How Long Can I Hope to Live?

Totalitarian Inquisition Revived in Spain

Caution! Your Credit Is Good

The East-West Center

SEPTEMBER 8. 1961

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pressure the more we have need for a change, for relaxation, for something that gives variety, that is beautiful and may also be creative; in other words, a hobby. For mental and physical health there must be time, not only for eating

himself to a single crop, nor did he do everything by machine. Every farm had its horses and cows, its pigs and chickens, its cats and dogs. Life was rich and varied, and not just for the farmer.

Then the average man living in town had his own house for his family, with a back yard where he grew fruits, vegetables and flowers. Caring for his family, house and garden gave him all he needed in the way of variety and relaxation. His wife found herself in a similar position. She sewed, knitted, quilted and crocheted, did her own baking and cooking and raised a large family besides. She was the praise of her husband.—Prov. 31:10-31.

But as people keep moving into crowded cities to live in ever smaller apartments and to have ever smaller families, their lives tend to become ever more restricted. Specialization, assembly lines and keener competition tend to make it even more so. The more life is marked with routine and and sleeping, but also for wholesome relaxation and play. Nor is the dedicated Christian minister an exception to this rule.—Eccl. 3:1-8,

Of course, if you should happen to be the parent of a houseful of children, you may well find all the variety, all the change, all the creative and heart-warming activity you need right within the walls of that house, or its accompanying back yard. Your looking after the mental and emotional needs of your children may give you all the satisfactions that a hobby gives others.

If kept in its place, a hobby, or two or three, can prove the source of many satisfactions. Your hobby can bring happiness to others as well as to yourself. Others will enjoy seeing your color slides, watching your tropical fish, listening to your music and smelling your flowers. But it must be kept in its place—and there’s the rub. For the more pleasure you derive from a hobby the more danger there is of going to an extreme, letting it get out of control, letting the hobby hobble you. — 2 Tim. 3:4.

To hobble means to cause to limp, to restrain or hold back. A hobby can very easily hobble you if it takes an undue amount of your time, money, attention and strength. The Scriptural injunction to “keep your balance in all things” also applies to hobbies.—2 Tim, 4:5.

The photography hobby, if not properly regulated, can easily become a timeconsuming one. Fascination may lead you to subscribe to periodicals, join camera clubs and go in for developing your own pictures. You may come to be in demand for taking pictures of parties, weddings and what not; and while all such may turn out profitably, the question is, How much time does it take? Is it worth while? Does it hobble you?

Or your hobby may be plants, African violets, or something more ambitious, such as growing orchids. Unless the hobbyist is careful, the daily attention they demand as well as the allure of literature and catalogues on the subject will seriously hobble him, perhaps even to the consternation of others of the family.

Unless one is careful, the cost of a hobby can likewise seriously hobble the hobbyist. The music lover may start out with an AM-FM radio set. Then he learns of high fidelity, and so buys costly hi-fi radio and phonograph equipment. Now he subscribes to hi-fi magazines, attends hi-fi shows and buys ever better equipment, all running up into many dollars. Along comes stereophonic music, and then it is the same thing all over again. He may easily let his hobby hobble him financially, spending more on it than he really can afford in view of other obligations.

Or the hobby may be tropical fish. At first a small tank will do, a few plants and a dozen modest fish, such as “neons,” “angel fish” and “zebras,” costing about twenty-five cents each. But then the hobbyist wants a larger, more interesting tank, or more than one, and larger and fancier fish, some costing from $2.50 to $25 apiece. Soon the hobby may hobble the hobbyist.

Not to be overlooked is the attention, energy and interest a hobby requires. Unless kept in check, a hobby can become a jealous master, requiring exclusive devotion. Members of a family, and especially fathers, must be on guard here. The bowling hobby can easily cause a father to neglect his family, and so can golfing or fishing. If he cannot take his family along with him to enjoy his hobby, he would be wise to find another hobby or to indulge in it only occasionally. This shoe, of course, applies also to the other foot. Children may become so absorbed in a hobby that they make unreasonable demands on their parents and seem to live just for their hobby, neglecting duties around home as well as school homework.

So keep perspective. If you have a hobby, make it something for which you have a natural aptitude or that especially appeals to your sense of beauty, that satisfies your instinct to do, make or collect things or to match wits with others. But keep it within the bounds of reason; do not let it run away with you. Exercise self-control as to the time and money you will spend on it.

Avoid the snare of pride and vanity. Do not go in for it big so as to have something to brag about. If your hobby is music, you do not try to rival a virtuoso; if it is a sport, you do not try to outdo a national champion. So keep your hobby in its place. Let it be pure recreation. Do not let your hobby hobble you!

YOU cannot hope to live very long if your hopes are based upon man’s average life span. For man “is shortlived . . . Like a blossom he has come forth and is cut off, and he runs away like the shadow and does not keep existing.” How true are these inspired words of the Bible writer of over 3,400 years ago! Man’s existence ceases all too soon. “In themselves the days of our years are seventy years, and if because of special mightiness they are eighty years, yet their insistence is on trouble and hurtful things, for it must quickly pass by and away we fly.”—Job 14:1, 2; Ps. 90:10.

So man has found the case to be. For one who lives in the United States the average life span is close to seventy years. In Norway and Sweden it is somewhat higher, being closer to seventy-two or seventy-three years. In India, if one’s hopes for life are based on the average for the people, then he cannot hope to live beyond thirty-two years of age. For a native of the Republic of Congo, Africa, the average life expectancy is thirty-nine years. In Chile, South America, it is fifty-two. These figures are based on the latest statistics compiled by the United Nations. They confirm what is so evident from observation, that when one reaches seventy or eighty years his vital energies are so diminished that “he runs away like the shadow and does not keep existing.” In many countries, because of the hardness of life, famine and disease, millions are cut off before old age sets in, accounting for much lower average life expectancies.

But cannot one hope to live longer than seventy or eighty years? Is it inevitable that we reach old age find approach death so soon? No, is the hopeful reply of medical science. A world-famous medical scientist, Dr. Hans Selye, says that “if the causes of aging can be found, there is no good medical reason to believe that it will not be possible for science to find some practical way of slowing it down or even bringing it to a standstill.” Studies of the human organism indicate that potentially man is perpetual. Last year, before a University of Southern California Faculty Club, Nobel prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling testified that “theoretically man is quite immortal. His bodily tissues replace themselves. He is a self-repairing machine.” Yet man continues to grow old and die—why?

Cause of Aging and Death

Dr. Pauling blamed improper living habits. “We constantly insult ourselves by doing things for which our bodies were never intended. The result of these constant, recurrent insults is aging and death.” But is this the real reason for aging and death? Do not people who take the best of care of themselves still grow old and die?

After spending well over a decade in pursuing the cause for aging and death, Dr. Johan Bjorksten, while not finding the answer, concluded that man’s life could average 900 years if one had the resistance to disease of a ten-year-old. According to Dr. Bjorksten, at that age the molecules in the child’s body are being destroyed and rebuilt at the rate of about one percent an hour. As a result the entire body is rebuilt every four days. He pointed out that when one grows older more and more of the body molecules become inert and are incapable of being replaced, leading to aging and death.

With man’s potential life span being endless, medical scientists press on in their search, spending untold hours of research in laboratories. However, they are looking in the wrong place. The answer has already been found and it is recorded in a book that is open for investigation to all. Turning to that book, one recognized as the highest authority by many of earth’s greatest men, we find the most logical, reasonable answer.

That book, the Holy Bible, in harmony with the findings of medical research, testifies that man was created perfect and therefore capable of living forever. Its opening chapter says that “God proceeded to create the man,” and in another place it says of his creation: “Perfect is his activity.”—Gen. 1:27; Deut. 32:4.

Life originates with God. “For with you is the source of life,” the psalmist declared. After being created, man’s continued life was dependent on its Source, Almighty God. If man was cut off from the “source of life” he would perish. As the scripture says, “If you take away their spirit, they expire and back to their dust they go.” —Ps. 36:9; 104:29.

The first man Adam was created a “son of God,” part of His great family, which already included untold multitudes of spirit children. God showed Adam from the beginning that life as a part of His family was conditioned on obedience to Him as the family Head. A disobedient child would not be tolerated but would be dismissed from the family and, thus cut off from the Source of life, would eventually die. Adam and Eve showed no appreciation for God’s family arrangement. They willfully broke the requirement for life by disobeying God’s instruction ‘not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.’ So after using up the tremendous vitality of their once-perfect bodies and within the thousand-year-day limit set by God, they died; Adam after 930 years of existence. —Luke 3:38; Gen. 2:17; 5:5.

Aging and death therefore are a result of our first parents’ disobedience and dismissal from God’s family. On their ejection from the garden of Eden Adam and Eve were subject to the stresses and strains of hard work under imperfect conditions, disappointments and heartbreaks, and even the stark tragedy of the first human death, that of their own son at the hand of a murderous, maddened brother. All these trials tended to throw out of balance the functions of their once-perfect organisms. Finally death ensued. Since all of Adam and Eve's children were born after their disobedience and since children inherit the assets and liabilities of their parents, the entire human race became subject to sin, sickness and death. Adam and Eve were unclean sinners condemned to death and therefore could produce only individuals like themselves. It is as the scripture says: “Who can produce someone clean out of someone unclean? There is not one.” This explains why all today grow old and die.—Job 14:4; Rom. 5:12.

Aging and Death to Be Stopped

Man cannot stop the aging process and prevent death; only the Source of life, Almighty God, can do that. His Word promises that if you take in wisdom from him and knowledge of his purposes “your days will become many and to you years of life will be added.” Creatures must turn to the law of the all-wise One, Jehovah, and not to medical science, if they would find the source of life. “The law of the wise one is a source of life, to turn one away from the snares of death.”—Prov. 9:11; 13:14.

God’s law, his written Word, declares that Adam and Eve lost their position as children of God, as well as the right to life for themselves and all their offspring. Governed by perfect justice, yet motivated by undeserved kindness and love, Jehovah provided a redemptive price, whereby humans could again become children of God and receive the right to life. By sending his heavenly Son to earth as a perfect man, and by his Son’s giving up his right to earthly life in sacrifice, Jehovah had a basis for declaring men righteous for life. This is explained at Romans 3:23-25: “For all have sinned and fall short , of the glory of God, and it is as a free gift that they are being declared righteous by his undeserved kindness through the release by the ransom paid by Christ Jesus. God set him forth as an offering for propitiation through faith in his blood.” God’s provision of the ransom of his Son Jesus is the only sure means of stopping degenerative aging and death.

Soon now, by means of the application of the benefits of the ransom sacrifice of his Son, Jehovah “will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.” Yes, aging and death will be among the former things done away with! Rejoice, for by Jehovah’s power “death is to be destroyed” forever!—Rev. 21:4; 1 Cor. 15:26.

The Real Hope for Long Life

The real hope for long, healthful life is not in men of science. They are completely helpless when faced with the enemies old age and death. So heed the words of the inspired psalmist: “Do not put your trust in nobles, nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs. Happy is the one that has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Jehovah his God.” —Ps. 146:3, 5.

But how does one today show that his hope is in Jehovah? How can he be assured of realizing the hope of everlasting life, which God has promised? Effort is necessary. “With the heart,” the apostle says, “one exercises faith for righteousness." Only by hearing an accurate report can one develop a faith that will motivate to a righteous course. So take in accurate knowledge. Study and build up faith in Jehovah’s provisions for life. But more is needed. “With the mouth," the apostle continues, “one makes public declaration for salvation.” One can hope to live forever only if he follows the apostolic example of publicly declaring to others the good news concerning Jehovah’s marvelous provisions for life.—Rom. 10:10, 17.

Therefore the answer to the question, How long can I hope to live? depends on your response to Jehovah’s provision. Will you trust in Jehovah with all your heart, hoping in his promises for life? Will you give evidence of your faith by pursuing a righteous course? Will you fulfill Jehovah’s requirement for salvation, publicly declaring this good news of God’s kingdom to others? If you do, you can hope to be among the millions who will live forever in happiness in God's new world.

They will not build and someone else have occupancy; they win not plant and someone else do the eating. For like the days of a tree will the days of my people be; and the work of their own hands my chosen ones will use to the full.-—Isa. 65:22.

OFFICIAL government decrees have mobilized the police of the nation to hunt down those who read the Bible and to put an end to any free discussion of it with others. Long-time residents have been forced to leave their homes; workers have been denied employment; private homes have been raided by the police; citizens have been kid

Religious oppression is nothing new to the people of twentieth-century Spain. During this generation nonCatholics have long accustomed themselves to putting up a costly fight of many years for the right even to get married without having to submit to idolatrous Catholic ritual, and even after all that they are granted only a civil ceremony. Spaniards who have been legally married by civil authorities in the United States, England or some other country have resigned themselves to the fact that in Catholic Spain they will be viewed as fornicators by the Catholic Church and any child born to them will be registered by the Spanish Catholic government as illegitimate.

Government Policy of Oppression

Yet the present onslaught has gone farther than ever before. Sincere Christians have been constantly harassed, the privacy of their homes has been violated, and they have been abused while in police custody. What is happening in Spain is not simply that local police are acting out of personal prejudice or as a result of local instigation by a priest of the Catholic state religion. Rather, a systematic nationwide program is being carried out to

deprive an entire segment of the population of basic human rights and the freedom that the law of the land guarantees for all its citizens.

It was Dictator Franco’s own First Minister of Government who authorized a police order, signed by the Chief of the General Directory of Security (the national police) and communicated to the police in all parts of Spain and its possessions, to stamp out the Christian educational work of Jehovah’s witnesses. That order, circulated during the past year, says in part: “On various occasions, instructions have been circulated from this Directive Center to the respective Chiefs of Police, to intensify the repressive work against the referred-to activities [of Jehovah’s witnesses], without having reached the desired results, principally due to the extensiveness of their action and also, that those who carry on this proselyting work usually come from different places than the zones where they operate, existing also the circumstance that foreign elements intervene in these tasks. . . . Consequently, in order to fulfill orders of the Most Excellent Minister of Government, I entreat that Your Excellency adopt the services and preventive and repressive measures, pertinent to stopping such activities absolutely and definitely.” In mid-March of this year another police order from Madrid directed that “the graveness of the repressive methods be accentuated” and that “foreigners” participating in the Christian activity of Jehovah’s witnesses be subjected to “immediate expulsion from the national territory.”

Homes Invaded

The fact is that the Spanish Rights, while declaring that the Catholic religion is the religion of the state, also says: “No one will be molested for his religious beliefs nor the private exercise of his cult.” And, in Article 16, the further guarantee is given: “Spaniards can meet and associate together freely for lawful purposes in accord with that which is established by the laws.” Yet the police have illegally forced their way into private homes in province after province to arrest any who might be studying the Bible.

Such was the experience of a group of humble Christians on the night of December 24. Although that is a time set aside for special religious observance throughout Christendom, residents of the city of Las Palmas in the Spanish Canary Islands spent that night in jail simply because they were caught reading the Bible. At 8:30 that evening, while policemen guarded the stairs and entrance of the apartment house and stood guard at each corner of the street, five others wearing gabardine raincoats and with pistols held inside their pockets illegally forced their way into a private home where a small group was engrossed in Bible study. One snarled at Jose Orzaez Ramirez, the owner of the house, that it was his custom to enter such gatherings with his pistol blazing with intent to kill.

Having confiscated the Bibles of everyone present, the police noted the names of the children and sent them home, while the fourteen adults along with a three-month-old baby were herded to police headquarters. Those under arrest were given nothing to eat that night, although suppertime in Spain is usually at ten or eleven o’clock, nor was any food provided the next morning. Cries of hunger from the three-month-old during the night and repeated pleas for the release of the mother and child were ignored until the next day.

All were fingerprinted as if they were dangerous criminals, and, for the majority, release did not come until the next afternoon, after eighteen hours of imprisonment without food or sleep. The owner of the house where the Bible study was being held and another man present were detained as the responsible ones. They w'ere thrown into a dark, dirty cell where there was nothing but a stone bench, and they were still given nothing to eat. At eight o’clock that night they were taken from their cells and led to the court; finally at 11 p.m. their case came under consideration. Three hours of intense interrogation followed, in which it was intimated that they were Communists and subversives; then they were put into a small and dirty, humid, bedless cell, where three men were already sleeping on the floor. The next morning they were moved into solitary confinement in parasite-ridden quarters. Request for a copy of the Holy Bible was refused. While they have been released on bail, court judgment against the owner of the home can result in a six-month jail term, for he has been formally charged with holding “illicit associations.’’

Just a few days after the police raid in Las Palmas, at 10 a.m. on December 27, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, four secret policemen forced their way into the house of Antonio Dorta, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, while four more guarded the street below. After a thorough search of the house, the owner of the home was fined 2,000 pesetas, as was Antonio Rodriguez Luque, the presiding minister of the local congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses who happened to drop by the house. The formal charge, as stated, was: “They devote themselves to carrying on propaganda of Jehovah’s witnesses.’’

Upon refusing to pay the unjust fine, the men were handcuffed and thrown into prison for thirty days. Appeal to the governor brought no reply. A copy of the New Testament carried by one of the men was taken from him. Visits were limited to five minutes a week for the wife of one of the men. When she left a copy of the Catholic Bible so that her husband could have something to read, the prison authorities rejected it as unsuitable reading material.

Punishment for Studying the Bible

If a person has a knowledge of the Bible he becomes a criminal suspect, and if he is caught studying it he stands condemned, according to the police standards of dictatorial Spain. Such is evident from an experience in the city of Talavera de la Reina, in the province of Toledo, where Domingo Gonzalez was accosted by the police while he was engaged in his secular work. They questioned him carefully as to what his religion was, how he acquired his Bible knowledge, who taught him, and so forth, and then threatened that they would have him thrown out of the city.

Later he wrote: “Eighteen days later they notified me that they were imposing a fine of 2,000 pesetas, accusing me of ‘public scandal and unauthorized propaganda’! Since they did not pick me up while witnessing and they had no proof, other than that I am one of Jehovah’s witnesses by admission, I made a plea to the Ministry of Government, notifying them that the accusations against me were not true. They answered that merely studying the Bible condemned me to the mentioned fine. While my visiting friend was taken to Madrid to serve his prison sentence, I was taken to prison for thirty days in the pueblo, the prison being in very bad medieval conditions. . . . [The police] notified all the shops not to give me work. They persecuted my wife who was working as an attendant, refusing her work in all places.”

Another such incident took place in Madrid, where the police invaded a home where a small group was having a private discussion of their Bible text for the day. Names were taken, Bible literature was seized, and three of the group were escorted to Madrid's Puerta del Sol central police headquarters. All concerned were subsequently fined, and for refusal to pay the fines they were thrown into jail.

Prison sentences were staggered so that none of the group would be imprisoned together, Carmen Navacerrada Barea was the first of the group to go to jail. To make the arrest as distasteful as possible, she was apprehended by uniformed police at her place of employment. At Madrid’s Ventas prison she was made to associate with prostitutes and other vile women, had to attend Catholic mass, and by twisting her arm they forced her to kneel before the prison priest to have ashes sprinkled upon her head.

What unmistakable evidence that the inquisitional tactics of the Roman Catholic Church, using the arm of the political state to blot out a knowledge of the Bible and the practice of all non-Catholic religion, are the same in Spain today as they were in the Dark Ages!

A Crime to Talk About God

While Article 12 of the Spanish Rights guarantees freedom for all to express their ideas as long as they commit no crime against the fundamental principles of the State, the worst treatment has been meted out to those who have used this freedom to talk to others about God and his Word the Bible.

In Madrid, on several occasions recently, when women were caught talking to neighbors about God they were arrested, charged with “scandal” and fined. Imagine it! In Catholic Spain it is considered scandalous and illegal to talk about God!

Last September Manuel Mula Gimenez, presiding minister of the congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses at Granada, was arrested along with another Witness for preaching from the Bible to others, and all his Bible literature as well as that in the archives of the congregation was confiscated. After questioning and even hitting this minister, they ordered them to cease preaching, and turned them loose. The next month, on October 5, Manuel Mula was standing on a street comer chatting with some others of Jehovah’s witnesses when one of the secret police again accosted him. Simply because he had in his possession a small case containing some Bible literature he was charged with breaking the previous order against his preaching.

Writing about the experience, he says: “The policeman that arrested me treated me very brusquely, threatening me with all kinds of things. When I reminded him that the only motive he had for arresting me was that I was talking with some people on the street and that I would like to know why I was being arrested, he became so infuriated as to say to me: T arrest you because I have a badge like this and a pistol with which I can fill your head full of holes,’ and he then took out the pistol and pointed it at me. This was in the middle of one of the most central streets of Granada.”

After his being charged with the “crime” of teaching others from the Bible as a witness for Jehovah God, bail for this minister was set at 50,000 pesetas ($833.00—a fantastic sum in Spain!), and because he was not able to pay the sum he was held forty-three days in prison. For twenty days he was held in solitary confinement, and after that he was forbidden to speak to anyone about religion, under threat of punishment. In the prison library was a Bible, but the priest ordered this to be removed so he could not use it. When another prisoner loaned him some Gospels that he was reading, these were snatched away and never seen again. Constantly the guards shouted at him and tried to make life unendurable.

Upon release from prison he was ordered to leave Granada.

Forced Out of Their Homes

The cruel oppression meted out to Jehovah’s witnesses has been designed to make it impossible for them to carry on even the normal activities necessary for life. In one place after another they have been arbitrarily and unscrupulously forced to move out of their homes and leave behind their employment.

Such has been the experience of Jose Cuso Xaxo, his wife Carmen, and their friend Carmen Caelles Sauch, all of Murcia. On July 29 last year they were asked to present themselves at the police headquarters. After four hours of questioning they were told to go eat dinner and then report back. Upon their return the man was immediately snapped into handcuffs and paraded through town on the way to see the judge. On November 16 each of the group was fined 1,000 pesetas for refusal to obey a police order to move out of the province. When Jose Cuso argued that they had broken no law, the government replied with sentences of fifteen days in prison for all three of them. A week after their release they were again asked to report to police headquarters, and again they were thrown into jail.

In writing to a friend on December 29 Jose Cuso said: “They ordered us repeatedly to leave the province, because they would not stand for our preaching work, and said that we would be in jail much more of the time than we would be free. One of them put himself heatedly before us and pulled from his pocket a rosary and cross and said: ‘These are my arms, and for them I will die; and now not as a policeman, but as a Catholic. I don’t want to see you in Murcia and I will pursue you as though you were my shadow.’ ”

The group little realized just how far the police would go in making good their threat. On January 9 the two girls and the man were jailed again. After being held for about a week in Murcia they were secretly moved to the seaport province of Alicante, then to the prison at Valencia, and finally to Barcelona. Attempts of the mother of one of the girls to visit her daughter were refused “for sanitary reasons.”

Spain’s habeas corpus law, which forbids the holding of anyone for more than seventy-two hours without formal charges, has been mercilessly trampled upon. Civil authorities in Barcelona even refused to admit that the three were being held. Finally, after thirty days in a Barcelona prison, they were released, and the government treated the whole incident as if it were all just a mistake, and no further charges were filed.

Another outrageous example of such action by the police occurred in the northwestern seaport city of Gijon. Although they had had no previous contact with the police in the city, after a year and a half of residence there two women, both Jehovah’s witnesses, were visited by the police and ordered to leave the province. When they refused, the police grew halfhearted about the matter, saying that they were only following orders from Madrid. However, two months later one of the women was arrested while simply walking along the street, and then they went to her home and arrested the other woman with whom she lived.

For over a month they were held in the jail at Gijon, after which they were taken under police guard to be returned to the provinces of their birth. One of them had not lived in her “home” province for about forty years, but that made no difference to the police. For both women the trip was made as unpleasant as possible by taking the long way around and using only slow-moving milk trains, traveling only a short distance each day before getting off to be registered in another local prison. For one the trip of seven hundred miles took about fifteen days, and it was all under male guards. In the process, arrangements that had been made by ber to get married were disrupted.

Hardly a province in Spain has remained untouched by this cruel campaign against Jehovah’s witnesses. In recent years at least fifteen ministers have been run out of such famous cities as Cartagena, Alicante, Palma de Mallorca, Murcia, San Sebastian, Santander, Zaragoza, Vigo and Gijon. And Witnesses have been searched out in Malaga, Tarragona, Cuenca, Cadiz, Cordoba and Sevilla and in the province of Pontevedra.

Tourist Centers Now Cities of Oppression

Government oppression has been directed, not only against Spaniards, but also against tourists. Vacationers in the Canary Islands—persons of such diverse nationalities as Canadians, Germans, Belgians and Danes—have been treated as criminals because of their belief in God, and some were even fingerprinted and photographed for INTERPOL, the international police.

The summer tourist city of San Sebastian has carried out a determined campaign of religious persecution. Early in 1959 a young Spanish woman was relentlessly pursued by the police because she was one of Jehovah’s witnesses. In August of that year a young German citizen whose wife was Spanish was thrown out of the country for talking about God, and since that time there has been hardly a month when various ones of Jehovah’s witnesses have not been summoned to police headquarters. Catholic priests have constantly contributed to the agitation by false reports printed in the newspapers and broadcast over the radio.

In the same city Angel Martin, who devotes all his time to the ministry, was arrested last November for speaking from the Bible to a householder. He spent the night in a cell where there was not even a cot, and on Sunday the prison attendants virtually dragged him from his cell in an endeavor to force him to attend Catholic mass. Later he was put in solitary confinement for twenty days and given as food rice with blood and blood sausage, which, as a Christian, he could not eat. After forty-two days he was released with instructions to get out of the province. Lawyers who were consulted on two occasions about the case said that it would be futile to try to do anything, since the order had come down from the Ministry of Government.

In another resort city, Alicante, on the shores of the Mediterranean, Gregorio Sanchez Valdepenas was thrown into jail and held incommunicado for twenty-five days, and then ordered to get out of the province—because of his religion.

Even the United States Air Force Base at Zaragoza has not been immune, and members of the military mission there have been harassed by police and priests alike for studying the Bible in their home.

What freedom is there for the people of Spain or for any who take up residence or visit there? None if you happen to cherish any religion other than that of the Roman Catholic Church. When it was explained to the secretary of the judge at Las Palmas that Jehovah’s witnesses are recognized in all free countries, the secretary retorted: “And who ever told you that this is a free country?”

Persecution Backfires

In spite of the constant persecution fomented by government officials and the Roman Catholic clergy, many honest-hearted Spaniards are reaching out for the help offered by Jehovah’s witnesses in studying the Word of God, and every month increasing numbers of persons are joining with Jehovah’s people in urging others to take life’s water free. (Rev. 22: 17) They know that the persecution of Jehovah’s witnesses is not for political agitation on their part, because Jehovah’s witnesses have absolutely no part in political activity of any kind in any land; rather, this persecution is solely because they are Christians. When they see the treatment that is meted out to Jehovah’s witnesses by the police, these sincere persons become convinced that Jehovah’s witnesses are indeed the ones spoken of by Jesus when he said; “Then people will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all the nations on account of my name.”—Matt. 24:9.

Illustrative of this is the case of a person who was only newly interested at the time of her arrest in the Canary Islands. She said: “What I least expected was on that day so sacred for them, being the 24th of December, that they would do such an outrageous thing as to put us in prison. After that my faith kept growing,” and now she has been baptized. And a thirteen-year-old girl said that she was happy about the experience that she had undergone, because “it was a very good proof of the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24:9. I wasn’t nervous. It was as if it were not the first time that I was being arrested for being one of Jehovah’s witnesses.”

Such persecution only strengthens the faith of those who love and serve God. Wrote one full-time minister who had been imprisoned for about two months: “I am very happy to have suffered such an experience and at the same time to see how Jehovah never abandons us and that he is with us in these difficult moments. It is my purpose to continue serving Jehovah with all my strength.” How like the apostles of the Lord Jesus who, when they had been arrested, beaten and ordered to stop preaching, “went their way from before the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy to be dishonored in behalf of his name”!—Acts 5:40, 41,

Lawyers and judges too have expressed their disgust with the cruel treatment given to Jehovah’s witnesses. In one city three good lawyers offered their services free of charge to Jehovah’s witnesses. Another remarked that the local judge had even told him privately that what had taken place was a “dirty action.” How much good is any government doing even for itself when it alienates its own officials and other prominent persons by unlawful action taken to stamp out a religious minority?

Protest

It is evident that it is not alone in Communist lands that the religious freedom of Jehovah’s witnesses and others is being trampled underfoot. Time and again in recent years the people in professedly Christian nations have been deprived of their freedom to such an extent that libertyloving persons in all parts of the world have been aroused to deluge government officials with letters of protest expressing their disgust with the action of the government and pleading on behalf of the beleaguered people of those lands.

How do you feel about the inquisitional treatment being accorded non-Catholics in Spain? How do you react to this record of constant harassment that has been the lot of Jehovah’s witnesses there? If you do not agree with the actions of the government of Spain that show they consider it to be a crime for non-Catholics to talk to their neighbors about God or to read the Bible with their friends, if you feel that men should have the freedom to share with one another the good news that they learn from the pages of the Word of God, then write to the Spanish government on behalf of the people of Spain who have been deprived of these privileges. If you disapprove of the policy of deporting tourists because they are found to espouse a religion other than the one officially endorsed by the State; if you recognize the injustice of forcing men out of their homes and away from their jobs because of their religious faith; if you decry the totalitarian practice of throwing men into jail and holding them incommunicado for long periods of time without trial, then write to the Franco government of Spain and make your protest. If you feel that it is wrong for a democratic nation such as the United States to give financial support to a government that deprives its people of the most fundamental freedoms and if you agree that, as a member of the United Nations, Spain ought to guarantee to its people the religious freedom advocated by that organization in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, then write to the government officials in Spain and say so.

Rulers of all lands have long been sensitive about the opinion of the people and about their relations with other nations. .-If you say nothing, they conclude that you find no fault. As it has often been said, silence is consent. Show that you do not give your consent to what is going on in Spain by making your protest known. Do it now!

Address your protest to: Your Excellency Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo of Spain, El Pardo, Madrid; also to: Most Excellent Camilo Alonso Vega, Minister of Government, Ministry of the Government, Madrid, Spain.

One Human Race

ifTHE Bible story of Adam and Eve, father 1 and mother of the whole human race, told centuries ago the same truth that science has shown today: that all the peoples of the earth are a single family and have a common origin. Science describes the intricate make-up of the human body: all its different organs cooperating in keeping us alive, its curious anatomy that couldn’t possibly have 'just happened' to be the same in all men if they did not have a common origin. Take the structure of the human foot, for instance. When you list all the little bones and muscles and the joints of the toes, it is impossible to imagine that that would all have happened twice. Or take our teeth: so many front teeth, so many canines, so many molars. Who can imagine finding the same arrangements in two human species if they weren’t one family?

‘The faet of the unity of the human race is proved, therefore, in its anatomy. It is proved also by the close similarity in what all races are physically fitted for. No difference among human races has affected limbs and teeth and relative strength so that one race is biologically outfitted like a lion and another biologically like a lamb. All races of men can either plow or fight, and all the racial differences among them are in nonessentials such as texture of head hair, amount of body hair, shape of the nose or head, or color of the eyes and the skin. The white race is the hairiest, but a white man's hair isn’t thick enough to keep him warm in eold climates. The Negro’s dark skin gives him some protection against strong sunlight in the tropics, and white men often have to take precautions against sunstroke, But . . , today white men in hot countries wear sun helmets and protect themselves with clothes and rub their skin with suntan oil. Very dark-skinned people in the north, too, can add cod-liver oil and orange juice to their diet, and, if they need to, take a vitamin pill or two. . . .

“The races of mankind are what the Bible says they are—brothers. In their bodies is the record of their brotherhood.’’—-The Races of Mankind, by Professors Benedict and Weltflsh, Columbia University Anthropologists. Published by Public Affairs Committee.

BUYING on the installment plan is a modem Aladdin’s lamp. When the hero In the Arabian Nights rubbed his magic lamp a jinni appeared and helped him build a wonderful palace. Through the magic of “easy” credit, millions of twentiethcentury households enjoy conveniences fit for a king.

“Hire purchase,” as it is called in England, is a way of life on both sides of the Atlantic. It has inspired all kinds of literary effort from quips and cartoons to magazine articles and a new book. There is even a novelty wall plaque available with a bit of satire: “We may not have much, but at least what we have isn’t our own.”

Soon that may be suitable for translation and sale in Russia, if communism has not made it apt already. Until recently the Communists denounced installment buying but the fall of 1959 brought the first products to Russian consumers on the installment plan. Across the ocean from Russia Canadians ran their installment debt to a new high of $2,219,000,000 last year.

This was something like a down payment compared to the $40,200,000,000 installment load Americans carried in 1960. By last October American debt on credit cards, charge accounts, installment plans, medical and utility bills soared to a record $54,201,000,000!

There is little doubt that America is the leading disciple of those who preach the “blessed expedient of going into debt." But even in Uncle Sam’s credit paradise the postwar rush for durable household goods has just about ended. Not so credit buying. Now the accent is on education, travel, vacation, recreation, boats, mobile homes and private airplanes—all on “easy” terms. If the private plane for $750 down does not interest you, it is possible to fly now and pay later, courtesy of the commercial airlines.

To stimulate sale of more down-to-earth products, manufacturers have hired motivational experts to discover the colors and designs that will impel you to buy. Millions of advertising dollars are spent to sell you 1961’s “miracles,” on the theory that progress has made 1960’s “wonders” obsolete! For the same reason fashions are constantly changed. This ingenious sales device is called “artificial obsolescence.” If that fails, the advertisers will try hard

to convince you that you really need two cars, two television sets, two telephones or one more of whatever the manufacturer is trying to sell. The wizards of motivation assure him it pays to advertise, because consumers are notorious for putting personal pleasure ahead of self-denial.

Credit for Sale

Credit itself is a major "commodity” in today’s installment world. Dealers often make more on credit charges than they do on the merchandise. Recently a store in St. Louis complained that its customers were repaying installment debts too fast! This marketing of credit has outmoded the old interest-free charge accounts. The practice now is to steer customers into charge accounts that bear 1 to 14 % monthly interest on the unpaid balance, or into expensive credit plans. “Revolving credit” is a newcomer in the field, but it has proved a bonanza for stores and banks. A dealer will allow you a fixed amount of credit against which you shop and on which you pay once a month along with interest on the unpaid balance. In “chargeaccount banking” the bank issues you a credit card that you can use in any store participating in the plan. You write checks against the bank and you are billed once a month. After thirty days interest is charged on any balance due. These plans may be convenient, but they can also keep you under pressure of constant debt.

Deception has added greatly to the profits gained by selling debt. No longer true is Benjamin Franklin’s quip: "If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.” Consumer expert Sidney Margolius says: “The deceptive way in which finance charges are stated is one of the biggest foolers of the public.” Surveys show that even college graduates are hoodwinked by the deception, which,

Margolius warns, “is practiced by almost all lenders.”

The deception is worked very easily. If you open a charge account that costs 1 to 11% a month on the remaining balance, you may pay from 12 to 18%! (The yearly interest rate is learned by multiplying the monthly rate by twelve.) Lenders will say the interest rate is “6% a year or $6.00 per $100.00.” The catch is they mean 6% on the face value of the loan, not on the declining balance. Since you must repay the Ioan in monthly installments, you obviously do not have use of the $100.00 for a full year. In fact, your average debt for the year would be only $50.00. (This is learned by adding your first and final payments and dividing by two.) A lender that charges you “$6.00 per $100.00” on an average debt of $50.00 has actually received 12%, not 6%! Likewise, “$7.00 per $100.00” is not 7% but 14%. However, if a store charges only 1% a month on the remaining balance, that is a true 6% a year, which is reasonable.

In Washington Senator Paul Douglas has been working to get a law passed that will force lenders and dealers to tell the true interest rate. Meanwhile, remember the words of Alexander Pope: “Blest papercredit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly.”—Moral Essays.

Uneasy Credit

There are other grievances against “easy” credit. New York Domestic Relations Justice Nathaniel Kaplan believes that too much installment buying is a cause of family problems that produce juvenile delinquency. He pointed to the example of a young person now in trouble with the law who had committed $50 of a $68 weekly income to credit payments! As a preventive Justice Kaplan urges adoption of an educational program to convince businessmen they have “gone too far in this extension of credit.”

To facilitate an installment purchase one housewife forged her sister-in-law’s name on the contract as cosigner. When time payments lapsed and the innocent relative’s salary was attached, the forgery came to light. Legal action is pending against the forger, with the likely result that her next time payment will be in prison.

Often personal bankruptcy is the direct result of too much buying on credit. According to the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, personal bankruptcies in the United States increased 300%; in ten years! There were 114,116 last year. Respectable people pressed into bankruptcy by unpaid bills find it a road of shame and humiliation. As one woman described it: "The people you are cheating—and you are cheating them in fact, if not in law, when you declare yourself bankrupt—had trusted you.” She told of a steady diet of tranquilizers and a nightmare of worry. Soon she was “near collapse from the constant hounding, hiding and nervous tension.”

Over fifty years ago the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen made a wise observation: “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.” Families carrying heavy installment debts live in fear of unemployment or sickness that would interfere with time payments. Said one housewife whose husband cannot work due to illness: “I’m almost out of my mind!” It is typical of many who keep "robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Debt for Christians?

The nature and possible consequences of credit buying pose some thoughtful questions for the Christian. Jesus said: “You cannot be slaves to God and to Riches.” (Matt. 6:24) Long before that the Bible warned: “The borrower is servant to the man doing the lending.” (Prov. 22:7) Even an ancient law maxim declared: “Who can not pay with money, must pay with his body.” Paul advised: “Do not be owing anybody a single thing,” except love. (Rom. 13:8) In view of this, to what extent is debt wise for a Christian? Is he wise to obligate himself to the point that he must work extra time, to the neglect of his family and ministerial duties? Certainly not. Nor can a dedicated Christian afford to spend himself into bankruptcy on the installment plan. If you personally went bankrupt, could you still effectively preach Bible truths and Christian principles to local businessmen and neighbors? Or might they angrily apply to you the scripture that says, “The wicked one is borrowing and does not pay back”? —Ps. 37:21.

The Christian is wise to ask himself: Am I cautious about using credit? Is it leading me into materialism? wasteful buying? self-indulgence? economic slavery? In short, does my reasonableness in money matters recommend my Christian way of life to all men?—Phil. 4:5.

Let the Buyer Beware

Whether you view it from the moral standpoint or from the practical standpoint, installment buying is serious business. Your credit is valuable in a financial emergency, but are your emergencies chronic? Have you learned to distinguish between wants and needs? Remember, buying on impulse has been the death of many a healthy budget. On shopping trips be sure to take along your self-control. Beware of “sales” that offer big savings compared to manufacturer’s “list” prices. These prices can be inflated just to give retailers a selling point. The warning of Colston E. Warne, president of the Consumer’s Union, is worth noting: “In many fields, the person who can’t get 30% off list prices is a fool.”

Just as physical health can depend on your doctor, so budget health can depend on your dealer. Be wary of stores that make sensational advertising claims or dealers who repossess many items from customers. Reliable dealers who aim to win steady customers are modest in their advertising and careful about extending credit. They would rather you be able to meet the terms than to put them to the trouble of repossessing purchases. A lender who lets you select the amount of monthly payments may get you to sign a “balloon” note that obligates you to make one very big payment as the final installment. This could prove very inconvenient. It is good business to know your dealer well.

Maximum Load

You may decide to incur debt if you are certain your future assured income will cover it. However, if your income is automatically absorbed each month by payments, or if bills begin to carry over into another month, you are operating on too close a margin. Normally, income should keep ahead of outgo. Some experts estimate that you reach a maximum debt load when your total obligations reach 20 to 25% of your annual income. If you earn $4,000 a year, your debt limit would be $800 to $1,000. Others say the limit is 12% of income after taxes. If you have exceeded your maximum load and anticipate difficulty in meeting a payment, do not suffer in silence. Advise your creditor immediately. He will appreciate your good faith and will likely accommodate you.

If arranging a credit purchase, be sure you will pay reasonable interest on the declining balance at a true yearly rate. Remember, the larger the down payment and the shorter the credit period, the more you save on interest Rather than carry payments that are too steep or too long, you do better to shop around for a less expensive product. In credit buying your taste must be adjusted to future income.

Advertising to the contrary, it is not advisable to finance travel, vacations and similar intangibles on the installment plan. Debt is a liability. For every installment purchase you should be able to show a substantial asset to balance the liability. A house or car can be converted back into cash if necessary, but travel is gone with the wind.

Cash Customer

He may be getting extinct, but the cash customer is still the happiest shopper around. Rather than “Buy now and pay later,” his motto is “Save now and buy later.” By keeping his purchases on a cash basis he can actually buy more. He does not have to worry about deceptive interest rates, finance charges or bankruptcy through installment spending. He has. a savings account that draws interest. When he sees what he needs, the money goes into quality, not into the dealer’s pocket as interest. The alert cash customer makes sure he learns the price of the item before announcing his intention to pay cash. This saves the salesman from the temptation to pad the price and make up for lost interest charges. Never does the cash customer have to worry about repossessed goods. He may not have quite as much as the prodigal who goes on a credit spree, but what he does have is his own.

Granted that credit has its place, the problem is to keep it there. It is a valuable asset, but so is your good name. Protect it and your peace of mind by exercising caution when the dealer says, “Your credit is good!”

LIGHT VERSUS DARKNESS

“IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED"

Aptly contrasting the debased pagan worship in the time of Moses with the logical account of creation as Moses presents it in the first chapter of Genesis is the following quotation from the best seller This Is My God, by the popular author H. Wouk:

“The first chapter of Genesis cut through the murk of ancient mythology with a shaft of light—light that the whole world lives by now, so that we can scarcely picture its effect when it first shone forth. The universe was proclaimed a natural order created and unfolded by one Force and set going like a vast machine to proceed under its own power. There were no man-made gods. Nor were the animals gods, nor were the gods animals. There was no sun god, or moon god, or love god, or sea god, or war god. The world and mankind were not the product of titanic incest and sodomy among monsters in the skies. Sun, moon, wind, seas, mountains, stars, stones, trees, plants, beasts were all part of nature, without any magic of their own. Mumbo-jumbo was a mistake The gods and priesthoods which demanded burnt children, or hearts cut from living men, or ghastly obscenities, or endlessly draining gifts, were useless, silly, doomed libels on the universe. The childhood nightmares of mankind were over, ft was day. The Genesis account of creation cut the cancer of idolatry out of human discourse.”

ASTROLOGY AND MEDICINE

In the book Four Thousand Years of Pharmacy, Charles H. LaWall discusses the origin of the abbreviated sign now used on medical prescriptions. He traces it to the pagan symbol for Jupiter and says: “It was shortly after the beginning of the Christian era that the astrological sign of Jupiter was generally placed at the head of prescriptions, a remnant of which sign still persists in the present abbreviation, 1}. This practice was said to have been instituted by the physician Krinas, in the time of Nero, when Christians were so fiercely persecuted, to indicate the conformity of the physician with the State religion of Rome. At this time, Christians were forbidden to practice medicine in Rome, and as late as the fourth century, in the reign of Julian, no

Christian teacher was permitted in medical schools.”

Discussing the same matter, an item in The Merck Report of July, 1949, said: “As an astrological sign, the symbol of the planet Jupiter first found its place on horoscopes. Later, as the ‘science’ developed, it was extended to and associated with formulas of drugs for body administration. The reason given for the latter association was to assure the influence of the lucky star whereby, in the course of time, both the planet and the god Jupiter were identified. Thus, the R conveys the supplication to the highest god and, as Sir William Osler (1849-1919) puts it, 'to remove harmful properties from the prescribed drugs used in prescribed formula.' ”

*‘A STAUNCH WILL AND FAITH"

Interest in the Eichmann trial in the spring of 1961 caused the Jewish quarterly, Midstream, Winter, 196L to publish the memoirs entitled “LaGuardia’s Sister—Eichmann's Hostage.” Among other things it contained the following quotation:

“Now I shall describe briefly the Bible students in the camp. They belonged to a religious sect which believes only in the Bible. Most of these women were very simple, honest wives and mothers and a very hard-working lot. In this camp [Ravensbriick] they were generally used for the hardest work. ... I admired these women for their strong character. They had a staunch will and faith. Most of them were imprisoned eight, ten and twelve years, from the beginning in 1934, The Gestapo had declared that any Bible student who would leave his religion and would sign a statement to that effect would be given liberty and be persecuted no longer. It is difficult to believe, but true, that not one of them signed. Rather, they went on suffering and patiently awaited the day of freedom. The only thing that could be said against them was that they were always trying to convert all the women in the camp to their faith. At first the students refused to stand attention during the roll call. They stated that they would stand only before God and nobody else. For this they were sent to the Straf block (punishment block), and the next morning one by one they were bodily thrown or kicked out from the barracks and forced to stand in the roll call.”

By “Awake!" correspondent in Chile

TAKE a deep breath! Ah, how stimulating it is! With no conscious effort on your part, oxygen is absorbed from the air into your blood stream and your life is sustained. But wait a minute! Do you know what happens to the nitrogen that makes up 78 percent of the air that you breathe in each time? Did you know that nitrogen plays a fundamental part in the formation of proteins and is a constituent of every living cell? Why, without it your life, in fact all life as we know it on this earth, would certainly cease to exist! Yet the strange fact is that in respiration you are unable to absorb this vital element and make use of it. You simply have to exhale it. How, then, do you get the nitrogen that you need? How is nitrogen used? What is the secret process that unlocks this basic mystery to sustain life ?

Nitrogen Fixing

Since we need a constant and consistent amount of nitrogen and we are unable to get it from the air, our food is our source. If we eat animal flesh, that indeed contains forms of nitrogen, but since animals are just as unable to utilize atmospheric nitrogen as we are, from where do the animals get it? In common with ourselves, animals obtain their basic needs from vegetation. In fact, all nitrogen in living organisms can ultimately be traced back to plant life. Plants themselves, however, are just as impotent when it comes to absorbing nitrogen from the air as are animals and man! How, then, is an adequate supply guaranteed for them, that the continuance of life may be ensured? This question poses a fascinating problem.

Nitrogen as a gas is inert, that is to say, it refuses to combine easily with any other elements. For plants to use it, it must be combined, or “fixed,” by some chemical means with another element into a nitrate, a form of nitrogen easily assimilated by plants through their roots. Decaying animal and plant life releases certain amounts of nitrogen that can be washed into the soil for use in this way, but such small quantities of returning nitrogen would never satisfy the full needs of plant life. In actual fact, much of the nitrogen released from decaying matter is lost to the atmosphere in the process of decomposition. In view of this, there must be other means by which nitrogen is being continually returned to the soil. Indeed there are, and a consideration of the two main ways this is accomplished brings to light sure evidence of the adequate provisions made by the Creator for the perpetuation of earthly life.

Nature’s Natural Fertilization

It has been proved that soil that has been sterilized, from which all forms of bacterial life have been removed, remains sterile and unable to support any plant life at all. On the other hand, unsterilized soil can absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere and sustain vegetation. How is this possible? The answer is found in the wonderful action of certain bacteria in the soil that are able to transform atmospheric nitrogen to fixed-nitrogen compounds to be utilized by plant life. Apart from these bacteria there is no other kind of living thing that is empowered to make direct use of atmospheric nitrogen. What a debt we owe them! Some of these act alone, others with the roots of leguminous plants such as alfalfa, clover, peas and beans. In this latter way they penetrate the roots to stimulate growths, or nodules, as they are more commonly called, wherein the bacteria reproduce. They obtain necessary carbohydrates and mineral food from the plant concerned and nitrogen from the air to form proteins that are released to the plant. With their eventual decay, the roots release nitrogen to the soil, which is thereby greatly enriched. The ancient Romans realized the great value of leguminous plants for increasing the fertility of the soil and made use of them, even though they were, of course, quite unable to explain the phenomenon of increased fertility that was evidenced in their crops. It seems evident that the presence of soil bacteria accounts for the greatest supply of nitrogen available for plants and hence for all forms of life sustained by them.

It has been estimated that over every acre of land there are 150,000 tons of free nitrogen mixed in the air, and in another very marvelous way this source is again tapped by nature and the fertility of the soil enhanced. This is through the natural wonder of an electric storm. Each mighty flash of lightning, by means or the temnc heat generated, forces the naturally inert nitrogen to unite with the oxygen in the air to form oxides of nitrogen, which are carried to earth by rain as nitric acid, there being converted into nitrate and washed into the ground. By this means some one hundred million tons of nitrogen compounds are put into the soil each year, and this figure does not take into account any additional supply that may be brought to earth as impurities from dust by normal rainfalls and snowfalls. Earth’s own nitrate-producing forces are thereby greatly augmented.

Chile Saltpeter

Due to nitrogen’s unwillingness to mix freely with other elements, there are very few natural deposits of nitrates throughout the world. The largest known to man was discovered in South America, in part of the Atacama desert now belonging to Chile, in the early part of the nineteenth century. This deposit of sodium nitrate, commonly called saltpeter, has a 16-per-cent content of nitrogen and has been esteemed world-wide as an agricultural fertilizer for well over a hundred years. The exact origin of this unique treasure is unknown, but the reason for its preservation is that it seldom rains in the Atacama desert region, the whole area being shut in on both sides by mountain ranges, on the east by the Andes and on the west by coastal hills. Rain, when it does fall, is so light that the water evaporates long before it has a chance to wash the precious nitrate out of the ground.

The ore containing the nitrate lies close to the surface of the ground and is mined by the simple process of dynamiting the rock. The broken rock, or caliche, as it is called, is then taken to a nearby crushing mill and the resultant pebble-sized ore conveyed to a lixiviation or leaching plant.

There, in a number of huge tanks, water to dissolve the nitrate is passed from one tank to another. The nitrate is finally obtained when the pregnant water, or mother liquor, as it is known, is subjected to various processes to crystallize it, in which form it is easily handled. Many hundreds of thousands of tons are produced annually and shipped throughout the world for use agriculturally as well as in many other ways.

Progress in Synthetic Nitrate

At the beginning of the twentieth century different laboratory techniques were devised for fixing nitrogen in various forms, and with the advance of modern science it has been possible to produce synthetic nitrate by differing methods as a commercial proposition. Certainly the production and use of artificial nitrate fertilizer in this century has played an important role in increased food production and land development. Ironically enough, however, it took the pressure of World War I for this to be finally realized. Then it was that a German scientist, Fritz Haber, discovered a way of combining nitrogen with hydrogen to form ammonia, from which nitrate can easily be obtained. Due to its explosive instability when combined with certain elements, nitrogen forms the basis for dynamite and other regular explosives such as trinitrotoluene, better known simply as TNT; hence its extreme value in times of war. It is generally acknowledged that but for Haber’s discovery the German forces would have been compelled to surrender long before the armistice date of 1918, when, in fact, their supply of natural nitrate was exhausted. Explosives have also played an increasing part in times of peace for mining purposes, roadway construction and other undertakings in which they have proved invaluable to man. Additionally, the chemical uses of nitrogen are seen daily in the manufacture of photographic equipment, artificial leather, silks and dyes, apart from its use, in the form of ammonia, in the refrigeration industry.

Nitrogen is odorless, tasteless and colorless. It does not support combustion and is itself incombustible. Since it cannot be absorbed by living things, in its natural state it is seemingly of no great moment, but let it be combined with other elements and it immediately forms powerful compounds that are not only of great value to man, but indispensable to your very life.

IN Hawaii a new educational program and diplomatic instrument is being forged in the East-West Center. Founded on the idea of seeking mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and Asia, the Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between the East and West—the Center’s complete name—is eyed as an “intellectual bridge” that will span the Pacific Ocean to bring together American and Asian students for educational, cultural and technological interchange.

With 1966 as the target date for full operations, the Center has been in its “dry run” stage with the first 101 of an eventual 2,000 students attending classes together at the cosmopolitan University of Hawaii, whose facilities the EastWest Center will be using until the first group of buildings is completed in September, 1962.

The East-West Center traces its beginnings to a speech made by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1959, then the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, when he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., that the world’s best and most mature minds should meet and exchange ideas in an effort to meet one of the major challenges of the cold war—the human understanding of communicating Western ideas and ideals to the uncommitted peoples of the world. Johnson added in the same speech that the new fiftieth state, Hawaii, had,a university of stature and prestige for a center “where professors from Harvard, Chicago, California and all of our great universities could meet with learned men of Tokyo, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India

and Pakistan.”

In less than two years, Johnson, as a Democratic senator from Texas and a vigorous supporter of statehood for Hawaii, transformed his words into a concrete reality. Beginning with his speech calling for the Center’s establishment on April 16, 1959, it took less than two years to get the bill (S.3385) passed, the monies appropriated and the first hundred students enrolled in their classes.

Early last year Johnson employed the aid of Hawaii’s first two senators, Hiram Fong and Oren Long, to round up fortyeight cosponsors, almost evenly divided between the Democrats and Republicans. The East-West Center bill was then amended to the Mutual Security Act and in June, 1960, the Grst $10 million was appropriated.

While educators have stressed that the East-West Center keep clear from any political implica

tions, there is little argument that the project is to play an important function in the shaping of U.S. foreign policy in the troubled East, especially southeast Asia. For one thing, the Center is part of the massive $3,526,200,000 Mutual Security Bill and is to be operated by the State Department in conjunction with Hawaii’s state university.

Hawaii, Ideal Place

Hawaii, with its predominantly Oriental population, is regarded as the most ideal American community for such a program as the East-West Center. Johnson, in an address to the Senate in June, 1959, said: “The selection of Hawaii as a site for such a meeting place was entirely deliberate. In Hawaii, the people of the Orient and the Occident have met already and learned to live in harmony.” John Bums, former Hawaiian delegate to Congress, expressed the similar thought in an interview with Ka Leo O Hawaii, the University of Hawaii’s campus student newspaper: “The East-West Center was an outgrowth of statehood. The people of Hawaii are East-West people. Their heritage is Eastern and their citizenship is Western. They are the only people who can sit down with people from Asia and Africa and not feel out of place.”

History professor at the University, John Stalker, who is also director of the school’s Overseas Operations and a noted Far East specialist, put the idea in a down-to-earth way in an article in the Saturday Review: “If we talk economics to the student, we will talk to him within the context of his country’s economics and problems. It doesn’t do a visiting agricultural student much good to see a 15,000 acre truck farm in New Jersey when he’ll never have more than two or three hectares at home. What good would it do to send a Japanese or Indonesian student to California to see rice planted by airplane? In Hawaii, the agricultural student would have ideal farm experience with the many small farms in the Islands, operated by farmers of Oriental ancestry.”

The University of Hawaii in Honolulu is considered the ideal place of study for the East-West students. More than one half of its 9,000-student enrollment and one fourth of its faculty are of Aslan extraction. Here all of the Islands’ racial and ethnic groups already have been going to school together for fifty years. No one is considered a stranger on its scenic campus several miles from Waikiki Beach.

And prior to any talk of an East-West Center, 250 foreign students from Asia and Africa have been attending the University yearly. During the summer months, the University co-operates with the State Department in conducting a six-week orientation program for Asian Fulbright and Smith-Mundt scholars. The school’s curriculum in Asian studies ranks with the finest in the nation. Started forty years ago, the program has more than a hundred courses. In addition, the University has been host of the annual East-West Philosophers Conference since 1939.

The East-West Student

The East-West Center now has put out a call for American and Asian students. The ideal Asian student is considered to be one with academic ability and with political leadership in his home country. The one considered to be an ideal American student has already trained for a career and wants to work in Asia.

Students as well as faculty members who will make up the East-West Center will come from the “Mainland” (a Hawaiian term for the continental United States only), Hawaii, Australia, Asia and other Pacific islands. The first vanguard of students at the Center represent thirteen Asian countries and the United States. The average age is twenty-six and a half years, and one half of them are mairied. Twenty-five hold masters’ degrees and all but five a bachelors’ diploma. The breakdown by countries of the first group is Japan 19, India 15, Philippines 14, Taiwan (Formosa) 11, United States 9, Thailand and Laos 5 each, Pakistan 4, Fiji and Cambodia 3 each, Korea and Ceylon 2 each, and Nepal 1.

The ratio for the East-West Center will be four Asian students to every one American student. They will eat together, study together and learn together in order to gain a mutual understanding of one another’s ways. Even the Asians will have to orient themselves to one another, for an Indonesian is as unlike a Japanese as an American a Chinese. Living quarters will be arranged in ten-member groups—eight Asians and two Americans—-to encourage interracial mixing.

Proposed Facilities

In its initial stages, the East-West Center will use the facilities and buildings of the University of Hawaii. By 1962, with appropriations of $10 million annually, the first group of buildings is planned. They will include transient quarters, a cafeteria, office and seminar rooms, a twelve-story dormitory to house 480 students, and a 750-seat auditorium flexible enough to handle a Japanese Noh play or Shakespeare.

Eventual plans call for a twenty-story faculty apartment tower, an administrative building, a meditation chapel, and three more twelve-story dorms to accommodate the 2,000 students by 1966. The total cost for the entire program is $71 million. Plans call for a $27 million building program, a six-year $8.6 million operating budget and a six-year $35.6 million scholarship fund.

Some Problems

The East-West Center is not without its problems, however. There has been criticism that the Center’s plans are moving too slowly, especially in the search for the program’s director. The original offer went to Phillips Talbot, head of the American Universities Field Staff, who turned it down to take the Assistant Secretary of State position. The Center’s interim committee says it is going to take its time in picking the director, but U.S. Representative Dan Inouye, the first Japanese elected to Congress, urges a speed-up in study in order to insure continued enthusiasm and funds.

In addition to the problem of finding a qualified director, another difficulty revolves around the University’s role in the Center. Some University officials are afraid that the school might be lost in the limelight of the international Center and that heavy financial support from the State Department might reduce the University to a federally controlled institution. The present policy of the State Department, according to University President Laurence H. Snyder, a noted geneticist, is to let the University handle the Center.

Comparison of America’s East-West Center and Russia’s earlier and similar project, Friendship University, is inevitable because of the similarity of motive— the winning of world allies in the cold war. While the Center in Hawaii is getting under way, the Russian counterpart in Moscow has already had hundreds of Asian and African students in Moscow.

From the foregoing it is evident that both the Western and Eastern blocs are battling for world domination by means of an ideological, technological and cultural campaign—the cold war. Regardless of how successful the East-West Center in Hawaii may be in the field of education, no man-made organization can ever hope to bring about lastingly peaceful conditions. True religious and racial harmony among men can be achieved only under God’s kingdom by Christ.—Isa. 2:2-4.

TIE Bible is an inexhaustible storehouse of knowledge. Inspired, it is “beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness.” Included in this are the laws that Jehovah God gave to the nation of Israel to set them apart from the nations round about them.—2 Tim. 3:16.

Why did Jehovah want to keep his people set apart from other nations, and how did he do this? He wanted them to be a people set apart that he might have a people for his name, a people that would keep alive pure worship on the earth, a people to whom the Messiah could come and whom God could use for the blessing of all the families of the earth: “If you will strictly obey my voice and will indeed keep my covenant, then you will certainly become my special property out of all other peoples, because the whole earth belongs to me. And you yourselves will become to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”—Ex. 19:5, 6.

Or, as expressed by the prophet Isaiah: “ ‘You are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘even my servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and have faith in me, and that you may understand that I am the same One.... I myself have told forth and have saved and have caused it to be heard, when there was among you no stranger. So you are my witnesses,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, 'and I am God.”'—Isa. 43:10, 12.

To keep the nation of Israel a people apart, God gave them a great many laws specifying what was clean and what was unclean. These were recorded primarily in the book of Leviticus. For this reason, in some languages the book has become synonymous with the Law. Thus to “read Leviticus to him” meant that you gave him a lecture on what the law says. Among the many things mentioned in that book that made an Israelite unclean were certain skin diseases such as leprosy, touching dead bodies, man’s seminal emission at night and woman’s menstrual flow. An Israelite was obligated to avoid contact with others if made unclean by these. This all served to keep the Israelites apart from the pagan neighbors, for they did not recognize such taboos and therefore might be unclean in any or all of such ways. Circumcision was another means used for the same purpose.—Lev. 11:39; 13:2-4; 15:16, 19.

In particular did the Mosaic dietary laws, defining what the Israelites might and might not eat, serve to set the Israelites apart from their pagan neighbors. They were not permitted to eat any animal fat or blood, or the flesh of any mammal that did not both chew its cud and have cloven hoofs. Many birds of the air as well as ever so many sea creatures, all those not having fins and scales, were forbidden.—Lev. 11: 1-31.

Suppose a Gentile neighbor invited an Israelite to eat with him. The Israelite would have had to inquire: What kind of meat is it? Was it bled properly? How was it prepared? Was animal fat used? Rather than to embarrass his host he would simply decline, thus serving Jehovah’s purpose. And while many of these taboos' did serve health puiposes, let it not be forgotten that the primary reason that Jehovah God gave all these restrictions was for the spiritual welfare of his people; so as to erect the wall of separation between the Israelites and their neighbors as high as possible, without, however, causing any undue hardship or privation to his people.

Another means God used to keep his chosen nation a people apart was to forbid their intermarrying with the peoples round about them. Very explicitly Jehovah commanded: “You must form no marriage alliance with them. Your daughter you must not give to his son, and his daughter you must not take for your son. For he will turn your son from following me and they will certainly serve other gods, and Jehovah’s anger will indeed blaze against you and he will certainly annihilate you in a hurry.”—Deut. 7:3,4.            ,

Wisely this law singled out one of the greatest dangers to Israel’s continuing as a people for God’s special purpose, his witnesses. False religion is ever more appealing to the flesh and easier to practice. It would therefore be most difficult for an Israelite to feel the strong antipathy he should toward degrading pagan religious rites if continually exposed to them, especially if his own wife should happen to be practicing them. Besides, simply as a matter of mathematics, the Israelites were vastly outnumbered by the peoples of the land. If God had permitted them to intermarry, they would soon have become assimilated and would have disappeared.

Supplementing these laws primarily given to keep Israel a people apart were Jehovah’s commandments regarding their having no other gods before him and not making any images and worshiping them. These served the same purpose. The high and noble principles of the worship of Jehovah were thus set in striking contrast to the popular polytheism of the land of Canaan, and particularly with its phalli-cism, which was so rampant. To the extent that the Israelites obeyed these laws they served also as a wall of separation between them and the nations round about them, —Ex. 20:1-6.

The same was also true of the rest of the Decalogue, requiring that they keep Jehovah’s name and sabbath sacred and maintain right conduct toward their fellow man. Also, the same may be said regarding his laws forbidding incest, homosexuality, bestiality and suchlike immorality. The severe strictures God’s Word contained regarding these crimes caused the Israelites to see those who practiced such things in their true light, as selfish, wicked, grossly immoral people, and therefore they would not even want to associate with them.—Ex. 20:7-17; Lev. 20:13-17.

To the extent that the Israelites throughout the years kept these laws they benefited from them, physically as well as spiritually. However, when the Messiah came he found only a small remnant keeping the spirit as well as the letter of these laws. These became part of spiritual Israel.

Since only a remnant were found faithful, God turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name, a nation of witnesses. For them to serve the purpose for which God chose them they likewise must keep themselves apart from the people round about. True, Christians do not have a code of laws governing what they may eat to assist them in keeping separate from those who do not worship Jehovah God. Nevertheless, they do have explicit commands regarding their giving God exclusive worship, their proper conduct, and their refraining from intermarriage with those who do not worship Jehovah. Their remaining neutral in worldly conflicts, their refusal to take blood and their avoiding tobacco illustrate how they are indeed a people set apart. Applying the Bible’s laws or its underlying principles in their daily lives has certainly resulted in setting them apart from others who profess to be Christians,

Anns Race Stepped Up

On July 25 President Kennedy spoke to an estimated 50 million Americans concerning the danger of war over Berlin and the need for military preparedness. He proposed increasing the armed forces by 217,000 men to provide for a million-man army for the first time since 1956. He also asked for 83,454,600,000 additional in defense appropriations, some $1,800,000,000 of it to be used for non-nuclear weapons, ammunition and equipment. On July 8 Russian premier Khrushchev said that the trouble over Berlin necessitated the suspension of projected reductions in the Soviet armed forces. He called for an increase of approximately $3,500,000,000 in this year’s defense budget, about the same amount that President Kennedy proposed in his speech.

‘Spectre of Armageddon'

On July 6 Robert J. Donovan, a reporter covering Washington for fifteen years, wrote that "it is appalling to discover how deliberately the possibility of war with the Soviet Union over Berlin this year is being accepted by high officials.” He said that he could not "recall any time when the spectre of Armageddon darkened the thoughts of responsible men the way it appears to be clouding them in Washington today.”

Another Man in Space

On the morning of July 21 Air Force Captain Virgil I. Grissom was shot off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Mercury capsule for a successful 118-mile-high, 303-mile ride out across the Atlantic Ocean to become the third human to make such a trip in space. The flight from takeoff time until the capsule hit the water took only sixteen minutes, with a top speed of 5,280 miles an hour being reached, The flight was proclaimed a success; however, after the capsule was in the water an explosive charge was detonated and the side hatch blew off, allowing the ocean to pour in upon Captain Grissom. He was able to scramble out and swim away as the $2,000,000 capsule with precious films aboard sank into the Atlantic. The next United States goal is to orbit a man three times around the earth and recover him at sea.

Cash for Man on Moon

<$> On July 21, the same day the United States launched their second successful manin-space flight, President Kennedy signed a bill providing for about $400 million to be spent during the year ahead tn stepped-up efforts to land a man on the moon.

France-Tunisia Fight

<§> On July 19 fighting broke out in Eizerte, Tunisia, between the French and Tunisians. After a bloody four-day war that claimed over 300 lives and wounded thousands more the French held the city.

Parents' Responsibility

<♦■ Parents are responsible for the type of entertainment they allow their children to watch and the effect that it has upon them. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Abraham A. Ribicoff, emphasized this responsibility when he said that "a child watches what he is permitted to watch and listens to what he is permitted to listen to.” Mr. Ribicoff urged parents “to get tough with themselves and their children, as well as the television industry.” He observed that "if he [the youngster] is permitted to sit like a vegetable, pursuing moronic murders and ceaseless crimes, he suffers, and his parents do too—in the end.”

India’s Food Production

• <$> In the year ending June 30 India attained a new production record of 78,500,000 tons of food grains, according to an official estimate. Rice and wheat are India’s two main grains and they reached peak yields of 33,700,000 and 10,500,000 tons respectively. The best previous production year was in 1958, when 75,500,000 tons were produced. Even with this record production India has to import food to feed her teeming 438,000,000 inhabitants.

Cattle Sunburn Too

• <§> On July 12 Commissioner of Agriculture Dave L. Pearce reported that Louisiana’s recent rains were responsible for thousands of head of her cattle developing severe sunburns. He explained that the wet weather caused molds to grow in pastures and when cattle ate this moldy grass their hides became extra sensitive to sunlight. His remedy lor sunburned cows: plenty ol shade.

Girl Gangs

The New York city Youth Board estimates that there are 3,000 girl gang members in the city, compared to an estimated 8,000 boy gang members. These girl gangs, which are almost always units of boy gangs, are reported to present almost as grave a problem as the boy gangs they follow. The girls’ role in the gangs includes carrying and concealing weapons for the boys (policemen are not allowed to search females), sexual intimacy with the boys and prostitution in order to obtain money for narcotics for the boys. According to Hugh K. Johnson, chief of the Youth Board’s street club project, ten years ago girls seldom committed crimes of violence, but “violence is now showing up in measurable quantities for the first time.” “The girls’ shoplifting forays have given way to snatching purses on subways and to groups going after women on streets late at night. More rumbles are being caused by girls, who used to be a calming influence.”

Crime In the U.S.

<$> On July 24 J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reported another “astounding” increase in crime. In 1960 the number of serious crimes reached the staggering total of 1,861,300, a 14-percent increase over 1959 and a 98-percent increase over the 940,000 serious crimes reported in 1950, During those ten years the population increased only 18 percent. In 1960 there was a murder every forty-eight minutes, a rape every thirty-four minutes, an aggravated assault every four minutes, a burglary every 39 seconds and a car theft every two minutes.

New Religion

4s> Reports tell of the spread of a new religion among the Melanesian natives of the New Hebrides islands in the South Pacific. Seven “rebel Christian ministers” started the religious movement, which centers its expectations on a coming savior known as “John Frum,” who is expected to arrive with ships carrying free luxuries for all. The natives were taught the Bible account concerning John the Baptist, but they turned "frum” him; hence the name "John Frum.”

Earth-scanning Satellites

<$» On July 12 the United States flung into space-orbit two earth-scanning satellites. One of them, Midas III, is equipped to spy on Russia by detecting and relaying information regarding missile shots and nuclear tests. The other, Tiros III, is a weather satellite for the purpose of searching out the causes of hurricanes. Scientist William G. Stroud explained; “If a hurricane develops during the life of Tiros III, we will assemble all the picti.res taken in the days immediately before. By studying these pictures we may be able to discover how the clouds in the hurricane birth area are formed. This may provide a clew to what type of conditions must exist for a hurricane to form. If we And the answer, later weather satellites will be able to spot these conditions and locate a hurricane before it starts.’’

Tiros III weighs 285 pounds and circles the earth about every 100 minutes in an orbit 425 to 450 miles out. Midas HI is a thirty-foot 3,500-pound satellite that circles the earth every two hours and forty minutes at a record altitude of 1,850 miles.

'Smoking Is Suicide’

Dr. Alton Ochsner, a well-known doctor and head of the Ochsner Clinic of New Orleans, in a civic club speech recently, called cigarette smoking a “form of suicide.” He said “the only difference is, when you put a bullet in your head it is cheap, quick and comparatively painless.”

Religion in Britain

The new archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey, faced the following spiritual apathy among the people of his church as he took office June 27: Of Britain's some 53 million population over 27 million have been baptized into the Church of England, yet less than 10 million have been confirmed, and fewer than 3 million are registered on parish rolls. Of these, only a handful attend church regularly.

School Prayers

<$> On July 7 the Court of Appeals, New York state’s highest judicial body, held by 5-2 vote that nonden omi national school prayers recited at the start of the day’s classes were constitutional. The prayer in question read: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

Chemical Warfare

<$> Reports reveal that the United States has developed missile warheads that can carry chemical weapons such as nerve gases and, perhaps, biological weapons. Potentially these warheads could be used in the whole family of army missiles, making possible their use on the battlefield or their delivery across oceans or continents. An Army spokesman said that thus far troops have not been issued such missile warheads.

Testing Nuclear Weapons

<$> A Gallup Poll published July 11 gave an idea as to how Americans view the knotty question of resuming testing of nuclear weapons. Some 55 percent felt that the United States should resume testing, 26 percent were opposed to resumption of tests and 19 percent expressed no opinion on the matter. Of interest is the fact that in December, 1959, about a year after Russia and the United States agreed on banning the testing of nuclear weapons, 77 percent of the American public were against resuming tests, according to a Gallup Poll at that time.

Sleep Like a Baby

<$> A study conducted by doctors at the Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, showed that a newborn baby sleeps 17 hours the first day, 16.5 hours during the second day and 16.2 hours the third day. After the seventh or eighth month a baby’s sleeping time has dropped to about eleven hours a day. A wet diaper and hunger are the most usual reasons for awakening.

New York Transportation

# On July 25 the New York Transit Authority announced that in the twelve months ending June 30 they carried 1,795,031,931 passengers on their subways and bus lines— nearly a 20 million increase over the previous year. Passenger revenues rose to $270,620,675—an increase of 1.13 percent over the year before.

Clergy and Disarmament

A youthful disarmament spokesman, Gerry Bain, 24, charged in a speech recently that the clergy have failed to Warn the people of a nuclear war and to speak out against the build-up of armaments in preparation of such a war. He said that “if they have convictions and are willing to stick by them they should stand up and be counted.¹’ He contended that “the clergy, no matter what their faith, should fight for a peaceful world’’ but that “so far they have not done so as far as nuclear weapons are concerned.”

Eating Out

<$■> The United States Department of Agriculture reports that out of every four dollars that Americans spend for food, about one dollar goes for meals eaten away from home.

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