CAN RELIGIOUS MEDALS PROTECT YOU?

Examine their history

Radioactive Clocks in the Rocks

How can they tell the age of fossils?

When Youth Gangs Go Wild

A shocking problem and its solution

How to Enjoy Reading

It really can be fun!

NOVEMBER 22, 1956 semimonthly

THE MISSION OF THIS JOURNAL

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

“Awake!” uses the regular news channels, but is not dependent on them. Its own correspondents are on all continents, in scores of nations. From the four comers 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 coverage is as broad as the earth and as high as the heavens.

“Awake!” pledges itself to righteous principles, to exposing hidden foes and subtle dangers, to championing freedom for all, to comforting mourners and strengthening those disheartened by the failures of a delinquent world, reflecting sure hope for the establishment of a righteous New World.

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

Published Semimonthly By

WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC.

117 Adams Street, Brooklyn 1, New York. U. S. A. N. H. Knorr, President        Grant Suites, Secretary

CONTENTS

Facing the Future with Confidence	3	An Obstetrical Curiosity	19
Can Religious Medals Protect You?	5	Let's Visit Tokyo!	20
Adopted by Apostate Christians	6	How to Enjoy Reading	21
Radioactive Clocks In the Rocks	8	“America’s Pastes t-gr owing Disease”	24
On the Lighter Side	11	“Your Word Is Truth”
Cuba’s Muleteer and Mule Train	12	Who Will Fight at Armageddon?	25
Confidence in a Medal?	12	Jehovah’s Witnesses Preach in All
When Youth Gangs Go Wild	13	the Earth—Cyprus	27
Never a Water Shortage!	16	Do you Know?	28
The History of Knitting	17	Watching the World	29

trigue man. In fact, they so intrigue him and are so difficult to come by that he very often accepts totally unreliable ones. And most of the predictions made by men turn out to be grossly unreliable.

Yet men continue to be greatly concerned with the future. Scientists, technologists and industrial planners also are concerned with it, since foreseeing future developments would enable them to direct their work intelligently. Recent reports from the California Institute of Technology told of studies, participated in by faculty members and also by individual industries, endeavoring to foresee and prepare for the developments of the next hundred years. What do they envision?

They envision the spread of the industrial-technological revolution to the most remote parts of the earth and a resulting vast increase in the population. They think that earth’s population will treble in the next hundred years, which, of course, would require a corresponding increase in the world's food supply, already limited in many areas. However, they predict that new crops and the distillation of sea water for irrigation will add a billion new acres to the world’s agricultural area. They are optimistic about keeping production up and keeping the population fed.

But what worries them is man himself.

In discussing these reports columnist Dorothy Thompson said: "The one element that can throw the whole machine Utopia out of kilter is the human being—his loves and hates, passions and dreams, emotions and distractions, his unwillingness to apply himself to the ‘right’ things, his unpredictability.”

She also called attention to the fact that, about the time the C.I.T. report was made, Professor Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist, warned in a Chicago speech that “human ignorance and the power to do evil” could plunge the world into chaos and upset the various promises of the future.

The problem, then, is how to control man, how to fit him to the requirements of this technological or machine age. Novelists have discussed this. British novelist Aldous Huxley in Brave New World _imagined a society completely controlled by the scientists who would produce the types of humans that were needed in a world where the whole object was to keep a vast system of production and consumption going.

Philosophers have discussed it German philosopher Nietzsche said: “Man is something that must be overcome.”

Biologists and geneticists have considered the problem, some even proposing artificial insemination or “test tube” babies to produce the types of people that they feel are needed.

Thus, viewing these possibilities, Dorothy Thompson said: "May not the human instinct, vaguely sensing a future described €y Huxley, blow up the world, or permit it to blow up, in a final urge toward suicide? To let it start from scratch again, as after the flood that saved only Noah, his family and the two of each kind of beast?”

The California Institute of Technology report may speak of the effort to "understand the scientific principles governing the origin and development of human behavior” and to “increase our psychological and emotional efficiency,” but man is a stubborn creature who resists control. Can the scientists exert enough control to guarantee even the existence of our civilization in 2056? Can they assure us of world peace for the century during which these great accomplishments are to be made possible?

Is there nothing that will get to the heart of man? that will change his mind and overcome "human ignorance and the power to do evil”? and that will direct man in the right way? Yes, most certainly there is such a thing! There is a source of truth that does direct man in the right way. What is it? A book that hundreds of millions have, but that few read—the Bible!

The truth of this book really does penetrate straight to the heart of man, changing his view, his outlook, his attitude and his very way of living. It provides the truth that makes man free; it protects him from the philosophy and empty deception of human traditions; it provides words that are tried, proved and true, that are a shield and protection and a source of refuge leading to the real life! From it man can gain faith and overturn false but strongly entrenched things. It is alive, it exerts power and it leads its believers to life.

But how does it affect the scientists’ prediction of the future? It shows where man’s predictions fail and what the future really does hold. It shows that instead of an industrial and technological revolution, a 'spiritual and moral one will come. It shows that wars will cease, peace will come and the desert will blossom, but through God’s rule, not man’s!

It shows that the very source of evil will be destroyed and that earth’s present difficulties are because that destruction is near. "Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.” Satan the Devil knows his time is short, whether the world in general does or not He knows his destruction is at hand, whether the world will admit his existence or not.—Revelation 12:12, New World Trans.

Human instinct rebels against the present conditions. But man will not have to destroy them; God will. He will clean off corruption and let things start over again, as occurred after the flood that saved only Noah and his family—the only humans who would believe God’s warnings and act upon them.

This is not a myth, but a fact. It is not a false prediction, but a true one. It is promised by the Supreme Sovereign, the Almighty God, whose name alone is Jehovah. That promise is contained in His Word, the Bible. The hundreds of thousands of persons who have studied it, accepted its truth and heeded its warnings face the future with firm confidence. Will you go to that one right source to understand the future and to know what you must do about it? This and related publications will help you to do so.

EVERAL years ago two men were driving in an automobile near Seattle, Washington. Their automobile sud denly went out of control and skidded into the nearby Lake Washington Ship Canal. Nearly four years later, on October 26, 1948, according to Newsweek magazine, their bodies were discovered. On the neck of one was found a religious medal, called a St. Christopher medal, commonly used as protection against accidents.

Three weeks after the discovery his widow and her five-year-old son were driving on an icy highway when their auto skidded into the Wenatchee River near Seattle. Both were drowned. When the bodies were recovered, around the neck of the boy was the very St. Christopher medal that had been recovered from the body of his father.

On the other hand, there are people who have survived accidents and who credited their survival to a religious medal. When such incidents come into the news the question inevitably rises: Can religious medals protect you? A sure way to find out is to learn the answers to two other questions: What does history reveal about religious charms as protectors? What does God’s Word, the Bible, disclose about the subject?

Actually man has been wearing some kind of religious charm, usuauy suspended from the neck, from time immemorial. In almost every nation there is a history of the use of religious amulets—objects worn as a charm against evil or harm, with the power of protection usually attributed, not to the objects themsfelves, but to a favorite god or goddess, patron or patroness. The ancients used amulets to protect themselves against any number of things, such

as diseases, evil spirits and accidents. Some charms used by the ancient pagans were placed around the necks of cattle, horses and camels, that their animals might also be protected by their favorite god.

Amulets and Sex Worship

One cannot learn the history of religious charms without being impressed by this fact: their use throughout history is generally, almost invariably, associated with phallic worship. The ancient Egyptian life amulet, called ankh or crux ansata, was in the form of a cross with an oval handle for a head; it represented the male and female organs of reproduction combined.

The ancient Nile dwellers distinguished at least twenty different kinds of amulets. One of the most popular was the scarab. Scarab amulets were made of wood, stone, ivory, glazed faience, amethyst and other semiprecious stones. Shaped in the form of a beetle, these religious charms were engraved on one side with many devices, usually mottoes. The mottoes were endlessly varied. Often they involved the name of a popular god or goddess. Two typical mottoes on scarabs that have been found by archeologists read: “Mut give thee long life” and “Ammon protecteth.” Mut signifies "mother,” and in hieroglyphic inscriptions this goddess is called “the lady of heaven.” She was the wife of Ammon. Ammon, later identified with the sun god, was originally a local Theban deity of the reproductive forces.

In ancient Babylon, Persia and Greece the use of amulets was widespread. The Greeks had a popular protective charm called phylacterion. In ancient Rome children carried around their necks what was called a bulla. It was a heart-shaped box containing an amulet; its purpose was to vard off the dangers incidental to children.

In describing the most popular feature of the ancient Roman religious charms the Dictionary of Classical Antiquities says under “Fascinum”: “Amulets of various kinds were employed as counter-charms. They were supposed either to procure the protection of a particular deity, or to send the enchanter mad by means of terrible, ridiculous or obscene objects. The name fascinum was thus specially applied to the phallus, which was the favorite countercharm of the Romans. An image of this fascinum was contained in the bulla worn as an amulet by children, and was also put under the chariot of a general at his triumph, as a protection against envy."

But the Romans used religious charms, not only with symbols of their own deities, but with those of foreign deities as well. During excavations at Pompeii workmen found the skeleton of a woman who died while in the act of flight. She had with her a small box containing her valuable knickknacks. Among the most curious of these was a necklace composed of amulets or religious charms. Most of them were attributes of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility.

Adopted by Apostate Christians

History, as well as the Bible, shows that the early Christians in the days of Christ and his apostles kept themselves free from every form of paganism. These Christians did not use statues, images, idols or religious charms. However, after the death of the apostles of Christ the true faith of the early Christians became corrupted. These apostate Christians adopted many pagan practices, including the use of religious charms.

The New Funk <£ WagnaUs Encyclopedia says in this regard: “The use of amulets passed into the Christian Church. . . . Amulets became so common among Christians that, in the 4th century, the clergy were interdicted from making and selling them on pain of deprivation of holy orders; and in 721 the wearing of amulets was solemnly condemned by the church.”

However, the clergy had for so long made a lucrative business out of making and selling religious charms that no church edict stopped the practice. So many religious charms came into use by the apostate Christians and for so many protective purposes that the ancient Egyptians were now, by comparison, mere triflers in the art of amulet manufacture.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I, page 443, in unexaggerated language, tells us of that time: “Especially from the fourth century, when imperial favour brought large numbers into the church, superstitious abuses in the use of devotional emblems became so common that the ecclesiastical authorities were obliged frequently to inveigh against the use of amulets. . . . From one of the sermons of St. Caesarius it appears that the dispensing of amulets was a regular profession; each disease had its appropriate amulet. These and similar superstitious practices survived to some extent, in one form or another, through the Middle Ages.”

Religious Charms Today

Throughout the world religious charms are still popular today. Among countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, especially, countless persons consider it necessary to wear a preservative charm. In some lands religious charms using phallic figures or symbols of them are still used. In Christendom the name amulet has been replaced by the terms medal and medallion. But whether it is called amulet, religious charm or medallion, the principle is the same. The person wearing the object hopes or expects that the saint or patron represented by it or whose name appears on it will perform some protective miracle.

Most of the popular religious charms today are called Holy Virgin medallions or are named after numerous saints of the . Roman Catholic Church. Some charms today are in the shape of a heart as was that of the ancient Roman bulla, wom by women and children. Many persons rely on religious medals to aid them because they are coupled with the power of a religious organization.

One of the most popular religious medals today is the St. Christopher medal. It is said that it provides protection for travelers, St. Christopher supposedly interceding with God on behalf of the living to protect travelers. Does this medal protect travelers? Statistics prove that there are just as many persons in autos with them that have accidents as those without. Some persons wearing the medal survive an accident, others wearing it do not. Is God partial? Does safety depend on a saint? No; in the last analysis the cause of accidents is carelessness. Safety depends ultimately on the skill, judgment, co-ordination and carefulness of the driver. An automobile driver can have a dozen St. Christopher medals in his car, together with several rosaries in his pockets and two scapulars

demon-worshiping pagans. And we have learned how religious charms, throughout history, have often been associated with the lowest, most debased form of false religion—sex worship. Is there any wonder that religious medals today cannot protect anyone?

The Bible tells Christians how to obtain protection from the Devil and his demons. Commands the apostle: "Put on the complete suit of armor from God that you may be able to stand firm against the machinations of the Devil.” To put on the “suit of armor from God” we must gain a knowledge of God’s Word, the holy Bible. Then we must confidently rely on that Word. What should Christians pick up then? The Bible answers: “Take up the large shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the wicked one’s burning missiles. Also accept the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, that is, God’s word, while with every form of prayer and supplication you carry on prayer on every occasion in spirit.”—Ephesians 6:11, 16-18, New World Trans.

Faith, hope, prayer and a knowledge of and reliance upon God’s Word—these are the true Christian’s protection, not religious medals.

THE earth is not infinitely old. It had a starting point at a measurable time back. At the beginning, spoken of at Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth.

Astronomers find many evidences that the starry heavens had a beginning in time. The best known of these is the expansion of the universe. From its present size and rate of growth, they estimate that the universe was created some three or four billion years ago.

The strongest proof that the earth began not many billions of years ago is that radioactive elements exist today. These show a

How can they tell the age of fossils?

striking difference from other elements: they destroy themselves, gradually, steadily, inexorably. They decay according to an exact mathematical law. If they had always been here their radioactivity would long since have burned itself out. But their radioactivity still persists, and from the amount left the nuclear scientist can tell that they are not over five billion years old.

But when we say uranium destroys itself we need to qualify our statement. True, it destroys itself as uranium and part of its actual substance disappears to produce energy, but the residue remains as a different element, lead. Likewise, when potassium suffers radioactive disintegration it leaves the gas argon. Rubidium decays into strontium.

This is the quality that makes it possible to .date rocks containing radioactive minerals. These pairs of elements, found together in minerals, are the radioactive clocks the geologist relies on to measure the age of rocks.

Every radioactive element is part of a system that is something like an hourglass. The active element is in the upper bulb and falls at a steady rate through the neck into the bulb below. The stable element produced by the radioactive process accumulates in the lower bulb.

Now, by watching an hourglass and comparing the amount of sand in the upper and lower bulbs, you can tell about how long it has been running. To be really accurate you should weigh the amount of sand'that had run through. And you would have to measure how fast the sand is running through. If the hourglass runs very slowly, as radioactive geological clocks all do, you might count the individual grains of sand. A magnifying glass would be needed for this, and slow motion pictures would help too.

In a radioactive mineral, of course, the uranium and the lead are all mixed together. But the chemist finds this no great obstacle. He dissolves the rock in acid and treats it with a series of chemical solutions that separate the different elements, and he ends up with the uranium and the lead in separate test tubes, just like the sand in the upper bulb and that in the lower.

To measure the rate of the radioactive clock, the nuclear scientist cannot use a magnifying glass to see the atoms, but he can use a Geiger counter to count the number of uranium atoms exploding. Thus he knows how fast the uranium is running through the neck into the lead bulb. Each radioactive dock runs at a different speed, which is expressed as the half-life, as follows;¹

In About

4.5 billion years

1,26 billion years

7.23 billion years

The geologist can use these figures to date his rock. Suppose, for example, that a crystal of feldspar from an ancient granite contains- rubidium. A chemical analysis of the crystal shows 2 percent as much strontium as rubidium. From the rate of decay he calculates that it took 1.4 billion years for this much rubidium to decay to strontium. So he concludes that the feldspar crystal was formed out of molten rock 1.4 billion years ago.

\But there may be weak links in the argument. There are conditions that must be met if the conclusions are to be well founded. Possibly the feldspar crystal formed originally with a small impurity of strontium from the molten rock. Then the rock will look older than it really is. It would be like turning the hourglass over before all the sand had run into one end. There would already be sand in the lower bulb when it started, and it would always indicate more time than had actually elapsed, because it was not set to zero at the beginning.

Sometimes the physicist can help strengthen this link. He can take the strontium the chemist has extracted from the rock and test it in a mass spectrometer. This is an instrument that sorts different isotopes of an element according to the weights of the individual atoms. The physicist knows that the ordinary strontium that would come from the average rock would have a mixture of atoms with weights 84, 86, 87 and 88. But only stron-tium-87 is formed by the radioactive decay of rubidium, and the mass spectrometer

will tell whether it is contaminated with ordinary strontium. If it is he can make a correction on the chemist’s measurements and still get the age of the mineral.

Another pitfall may trap the unwary explorer of the past when he tries to date rocks containing fossils. Hocks in which fossils are found are always sedimentary, deposited from streams of water. But this type of rock does not contain nice crystals of minerals that can be used for dating. They are found only in igneous rocks, where they formed as molten rock cooled.

How can the geologist overcome this difficulty? By looking for intrusions, where molten rock, called magma, has welled up into cracks in a sedimentary rock. Suppose granite melts and oozes, under pressure, into the overlying sediment. Then it cools and solidifies in the fissure, forming a rock called pegmatite. Now, the geologist argues, if we can find radioactive minerals in the intrusive pegmatite we can tell when it flowed into the fissure. And if the sedimentary rock contains fossils they must have been there before the intrusion occurred. So the fossils must be at least as old as the radioactive mineral.

That sounds reasonable. Wherein is the pitfail? For one thing, it is assumed that the radioactive mineral crystallized at the time of the igneous flow. But in many cases the crystal selected for dating melts at a much higher temperature than the rock it is imbedded in. For example, the quartz in granite melts at about 2700 degrees Fahrenheit, but the feldspar does not melt until the temperature reaches 3200 degrees. This means that granite would begin to flow at 2700 degrees. So no one can say for sure that such a magma did not already contain the radioactive crystal before it melted. If it did, and if the granite were gradually heated to where it began to soften and flow, it could carry the feldspar along without ever melting it. In such case the radioactive clock would not be reset at the time of the intrusion, but it would continue to show the date when it was originally set, possibly millions or billions of years earlier.

Another difficulty in dating fossils by this method is that the geologically ideal situation is rarely, if ever, met. The hoped-for case where a sedimentary rock with dinosaur bones lies directly against an intrusive granite with a neat little crystal of feldspar—this has not yet been found. In cases where the argument has been used, the nearest fossils are usually miles away from the pegmatite intrusion, and no one can prove that the sediment at the point of intrusion formed at the same time as the one where the fossils are found. The doubts in identifying strata are too great.

This weakness in the argument is admitted by experts in this field of science. In their textbook geologists Schuchert and Dunbar of Yale University illustrate the usual occurrence of datable minerals by a pegmatite in Connecticut that contains uraninite crystals with “an age of 350,000,000 years, but it lies in a bed of deformed schists far from any fossiliferous rocks that could determine the geologic period of its intrusion.”²

Nuclear physicists Goodman and Evans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology speak of the “complication that it is apparently quite difficult to assign geologic ages to radioactive minerals, that introduces so much uncertainty in the present status of radioactive age methods.”³

Dr. Henbest of the U.S. Geological Survey told a symposium of paleontologists and geologists: “The inaccuracies connected with dating the source mineral of a radiogenic lead specimen in terms of a well-known and a well-dated stratigraphic sequence is a geologic problem.”*

And Dr. Marble of the National Research Council, ah expert chemist in this

field, at the same symposium added this succinct comment: '‘As you all know, it is often many miles from a pegmatite to the nearest diagnostic fossil and, even if they are near each other, the field relations are usually obscure.’'³

Other methods of dating sedimentary rocks and fossils in them have been found entirely unreliable.^{1 2 3 4 5} The geologist’s claim to the great age of fossils, to the hundreds of millions of years for the dinosaurs, to the billions of years for algae, must depend entirely on the radioactive clock. And here, it is all too clear, they are still leaning on a broken reed.

The Bible shows that simple forms of life, as well as great reptiles, existed on the earth long before man. How long? It does not definitely say, but it is reasonable to believe that the same 7,000-year period that spans God’s rest day also marked each of the six creative days before. This would put the age of the first living things on earth no farther back than 34,000 years. Note that it leaves open the question as to how long before that the earth was formless and waste, Without being dogmatic as to this conclusion, we can say that it is certainly harmonious with the Scriptures. And it is also harmonious with the proved facts of science. No scientific evidence has yet been produced to contradict it.

Worldly scientists who have no regard for God’s Word may theorize and speculate without restraint, and the public press may blatantly publicize their hypothetical million-year-bld men and billion-year-old algae. But the reverent seeker for truth will not be misled by the “oppositions of science falsely so called.” He will always hold foremost the Word of God. Doing this he will find in the things God has created no conflict with his Word. Indeed, a study of God’s creation will only enhance one’s understanding of his eternal power and Godship.—1 Timothy 6:20; Romans 1:20.

HBFEHBNCBS

¹L. T,           Sctertce, Vp], 123, Page 371 (May 18,

1956).

> C- Schuchert and C. O. Dunbar, Outline* of Historical Geology, page 22 (1941).

s C. Ooodman and R. D. Evans, Bulletin of the Geological Society of. America, Vol. 52, page 491 (April 1, 1941).

* D. G. Henbest, Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 26, page 299 (May, 1952),

’J. P. Marble, ibid., Vol. 26, page 319 (May, 1952), ⁰ Awtke! February 8. 1952.

fee

to the zoo in Columbus, Ohio, Complained that an elephant swallowed hj_s wallet. A man-hole cover was stolen in Detroit. In London, someone made off With a ffea circus. A contractor in Jersey city complained that thieves stole an eight-ton s tractor shovel.”

♦ In Detroit, Michigan, a woman’s car 1 collided with a submarine.

♦A truck driver In Wethersfield, Connee* § ticut, was arrested for driving an over* g loaded truck. It carried thirty-one thou-S sand pounds of feathers.

H ♦ A man in Knoxville, Tennessee, reached J into his pocket for a cigarette, Instead he g pulled out and lit a two-inch firecracker, g Gave up smoking then and there.—United § Press dispatch, December 1, 1955.

trast with the most modem cars and trucks that are used in the cities, the picturesque arriería or mule train, is still the only means of transporting cargo in many of the mountain regions, C The experienced arriero, or muleteer* is young, strong, simple and suntanned. He is greatly trusted by the plantation owner, makes about $70 a month plus his room and board* and knows his mules like the ten fingers on his hands. He talks to them, praises them, scolds them* pets them and* at times* threatens them.

C The arrangement of his mule train and the respected relationship of one beast to the other are of real interest. Each mule has its place.

The guía, or guide mule, takes the lead. It carries only about three-quarters of a normal load of 200 pounds, but must be agile, dominant and alert It will not permit another animal in the train to get ahead of it. It picks the path that all the rest take. It must avoid dangerous places and not get lost or become confuaed at crossroads.' A well-trained guide mule costs about $300, and the muleteer quickly flatters his guide mule with such names as “beautiful pearl” “marksman " “banner,” etc.

C. After the guide mule comes the second guide, then the third. The other animals in the train do not have such explicit training or graduation, except that they must know how to keep their position. The last mule is the pie, or foot. He knows he is last and must march close to the muleteer's horse. A train of experienced mules costs from $1*500 to $3,000 and carries about 2,000 pounds.

<L A delightful melody accompanies the mule train, for each mule wears a bell that is especially toned for his position in the train. The

until the last mule has the one with the highest pitch of all. Each note distinguishes the mule and his position, and on the darkest of nights any irregularity can be detected through the bells. The muleteer immediately knows where the trouble is. His experienced and agile fingers quickly loosen or tighten the ropes tie or untie the knots* adjust the load* and the march is on its way again with only the slightest interruption. Then the bells* like the delightful melody of a tropical orchestra, continue their musical message that all Is well.

<L The muleteer does not permit the mules to eat during the march. But the trained animals, knowing that food awaits them at the end of the journey, step lively tn anticipation of their feast. On the march they have a special bridle that permits them to drink but not to chew.

<L Also, to increase the speed of the mule train, the driver, in addition to threats and sometimes unsavory expressions, has a special kind of whip, or fuete that is made from cotton cord and is about eight feet long. The primary use of this whip Is not to strike the animals, but to produce a sound like a pistol shot when the whip is suddenly cracked in the air. Thus it helps to keep the train moving swiftly along.

The colorful mule train and muleteer, however* are disappearing from Cuba as more and more the specially built vehicles for rough roads and mountainous territory (including jeeps and trucks) are taking over,. But in the eastern part of the island, as well as in the western province of Pinar del Rio, where rough, hilly territory is found, it is still the mule train that is relied upon to get the area's products down from the mountains and to return with the needed supplies.

CONFIDENCE IN A MEDAL ?

V According to the Jewish Encyclopedia Martin Luther once told how a Jew presented Duke Albert of Saxony with a button, curiously inscribed, which would protect against cold steel, stabbing or shooting. The duke made the experiment on the Jew* hanging the button around his neck and then slashing him with a sword. The button failed.

ALARMING gangland murders, intimidation of enemies and special territories that must be recognized by the members of other gangs—these things may be common TV and movie fare and may have marked the prohibition eTa in certain American cities, but the shocking fact now is that they mark the present state of juvenile gangs in many large United States cities.

In New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and other cities the problem has been appalling. One of the most shocking of the juvenile gangland incidents was the killing of 17-year-old Carlos Luis Feliciano in June, last year. In a fight over a 14-year-old girl this New York boy had stabbed a rival gang member. Another gang of teen-agers, serving as a kangaroo court, promptly drew lots to pick a trigger man to kill Feliciano, and the world was shocked by a brutal murder.

But this widely publicized incident was not New York’s only juvenile gang violence. The following examples are limited to one six-month period this year. On February 2 Antonio Robles, just 15 years old, and Miguel Rosario, age 19, members of the Comanches gang, were shot in East Harlem by rival Viceroys. On March 1 two boys were stabbed by a gang of eight armed youths who had fired five shots into a crowded recreation-night school gymnasium meeting.

On April 23 five girl-gang members, from ages 14 to 17, were seized by the police for attacking other girls. On April 24 twenty-eight members of two armed boy gangs were arrested. On May 12 Hector Garcia, 14, was shot dead by an 18-year-old lad who said he had only intended to scare Scorpions gang members who had beaten him. On the sixteenth, twenty-eight youths were held by the police, who seized knives, belt buckles, bayonets and ash-can handles that they had in preparation for a gang war. On May 22 gang rivalry prompted two youths to assault and shoot Stewart Gross, 17. On June 11 Victor Serrano, 17, was shot in the back and seriously wounded by gang members.

On July 16 youths drew homemade guns, forced community workers under tables and threw chairs about at a peace meeting that had been called “to persuade members of the Chaplains and Stampers that; if they must fight, they fight only with fists."

On the seventh of July Evelyn Orr, 15, was stabbed to death in a subway station in a fight between two girl gangs, the Chaplains and the Diplomat Queens. A twelve-year-old girl was accused of stab-

WOVEJtfBBB 1956

bing her with a seven-inch butcher’s knife. Sixteen other girl-gang members were held by the police.

What Prompts Such Juvenile Crime?

What is behind such flagrant juvenile crime? What causes the very small percent tage of today’s youth who are represented in these acts to go berserk?

In reporting on the study of 9,000 cases of juvenile delinquency in Baltimore Dr. Bernard Lander of Yeshiva University said that the lack of community feeling and complete moral chaos rather than poverty are the major factors. In support of this he cited the high incidence of delinquency in so-called privileged areas, as well as in the slums.

One^f Brooklyn gang that might be taken as an example comes from a middle-class environment. Its members’ parents were born mostly in the same neighborhood of one- and two-family houses along clean, tree-lined streets, in which they now live. The family income ranges from $3,000 to $6,000 a year. The gang, whose members’ ages range from 13 to 18, averaging about fifteen and a half, is supreme over a territory of nearly ^a square mile. Most of its members have left school, though few have regular jobs.

A great deal of their time is spent idly hanging around. They wake up about noon and arrive at their park-bench meeting place about one or two o’clock. Sometimes they go to a movie, sometimes swimming, but not to the crowded beaches. “Anytime we go to a place like Coney Island we get into trouble,” one member told a New York Times reporter. “A guy gives you a funny look. You say: ‘What the----you

lookin’ at?’ You can’t let guys get away with that stuff. Next thing you know there’s trouble.”

Tension hangs over the gang. Any car that rolls by the bench around which it clusters could contain invaders or detectives. Its leaders carry a list of telephone numbers for emergency mobilization. Sixteen members or former members of the gang are in jail on charges that include extortion, grand larceny and possession of deadly weapons.

According to the New York Times report: “Thursday nights they meet at the playground to learn if any enemies have besmirched their rep [reputation] or violated their turf [area]. ... On this night they also plan their campaign for the dance the following night in Prospect Park. There they go in strength because it is alien territory and because they think it might be fruitful for girl-hunting, Saturday nights they may go to parties, to a Coney Island rock-and-roll session or just drape themselves around the bench and sip a few cans of beer while they argue loudly. They rise much earlier than usual on Sundays, for the 10 a.m. mass.”

There is no such thing as the typical gang, though certain principles apply to most of them. There may be from a dozen members to 50, 100 or even 250. Yet even the most violent of the gangs are based on friendship—they are friendship clubs of teen-agers. A thousand or more such street clubs in New York city draw little police attention. Less than a tenth of them provide a real danger to the orderly life of the city. Even these gangs devote only a small fraction of their time to fighting or to crime, but there is always the danger of a battle between them, and their individual members are responsible for much of the city’s crime.

The relatively few problem gangs that have been called a “murky nursery and training ground for American crime’’ have provided a major problem, however. They have fought with fists, blackjacks, clubs, switchblade knives, and sometimes with regular daggers. Their girl-gang affiliates

have carried the weapons for them because of the police reluctance to frisk a girl, A fight between the gangs can be an Individual beating, or a large-scale battle like the one held near Prospect Park on May 30, 1950, when some forty shots, by newspaper estimates, were fired from homemade guns.

Copying the nations, the gangs consider it an invasion and an act of war for the members of one gang to walk through the territory of another. Or insulting a gang member, calling him “chicken” or "punk” or some other trivial insult, will bind him or his gang to see that the insult is avenged, proving that he is not “chicken,” Gang wars can also start when an outsider tries to "crash” a dance, wins a gang member’s girl, or dances with her at a party. "Rep” is the great concern of these gangs, and blood can flow before even a trivial insult will be taken.

What Produces the Gang?

Broken hofhes, chronic truants, children who cannot seem to get along in school are all involved- in producing the gang. But many gang members are bright. The one common ground the gang members seem to have is a need to "belong,” They seem convinced that they have no future, and that society will not give them what they deserve. They may retaliate against the school, the police, or even the home that produced them. But in the gang they have status. They are associating with other boys who are suffering the same set of circumstances, and among whom they can gain recognition.

An older boy put it this way: “Guys who don’t feel like they are counting, who feel like they are worthless to everybody—well, they are the guys who go and try to make names for themselves by being stickup guys. It is on account they feel like they are nobody,” Their gang names show this desire for self-esteem: “Imperial Counts," “Dukes,” “Ambassadors,” Viceroys,” "Bladesmen,” “Noble Englishmen” and "Enchanters” are a few samples.

Another major factor is having too much time on their hands. A' boy who shot five other boys in a San Francisco gang fight, killing two, said: “You go to school, but if you’re not in sports, you’ve got a lot of time.” His father said: "Most industry won’t take him until he’s 18. So he has two years on his hands—and nothing to do. That's the dangerous age, in my opinion. That’s when they get in with bad company.”

“You get caught without your gang," the boys say, “and another gang works you over good.” So, they stick with the gang. And just one severely warped boy can steer the whole gang wrong. His very viciousness may set an example that the others follow. The existence of such viciousness is not too amazing today. Newsweek quoted “a thoughtful juvenile expert” as saying: “Perhaps the viciousness of mankind in the past few decades has taken its ghastly toll on our youth.”

Seeking a Solution

The world that has scoffed at what God’s Word says about child raising now has a man-sized problem of delinquency. And it has conflicting views on what to do about it. Detroit applied a get-tough policy. The police broke up the gangs, established a curfew and enforced it. New York, on the other hand, sends workers out to win the gangs' confidence and to deter them from their delinquent activity. In 1955 it could boast that for four years there had not been a gang war in the areas where the program was conducted.

Youths can be aided by a little of the missing friendship and consideration at the right time. But as Life said after the Feliciano killing, the New York city Youth Board’s social workers “know they can

make only stopgap efforts in a world that has not worked out ways to prevent such pitiful scenes” as these gang murders produce.

The police feel that the social workers must too often make more concessions to the gang than the gang makes to them. They think the gangs must be made to respect the law. New York Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy recently warned his officers: “You shall not enter into treaties, concordats, compacts or agreements of appeasement—because of such are storm troopers made.”

But these problems would not have arisen if the parents had really applied the Bible’s principles. These require that family love must abound, that the youth must be trained in the right way, and that they be given a sense of belonging and accomplishment in the Christian congregation.

The parent cannot put the responsibility of teaching God’s requirements off onto the church, or synagogue, or anyone else, but must know those requirements himself, teach them to his own sons, and set the right example of following them in his own life. He is commanded: Have God's words “on your heart, and you must inculcate them in your son and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up.”—Deuteronomy 6:6, 7, New World Trans,

The child who is trained this way will know that he “belongs,” will understand what is right, and will have a good feeling of real satisfaction in doing it. He will not have an overabundance of time on his hands, to waste in the idleness that leads to mischief, but will follow his parents' right example of serving his God, thus having a worthwhile work to do, and occupying his time with good things, not with the bad ones.

This is not just a theory, but it is put into practice by young witnesses of Jehovah, who, like ancient Jeremiah and like Jesus himself, happily spend their lives in their Creator’s service. Doing this they have the right kind of companions, and set other youths in the neighborhood the right example, rather than being led astray by their wrong one. It is because they have really applied these Bible principles that Jehovah’s witnesses' children, who go to the local Kingdom Halls, are not members of the juvenile gangs that get up early just one morning a week to go to “the 10 a.m. mass.”

For those who refuse to apply these principles, perhaps the best solution to the gang problem is strong policing, with enough officers to provide impartial and inevitable enforcement of the law, plus the activity of social workers to help the gang members rehabilitate themselves into jobs and positions of respectability.

But it should be remembered that by the time a youth comes to the attention of the police the damage already has been done, while if the parents had really followed true Bible principles, they could have prevented it!

NEVER A WATER SHORTAGE ! JF

£ For some sea birds supplies of fresh water are not always available. What do they do? They drink salt water. With an ocean full, they never have a water shortage. Penguins, shearingwaters and terns have often been seen drinking sea water. Some sea birds must drink salt water or they will die, Some species of penguins drink either salt or fresh water. It Is not known how they are able to drink salt water and still remain healthy.

By “Awake!” correspondent in New Zea

HE craft of knitting is indeed an ancient one. Just who began the art or when it began is not exactly known. Relics of very early knitting have been found in countries as far apart as Egypt and Peru.

The most common of all knitted garments is the stocking. It was known in England as early *as the time of King Alfred. The Anglo-Saxons called it “hos.” It consisted of a leg covering that reached from the foot to just below the knee, where it joined the breeches. It was a guilds in continental Europe as well as in England. These guilds looked after their interests as might a trade union today. They were responsible for establishing and holding a high standard in the knitting of stockings.

After the introduction of silk into Europe, knitted silk stockings became very popular among the richer classes. Knitting in patterns of different colors, even with threads of different textures, was the fashion. At times the hose were very extravagant, as those worn by the Landsknechte, the name for the German mercenary soldiers of the sixteenth century. They had different stockings for each leg, that is, different in color, shape and trimmings, might think that, rather than instilling fear, they would be a source of amusement to their enemies. However, in the stockings they wore, during the the reign of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I England the Landsknechte was a fighting body in Europe.

Late/, stockings were made to harmo-th the color of the breeches. fashions ruled in different countries, ain, black was the color worn by st everyone. In Germany only the gy wore black stockings. "Tricot” was e word used for men’s hose in Europe at at time, coming from the French word

However, William Lee, a poor clergyman of Nottinghamshire, watched carefully the movements of his wife’s fingers as she knitted. From his observations he was able to invent and

build a machine that would do the work of the hands. The machine built, Lee went to Elizabeth I, who refused him the right to build the machine, on the grounds that those making their living by hand knitting must be protected. However, she did grant him the right to knit silk stockings, fully believing that his machine would not be capable of doing so. Lee renewed his efforts and soon he had a machine that could knit silk stockings. Again he applied to the queen and after being refused a second time he went to France, hoping that there the king would treat him differently. Henry IV, being a farsighted man, welcomed Lee with open arms. Unfortunately, the king was assassinated and his successor, not liking Huguenots, of whom Lee was one, had him imprisoned. Freed from prison, he later died heartbroken and unknown.

Fortunately, Lee’s knitting machines survived him. They grew in number and their speed increased. As time went on materials other than wool and silk became popular in the knitting industry. Indian fabrics of cotton and linen became popular in England. Linen and cotton stockings were soon seen on the market. In more recent times artificial fibers made from wood pulp have been utilized in the manufacture of stockings. As a rule these are machine knitted, shaped and fitted with a seam in the back.

Other articles that were knitted in early times were caps, gloves and woolen shirts. In France peasants of Normandy went to market with the most beautiful and highly prized bags made of beads. The knitted beads were as delicate as miniature paintings and full of color. Knitted caps and berets have been worn by people of all ages for many centuries. During the fourteenth through the sixteenth century berets and caps were made to look like felt. The knitted beret when finished was soaked for five days, after which time the wool had thickened so that the stitches could no longer be seen. But the cap was now shapeless. So it was put on the milliner's block and pressed into the desired shape. To give body to the felt a teasel brush was used. Finally, it was decorated in the fashion of the day by “slashing” it, that is, by cutting slits in the felted material and inserting a cloth of a different color.

Knitted carpets were first made in Europe and were greatly in demand. These early carpets were rich in color, designed usually with a flower pattern. In eastern Germany, human and animal figures and landscape scenes were bordered with a flower pattern around the edge of the carpet. The work required great skill. A knitting apprentice had to train for six years, and then, to pass his final test, he had to knit a carpet six feet long by five feet wide, as well as a beret, a shirt and a pair of hose. They had to be in the fashion of the time and the designs were very elaborate. The knitter was given thirteen weeks to complete his test. The tests were strict. The entrant had to swear that the work was entirely his own.

Behind the Knitting Material

Few knitters stop to think of all that lies behind the material that they hold in their hands. Wool must be grown. The oldest type of wool-bearing animal is the moufflon, which lives in Central Asia. The most common wool bearer is the sheep. And the oldest known breed of sheep is found in the Isle of Soay, west of the Hebrides. These animals have fine fleeces, and from them beautiful, fine knitted fabrics were made long before the time of Christ.

The tools used in knitting have undergone great changes. At first they were rather crude in comparison with modern

equipment Today instruments are made in various thicknesses to suit the yarn. Earliest needles were very thick and were made of bones, tusks and wood. Spindles have been discovered in the tombs of the British Pit Dwellers, testifying to the knowledge of spinning around 2000 B.C.

Of all the hand knitters left on the earth today, perhaps as a group the Shetland Islanders are the most famous. These islands. which have a special breed of sheep, are one of the great centers of hand knitting remaining in Britain. Living on very small farms, the inhabitants have to take on other work to make a living. So, while the men go fishing, the women stay home, look after the sheep and knit. There is no spinning mill here, so all the knitting is done with homespun wool. Also, it is home-dyed. Because the wool produced here is unmatched in its fineness and beauty these islands are often called “the land of the golden fleece.”

The Shetland sheep is "bred and tended with particular care. It is a small animal with a fleece that is fine, long and delicate, more like human hair than wool. The fleece cannot be clipped or shorn in the usual way, but must be pulled carefully by hand. This is done by running the hand, with the fingers spread wide apart, along the sheep’s back. The wool comes off easily. It is then cleaned and dressed with a preparation of seal oil and thoroughly soaked. The finest wool is a two-ply yarn made-of single hairs.

The Shetland sheep are not the usual white color, but are of various colors— reddish-brown, reddish-orange, black, brown-black, gray, blue-gray, flecked-white and brown. In most cases the wool is knitted in its natural color. However, the Shetlanders make their own dyes, fadeless and in a range of most delicate shades, from the lichens that grow on their own islands.

The Shetland knitters are extraordinarily quick, being able to do two hundred stitches a minute. This is because of the method they use, a very old one, that comes from Norseland. The needles are held in a pouch so that the hands are left free to secure the stitches. Though the knitters are agile with their needles, the garments are large and it takes a week to knit a woolen jumper, so fine is the wool and so intricate the pattern. .

Considering the history of knitting makes us appreciate the ingenuity God has placed in man and the bountiful provisions with which he has surrounded us so that we can develop our skills to the glory of God and reap joy from the work of our hands.

Jin Obstetrical Curiosity

C One of the snakes common in the American tropics is the fer-de-lance, a six-foot snake and one of the most poisonous reptiles on earth. It is somewhat of an obstetrical curiosity. The NW Fork telling about a Smithsonian Institution's report from its biological station in the Canal Zone; said: A scientist picked up a gravid female and carried it to the Smithsonian’s island laboratory. The fer-de-lance did not bite the man, although females about to bear young are supposed to be especially nervous and vicious. She began to produce her new family on arrival. One by one, sixty young came into the world, each one-sixth as long as its mother but much thinner. Each had. fully functioning poison fangs and sacs of venom. From the instant of birth each could have killed a small mammal and would have been dangerous to a man. The young came into the world as closely packed halls, which started to unwind at once.”

Why visit Tokyo? For many reasons. The unusual customs, food and the Oriental way of living make this Japanese city a very interesting one to visit So come with us on an imaginary trip. In 1457 a castle was built here, and a city quickly grew. But it was not until 1868 that real recognition came when, For political reasons, the central government was moved from Kyoto and the city got its present name Tokyo, meaning "eastern capital.”

Viewing the City

During a visit to Tokyo you will note that it is no city of skyscrapers. The tallest of Its business buildings are eight stories, and by far the greater part of the dwellings are only one story high. The reason for this lies in the frequent earthquakes, and in particular the historical 1923 earthquake that claimed 100,000 lives. Fewer homes than before the war now house twice as many people. Yet the city has made remarkable recovery, and its products are again being shipped in large quantities to world markets. Tokyo shows a bright smile and has every convenience to cater to visitors’ needs.

A Japanese Meal

■j? ‘One of the visitor’s needs is food, and just consider the Japanese specialties! There are rice dishes, as well as soba or udon (buckwheat and wheat noodles), tempura (shrimp) and fish or eel, raw or cooked. But for this meal let us try sukiyaki Tokyo-style. Entering a restaurant we are escorted to a small private dining room. We seat ourselves around a low table on a tatami, or straw mat floor. A gas burner and an iron skillet are placed on the table. Into the skillet are put thinly sliced strips of beef, onions and other ingredients, with a special sauce made of soy beans and rice wine. As the meat browns, we are given an egg and a small bowl. We break the egg into the bowl and beat it with our chopsticks. Then we dip the cooked food from the skillet into the beaten egg and into our mouths. Ah, delicious!

Unusual Entertainment

■g The Noh Play or Kabuki are the Japanese counterpart of Shakespeare. They carry us to the Japan of the past as we watch elaborately and colorfully dressed actors skillfully develop the plot of a legend that is well known to the Japanese, but is new and bewildering to the visitor. The Kabuki is perhaps more easily understood than the Noh Play, as the latter uses no stage decorations whatsoever, leaves it entirely to skill of the actors the imagination of audience to develop theme.

A Shrine and Sports

There are many temples and shrines. A convenient one is Yasuku ni Shrine, from which we can see much of the downtown section of Tokyo. As we walk up the hill toward the shrine we note the 40-foot-high torii or entrance gateway. This temple is dedicated to those who have died in war. Bus loads of people from all over Japan come to pay tribute here.

■g The Japanese are interested in sports, as the Korakoen Sports Center testifies. It has a 30,000-seat baseball stadium, a race track, ice rink, swimming pool and playground. At other places we can look in on judo classes, or watch Sumo wrestling, in which two-hundred-pound men strive to push or throw each other out of the ring, or to trip their opponent to the floor.

Contrasts

•g Indeed, Tokyo is a city of contrasts. It is an Eastern city with a sprinkling of the West. It clings to the old while accepting the new. A city born from the marshes of a feudal system, its 8,000,000 inhabitants now make bid for first place among the large cities of the world. At first Tokyo seems mysterious to westerners, but East and West are meeting here, and the veil of mystery begins to lift.

that sound strange to you? It sounds strange to many people. As much as some people like to read they just cannot understand why others do not enjoy it, while the people who do not enjoy reading often seem to think that something is wrong with those who do.

The man who enjoys reading leads by far the fuller life. Words take him places, show him things and provide him with a guided tour of ideas and information. They extend the four walls of his life, fulfill his curiosity and invite him into bright new worlds of the mind. He experiences a joy that his nonreading critics will never experience.

Many people do not enjoy reading because they find it difficult, and therefore tiresome. They do not get the full benefit even out of what they do read and find little pleasure in it. By being poor readers they limit their knowledge, their understanding and even the value of their life. But to improve a person must really want to read. He must recognize that the man who reads well is to be admired, not scoffed at; copied, not shunned. You do not develop an interest in reading merely by telling yourself that you should read, but you do it by getting interested in what has been written, by experiencing for yourself the wonders of the printed page.

By reading a recipe book you can learn to cook; by reading an argument you can debate with great minds; by reading the Bible you can listen to God! Reading takes you to new periods of time, new experiences, new worlds of fact. If

reading is not fun, then something is wrong with your reading!

Something is wrong with many people’s reading today.

Only half of the people in the United States read even one book a year. In some countries the figure is even less. Yet it is assumed that readers of this magazine are interested in information, knowledge and understanding, and therefore are above the average in the amount of reading that they do. These, of all people, should be interested in improving their reading, their understanding and their memory of what they read. How can you do these things?

More than the Eye Is Involved

First, it is important to remember that reading does not go on just between the eye and the page. It does not depend solely upon how your eyes move along the line of type, though this does affect the speed of your reading, as an earlier article in Awake! explained. But accurate reading also depends upon comprehension and interpretation, on what you get oftt of what you read. And what you get out of what you read depends upon at least four things: how well you think, how much you already know, how easily you recognize the words you see and how experienced you are at translating these words into thought.

Thus, reading is thinking. It is using the marks on the page to re-create the thought that the author recorded. The thought must be re-created in the same design that the author used. Only if it is will you really, get the meaning. And only by really getting the meaning can you read well. This is why the man who has knowledge, ideas and opinions of his own (but who also is open to new ideas) usually reads much more easily than people who do not think for themselves.

So such mental activity as study, reading and thinking should greatly improve both your speed and the benefit you get from what you read. The more you use words, the quicker you will recognize them. The more you think, the easier you will follow the author’s thought, and the more ready you will be to form your own opinions about what he is saying. Forming your own opinions will impress what you have read more strongly upon your mind and will enable you to remember it far more easily.

Thus, rapid and efficient reading is not just saying: “I must go fast, fast, fast.” It is overcoming the necessity to struggle with the individual words and developing the ability to see them as thought units. The poor reader often pauses so long over individual words that he sees merely the parts, not the whole.

Knowing the Words

It is evident, then, that the number of words you know—the extent of your vocabulary—vitally affects your ease and enjoyment of reading. “Vocabulary?” some people say, “Oh no, wait, that’s too big a job for me, I’ll just stop right here.” Yet the word “vocabulary" should not frighten us. It just means knowing the words, and we know many words already. Perhaps you know even more words than you imagine you do.

But how can a person, without too much pain, increase the number of words he knows? Not through taking ten easy lessons, but through gradually growing in mental stature. How do you grow in mental stature? One way to do so is by reading. Another is by thinking about what you read. As you constantly whet and satisfy your intellectual curiosity, enjoying new and more difficult things, you will run across new words. You will see how they are used and will learn to understand them. True, you must check them in a dictionary in order to be sure of their meaning, and this should not be overlooked. But words are like people, in that you really come to know them not just through being introduced to them but through meeting them often and seeing them in different situations and under varying circumstances.

Thus, by reading more and better material, and by being alert for new words while you read, you will become aware of them, will become curious about them and will gradually master them through repeated use. In an ever-widening circle, reading will help you to build your vocabulary, and vocabulary building will continue to improve your reading.

Concentrate

To get the most out of reading it is necessary to concentrate. But this word too frightens many people. It reminds them of school and sounds like work. Yet you concentrate every day. When you are really interested in something you concentrate without giving it a single thought, for you center your whole mind on the one thing you are doing. How can you concentrate while reading?

To concentrate you must want to know. You cannot 'just sit back and listen, but you must be interested enough to find out. If the page presents a problem for you, so much the better—the problem will oc-

cupy your mind and will leave room for nothing else. You concentrate by using your whole mind, by thinking on the author’s ideas, by weighing them and responding either in agreement or disagreement with what he says.

To concentrate you must get the center of energy off the page and into your mind. Unless you thus keep your mind busy with the material at hand, it will go searching for something else to do. And when it does that yfiu can read a whole page without knowing a thing about what you read! But when you really think about what you read, analyzing it to see if it is true, comparing it with your previous knowledge, trying to figure out why it is said the way it is, then you will never have the experience of reading two or three pages without getting anything out of them. When you have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, when you really want to know, concentration is no problem.

Also, forcing yourself to cruise along at a good clip, searching for the most information in the shortest time, will further aid your concentration. When you dawdle your mind wanders. But pressing ahead, holding larger units of thought in mind and keeping your mind on the ideas, will enable you to get the whole force of a passage or chapter.

Norman Lewis said: “You can concentrate 100 per cent on your reading provided you are so eager to do that reading that nothing else in the world possesses a comparable interest during the time you have the book open before you. But also, provided that what you are reading makes sense and is not just a meaningless jumble of words.”

Making Sense of What You Read

To make sense out of what you read you must see why the article or chapter is arranged the way it is. Good readers do this without even thinking about it They get the theme, see the message and understand the framework. They can distinguish the main points from the details. They recognize that the details merely Illustrate, explain or help to establish the main points as being true. They know that unless you can do this you will come away from your reading with many random points in mind, but without the main ideas.

Both the reader and the writer are trying to achieve the same end. Both want to convey the idea to the reader’s mind. Unless the reader can see what the writer is doing he may miss the whole point of what he is reading. To keep this from happening, .readers should know how material is put '.together. Their ability to adjust to the way the materia] has been prepared will make them experts.

If the author is stating a problem and proceeding to show its solution, we must grasp the problem and look for the solution. But if we do not recognize that this is what has been done we can fail to match the problem with the solution, and will come away with a blurred impression and a mere mass of details.

If the author is narrating events in a chronological order, we will follow along, event by event, watching for the ones that we want to keep in mind. If he is contrasting ideas, we note the contrast If he is comparing similar viewpoints, we must see the comparison. If he is expressing opinions and then giving reasons for them, we want to grasp the opinions and see the reasons. If, in each instance, you can recognize why the material has been organized the way it has, you will read easier, understand better and remember much longer. The experienced reader does this easily, almost without thinking about it. He is familiar with these forms of construction because he has seen them all before.

THINK!

Even further, anything that improves your ability to think should improve your reading. Some people never read anything “hard” or “deep.” How can they expect to learn to think? A hard or deep lesson is one that makes you think, and the way to improve your ability to think is by exerting yourself on ever-harder things. If the book or lesson is a challenge, and if you dig deeply enough to understand it, then not only will you be pleased with your accomplishment, but you will also be training yourself to think. And since reading is thinking, you will be on the way to becoming a better reader.

Jehovah’s witnesses, who are intensely interested in the Scriptures, should be better readers than they were before they began their study. Their intellectual curiosity has been whetted, an intense interest has been aroused, and they must weigh and consider and analyze. They read more, get more out of what they read and get greater pleasure from it. And by knowing and applying the principles of good reading their understanding will continue to increase.

Everyone can experience this improvement. But just knowing the principles is not enough. You must practice and apply them until they become so automatic that your mind is left entirely free for what is being said, rather than being fixed upon the individual words that are being used. By applying these principles, and really making them a habit, you can get more out of your reading, can develop a greater appreciation of the good things that have been written, can grow in the right kind of knowledge, and through its use can actually get more out of life!

“America’s Fastest-growing Disease”

Hepatitis, inflammation of the liver, is today America’s fastest-growing disease. According to Science Digest, January, 1956, it increased threefold from 1952 to 1954, when some 50,000 cases were reported. However, since it often is not recognized unless it takes on the extreme form of yellow jaundice it is likely that some half million suffer from it annually. Its symptoms are headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea and a generally wretched feeling.                  .

There are two separate and distinct types of hepatitis. The more common and the milder form is infectious hepatitis and is spread by blood, by contaminated food and water, by personal contact, etc. The preventive for this obviously is improved sanitary conditions.

The far more serious type is serum hepatitis and is spread only by blood, by blood or plasma transfusions or by handling blood or transfusion equipment. Regarding this Dr. Alvarez, one of Mayo Clinic’s leading physicians, states: “In spite of all efforts to prevent the use of blood carrying the virus, transfusions are still dangerous, and I personally would never accept one unless I was sure it was much needed to save my life."

In 1942 the United States Army had 51,337 cases of it because of using infected serum, and ten years later the Army reportedly dropped the use of plasma, as one fourth of the soldiers in Korea that received transfusions came down with serum hepatitis. From this it would follow that the only preventive for serum hepatitis is no blood or plasma transfusions.

.-TfrulR VJORD IS yyju---'----• jf

Who Will Fight at Armageddon?

IT IS»elear that the war of Armageddon is near. Universal in scope will be the Armageddon war, which the Lord God Almighty will fight. It will involve the visible earth and the invisible heavens.

The wars of men have never settled anything permanently. The war of Armageddon will settle forever the leading issue before all the heavens and earth, that Jehovah is God and that it is his sovereign right to rule over heaven and earth. The war of Armageddon spells victory for Jehovah, defeat for his foes.

Satan, the god of this system of things, is preparing for a final fight against Jehovah and his Christ, and so are the nations, under Satan’s invisible leadership. Men who claim to be Christian may deny this, but God’s revealing Word exposes Christendom as taking part in the fight against him. Their hatred for Jehovah and his Christ is evidenced by their hatred for “the remaining ones of her seed, who observe the commandments of God and have the work of bearing witness to Jesus.” As the nations do to the least one of these, they do to Jehovah and to his kingdom by Christ, for these faithful ones uphold his side of the long-standing controversy— “Who is Jehovah?” or "Who is God?” —Revelation 12:17; Exodus 5:2, New World Trans.; Matthew 25:40; Job, chapters 1, 2.

The Bible prophecies in Ezekiel and the Revelation disclose that all worldly nations are Invisibly led by Satan and his demons to the attack against God’s side, hence against his remnant and their companions. The abased Devil uses his visible political agencies in the gathering of all the nations against Jehovah’s enthroned King, represented on earth by the remnant of his royal heirs. The Revelation describes his moves in these words:

"And I saw three unclean inspired expressions that looked like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the wild beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are, in fact, expressions inspired by demons and perform signs, and they go forth to the kings of the entire inhabited earth, to gather them together to the war of the great day of God the Almighty. . . . And they gathered them together to the place that is called in Hebrew Har-Magedon.” —Revelation 16:13-16, New World Trans.

It is not to a fight among themselves that the demons under Gog lead them to Armageddon. They do not go there to fight against a mere theory, a mere political ideology, a mere religious doctrine. They go there to fight against the real kingdom of God under Christ. Against this everlasting kingdom, the demons will lead the power-greedy nations at Armageddon. The demonic forces therefore will lead them against something visible and tangible that represents that kingdom here on earth, namely, the remaining ones of Christ’s joint heirs and their companions in the New World society. The purpose of this attack is to strip the restored remnant of their spiritual prosperity, to drive them out of Jehovah’s favor, to destroy them as the foundation of the “new earth,” to stifle their voice as Jehovah’s witnesses, his Kingdom preachers.

Hie time will come when “this good news of the kingdom” will have fully been

preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations. Every lost and strayed- sheep will have been found and gathered by the Right Shepherd and made part of the “one flock” under the Christ. The time will come for the “time of the end” to dose, for the days of “great tribulation” upon Satan’s world to be shortened no longer for the sake of God’s chosen ones. The time will come for the “accomplished end” of this present wicked system of things, visible and invisible. The time will come for God’s kingdom to “break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms” and then itself stand forever. Then Satan and his demonic hordes will be dashed to the abyss.—Matthew 24:14,21, New World Trans.; Daniel 2:44.

The battle lines will then be sharply drawn, for and against Jehovah’s universal sovereignty, for and against his kingdom under Christ. On the one side will be Satan’s forces, invisible and visible, embracing all the selfish, greedy nations. On Satan's visible side, the Revelation shows, will be the “wild beast” and the political “false prophet,” which takes in all worldly rulers and their armies. The members of the United' Nations are there, like the ten horns on the seven heads of the scarletcolored "wild beast” of international alliance. The Babylonish religious “woman” that rides seated upon this “scarlet-colored wild beast” is there, but now ready to be unseated and devastated and denuded and have her flesh devoured and then her remains burned with fire. All the modem worshipers of Baal, rulers and subjects alike, will be there in their fully'donned robes of identification. And the goats will have been separated from the sheep, and will be to the left side of the King Christ Jesus.—Revelation 19:19, 20; 17:1-18;

2 Kings 10:18-23; Matthew 25:‘31-33, 41, New World Trans.

On the other side will visibly be seen the remnant of spiritual Israel and an unnumbered crowd of “other sheep,” their companions, all backed up by the unseen hosts of heaven under Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, together with those of his anointed followers already resurrected.—Ezekiel 38:8-12.

The resurrected ones of Christ’s body “keep following the Lamb no matter where he goes,” doubtless right into the thick of the battle with him too. Blood will run deep. Armageddon will be a “tribulation such as has not occurred from the beginning of the creation which God created until that time and will not occur again.” Not a human on the side against Jehovah’s kingdom will survive. Satan’s entire world or system of things, its invisible demonic heavens and its visible wicked human earth, will be brought to nothing.—Revelation 14:4; Mark 13:19, New World Trans.

Will there be any survivors? Yes indeed! The destruction of Satan’s worldly heavens and earth will not leave a void, a vacuum. They will be replaced by a new world with righteous heavens and a righteous earth. For this righteous new world Jehovah God will preserve survivors, the remnant, who are destined for the new heavens, and the “other sheep,” who are to be permanent inhabitants of the new earth. Despite the furious battle of Armageddon they will not be dislodged from this earth. Without taking any violent part in the combat these earthly servants of God will stand and see the salvation of Jehovah work in their behalf. They will be eyewitnesses of his incomparable victory over the combined enemy world, and will sing of it then and throughout endless time.—Isaiah 45:18; 2 Chronicles 20:17.

Cyprus

CYPRUS is an ancient island with a civilization dating back to about 1500 B.C., when, as history records, it came under the domination of the Egyptian world power. Barnabas, a native of Cyprus, together with the apostle Paul, was the first to preach about Christ in Cyprus. However, Christianity since has become mingled with paganism until, in this twentieth century, the numerous traditions and formalisms carried on under the name of Christianity are far removed from the things that Barnabas and Paul taught on their visit to the island nearly 2,000 years ago.

Today many of the ancient shrines of the pagans still keep their importance under Christian names, so that instead of a pagan altar dedicated to a god or goddess, you will find an “icon” or holy picture looked upon as sacred by the humble villager. These pagan shrines, often called by the name of a Greek Orthodox “saint,” are considered as having the power to perform miracles. A pilgrim suffering from some malady will visit the shrine. After lighting a candle and making the “sign of the cross" the pilgrim will probably tear off a piece of his clothing and hang it nearby and will say something like this, “My saint, I pray that as I tear off this piece of cloth, so will my sickness pass from me.”

If you visit a Greek Orthodox church you may also see a wax arm, hand/ foot or another part of the body hanging up by the side of a picture of a “saint.” These objects are left by. people suffering from

some sickness. A wax figure is made of the part of the body that is sick and then left by the side of a picture image in order to effect a cure.                 .

It is to these humble folk that Jehovah’s witnesses are taking the same message as preached by Barnabas and Paul. They are preaching true religion, helping people to discern between what is Scriptural fact and pagan myth. It is not easy for these humble folk to see the difference when, for generations, pagan ideas have been misrepresented to them as Christian. However, Jehovah’s witnesses in Cyprus are making progress. They are telling their fellow Cypriotes that real hone is not based on ancient superstition, but on the sure Word of Almighty God.

Tucked away in a lovely mountain is a little village. Perhaps you would like to visit it. You can go along with one of Jehovah’s witnesses who is preaching in this vicinity. This is a mild winter day. The countryside is picturesque, actually breathtaking. The lofty mountains and secluded valleys, small streams gurgling with the first trickle of -winter water and a lonely shepherd with his flock of sheep combine to bring out songs of praise to God. In the distance we can see a tiny village nestled beautifully at the foot of a mountain. The houses are small but spotlessly clean. Fortunately for us, almost all the people will be at home because this is the day of Epiphany, a feast day.

The witnessing minister of Jehovah goes directly to these lovely sun-dried mud brick homes and talks with the people about the hope for salvation and life in

the new world. At our very first door tantalizing cooking fragrances greet us. The housewife is busy making delectable doughnuts called loukoumades. These are dipped in pure honey when served. On this day the local village priest visits each home to sprinkle it and the cattle with “holy water.”

As busy as this little housewife is, she invites us in. She and her children are glad to listen to the Kingdom message that this minister of Jehovah brings. He speaks directly from the Bible about a new world where there will be no more fear, drudgery or oppression. He points out that the Bible says that every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none will make him afraid. The housewife indicates that this news is all too good to be true. The witness says that this is the good news of the kingdom that Jesus commanded to be preached in all the earth. After a happy exchange of thoughts she accepts some of the Bible literature offered. She waves to us as we continue to the next door.

This is a lovely little house and the householder has an engaging personality. While he is seriously listening to the witness tell about the Kingdom, who should come along but the village priest The householder invites the priest to discuss the Bible with the witness of Jehovah, but he abruptly declines, saying he must bless the house and cattle and chant the Epiphany hymn. This he does. With his formalistic service over in a hurry he quickly moves on; however, not before he collects some money for his service. The witness takes the interruption in his stride and continues his sermon. The householder sees the need for real life-giving waters of truth and happily becomes a subscriber for the Watchtower magazine. He beams with delight to have something that will help him understand his Catholic Bible.

And he too waves good-by as we continue from house to house preaching this good news of God’s kingdom to all men of good will.

* What the early Christians thought of statues, images and religious charms? P. 6, 114.

• Whether St. Christopher medals prevent accidents! P. 7, 113,

* How to receive real protection today?

P. 8, til.

• • Where knitting was first established as a    /

craft? P. 17, T3.

• • Why reading is such a joy? P. 21, 114.

• • How to expand your vocabulary without / too much work? P. 22, US.

  • What proves that the earth did not always exist? P. 8,

  • What the major pitfall is in trying to date fossils by the age of rocks? P. lo, 113.

  • Why Armageddon will be totally unlike \ man’s wars? P. 25, j[2.                             .

  • Why the work of Barnabas and Paul on ' Cyprus must now be repeated? P. 27, Ui. (

  
  
  
  
  
  

Battle of the Flags

Since the fall of Nationalist ,China refugees have swarmed into Hong Kong. The population has risen from a low of 600,000 during World War U to 2,500,000. Many refugees live in poverty and overcrowded conditions. At the same time they are either afraid or unwilling to return to Red China and find it difficult to move to Taiwan, which has its own population problems. In October each Chinese regime has its own “national day." Procommunlst Chinese celebrate on October 1, the Nationalists on October 10, On these days each group vies with the other io see who can put out the most flags. This year a housing official tore down a number of flags on the Nationalist holiday. Rioting in the Kowloon mainland section ensued. Soon the anflcommu-njst demonstrations turned into riots against these westerners. A police post was attacked; soldiers had to come to Its rescue. Mobs burned automobiles. One Englishman and his wife were not allowed to leave the burning vehicle until the last possible moment. Looting was widespread. Mobs ransacked two government subtreasuries. Howling mobs threw rocks and broken bottles. Several times British soldiers were forced to open fire on the mobs. After two days, in the greatest outbreak in Hong Kong in a generation, the dead numbered 44 and the injured nearly 200. Observers laid the rioting to political animosities and also to the tensions of refugee life. Red China blamed the British for letting the situation get out of control. Warned Peiping: “We are watching for the next move-”

Border Violence Increases

& "No aggressive action by ,.. either shall be undertaken, planned or threatened against .. . the other.” These terms of the Arab-Israeli armistice agreement were signed more than seven years ago. But since then it would be hard to find any international agreement that has been violated more times. In fact, this year violence has been on the rise. During the short period from July 29 to September 25, Israel lost 19 dead, had 28 wounded and filed 59 complaints; Jordan lost 72 killed, had 24 wounded, and filed 210 ecm-plaints. In October the pattern continued. Two Israeli workers were found in a citrus grove shot to death and mutilated Evidence pointed to Jordanian gunmen. That night Israeli forces launched a retaliatory raid, during which the Jordanian police post at Qalqilya was destroyed. Jordan lost 66 persons killed. Israel lost 18 killed, the largest number ever lost in a reprisal raid. Observers found evident of Israeli use of i55-mm. and 105-mm. artillery, mortars, bazookas, Bangalore torpedoes and grenades. Tel Aviv stated that Israel had been left no alternative because Jordan had incited aggression and the U-N. was helpless to prevent it.

The Poznan Trials

& Last June riots in Poznan, Poland, left 53 persons dead. The first of a series of. trials growing out of the riots began in September, Defendants In two proceedings were three youths accused of murdering a security policeman- Nine others were charged with attacking policemen. The trials were singularly unusual for a Communist land. The courtroom was bare of the usual pictures of Red leaders. There was no abject self-accusation on the part of the defendants, in fact, the defendants indicted the police ae severely as they themselves had been indicted. At the close of the trials the judge sentenced the youths accused of murdering a policeman to four years in prison. Two other defendants were acquitted and another got a suspended sentence. Srt other# wens sentenced to prison terms for attacking secret-police headquarters. The defense described the verdicts as "very fair.” Shortly after the trials Poland’s prosecutor general declared that “democratization¹¹¹ of life under communism had guaranteed that the police tyranny of 1949-1953 could not recur.

■Visit to the Latvian Capital

<#> Latvia is a small country at the east end of the Baltic Sea. Its capital is the port diy ol Riga. In 1940 the Russians took over Latvia. The elections, supervised by the Red Army, installed a Communist regime. Recently Swedish warships made a visit to Riga. When the sailors returned to Stockholm they told stories of poverty and brutality. Almost to a man

the sailors were shocked by what they saw. Citizens were picked up for interrogation after talking with the sailors. One sailor, invited to dinner by a Latvian family, found that the head of the house could not be present. The reason: the police summoned him for questioning. The sailors saw women pitched into prison trucks because their farewells to visitors were considered too friendly. “What do you think it is like to*Iive here?” a Latvian woman asked two Swedish reporters In the street. “You should stay and see for yourself. It Is hard.” Sailors reported widespread drunkenness among men in Riga. Prices of bread, butter and milk were said to be three to four times higher than those in Sweden. The crewmen reported that there seem to be as many Russian soldiers in uniform in Riga as there are civilians.

Rehabilitation in Hungary

Seven years ago Hungary’s foreign minister, Laszlo Rajk, and three other top-raiiking Communists were executed. They had been charged with treason and Titoism. The men were buried in unmarked, dishonored graves. In time Moscow effected a reconciliation with Belgrade. This changed the picture. Former Titoists throughout the Soviet world were rehabilitated. In October 200,000 Hungarians watched as the coffins of Rajk and three other executed Communists were given honorary reburial in a cemetery that is to become a national pantheon. Wives and children and other relatives of the dead Communists clustered around the coffins, Speaking for the Communist party and the government. Deputy Premier Antal Aprs said: “There never was a more tragic duty than ours, rehabilitating our dead comrades whom we cannot resurrect.”

Stalin Assailed Anew

Ever since Moscow exposed the myth of Stalin’s genius, Soviet newspapers have attacked Stalin for his military leadership during World War II. In October Soviet newspapers opened up a new front: they attacked Stalin for failing as a military commander as early as 1918. They said that historians have credited Stalin with a greater role in the Bolshevik Revolution than he actually played.' It was a mistake, a Soviet military newspaper said, for historians to give primary importance to the Southern Front during the Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. “The activities of J. V. Stalin on this sector were evaluated as decisive,” the paper said. "Actually the Southern Front at that time was of secondary importance. The Eastern Front was the most important one. It was there the fate of the young Soviet state really was decided. . . . Lenin personally supervised the strengthening of the Eastern Front as well as other fronts.” Meanwhile, the Soviet Ministry of Culture instructed the state radio to give wider publicity to the destruction of the Stalin legend.

Tangier: Passing of an Era

For more than half a century the seaport city of Tangier In Morocco has known some form of international status. As a result it has been one of the most free places in the world, both financially and morally. Brothels have operated openly. So have vendors of hashish. There has been no income tax. Currencies and gold have been bought and sold legally at rates that in many lands are black-market prices. Low import tariffs have made Tangier the place to buy German cameras, French wines, British woolens and U.S. nylons. Last July a protocol of transition - was signed by the eight ruling powers. This turned the zone over to a Moroccan governor until final settlement. In October some 70 delegates from nine nations met Their purpose was to put an end to the International status by integrating Tangier into the Sultan's empire and, at the same time, guarantee an economic regime favorable to foreign capital. European residents of Tangier, uncertain of the future, mourned the passing of an era.

The Diary of Anne Frank

& Anne Frank, the youngest member of a Jewish refugee family, hid in an attic for some two years in wartime Amsterdam. That was in July, 1942, when the Gestapo began searching out Jews from occupied cities to transport them to concentration camps. Anne was 13 when she went into hiding, 15 when she died in the B e r g en-Belsen concentration camp. Anne had kept a diary; it was published after the war. Recently it became the basis for a play running successfully on Broadway. In October "The Diary of Anne Frank” opened in seven theaters in Germany. Observers wondered how German audiences would respond. To the surprise of many an observer the German audiences did not greet the play with derision and disbelief as they had the postwar films of the concentration camp horrors. The audiences’ attitude was one of shocked silence. A Berlin critic, writing in Berlin’s Nacht-Depesche, called the play an excellent reminder of “the already half-f or gotten truth."

Pope Innocent XI Beatified

•$> Beatification is a solemn act by the pope in the Roman Catholic Church, declaring a deceased person worthy of a degree of homage. It is generally a step toward being proclaimed a saint. In October St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was

richly decorated and packed with a crowd of some 30,000. The crowd had come to witness the beatification ceremony of Pope Innocent XL Ten cardinals and 50 archbishops and bishops were also present as Pope Pius XII praised Innocent as “one of the outstanding popes.” A coffin bearing the remains of the seventeenthcentury pope was put on display. His remains were clad in white and golden vestments and his face covered with a silver mask, The beatification sanctioned Catholics to venerate Innocent in certain places, especially in his native town of Como, Italy. Many Roman Catholics hope he will eventually be proclaimed a saint, This would make him a subject of veneration by the church as a whole.

The Live-Virus Polio Vaccine

Dr. Jonas Salk developed the present vaccine against poliomyelitis. It is administered by injections and is made of virus killed with formaldehyde. For some time scientists have been trying to make a live-virus polio vaccine. This is the form of most vaccines, such as those for smallpox. The main problem was to isolate samples of the safest virus in three major strains—a virus that would not cause paralysis but would give the patient a very mild case of the disease. This would stimulate the body to develop immunity to more potent forms of the virus. Last year scientists at the California Institute of Technology developed a means to Isolate single polio particles. This paved the way for rapid progress on a live-virus polio vaccine, in October the University of Cincinnati's Dr. Albert B. Sabin announced he had developed a live-virus polio vaccine to be taken by mouth. A single dose, Dr. Sabin said, would produce immunity against all three major strains of polio. Tests conducted so far proved the vaccine safe on animals and humans. The vaccine costs little to make. Oddly enough, the cherry syrup vehicle by which the vaccine is administered costs more than the vaccine itself, Twenty-one quarts of the vaccine are sufficient, Dr. Sabin disclosed, to vaccinate 2,000,000 persons. In 1957 more extensive tests of the vaccine will begin.

Many people of Noah’s day knew God existed. Why did they perish? Because their knowledge was insufficient. Noah knew God, too, but he knew him well enough to heed his counsel. That’s why he was prepared when the great Deluge came.

How well do you know God? Do you know his personal name? Do you know what his purpose with this world is? Or what the world’s “time of the end” is? Do you know God’s requirements for surviving this world’s end? Right knowledge can lead to your salvation.

Obtain "This Means Everlasting Life” with a free booklet by sending 50c.

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32                                            AWAKE!

¹

A policeman in Long Beach, New York, gave his wife a ticket tor a parking violation. His wife snapped back: 'TH pay the fine, all right—with his money."

²

+ In Davenport, Iowa, a woman rushed into the police ■ station to pay a parking fine. “Hurry up,” she said, "I'm double parked.”

♦ In Tokyo, Japan, Air Force weathermen had to postpone their annual picnic. It rained.

³

♦ Since hurricanes were named after women, an editor in Williamson, West Virginia, ‘began naming heat waves after

⁴

men.

⁵

♦ A few crime notes from 1955: “Someone made off with a burglar alarm in Richmond, Virginia. A ferris wheel turned up missing at a Chicago carnival. A visitor