaint country has turned the eyes and attention of diplomats, statesmen and people of the world to “the roof of the world”. A land of blighted superstition, Tibet has ever remained buried in the depths of antiquity. Tibet of today is almost the same as Tibet of a thousand years ago.
Geographically, Tibet, with its 470,000 square miles in extent, occupies a position high above the rest of the world. The lofty Himalayan mountains, with their steep cliffs and declivities, inaccessible deserts and quagmire, form an insurmountable barrier on Tibet’s southern border. Access to the country is effected from its eastern,
north and northwestern borders, which are flanked by China, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkestan, respectively. This seclusion no doubt is largely responsible for its lack of progress.
Very little is known concerning the early history of Tibet. The people are of Mongolian descent, and to this day the similarity between the two races in outward appearance and physical characteristics is remarkable. In general, with the exception of the lamas, the people are divided into two classes, the rich and the poor. Glimpses of their lives afford us some insight as to how these people live. In conformity with the rest of the world, the rich lord it over the poor. What little is available of the necessities of life is mostly taken up by the rich, which leaves just about nothing for the poor.
The houses of the rich are built of mud and stone, square-shaped, with a single entrance. Generally they consist of three stories, with a fiat roof which is used for drying grain and sometimes for parties.
In direct contrast to the Hch, the one-story mud houses of the poorer cultivators are little better than hovels. Their domestic beasts occupy the ground floor, and the family, living no better than their beasts, occupy the first floor. Unable to procure fuel these people suffer intensely from the biting cold. Many of them are known to sleep and work in the same clothes for months, with the result that their garments get very dirty, which, far from disgusting the wearer, is welcomed* by him because it affords more warmth.
Marriage customs in Tibet should bulge the eyes of the most seasoned American divorcee. According to the Tibetan custom, a boy weds at the age of twenty to a girl of his own social standing. The marriage is arranged by the parents after obtaining the consent of the young man and the approval of the local astrologer. The eager bridegroom certainly requires great patience. The astrologer with his report, the consent of both parties, the exchange of gifts and dowries, the discussions of the go-betweens, etc., and all the other details and arrangements, serve to postpone the eventful day by several weeks. If the husband has any younger brothers, the wife weds each in turn, with an interval of a year between each marriage. Incest is also common, and should offenders be arrested, they get off with light punishments.
The fair-skinned, (Jark-eyed, well-developed Tibetan woman can certainly be described as beautiful. The Tibetan lady spends several hpurs at her toilet. In earlier times fat used to be rubbed into the skin at bedtime, but this is now replaced by cream imported from India. They are no different from their sisters the world over, so far as fashion Is concerned, and on special occasions bedeck themselves enough to attract a great deal of attention. In business they have an exceptional flair for salesmanship and often help their husbands even to the extent of controlling the entire business.
Selling is done in the local bazaar, which, unlike other bazaars, is a portable one, similar to that of an auction sale, with the sellers as the auctioneers. The locality is generally the main street, where the sellers display their goods, and it is a common sight to see large crowds shouting and haranguing over the prices. The few stalls erected are presided over by women. Their natural aptitude for having the “last word” serves them in good stead against the most astute bargain-hunter and also derives a good net income.
Hidden away in those heights it is known that there are mineral deposits of unascertainable value; gold has been found, and it is thought that some radioactive metal may be there. But due to the belief that to disturb the earth will bring failure of crops and calamities on the Dalai Lama, the living Buddha, they will not permit it to be mined.
What the cow is to the Hindus of India the yak is even more so to the Tibetans, for it provides food, shelter and clothing. The rising sun sees the Tibetan plowing with a yak, dressed in a garment made from yak hair; at noon he returns to his home, which is built partly of yak bones and horns. He sits down to a meal which will consist of either cheese made from yak milk or dried yak meat. His beverage will be yak-butter tea, of which he drinks 50 to 60 cups a day. As the cold evening sets in he will light his yak-butter lamp and warm himself with a Are made of yak dung. Should he be a traveler he will carry a tent made from yak hair and cross the rivers in a boat made from yak leather.
Mules are used for transport on the trade route to Kalimpong. Burdened with goods weighing about 180 pounds, the strength and endurance displayed by these animals on the steep mountain paths borders on the incredible. There are two trade routes to India and two to China.
All roads in Tibet have their source in Lhasa, the capital. Of the few good-sized towns in Tibet, Lhasa is the most populated and influential. The name “Lhasa” means “the place of the gods”. Standing on the tributary Kyi, it is roughly a mile square, with much open space for market places and parade grounds. Situated on a low hill rises the imposing Pot ala Palace In all its grandeur. It is indeed one of the (tew man-made wonders of the world; it is 900 feet in length and more than 400 feet high. The gold roofs of the red-and-white Potala flash and sparkle in the sun so that it may be seen a great distance from Lhasa.
Three and a half miles from Lhasa lies Drepung, the largest monastery in the world. Nearly 8,000 lamas inhabit this monastery. The number of lamas in comparison with the population is stupendous. This is largely due to an old custom among the people that one son from every household should be given to the priesthood. So fully one-sixth of the male population are lamas; this means that the largest proportion of the population take up religion as a profession.
Both the lamas and the laity recognize the Dalai Lama as their supreme head and believe him to be the incarnation of Chen-resi, the patron saint of Tibet. Practically equal to him in power and position is the Panchen Lama, and he is involved in the present communist claim and invasion of Tibet. In 1923 a rift took place between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, with the result that the latter with his supporters promptly left for Kumbum monastery in western China and settled down there. His successor, a Tibetan, but Chinese born, was installed in the Kumbum monastery. He was later invited to Tibet to undergo the inauguration ceremony of the Panchen Lama after testing his claim with the other candidates in Tibet. He refused to do so, with the result that a second Panchen Lama was chosen in Tibet. Now the Chinese communists under Mao Tse-tung saw in the Chinese-born Panchen Lama from the Kumbum monastery an excellent medium for winning the support of the Tibetan people, half of whom owe allegiance1 to him.
The communist invasion has awakened a long-slumbering nation to a world of grim reality. Through the smoky haze of a buried age, these quaint people observe with bewilderment and terror the triumphant march of the Red tyrant under whose tyrannical boot freedom is being crushed. The Red flame that consumed the vast land of China has now consumed “the roof of the world”—that strange land of antiquity.
.. WHY THE INCREASING
How Much Do We Actually Pay in Taxes and Why?
T1OSE who understand the Word of God appreciate that only God's kingdom can set all matters right. That truth we find strikingly underscored as we note the corruption, confusion, inefficiency and extravagance associated with the fiscal policies of a large nation. Also, we see in the ever-worsening situation a fulfillment of the prophecy that wicked men would go from bad to worse.—2 Timothy 3:13, An Amer. Trans.
That the tax situation is going from bad to worse is seen by a comparison of the taxes paid by the people of New York city 120 years ago with what they are paying now. Since 1830 their city taxes have increased 21 times, state taxes 50 times and their federal taxes 150 times. For the year 1950 total taxes for the United States, federal, state and local governments came to more than 53 billion dollars. That's onefourth of the nation’s income and more than its food bill. Did you know that your taxes cost more than your food?
If this seems incredible to you it is only because you overlook “hidden” taxes. And if you earn $5,000 or less a year your “hidden" or indirect taxes are doubtless higher than your direct taxes. A recent tax survey showed that a $10,000 house involved $2,500 in hidden taxes, a $2,000 automobile, $500. Why, there are at least 100 different hidden taxes involved in the sale of a dozen eggs, 116 in the cost of a suit of clothes, and 151 in just a loaf of bread. How can that be, you ask?
Consider, for example, a loaf of bread which has six basic ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, sugar, powdered milk and malt.
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Each of these involves a producer or farmer, one or more processors or manufacturers, distributors and railroads. And each of these pays as many as 35 different federal taxes, about as many state taxes, and also a number of local taxes. All these taxes are added to the cost of the products or services rendered, business merely acting as collection agencies for the government. So we find each business shifting the tax burden to the next fellow until it finally reaches the consumer, who, being unable to pass it along, pays the bill.
War Makes High Taxes
Someone has well stated that “the crime of taxation is not in taking it; it's in the way it’s spent!" How are the billions collected in taxes spent? As regards the federal tax bill, more than 70 per cent of the $40 billion can be charged to wars, past, present and future. In this amount are included expenses for defense, $7 billion for veterans, $5| billion interest on the national debt, some $3 billion in foreign aid, etc. (Since the beginning of World War I the United States has spent $81 billion in aid to foreign lands.) The less than 30 per cent remaining takes care of all other expenses incurred by the government.
Corruption Makes High Taxes
But war cannot be given the entire blame for high taxes. Corruption comes a close second. One modem popular writer (Oursler), referring to modem rampant political corruption in an article entitled
“The Twilight of Honor", states: “The shocking lack of morality and integrity in public life Is a dire threat to the nation . . . Never before In America has official conscience fallen so low, or official Impudence grown so brash; and never before has public apathy seemed more profound.”
The actions of such as the military aid to President Truman, General Harry Vaughan in the Maragon affair and his being kept in his position by the president in spite of the shocking exposures show that corruption has reached clear to the top and is being winked at by the chief executive himself. What can be expected of the underlings if the big boss himself acts that way? No wonder there is padding of payrolls, of expense accounts; no wonder the government is losing millions upon millions of dollars in revenue due it from properties rented to private businesses, to mention but a few cases of corruption.
Extravagance Makes High Taxes
The Hoover Commission was appointed by President Truman for the purpose of recommending ways of eliminating extravagance and waste from the executive branch of the government Among other things it found that government departments had a surplus of supplies to the value of two and a half billion dollars; some departments having supplies on hand to last them from one to fifty years! They found that over half of the requisitions put through were for amounts less than ten dollars and that it cost more than ten dollars to put through each requisition. Also that each government department is ambitious to get as big as possible, and so adds as many to its personnel as possible, called "empire building”, but they are all very reluctant to let help go even though not needed. As a result, as a recent press dispatch showed, whereas in 1900 one out of 24 workers was employed by the government^ (federal, state or local), in 1950 one out of ten was so employed.
Indicative of the bureaucratic inefficiency and waste is the procedure noted in the following item taken from a national news magazine: “Is it necessary that the army put a simple order for buying onions through 288 separate steps as discovered by an investigator for the House Appropriations Committee? The order was date-stamped, time-stamped, examined, routed, copied, typed, receipted, entered on other documents, underlined, described, card-punched, coded, tabulated, checked, matched, filed, discussed, reviewed technically, indexed, analyzed, maijed, abstracted, printed, registered, inspected, sorted, stored, transmitted, and vouchered. Messengers handled the order 110 times in sending it through eighteen divisions.”
And in referring to the waste in the defense department another national weekly asks: “Who will tell the army and navy what every ex-GI knows—that the services could provide the same security with a billion dollar saving in airplane junkets for the generals and admirals and boondoggling projects for the ambitious colonels?”
We read of 70,000 tanks built during the last war, although the very most that the United States was able to use was 20,000 and its allies 12,000, or a total of 32,000. Also, of the great waste In selling surplus
or obsolete equipment, like the six sub* marines that were soklto a Florida deep-sea fisherman for $40,000 and who made an easy net.profit of $615,000 on them.
The Hoover commission discovered that the war department had asked for funds to modernize 102 more Sherman tanks than they had on hand; and by a typist’s error had asked for 39 instead of 9 million dollars for some howitzers. Nobody had noticed the mistake. What’s a mere 30 million to the defense department? An order was put through for tropical worsted suits at $129 each, more than one for each man in the army. After the Hoover Commission’s investigation the order was canceled. Somebody changed his mind, effecting a saving of more than 100 million dollars. Two and a third billion was requested fop construction purposes. When Congress asked for details, it took the war department a month to furnish them. Among the items listed were: 910 family houses m Alaska at $59,350 each; 828 family houses in Guam at $48,000 each, etc.
Government hospitals also came in for censure. The average man spends less than a day and a half in a private hospital to have his tonsils removed, but active army personnel averaged more than 16 days in the government hospitals for each tonsillectomy. Each department insists on its own hospitals in the large cities and so there is much needless duplication. Many of the hospitals are less than half filled and yet more are being built in the veuy same areas, The new Navy hospital at Moffatt Field had an average of two patients a day during 1948! In such hospital not only are the Immediate members of the active personnel given free and complete care, but in onq year some 24 million dependents of veterans received some form of free medical care. At present the large majority of cases handled by veterans’ hospitals have absolutely nothing to do with the war.
Recently an investigation revealed that in a certain army center (St. Louis) veterans’ beneficiaries had been overpaid to the extent of $157,000,000! In presenting its budget the Veteran’s administration listed one billion dollars for "salaries and expenses”. Why bother with details!
But let us leave the defense and veteran’s departments and see how the taxpayer’s money is spent by those engaged in more peaceable pursuits. Take the Post Office department. Last year it had a deficit of one-half billion dollars. Being run on the patronage basis it is doomed to inefficiency from top to bottom. It costs the post office 24 cents to print and deliver the penny postal card. It is supposed to be the poor man’s letter, but 85 per cent of them are used by business firms. Millions of dollars are lost by congressmen permitting lobbyists to take advantage of their franking privileges whereby propaganda is sent through the mails first class free of charge.
Then there is that government agency that so delight^ to throw away the taxpayers’ money wholesale—the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Its activities have recently come up for severe criticism and not without good cause. To what extent such Ioans as the $975,000 loan made to a Reno, Nevada, hotel (whose business depended upon a gambling casino which it housed) are the result of lack of judgment or lack of integrity each reader can decide for himself, and put his own construction on the statement of one of its former directors: "As it stands now, anybody with any brains in the private lending business wouldn’t make a lot of loans we do.” Loans default and more of the taxpayers’ money takes wings.
Under the heading “The Battle That Squanders Billions" Leslie Miller, exgovernor of Wyoming and chairman of that part of the Hoover Commission con-
cemed with natural resources, tells a tale of rivalry between the army engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation wherein “billions are being squandered on duplicating and badly engineered projects”. When the Bureau of Reclamation decided to build a dam of the most questionable value it let nothing like a highway or railroad stand in its way, even though it cost one and a half million dollars to move the highway and 15 million to move the roadbed of the railroad, the latter requiring the blasting of a tunnel a mile long through solid rock!
Many of the dams are built without even making sure that there will be enough water to make it worth while! For instance —the Kendrick dam in Wyoming was built at a cost of 24 million dollars in 1934-5, but not until 1947 was there any surplus of water so as to make it serve its purpose. Among the more ambitious projects now under construction Is one involving the boring of a tunnel 13 J miles long through the Continental Divide, that backbone of solid rock of the American continent. Estimated at a cost of 44 million, its cost is nearing the 200 million mark and at that it will come far short of supplying the water originally claimed for the project.
Fantastic Fiscal Farm Folly
The way the agriculture department wastes the taxpayers’ money presents a tale almost too fantastic to be believed. Proceeding upon the theory that farm prices need government support, for the past seventeen years the government has pegged farm prices, buying up the surpluses at its set price. With what result? Its potato support has cost it a half billion dollars alone. Having bought millions of bushels and not being able to sell them on the market, the government resold the potatoes, for which it had paid from $1.65 to $2.90 a bag, back to the farmers at one cent a bag! Unprincipled farmers immediately resold them to the government at the regular rate! So the government had to dye them blue so that the farmers could and would use them only for hog feed or fertilizer!
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In one instance the government bought the potatoes at $2.90 a bag from a Maine farmer, shipped to Illinois at the cost of $1.10 a bag and then sold them to another farmer for fertilizer at a cent a bag, or at a loss of $3.99 per bag! One farmer bought 1,800 bags of potatoes for $18, fed them to his hogs which he then sold at $28 per hundredweight; sold the empty bags for ten cents each. He had made 900 per cent profit on the bags alone and fed his hogs for nothing! Does that make sense?
And how did the potato farmers fare? In one of the greatest potato counties in Maine, the farmers got 67 million dollars for their potatoes from the government in one year. Thirty-one farmers got checks ranging from $100,000 to $450,000; 146 farmers got from $50,000 to $100,000; 468 got from $25,000 to $50,000; and 1,200 farmers received from $15,000 to $25,000 each.
And that’s just one farm commodity! The potatoes, which cost the government a half billion dollars, had to be sold for fertilizer or hog feed because potatoes do not keep, but two billion dollars* worth of other commodities are now in storage (a small amount having been used for relief purposes). Mountains of cotton seed is stored right out in the open, there being no facilities to store it; some 600 million bushels of com is kept in airplane hangars, etc.; the 100 million pounds of butter is kept in refrigeration plants as is also the 76 million pounds of powdered eggs; storage of such items runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Also in storage is 400 million bushels of wheat, enough to furnish every man, woman and
child in the United States with more than one loaf of bread per week. And that does not begin to exhaust the list.
The Government Pork Barrel
Space does not permit going into detail regarding the other follies of the agriculture department such as having some 178 agents in one county to advise its 2,500 farmers, etc., and so we hasten to the consideration of another great drain on the taxpayers’ money—the “pork barrel”. As one press report puts it: “ 'Pork/ in Congressional definition, constitutes proposed unwarranted spending of Federal funds on projects that will please local constituents and produce votes for their sponsors.” Says the Wall Street Journal, “Knock on any door and you will find a man with his hand in the public purse. Farmer, laborer, businessman ... all seem to be sitting with palm outstretched. The posture personifies the politics of our times. Never before in this country has the government made such frank appeals to cupidity. . . . There is, of course, nothing new in the idea of raiding the public treasury. What is novel is its newly acquired respectability. . . . Businessmen have been in the forefront of those denouncing government extravagance. Yet, when the line is formed, there are businessmen seeking subsidies for this or that industry . . . the big businessman seeking millions and the little businessman seeking thousands.”
All are for economy—as far as the other fellow is concerned. Typical of such pork barrel politics was the measure recently passed by both houses of Congress (in the House without even the formality of a roll call!) and signed by the president which provided for a new post office building in each of the 435 Congressional districts, whether one was needed or not! As a starter 40 million dollars was appropriated; how much the bill would eventually run to, nobody knew or cared. Also, in recent months a bill was passed authorizing expenditures close to two billion dollars for hundreds of river, harbor and flood control projects in nearly every state. When signing the measure the president admitted that many of them were unnecessary.
Another project involved 250 million dollars to dredge a river. Three government agencies were fighting for the benefits to be derived from the dredging but there would be enough water for only one. Why invest a quarter of a billion dollars in a project before definitely ascertaining whether its purpose is to benefit navigation, irrigation or soil conservation? When a number of such ‘pork’ measures came up in Congress one senator (Douglas-Illinois) began to point out their weaknesses, one by one, but he seemed to be like a voice crying in the wilderness. After a number of valiant but futile attempts to save the taxpayer’s money, he got discouraged and gave up trying.
Yes, the crime of taxation is not merely that taxes are high, 20, 50 and 100 times higher than they were a century ago, but is the way the tax money is being spent. War again dips deep into the public till. Corruption and pork barrel politics continue to take their toll. And though time, money and energy were spent by some of the country’s foremost citizens in ferreting ways and means for ending governmental inefficiency and extravagance it seems to have been all in vain, for late reports tell us: “Reforms in Peril, Hoover Warns, Citing Fight by 'Vested’ Interests.”
Yes, men cannot expect any relief from the ever-mounting staggering tax burden until the Theocracy, the kingdom of God, replaces all selfish, weak and corrupt governmental efforts of man. Then righteousness will spring forth and man on earth will long enjoy the work of his hands.
r ogress with, (Bloo^ Substitutes
HpODAY the subject of blood I substitutes is one of vital interest to every one, even the most healthy. Why? Because in view of the ever-worsening political situation the prospect of an atomic attack becomes daily more real, and an atomic attack plays havoc with the blood.
According to one medical authority (quoted in Science News Letter, July 8, 1950), if atomic war comes, “Gelatin and dextran may have to be used as plasma substitutes in the case of mass burn casualties because there probably won’t be enough blood and plasma/*
For a long time the medical profession has been rather slow and reluctant (at least so it seems to the layman) to explore and exploit the possibilities of blood substitutes. Note the tenor of the following (written as late as 1947) by Drs. Taylor and Waters, as quoted in Blood Derivatives and Substitutes, by White, and which expresses the orthodox medical opinion on the subject of blood substitutes:
* (a) The molecule of the dissolved substance must be of a size that the fluid will not leave the body too freely; (b) the fluid must exert an osmotic pressure and possess a viscosity approaching as closely as possible to that of whole blood; these qualifications depend upon the molecular size and shape; (c) it should be as nearly as possible isotonic with the contents of the red cells; (d) it must, of course, be non-antigenic and innocuous in every respect. In addition, it should be readily available, preferably inexpensive and capable of being quickly and easily prepared for intravenous administration.”
Stated in nonprofessional language, the molecules of a blood substitute should have as great a diameter as those of blood plasma, through the walls of the blood vessels and kidneys. This process of liquids passing through a<membrane is known as “osmosis”, and th^ extent to which a fluid does this is" termed its “osmotic pressure”. Also, the molecules must not be too long, as that would impart a greater stickiness or viscosity to the fluid, which would throw extra work on the heart. Gelatin normally has both of these weaknesses.
The substitute must have the right kind of salt solution, in harmony with, or “isotonic” with, the red corpuscles, otherwise the little sacs which contain the hemoglobin are dissolved. Actually, the red cells are like so many ships in a stream, and the prime problem of a blood substitute is to furnish the liquid for them to float and navigate in and to give the heart something to pump, or else it will stop. Also, any fluid injected into the circulatory system must not contain any antagonistic foreign elements, known as antigens (usually composed of protein), which would cause the system to form antibodies to counteract them; so, as above expressed, the fluid must be “nonantigenic”.
Merits of Saline Solutions
However, it does not at all follow that anything less than a perfect substitute must be rejected. For, says W. Kaempffert (New York Times, October 22, 1950):
“Despite their limitations, the Public Health Service, on the advice of the Sur-
gery Study Section of the' National Institute of Health, announced on October 13 that salt solutions were as effective as blood plasma in the emergency treatment of shock from serious burns and other injuries. One level teaspoonful of table salt and one-half teaspoonful of sodium citrate and another of baking soda in a quart of water are considered about right. If sodium citrate is not available, baking soda may be substituted for it. [Such a solution is drunk.] . . .
“A quest for a cheap and satisfactory substitute for blood, easy to administer, led the Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals in New York city to experiment with sodium salts in treating bums. Dr. Charles I. Fox, Jr., who has been conducting the experiments, says that 'we have treated severe cases of burns with isotonic solutions of sodium salts, or solutions in the same proportion as those of the body fluids, without the use of blood or plasma, and clinical trials to date have been satisfactory’,
"Dr. Fox’s work has involved more than 100 cases treated with the exclusive use of sodium salt solution, without blood or plasma.”
After giving a history of the efforts to utilize gelatin and the results obtained therefrom, Kaempffert further report?:
"Under the direction of Dr. Ellice McDonald, the Biochemical Foundation of Newark, Delaware, also experimented with a gelatin plasma substitute. The subjects were rabbits which had . . . suffered great damage from shock.' Drs. J. O. Ely and A. W. Angulo of the Biochemical Foundation’s staff gave the shocked rabbits a . . . gelatin-glucose-salt solution [which] proved to be as effective as blood serum in combating the increased concentration of red cells when serum was lost and blood thickened, and in restoring blood volume after as much as 60 per cent of the blood of the rabbit’s circulatory system had been drained off. The Biochemical Research Foundation’s substitute for blood and plasma is based on the needs of tissue culture for growth. In this respect it seems to differ from most other substitutes.
"So far as the record goes nothing was done with this gelatin-glucose-salt solution of the Biochemical Research Foundation. The results obtained in burns and hemorrhages in rabbits were so striking that it ought to be given a fair trial in hospitals. The prospect of putting up a gelatin substitute for plasma or serum is too bright to be ignored.”
Mayo Clinic Research
The orthodox conservative medical attitude toward blood substitutes received quite a jolt recently from none other than Dr. John S. Lundy, who is the anesthesiology chief at the Mayo clinic, one of the country’s top anesthesiologists and "who introduced sodium pentothal, now one of the world’s most widely used anesthetics (in smaller quantities, it’s known as 'truth serum’)”. He believes, according to the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, November 4,1950, that there are three blood substitutes that can "be backed as valuable and even life-saving agents:
’ 'Dextran—A sugar industry by-product first used in Sweden, still regularly used there and tested successfully here by Dr. Lundy.
“Periston—A chemical developed in Germany during World War n.
"Gelatin—Ordinary animal bone gelatin, but of medical purity.”
After telling that “there is still no wide agreement in the United States that in dextran, periston and gelatin effective substances have finally been found”, the article lists the advantages that Dr. Lundy sees in using such substitutes—and for whole blood:
"L There Is much skepticism today about plasma, for it has often carried a virus causing a serious liver disease. Ultraviolet irradiation supposedly kills this virus, but the question of whether or not it really does so is still open,
“2. No fluid is any good unless it stays in the vessels to keep up blood pressure and volume. Even plasma tends to seep out too fast. The new substitutes remain a long time.
“3. Blood banks are being operated at increasingly high cost—which could be cut by stock-piling the substitutes.
*'4. Large-scale transfusions are getting more and more complicated as scientists discover more blood groups and subgroups and varieties that should not be mismatched. The less need for whole blood, the less this problem. Dr. Lundy believes a substitute can be used ‘wholly or partly* instead of whole blood in some cases. When a patient, for instance, loses three pints of his own blood, he may sometimes be given two pints of blood and one of the substitute.
“5. With ‘the potential problem of preparing for another war’, use of substitutes could relieve the need for blood and plas-ma—and provide a substance which could be given in an emergency without previous examination for blood type.
“The Swedish ‘blood substitute* dextran is an almost colorless fluid. Swedish doctors first reported its use in 1944. Dr. Lundy began trying it in April 1946 and up to January 1, 1950, had administered it to some 1,500 patients. Animal studies have been under way, too, in the Mayo foundation. With duty, Swedish dextran now costs about $8.50 a pint. It is also made in Great Britain and a company in Terre Haute, Indiana, has entered the field ... Even at $8.50, dextran is cheaper than Wood or plasma—where the patient must pay $25 to $40 a pint unless his friends or relatives can replenish a hospital's blood bank.
“In the recently published 1949 report of the Mayo clinic's anesthesiology section, Dr. Lundy and associates teli of several cases—five or six last year—in which patients remained in severe shock, near death, despite several normal blood transfusions. With dextran, blood volume and pressure were restored and the patients recovered.
“ ‘We would not want to be without them/ the doctors comment on all three of the substitute fluids.”
Most remarkable indeed is the fact that, to quote Science News Letter, October 28, 1950, on these experiments, “in five or six cases [dextran] was considered of lifesaving importance, having helped patients who had not benefited from several transfusions of blood/*
Also showing the widespread use and value of dextran and its superiority over blood plasma in many cases is the following report taken from the New York Times, December 24,1950: “Dr. Gunnar Thorson, a Stockholm surgeon, recently presented a report ... of some near-miracles produced by the substance in counteracting shock in victims of accidents who to all appearances were lifeless. Thus far, he reported, more than 25,000 cases have been treated in Sweden with the refined products, with bad reactions in only onefifth of one per cent. This was said to be better than the Swedish or American experience with blood plasma.” Reporting on this same matter the Washington (D. C.) Star, December 18, 1950, tells that due to the effectiveness of dextran “use of plasma has been almost completely abandoned in Sweden”.
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