Awake!, September 22, 1951
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A DICTATOR GETS SPANKED'
Q-«*hec’s ’’Little Caesar” learns about the law from Jehovah’s witnesses
Narcotic Addiction in Youth
Symptom of Juvenile Delinquency
Praying to Be Heard
World’s noisy appeals go unheeded—why?
Inside Venezuela
Colorful life of the rugged interior
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CONTENTS
A Dictator Gets Spanked!
Jubilant Press Welcomes Decision
Little Man’s Big Pride Injured
Maurice’s Bridge Is Falling Down!
The Bridge Is Gone; Duplessis Is Going 8
Reproducing the Miracle of Life 9
Love Life of the Flowers
Nature News
Narcotic Addiction in Youth
What Can Be Done About It?
Praying to Be Heard
How Christendom Prays
'You Must Pray This Way’
Inside Venezuela
Living Conditions
“City of Sunsets”
“Your Word Is Truth”
The “Right Soil” Bears Fruit
Zone Therapy
Watching the World
A Dictator Gets Spanked! learns about the low
Quebec's little Caesar
By “Awofcef" (orrespandent in Canada
NORTH America’s own contribution to the realm of dictators ^as received a sound spanking. The punished autocrat is Maurice Duplessis, Quebec Province’s “Little Caesar”. The man who keeps Quebec’s face in totalitarian mud lest it rise to enjoy the freedom common to the rest of Canada can thank his own blunders for the indignity.
“Little Caesar” indeed! Did the ancient Caesars annihilate their enemies ? So would Maurice Duplessis! Did the Roman line of emperors raise the name of Caesar above the law and make it synonymous with Rome itself? So would the name of Duplessis gain such elevation in Quebec! Did the Caesars contribute great building projects to their peoples, some of which are still in use or at least partially standing? So would the great Duplessis! In fact, to be specific, did he not present a nine-span bridge to posterity? Yes, he did; and, in fact, he placed said bridge in a category rarely enjoyed by such structures, linking its destiny with that of his own political party. But this leads into a matter deserving of greater attention. We will first prepare the way with a consideration of Premier Duplessis’ run-in with law and order that precipitated a judicial thrashing.
Among his “blunders” referred tp above was his forgetting to dissolve entirely the from Jehovah’s witnesses court system in Quebec. Any dictator should always take precautions of this nature or make sure the judges are solidly “packed” behind him. Now, lo and behold! One or two honest jurists have thrown the premier of all Quebec into consternation by their discovery that their power to administer justice does not stop even with the chief of state himself-
Like a typical totalitarian, Duplessis is a great one to marshal his might and storm forth against an apparently helpless minority- Following World War II, he displayed this trait by pouncing on the religious group known as Jehovah’s witnesses. How many times he may have regretted this rashness is unknown. The compelling force of Christianity fighting for its liberty proved something far different from the political “pushovers” the premier had been used to. Among his woes resulting from this battle was a personal law Case in which Duplessis entangled himself when he forced an honest workingman out of business. Quite logically, the man sued the premier for damages.
The Roncarelli Case
The case has a very interesting background, which is well told by Time magazine under the heading, “Judicial Spanking”: “For many years Roncarclli’s was one of Montreal’s leading restaurants. It
catered to the carriage trade and had the reputation of being one of the few good places where a man could take his wife and family. Owner Frank Roncarelli was also a member of the unpopular Jehovah's Witnesses sect Soon after World War II, when Quebec police were arresting Witnesses right and left on such charges as obstructing traffic and peddling without a license, Roncarelli began bailing them out. In December, 1946, Premier Maurice Duplessis took a hand in the matter, ordered the Provincial Liquor Commission to revoke Roncarelli’s license "now and forever’ . . . Roncarelli was soon out of business.”
Mr. Roncarelli had done nothing worse than provide bail for persons charged before the courts, which everyone has a right to do. It was remarked by the influential weekly, Saturday Night: “The action of the head of a provincial Government, in punishing a provider of bail by depriving him, upon no other ground whatever, of the license to carry on his business seems to us the most amazing misuse of the sovereign power of the province that has occurred in a good many years/'
Most Quebeckers are used to official misconduct and feci there is nothing that can be done about it. Jehovah’s witnesses, however, arc made of sterner stuff, and Mr. Roncarelli promptly sued Duplessis personally for the damage he had suffered. The lawsuit appeared to many as a futile gesture. As remarked by the Victoria Daily Times: “When Mr. Roncarelli entered suit against the premier, he was admired for his audacity if not for his ingenuousness; for in Quebec, Mr. Duplessis is not only premier and Attorney-General but, like Pooh-Bah, Lord High Everything Else.”
But the audacity paid off. On May 2, 1951, Mr. Justice MacKinnon of the Superior Court ruled that Duplessis had indeed committed “a faulty and unauthorized act”. He assessed damages of $8,123.53 plus costs (about $1,500.00). Said the decision: “It is apparent that the real reason for the cancellation of the plaintiff’s license was that he had been furnishing multiple bonds | for Jehovah’s witnesses] . . . and that he was a member of that sect.”
Jubilant Press Welcomes Decision
Both radio and press headlined the story lor which many Canadians had Jong waited: “Duplessis ordered to pay Jehovah’s witness $8,123”; “Witnesses Win over Duplessis”; “Mr. Duplessis Reproved”; “Intolerance Rebuked.” Said the Edmonton Journal: “If this decision is upheld, it will be a sharp and painful reminder to Premier Duplessis that he is not above the law—a reminder he has needed for a good many years. It should have a wholesome effect in checking the tendency to arbitrary government and persecution of unpopular minorities which has made its appearance in Quebec of late.”
It is an outrage ~in any civilized country when a Crown officer such as Mr. Duplessis, who is supposed to be enforcing the law, defies the very laws which he is charged with applying and seeks to injure a respectable, law-abiding citizen simply because of religious prejudice. The Osbawa Time-Gazette put the matter aptly, charging that Duplessis “allowed religious prejudice and intolerance to become weapons of an effort to ruin a citizen with religious views different from his own.
“Such intolerance, such interference with the legal rights of citizens, have no place in Canada, and it is astounding that they should have been used by a man holding the high office of Premier of a Canadian province as a means of punishing one with whom, he disagreed on religious matters. ... The decision of Mr. Justice MacKinnon can be interpreted as a stinging rebuke, not only to Premier Duplessis, but to all others who would interfere with the religious freedom of Canadian citizens?’
The Globe mid Mail, Toronto, said: “The Superior Court has acted according to the finest traditions of British jurisprudence.”
The Victoria Daily Times commented: “The mark of history was on the Montreal court judgment this wook. . . . Few spec-tators at this trial thought that Roncarelli would have a chance. Mr. Justice MacKinnon’s judgment demonstrated that, while the premier has been able to introduce restrictive legislation against the press and screen in Quebec, the authority of the courts nevertheless remains (in this jurist’s hands at least) inviolate. This was a wise and courageous decision.”
The Kingston Whig-Standard had this to say: “Damages of some $8,000 were awarded him [Roncarelli I which seems inadequate in view of the business loss he suffered. The decision is nonetheless gratifying, however, as a disciplinary rejection of dictatorial methods. . . . This assumption of dictatorial power should not be countenanced. It is most gratifying to see Mr. Duplessis placed in his proper position by the court.”
I
Little Man's Big Pride Injured
When Duplessis heard the news of the decision he burst out laughing. The very next day, however, he demonstrated how hypocritical was his outward display of mirth, Once again he began mouthing vicious, burning hatred of Jehovah’s witnesses. In banner headlines the Montreal Star announced that Duplessis would prosecute Jehovah’s witnesses for sedition. The Supreme Court of Canada had recently ruled they were not seditious; but what does the law matter to the great Duplessis? The statement said: “Premier Duplessis announced at a press conference Wednesday [ same day as the decision against him J the Government’s intention of continuing action in the pending cases. . . . The Government’s policy towards Jehovah’s witnesses is in conformity with the ’sound traditions’ of Quebec’s people, he said.”
The Watchtower Society issued a reply to these windy threats. It appeared in the Montreal Star under the heading, “Witnesses Challenge Decision to Prosecute,” and said: “General counsel for the witnesses said today he would be glad to see Premier Duplessis proceed, but doubted if he ever would. ’These prosecutions hegan in 1946, and since then, over 120 charges have been laid. Up to now he has proceeded to try four of them. Mr. Duplessis has been proven wrong, and the courts have maintained the contentions of the defense in every single instance.’ . . .
“Counsel stated that when the Attorney-General talked about the ’sound traditions of Quebec’ he was following, he really meant the ‘traditions of Mr. Duplessis’. Tt is unfair for Mr. Duplessis to blame the province for his own policy of oppressing and persecuting a minority group. His statement attributing his personal attitude to the whole province is a libel on the tolerance and fairness and respect for laws which is characteristic of many people in this province.’ ”
Duplessis’ display of bad temper was just too much for the French Canadian sense of humor to take. The idea that a Crown official acting in the capacity of attorney general, and having been called to account for his unlawful actions, should suddenly decide that the pedple who had made him look silly were therefore seditious, they just could not stomach.
The French-language paper Le Canada struck hard at “notre Maurice”: “The people have lost all confidence in the administration of justice as far as it relates to the Attorney-General of the province of Quebec. And since we live under a dictatorship, the fault lies with the dictator himself, the prime minister.”
After discussing the long delay with these cases begun in 1946-1947, the article continued: “Why the long interruption? What happened in the interval? Why had the ’witnesses’ all of a sudden become dangerous again? Strange coincidence, the same day that Duplessis announced this decision he learned that judgment had just been rendered against him. The coincidence forces the conclusion that the Attorney-General wants to exercise the vengeance of Mr, Maurice Duplessis.”
Maurice’s Bridge Is Falling Dawn!
But before the premier takes his vengeance out for its exercise, he might wisely take stock of his circumstances. Since first he opened up his volley on the witnesses, his fortunes have changed. For once, his bluff has been called. Furthermore, the valiant fight by a determined group of freedom lovers has caused others to take heart. It has even assisted judges to do so. Now the Supreme Court of Canada has swept away the Quebec dictator’s erupting charges of “seditiontf against Jehovah’s witnesses, charges that formerly flowed like lava. The press, the radio, the people now see the tyrant in his true light
Furthermore, in the meantime, an ill-fated venture by Duplessis in the art of bridge building has added a note of grim humor to his puhlic and political status. At his home town in Three Rivers, he caused to be built, at a cost of $5,000,000, a beautiful new bridge across the St. Maurice river which was proudly named the “Duplessis Bridge”. Duplessis personally came to the scene in the summer of 1948 to open the structure. Perhaps he had fond visions of the bridge’s endurance unto many future generations that would think back to the “Golden Age of Duplessis” as they journeyed back and forth across the span. Probably reaching what he considered the heights of comparisons, the premier is reported to have linked the destiny of the bridge with that of his political party, saying: “This bridge is as solid as the Union Nationale.”
Ah, wnat a proud moment! Such a bridge, that it should be likened by so great a man as Premier Maurice Duplessis to his own party! So with much pomp the new bridge was proudly opened in 1948. But Jo, two years later, for eight months during 1950, the enjoyment of the bridge by “future generations” must be interrupted to allow workmen to proudly repair a number of cracks that have appeared.’ Then, no sooner is this done, than one cold night in January, 1951, with the temperature at twenty-six degrees below zero, four of the bridge’s nine spans proudly crash into the river! Four persons are plunged into the icy wTaters and drown.
Informed of the tragedy, a crestfallen Duplessis at once cried out, “Sabotage!” (along with “Sedition”, one of his two favorite words). But this time the people agreed with him. However, the general opinion prevailed that, to find the saboteurs, the premier would need to look only as far as his own office. It seems that the bridge’s contract had not been let out to public tender, but was let privately to Duplessis’ own associates. The Liberal leader of the province did not miss the opportunity to remark that the trouble with the bridge was “too much grease and not enough* steel”. In this modern age it does not seem to be asking too much that $5r000,000 bridge spans of but 180 feet remain intact for more than three years. Their failure to do so points an accusing finger at obvious criminal graft.
Like Bridge, like Party
Now remember, it was Duplessis and none other who likened the permanence of the bridge to that of his party. Turning our attention now to the more important part of the premier’s allegory, and recalling the charges of graft and corruption in connection with the bridge’s construction, we cannot help but recall the words of Jesus: “Therefore everyone tljat hears these sayings of mine and does them, will be likened to a discreet man, who built his house upon the rock-mass. And the rain poured down and the floods came and the winds blew and lashed against that house, but it did not cave in, for it had been founded upon the rock-mass. Furthermore, everyone hearing these sayings of mine and not doing them will be likened to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. And the rain poured down and the floods came and the winds blew and struck against that house and it caved in, and its collapse was great.”—Matthew 7:24-27, New World Trans,
In making war on Jehovah’s witnesses in an effort to halt their campaign of free Bible education among the citizens of Quebec, is Premier Duplessis showing himself and the party he leads to be in harmony with or opposed to the words of Jesus, the greatest exponent of free public Bible education that ever lived? Will he yet call a halt on his own senseless “burning hate for God and Christ and freedom” in time to avert disaster for his “house” during the storm of Armageddon? He certainly gives no indication of doing so. However, he seemingly stalls for time, rants his determination to convict all of Jehovah’s witnesses of “sedition”, yet shows no desire to follow through with action. But his bluff is being called. Finally something has started on the more than one hundred pending sedition cases. By no means could the government be made to bring them all out of moth balls, but the summer of 1951 found the Crown budged into court over one lone sedition case.
On June 11, 1951, there began at Montreal the trial of minister A. S. Gaskin, who was charged with seditious libel for distributing in 1946 the article, entitled “Quebec’s Burning Hate for God and Christ and Freedom Is the Shame of All Canada”. The Supreme Court had already ruled that there was no sedition in this article, so the case' was a foregone conclusion for everyone except Duplessis. At the end of the evidence for the prosecution the trial judge, Justice Lazure, announced rather sadly that the Crown had failed to make out a case and he would have to dismiss the charge. He considered himself bound by the judgment of the Supreme Court even if he did not agree with it.
Counsel for Jehovah’s witnesses immediately moved that all the other cases be either dismissed or brought to immediate trial. The court agreed, but instead of doing as he promised, the judge reversed himself and allowed the prosecution to drag these five-year-old cases to the September term. Why this should be necessary is hard to understand. If the Crown prosecutors do not know the law on this subject by this time they will never know it.
Even the conservative Montreal Star felt obliged to protest the prolonging of these old complaints. It remarked editorially, under the title “A Duty to Be Fair”: “It would be expected that other pending cases would be dropped, but the Crown, insists on proceeding add the remaining cases have been put over to the September term. ... It would seem to be equally the Crown’s duty not to clutter the rolls of the court with cases that have virtually been decided. It will not do to create the suspicion that the courts of Quebec are lending themselves to persecution of a dissident minority, yet this suspicion is bound to be created if these similar cases are proceeded with.”
The Star is conservative indeed in its choice of the word “suspicion”. No, the persecution is fact, not suspicion. This Jehovah’s witnesses have maintained all along. Now the continued stubborn determination of the attorney general and his support by members of the judiciary only amplify what the witnesses have said about the maladministration of justice in medieval Quebec, However, the judges who have had the courage to thus far uphold law and order through their favorable decisions are to be commended.
The Bridge Is Gone; Duplessis Is Going
Were Mr. Duplessis and his henchmen students of the Bible, they would save themselves much trouble. The Scriptures record many precedents of history wherein world leaders (and much bigger men than provincial Duplessis) have sought to fight against God’s children and have been defeated. See Exodus, chanters 5-12; Second Kings, chapters 18, J 9. To Duplessis, judging by human standards, Jehovah’s witnesses looked like a helpless minority that he could easily sweep out of his Catholic province. He stormed, raged and threatened; his strong-arm squad arrested and bullied. And his results? Practically nil! Jehovah’s witnesses were declared innocent, and his prosecution came to nought. Inst^d, he has himself heen judicially condemned and spanked because of his own unlawful actions; his arrogant provincial police face actions for false arrest and unlawful interruptions of peaceful meetings for Christian worship. Even the law of gravity has taken a hand against him, sending his proud but ersatz Duplessis bridge tumbling into the river. This should give him a foretaste of the bitter medicine the Lord has poured for him and his conspirators to drink at Armageddon,
He has been successful in only one thing —making his administration and his persecutions a stench in the nostrils of decent men, and in bringing a bad name on his province. He has also helped many honest-hearted persons in Quebec and elsewhere to recognize the righteousness of the cause of Jehovah’s witnesses. Their numbers have soared from 342 in the province in 1946 to 1,091 in 1951!
Duplessis, as a lawyer, should heed the wise decision of Judge Gamaliel who sat in judgment on some early Christian witnesses of Jehovah, Peter and the other apostles who were on trial in Jerusalem. Gamaliel said: “Do not meddle with these men, but kt them alone; (because, if this scheme and this work is from men, it will be overthrown; but if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them;) otherwise, you may perhaps be found fighters actually against God.”—Acts 5:38,39, Acw World Trans.
As for Duplessis, his bridge is gone and he is going. Like the bridge before its fall, his position even now reveals'great, menacing cracks. If not before, his continued mad fighting against1 God will land him and his party in the junk heap of destruction at Armageddon. Let the people not be misled. Heed the warnings of God’s Word and do not follow blind guides into the ditch of ruin and death. Take advantage of the powerful, living counsel from the Most High God, when He describes the course of headstrong world rulers:
“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against Jehovah, and against his anointed, . . . He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision. Then win he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure: Now therefore be wise, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with trembling.”—Psalm 2:2, 4, 5,10,11, Am. Stan. Ver.
LIFE adorns our plan- ...h ■■ nently together, but fiet in indescribable ’ ■:/ ■ nally separate. The starbeauty and variety. f regenerative abil-
book Man and the W ;* ”^**^**K t'fl^ to grow new arms logical World infop^s ' _ f ww • <f ■ ’-i^Jy becomes a form
us: 4'Just how ijttaiy ' £ £ JjrL dCl£ ■ ■'<I reproduction,
kinds of animals^ and ' _ from only a severed
plants there are we do
not know; more than "J
one million species have
already been described and named, however, and it is not improbable that as many more remain to be discovered. Within this vast array, we encounter the widest variations in size, form, degree of complexity, methods of self-maintenance and reproduction, and relations to other organisms/’
Is it any wonder, then, that the youthful offspring pf intelligent humankind look inquiringly into parental faces and ask to know where everything in general and they in particular came from? But interest in our own and other life forms is found among all age groups. An entire science, the field of genetics, devotes itself to the study of human heredity. So a consideration of the varied ways in which life is transmitted proves worth while.
Though mainly through sex is the manycolored cape of vegetation spread out over the earth and animal kind replenished, it is not the only means used. Asexual reproduction involves but one parent and requires no special reproductive organs. It is illustrated in such one-celled organisms as the amoeba or the paramecium. Usually each of these reproduces by dividing into two new cells; though at times two cells will unite instead to dwell together, at least for a time. In the latter instance the cells do not remain perma-
CRO55 SECTION OF A FLOWER
* f . 1 BXiif ^d a fragment of
V ’ the nucleus will grow a * new starfish I The spiro-
gyra, a water alga plant, may divide a filament or unite two cells of neighboring plants. The ‘'walking fem” grows new plants from the tip of a leaf.
Life may also be handed on by means of budding„ or outgrowths. Take yeast cells. A tiny enlargement on the mother cell
grows until it becomes possibly as large as the original. Then a new bud may appear on the mother as well as one on the daughter cell.
Here it would be well to mention the invaluable assistance to reproduction offered various plants by underground stems. Those of grasses and sedges are typical of rhizone stems, and other types include the bidb type, as in crocuses, hyacinths and tulips; the cat m type, as in the Indian turnip; and the tuberf as exemplified by the popular potato. Credit for very early spring flowers, like those of the crocus and hyacinth, is attributed to such stems that nourish the buds underground that began growing the preceding fall.
Molds reproduce in yet another unique fashion. From the surface of dead, organic matter, tall, slender stalks will rise, blooming at the top a round, black body covered with spores. When ripe, the encasement bursts to sweep away scattered independent spores. Each of these that contacts moist, decaying matter is capable of starting a new mold growth. Mosses too produce one-celled reproductive spores, but when these fall on a wet surface they germinate and bring forth an algalike plant. From this plant come buds that grow to become leafy moss plants. In the latter plants male and female sex organs develop, sperms of the former at length fertilizing eggs of the latter. This in turn results in a stalk with capsule containing asexual spores. Thus the two-generation moss introduces sexual reproduction.
Love Life of the Flowers
Prominent in the sex life of plants is the generative medium, pollen. The various ways in which this is transferred from male to female organs is interesting indeed. A most obvious method is to enlist the services of the wind. Flowers of cereals, sedges and various kinds of trees employ this method. Commonly flower pistils of plants depending on wind pollination are equipped with feathery or hairy construction, thus easily catching wind-propelled pollen. -Elm and oak trees, usually wind pollinated, will be noted to blossom in flowers before their leaves appear. Otherwise, the leaves would provide a hindrance to the pollen’s arrival.
Where the wind leaves off, the pollen specialists of the insect or bird air force take over. Flowers depending on these unique aviators are outfitted to entice their visitors. They come out in bright colors and sweet fragrance. Within the anthers of the “Easter” lily are developed a number of spores which in time become pollen grains, male sex plants. Finally, the anther dries and bursts open, laying bare the powdery pollen which is next loaded aboard night-flying moths and transported by airlift to the pistils, abode of the female plants. The sticky, stigmatic surface that receives the pollen from the moth quickly encourages its growth into a microscopic, hairlike tube. This pollen tube makes its way into the pistil, inhere it bursts and empties two male sperm cells.
In fresh-water eel grass the “middleman” pollen-carrier is eliminated. An elongated stem carries the female plant to the surface where it opens on the water. The tiny male flowers are released under water and float to the top, where they are attracted by surface tension to larger objects such as the female plants. Then, once beside them, this tension and small ripples prop or tilt the male flowers just enough to touch the female stigma and pollinate.
Reproductive “Taxi Service”
A majority of flowering plants rely on seed dispersal to guarantee reproduction of their kind. Wind again steals the show when it comes to scattering mature seeds. Included in this classification are the seeds of maple, elm, ash and pine trees. Also, the feather-topped dandelion’s extreme success in expansion testifies to the good work the wind does for its fluffy, airborne seeds. Thistles, cattails, fireweed and virgin’s-bower add to the list. Locust pods split open when mature to catapult their wind-borne seed abroad. The Russian thistle grows branches in a globelike formation. At ripening of the seeds, the main plant stem snaps below the branches, enabling them to drive freely over the ground by wind propulsion, scattering seed.
Rivers and ocean currents carry other seeds, like those of the coconut with its buoyant husks. The bladder nut’s dry fruits are enclosed in a tough, paperlike “envelope”. The seeds within have several compartments so that if only one remains intact^ they continue to float.
Do not overlook the taxi service furnished many seeds by animals. Some are eaten along with the fruits, but, being indigestible, pass through the alimentary canal intact, later to be dropped in some
spot perhaps favorable to germination. Some birds eat the “meat” of the fruit, spitting out the seeds some distance from the parent plant. Wild carrot seeds and others cling to animal fur by means of sharp points, while some give off a sticky substance to attach it to a likely passer-by. Witch hazel, jewel weed and phlox, violet are among a class of plants with special “seed cases”. These can be snapped open and the seeds flung for sizable distances.
Maintaining the Animal Kingdom
Turn to other life. The female crayfish releases eggs from her body to deposit them on appendages called swimmerets. There they unite with sperm cells from the male. Orthodox “run-of-the-mill” fish follow a different procedure. The female will lay a brood of eggs on a shallow river bottom. A male appears, hovers over the eggs for a time, then releases sperm cells as a milt that settles down over the eggs and fertilizes them. Bird eggs, of course, are fertilized while yet in the mother’s body, then brought to complete development and hatching after laying. The male octopus “hands” the sperm to the female with one of his tentacles, placing it in her receptacle. With the newts, the female is more aggressive. She seizes a packet of spermatozoa deposited by the male and conveys it to her own reproductive chambers.
Some life forms employ the rare gift of delayed fertilization. One salamander produced young after two years’ captivity when no opportunity for mating was afforded. Bats, are similarly distinguished. Copulation occurs with them in the autumn, but the sperm is then stored within the female’s body until the following spring, when the ova are produced and fertilized. Among animal life it is frequently the case to mate “in season”, promiscuity is the rule rather than the exception, and no social or moral requirements bind the couple together for a sustained period.
It would be appropriate to mention that some rare animal forms possess within their one organism both male and female sex organs. However, it is rarer still that both develop together, allowing for self-fertilization, Hence, cross fertilization between two individuals is the usual practice for this unusual group, called hermaphrodites, Included are some snails and oysters, annelid worms and flatworms.
Also in a class by itself is the method of reproduction known by the Greek term, parthenogenesis. Literally, this means “virgin birth”. This method features the development of all or part of the eggs without the benefit of fertilization. With the honeybee the fertilized eggs become females, the unfertilized, males. Parthenogenesis is found among some seed plants, including dandelions, daisies and sunflowers. For long some evolutionists held that parthenogenesis was proof of an evolutionary step between asexual and sexual reproduction. But not so! If any variation is involved, it appears that parthehogenesis is a “devolution” from sexual reproduction, Man and the Biological World (page 212) states: “There is much evidence that parthenogenesis is a derived condition, developed in groups that were once bisexual but that have become able to dispense wholly or in part with fertilization.”
There is much more to say. But already the stable principle of like bringing forth like can be seen throughout nature. The make-up of life’s many forms of chromosomes and their genes, amazing carriers of heredity, provoke further questions which later discussion might answer. The average layman knows that wheat grains produce wheat plants, that birds, bees and bears have little birds, bees and bears. What has been said so far should make us anxious to trace further some of the mysteries of earth’s living creatures.
Nature News
"^Best Friend” Welcomes Aviator Back to Earth <f In the summer of 1950 Ensign Stanley W. Henderson took to his parachute to forsake a damaged navy plane. He landed safely in a tree and, lo, there at the base of the trunk was one of man’s "best friends”, a dog, ready to welcome him back to earth. However, the dog proved overenthusiastic and at once bit Henderson in both legs.
Stujffing Not Bargained Fur
Though there might often be some advantage to a ready-stuffed chicken, all housewives will surely join Mrs. Jack Latham of Tucumcari, New Mexico, in preferring to do their own if the alternative is to accept the kind of "stuffing” she found in a chicken she was dressing one fall day in 1949. Taking up her work, she noted a reptile’s tail protruding from the fowl’s gullet. Called ttTthe scene, her husband split open the chicken to discover that it had swallowed a thirteen-inch rattlesnake. In case any are wondering, the Associated Press dispatch adds the postscript that the Lathams and their guests dined on pork that day.
Temperance Mouse Dies at Old Age of Six
<L A desert pocket mouse owned by the University of California’s associate professor of zoology, Dr. Seth B. Benson, died last year at the advanced age of six—about six times as long as this creature’s normal life expectancy. The mouse “abstained” so totally that it rejected even water, frequently fighting to keep free of drops sprinkled on it.
Dr. Benson was not surprised at this, since such desert animals require very little water. The small amounts of birdseed it ate provided all needed moisture. The mouse’s advanced age was attributed to its sheltered life.
Oog Chases Lion's Blues” Away <L A lion cub in the Moscow, Ohio, zoo permitted itself to fall into the deepest depths of despair. To provide aid and comfort and in the hope of lifting the lion’s "hangdog” expression, a dog was a 11 o w’ e d to share his cage with him.
Once, later, while strolling together, the lion had to be rescued by the dog from a rooster at whose beak the young 'king of beasts’ was taking a horrible trimming. So close has become this strange animal attachment that the lion howls unmercifully at bedtime unless the dog is at its side.
Spider's Tdcgniphy
<1 The simple orb spider continues to win the admiration of experts jn modern complicated means of communication. Have you ever noted how quickly she can be on the scene at the arrival of an adventurous insect caller? The truth is that a strand of her web is run to her nearby boudoir and drawn taut to the necessary tension. A visitor is detected by vibrations on that strand, which in turn serves as the spider’s dinner hell.
Chickens Support Automotive Age <J, Determined never to be called waylayers of progress, chickens are known to have taken tlfe automobile right in stride. One rooster rode quietly on the bumper of a car driven by Robert E. McEwan of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for over a mile without even waking up. In California, Larry Rusyne motored the 217 miles from Fresno to Pasadena, attributing a marked cackling noise in his motor to nothing more than the 100-degree heat. However, upon arrival at his destination, he discovered in the space between radiator and grill one Rhode Island Red chicken.
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NarcoticAddiction in Youth
Symptom and Abettor of Juvenile Delinquency
HE latter half of June, 1951, saw the subject of narcotic addiction of youth occupying the first place in the newspapers of New York, the nation’s largest city. A state investigation was publicizing the shocking facts. Exposed was widespread dope traffic; one could get the stuff anywhere from Coney Island to the Bronx, Places were named, drug and candy stores, restaurants and dance halls, in the very heart of the city, where dope was being peddled. In the investigation, letters were read, tapes were played containing confessions by youths as to how they became addicts, how addiction made them thieves, forgers and prostitutes. One schoolboy, a peddler of dope, known as a "pusher", was doing a $300 to $400 business daily selling the stuff to his schoolmates; he was losing his money to the school gambler, a "bookie", who himself got snared by dope addiction.
According to H. J. Ansling-er, head of the Federal Narcotics Commission, the dope situation is gravest in New York city, is at epidemic level in nine large U. S. cities, and in the nation some $100,000,-000 worth is sold on the streets annually.
Narcotic addiction begets not only crime but algo extreme violence; old men and women being unmercifully clubbed because of resisting the attempts of addicts to rob them. Dope addicts stop at nothing: they attack and rob doctors, burglarize pharmacies and hospitals and boast that they would even kill their own mother if she stood in the way of their getting dope when they needed it. One dope fiend criminally attacked his own sister after stupefying her with dope. Police, court and school officials all tell the same story: dope addiction and dope-inspired crime among youth are increasing at an alarming rate.
In two weeks the New York city police arrested 250 dope peddlers; some 5,000 New York high school students, it is estimated, are addicts. Chicago, Illinois, reports that the dope situation has gone '‘completely out of control”; four out of five seeking cure for addiction are minors; the court especially set up to handle narcotics cases is jamming the jails, and the latest estimates place at 25,000 the number of youthful addicts. Incidentally, if the narcotic menace is worst in New York city, and Chicago with one-third the population has some 25,000 youthful addicts, can we be so sure that the 5,000 estimate of youthful addicts in New York city is correct?
Other cities, such as Detroit, Michigan, and St. Louis, Missouri, tell the same sordid story of an alarming increase in dope addiction among youths and of an aroused citizenry trying to combat the evil. One California official estimated that 15 per cent of the teen-agers in his state are dope addicts. In just a tew years the number of teen-agers admitted to the government hospital at Lexington, Kentucky, for curing narcotic addiction, increased seventeenfold.
How They Got That Way
While some teen-agers doubtless acquire the habit through no fault of their own, drug addiction is the logical result of a philosophy which puts pleasure first. Youths who indulge in liquor find the step to drug addiction a short one. Usually, this begins with the smoking of marijuana cigarettes, known as “reefers”.
Marijuana addiction is bad, but it does not stop there. Youth is enticed to try sniffing a white powder, heroin, known as “horse”, an opium derivative, for a greater thrill, “bang” or “kick”. Heroin has been described as “the most baneful, the strongest and most habit-forming drug, the most determined in its effect”. Heroin inflates personality, benumbs ordinary impulses of human judgment, gives one a sense of intense egoism or self-importance, lasting for several hours.
Soon the pleasure-seeking, impatient teen-ager, the quicker to realize the effects of the dope, to “get high”, as it is called, learns to dissolve the powder by use of a spoon and a match, and to jab it into his arm with a hypodermic needle. Then he graduates to “main lining”, learns to fasten a band around his arm to raise the large vein in his forearm and to jab the stuff directly into it. Two or three weeks of this and the teen-ager is fully addicted.
Now the pay-off. He finds that his system is inured to the stuff so that he no longer feels “high” when he takes it. Instead it puts him into a lethargic or comatose state. So why does he not break off? Because he cannot, Every fiber of his body cries for the stuff and he has to have it or suffer the unspeakable agony, so it seems to him, of the wearing-off process. If he fails to get it he sweats, vomits, has stomach cramps, diarrhea, running of the nose, etc. Morbid fears beset his mind, he is going mad! He learns why this addiction has been called “the white death”.
The youthful victim now loses interest in sports, his family and in school. Only one thing matters: he must have his dope. He uses all his spending money, takes odd jobs to get more, borrows, but still it is not enough to supply the ever-increasing need for this “happy dust”, as it is also known. He begins stealing from his own family, from neighbors, and if the addict is a girl, prostitution is found to be a quick and easy way to get the money for dope. Addicts spend from $4 to $40 a day for the stuff, at the rate of one or two dollars a capsule. No wonder dope addiction has been termed the “most dangerous form of juvenile delinquency”.
And here is where a vicious cycle sets in. To get money for his own dope need, the addict will deliberately ensnare others so as to profit from supplying their need. Thus the spiral of addiction widens, and that, by youth itself. One girl of 17 told of making a profit of $1,000 a week from peddling dope; a young woman of 21, who had the reputation of being one of the “most vicious” dope peddlers in Newark, New Jersey, had among her customers a twelve-year-old child whom she had taught to sniff heroin.
Who Is to Blame?
According to one press report, “derelict” parents are driving children to use dope. Without a doubt, parents do come in for the chief blame in this matter of juvenile narcotic addiction. When parents show love of pleasure more than love of God and the principles of righteousness, and neglect their children, what can they expect but that their children will also put pleasure first? Parents lead a double life, become strangers to their children and then profess to be shocked when they hear of the dope addiction of their offspring.
Educators are also to blame. They have failed to properly instruct children on the dangers of drug addiction. In some cities the law provided for this to be done, but the school authorities neglected to obey this law, some even offering the lame ex-□use that to instruct youths regarding the harm resulting from dope addiction would arouse a desire to indulge. Federal Narcotics Commissioner Harry J* Anslinger stated that part of the blame could be placed on the psychiatrists who wrote a book on Marijuana Problems^ in which they minimized the harm of marijuana addiction, and which book is in practically every library in the country. “Totally inaccurate/’ was his description of it. Hollywood producers also are blameworthy, in that they made heroes out of their stars who were convicted of being dope addicts., The government also has to share the blame. Narcotics squads are pitifully undermanned. The entire U. S. force could keep busy in New York city alone. And politicians, as the recent Kefauver investigation showed, are ever ready to connive with the worst elements of society, breaking the law for the sake of filthy lucre. The New York narcotics investigation brought to light police laxity and corruption in the matter of narcotic control. The dope traffic is the underworld’s most vicious racket, even as gambling is its most widespread.
And the teen-agers themselves arc also blameworthy. Dope addiction among them has been described “as a symptomatic response to the general world tensions under which the teen-ager is living”. In other words, it is a refusal onb their part to face the facts, and in this they cannot shift all the responsibility on their parents, on the school authorities, on the police and poli-tlcians,i and on the ruthless dope traffickers. They know certain things are right, certain things are wrong, and that when they go in for dope they are yielding to selfish impulses. The instinct of self-preservation alone should teach them to be on guard. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”—Galatians 6:7.
What Can Be Done About It?
Public-spirited citizens, civic groups, school authorities/ politicians and judges are advocating campaigns of education of both parents and children. Stricter laws are being urged, such as making the selling of dope to children a separate crime and tripling f the penalties now in force. The death sentence for the hardened "repeaters” and those who sell to minors has been urged by a senator, a labor convention and by a woman’s club. Late in June, 1951, one veteran dope peddler was given fifteen years, the highest penalty yet inflicted.
According to narcotics officers, the medical fraternity comes in for considerable blame. Their carelessness in prescribing drugs unwittingly makes some addicts; they are far too generous in the amounts they prescribe; some willingly traffic in dope for the profit obtained, and a considerable number of doctors and nurses arc addicts themselves.
Keeping dope off the market would solve the problem, but that poses a Herculean task. According to Drew Pearson, a foremost U. S. columnist, the dope traffic Js run by the underworld organization, the Mafia composed of 50 men, whose United States head is Frank Costello and whose international head is Lucky Luciano; who, for some mysterious reason, was released from Sing Sing and sent back to Italy. Criticized was the State Department for issuing pas spurts to well-known racketeers over the objections of the Narcotics Bureau.
Why these underworld characters are so interested in the dope traffic becomes apparent when one considers the profits involved. Life magazine of June 11, 1951, tells that a kilo (2.2 pounds) of heroin, selling for $1,000 in Italy, brings in a total of $200,000 by the time it has been brought to the United States, “cut” to an eight to ten per cent mixture, and retailed* The traffic has its international agents, its importers, wholesalers, middlemen, “cutters” and petty retailers, which latter are the ones who usually get arrested. Even among these, however, the profit is enormous, at times as high as 1,100 per cent.
The United Nations has a commission dealing with the dope traffic problem, and while some efforts are being made to bring it under control, there is still much room for improvement, according to H. J. Ans-linger, U. S. representative. Italy has a ten-year stockpile on hand, and recently Red China offered 500 tons of opium for sale on the world market.
Plans to provide facilities to cure the addicts also furnish no adequate answer. In the first place, neither hospitals nor jails have the space nor the equipment to take care of so large a number of youthful addicts; and, in the second place, checkups show that the per cent of those who remain cured is pitifully smalt To help those who really want to be cured an Addicts Anonymous has been formed like the Alcoholics Anonymous. The small size of this group and its meager success emphasize the seriousness of the problem.
So what hope is there? The hope of the kingdom of God which will wipe out modem Babylon with all its corruption at Armageddon and usher in a system of things that will tolerate neither the exploitation of one’s fellow man nor the debasing of one’s self; a system of things based on love for Jehovah God and for one’s neighbor. Bible prophecy indicates that the time for all this is near at hand.—Jeremiah 51:9; 2 Peter 3:13.
PRAYER, like a final appeal to the highest court, is a frequent last resort of the helpless or the hopeless. Occasions of public assembly are often commenced with a prayer gravely intoned by an officiating priest, minister or rabbi. Wars witness mass-prayer production by chaplains on either side of the battle lines, by soldiers in the foxholes and by their loved ones left behind. Personal supplications, encouraged by all creeds of religion, request divine favors in every conceivable avenue of life. To discover the emptiness of mere quantity and repetition in prayer, however, one need only consider the pagan peoples of the East,
It would be very difficult to match a devout Tibetan in turning out prayers. Besides his renowned “prayer wheel'" that whips up prayers with each rotation, he might carve a request of the gods on a plank and dip it in water throughout the day, each dip constituting a prayer. Women, while going about their daily tasks, carry little “whirligigs” which they keep in motion, each whirl of which is a prayer. The broad shoulder blades of a yak are inscribed with prayers and hung from a tree bough overhanging a footpath. Travelers cannot pass without brushing these aside, thus engineering several prayers for the author. Prayer flags are made to flap in the breeze, some carve holy words on cliffs and walls or gain favor with the gods by chanting in low, singing words the native expression meaning, “Oh, thou jewel in the heart of the lotus/7
Criticizing such practices even when carried on under a “Christian” label as a 'kindergarten religion7, Dr. Harold C, De-Windt told his audience in New York's West Park Presbyterian church on June 22, 1947, that “those who believe that enough Hail Mary's, lighted candles and medals will enable them to share in the spoils are quite contemptible”.
This alone is enough to provide considerable reason for the miserable failure of Christendom's religions to convert pagan lands to true Christianity. Dealing with the case of the Guatemalan Indians, first subjected to Roman Catholic priests three centuries ago, The Christian Century, of October 20,1948, observed: “To the Indian conversion merely meant adding a few more gods to his pantheon.” Continuing, the article, written by Willard Price, detailed the selfish credulity with which the natives consult their sorcerers for prayers of intercession on behalf of their personal whims and welfare. A typical prayer by one of these sorcerers, or brujos^ will show how they have shamelessly added Christendom's god to their own, and piled their conception of Christianity on top of their pagan foundations. Mr. Price cites an example:
“I the priest, I who speak, I who burn this incense, I who light this candle, I who pray for him—I ask you that he may obtain his subsistence with facility. Thou, God, canst provide him with money. Let him not fall ill of fever. I ask that he shall not become paralytic; that he may not choke with severe coughing; that he do not go mad; that he be not bitten by a dog; that he be not killed with iron, nor by a stick; and that he be not carried off by an eagle. Guard him, O Clouds; aid him, O Lightning; aid him, O Thunder; aid him, St, Peter; aid him, St. Paul; aid him, Eternal Father!”
Similarly, for the man’s enemies, the priest prays for sickness, troubles and injury, Narrow and benighted as this may seem, curiosity prompts a consideration of the kind of prayers offered by the parent organizations of the Guatemalan missionaries on their own home fronts, the lands of the supposedly enlightened and professedly Christian Western civilization.
Prayer Hours, “Peace Rainbows” and “Holy Years”
Three years following the end of armed hostilities in World War II, President Truman, in his 1948 Memorial Day Proclamation, called for a universal hour of prayer for peace by the entire nation simultaneously on the evening of that day. Whether this great national prayer was not loud enough or for other reasons, the pope of Rome found it necessary on the following December 31 to as times, peace to the souls, peace to families, peace to fatherland, peace among nations”. In highly poetic phrase he prayed “that the rainbow of peace and reconciliation may under the arc of its serene light mantle the earth
for peace on our
made holy by the life and martyrdom of Thy divine Son”.
The lengthy public prayer from which the foregoing excerpts are taken was pointed forward a full year to the opening of the 1950 “Holy Year”. The year 1950 found all faiths still praying for guarantees of the elusive thing called peace. Then suddenly the pope’s beautiful “rainbow of peace” paled to a watery faintness and threatened to fade out entirely behind the black smog of war that exploded in Korea. Following a year of dismal failures in the struggle for peace, the end of the much-publicized “Holy Year” made the many earlier papal hopes and boasts appear quite useless. After trying at length to reconcile results of the “Holy Year” with the multitude of prayers offered to the contrary, a writer in the London Catholic Herald of December 22, 1950, summed up his argument, saying: “Thus we can understand how little it is to be expected that God’s grace being poured forth on to souls, as the results of great movements of prayer, will normally affect the desperate currents of contemporary history.”
Of course, everyone understands, or at least should understand, how little is to be expected from Christendom’s prayers. Undoubtedly many Chinese would understand. The New York Times announced on October 2, 1948, that in response to a request by Roman Catholic Thomas Cardinal Tien, archbishop of Peiping, the following day was to be “a day of prayer for the return of peace to China and for the spread of Christian ideals among the Chinese people”. Since then, the Reds completed their conquest of China, Chinese fighting on one or more fronts has never ceased, and China’s intervention in Korea was marked by some of the most barbaric military tactics and disregard of human life known to man’s history.
How Christendom Prays
The Boston Post of August 10,1948, reported a meeting in a local hotel of the Catholic “Daughters of Isabella” and their adoption of “a resolution calling for prayers to Our Lady of Fatima, who promised the conversion of Russia if enough prayers were offered to her”. Two months later United States Catholic pilgrims gathered before the shrine of “Our Lady of Fatima” in Fatima, Portugal, to offer such prayers along with 5,000 petitions and 5,000,000 rosaries. But despite all of this and the statement of the bishop of Leira that Fatima was “the last hope of the conversion of Russians”, there is no sign of conversion of Russia to whatever Rome has sought to convert her. All that can be deduced is that “Our Lady of Fatima” has set an extraordinarily high price in prayers upon delivery of a Russian conversion.
Through prayer, God has been asked to make “world citizens” and destroy national rivalries, find lost children and cure any affliction. In the spring of 1948, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, called for prayers for the security of Italy during its crucial elections then pending, in which communism threatened to win the government. In 1946, thousands of citizens of the Dominican Republic prayed in the rain before crude shrines for the cessation of days of earthquakes and tidal waves. On the economic front, the towns of Mays Landing, New Jersey, and Laurel, Mississippi, in 1949 held prayer movements to seek relief from serious employment and industrial crises.
Moments of grave danger find men of the most hardened backgrounds turned to prayer. Some wartime authorities have contended that There were no atheists in the foxholes’, and the celebrated Captain Eddie Rickenbacker once wrote an article about the times he had sought prayer while in critical situations.
There is the Boston preacher who prayed about the advisibility of returning to athletics long enough to win an indoor mile race; and the two Melbourne, Australia, clergymen who opined that racehorse owners and trainers have as much right to pray for the success of their horses as farmers have to pray for successful harvests. Tough, wise-cracking Jack Sharkey is said to have slipped away to pray in church prior to his bouts as a prizefighter. Back in 1927, an unknown party in England tried to make the world’s fashion trend a heavenly affair when he wrote the “Rev.” W. Russell Maltby, president of the Wesleyan Methodist conference, asking for a special prayer meeting to request that women’s skirts be lengthened.
Rain has proved a fertile subject for prayer by every race of people and all creeds of religion. In recent years it has been tried throughout the United States, as when Cardinal Spellman urged Catholic rain prayers for the New York 1949-50 water shortage. South African religions were asked for such prayers by the prime minister in January, 1949, and Moslems in India went to their god for rain last October 31. The maharaja of Banaras in September, 1948, became dismayed when his rain god began working overtime. The maharaja launched a fast and a barrage of prayers to appease the god, in an effort to halt raging floods from too much rain.
Sometimes in an effort to cover everything in one fell swoop, religious dignitaries will make such sweeping requests in prayer as that offered by the pope in public on March 26, 1950, when he concluded with: “Lord, stop hatred. Disperse by Thy powerful breath greed of domination, wars, destruction; give breath to the little ones, houses to the roofless, work to the unemployed, understanding among the people, peace to the world and eternal salvation to everybody.*’
Like Prayer, like God
Yet hatred increases, prayers fail to halt affliction’s death-harvest, greed flourishes, wars and destruction multiply, poverty gnaws on, as much or more in religiously dominated lands as any, and the conglomeration of religions with their conflicting paths to salvation leave everyone in a quandary. The beautiful “rainbow of peace” talk in time of peace and victory prayers in time of war seem to beat rhythmically with the tune of the times. But the very occurrence of wars nullifies the peace prayers, making them appear weak and supine.
It is all so confusing. But it is worse than that. Time magazine of January 10, 1949, carried an account of a World War II incident in which General Patton of the American Third Army is said to have demanded a prayer from his chaplain for good weather prior to the “Battle of the Bulge”. At the chaplain’s attempted objection, Patton roared his wish again, and got it, a printed prayer on a Christmas greeting to the troops. This world’s prayers are tailored to fit. Some thirty thousand Roman Catholics gathered in New York’s Polo Grounds on May 1, 1949, offered mass prayer for the oppressed. But during the heyday of Hitler and his gang this same religious organization, through its representatives in Germany, prayed for the nazis and their allies, then the oppressors. This world's prayers are inconsistent and hypocritical. On July 19, 1948, Religious News Service carried a report that the then U. N. mediator in the Palestine Arab-Israeli conflict, Count Folke Bernadotte, had asked Christians to pray for the success of his efforts to bring peace in that quarter. However, not two months later, September 17,1948, Count Bernadotte was shot and killed by an assassin while about his mission. This world's prayers are impotent and futile.
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