DRUNKARDS DE LUXE

The evils of alcoholism and excessive drinking

Palestine on Fire!

On-the-scenes report of the clash between Arabs and Jews that now sets the "holy land” aflame

Here Comes the Easter Parade!

But what is behind it all?

The Lord’s Supper

Meaning of the emblems of bread and wine

THE MISSION OF THIS JOURNAL

News sources that are able to keep you awake to the vital issues of our times must be unfettered by censorship and selfish interests. ’'Awake!*’ has no fetters. It recognizes facts, faces facts, is free to publish facts. It Is not bound by political ambitions or obligations; it is unhampered by advertisers whose toes must not be trodden on; it is unprejudiced by traditional creeds; This journal keeps itself free that it may speak freely to you. But it does not abuse its freedom. It maintains integrity to truth.

**Awake!” uses the regular news channels, but is not dependent on them. Jis own correspondents are on all continents, in scores of nations. From the four corners of the earth their uncensored, on * the - scenes reports come to you through these columns. This journal’s viewpoint is not narrow, but is international. It is read in many nations, in many languages, by persons of all ages. Through its pages many fields of knowledge pass in review—government, commerce, religion, history, geography, science, social conditions, natural wonders—why, its cover* age is as broad as the earth and as high as the heavens.

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Get acquainted with “Awake I” Keep awake by reading “Awake!”

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CONTENTS

Drunkards de Luxe

The “Curfe” for Alcoholism

Other Side of the Picture

Social Pressure to Drink

The Bible Guide for Christians

Alcohol Plays the Villain

AleohoFs Effect on Mind and Body

Social Ills and Excessive Drinking

Palestine on Fire!

Partition Scheme

Arab Plight, and Jewish Words

Barrel of Gunpowder Set Afire

Here Comes the Easter Parade!

Christendom Joins the Parade

Eggs and Rabbits on Parade

Lemmings on the Death March

“Judea” Doomed to Failure

Woods of Nicaragua

“The Constitution Be Damned”

“Thy Word Is Truth”

The Lord’s Supper

Tenth Class Graduation Broadens Expansion 28

Watching the World

Awake./

C^'Now it is high, time to awake.— Romans 13:11 Qj

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Volume XXIX                        Brooklyn, N. Y., March 22, 1948                           Number 8

DRUNKARDS DE LUXE

“TV/FY FATHER is a drunkard,” trem-lV.Lulously laments the orphan child in the tear-jerking ballad of yore. The orphan winds up dead. Serves her right, snap the faddists of today. The little beast should never have been so cruel as to call her poor, sick, diseased, alcoholic father a “drunkard”. He was sensitive. He could not stand sorrow and suffering. His delicate soul could not face the facts of life, its hard knocks, or even its simple boredom. It seems about all the poor fellow could face was the bartender. Hence to this “doctor” the sick alcoholic fled to find refuge in inebriation, to seek shelter in the stupors of the bottle. Then bursting in upon his convalescence comes his calloused kid wailing that he is a drunkard! She could just as well have used some such euphemism as “problem drinker” ; then he would not have had to face even his degradation as a drunkard. Surely a selfish imp! What matter if she was a sensitive child, let her face shame, homelessness, hunger, cold and death. She should face things bravely and not indulge in self-pity. Leave the latter for sick Papa, whose sensitive soul must have his medicinal bottle. Only from it will generous draughts float him out of this sordid world of reality and into an alcoholic dream-world, where he can always play the hero in his grandiose hallucinations. What’s that? No, the kid cannot join Pop at the bar to likewise solace her sensitive soul! One alcoholic in the family is enough to be pampered, petted, babied, coddled, excused and fashionably diseased.

The above hints that there may be two sides to the story about drunkards. In days gone by the pendulum of public opinion swung far to condemn. Now it swings far to condone. However, this article will attempt to look at both sides.

The Alcoholic’s Plight

It is when considering the causes of this fourth-worst disease that the patient slips out from under the odium of the harsh term “drunkard” and slides neatly under the kind label of “alcoholic” or “problem drinker”. Under these euphemisms the drunkards de luxe of modern times escape personal responsibility for their degradation, and even find themselves the center of attention and gain an odd fashionability and glorification as the subject matter of books, magazine and newspaper articles, club-meeting discussions and sermons. The doctors delving into the causes of dipsomania come up with divers theories that absolve the drunkard. First, he is sick. Usually mentally. Reasons given are: the ailing person is unhappy, he has suffered some failure or disappointment, he is worried, he is depressed, he has troubles, he is sensitive, he has an inferiority complex, he is neurotic, he has an underlying emotional conflict, he has an intense urge for excitement, or he is simply bored; at any rate, he cannot face reality, and retreats into the bottle.

Are these reasons real, or are they just more pampering and rationalization for the drunkard? They may well be what drives him to drink. But why? Few other persons in this troubled old world are free of all these afflictions. Why do not all become inhabitants of the alcoholic’s rosy realm? Are those who fall so much weaker mentally and emotionally than those who stand? Or have the alcoholics merely weakened themselves on a diet of self-pity? Digging deeper to unearth causes as to why some stand and some fall, could it be that some have more courage, others more cowardice?

Is there any other reason given for alcoholism? Yes, but the doctors generally minimize it to magnify mental illness—a fad in itself these days. The minimized reason is that some alcoholics began as social drinkers and thence drifted into the habit that enslaved them. This makes sense, common sense, and dovetails with the fact that as the total number of moderate drinkers increases the number of excessive tipplers increases, and as they increase the number of chronic topers mounts. It is merely a case of many starting downhill without brakes and piling up at the bottom. Doubtless by the time the bottom of the long downgrade plunge is reached the alcoholics have picked up or aggravated many emotional disturbances and neuroses which contribute heavily to their helplessness to start the long climb back up out of the pit of alcoholism; but these cannot be blamed for the original fall. In 1945 Dr. Joseph Thimann, director of the nation’s only hospital devoted exclusively to the treatment of alcoholic diseases, said: “Habitues all start socially, then gradually slip into their addiction.”

The “Cure” for Alcoholism

The studies of alcoholism by the Yale Foundation have proved that “any reasonably intelligent and sincere person who is willing to make a sustained effort for a sufficient period of time is capable of learning to live without alcohol”. The Yale Foundation begins the cure by giving the patients a warm bath and a sedative. Afterward they are urged to bulwark their abstinence by watching out for nervous or emotional fatigue; always carry chocolate bars to relieve fatigue; relax naturally; avoid alcoholic daydreams about former alcoholic pleasures; avoid needless hurry and worry ; maintain good health earnestly; and never drop the guard! The latter is a must, since, it is claimed, the alcoholic is never cured, but lives thereafter just one drink between himself and dipsomania.

The “cures” doctors and psychiatrists are able to effect are seldom estimated beyond 50 percent of the cases treated. There is another organization at work in the field of alcoholism, however, that is credited with “cures” of 75 percent. That organization is Alcoholics Anonymous. It began a slow growth with its one alcoholic founder in 1935. By 1939 there were 100 members, all ex-alcoholics. As recruits increased the work expanded, and ' membership had shot to about 12,000 by 1944. Thenceforward the group made the headlines more and more, grew faster on the wings of its reported successes, and today has 40,000, all ex-alcoholics.

Alcoholics Anonymous’ program for recovery has twelve steps, which boiled down are: admission that one is powerless over alcohol; searching moral in- > ventory and personality analysis; willingness to make amends to persons wronged; dependence upon a higher power; work with other alcoholics to aid them toward recovery. They do not crush the alcoholic with the prospects of a long future without alcohol; they nibble into the problem by setting a goal of 24 hours without alcohol, and cope with the problem on a day-by-day basis. Kind of a “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” approach. When psychiatrists and doctors and friends talk and plead with the alcoholic, their words fall on unre-ceptive ears because in the alcoholic’s

mind they do not understand him or his problems. How -can they? But with an AA member it is different. He can talk to the alcoholic understandingly, having been in the obsession that grips him.

But the contact with a former alcoholic does something else for the chronic drunkard: it shows him that it is possible to quit. He sees before him an example. Reasonably, alcoholics would rather see a sermon than hear one; aiid to them AA members are living sermons that it can be done. As for sermons, the alcoholic is still realistic enough to know that in hypocritical Christendom we hear too many and see too few. Assistance rendered by AA members is on the whole rather flexible to fit individual cases; but on one point they are adamant: the recovered alcoholic must never drink again. He can never be a moderate or social drinker. The only difference between him and the drunk sprawled in the gutter is, one drink! As a recent novel on the subject put it, for an alcoholic one drink is too many and one hundred not enough.

An alcoholic needs help desperately. He should have it. But this does not argue that he is diseased or sick in the medical sense. Proof that there is a difference in the alcoholic’s dilemma is that medical men cannot combat his ailment with a measure of success anywhere near that of the non-medical Alcoholics Anonymous members. The twelve steps of the AA program do not absolve the drunkard of blame, but urge him to see the errors of his rationalization and self-justification and to accept responsibility for past wrongs and make any amends possible. It is a straightforward approach, without a lot of shadow boxing with psychiatrist terminology and falderal.

Other Side of the Picture

While it is the popular cry that alcoholism is a disease, many observers find the comparison strained at the seams when considering treatment of the sickness. In other diseases the patient is confined, the germs not spread, but eventually killed off. In alcoholism the “germs*’ of the disease are manufactured wholesale and retailed to the patient as long as his purse can purchase them, and when the “germs” have knocked him out his hospital bed is the gutter. A woman whose husband is an alcoholic touched a few of these weak spots in the modern painting of drunkardism as a disease, and then proceeded to paint another view of the picture, a view we are not supposed to look at today. The Woman of May, 1947, condensed her article; she said, in part:

It seems that alcoholism is an illness, and the victim of the disease needs sympathy and not blame—the victim, according to this theory, always being the one who indulges, never the family. It’s just like a bad cough or measles. The weak spot in this comparison is that people are usually glad to be rid of disease and will go to ludicrous lengths to effect a cure, while the alcoholic clings to his so-called disease with a love “passing the love of women”. Better compare it to insanity, but again there is a difference. Insane persons are usually confined where they can do no harm, while the alcoholic is allowed at large to drive high-powered ears, to carry fire-arms, to squander money, to run up bills.

It’s nice, though, to have the alcoholic so fashionable. ... In fact, the alcoholic is now almost a hero. It seems he is a sensitive, noble soul, who can’t stand the sorrows and sufferings of mortal life, and must have liquor to cast a rosy glow over it, or to numb him into not feeling anything. Very good! What about the wife, sister, mother, or even brother, who is a sensitive creature too, but who must think about cold facts while cold sober, and also put up with the eternal worries, the chronic heartache, the everlasting pall which hangs over every home which shelters an alcoholic ?

What about them ? It seems they are impatient, self-righteous clods, lacking in understanding, thinking about such mundane subjects as how to pay the rent or what to feed the children. . . .

But you mustn’t be bitter* . . \ All you have to do now is to tell Johnny and Susy that papa is sick, “Why doesn’t papa have treatment?” little simple Susy asks. Papa doesn't want treatment What fun would papa have when Joe Doakes drops in, if he had treatment—what fun would papa have on his business trips, at his class reunion, at the bar? No, on second thought, better not tell Susy he is sick. Better not say anything to Susy, To Johnny, maybe, Johnny has been acting morose lately, embarrassed when the gang sees papa not quite himself.

Tell Johnny, “Papa is sick. He is an alcoholic. You mustn’t be ashamed of him any more than Jim is ashamed of his father’s heart trouble/’ Johnny might cry out, “But Jim’s father stays in bed , with his heart trouble. He doesn’t say and do foolish and bad things because of his heart trouble. He isn’t allowed to drive the car and pull down the fence posts when he’s having heart trouble!” But Johnny won’t say any of that He will squirm uncomfortably and change the subject* He’ll become quieter and meet the gang down the street a way, and sometimes you will catch him looking at you with sympathy in his eyes*

Thank goodness, Susy is different! She is gay and is never bothered by papa’s actions. But the little demon, memory, whispers, “Johnny was like that a few years ago too.” Susy will get quiet and ashamed, and will look at you with pity, and do little kindnesses far beyond her years—which will hurt you more than any childish thoughtlessness ever hurt. But you smile until your face aches, and you swear that no one will ever see you looking like a drunkard’s wife. . * *

You lose control more easily. You sob and cry and pound the table. But the next time papa gets out the drinks for the guest, you adjust your wooden smile and help. Never must the alcoholic’s wife openly disapprove of liquor. That will always be seized upon as a reason for his drinking, by relatives, by friends—by papa! In fact, you learn early that alcohol is a Sacred Cow*

It will take much more than the few emptyplatitudes of today’s broad-minded faddists, who have never had to live with an alcoholic, to wipe that picture from mind! Their minds might narrow down a bit on the alcoholic’s innocence if they had to live that sermon instead of just hear it I

The Road to Alcoholism

With all of the publicity given to the horrors of alcoholism, why do their numbers continue to increase alarmingly? As Dr* Thimann said: “Habitues all start socially, then gradually slip into their addiction/’ There is a pool of more than 58,000,000 social drinkers in the United States, Some drink too much, and become of the few million excessive drinkers, Then they stand at the dark portals of alcoholism, then they pass through and into dipsomania. Like something under the auctioneer’s mallet, the slipping drinker finds himself going—going— gone! The ones most likely to fall are the tough guys, the ones who can hold their drinks, the ones who can take their liquor. Instead, liquor takes them. It holds them* And it does not let go easily*

Here are some of the red lights that drinkers should watch for: requiring a drink in the morning; preferring to drink alone; allowing liquor to interfere witl\ work or home life; needing it to bolster confidence or offset difficulties tmd frustrations or overcome anxiety and fatigue; gulping drinks; sneaking a few on the side; or forgetting what happened during a debauch* If social gatherings are not complete for you without alcohol, or if you demand it as essential at times, you are leaning heavily on the alcoholic crutch, a broken crutch*

Social Pressure to Drink

Not all social gatherings use pressure methods to make non-drinkers drink. But many do, and to such the following applies* Properly enough, drinks may be offered* Some of the guests may decline. Thereupon, improperly, the non-drinker is ridiculed, either raucously or gently, as a poor sport, a softy, a sissy. This pressure to drink by calling names implies that the drinkers are just the opposite of softies, sissies and poor sports. Actually, it takes strength to resist this social pressure, and no softy can do it. Moreover, in view of the popular theory that heavy drinkers overindulge to escape reality, the tables might be turned to show that the excessive drinkers are the sissies because they run from reality.

Another lever used to exert pressure on the non-drinker is the old gag of thinking a man’s manliness is measured by his capacity for liquor or his ability to hold it. Dr. Jellinek of the Yale studies on alcohol says that this is the motive that starts youth on drinking careers. By imbibing, they think, they show superior age, show prowess, show manhood. Falling into this category of stupid social pressure is the asinine foolishness of Admiral “Bull” Halsey: “As a general rule, I never trust a fighting man who doesn’t smoke or drink.” Subsiding to sensibleness on this point, why can some stand more alcohol than others ? Manliness is not the measure. There are physiological reasons. Also, the temperament of the drinker is a factor. Manliness is not.

Why do some social gatherings exert social pressure on non-drinkers? They will answer that the abstainer must drink to be sociable, to not reject the host’s hospitality. When they serve coffee, you may safely choose tea. When they serve milk, you will not draw a frown if you ask for hot chocolate. Neither are you endangering a beautiful friendship if you request water when they offer buttermilk. But none of this fussy choosi-ness when liquor is the offering! You drink it—or else! Why is this? Offense at rejected hospitality? Then why is not hospitality offended by your refusal of coffee or your skipping the spinach? Actually, it is inhospitable of the host to press drinks upon an unwilling guest.

Then why do some do it? Could it not be the effect the alcoholic drink has, which sets it apart from other drinks? It puts to sleep the inhibitions and critical reasonings governing man’s higher intellectual centers, and sweeps aside these restraints that otherwise would cramp his emotions and actions. It enables the drinker to lose any stiffness or' self-consciousness he might normally have, to relax, to be more informal. To this mild degree there could be no objection to freeing the individual from such tension; no evil motive is behind the host’s insistence to drink moderately.

But the same principle, when applied to a greater degree, may not be so harmless. Perhaps the host wishes the gathering to imbibe quite freely, and set aside restraints to such an extent that the drinkers act silly and foolish.'The majority may favor this degree of hilarity, but they would appear too ridiculous to sober guests; they would become a joke, a laughingstock, a ludicrous spectacle. None wish to appear at such a disadvantage; so all must be urged to drink, so that the critical faculties of all may be drugged and to everyone everything will appear in order. To lower all to the same giddy level it is imperative that all drink freely, to bully the hold-outs to imbibe, so that none will remain aloof to the revelings and behold the others at a disadvantage.

Sometimes the degree to which this principle is pursued is very extreme, to lower the entire gathering to the status of a wild party where immoralities may be unrestrainedly indulged in. Certainly no sober witnesses would be welcome there. Hence social pressure is applied in varying degrees to keep all the guests at the same level of relaxation. Many social gatherings, however, properly serve moderate amounts of wine, without trying to force it upon guests who for reasons of taste or health do not desire it.

Sometimes toasts are proposed, and members of the group feel obligated to join in the drinking on those grounds, This practice is rooted far hack in paganism. The Babylonians drank toasts to their gods, and ended up drunk.. The Bible gives an account of one such instance. In 539 B.C. Belshazzar ordered the holy vessels of the Hebrew’s temple service brought out, and from them’ he and his party of revejers “drank wine, and praised the gods”. (Daniel 5:1-4) Such toast-drinking is in no way comparable with the drink-offerings Jehovah God prescribed for His temple service. When the Greeks gave entertainments and got tipsy thereat, it was for- pious reasons: they were drinking deeply in honor of their pagan gods. After the Greeks, the Bomans followed similar pagan religious customs of drinking toasts to the gods. Of course, they had so many gods that everyone was drunk before the ritual ended. Also, human heroes were toasted.

The Scandinavians before conversion to Christ gathered for drinking bouts, and toasted Odin, Njord and Frey. Christian missionaries were unable to abolish these customs, but the toasts were shifted to “honor” God and Christ and various patron saints, and to gain salvation for their souls. The future state of bliss was associated with constant drinking and much intoxication. Jehovah God and Christ Jesus are not honored by having pagan customs of toasting switched to Them, or to humans.

The Bible Guide for Christians

The Bible condemns drunkenness. God’s law to Israel linked gluttony and drunkenness, and provided death for those guilty of the charge, “He is a glutton, and a drunkard.” (Deuteronomy 21:20) The two are again linked, at Proverbs 23: 20, 21: “Be not found among winebibbers, or gluttonous eaters of flesh; for the winebibber and the glutton will come to poverty, and sottishness will clothe you in rags.” (An American Translation) Those who stagger in drunkenness are foolish: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler; and whosoever reeleth thereby, is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1, Am. Stan. Ver., margin) One sign of an alcoholic is drinking in the morning ; and it seems that there were alcoholics in Bible times, and who with brusque bravado bragged of their “manly” might at quaffing strong, mixed drinks: “Woe to those who get up early for a drinking bout, who sit far into the night, heated by their wine . . . Woe to those who are brave—at drinking ! mighty at—mixing a bowl!”—Isaiah 5:11, 22, Moffatt.

The Bible warns that drunkardism would be a growing danger in these “last days”, that an increase of excessive “eating and drinking” would be a sign of the times. (Luke 21:34; Matthew 24: 37-39) Satan’s scheme is to counteract the sign by causing drunkenness to be winked at, to be excused on the ground of illness. The Bible does not warrant this excusal. It does not consider chronic drunkenness as an illness, like leprosy, crippled limbs, hemorrhages, insanity, etc. These ailments Jesus cured. There is no record of His curing an alcoholic by miraculous means. The Bible does not exclude the sick from the Kingdom, but it does the drunkard. Nevertheless, drunkards of humble heart were able by the Lord’s grace to quit and gain entrance into the Kingdom. (1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; 1 Peter 4:3,4; Homans 13:13; Galatians 5:19-21) The Bible calls a drunkard a drunkard, not supplying some euphemism that soft-pedals his sin and converts him into a curio and a de luxe model patient. Modernists excuse the alcoholic on the ground that he is escaping something. The Bible acknowledges the propriety of moderate use of wine to dull misery: “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” (Proverbs 31:6,7) But this does not mean that the extreme retreat into drunkenness is the way to meet problems.

This last-quoted text shows that while condemning drunkenness the Bible does not condemn the use of wine, but rather recommends it. Noah used wine, once slipping into excess, but had God’s approval thereafter. (Genesis 9: 20, 21; Ezekiel 14:14; Hebrews 11:7) Mel-chizedek served wine to Abraham. The priests in Israel were permitted to drink wine, except when serving in the tabernacle or temple. It was used in f eastings, with God’s approval, and was gratefully accepted as a divine provision. (Leviticus 10:9; 2 Samuel 6:15-19; Psalm 104:14,15) Jesus’ first miracle was to change water into wine for use at a wedding, and the very context shows it could not have been grape juice, as some straight-meed religionists chunk (John 2:1-11) Jesus ate food and drank wine, and the religions generation of His day accused Him of excess, saying, “Behold a man gluttonous, and a winehibber.” (Matthew 11:19) This charge would never have been lodged against Him if it involved oniy unfermented grape juice. Nor does an unferinenting drink cause wineskins to burst.—Luke 5: 37-39.

The Bible urges moderation in the use of wine, however. ‘‘Use a little wine [not a lot? for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” (1 Timothy 5:211) Christians may use wine, hut should he “not given to much wine”. They should exercise control and restraint, and not use it at all when in assembly or in gospel-preaching work. (I Timothy 3:8; Titus 2:3; Proverbs 25:2A; Leviticus 10:9) And certainly a Christian will never use social pressure to ‘give his neighbor drink’ or use alcohol when it might stumble or offend a weak one. —Habakkuk 2:15; Homans 14:21.

One more thing the Bible condemns: the rabid total abstainers that seek to force their narrow views on others as a tenet of religious laith. Their anti-alcoholic stand is also ami-God and anti-Christ and anti-Bible. Their arguments are saturated with emotional prejudice that slaughters reasoning. They have become single-track “Christians”, and their one track is a sidetrack that leads to a head-on collision with the Bible on the subject of wine. The Bible condemns drunkenness; not drinking. It condemns gluttony; not eating. If the temperance howlers ban one drink as leading to drunkenness, why do they not bar one mouthful of food as leading to gluttony! The intemperate views of the temperance peddlers are too unreasonable to reason upon. They have gone against the Bible and sided in with the Pharisees that waggled a finger at Jesus and cried, “Winebibber!” Christians will keep the balanced viewpoint of the Bible, and thereby avoid either extreme.

ALCOHOL Plays the VILLAIN^

VLCOIIOL in moderation can fit into human society as an acceptable member. But alcohol in excess dons, the hla.es garb of the dastardly villain, twirling his mustache and muttering his proverbial “curses”. When it plays this villainous role in the drama of life its “curses” upon humankind are. many. The blows it launches at :he brain of the excessive imbiber knock out that center of intellect, and i'.s heavy body punches jeopardize health. It multiplies traffic accidents. It tills hospitals with wounded. It Ells jails with criminals. It empties the public pocketbook to the tune of nine billion annually in me United States, and it does it. with a witty deftwet-s thwt wwuWL rouse the envy of any professional pickpocket. Increasing numbers open their arms to embrace alcohol in its role of villain by drinking to excess, and many eventually find themselves embraced in turn by the villain named Alcoholism. Let us view the drama of life and see how the plot is unhappily thickened by the entry of this “cursing villain”.

Alcohol’s Effect oh Mind and Body

First, how does alcohol affect the body? After it reaches the stomach some of it is absorbed by the stomach walls and goes to the liver. The remainder enters the small intestine, where it is absorbed and passed on to the liver. From the liver the alcohol goes to the heart, whence it is pumped to the whole body via the blood stream. Intoxication takes place in the brain, and as the alcohol content in the blood increases it acts progressively on different parts of the brain. First, alcohol attacks the brain area of judgment and inhibition; next, muscular co-ordination, speech and vision; finally, when sufficient amount is concentrated in the body fluid, the whole balance of the brain is upset and the drunk passes out.

This gives the cue to the answer of the old question, Why can some persons drink more liquor before becoming intoxicated? A large person has more blood, and, since intoxication depends to some extent on the concentration of alcohol in the blood stream, a large person must drink more than a small person to reach the same percentage of alcohol in the blood. When alcohol concentrated in the blood becomes .4 percent the drinker passes out. This is a safety measure; for if the concentration were to reach from .7 percent to .9 percent the automatic nervous system would be paralyzed and breathing and heart action would stop. Or if one drinker has more food in his stomach than another he will not be intoxicated so quickly. Food in the stomach slows the alcohol’s passage into the blood stream, and by the time the last of the alcohol in the stomach gets into the blood the first has worn off somewhat.

But there is one other important factor governing differences of individual tolerance for alcohol: the drinker’s temperament. Generally, persons normally sedate stay sober longer.

Contrary to popular belief, alcohol is not a stimulant, but is a depressant. When it reaches the brain it acts as an anesthetic and numbs or drugs the higher, intellectual brain centers. Inhibitions, judgment, self-criticism and feelings of inferiority are put to sleep. As behavior restraints decline self-esteem rises, emotion takes over, perception of cold, pain or other discomfort is dulled and a feeling of easy warmth and fine expansiveness suffuses the drinker. In this mood he is positive he can walk, drive, lecture, fight and be witty better than when he is sober. He feels stimulated to great heights. But it is an illusion. AcfuaJJy, his faculties to criticize or judge himself and his abilities have been depressed.

In reality, the drinker’s ability to do these things has declined in proportion to the increased concentration of alcohol in his blood stream. Careful tests have shown that after relatively small amounts of alcohol have been consumed body efficiency sutlers. Visual reactions were slowed by more than a third; hearing was similarly affected; memorizing a few lines of poetry took twice as long; performance of mathematical problems declined 13 percent; errors in reasoning and judgment increased 67 percent; and, though subjects were less conscious of fatigue after alcohol, laboratory tests showed their muscular strength had dropped 10 percent. Another discovery was that car accidents due to alcohol were more attributable.to this combination of sluggish reactions and the increased selfconfidence of moderate drinkers than to driving by actual drunks.

What about consumption of alcohol from the health standpoint? It is a food in the limited sense that it supplies bodily energy, mainly in the form of heat. It is not a tissue builder, and is not assimilated into cellular structure. Neither does it supply any needed minerals or vitamins. In fact, it is held responsible for vitamin deficiencies,. But many of the horrendous health hazards of heavy drinking held forth by rabid dries tb scare the wets to death evaporate upon investigation. Modern research gives alcohol a fairly clean physiological bill of health. It does not damage tissue nor corrode brain cells. The old claims of diehard dries, that liquor ruins the liver, kidneys and gastrointestinal tract, and makes the imbiber prone to cancer, heart disease, ulcers, tuberculosis, arteriosclerosis and many other dire ailments, are without foundation in fact, according, to Drs. Jellinek and Haggard, in Alcohol Explored. Of course, if the habitual heavy drinker negle'cts his diet and general health he will be more susceptible to disease and may have a shorter life.

Social Ills and Excessive Drinking

The fact should be faced that alcohol in excessive use accumulates social ills. Of 13,402 convicts studied, intemperance alone explained the careers in crime of 17 percent. Half the maintenance of jails is traceable to inebriates, and two-fifths of the women in jail are there for drunkenness. One authority charges $188,000,-000 of the crime cost estimated at $962,-000,000 to immoderate alcoholic indulgence. Alcohol must shoulder blame for a good percentage of traffic accidents. It is guilty of booming both juvenile and adult delinquency. It is a home-wrecker when used in excess. Dr. Landis of the Yale Foundation reports that when considering mental illness costs, bodily disease treatments, accidents and wage losses the annual bill chargeable to alcohol is about $780,000,000.

But that public expense is small in comparison with the amount the public pays annually for liquor. During 1946 the total expenditure for alcoholic beverages in the United States was $8,770,-000,000. That is more than $730,830,000 monthly, more than'$168,650,000 weekly, more than $24,000,000 daily! It is an average of $150 spent annually for liquor by each of this country’s drinkers. In the same year the country spent only three and a half billion for all public and private education. To get them to spend some eight billion annually for drinks the liquor industry spends $75,000,000 annually for advertising. The advertisements always lean heavily on psychology. The drinkers pictured are never drunk, never staggering, never boisterous or brawling, never disheveled, and never even slightly silly. Well-poised masterful men, men of prestige, today’s men of distinction. Never are they tomorrow’s men of extinction gripped, by alcoholism.

Since 1940 users of alcohol in the United States have increased 35 percent. About 60 percent of the population over 15 years of age consume alcohol, according to a Gallup survey. This would mean, in 1945, 58,250,000 persons. Of this number, 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 drink to excess, go on sprees, have benders. Additionally, there are from 750,000 to more than 1,000,000 that are alcoholics, according to varying estimates. Alarming is the increase in number of women chronic drunkards. “Today, bf the estimate of competent authorities, four out of ten chronic alcoholics are women. There are some 650,000 of them in the United States.” (New York Mirror, February 1,1948) Alcoholism is described as “our greatest unsolved public health problem” and, according to an INS dispatch, is “the disease rated fourth-worst in the United States”.

In this role of alcoholism the villain hands out his heaviest “curses”. It is the end of the road for the excessive drinker. Once there, it is extremely difficult for even the most heroic efforts to foil the villain. But that problem is not for this article to treat. The curtain on that tragic drama is drawn back by the leading article of this issue of Awake!

Z\N October 24, 1915, the British gov-V/ernment wrote a sinister letter. About two years later it wrote another one. These two letters were the origin of the catastrophe. On paper they were written in ink, but on the face of Palestine they were written in blood and tears. The first was a promise given by Henrj⁷ MacMahon, the high commissioner in Egypt, to King Husain. This was a promise to the Arabs. It runs:

I am granted the authority by His Majesty King of Great Britain to give the following affirmation, - and to answer your, letter: Britain is ready to recognize the independence of the Arabs in the countries which boundaries and borders had been marked by Sheriff of Mecca, and to support that independence. Great Britain guarantees the protection of the Holy Land against all outer aggression. Moreover, Britain will offer guidance to the Arabs when circumstances permit, and assist them in setting up the forms, of government which appear to be the best, in all the mentioned Arab countries.

The second was a promise given by Lord Balfour, the minister of foreign affairs, to Baron Rothschild. This was a promise to the Jews.

The Government of His Majesty appreciates the establishment of a National Home in Palestine for the Jews. It will do its best to carry out this promise. It is understood that nothing should be done to injure the civil or religious rights of the non-Jewish communities’in Palestine, nor to the political rights which the Jews enjoy in other countries.

Thus Britain promises the Arabs independence in all the Arab countries, and then she promises the Jews a national home in Palestine. She states in one sentence, in Balfour’s Declaration, that she will give all help to the Jews to establish the national home, and in the next, she points out that the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine should not be injured. How could a national home be established in another people’s country without injuring their rights? However, the Mandatory government began to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine; and thousands of them poured into the country every year.

Before the British government took authority on Palestine, that is, in the Turkish¹ reign, the Jews made a very low percentage of the population. They did not exceed 5 percent. Gradually this percentage grew, and with it grew the fears of the Arabs of Palestine, who 27 years ago began their resistance to the national home and the British government’s policy. At first this resistance w^Tas weak. The danger was still far away, they were not ripe politically, and assistance was not expected from other Arab countries, which were under the British influence. As time passed it brought about a change to all this. Danger drew nearer, the Arabs became riper politically, and assistance loomed in the distance. So their resistance grew harder.

Britain knows, however, what she should employ to break down trouble, and to put an end to resistance. Her unfailing means was committees. The Arabs, who had been suffering greatly from their opposition to the government and from the trouble they themselves had been making, were for many years ready to put the matter in the hands of the committees, and so give up violence. The committees were their only hope, and, believing in the justice of their cause,Jhey expected the result of investigation to be in their favor. But when it actually was, the British government would later ignore the committees’ proposals.

The White Paper

The years that preceded 1939, after Mandate, were full of events in the history of Palestine. Violence broke out several times; many Arab leaders were put in prison, exiled, or executed. Yet in 1939, after about three years which the Arabs had spent in revolution, the British government found it wise to plan a new policy for the future of Palestine. This was set down in a White Paper issued in that year. It consisted of a declaration that the British government was not held by an obligation to set up a Jewish state, nor was it in its policy to make Palestine a Jewish state, and, at the same time, it would not approve of establishing an Arab state. The White Paper added that the British government was planning to raise a Palestinian state, which would become independent in the end, after an interval for transference. No more than 75,000 immigrants would be allowed into Palestine in the next five years, unless the Arabs of Palestine should be ready to accept more.

At the beginning the White Paper roused the anger of the parties concerned. To the Arabs it represented the end of their hope to have an Arab state, and indicated that some 75,000 foreigners would find their way into the country. To the Jews it meant disaster. They rvould not be able to form a Jewish state.

As time passed the Arabs, realizing that their gain in the White Paper was more than their loss, ceased to show opposition to the intended scheme. Meanwhile, the Jews, seeing in the White Paper the sentence of death declared against the Jewish state, bitterly made desperate endeavors, putting forward all their resources, to get Britain to cancel the White Paper. .They attained their object. But what they had been seeking was more than the mere cancellation of the White Paper. One hundred thousand Jews should immigrate into Palestine immediately, they claimed; the restriction on selling land should be lifted as well.

The British government had no mind to accept the Jewish demands. In the diplomatic and financial fields of the world, the Jews worked diligently to overcome the opposition of the British government, but it appears that they failed. Then a desperate idea occurred to them. The Arabs obtained the White Paper from the British government by using force with the Mandatory government in Palestine, in their big revolution in 1936. Therefore, why should not they (the Jews) resort to violence too, in order to get what they wanted? Consequently, as soon as the second World War came to end, the Jewish disturbances began and continued till November 29,1947, when the General Assembly approved the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state.

Partition Scheme

It was first regarded to be the solution of the enigmatic problem of Palestine bv the Committee of Lord Bell, which was appointed by the British government in 1937. In addition to a Jewish part and an Arab part, this committee recommended partitioning Palestine into a third, an English part. But this, plan was put on the shelf, for the Arabs of Palestine resumed their revolution. Later the idea was adopted by the Anglo-American Committee, and afterwards by the United Nations.

It was repeated of late that the interference of the United States in the matter, and the influence it had with and upon several governments of various states, were what determined the material of the scheme placed before the General Assembly, and determined the approval of the partition plan.

Two different communities are living in a country together. They have different religions, different languages, different traditions, different hopes, and different education. And though they have many different goals as well, yet there is one goal in common, which both of them are after. This is Palestine. Each wishes to have it as its own. The two peoples do not understand each other, and for several reasons in connection with the way of living they despise each other. This is the first fact that has presented itself to the members of the committees coming to the country. The second is that each prefers death to being governed by the other, to put it iii their own words. Both dread being a minority, and wish earnestly to be a majority. The other facts are that violence would most' probably continue in Palestine if it were made'wholly an Arab state, or a Jewish state. In the first case, the Jews would be the trouble-makers, and in the second, the Arabs.

Arab Plight, and Jewish Words

That there are still more facts to be considered, important facts which should influence solution, is ignored by the Jews, the United States and several countries in the U. N., the Arabs declare. They shout in the others' faces: Let us remind those who forget, or pretend to forget history, that we, Arabi?, have lived in Palestine as its owners and inhabitants for over one thousand years. Its earth is mixed with our blood, its sky witnessed the deeds of our forefathers, its parts are parts of ourselves, of our souls. The Jews are foreigners. The Arabs add: They would make us their slaves, if they did not drive us out of our country, or out of this world. True, they own at present a big area of the land of the country, but had it not been for the Mandatory government’s policy this land would not have been sold by our weak, needy fellows. In addition, according to the partition scheme, about half a million Arabs with their possessions will be in the Jewish state. This number is'a little less than the number of all Jews that live within the boundaries of the intended state. In their desire to refute the Jewish claims, the Arabs go on to point out that in the Jewish state there would be the best ground in the country, most of the shore of Palestine, and quite a big area of land that does not belong to the Jews, but to the Arabs.

From this state, they say, the ropes will stretch and twist around the necks of the Arabs in the neighboring countries. It will be an ever-present menace to the Arab countries, for it will be the headquarters where plans are set to place those countries under the. Jewish influence. With thousands of Jews in the Arab countries, those plans would find agents who would be very earnest to fulfill them. Not long after the establishment of the Jewish state it will'be the most powerful military state in the Middle East. The millions of dollars which pour every year into the hands of the Jews of Palestine from their fellows in America and other countries would make the strong military state a reality. Secret maps seized by the Arabs show that it was intended that the Jewish state should include Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and a part of Egypt.

Bearing these facts in mind, and hat-boring those fears in heart, the Arabs around Palestine realize that the cause of the Palestinian Arabs is their own cause too, not only because they are of the same blood and race, but also because they are threatened themselves by the same dreadful danger.

The Jews, on the other hand, listen to these statements and protest against them. We are here, they say, not to make you or anybody else a slave. We wish to live in peace with the Arabs, on equal terms. We need you as well as you need us. We have money, you have not. The labor cost in your communities is cheap, in ours it is not; so we can and must,cooperate and work together. With the money we have, we could develop the country, produce the treasures of earth, raise your living standard. If we governed the country you would have a better schooling, more chances in life, and real civilization. For you, we, have nothing but good will, good wishes, and good schemes. Believe us, put your trust in us. You will not be sorry, you’ll see.

To this the Arabs shake their heads, and laugh sardonically. Bo you want us to believe this nonsense! We think we have some intelligence to recognize that this is a bait. Once we took it we would fall into your trap. Because you possess a lot of money, because your fiijst principle in life is to be capitalists, and because you are active, intelligent and united, you will be the masters in this country, occupying all the important positions and the main establishments. We know. This happened in Germany before. We see your influence in the United States, where you are only about 4 percent of the population. This is our country, after all. We are still the majority, and we own the greater part of its ground. In any case We are not going to let you govern us, nor are we going to allow you to establish a sta<te on any spot in our country.

Then the Jews would answer, though in great error: Not only is it man who wants us to have a state in this country, not only the U. N., but it is also God. We were given this country by God. He promised to return us to this land.

Barrel of Gunpowder Set Afire

When the General Assembly was voting on partition on November 29 it was after midnight in Palestine. Yet the Arabs and Jews were still awake. They were sitting beside the radios, listening to the translated discussions and the description of the turning of voting at Lake Success. In Tel-Aviv loud-speakers were placed in the streets by the Jewish newspapermen to enable the Jewish public to follow the debate. As it was announced, the Arabs turned off their radios and went to bed with a feeling of disappointment, bitterness and revolt. They realized that in the U. N. there is no justice, no good, no honesty. They knew that the U. N. in general, and the U. S. A. in particular, recklessly put fire to a barrel of gunpowder.

The Jews, however, did not go to bed that night. They were too happy to sleep, too excited to close an- eye. It was the day of victory to them, of thanksgiving, of elation. A Jewish state would shortly emerge. One would be able after a little time to say: "This is my state, this is my country.” There they would not see signs on doors of restaurants, "No admittance to Jews and dogs.” That night was spent in celebration in the Jewish quarters, settlements and cities. They danced in the streets, sang, and gave drinks free. Jewish flags rose on the buildings and on cars, running in the streets, full of joyful Jews. For three days these celebrations went on.

Meanwhile the Arab leaders in the neighboring countries declared the determination of the Arabs to break down the partition scheme in all possible ways. The Arab higher executives held a meeting and announced that the Arabs in Palestine would be on strike for three days beginning on December 2.

On December 1 the Arab college students in Jerusalem made a peaceful, very well organized demonstration. But the following day, which was the first in the strike, the trumpet of trouble sounded. At about nine o’clock in the morning a big disorderly crowd of l(i-^zto 20-year-old Arab boys began their attack on the Jewish shops near the Arab quarters. They were armed with nothing but sticks and stones. They killed owners who could not escape, and looted and burned the shops. The damage to the Jewish property on that day was valued at more than one million pounds. While all this was going on, the British army stood watching, but did net intervene; yet they did not allow the mob to approach the security zones.

At midday a group of the Haganah, the Jewish Defence Organization, came marching down with arms carried openly to Rex Cinema, which belonged to Arabs, and set it on fire. The Jews, however, showed great patience on that date; for, with the arms they possessed, they could have easily defeated and broken up the Arab crowd. But they refrained from so doing. Their leaders did not want to make matters more complex, and thought that the disturbance would soon subside.

Next day curfew was imposed on the Arab quarters. So the Jews seized the opportunity and set about burning and looting the Arab shops; while they (the Jews) moved away the remainder of their goods in the shops that were saved by ehance the previous day. Thereafter violence spread in all parts of Palestine. While the Arabs in the beginning were using daggers as weapons for attack, now they used automatic fire arms. But still they are short in arms, prices of which at present are unbelievable. The ordinary gun is sold in the Arab side for 100 pounds, in spite of the fact that the neighboring countries send arms to them. But every Arab in Palestine hunts for a gun at least to defend himself, should he be attacked; for the Jews now are revenging themselves by attacking the Arab villages with machine guns and grenades.

Settling Down for W⁷ ar

Realizing that matters will still get worse, and as security measures, the Arabs have started to organize themselves, to prepare themselves for the coming desperate battle with the Jews. In every village and town a “national committee” has been set up. Its duty is to secure sufficient food for the village or town, to prepare for defending the place, furnish houses with the necessary furniture to make hospitals, and get doctors to teach the girls to be nurses. In short, this national committee is responsible for everything concerning the social and military activities.

But if the Arabs started to make this organization since the approval of the partition scheme, the Jews had it for years. All know in Palestine that the Jews are very well armed. They have weapons of all sorts. These weapons are in trained hands, for thousands of Jews were in the British army in World War II. Released, they gave training to many other thousands. Now it is said that the Jews could put forward 80,000 well-armed and well-trained men.

Both parties now attack the other every day with automatic weapons. At the time of this writing (January), according to official reports the wounded and killed have mounted to 1,064. But, I think, the number reported should be much bigger. Raids are made on villages. People are attacked in the streets. Trains going to the Jewish towns are stopped by the Arabs and robbed. The streets are almost empty except of those who have emergency missions or necessary tasks out. One is not safe outside, nor in his own home, for at any moment he might be attacked, whether he is an Arab or a Jew.

Thousands of Arabs in the neighboring countries are training to use arms so as to come to'Palestine to help their fellow Arabs, and fight the Jews until they give up the idea of establishing a Jewish state. The Arabs of Palestine are determined to allow no Jewish state to rise in Palestine. They are waiting to have more weapons, to .see those volunteers.

But the Jews shrug their shoulders with a sneer. A Jewess told me: “Whatever the price of the Jewish state will be, we are ready to pay it. It will be trifling compared with what we shall get in exchange.”—Awake! correspondent in Palestine.

QPRINGTIME again!,And there is no O surer sign of it than the Easter paraders all dolled up in their extravagant new outfits of colorful ensembles and gay bonnets. How these people love to show off their Easter costumes! Little do they worry if it takes them six months to pay for this fling of vanity. Let the future take care of itself, they say, for right now it is parade time! Down the Avenue they come. With them are the little kiddies, dressed up in their flashy new togs and carrying fancy baskets of multicolored eggs and candy rabbits. This is a church-bound parade, one of the biggest of the year, swelled on this occasion with many religious formalists who attend but twice a year. At the church the flower-scented populace pauses long enough to allow the special Easter sermons of the clergy to parade before their minds. Meantime, great multitudes of other people are watching from the side lines this whole Easter festival with mixed feelings of perplexity and wonderment. They wonder who started this Easter idea in the first place. They are curious to know how long these traditions and customs have been on parade. And they want to know the meaning of the peculiar symbols of Easter.

Only a little digging in the dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference works is necessary to uncover some amazing answers to these questions, answers that will astonish both paraders and non-paraders. Start with the name Easter. Webster’s New International Dictionary, first edition, says that the name comes from the Anglo-Saxon Eastre, the name of “a goddess of light or spring, in honor of whom a festival was celebrated in April”. The Catholic Encyclopedia backs up Webster by citing the venerable Bede as authority on this point. Various spellings of Easter (asster, aestere, esterne, eesterne, eostre) are found in old manuscripts, and they are akin to Ostara, the German goddess of Life and Spring.

Digging deeper into pagan mythology, the name Easter is traced back through the heathen religion of the Druids to the ancient demonism of the Phoenicians, Babylonians and Chaldeans, where the same goddess of spring and rebirth was called Astarte or Ishtar, names that are very. similar in pronunciation to the English name Easter. Alexander Hislop, in his weighty book, The Two Babylons, answers the question, “What means the term Easter itself?” by saying: “It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard [the noted archaeologist] on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar.”

Now, whom did this goddess Easter or Astarte represent? Her name is derived from Asht-tart, meaning “The woman that made towers”. That woman was Semiramis, who, being both the mother and the wife of Nimrod, worked with him in building the tower of Babel as a means of reaching heaven in defiance of Jehovah God. Upon her death this mother queen was deified by her worshipers as the “queen of heaven” and the moon became a symbol of her “spirit”. (Nimrod’s “immortal spirit”, it was believed, inhabited the sun.) It is from this ancient cistern of demonism that the universal heathen worship of the sun and moon sprang. The springtime festival, held when the moon reaches its fullness, is part of this pagan worship of the “queen of heaven”, and it still parades throughout the earth under its ancient but Anglicized name “Easter”.

Christendom Joins the Parade

How the peoples and nations that call themselves “Christian” got into this pagan Easter parade, inasmuch as Christ and the apostles did not celebrate Easter, is indeed a strange story of spiritual fornication and political intrigue. The writings of the apostles make no mention of Easter. (It is no point to say that the word Easter appears at Acts 12:4 in the King James version, for all Bible scholars know that this was a gross blunder on the part of the translators, a blunder that was not made in any other translation. The original Greek word is pascha and is properly translated “passover”.) Christ and His early followers had a full knowledge of how God’s Word, the Bible, condemned the worship of Easter, i.e., Astarte, which in the Hebrew Scriptures is spelled various ways: Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth, Ashteroth and Astaroth. The early Christians knew how Solomon fell into disfavor when he began to serve the Easter goddess. (1 Kings 11:5,31; 2 Kings 23:13) They knew how Jehovah God’s wrath was kindled when the Israelites time and again turned to demonism and celebrated the Easter festival. (Judges 2:11-14; 10: 6; 1 Samuel 7:3, 4; 12:10; Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-27) Hence, Christ and His early followers did not celebrate any Semiramis-honoring, God-dishonoring, “queen of heaven” Easter!

It is obvious from this that the Catholic Encyclopedia falls into error in saying that when the “Apostolic Fathers” failed to mention the celebration of Easter among early Christians it was “purely accidental”. What a devil-conceived argument! Is it not far more logical, reasonable and Scriptural to say that the early Christians failed to mention Easter because, as the Bible shows, there was no such pagan celebration kept by them? Yes, indeed. However, after, the apostles fell asleep, and ambitious men in the church began leaning to their own understanding, a controversy developed over whether Christians should celebrate the Jewish passover. Justin Martyr and Tertullian, of the second and third centuries, mentioned such a controversy. Some religiously observed the Jewish passover as a formalism, while others, like Arius, said, as quoted by the historian Mosheim: “Christians should keep no Passover, because Paul declares Christ, who was slain for us, to be our Paschal Lamb.” But as time went on the passover-keeping apostate Christians increased in numbers until by the fourth century they completely overran the various congregations.

Then came Constantine, the adroit religio-political emperor, who took this apostate Christianity, united it illicitly with the pagan religions of his empire, and formed a single, universal (Catholic) state religion. It was the Council of Nice (A.D. 325), called by Constantine, that fixed the parade date when it declared that “everywhere the Great Feast of Easter” was to be observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon following March 21. Thus it was that those who professed to be Christians began to march along in the Easter parade, though there was much controversy in their ranks until the sixth or seventh century. As Hislop says, it was only after violence and bloodshed “that the Festival of the Anglo-Saxon or Chaldean goddess came to supersede that which had been held in honour of Christ. Such is the history of Easter".

Eggs and Rabbits on Parade

After Christendom entered the carnival business and took over the pagan Easter parade she began to dress up its symbols in such gaudy costumes that today their true identity and meaning is almost hidden from view. Easter eggs and rabbits are made to appear as nothing more than innocent appendages attached to the occasion solely for the amusement of the children. The origin and ancient meaning of these emblems, however, is one of the surest proofs that the entire celebration is of the Devil.

Not only the Druids of northern Europe, but also the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Hindus, Chinese and Japanese all attached deep mystical significance to eggs used in the spring festivals which all these heathen nations observed. The Japanese sacred eggs were the color of brass; the Chinese also painted their eggs; the Hindus had eggs golden in color. Other nations colored their Easter eggs red to symbolize the blood of life. “From Egypt,” says Hislop, “these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the banks of the Euphrates. The classic poets are full of the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians.” One of these tales as told by the learned Egyptian, Hyginus, keeper of the Palatine library at Rome in the time of Augustus, is as follows: “An egg of wondrous size is said to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates. The fishes rolled it to the bank, where the doves having settled upon it, and hatched it, out came Venus, who afterwards was called the Syrian Goddess,” or Astarte. The egg, therefore, became a fitting symbol of Easter as well as life and fertility over which this demonic goddess was thought to have control. Because of this significance attached to the egg it played an important part in the wicked “mysteries” of phallic or sex worship indulged in by demonized pagans.

The Catholic Hierarchy, having Easter eggs in their parade, would like to be excused from admitting that they are colored with this pagan meaning. Says the Catholic Encyclopedia, under the subheading “Easter Eggs”: “The custom may have its origin in paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring.” Brewer, quoted in The Century Dictionary, says: “The practice of presenting eggs to our friends at Easter is Magian or Persian.”

The Easter rabbit is also a very prominent symbol in this long parade of springtime demonology. And why should it not be ? It is as much a part of the celebration as the other symbols. The Easter rabbit is as old as the worship of Ishtar, for carvings of that goddess have been found that show her holding an egg in her hand and a rabbit at her feet in symbol of fertility and rebirth. “In both India and Egypt rabbits and eggs, as the symbols of fertility and reproduction, were closely identified with the spring festival which corresponds to our Easter,” says George W. Stimpson, in Nuggets of Knowledge. “The rabbit,” declares the Catholic Encyclopedia, “is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility (Simrock,Mi/GioZo^ie, 551).”

Other Customs on Parade

As the Easter parade passes by the reviewing stand of honest investigation many other pagan customs are observed. Like all the rest, the origin of these is disguised beneath a double meaning which the clergy of Christendom have given them in an effort to “sanctify” their use by Christians. But to worship the rising sun as a symbol of the resurrection of Christ as the “sun of righteousness” does not remove its hereditary stains inherited from pagan parentage. In ancient times, though the day was de-

voted primarily to the worship of the moon goddess, her consort, the sun, was not overlooked. They believed that on Easter morning the sun actually danced for joy, and so people were up at sunrise to watch it. The rest of the day was one of great sport with noise and hilarity, dancing and music, hooting and hollering—all for the pleasure of the gods.

“In France,” says the Catholic Encyclopedia, “handball playing was one of the Easter amusements, found also in Germany [and in England]; The ball may represent the sun, which is believed to take three leaps in rising on Easter morning. Bishops, priests, and monks, after the strict discipline of Lent, used to play ball during Easter week. . . . The ball game was connected with a dance, in which even bishops and abbots took part.” This devotion to the sun was called libertas Decembrica, it being. a hangoyer of the December sun festival known as the Saturnalia. Within the last half century this old sun-worship has been revived, costumed as Easter morning “sunrise” services, with the “bishops, priests, and monks” all playing their “important” parts.

More demonism marches by! On Easter eve these modern worshipers of Easter consecrate “new fire”, which, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, “is a custom of pagan origin in vogue all over Europe, signifying the victory of spring over winter.” But, though it is recognized as a pagan custom, instead of avoiding it aS profane, the Encyclopedia says, “The Church adopted the observance into the Easter-ceremonies, referring it to the fiery column in the desert and the Resurrection of Christ. ... In some places a figure was thrown into the Easter fire, symbolizing winter, but to the Christians on the Rhine, in Tyrol and Bohemia, [it symbolized] Judas the traitor.” This custom, then, is nothing more than a disguised form of worship and devotion to Molech and Baal in which a victim was sacrificed to appease the raging anger of the demon gods.

Many sexy customs have been super-stitiously associated with this spring festival in honor of the goddess of fertility. The following, once the custom, and recently revived, is an example. “In the northern parts of England the men parade in the streets on Easter Sunday and claim the privilege of lifting every woman three- times from the ground, receiving in payment a kiss or a silver sixpence. The same is done by the women to the men on the next day. . . . These customs are probably of pre-Christian^ origin.” (Catholic Encyclopedia) The idea of wearing new clothes and new bonnets at Easter time, an idea that is today exploited to the limit by unscrupulous commercialism, is directly traceable to ancient beliefs about sex and fertility. It was a pagan superstition that the wearing of a new bonnet on Easter brings happiness in love during the following year.

The eating of ham, the use of .oranges and pomegranates, and the serving of hot cross buns at Easter time are also closely associated with the devilish worship of Astarte, the “queen of heaven”. In fact, Hislop points out that the present-day recipe for hot cross buns is quite similar to that used centuries ago. Even in Jeremiah’s day, 600 years before Christ, it was written: “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven.”—Jeremiah 7:18.

Most manifestly Easter is of the Devil from its beginning, though in recent centuries it parades before the people as a “Christian” festival. It is not Christian, not even in name, and its celebration is a reproach upon Jehovah God and His Christ. Consequently, as the Easter parade marches on to its final destruction at Armageddon, true and sincere Christians will remain on the sidelines, clean and separate from these pagan abominations.

THINK of it, thousands of little creatures the size of baby bunnies go down to the shore, plunge in and swim out to sea until they become exhausted and drown! Lemmings they are called, and for centuries they have been repeating this performance every three to eleven years in Norway and Sweden. But why? What powerful instinct drives these creatures to forsake their mountain homos and go down to the seashores and certain death? Deliberate mass suicide, some say. But if that were so, then lemmings would be on the same low level as some degenerate men, who, being devoid of reason, disregard all natural laws and prepare for another global war with its suicidal consequences. However, other men, who are not willing to believe that lemmings have forsaken the laws of self-preservation, seek to find a better reason for these periodic one-way migrations in Scandinavia.

Belonging to the rodent family, the lemming, with its very short tail, resembles a short-eared rabbit more than a rat. About five inches long when grown, it is rusty brown in color, having yellowish sides and a black stripe running down its back. The Scandinavian lemmings are very similar to other species found in northern Siberia and Arctic America, and all seem to be quite closely related to the American meadow mice and the European voles. Their natural habitat is high up, above the timberline, and on the Arctic tundra, where they live on an exclusively vegetable diet of moss, lichens, grass and plant roots, and dwarf birch bark. Comes wintertime they do not hibernate but search beneath the snow for anything edible.

In the age-old business of reproduction the rabbitlike lemmings are very energetic and exceedingly prolific. A papa and mama are able to produce a litter of five or six young ones two or more times a year, and then these children when they are but a few weeks old mature, marry and begin producing grandchildren faster than compound interest. Hawks and owls, and foxes and weasels in these countries have cultivated quite an appetite for nice, juicy lemmings, but, in spite of the consumer demand, every few years the lemming producers overtake their enemies and flood the market with more than can be eaten. Once lemmings pass this critical point in the supply and demand cycle it is not long before bumper crops of these little creatures have stripped the mountains of everything that is edible.

Famine conditions among the lemmings then set in. The overcrowded millions begin to move down the valleys, chiefly at nighttime, where there is more food. Yet, on the trek to greener pastures they never forget their traditional schooling in mathematics, and so they multiply. Soon there is a great horde of lemmings pushing along, stripping the valleys and lowlands, devouring the crops and gardens, and causing great destruction.

The lemming plague is on! Disease sets in; the older and weaker ones die off; the land and streams become po-luted; “lemming fever” breaks out, and reindeer, cattie, goats, pigs and even humans become infected. Streams and lakes are no barrier to these wandering creatures that swim like rats. On and on they go, ever increasing in numbers until by the time they reach the sea a year or two later their numbers are greater than at the beginning. Reaching the Baltic or North sea or the northern Atlantic ocean hordes of lemmings hurl themselves in and swim, swim till they are exhausted, swim till they can swim no more. Then they sink and die in a watery grave.

Why They Do It

One legend has it that lemmings are obsessed with some mysterious desire to discover new and distant lands, like the Vikings of old. Another popular theory says that their movement down to the sea is due to some “death instinct” or desire to commit suicide. Others have said that the migration is due to the sun-spot cycles. But scientific investigation has come up with more reasonable answers to this baffling mystery. One of the foremost authorities on the subject, Professor Charles Elton, in his book Animal Ecology and Evolution, points out that the excess lemmings are not going to some place, but, rather, they are going away from a place where they cannot stay any longer. Elton also explodes the theory that there is some connection between their periodic movements and the recurring sun-spots.

Professor Bergen Evans, of Northwestern University, in his book The Natural History of Nonsense, debunks the mass suicide theory. In a letter to the New Yorker magazine Evans states:

The origin of the lemmings migrations seems to be not world-wear in ess but a periodical increase in their population that makes it impossible for all of them to find sufficient food in their proper mountain habitat. The surplus lemmings have to go elsewhere, and the only elsewhere for them is the plains. The phenomenon is a common one in nature, and it and its extraordinary series of consequences have been described in many books. . . . The creatures can swim small lakes and streams, and those that reach the ocean apparently, and unfortunately, regard it as one more river to cross.

While on his death march to the sea some regard the lemming as a “displaced person”, a victim of circumstances, where one misfortune forces him into another more terrible than the former. So, whatever the cause for the periodic overpopulation and regardless of the motive for the fatal plunge in the sea, the conclusion is the same: whether remaining in the mountains, there to be eaten by a hungry hawk, or dying in the salty sea, the life of most lemmings has a tragic ending.

NICARAGUA, the narrow strip of country known as “The Land of Lakes and Volcanoes”, holds beauty and adventure for the traveler. True to its name, Nicaragua does have the lakes and volcanoes, but our present interest focuses on the beautiful forests that surround its lakes and clothe its hills in green. Eighty percent of its 51,660 square miles is covered with timber, the majority being broad-leaved hardwoods. Some 420 kinds of trees assure variety to the woodlands. They also assure interest to a quick glimpse of some of Nicaragua’s outstanding woods.

Famous is¹ the caoba, or mahogany wood. It is lumbered in lengths of twelve feet, and, as a rule, is about eighteen inches in diameter. Ninety percent of the mahogany cut is exported. Its uses number into the hundreds: furniture, floors in better-type homes, panels, inlays and other beautiful works in wood. Its color varies from a deep reddish brown to a brownish yellow, and glows under a high polish. In the town of Bluefields there are homes built entirely of mahogany.

Ebony is another wood with which the world is familiar. It grows especially well in the higher altitudes. Though valuable, it is not exported to any great extent because it is not found in quantities large enough to risk the exporting expenses involved. Ebony is used for many beautiful pieces, such as cabinets, umbrella handles, knife handles, inlay work and pianoforte keys. An interesting point to know concerning the species of ebony grown in Nicaragua (the Libi-dibia coriaria) is that its value lies more in its pods than in its wood. The S-shaped pods yield tannin ‘for tanning hides and making inks and dyes*

A well known wood is the eedro, or cedar, which grows in abundance. Like the mahogany, it is principally a furniture wood, and is particularly prized for lining closets, because of its insect resistance. Here is a good place to mention the accomplishment of one particular guitar maker of Nicaragua, namely, that the whole base or volume box on all of his makes of guitars are cut out of one solid piece of cedar. There is not a single break, other than the lid that covers the base. Sometimes the guitar-makers in this land use as many as eleven different kinds of wood in their masterpieces. The beautiful inlay work employs cedar to bring out a pinkish brown, mahogany for brown, brazil for red, pine for white, escobilla for a shade of yellow, chocito for black (using the heart of the log), and laurel and granadillo for a grain display.

We catch ourselves being lured quite q way from the subject of the cedar by this interesting workmanship of the guitar-makers wherein they use such a variety of woods. But we come back close to cedar when we consider briefly a very popular wood called pachote, known also as a bastard cedar. Its easy working and plentifulness popularize it for all kinds of construction. Its color is light-brown. The logs are large and heavy, a thousand board feet weighing over 6,750 pounds. Its great weight is due to high moisture content, and as a result the logs cannot be floated in logging operations. They are brought out of the forested areas by being tied to other, lighter logs, such as eedar, for floating. Native lumbermen claim the pachote wood never dries out,

। and for that reason it is necessary to use rust-proof nails when constructing with it.

Speeding up a bit: oak and escobilla are furniture woods; acetuno is white and soft, reminding one of balsa, but which is actually inferior and stains itself to yellow and black; balsa trees flourish, and, as almost everyone knows, are used in airplane construction, as well as in life preservers and modern streamlining work. The wood inadero negro (black wood) is strong and is used for heavy-duty work, as is the heavy wood known as almendro. The brazil and mora woods furnish a red and a yellow dye, and ink when treated properly, Guapinol yields a kind of copal used for varnish, also cement, incense and medicine. The Nicaragua rosewood is eocabolo, and is almost entirely exported. Woods more rare are myrorylon balsamin, used in preparing perfumes and proprietary articles, Malpighia is of the box-wood class. Then there is guarea, a heartwood of pinkish or deep reddish-brown, a delight to craftsmen because of its straight grain,_ easy working and tine tlmshing qualities. Trichilia is used for harpoons; pimenta, for walking sticks. Hirtella is a source of tannin, and even its ashes are used, for pottery. Fine quality wood decorative pieces, such as lamps, vases, stands, bowls, flutes, etc., are made of granadillo and guayacan.

Changing pace again to linger a little at the end, let us note an interesting point about the wood last named above, guayacan. It is a bastard lignum vitae known as “wood of life”, and is entirely exported. The interest it specially excites is due to the fact that housings of self-oiled bearings are made from this wood, also bushing blocks for propeller shafts in large boats. A bearing when made with this wood puts out an oil when in operation. Especially when the bearing becomes warm will the oil seep out of the wood to lubricate the moving parts. What an example of products of the earth meeting in ingenious ways the needs of man!—Awake! correspondent in Nicaragua.

The Lord’s Supper

WHEN Jesus of Nazareth took the loaf of unleavened bread and thanked God for it and then broke it-and gave the pieces of it to His faithful apostles and said, "This is my . body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me,” He was not pronouncing some magical words to transform that literal bread into His literal flesh. And when His apostles ate it they were not eating Jesus' literal flesh, because He still had His whole fleshly body and it was a perfect body of flesh that was hung upon the tree not many hours later. Notice that Jesus did’ not say to His apostles, ‘This do in sacrifice of me,’ but He merely said, "This do in remembrance of me.”—Luke 22 :19.

What, then, is meant by Jesus’ words concerning the broken bread, "This is my body”? These words, viewed in the light of other Bible verses, lend no support to the religious doctrine of transubstantia-tion, to wit, that the flesh of Jesus was substantially present with the bread and was combined with it. Jesus did not there perform a miracle like that which the Devil tried to tempt Jesus to perform when he asked Jesus to command the stones to turn into bread so that He could break His forty-day fast. (Matthew 4:3,4) Jesus still had His flesh intact, with nothing extracted from it. The broken bread could not, for that reason, be His literal body or even symbolize His literal body of flesh, for Psalm 34: 20 prophesied concerning Jesus’ literal body: "He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.” The apostle John calls attention to the fulfillment of Psalm 34:20 respecting Jesus while nailed to the tree, at John 19:33-36. To picture the very same thing concerning the literal body of Jesus the “Lamb of God”, not a bone of the typical passover lamb was permitted to be broken, as stated at Exodus 12: 46 and Numbers 9:12. Hence Jesus’ act of breaking the bread and saying, "This is my body,” proves He was not referring to His own humanity, and also that the substance of the bread was not changed, but was merely being used as a symbol of something larger than His mortal flesh. For this reason Moffatt’s translation of Matthew 26: 26, reads: “Then he gave it to the disciples saying, 'Take and eat this, it means my body.’ ”

Consequently, Jesus’ words “my body” must mean the great spiritual body of which Christ Jesus is the Head, namely, "the body of Christ.” As to the “body” which Jesus used the bread to symbolize, the apostle Paul writes to the consecrated Christians who are sanctified for the Kingdom; “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” (Romans 12:4,5) A perfect body has a perfect number of members, no more, no less, according to the perfect Designer of the body, Jehovah God. So the royal “body of Christ” is made up of just 144,000 members under Christ Jesus their Head. “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one spirit. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” (1 Corinthians 12:12,13,27) Jehovah God, choosing Jesus Christ as the Chief One, “hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body.” —Ephesians 1: 22, 23; Colossians 1:18.

The pieces of the broken bread were offered only to those in line to be members of the kingdom, the “body of Christ”. Hence partaking of the bread means to have part in the body of Christ and accepting a God-given assignment in that body and thankfully undertaking the obligations of being a member in that body and joyfully carrying them out. It means “partnership” in the body of Christ. That is the sense of the word “communion” used by the apostle Paul, at 1 Corinthians 10:16,17: “The bread which we break, is it not the communion [joint participation; fellowship] of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers [communicants] of that one bread.” Here the inspired words of an apostle definitely settle it that Jesus’ words "my body” refer to the “body of Christ”.

Further, concerning the Memorial that Jesus established before His death, we read: “And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” (Matthew 26: 27, 28) By those words the wine in that cup was not transubstantiated into His literal blood and then drunk by His apostles, for Jesus had not yet shed His blood. If the contents of that cup had been turned into literal blood and then, too, if the drinking of it secured the remission or forgiveness of sins, why, then, there would have been no need for Jesus to hang on the tree, shedding His blood and dying. It could have been done the easier way by miraculously transmuting wine into blood which had never been in His literal body.

However, as the broken bread was used to symbolize something larger than His flesh, so the cup of wine was used to symbolize something more inclusive than His literal blood. Blood in the vessels of the body signifies life: “for the life bf the flesh is in the blood.” “Eat not the blood: for the blood is the life.” (Leviticus 17:11; Deuteronomy 12:23) Hence blood poured out means life shed, death. The contents of the cup which Jesus handed to His disciples symbolized His blood poured out, that is to say, His death and the sufferings therewith. —Matthew 27:25; Acts 5: 28.

Truly, the Lord’s blood was shed and thereby accomplished the effectuating of God’s new covenant. It provided for the remission of sins for those brought into that covenant and made God’s namepeople, the Kingdom people. However, drinking of the wine cup symbolizes something deeper than that. What? Meeting the requirements to enter into the Kingdom. Not only the shed blood is pictured by the wine in the cup, to mean death, but the drinking of the real “cup” by those taking part in the Lord’s supper also means death. It means their death with Christ, their participating in His death, their communion in His kind of death.

Such symbolic meaning of drinking the cup Jesus’ faithful apostle Paul makes clear, at 1 Corinthians 10:15-18. The word “communion” here means partnership, joint participation, a being partaker, fellowship. The Greek word for "communion” is so translated elsewhere in the Bible, and this makes clear the meaning of the expression “the communion of the blood of Christ”.

All those celebrating the Memorial of Christ’s death this year on Thursday night, March 25, should have the foregoing in mind, in order to celebrate with the right and Scriptural understanding.

Tenth Graduating Class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead

Left to right: First row: Bradley, R., Burnham, I., Latch, R., Johnstone, H., Lowe, P., Taylor, M., Humphrey, J., Kite, P., Rahm, H., Brown, R. Second row: Bauert, G., Earle, E., Casson, S., Tracy, E., Collins, J., Dodd, D., Uhl, V., Burnham, R., Richardson, D., Lochner, E., Tischhauser, E. Third row: Lowe, G., Taciak, S., Tilton, A., Grover, C., Hansler, A., Reed, L., Maykut, P., Taciak, A., Dodd, R., Wojciechowski, A., Beattie, O., Lucas, D., Bunt, M., Avoures, U. Fourth row: Plumhoff, E., Resch, J., Zavitz, M., Butler, C., LaPointe, S., Milne, V., Rinker, O., Small, M., Craddock, E., Holland, R., Bunse, M., Picard, A., Strong, U. Fifth row: Kielhorn, E., Humphrey, T., Grover, E., Reed, H., Avoures, N„ Shealy, L., Wojciechowski, S., Collins, H., Tilton, T., Craddock, J., Resch, L., Berg, E., Sallis, J. Sixth row: Zavitz, G., Nelson, J., Ward, H., Covert, G., Bradley, G., Payne, P., Byron, H., Thomas, A., Gillman, B., Rahm, E., Yarbrough, D., Plumhoff, F., Latch, W. Seventh row: Mahan, A., Cyr, E., Hansler, R„ Rae, A., Endres, W., Atkin, A., Bunt, W., Brown, D., Lochner, H., Holcomb, B., Earle, K., Gisbrandt, H., Walden, W. Eighth row: Stull, D., Gustavson, D., Burt, G., Bumphrey, F., Buckey, E., Richardson, N., Lamborn, R., Rees, J., Lucas, J., Kamphuis, J., Mroz, A., Casson, R.

Tenth Class Graduation Broadens Expansion

64T WILL sing praises unto Jehovah 1 among the nations, to whatever nations I am assigned,” was the spirit manifested by the tenth class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead on graduation day, February 8,1948. And they will have opportunity to do just that. Already 34 graduates have been assigned to the far-flung lands of Rhodesia, the Belgian Congo, the Ivory Coast, Nyasaland, Senegal, Kenya, Burma and Brazil-

Assembled to witness the graduation exercises were 647 visitors. Along with the students, they heard brief discourses by the servant in charge of the farm on which Gilead is located, and by the instructors, the president’s secretary, and a graduate of the first class who has been active as a missionary in the Caribbean. Then the president of the Society and the school, N. H. Knorr, addressed the student body on the subject “Are You - Saved?” By many Senptural iiiusira-tions he developed his theme, showing the fallacy of the doctrine “Once saved, always, saved”. All those now serving God faithfully are saved, hut this salvation is iiow only conditional upon continued obedience to Jehovah God.

Then each graduate received an envelope containing a class group picture (see page 27), a gift from the Society, and the school report card. In the envelopes of 90 of the 99 graduates were diplomas indicating that the course of study had been completed with merit.

Finally, a resolution was read, which was unanimously adopted by the class. It expressed deiermmaimn to ptitGribsad training to work world-wide in preaching the gospel.

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Czechoslovakian Coup

By far the most significant and sensational event of late February was the Communist Coup in Czechoslovakia, The five-party cabinet fell when twelve ministers, representing three of the parties, resigned in protest against the Communist minister of the interior’s moves toward making the police department ati instrument of the Communist party. The Communist premier, Gottwald, then insisted upon being given the privilege of choosing new ministers to take the places of those who had resigned. President Benes, threatened with a general strike by Communist-controlled unions, together with widespread disorders, yielded to Premier Gottwald’s demands, with the result that the new cabinet is predominantly Communist. Action committees in every field of national activity then set to work to purge out those who did not fall in line with the new regime, and bans were imposed on numerous publications, while strict control was imposed on radio facilities and schools.

Britain, France and the United States joined In a strenuous protest against the Communist coup, but to no effect. Retorted Gottwald: **We will never take any lessons in democracy from those with Munich on their conscience, who dealt with Hitler Germany to divide us up/’

‘The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia was followed by a move toward lining up Finland with the Communist-controlled nations. Stalin addressed a personal note to that country's government, requesting a treaty of friendship and military assistance, Finland is the only country bordering on Russia not having such a treaty,

Palestine Partition

The Palestine situation in late February changed, if any, for the worse. The Insane orgy of bloodshed and strife continued, hut with increasing fury, and the toll of lives, since partition was decided by the U, N., mounted to 3,000 slain. Arabs killed Jews; Jews killed Arabs and British. In the last week of February the Palestine partition problem came up for consideration by the U, N.’s eleven-member Security Council. The question was, Should the Council use force to carry out the partition recommendation in the face of Arab threats of a "holy war”? Two of the Big Five members of the Council stated their position in the matter. The U. S, said that the Council could not enforce a political settlement, i,e,, partition, but could act only if there was a threat to international peace, in which case the Council could send U, N. troops. The United Kingdom stated that it would take no part in enforcing partition. The American legal-Istic straddle was called “betrayal” by Jewish interests in the U, S, It was seen to be influenced by the decision of the Arab League that no American business interests would be allowed to lay pipelines across any of the territories of its member states as long as the U. S, policy favoring partition In Palestine remained unaltered.

Next U.N, Assembly

It was announced by Secretary General Trygve Lie on February 16 that the next General Assembly of the U. N. would meet in Paris. He had been looking around for a place in Great Britain, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands, A U. N* Assembly needs 110,850 square feet of meeting space, 600 offices for 2,600 persons, 1,000 typewriters and telephones, 400 filing cabinets, and 3,000 hotel rooms. The Assembly will meet in the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, The Palais has a meeting hall that will seat 3,000, and five museums, three of which will be converted into offices, another closed, and the fifth devoted to exhibits setting forth the so-called “evolution of man”, for the benefit of delegates and others, doubtless to show how far man has progressed,

London Conference

Tn London two conferences were going on in the latter part of February. A Big Four conference on Austria was trying to reach agreement on a peace pact with that country. The representatives of Britain, France and the United States were trying to persuade the Soviet to cut down demands for $200,000,000 reparations in two years. The other conference, attended only by representatives of Britain, France and the U- S., discussed mutual occupation problems and sought an agreement whereby the French zone might be added to the bizonal unit of Britain and theU, S.

Ireland’s New Premier

Ending the 16-year premiership of Enmon de Valera by defeating a motion to re-elect him, the Assembly of Ireland on February 18 elected John A. Costello, former attorney general, to be prime minister of Ireland, by a vote of 75 to 68, The Hail approved the prime ministers choice of cabinet members 75 to 65. The new government is agreed on the need for reduced taxation, more housing, and lower living costa The prime minister said, the government would help the Marshall Plan by exporting food to Europe, Closer economic ties with Britain were expected,

British Medicine

<§> In, a nation-wide plebiscite on February 18 the Labor government was defied by 8fi percent of Britain’s doctors, who voted against working for the universal free medical service scheme which is scheduled to take effect July 5. The remaining 14 percent represent 3,OGO general practitioners and 971 consultants and specialists, hardly sufficient to provide health service for a population of 47,000,000*

French Confidence Vote

The Schuman cabinet on February 24 obtained from the National Assembly a vote of confidence (29L2G8) on its schedule for reimbursing the holders of demonetized 5000-franc notes. Thirty-nine Conservative deputies abstained from voting. The government has arranged a program for compensating the greater part of the holders of 5000-franc notes before the end of June.

Aid to Greece

In his second report on American aid to Greece the president told the U* S. Congress that he intended to call for additional funds. Most of the $250,009,000 extended to Greece last year had been spent on nonproductive (military) measures* In Greece an American general has become a member of the Greek National Defense Council, The U. S. also presented twelve or baore fighter planes to Greece, suitable for training and observation purposes. in the Greek Chamber of Deputies the Populist-Liberal government received a vote of confidence of 190 to 90. Premier Themistocles Sophoulis, concluding debate on the handling of security problems, said, “Thanks to American aid, the Greek army now is fully equipped and in position to pass to the offensive against the guerrihts,” About a million dollars donated by patriotic Greeks was to be used for the purchase of 35,000 new rifles. In Athens a systematic effort to clean up Communists and other subversive elements was begun at the end of the month. Hundreds were arrested and incarcerated. Early on February 28 thirteen Jailed leftists were executed on charges of murder, killings and rebellion.

New King in Yemen

Following the killing of Imam Yahya and three of his sons In a coup on February 18, Sayed Abdullah Ibn Ahmed eLWazir was proclaimed the new king-priest of Yemen. Another son of Imani became premier of Yemen's “constitutional” government Yemen has no Railways and no political parties. It is from this region at the extreme end of the Arab tan peninsula that the queen of Sheba is believed to have come to hear the wisdom of King Solomon almost 3,000 years ago

Old CfviBzatian Found

<$> The Department of Antiquities of Iraq on February 18 announced that it had discovered what it believed to be the world’s earliest civilization. The discovery was made in southern Iraq, near Ur of the Chaldees, from which region the patriarch Abraham came fnto the land of Canaan.

Korean Situation

There were Com muni st-Inspired demonstrations against the U. N* Korean Commission in Korea in late February. From U, N. headquarters, however, the ‘’Little Assembly¹’ sent instruction^ to the commission to go ahead with the balloting in the American Zone of Occupation even though the Russians will not admit them to the Russian Zone, divided from the American Zone by the 38th parallel.

Chinese Problem

The U* S. Congress on February 18 was urged by the president, and later by the secretary of state, to appropriate $570,000,-' 000 for aid to China, to be used for food, clothing, and other necessities, as well as for reconstruction projects to help restore transportation facilities. It was not intended for military purposes. A few days later reports came that the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek had sustained a great loss in the Communist capture of the steel center of An shan in Manchuria, This was followed by the capture of YIngkow, a port which the Nationalists had hoped to use for landing troops to aid the Important city of Mukden. Other Co i n m u n i st v i ct ori es agg ravate d the already serious situation of Nationalist forces in Manchuria*

Cruiser to Belize

<$> A heavily gunned cruiser, the British Admiralty disclosed on February 26, had been ordered to Belize, in British Honduras, in view of threatened border trouble between Guatemala and the British possession. What was described as “an extremely vitu-permire press e&mp&ign" been carried on in Guatemala against Britain, and the British government was apprehensive that incidents might be staged by irresponsible elements in Guatemala*

Truman In the Caribbean

Mr. Truman, vacationing in the Caribbean, signed three bills, one extending rent controls for one month after March 1, another granting benefits to 1,500,-000 Federal workers on retirement, and a third continuing controls on scarce materials*

Atom Defense for Cities

Addressing the U. S. Conference of Mayors, attended by the chief executives of 250 of America's largest cities. Major General Harold IL Bull, deputy chief of the Army General Staff, on February 17 urged defensive measures against atomic attack. He drew a horrifying picture of what would happen if an atomic bomb of latest design and size should explode over a city, stating that every living thing together with all the property within a circle 1$ miles In diameter would be destroyed. The conference was also addressed by Dr. Pieter Jacobus Oud, who was burgomaster of Rotterdam when the Nazis bombed that city, wiping out most of it.

U»S. Housing

In a message sent to Congress February 23 the chief executive urged the extension of federal rent control until April 30, 1949, as well as laws to stimulate the erection of a million homes and apartments in urban areas annually over the next ten years.

St. Lawrence Seaway Plan «$> The U, S. Senate on February 27 shelved the $720,000,000 Great Lakes-St Lawrence Seaway and power project. A vote of 57-30 returned the measure to the Foreign Relations Committee “for further study”. But no further action is expected. It is the fourth time the project has been turned down over a period of fifty years.

Pushing the ERP

<$> The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia spurred the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the last week of February to step up the time table for putting through the European Recovery Program. Its chairman, Senator Vandenberg, of Michigan, said he hoped that the Senate would complete its work on the program by March 15, as “time was of the essence”. The committee decided to put off consideration of China relief and Greek and Turkish military aid until after ERP Is taken care of. The House Committee on Foreign Aid has recommended that ERP be limited to 4| billion dollars for the first year, beginning April 1. Henry Wallace, third party presidential candidate, called ERP a "blueprint” for world war and repeated his charge that President Truman was leading the IT. 8. into a conflict with Russia.

Prices In the U. S.

In mld-February American economists were still in doubt as to the meaning of the drop in prices that had occurred, wondering whether it meant inflation or deflation. There was a sharp drop in the exchanges on grains, although retail food prices did not drop more than an average of 4 percent. Steel prices were under observation, as on February 19 steel producers simultaneously announced a lO-pereent increase In the price of structural and semifinished steel, Since steel Is an essential raw material for 40 percent of American industry, Congress decided to call on the leaders of the steel industry to explain the drastic Increase In price. The president ordered the FBI also to make an inquiry, expressing particular concern because steel workers were talking about making further demands for increased wages.

Wallace Candidate Wins

An American Labor party candidate endorsed by Henry A. Wallace won an unexpected victory In the special election February 17 to fill a vacancy in Congress from the Bronx. He won easily over the Democratic contestant. The victory was taken as an indication of Wallace's strength as a third party presidential candidate.

Medal to Truman!

Just what the National Conference of Christians and Jews Is supposed to stand for Is not too apparent. But it did award a medal and a "citation” to president Truman (February 18) for his efforts In behalf of brotherhood and Interracial amity¹.

U. 8. School Problem

In a survey made public February 16 the National Education Association asserted that despite increased school support during the past year, there is a serious school crisis confronting the U. S. Millions of children are attending obsolete schools and are receiving a meager and inferior education, according to the report. Education costs per pupil ranged from $25 In Mississippi to $234 in New York, America has a great many excellent and well-equipped schools, but there are evidently still many parts of the country where educational standards are low.

Antarctic Dispute

<$> A three-way dispute over the possession of certain Antarctic territory and adjacent islands came into the news in mld-Feb-ruary, when President Vldela of Chile landed at Antarctica and set up a base. Britain, Chile and Argentina have long claimed overlapping sectors of the Antarctic continent. Britain claims that part which lies between 20° and 80° west longitudes; Argentina stakes hers from 28° to 74°, and Chile says it owns from 53⁰ to 90°, Britain sent a cruiser to demonstrate its authority; while Argentina sent a naval squadron to the disputed isle of Deception. Britain indicated the matter might be submitted to the U N.

Pulp Mill Waste Utilized

<$> Each year American paper mills dump six billion gallons of sulphite waste liquor Into the rivers and lakes of the country. A process has now been devised by three University of Wisconsin biochemists whereby the sulphite waste can be converted into lactic acid, which in turn can be used in the tanning, lacquer and food-processing industries. The acid, valued at 19 cents a pound, can be produced from the mill waste by adding substances valued at 8| cents a pound. A byproduct, wood lignin, can be used for fuel, and saves another cent a pound.

COMING

SOON!

Don t itf

World peace is bound up in The Signal

Can that signal be the U.N. that suffers from chronic division?

What? - A Bible lecture of first importance!

Where? - Country-wide.

When? - March 28, 1948 (or soon thereafter).

For whom? « All lovers of righteousness.

Are you among that great majority who desire to see the establishment of lasting peace? If so, perhaps to you the lifting up of the U.N. as the agency for its establishment has seemed the best and only hope. To maintain hope for peace is proper. Even the Bible foretells that such a peace will someday come; and it tells about the raising up of a Signal around which the people can rally, and through which peace will be established. But is The Signal the U.N, which is currently divided? Or is there another signal for all people?

Vital Information for All Communities

Communities throughout the world may now hear vital information on the subject “A Signal for All Nations”, presented from the public platform. In many localities, “A Signal for All Nations,” the first of a new series of Watchtower-sponsored, educational Bible lectures, will be given March 28, 1948. Watch for local announcements or contact Jehovah’s witnesses for the time and place of the inauguration of this series in your neighborhood. Then, make it a point tq attend.

All lectures free                   No collection taken

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A WAKE!