WHITE MAN SCALPS INDIANS’

Tables have been turned with an unholy vengeance

Fear in the Atomic Age

Hovers forebodingly over the seas of restless humanity

Enriched Bread

—for Whose Enrichment?

What are they doing to the staff of life?

’’Divine Healing” Today?

THE MISSION OF THIS JOURNAL

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

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

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CONTE N'T S

White Man Scalps Indians!

A Close Look at Horror

White Man Wields Tomahawk

Medical and Educational Needs

How Indians Were Robbed of Land

Modern Scalping Operations

The Jungle “Trinity”

Fear in the Atomic Age

Death of a King

The Funeral Procession

Jehovah's witnesses Not “Reds”

Catholic News Flashes

Enriched Bread—for Whose Enrichment? 16

Political Birth of “Enriched” Bread

Should Join the Roman Catholic Union

Calling Dr. Satan, Calling Dr. Satan

“Christian Science” and Spiritism

Hypnotic Healing

Christians Under Roman Rule

“Thy Word Is Truth”

“Divine Healing” TodayT

Venezuela Elects a Leader

Ordering Color by Curve

Watching the World

®^/“NbiV it is high time to awake”—Romans 13:1/9)

Volume XXIX                         Brooklyn, N. Y., May 8, 1948                             Number 9

WHITE MAN SCALPS INDIANS!

WHAT do you think of a father who boasts of his generosity and charity toward strangers, when at the same time his own children and dependents are neglected and starving at home ? To say the least, he is a cruel, heartless and wicked father, a scoundrel whose scarlet sins are not made white by all of his generosity! Is it not, therefore, most shocking to hear that the “Great White Father” of America has turned out to be just such a worthless fellow as this ? Yes, Uncle Sam’s charity to foreign nations is very great. He gives millions of dollars to Greece, Turkey and China, pours out billions of dollars for European recovery, and gives away trainloads of food and boatloads of machinery and materials to needy nations. But at the same time he deliberately and knowingly turns his back on thousands of hungry and altogether destitute children in his own country, children of the redskinned North American Indian whom he solemnly vowed would be properly cared for by the government for all time! Nor is this criminal negligence an unavoidable outgrowth of the present postwar confusion. Ever since the white man killed off the early Indians and paid a paltry $24 for Manhattan island he has systematically robbed, persecuted and killed the descendants of the true and original Americans. With great fraud and deception the white man, while posing as the guardian and protector of these defenseless people, has scalped them of their possessions.

The shocking story of the American Indian’s suffering during the past winter has been vividly told by a few newspapers and magazines. “America’s biggest slum,” to quote Will Rogers, Jr., in Look magazine, is the Navajo Indian reservation located in the southwestern part of the United States. It is a “vast concentration camp of desert and non-irrigable land”, where the Indians “are struggling to exist under intolerable conditions of poverty, illiteracy, disease and neglect. They are dying and starving, are sub-underprivileged, because of the abject neglect of their own country—these United States,” according to the Los Angeles Examiner. After speaking of the Indian’s “theoretical privileges”, the New York Herald Tribune says: “In practice, the Navajo has been reduced to squalor and poverty equal to or surpassing the worst war zones of Europe and Asia; he has been deceived, exploited, confined and then virtually ignored by a government which has shrugged aside treaty obligations.” More than a national disgrace, the Indian’s plight has become an international scandal.

But you must visit the interior of the Navajo reservation to fully appreciate how deplorable living conditions really are. It is the largest and worst of the Indian “concentration camps”, and is situated mostly in New Mexico and Arizona, with portions lying in Utah and Colorado. In size its 24,000 square miles is equal to that of West Virginia, or three times the area of Massachusetts. On this reservation is a population of 61,000, about one-sixth of all the Indians in the United States.

A Close Look at Horror

Hunger is the Navajo’s greatest enemy. Whereas the U. S. government sees to it that the defeated Nazis receive 1,500 calories per day, and the Japanese 1,300 calories, the poor Navajo is expected to exist in this “land of plenty” on starvation rations amounting to 1,000 to 1,200 calories, which he gets chiefly from bread, coffee and mutton. The clothes of the Navajo are only rags, and there are not enough of these to keep him warm. It is indeed a pitiful sight to the tenderfooted visitor to see little children walking around on the frozen ground barefooted because they have no shoes. Do you hesitate to enter their homes called hogans? We do not blame you. Made of rough timber covered over with dirt, they look like mud igloos. There are no windows, and only a bole in the side for a door and another in the roof to let the smoke out. There is no furniture. The family sleeps on the floor and the floor is plain dirt. A fire is built right on the floor in the center of the single room. Sanitation is unknown. There are n,o plumbing facilities, no electricity, no transportation, no running water. Often small children carry water for many jjiiles from the nearest creek because their sick parents are not able to walk.

Is it any wonder that the Indians who are forced to live in such loathsome conditions are half-dead from disease? Statistics show that the death rate of the Navajos is from ten to fourteen times as great as the U.S. national average! Their life expectancy is shorter than any other group in America. Half their children die before they reach the age of five.

There is no baby food; so when a mother is not able to nurse her growing baby she starts to feed it green corn. Death from diarrhea is the result Besides having the highest infant diarrhea rate, these Indians have the highest pneumonia rate, the highest tuberculosis rate, and probably the highest venereal disease rate. Another curse that runs riot among these people is trachoma, a form of blindness that cripples a large percentage of the adults, and which is caused by malnutrition during childhood. Other diseases that find the reservation filth fertile soil include typhoid fever, smallpox and diphtheria.

Don’t think for a moment that the Indians live in this muck and downtrodden condition because they are morons. Don’t show your ignorance by saying that Indians are capable of saying only “Ugh f” True, in the last eighty years the Navajos have produced no medical doctors, no college professors, no engineers and no scientists. However, intelligence tests show that Indian children are equal to the standards set for the white man’s children. Hence, the Indian’s backwardness is due entirely to a lack of education. Only 5 percent talk English fluently, 15 percent understand a little English, and SO percent are totally illiterate. Their superstitious demon religion also has a deadening effect on their advancement and learning.

The stench of these putrid reservation conditions has reached to high heaven, and irate citizens who love-justice and equality want to know the cause, in order that a remedy may be found. Why, on the reservation, is there a shortage of food, clothing, housing and transportation? Why is there a lack of medical care, a lack of proper education, and a lack of knowledge of the true and living God?

Why are 61,000 people not able to live in an area three times the size of Massachusetts, which is able to support 4,500,-000? The answer is simple. The reservation is nothing but a vast, wind-swept, sandy wasteland that is practically roadless, waterless and fruitless. Why. do not the Indians go to work in factories ? No factories. Why do they not work in the mines? No mines. Why do they not do more farming? No water. Why do they not raise enough livestock? No grazing land. Why, then, do they not migrate to more fertile country? Because on every hand they are hemmed in by tribal language, custom and religious barriers, and on every side by a selfish and hostile country full of racial prejudice, a country that is too busy with the problems of world domination to give much consideration to these "forgotten people”.

Eighty years ago, when the reservation was set up by treaty, in 1868, there were only 10,000 Indians, and the land was able to support their sheep. But as the population rose and six times as many were squeezed in, the boundaries, instead of being expanded, were actually contracted by land steals. We are told that these conditions of overcrowding have made firewood to disappear, the grass to vanish and soil erosion to set in, until today the reservation is a wasteland. Unlike the eastern seaboard of the United States, the reservation is a desert country. It seldom rains, and there are few wells, and fewer reservoirs. All together there are perhaps 23,000 acres under cultivation. A proposed irrigation project to cost several million dollars would bring water to only an additional 117,000 of the 15,000,000 arid acres.

At one time the land maintained 1,000,000 sheep; but in 1934 “new deal” experts came along and said that the land was overgrazed, and, by government edict, cut the flocks down to between 350,000 and 400,000. Accordingly a family of five or six that requires a flock of 200 to 350 to support itself is limited to 61 sheep.

White Man Wields Tomahawk

Right here, behind all these figures, one sees the shadow of a tomahawk in the white man’s hand, and it is red with red men’s blood. Were the number of sheep cut in half because the land is over-grazed, as the “raw dealers” say (the same imbecilic “experts” who plowed cotton under and killed off pigs) ? or was it because heap-big paleface sheep barons wanted the Indian flocks cut down? The truthfulness of the latter suspicion is strengthened by the rank and odious instances of where white sheepmen glazed their own flocks on the “grassless” Indian reservations I Back in 1936 John Collier, Indian Commissioner at the time, said:

The report of the Department of Agriculture states, and shows by successive examples, that Indian after Indian has been persuaded, through debauchery with whiskey, to surrender his breeding stock and thus to lose his foothold as a livestock man. In exchange for whiskey, systematically peddled to these Indians, Navajo family after Navajo family has given up its foundation stock. Thereupon automatically and systematically, these livestock barons have moved their sheep upon the Indian range. So it has come about in the Pueblo Alto area that the Indian livestock has shrunk from 100,000 to fewer than 37,000. Every Navajo animal that has vanished has been replaced by one or more animals belonging to the "big fellows".

So the land is too nude for Indian sheep, but is O.K. for the white man’s sheep. But this is only one of the many games of cheat at which the Indians have been beaten to the ground and sculped by the ruthless and savage white man. The white traders (and there are about 125 of them) compose another pack of Indian scalp hunters. They buy a $25 yearly license from the state (thus the state becomes a party to their crimes), and then by applying their bartering tactics of lying, stealing and cheating, they rob the Indians of their works of art and sell them to the tourist trade at a fabulous profit, a business with a yearly income of $50,000 to $150,000. The Indian’s skill at weaving blankets and rugs, and fabricating silver and turquoise jewelry, is known the world over. If given a fair return for his labor he could make a living, but not so under the trader’s form of slavery.

Medical and Educational Needs

On the fringes of the reservation there are some life-saving npedical facilities, but nothing to compare with what there should be. In fact, during the last four years it is reported that five of the small hospitals have been closed for lack of funds. Think of it, for the relief of the suffering there is only one doctor, one nurse and one dentist that do any traveling in this sea of misery!

In 1868 the government promised that in the future Indian children would be given the same education given white children; that for every 30 children a school and a teacher would be provided. But what are the facts T Today 90 percent of the Indians can neither read nor write! Deliberate bungling by political grafters has flouted education of the Indian. As an example, in the early 1930’s the government built 50 schoolhouses, many of them miles away from any Indian settlement or water supply. Many of them were never used, and simply crumbled away. In the last twelve years not a single classroom has been added (in fact, some schools have been discontinued), yet the population in this period has increased by 10,000. As a result, today, of the 25,000 children, who are eager to learn, only 5,000 to 7,000 have received any education whatsoever. Even when they go to school, instead of being taught practical things that will lift their standard of living they are taught their native folklore, dancing and weaving, all of which will keep the future generations bound to the reservations and to their primitive superstitions. Indian parents cry in protest against this and beg .that such miseducation be discontinued; but to no avail. "Keep ’em on the reservations,” is the scalpers’ policy! Keep them weaving for the traders 1

The missionaries that have swarmed over the reservations also have made little progress in educating the Indians. Up until World War II, besides the many Protestants, over 1,000 Catholic priests, nuns and lay brothers infested 81 reservations in the United States and Alaska, yet only 2 percent of the Indians have been "Christianized”. Christendom’s cults, instead of uplifting and setting the Indians free with a knowledge of the truth (it is the truth contained in the Bible that makes one free.—Gala-tions 5:1; John 8: 32; 17:17), they have implanted in the Indians more religious superstitions. Why, even the director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions stressed "the Church’s policy of respecting the personality, the language, the customs, and the institutions of the various people with whom she deals”, to quote the Catholic Telegraph-Register. Like the policy of the other exploiters of the Indians, tfie creed of the Hierarchy is: Keep them illiterate and ignorant, do not change their language, their superstitious customs, their hogan-hut institutions, or their demonized medicine-man affliction of the sick. What these modern proselytizing pharisees seem most interested in is their huge slice of money appropriated by the government for Indian education. Nine of these missions will get $185,000 in the next fiscal year.

Wickedness in High Places

Far more responsible for the despoiling of the Indians than the cheating traders, livestock shysters and missionary parasites are the government bureaucrats, both state and federal, that rule the reservations as overlords. Money is appropriated for Indian relief— $100,000,000 has been spent on the Nava-jos during the last 80 years—but by the time it filters through the sticky fingers of government agencies the Indians see very little of it'. For example, 216 federal employees are op the pay roll to look after the work of 33 doctors and nurses in the small Health Department that is assigned to the Navajo reservation.

But one should not get the Idea from this that the Indians are not the recipients of many "blessings” from the “benevolent” government of the "Great White Father”. These true Americans were given their citizenship in 1924, but even to this day they are not allowed to vote in Arizona or New Mexico. They were drafted during the war, some 25,000 of them in violation of the treaties,‘■but as veterans they are denied G.I. loans for new homes. Another 40,000 worked in war plantsj paid sales taxes, income taxes and social security taxes, but they cannot receive a penny of old-age pensions or social security benefits. Why, they are even "honored” by being on the government pay roll. Yes, sir I The big-hearted and over-bounteous Uncle Sam gives his Navajo wards a monthly allowance amounting to something like $64 a year. The head of one family said he got the handsome amount of $8,50 a month. Now, honestly, would you like to he a loyal Indian trying to keep your family on such an allowance with flour costing $8.00 a sack? or would you prefer to be a Nazi enemy well cared for in the American zone?

If the public becomes enraged at this wanton mistreatment handed the Indians an "investigation” is started. Another "inspection” is begun. Another “survey” of the problem is made. As an old Indian once lamented: “All these highly paid people do is ride around all day long in government cars, inspecting us.” Answering the starvation charges, these peanut-brained bureaucrats came up with the magnificent deduction: “The Navajos are not dying of starvation. They are dying of diseases caused by malnutrition.” But which is worse, to die outright of starvation or suffer a slow, hideous death with the prolonged agonies of malnutrition?

No, not all the Indians died this last winter. The majority lived, but it was MiT 8, 1948

only because carloads and truckloads of food and clothing were donated around Christmastime by private charity. About the same time a miserly Congress voted a stingy $500,000 for Indian emergency relief, as a sort of soothing balm for the nationaUguilt that stabs the white man’s conscience.

Row Indians Were Robbed of Land

Stealing valuable land from the Indians is nothing new for the white man. He has been doing it ever since he began colonizing this continent. The very deeds of the land now in the white man’s hands were written with the red man’s blood, the story of which is found on some of the blackest pages of American history. Turn to- the case of the Sioux Indians who were driven into the Black Hills, Powder River and Big Horn country, which is now embraced by portions of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana.

In 1868 the Fort Laramie treaty was drawn up, stipulating that this area was to be a "permanent reservation” and henceforth “no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle or occupy any portion of the same or, without the consent of the Indians first had and obtained, to pass through the same”. But alas! in less than a year the white man made the treaty a scrap of paper, and General Sherman, noted for his creed that ’only dead Indians are good Indians’, was again making Indians “good”. The white man w’anted to build the Northern Pacific railroad across the Indians’ land, so his surveyors were sent in without permission. General Custer’s palefaced warriors provocatively violated the treaty in 1874 without permission. Prospectors swarmed over the Black Hills in search of yellow gold without permission. Thereafter wholesale scalping campaigns under the command of Generals Crook, Terry, Gibbon and Miles killed off all but a remnant of the Indians in this part of the country.

Finally a commission in 1876 undertook to draw up a new treaty minus a great portion of the land included in the former treaty. In its report the commission said:

While the Indians received us as friends and listened with kind attention to our proposition, we were painfully impressed with their lack of confidence in the pledges of the government. At times they told their story of wrongs with such impressive earnestness that our cheeks crimsoned with shame. In their speeches and recitals of wrongs which their people had suffered at the hands of the whites, the arraignment for gross acts of injustice and fraud, the description of treaties made only to be broken, the doubts and distrusts of our present profession of friendship and good will, were portrayed in colors so vivid and language so terse that admiration and surprise would have kept us silent had not shame and humiliation done so.—Doane Robinson’s History of the Sioux Indians.

George E. Hyde, in his History of the Oglala Sioux Indians, shows us the white man’s teeth which reveal him to be a savage real estate shark:

Under the cloud of war the government had taken the Black Hills, the Powder River lands and the Bighorn country. The pretense of formal agreement and fair payment which Congress had devised to veil this act of robbery did not even deceive the Indians. The chiefs knew that they were being robbed and that they were forced to sign away their lands. Here are beef, flour and blankets (said the United States) for your lands in Laramie Plains and between the forks of the Platte, which we took from you before 1865; and here (said the United States) are the same beef, flour and blankets for your lands in Nebraska which we took before 1870; and (said the United States, with an air of vast generosity) here are the same beef, flour and blankets for the Black Hills, the Powder River, and the Bighorn lands which we are now taking from you. In all fairness, that is very near the true meaning of the “agreement” of 1876, by means of which these last lands were taken from the Sioux.

Other examples could be cited of where the white man has robbed the Indians of 600,000 acres in southern Utah within this twentieth century.

Modern Scalping Operations

Great advances have been made in the art of scalping without drawing blood. Anyone desiring to strike it rich in oil, make a few millions on coal or lumber, or reap a fortune in the salmon business, has only to ape the white man's modern land-stealing tactics. Big mining companies, fish canneries and lumber interests in Alaska have stripped millions of Indian acres of their resources in utter disregard of the treaty rights of the 35,000 Indians, Aleuts and Eskimos in that country. Though bloodless, such wicked deeds are not committed without causing the victims much pain and suffering. Crying out in protest against this rapacious robbery the president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, in a letter to the National Congress of American Indians, said, in part:

Our homes and lands, our fisheries and trees, our trap-lines and reindeer, everything we possess is being seized or threatened by unscrupulous white men, who tell us that what they are doing to us has been approved in Washington. All of the promises that have come to us from Washington are now broken. ... We were promised by President Roosevelt, ‘President Hoover, President Coolidge, President Wilson and even by presidents before their day, that our possessions should always be protected. Now the men in Washington who are supposed to be our protectors say that big corporations can take our trees, our minerals and all our lands without asking permission or paying us. . . .

Why are we suddenly to be made what you call “displaced persons”? Is it because our skins are not as light as yours? But the Declaration of Independence you brought us says that all men are created equal. Your Constitution promises that the property rights of all men—not just white men—shall be safeguarded. And the Bible that you brought us

and translated into our native tongues says that we are all brothers and children of God. It does not say that it is all right for white men to rob from men of copper skin.

From this it is obvious why the scalp-hunters are not interested in the Indians’ learning the “naughty” art of reading. But even those that are not able to read, or not able to write the truth as caustically as the above letter, know that the white man on many occasions has been and is a treaty violator and covenant breaker. “Chief Broken Treaties” is what they dub double-dealing Uncle Sam!

Figures released in 1945 show that under the terms of 389 treaties with the Indians the white man gained possession of 2,600,000 square miles of territory, or 95 percent of the country, at a cost of about 48 cents per acre. Today the land is valued at more than $40,000,000,000.

And let none say that the paleface has reformed because $8,500,000 is being paid by the federal government for 300,000 acres in southeastern Oklahoma that is owned by the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. It is just another bloodless massacre, for in this tract there is more than 769,000,000 tons of high-grade bituminous coal, worth billions of dollars, readily available for mining, and 1,000,000,000 tons more deeper down. Then there is the recent case where the government stole a vast subterranean reservoir of helium gas from the Nava-jos. For this fabulous quantity of rare and precious helium, worth untold millions of dollars, the government paid the poor, half-starved, illiterate and helpless Indians the sporting sum of $147,799.

And so it goes. One Could continue to cite many other overt acts and crimes of wickedness suffered by the native American Indians. As Jim Marshall says in Collier’s magazine, the Indians have been “studied, surveyed, inspected, exhorted, robbed, exploited, bawled out, wept over and ruined almost beyond redemption”.

Let the white man bury the hatchet and repent. Let the officials redeem themselves from this woeful indictment. Let the government that spends billions for foreign relief remember that charity begins at home. Feed the hungry Indians. Give their babies milk. Provide them with sufficient clothing. Give them medical care and attention. Pay them for the stolen lands. Give them back their sheep. Open up their reservations. Develop their land and resources. Let them reap the fruit of their own labors. Remove the exploiters and oppressors. Take away government support of the missions. And, above all, educate them to read and write. All this will at least give them temporary relief. Of course, for permanent relief and a lasting remedy, the American Indians, like all other people of the earth, must put their hope and trust in the glorious, perfect and eternal Theocratic kingdom of Jehovah God and His Christ.

44T T PON the earth.

U distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which, are coming on the earth.” Thus Christ Jesus foretold conditions.that would come in the “last days” of Satan’s world, just prior to Armageddon. (Luke 21:25,26; Revelation 16:14-16) Who will deny that the nations are now sorely distressed and perplexed, that the seas of restless humanity are tossed and whipped about by the tempestuous roarings ened political leaders? They unleash upon'the troubled masses of people their windy charges and countercharges, their wars of words, their wars of nerves, .their cold wars. Cold wars that threaten to become shooting wars. But thus far, as one reporter put it, the cold war has only developed into the shooting-off-the-mouth war. Both rulers and ruled have hearts filled with fear, fear for the future of the atomic age.

Listen to the outcries of fear from scattered parts of the world. In Costa Rica “a reign of terror and lawlessness” grips the land, in the throes of revolution (April 6). March 27 Greek Foreign Minister Tsaldaris filed complaint with the United Nations that in Greece there had been “loosed a reign of terror so calculat-ingly cruel as to challenge description”. Also in March Secretary of State Marshall said, “The world is in the midst of a great crisis, inflamed by propaganda, misunderstanding, anger and fear.” He declared Czechoslovakia gripped by a “reign of terror”. Henry Wallace shouted back that President Truman had “set the pattern for a reign of terror” in the United States. On March 15 the New York Daily Mirror said editorially : “This is a new thing for Americans. Fear! Fear in their own land. Fear in their homes. Fear for their children. It is fear born of the disunity in America and the aggressions abroad of an expedient ally turned enemy.”

Next during the mad month of March comes a call for one slave to free another. Anne O’Hare 5 McCormick declared that “the United States, however, must find some way to liberate Europe from fear”.

Last November 10 Albert Deutsch, writing in the New York PM, jabbed at jittery United States for becoming such a nervous nation, saying:

What a nation of gossipmongers we’ve become ! Rumors are flying. Our Congress is being turned into an Assembly of irresponsibles, where tattle and gibble-gabble are accorded the same weight as truth and common sense. As the President’s Committee on Civil Rights expressed it more elegantly the other day, we’ve got a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. We jump like mad, as though the earth beneath us were shaking, every time Stalin sneezes, and we—the world’s most powerful people— see world-wide conflagrations every time the Man in the Kremlin lights his pipe.

On April 12 Trygve Lie, secretary general of the United Nations, said: “Today, as in 1933, too many people are afraid. People are afraid in America. They are afraid in Russia. They are afraid in small countries like my own. And the governments, too, are acting as if they were afraid.” That just about wraps up the entire world in the blanketing tear.

Fear looms ever larger because of World War III that hovers on the horizon, with its unknown terrors of atomic warfare. Tossing the troubled waves of humanity to higher pitches of anxiety and fear, Lieut. Gen. A. C. Wedemeyer, on April 6, asserted: “To be brutally frank the ugly clouds of war are once again gathering on the horizon.” And what those war clouds of the atomic age hold in readiness to downpour on the earth strikes still more fear into the people’s already failing hearts. Recently an aircraft builder, G. L. Martin, excited the nation about radioactive clouds that could be drifted across enemy territory, causing horrible death and widespread desolation. He described the atomic cloud as “the greatest killer of human beings ever devised”. Isn’t that a nice triumph for science? He added, “I wouldn’t want to visit any nation that got a taste of it for a year afterward.” His Baltimore company makes a rocket supposed to rise 235 miles high. Guided missiles with homing devices have been developed, and he boasted: “We can sink the ship even if it is halfway across the Atlantic.” Then there is bacteriological warfare to add its contribution to the mounting war fears of “civilized Christendom”. And if more fear is to be fomented, speak mysteriously of potent cosmic-ray bombs!

Atomic bombs, of course, will play their part, and much more fearfully than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due to subsequent scientific research and development. On this point Dr. Urey, one of the foremost scientists in the atom bomb project, said, April 11: “Atomic bombs have been developed to the point where we can’t expect to use them in large-scale war and have the human race survive.” Previously he had written concerning fear: “I write this to frighten you. I’m a frightened man, myself. All the scientists I know are frightened, frightened for their lives, and frightened for your life. . . . We who have lived for years in the shadow of the atomic bomb are well acquainted with fear, and it is a fear you should share. . . . Freedom from fear? We will eat fear, sleep fear, live in fear, and die in fear.”

Does the United Nations calm these fears? President Truman had expressed confidence that world peace could come by world co-operation through the international organization. That was last December. During March he was reminded of his “confidence”, and he confessed that “his confidence had been somewhat shaken, but that he was still confident of ultimate peace. He added that we must have peace”. Premier Pekkala of Finland was more blunt, saying bitterly of the United Nations: “Hopes of organizing international affairs through this organization have collapsed.”

Does religion calm the rampant fears and soothe restless humanity? On March 28 the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of New York, Charles K. Gilbert, said: “We stand bewildered and afraid before all the baffling problems that now threaten to destroy everything we hold dear.” Catholics are under even greater stress of fear, if we can believe Representative Donald O’Toole, who, on March 19, urged the United States to guarantee the safety of the pope, saying that if anyone should “bring harm to this holy man, it would be a world tragedy”. Because of conditions in Italy he declared that a “terrible fear has been placed in the hearts of more than 25,000,000 Roman Catholics”.

Only true Christianity casts out the paralyzing force of fear. “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” —1 John 4:17,18.

T> ANNOUNCE the death of a king, in most parts of the world, means much publicity to the whole world. It means a great heralding forth through international communication systems. However, in many parts of Africa the death, of A king means little or nothing to the rest of the world; but to the inhabitants of the tribe over which the king ruled it means a great deal.

On December 28,1947, the death, after but a short reign, of Nii Tackie Ta-wiah II, king over the Ga state, occurred, in Accra, the capital city of the Gold Coast. The Ga state, though small, is a very important region stretching from Obutu on. the west to Tema on the east. This stretch of territory occupies a coastline of about fifty miles and embraces some 919 square miles. In all, the population is some 250,000 inhabitants, the greater portion of which are illiterate and only able to speak the Ga native vernacular.

On the day of his death, December 28, the body of the late king was laid, in state, libation was poured by the high fetish priest, there was a volley of rifle fire, and the air was rent by the doleful beating of the drums. This custom of firing the rifle shots when a man of rank dies is to let the long-dead know that an illustrious newcomer is arriving.

Much ceremony was carried out in the preparation of the body before the funeral, and regarding some of these customs the book Religion and Medicine of the Ga People, page 198, paragraph 1, bays: “Immediately a death occurs in a household the first thing that is done, other than wailing and crying, is to call in the old women of the dead man’s father’s family and of his mother’s family also to wash and shave the corpse,” Commenting further, paragraph 5 adds: “The fingernails and toenails of the body are also cut very short before the bathing. This is to remove the risk of mourn-

ut throwing some ' ~ora£ath

And here in the palace the pr libation wore closely followed.

For the three days following his death, numerous relatives, friends and subchiefs poured into the precincts of th$ palace or Mantse We. Outside the palace each day were crowds of natives all performing customs, of a numerous kind. The news of the death had flashed across the country like wildfire, and before the corpse was cold relatives and mourners from distant villages had made their appearance. Day by day the masses flocked to the palace. The noise of wailing, rattling beads on calabashes, dancing and drumming made a racket designed to flatter the vanity of the departed. This mourning procedure was not limited to the relatives of the deceased. Women not bound by blood ties or friendship to the dead person were there the whole day, sustained by purely ceremonial tears." Drinking was ever seen in and around the palace grounds. As merrymaking was carried on, visitors would contribute their money to -the funeral cost. The charges of drinking are, many times, of a crippling nature to the relatives of the deceased; but a lifetime of debt is preferable to an offended dead relative.

At ⁺he conclusion of three days of such revelry, the time arrived for

The Funeral Procession

At the scheduled time, amid the doleful beating of tom-toms, the funeral procession started. Crowded along the burial route were many people, all anxiously awaiting the events to follow. Some people had gained prominent positions along the route, on' the tops of buildings and automobiles. Others were lined in solid ranks along the sidewalk.

The spectators, most of whom were of the Ga state, were attired in the varying native garments. Men of the tribe wore long robes slung loosely over their left shoulder while at the same time exposing the right arm and shoulder naked. Very few of the natives wore anything on their feet, as these things are considered a luxury. Women, likewise in the usual way, with long cloths to their feet, also carried their babies on their backs. Noteworthy among the spectators were also many Mohammedans clad in their typical white gowns. In all, the sight was a mass and blaze of brilliant color.

The procession as it moved into sight was headed by the headsmen of the various tribal communities. These warriors were naked except for a short grass or

In close proximity to these followed soldiers attired in red-and-black-striped garments, holding high in the air their rifles, running as they went on their way, shrieking wildly, occasionally bowing, then retreating so as not to get too far ahead of the coffin.

Moving in line along in the procession came the many divisional chiefs, so well identified by the many colorful state umbrellas, carried by their servants.

Then the richly decorated casket or coffin borne on the shoulders of six bearers followed. Not in even motion did it follow along in line- No, not by any means. The coffin was indeed an unruly burden, for it would lurch and plunge forward, and several times spin round, shy, and then “take the bit between its teeth*’ and charge off into side streets. The bearers in facial expression looked suffering and sweating creatures. Tradition has it that if anyone is responsible for the death either by witchcraft, poison, or bad medicine, the coffin will lurch and rush toward the house of the offender and refuse to pass it. The rushing around the town in this way with the coffin is for the purpose of giving the corpse the chance to say “good-bye^,J to its friends. It is the last time that the dead man will be able to make people run about for his pleasure, so he takes full advantage of it.

Amid dancing, drums and infectious excitement three children of the late king were carried in an elephant palanquin. The noise of drumming and other music by this time had reached a crescendo.

Trailing still farther in the rear of this palanquin came crowds of relatives and friends of the deceased, and other associates, in ever-increasing numbers as the burial site was neared.

Details as to the last funeral rites administered at the graveside are not definitely known on this occasion, owing to great secrecy of the matter. However, the usual, -customary procedure is outlined for us in the book Religion and Medicine of the Ga People, page 205, from paragraph 1 on:

At the burial place various [fetish priestesses] are possessed and are ready to deliver any messages from the dead chief. Only a few people can squeeze into the little room under which the chief is buried. Food is sprinkled three times on the grave and rum is poured three times with the words: , , , Grandfather, mantse, come and eat. . - . Every ghost, all of you, come and eat. And crush all misfortunes. Give us a good mantse, and abundant meat and com. Hail! Let happiness come.

After all this the officials present call upon the dead mantse in the name of the devastation of the battle of Katamansu, saying that if he knows that his death was caused by any human being he must kill that person, but if it was a natural death that he died , ₊, he must sleep in peace.

The ideas and traditions of the tribes inhabiting this country are numerous and widely different from one another. Thank God, however, that the customs and precepts of this old world will shortly go and forever make way for that New World, the “world without end”. —Awake! correspondent in Gold Coast.

Jehovah's witnesses Not “Reds”

(So often the false charge is made by ignorant and rabid Catholics that Jehovah’s witnesses arc communists, that it is of more than passing interest to note a statement to the contrary in an official Catholic publication. Gabriel Gagnon, C.Bs.R,, writing on the subject “The Witnesses of Jehovah”, published in the French language magazine Annettes de la BONNE SAINTE ANNE de Beaupre, Quebec, P.Q., September, 1947, says: *It is good not to ignore that Russia is the only land where the witnesses have nut yet been able to implant themselves. The iron curtain of M. Stalin is for them also impenetrable.” However, in Russia there are Witnesses preaching, under difficulty.

Catholic News Flashes

Catholic Conquest of America

“I add, with both hesitation and regret, my feeling that a good deal of what is most reactionary in the political and social life of America

today is directly traceable to the influence of a militant Roman Catholic Church, which is as much the expression of the purposes of a foreign power as any influence exerted by the Communist party. No other body has the same grim responsibility for the tragic fate of the Spanish people. No other body has devoted itself so consistently to poisoning the relations between Russia and the United States. ... It has immense influence over the movie industry. ... It plays a major part in the repression of freedom of speech. ... It is attempting with subtlety and skill to establish a concealed control of trade unions in cities where there is a large Roman Catholic population. I doubt whether there are three Americans today whose authority, direct and indirect, counts for more than that of the cardinal-archbishop of New York. And to this must be added the curious and significant fact that the members of the Roman Catholic Church seem able, like their co-religionists in Great Britain, to obtain pivotal posts in the foreign service. ... Anyone who measures Roman Catholic strength in the United States today with what it was a generation ago cannot fail to be impressed by its growth, as well as perturbed by its direction. Spain apart, I doubt whether there is any country in the world today, in which its authority is greater than in America?’ —Harold Laski, of the British Labor party.

Clearing Hitler’s Catholic Conscience

<L In a letter to Mussolini, June 21, 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of Russia, Hitler gave his reasons for the invasion. He declared: “In conclusion, let me say one more thing, Duce. Since I struggled through to this decision, I again feel spiritually free. The partnership with the Soviet Union, in spite of the complete sincerity of the efforts to bring about a final conciliation, was nevertheless often very irksome to me, for in some way or other it seemed to me to be a break with my whole origin, my concepts, and my former obligations. I am happy now to be relieved of these mental agonies.” Hitler’s friendship with Communism was against his “whole origin” (he was born and raised a Roman Catholic); it was against his “concepts” (he had dreamed of re-establishing the “Holy Roman Empire”); and it was against his “former obligations” (he had signed a concordat of partnership with the Vatican). So by doublecrossing the Russians Hitler felt “spiritually free”.

cAmnesty for Collaborators

C The Catholic cardinals and archbishops of France have asked that the 100,000 Frenchmen convicted of wartime collaboration, and others suspected of the same, be given amnesty. Says the New York Times: “The prelates expressed the belief that France would recover quicker if these persons were relieved of this disability.” What the prelates mean is that France “would recover quicker” to the state of affairs existing when the Vatican-Fascist-Nazi regime under puppet Petain ruled the roost. This Hierarchy request seems to be part of the reported Vatican-sponsored conspiracy to form a “western bloc” of Catholic dominated countries made up of Franco’s Catholic Spain, Salazar’s Catholic Portugal, De Gasperi’s Catholic Italy and De Gaulle’s Catholic France.

&£o More ioc Hallowed Hold-ups

<1 Reports the Denver Post, January 17,1948: “A hallowed custom of thirty years has been discontinued at the Immaculate Conception cathedral. The seat offering of 10 cents a person, formerly collected at the entrance to the aisles by ushers seated at desks, has been abolished, the ‘Very Rev.’ Walter Canaban, rector of the cathedral, announced. ‘The money-changers are no longer at the gates of the temple/ he said. ‘Non-Catholics sometimes thought it strange, and some of the parishioners also objected. We shall depend upon the generosity of the people in the regular offertory collection to make up the difference.’” The money-grabbers inside will hound them to “make up the difference”.

EVEN though the perfect foods of God’s provision in the garden of Eden were no longer accessible to man, the benevolent-Creator made ample provision for the sustenance of His intelligent creatures, in that which the earth would produce: “Thou shalt eat the herb of the field . . . Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground.”—Genesis 3:18, 23.

Among the many herbs or green grasses springing from the soil was one of rich food content, wheat. This staple food has been a means of sustenance for generations of men in all the nations of the earth. So universally has wheat been accepted as a basic article of diet that it has come to be spoken of by many as the staff of life. The first Biblical account of the use of wheat as a main food dates back to the days of Jacob, when it speaks of the wheat harvest.—Genesis 30:14.

In all the many centuries of its use the matter of w’heat enrichment was unknown. Nor is it to be presumed that the users of wheat lost any of its rich food value by its not being “enriched”. And, contrary to the arguments of the votaries of bread enrichment, the earliest users of wheat in its various forms were not cave men of low animalistic temperament and who because of their subnormal mentality gleaned only partial value from the wheat bread they ate. The only dependable and authentic record as to the earliest uses of wheat and other grains as articles of food is to be found in the Bible. From that record wheat was used by men who were of the highest intelligence and were of far finer physique than their progeny of today, Not until this present century was it considered necessary to “enrich” bread.

From its first recorded uses the preparation of wheat to be eaten was most simple. The kernels were sometimes roasted or parched; more rarely the ears were roasted at the fire. The primitive way of grinding the grain was to crush it in a mortar, with a pestle, making the bruised grain, which was eaten without further preparation. Probably it is this, or porridge made from it, that is denoted in the Biblical term “dough”. Generally, however, the grain was ground into meal either fine or coarse. Bread was baked in a bake-oven. The lumps of dough were flattened firmly against the heated wall of the oven or spread on the stove within. At times the loaves were simply placed in the hot ashes or on red-hot stones, in which case care was taken to turn them at the proper time. Frequently cakes were spread with oil; or the dough was mixed with oil or honey.

Such bread was really enriched, but not synthetically. It is certain that food so prepared, while perhaps not pandering to the jaded appetite of today, lost none of its vital mineral and vitamin essentials; it made no claim to being a slo-baked wonder bread, enriched beyond compare.

But Why Enrich?

Simple confession is sometimes unwittingly made in the most naive way. The mere fact of the much advertised enriching of bread is tacit admission that there is need for such enrichment. Hence the naivete of their advertised claim. But does the sun-ripened golden wheat require to be enriched? Ha« not the great Creator placed within the enemical structure of each grain life-sustaining minerals in such balance as to need no artificial enriching? Then why enrich? Or better still, What is being enriched? The claim is made that Vitamins Bj, B₂, niacin and iron are added to the flour used, in the main, to make our daily bread. Just see how snowy white the bread is I Note its light fluffiness! Scientific masterbrains have displayed with pride aluminum-f oilwrapped, “enriched” bread 72 days old that possessed “the characteristics of a freshly baked loaf”. Is this the wheaten flour ground from the rich golden kernels? No indeed! It is the almost worthless starchy residue after the highly perishable but invaluable wheat germ and bran have been removed.

This “refined” residue, from the bulk of the kernel, is the white flour universally used today; “exhausted” flour it is termed even by the millers; mummified flour it is in actuality. To be sure, this mummified flour keeps well, in fact, indefinitely; and the reason is simple. In all foods for human consumption, that part which contains the highly specialized life-sustaining elements is always highly perishable. It is this life germ that is so amenable to attack by bacterial invasion and all kinds of pests. Because of this, whole-wheat flour cannot be kept for any length of time before it becomes subject to spoiling through parasitic attack. Parasites do not attack the starchy bulk of the wheat kernel, but they thrive upon the precious wheat germ. Hence, for economic and commercial

reasons, millers “refine” flour, removing the perishable but vitally nutritious wheat germ and the rich vitamin-containing bran to be used mainly for animal feed. Experimental tests on animals have proved that dogs fed on nothing but white bread will die in two months. Animals lived longer on water alone than on white bread and water.

And yet in view of these undeniably proved facts human creatures have presented to them in all their highly advertised, fanciful forms goods made of “exhausted”, “bleached” white flour; white as driven snow, cakes, cookies, rolls, crackers, refined cereals’and no end of frilly knickknacks, not to mention an “enriched” “wonder” bread. The spurious argument is presented that presentday baker’s bread is far superior to that which grandmother baked. From a commercial baker’s advertisement we quote:

The writer of a typical article starts off by yearning for the good old bread that grandmother used to bake, then charges the baker with taking the good out of bread and putting it into his own pocket. This is all calculated to make people want to rise up and put bakers out of business. Whereas, analysis—from the scientific point of view—of the formula of the bread grandmother usM to bake proves, among other things, that it is woefully lacking in four major nutritional elements: Vitamins B,, B₂, niacin and iron. All of which are contained in modern bread. But enough of this bogeyman business. Let’s take a look at bread as an important food. Let’s see what the only people in the world who are in a position to find out know about bread. That is, scientists —who have no axe to grind.

There can be but one reason why grandmother’s bread was so “woefully lacking” in nutri-

tional elements: grandmother’s flour had been deprived of those elements. It is certain the farmer who grew the golden kernels did not remove those elements. The miller is the one who removed that which scientists avow is essential to human nutrition. For purely economic and commercial purposes those elements were removed. And both grandma and her children have had to endure the scourge of nutritional deficiency diseases resulting from “refined”, “exhausted” and mummified white flour. So deleterious an effect did this have upon so many millions that scientists endeavored to step into the breach by producing synthetically vitamins and minerals with which to “enrich” the exhausted flour. This gesture of science presumed to substitute artificially those lifesustaining elements that the Creator placed in the sun-ripened wheat originally, and which the miller had removed to promote his own ease of handling and for commercial gain,         * *

Political Birth of "Enriched” Bread

And then, as though adding insult to injury, not only has the wholesome wheat been “exhausted” in the process of refining, thus removing its precious vitamin and mineral content, but, to make it more appealing to the eye, the mummified flour is submitted to further processing: bleaching. In this regard the New York Times of December 29, 1947, has some revealing information from “the only people in the world who are in a position to find out”,

A warning that a chemical widely used to bleach white flour which has been found to produce convulsions and fits in dogs, may also produce subclinieal symptoms in human beings that may manifest themselves as alcoholism or some other form of personality disturbance, was sounded . , . at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . . * The bleaching agent, a gas compound of nitrogen and chlorine, has been found in laboratory tests to convert proteins into a nerve poison. The effects on dogs were produced after feeding them on large amounts of the white bread bleached with this agent. While no clinical effects from eating white bread bleached with the chemical have been observed on humans, this may be due to the fact that the amounts consumed by the average persons are not large enough . . , however, there is a strong possibility that it exerts'a deleterious effect on the nervous system and that it may be a contributory factor in pushing potentially unstable personalities over the line. Persons with tendencies to alcoholism may become active alcoholics as a result of even small effects of the chemical on the nervous system ... 90 percent of the white flour produced in this country during the last twenty years has been bleached by this gas . , . we should provide, without delay, more iron in the education of our children, and less nerve poison in their bread.

If Br. Carlson’s assumption is correct, it would mean that some individuals may become alcoholics as a result of eating white bread bleached by the nitrogen-chlorine gas.

Prior to 1940 most of the well-known nutritional scientists in the United States, 'Britain and Canada were in favor of whole-wheat bread and opposed to “enriching” with synthetics. British and Canadian scientists are still opposed to synthetic bread. American scientists, strangely enough, now call for “enriched” bread. Why?

Scientists have an axiom that “scientific truth knows no boundaries, national or otherwise”. What, then, has interposed itself around the borders of the United States to make axiomatic truth within this nation the very opposite of what it used to be, and what it still is in Canada, Britain and parts of Europe? Something pertaining to the nascent doctrine of bread enrichment has caused a complete face-about by such leading American nutritionists as R. R. Williams, synthesizer of thiamin; Dr. Russel M. Wilder, of the Mayo Clinic; and Dr. W. H. Sebrell, of the United States Public Health Service.

A change of heart was indicated when in the late 1930’s the American Medical Association began making favorable gestures toward synthetic enrichment. The director of the A.M.A.’s department of Investigation & Propaganda, Dr, Arthur J. Cramp, suggested to the baking industry that what both doctors and public needed was “education” to the virtuesof white bread. Thereupon the baking industry became good advertisers in the A.M.A.’s two magazines. It was not long until the A.M.A.’s Council of Foods issued a statement which began, “White bread is a wholesome and nutritious food.” The newspapers responded in fine style and then the baking industry bombarded the public with all the subtle advertising broadsides at its command. Now that organized science had in measure given its endorsement, the campaign for "enriched” bread advanced like a tide and grandma’s “exhausted” flour bread was held up as woefully lacking in vital nutritional elements.

The next move was to enlist politics. In 1940 the government’s Food and Drug Administration called for public hearings on flour. During the hearings the A.M.A. made some weighty “deliberations” and recommended “the use of vitamins in certain staple foods, including flour”. From September until November the government hearings'recessed and during the recess Dr. Parran, surgeon general, and Dr. M. L. Wilson, noth of the United States Department of Agriculture, made a suggestion to the milling and baking interests that they call a closed meeting with representatives of science and government. The meeting took place in Chicago. What happened was all the big millers and bakers could ask for, according to the government’s white paper on “enriched” bread, which reported: "When the flour hearings were resumed in mid-November, industry, science and government were thinking together as they had not been able to do so before.”

Six months later grandma’s daughters, the American housewives, were introduced to “Enriched Bread”. By 1942 over two thirds of American baked foods were “enriched”. The goal set by the American Grocery Manufacturers is $24,000,000,000 worth of business a year, Not the least among these commercial grants are the millers and bakers.

Exploitation of the people’s food supply, mainly for the "enrichment” of greedy commercialists, may be reaping its rich harvest now. But the long train of nutritional deficiency diseases following in the wake of such exploitation will reap its just recompense shortly in the time of reckoning at Armageddon. Then, the promise of the great Provider is: “And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil, And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied.” (Joel 2:24,26, Am. Stan. Ver.) Man’s food shall indeed be enriched with the blessing of its Creator.

iiTAlVINE healing” by miracles is gen-JJ erally found among small religious groups among whom there is an unusual amount of emotional feeling, or an excessive desire for the spectacular and miraculous. That tendency may be viewed with a measure of sympathy, for it may indicate a desire for some evidence of the hand of God in the affairs of this troubled life, an evidence which is, however, sought in the wrong direction, “Divine healing” has also been called “faith healing”, as the only thing said to be required is faith on the part of the one to be cured. The faith generally persists stubbornly even when tragic disappointment is its portion. Instances of such kind have been given publicity.

The ease of eleven-year-old Philip Bowers was widely publicized in October of 1946. His mother was identified with a “faith healing” group, and believed that only prayer was required to cure the boy of infantile paralysis. The father demurred, but the mother was adamant. After much prayer the boy finally died, to the great distress of the father, who said, “That religion killed my boy!” But the mother’s “faith” was unshaken. Such instances abound.

Charlatans often take advantage of simple people by working on their credulity and their desire for health. A Negro woman of Monroe, La., was victimized by a woman who persuaded her to turn $1,000 over to her to effect a cure, after, by some legerdemain, she had convinced the Negress that she had supernatural powers. Another case is that of a minister, Myriam Boswer Franz, who, over a period of four years, obtained $4,000 from a victim of poliomyelitis but failed to effect a cure.

There are those who make claims to being “some great one” (Acts 8:9) and whose dominating or domineering personalities succeed in gathering a less self-assertive following around themselves. Cures are among the accomplishments attributed to such “shining lights”. Among them mention may be made of one Daddy Grace, of Washington, D.C., the head of “The Church on the Rock of the Apostolic Faith”. He claims to have power to heal, and is enthusiastically and financially supported by his followers. He is attended by little girls and young women in nifty costumes. He wears long hair and handpamted neckties.

Another personality who appeals to his followers’ love of the colorful and the “miraculous” is Prophet Jones, an adroit Detroit evangelist who lives in oriental splendor at their expense, and provides “blessed photographs” of himself for $5,00 each. He, too, likes hand-painted neckties, paying $100 for one of them.

Mention may be made, too, of the arrival in the United States of Avak the healer, on May 6, 1947. He is an Armenian “mystic” who flew from Persia to California at the request of a rich wine merchant to heal his son, an epileptic of 38. The “healer” touched him, and said he would be well, but no cure followed. Nor have there been any startling accounts of other cures effected by Avak during his stay of several months. Avak is held in high repute in his own country.

“Christian. Science" and Spiritism

Another “faith healing” 'device is “Christian Science”. This asserts the power of the mind over matter, which none will deny as having a basis in fact. But the “Christian Scientists” carry this principle to a great extreme, and claim tb be able to think themselves,'and .others, well. Practitioners are ready to practice on anybody who*cari foot the bills, charging stiff fees for their ministrations. In February of last year an item appeared in the LondonNews Chronicle about a man who claimed to be a “Christian Science” practitioner and who “gave absent treatment” for £1 each to a man who later died just the same. The coroner called in on the case testified that an operation would have saved the victim.

“Christian Science” advertises that a person may be cured of sickness by the very simple expedient of reading Mary Baker Eady’s book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It is unusual to get results from merely reading a textbook. The lessons in most sciences have to be put into practice. But “Christian Science” is quite unusual in every way, denying, in fact, that there is such a thing as sickness. ‘You merely imagine you are sick, and so all you have to do is, change your imagination or “carnal mind”. There just isn’t any evil at all.’ Such inconvenient texts as the following are simply ignored by “Christian Science”: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”—Proverbs 15: 3.

Supernatural healing was attributed to a

W. T. Parish of England in the case of a woman afflicted with cancer who came from Argentina to see him. She failed to contact the healer personally, but he gave her absent treatment, which “cured” her on the way home. The lady stated that she was awakened by a tap on the shoulder, and, going back to sleep, was once again disturbed by someone pulling at her dress with invisible hands, and then stating, “There is nothing wrong with you. You are in perfect health;” She claims to have had no further n'eedfor drugs. In commenting on this caste, London’s “Psychic News” said that while prayer may have played a part, the cure was achieved, as have been all Parish’s successes, by “the co-operation between the human instrument and his healing spirit guide”. The acknowledgment of the real power back of such cures definitely identifies it with demonism, if that had not already been suspected by the circumstances and environment in which these supposed healers are usually found.

Supernatural healing also has a place in the endless ramifications of the Roman Catholic system. There is generally a vision of “Our Lady” or some other “saint” connected with it. Cures are further associated with some shrine or gadget such as the rosary, both of which play a part in the “Grotto of Lourdes” “miracles”. Considerable trickery is suspected in connection with the operation of these profitable centers of healing.

Noted cases, widely advertised, fail of results; but less conspicuous per-sons, about whose crippled condition there is considerable doubt, come hobbling in and in due course throw away their crutches and go leaping out. There is usually an excessive number of crutches hung around such shrines as mute evidence of the power of the particular “saint” there worshiped. But thousands who come in “faith” depart in disappointment, taking with them “holy water” from the “miraculous” spring.

The basis for the claim to “faith healing” is the misapplication of certain texts of Scripture from which it is assumed that such healings are an essential part of Christianity. In the “Thy Word Is Truth” feature of this issue of Awake! the Scriptural angle is considered at some length, and evidence given that “faith healings” are not an essential, of Christianity, though there were genuine cases in the early history of the church. Healing does not prove the Christianity of any group, nor does an absence of it disprove the Christianity of another group.

Associated with the “faith cures” mentioned in the first part of this article are the snake-handling practices of some cults, and some have even gone so far as to drink poison. At Clay, W. Va., in early 1947, a mother of nine children drank a potion of strychnine and died within thirty minutes, in spite of her “faith”; while another demon-deceived member of the cult, Leander Cadle, suffered paralysis from the waist down. At Richmond, Va., also early in 1947, Harvey 0. Kirk, leader of a snake-handling group, was indicted for manslaughter because his wife died of snakebite after handling snakes at a so-called “church service”. The husband’s “faith” was unshaken by his wife’s death. Numerous deaths, in fact, have resulted from the practice of handling reptiles at religious gatherings. There are said to be upward of a thousand believers in this business of snake-worship. The clergy generally must share responsibility for the deaths and suffering that have occurred, for they have not plainly told the people that the passage in Mark (16:9-20) on which such practices are based is spurious and no part of Mark’s gospel. This fact is well-known, or should be, by those who profess to teach the Word of God, but who refuse to enlighten the people, while they hinder those who do enlighten them.

Hypnotic Beating

While not generally considered as “faith healing”, hypnotism does come under that bead when used with the ostensible purpose of healing people or sparing them from pain. Such measures involve the placing of implicit faith in the hypnotist, submitting one’s will to him. When such submission of the will is once accomplished the hypnotist can then hypnotize, and control his victim with little trouble. During hypnotic trance the victim is definitely “out”. One, who had a tooth drilled and filled in hypnotic slbep, said, “Afterward my colleagues told me they had tried to awaken me, even pulling my hair and sticking pins into me” without success. The dentist who had hypnotized her was the only one who could awaken her, by means of his occult power over her. It is admitted that hypnotism is in effect almost the same as the much-advertised yoga practices of the Hindus, a known form of demonism.

Hypnotism has been considered in connection with medical practice for over 150 years but is only lately being extensively used in that field. One writer says: “In the hands of the self-deluded,, the charlatans and the racketeers, hypnosis is a dangerous tool that can maim the victim’s emotional mechanism while depleting his pocketbook.” But such practices will always injure the patient spiritually, whether the practitioner is considered ethical and licensed or not. There is no end of quackery practiced in the field of so-called "psychology”, in which hypnotism is freely employed. There are about 25,000 of these fake doctors who fleece the American people of at least $375,000,000 a year, according to Dr. Dael Wolfle, executive secretary of the American Psychological - Association. An effort is now being made to limit the practice of psychology and hypnotism in that connection to approved persons. The extensive practice of hypnotism is, indeed, causing alarm. The danger associated with its use is admitted. A writer in the New York paper PM says: “We don’t know all the dangers involved in the loose allowance of hypnotism demonstrations. But experts know there is some danger involved, and that public demonstrations should be legally curbed/' This is a step in the right direction; but there is greater danger connected with hypnotism in any form than is realized.

Hence the parents in Washington, D.C., who in April, 1946, raised objection to the use of hypnotism in the schools were most emphatically and indubitably right. Children should be instructed to walk out when such attempts upon their physical and spiritual integrity are made. The use of hypnotism in any form, and its increasing use in connection with “healing”, are but Satan’s dastardly attempt to bring the human race into more complete bondage to himself.

An unusual demonstration of hypnotic wonder-working is that of Mirin Dajo, called “The Invulnerable Man”. He permits himself, under hypnosis, to be pierced with swords, submerged in boiling water, dos,ed with deadly poison or otherwise subjected to death-dealing experiments, without apparent pain or injury, On one occasion, however, he collapsed during a demonstration, because the sword, so it was said, struck a bone. The man claims to have a divine mission, but the demonstrations are of a kind that are foreign to the spirit of God’s Word, where miracles served a purpose.

The connection between so-called “faith healing” and hypnotism is evident. Both are deceptive and ultimately injurious. In the case of religious “faith healing” the accompanying manifestations of "holy rolling”, jerking and shouting, together with other unseemly behavior, testify that these healings are not of God, but of His enemy. Health is not the most important thing. Maintaining one’s integrity toward God is more vital.

Christians Under Roman Rule

From the 7th grade history book used in the public schools of New York |1 | ] । city the following is quoted: “The early Christians were ready to die for J their faith. They refused to worship the gods of the pagan Romans. Since they believed in peace, they would not serve in Borne’s imperial armies. They openly condemned evil deeds. . . . The Roman emperors who wanted to restore the belief in the Roman gods did not look with favor upon the teachings of the Christians. . . . Time after time many ignorant people were persuaded to believe that their misfortunes and diseases were due to these ‘haters of mankind,’ who refused to join them in public festivals and who steadily won people away from the old religions.

“It was easy for Roman officials to believe that the Christians in their secret meetings everywhere, were hostile to the government. Did they not stubbornly refuse to worship the spirit of the Emperor J Did they not speak of Christ as their King 1 The government charged that in their meetings the Christians plotted treason against Rome. Accordingly, throughout the empire officials punished and persecuted Christians at various times. . . . But persecution served only to strengthen their faith and to bring many converts to their cause.”—From the Old World to the New, by Eugene A, Colligan, president of Hunter College, and Maxwell F. Littwin, principal of New York city public schools, 1932, pp. 88-91,

And from a college textbook we learn: “Rome had become gradually full of people espousing foreign cults, who on demand would swear allegiance to the divine spirit of the emperor. The Christians, however, strong in their faith, would take no such oath of loyalty. And because they did not swear allegiance to what we would to-day consider as analogous to the flag, they were considered politically dangerous.”—The Book of Culture, by Ethel Rose Peyser, 1934, p. 549.

^^{ORD is} TRUtjj,,

‘‘Divine Healing” Today?

ONCERNING the great Teacher from Nazareth of Galilee the Scripture document says: “He laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.” Luke the physician so reports at chapter 4, verse 40, of his account. Spiritualists, trance mediums, hypnotists, Christian Scientists, "Divine Healing” sects, etc., earnestly seek to associate themselves with the name of Jesus the Healer in order to stamp themselves as healers in His name and by His power. But all persons who care for their true spiritual health and their prospects of eternal life in the coming new world should be on guard against such so-called “healers”, who, however sincere they may sometimes seem, are undoubtedly the tools of Satan the prince of darkness, who would array himself as an angel of light that he might deceive and mislead the people seeking relief.

It is true that in the first century of the "Christian era” Jesus and His disciples performed miracles of healing, even to restoring the dead to life. There ■was a reason why such' miracles were necessary at the beginning of the Christian church. Had Jesus performed none of the miracles recorded in Scripture how could we today feel the confidence, the assurance, that we do feel respecting Him? Would He in preaching to the Jews have accomplished any work without the use of miracles? Were they not necessary to Him as a demonstration of His right to take the place of the miracle-working prophet Moses and be the spiritual Leader of God’s people now? Assuredly that is trup. But we have no n,eed for such manifestations of miraculous power today. On the contrary, we behold so-called “Christianity” already too popular with this wicked world. As it is, h}^rpocritical “tares” are pretending to be wheat, to deceive.

Some, however, will urge: ‘Psalm 91:3 says God will deliver us from the noisome pestilence that walks in darkness, and Psalm 103:3 says God forgives all our iniquities and heals all our diseases; and does it not seem reasonable that even today God’s people should go to Him in prayer or go to the Christian elders for healing by miraculous power, rather than that we should use drugs, medicines or surgery? Is that not what James 5:14,15 says about our bodily sicknesses?’

We answer, No. It is natural to think that way; that is what the natural mind would expect and crave, but God is not dealing today with His people as with natural men of this world. His true people are not natural Israelites, but spiritual Israelites. Those begotten of Him by His spirit are new creatures. (2 Corinthians 5:17) It is with such new creatures that the Lord God deals n<3w primarily. It is the new creatures that have the privilege of experiencing healing at the Lord’s hands, the forgiveness of sins, awakening from being dead in sins and trespasses with this world, the quickening to a righteous life by the power of God’s spirit, the imputing to us of Christ’s righteousness and thus the giving to us a perfect standing before God the Father of absolute righteousness. If we are new creatures, then, says 2 Corinthians 5:16,’ we, know no, fellow Christian after the flesh, but we do know the perfection and miracles after the spirit, such as the opening of our eyes once blind to truth and the unstopping of our ears once deaf to God’s Word. And many a time have the Lord’s people marveled at the wonderful healing of their mental condition by means of the Bible faith and hope, and the wonderful refreshments, with joy unspeakable, which are things that physical healing could not bring in themselves.

“We walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7) This applies to Christian new creatures. Have these not taken their physical, human, earthly rights and privileges as secured through the death of Jesus Christ and have they not yielded these up in sacrifice as Christ set the example, and have they not received, instead, the heavenly hopes, of a heavenly body that is to be received by them at the “first resurrection” and of heavenly immortality? Have they not agreed to the sacrifice of all their earthly interests, hopes, rights, privileges, and forsaken all these that they might follow their Leader Jesus Christ? Yes, they verily have. Why, then, would they ask to have again the earthly advantages by miraculous means? Would not their prayer, their request, for divine healing indicate a withdrawal of their unconditional consecration to God or a qualifying of it one way or the other? Yes.

Many professing Christians today note the cure of diseases by spirit-mediums, mind-curists, hypnotists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, etc., and are inclined to think of these cures as cases of divine healing. That is a natural tendency; it is natural for men to seek to walk by sight and not by Christian faith. Some Awake! readers will say, Is not Jesus Christ in heaven as able to heal the sickness of our bodies today as He was able to heal the sickness of people in the first century? Yes, unquestionably. More than this, we hold that in heaven He has more power today than He had on earth then. After His resurrection He said: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18) And during His 1,000-year kingdom that is near He will again act the part of the great Physician and will bless and heal in a physical sense all those of humankind who are willing and obedient toward Him as His earthly subjects, lifting them up out of Adamic sin and death conditions to the human perfection that was lost for them in Eden by Adam’s sin before they were born. We must, therefore, not try to run ahead of His due time.

The true Christians today, therefore, will not be deceived by Satan and his demons who try to appear as angels of light and as ministers of righteousness, and who now find it necessary to perform physical signs and wonders in order to deceive the people. The true men and women of Christian faith today will not exchange their simple faith in God’s Word and their prospects of life in per fection in the coming new world of right eousness for a compromise with the counterfeit healers with the temporary physical benefits that these may offer at this present time. They will remember that even the apostles and fellow disciples of the first century used what common ordinary remedies were then available to relieve them of their ailments rather than call for a misapplication of miraculous power to them for instantaneous cure and healing. The apostle Paul had as his traveling companion Luke “the good physician” of some earthly medical school. And to Timothy the same apostle Paul wrote: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” (1 Timothy 5:23) Likewise, the faithful, believing Christians of today will use all reasonableness in applying to their ailments the common remedies, be they wine, or Isaiah’s fig plaster, or the famed “balm of Gilead”. No, they will not be misled by any practicers of so-

called “divine healing” today, but they miraculous and life-saving physical cure will appreciate the spiritual healing that and perfection that Almighty God will the great Physician hag now brought extend to all the believing and obedient them by faith and obedience to God, and of mankind during Christ’s 1,000-year they will look forward by faith to the reign.

""T?*

Venezuela Elects a Leader

DECEMBER 14,. 1947, was an eventful day for the citizens of Venezuela. It marked a new era for the people, as they had the privilege of electing the head or president for their country. Since October 18, 1945, the people have been under a provisional government with its leader Romulo Betancourt. On October 27,1946, one year later, the people had the opportunity to vote for a Constituent Assembly to form or revise a constitution. The Accidn Democratica party won the election, receiving 1,088,601 votes and won 137 out of 160 members in the Assembly. After many months of debating and revising the Constitution was completed, and soon thereafter a date was set for the presidential election.

The citizens voted not only for president but also for members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and for municipal councils. All Venezuelans over the age of 18, of both sexes, were entitled to vote, regardless of their literacy. Only three of the political parties nominated a candidate for the presidency. The Ac-ci6n Democratica party appointed R6-mulo Gallegos; the Copei party, Rafael Caldera; and the Communist, Gustavo Machado. The other parties, such as U.B-D. and P.R.P., nominated candidates for congressional and local offices.

Rdmulo Gallegos was born in Caracas in 1884, He was a teacher in secondary schools from 1912 until 1931, his last fwsition being that of professor of phi-osophy and director of the Liceo Andres Bello in Caracas. In 1936 he was appointed minister of education under L6pez Contreras, but resigned after three months. He is considered the outstanding novelist of this country and has written constantly since 1912. In 1941 he helped to found and became the president of the Accion Democratica party.

The Accion Democratica party which he helped to establish is a leftist party, socialistic in tendency, although anticommunist. Its platform is very similar to the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, and involves a certain amount of economic planning and state intervention in the national economy. In the field of foreign policy it is against Franco of Spain and in the United Nations it is a supporter of leftist regimes.

The young candidate of the Copei party, Rafael Caldera, was born in the state of Yaracuy and educated in the Jesuit School of San Ignacio in Caracas. lie was an active sympathizer of the Franco movement. After the revolution in Venezuela he was offered the post of attorney-general, but resigned later to devote himself to the founding of the Copei party. This party is a Socialist party and very much against communism. It is traditionalist in its defense of the home, the family, and the Catholic Church, but it resents being called conservative. Its chief support comes from the upper class, the Catholic Church, and business groups. During the campaign the Catholic Church made its political position quite clear, and in the newspaper The Caracas Journal, December 5, 1947, this article appeared:

Caracas Church Comes Out Against Acci6n Democratica

The San Francisco Church of Caracas, one of the most important in the country, issued a bulletin this week advising Catholies to vote against the Aecion Demoeratica party in the coming elections of December 14. This is the first formal declaration made by any Church entity here. Up to now, even though the Catholic Church Hierarchy tacitly supported the Copei party,, it.has made a special point of keeping out of the current political campaign, The bulletin stated; ‘The Aecion Demoeratica party is socialist, proposes secular education without God, fights to suppress Catholic schools. Will there be any Catholic who gives his vote to this party? Impossible I The San Francisco Church is under the direction of the Jesuit Order.

Many charges have been made against Gallegos and the Aecion Demoeratica that they were atheist and ungodly. During the campaign Gallegos pointed to a letter signed by 38 priests in support of him and his party. He stated that he would respect religion and hopes a concordat between church and state can be arranged. He also accused the Jesuits of meddling in politics and of being “foreign representatives of Franco and falangism”.

Election Day and Final Results

Election day dawned and the Venezuelan people were all keyed up and ready for this important day. The voting began at 6 a.m. and lasted until about 4 p.m. The entire process was under the vigilance of the Venezuelas Army, and they were on duty at all polling places and patrolled all cities and villages. The voting was efficient, orderly, and a simple process. The citizens voted by means of colored cards, each color representing a party, Aecion Democrdtica was white, Copei green, Communist red, U.R.D. brown, and the Miquelena communist group black. First the voter’s name was checked off in the registration book, fingerprinted and given a complete set of colored cards with an envelope. The sets of cards included two of each color: one large to indicate the voter’s choice for president, the other of smaller size to indicate his choice for congress and state legislature, The voter then chose his two cards and placed them in the envelope, sealed it, and deposited it in the election urn. Before leaving his little finger was dipped in indelible ink so he could not come back later and vote again. This simple process was adopted to accommodate the large masses of illiterate that went to the polls.

The final results were that Komulo Gallegos won a sweeping victory, defeating Rafael Caldera by a very large margin, Aecion Demoeratica also won majorities in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies of the new Congress. The results for the three candidates for president are as follows: Romulo Gallegos 860,588, Rafael Caldera 262,958, Gustavo Machado 36,365. It seems that many Catholics did not follow out the instruction of the San Francisco Church but gave their support to the Aecion Demoeratica party. It also indicates a weakness in the influence of the Catholic Church.

Romulo Gallegos was inaugurated in office in February. He will serve as president for four years. The Venezuelan people are looking forward to a progressive epoch during the coming years under their new leader.—Awake! correspondent in Venezuela.

Ordering Color by Curve

MANY firms that require exact duplication of color for their advertisements or products now order from paint and color manufacturers by color curve. Greater accuracy is thus assured, because color samples may fade or be incorrectly reproduced by the fallible human eye. The color curve, on the other hand, charts by the infallible electric eye the precise component basic colors in any shade whatever. Thus by means of a black waving line on a chart measuring reflectance percent of the colors of the spectrum, mixtures of which form every visible shade, the desired standard color is represented exactly.

While the device for drawing this color curve is naturally complex, the apparatus utilizes simple basic principles of light and color. If sunlight is passed through a prism it is separated into its component colors called the spectrum. The rainbow is a natural spectrum. The arrangement of the colors is according to their wave length, visible violet beginning at 400 millimicrons, and visible red reaching 700 millimicrons, the other colors falling between. Below and above the visible color range are the ultraviolet and the infrared rays respectively. For this reason any color shade can be represented by a curve showing the percentage of all the visible wave lengths from 400 to 700 millimicrons.

In plotting this curve use is made of several other principles of light. One is that all light that strikes an opaque surface is either reflected or absorbed; and another is that light can be transformed into electric current by the photoelectric cell, and precisely measured. Now in the process of making the chart the color sample-sheet has played upon it the various pure-color, or monochromatic, lights of the spectrum in their respective order. The predominant colors (for example, red, if the sample-sheet is red) will be largely reflected while the others will be largely absorbed. The curve will thus, by measuring reflectance through the current set up by the photoelectric cell which received it, reveal high percentages for the predominant color or colors in the sample, and negligible percentages of the others, because almost no colors used commercially are without intermixture. The resultant diagram may take the form of a wave, an irregular line, a saw tooth, or a smooth curve, depending on whether its components are chiefly of high or of low wave length, or various.

These. curves are made more quickly than the description, and the color of liquids can also be plotted. Besides innumerable other commercial uses the curve assures that paint, rouge, lipstick and perfume for the American woman is always identical in color to the last purchased of the same named shade.

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Bogota Conference and Revolt

The Inter-American Conference had gotten under way at Bogota Colombia, Secretary of State Marshall, representing the U, S., had seconded the motion to nominate the Colombia foreign minister, Laureano Gomez, as permanent conference chairman, (Laureano Gomez was an admitted pro-Nazi during the war.) On the agenda were such considerations as the forming of an Inter-American Defense Council as a permanent military agency, and an agreement for economic co-operation among the Americas. A rather serious interruption took place in early April when revolutionists staged a rebellion and attacked the capitol building in which the conference sessions were being held, though none of the foreign delegates were harmed* Gunfire in other parts of the city resulted in a costly toll of lives and property. The insurrection was touched off by the assassination of the Liberal party leader, Ur. Jorge Eliccer Gai him Uncontrolled pillaging accompanied the revolt Finally, the leader of the revolutionaries, Dario Echandia, got into conference with the president, Mariana Ospina Perez, and sought to get him to resign. After long discussion Perez offered to form a coalition govern^ nient, including Echandia and other members of the Liberal party.

Russo-Finnish Treaty

Finland and the Soviet Union, on April 6, signed a ten-year military alliance that will, if ratified by the Finnish Parliament, obligate Finland to resist an armed attack made across her territory against Russia by Germany or any state allied with her* It will also require Finland to accept Soviet military assistance, in case of. necessity, on terms to be decided by agreement. The treaty stresses Finland’s desire to remain neutral in any conflict among the great powers, and specifies that Finnish forces will be obliged to fight only on Finnish soil. Soviet troops may enter Finland only upon Finnish permission* Russia, according to a Moscow broadcast on the treaty, pledges herself not to interfere with Finland's Internal affairs*

The Battle for Berlin

The occupation authorities in Berlin were pushing each other around considerably in early April. The democracies gave Russia the credit of “starting it” by clamping unusual restrictions on the entry of persons and traffic into the zones of the other powers in Berlin, which is in the Soviet Zone of occupation. The U. 5. countered by flying food Into .the American sector and by placing restrictions on the movements of Soviet personnel* Scores of military policemen surrounded the Soviet railway headquarters in the American zone* The Soviets warned that “unusually large numbers” of Soviet fighter planes would maneuver along the U* S. air corridor into Berlin. One of these fighting planes got in the way of a British passenger plane, w^Tith the result that both crashed, killing 27 persons.

Czechoslovakia Under

Communism

<$> President Eduard Benes, of Czechoslovakia, on April 1, received the new Soviet ambassador, Michail Alexandrovic Silin, and said, “Our unity is the natural and concrete expression of the deep friendship which connects our fraternally related nations. . * * the nations of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia are filled with a deep purpose and will to maintain and strengthen if possible an everlasting peace,”

The U.S., on April 2, asked Czechoslovakia to recall two officials assigned to the Czech embassy at Washington as no longer acceptable to the IL S* gov* eminent No reason was assigned for the move*

The Czech regime, on April 9, announced that it would abandon elections on a party basis, and that only a single list would be presented to the voters in the forthcoming elections.

Communists in Iran

On April 8 and 9 the Iranian government, in a sudden security move, clamped down on Communists In the northern province of Mazandaran on the Caspian sea, and declared martial law in several towns in the area. Definite knowledge of Communist plans for an armed uprising in the province of Isfahan was reported by the new^Tspaper Sa&a* The Gorgan plain, lying along the Caspian sea, east of Mazandaran, was to be the scene of the Russo-Communist coup, according to the paper.

Italian Pre-Election Maneuvers & Armored cars and tanks paraded along the Via dei Fori imperial! in Rome early in April ms a display tfr Italy’s armed strength. The parade was considered an answer to Communist threats er force. The Commu-nlBtB called an hour strike for April 12, for all over Italy, in protest against the killing of 85 Sicilian labor leaders in the last two years, charged to have been perpetrated by the Black Hand with political support. The strike was reported to have been a failure, as most of the workers ignored the call to stop work Efforts to halt the Communist advance in Italy were made by U, 8. leaders¹ urging Italians to vote “right¹¹ and reject Communism.

Trieste Proposal Rejected

The Soviet Union, on April 13, rejected the joint British-French-Ambrican proposal to start negotiations In Paris looking to the return of the free territory of Trieste to Italy. Moscow said the proposal violated the elementary principles of democracy.

In the TL N.

On April 3 the United States, Great Britain and Franco proposed that the Security Council of the U, TV. consider membership applications of Italy and Trans-Jordan. The question of Italy's admission was probably raised at this time to Influence the Italian elections. The admission of Italy was vetoed by the Soviet on April 10, which was the third time it had rejected Italy's application for membership. The U. S. Immediately announced that It would try to get all states turned down by the Soviet Union a non-voting voice in the General Assembly. It proposed to take this matter to the Assembly itself for consideration. Toward the middle of April the U. N. was working toward an agreement on a military and political truce for Palestine.

Non-Oommunist Affidavit Legal

A special federal court, on April 18, by a 2-to-l vote, ruled that the government is constitutionally empowered to require union officials to swear that they are not Communists, as a condition to using the facilities of the National Labor Relations Board. The decision was made on the case of the National Maritime Union, CIO, against the NLRB. The court unanimously agreed on the validity of two other subsections of the Taft-Hartley law, referring to the filing of union membership and financial data. The two majority justices ruled that no union has the right to be exclusive bargaining agent, except by grant of Congress through the NLRB.

EKP Administrator

As U. 8. House and Senate conferees completed action on the slx-billlon-dollar European Recovery Program, they nullified the amendment by which, on the vote of the House of Representatives, Spain was also to be eligible. This, the conferees said, was up to the Marshall plan nations. It was believed that the conferees acted on the president’s statement that he was “utterly opposed” to the proFranco amendment. However, there were those w^Tho wondered what the president meant, in view of the fact that fits personal representative, Myron Taylor, was in Madrid having a visit with Franco. Congress passed the completed bill under the title “Foreign Assistance Pact”, on April 2, and 4t was signed by the president the next day. It had taken the Marshall plan ten months from the initial suggestion to arrive at its final en&ct-ment. The administrator Is Paul G. Hoffman.

“Prepare War I”

<$> General EI genhower on Ap r 112 told Congress that the proposed selective draft and the universal military training program were both necessary and should be enacted as soon as possible, in the interest of national security, James Forrestal, defense secretary, gave Congress the national military establishment's detailed recommendations for these programs the same day. Public hearings on these measures were cow pleted j the following day. Congressional consideration followed, revealing hostility to the UMT but backing’ for the draft bill. On April 8 the president and the national military establishment called on Congress for speed in getting a $2,376,100,000 military aircraft production program un* dor way. On the same day the White House suspended for thirty days the sale of all surplus war plants and machine tools not covered by provisions for recovery in case of emergency. The House on April 15 all but unanimously passed a bill for 70 combat groups, instead of Forrestal's proposed 55 group®. The cost was $8,198,100,000.

IT* S, Tax Reduction

<$> A presidential veto of the Republican-sponsored tax-reduction hill was overridden by both Senate and House, by votes of 77-10 and 811-88 respectively; one of the most complete repudiations of a presidential veto on record. The tax law, retroactive to January 1, calls for a total cut in personal income taxes of $4,800,-000,000.

U. S. Presidential Prospects

Wisconsin primaries In early April indicated strong Republican support for Harold B. Stassen, former Minnesota governor, for the presidency. This decided lead was followed by another victory for Stassen in the Nebraska primaries, which showed him to be a top contender for the nomination.

th S. Education Aid Bill

<§> The U. S. Senate, on April 1, passed the Taft aid-to-educatlon bill, 58-22, authorizing federal grants intended to assure that no state will spend less than $50 per pupil annually in any of Its schools. The states themselves will determine, in harmony with their own constitutions, laws and policies, whether any of this federal help will be available to sectarian religious schools. The cost of the first year’s appllca-

tion of the . bill is put at $S00r 000,000,

Soft Coal strike In U> S.

<§> With an order to appear in federal court hanging over his head, John L, Lewis of the UMW In *early April showed a dlsposl-tion to come to some kind of agreement with the government and the operators. He accepted Senator Bridges from New Hampshire as neutral trustee for the industry’s $30,000,000 welfare fund; and It looked as if the pension controversy would be settled. Toward mld-April most of the miners returned to work and coal-burning transportation returned to normal,

Events in' China

<$> General Chiang Kai-Shek threw the Kuomintang (Nationalist) party caucus into consternation on April 4 with the announcement that he would not run for re-election as president of China as long as the nation remained disunited. He said that a well-qualified nonpartisan should be put forward by the party for election to the presidency, and that he would devote himself to suppressing the Communist rebellion, which Is China’s most critical problem. In a report to the constitutional convention Chiang acknowledged Nationalist losses of. 820,000 killed, wounded and captured, and said the Communists had lost 2,290,000 men, a figure which is twice that of the present Red army, according to other reports. Toward the middle of April party leaders had pretty well persuaded Chiang to permit his name to appear on the ballot for the presidency,

Jewfah-Arab Warfare

<$> April saw continued Arab-Jew ish warfare in Palestine. Fighting around the strategic' town of Kastel, dominating the main highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, was intense. The place changed hands a number of times. An all-out attack by Arabs on Jerusalem saw artillery used for the first time In the conflict. Later reports told of an Arab attack on a Jewish convoy, resulting in the death of 34 Jewish doctors, nurses, patients and Haganah guards. The greatest pitched battle fought in the four and a half months of Palestine strife developed In mld-April between Haganah men and an Arab ‘army of liberation^ In the meantime the U. N. was working on arrangements for a truce in the suicidal conflict.

Costa Rican Revolution

April 14 talks were bejun in San Josd, Costa Rica, looking to terminating the six-w’eek strife resulting from last February's presidential election. The rebel forces had come close to victory, A representative of rebel leader Col, Josd Figueres ivas escorted Into San Josd and taken to the Mexican Embassy for the negotiations,

Paraguay Nips Coup

Paraguayan police, on April 10, announced that they had nipped an attempted Communist coup in the bud, asserting that it was co-ordinated with similar moves in other South American countries, Object: To interfere with the Inter-American Conference at Bogota. The plan, reportedly, included attacks on police stations and telephone exchanges throughout Paraguay, Four Com* mu n 1st leaders were arrested and rifles and hand grenades seized.

President Roxas* Death

<$> At Clark Field, Pampagna, Philippine President Manuel A. Roxas on April 15 had delivered an address in w^Thich he affirmed close co-operation with the U, S,, particularly in the event of war. Shortly after his address he died of a heart attack.

Riots in Algeria

<§> Seven persons were killed and many injured in Algeria as a result of clashes between the French police and Moslem Arab nationalists on the occasion of

Algeria’s first elections, April A The Algerians want to be independent and the disturbances in some places were so serious that troops had to be used to disperse separatist demonstrators.

Police Strike in Egypt

More than twenty persons were killed and fifty injured in Alexandria due to a police strike which involved all Egypt. The army was called out to deal with the situation, due to the fact that demonstrators supported the demand of the police for salary increases and other benefits.

Ethiopian Protest

Emperor Haile Selassie said, April 3, that Ethiopia would strongly protest appeasement of Italy* by the return to her of the colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland, which he designated "bases of aggression against Ethiopia” He hasn’t forgotten the pope-blessed assault on Ethiopia by Mussolini,

Pope Asks Forgiveness

The Roman Catholic pope, In a letter to German Catholic leaders made public on April 15_t declared that the world should forgive and forget Germany's war crimes,

lifesaving Factor in Liver

The mysterious factor in liver hat is reputed to have saved the lives of more than a million victims of pernicious anemia in the U, S. alone has been isolated. Announcement of the feat was made April 15 by the research laboratories of Merck and Company. It is considered one of the most important accomplishments in the field for many years. The product has been identified as a member of the vitamin family of the B complex type and has been tentatively named vitamin B_ia, one of the most powerful vitamins In nature. As little as 1/9,000,000th of an ounce will produce a positive response in a patient.

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