Then Came the Crash and the World Crisis

It had to come and it came! They called it a panic when in the fall of 1929 the New York Stock Market collapsed. Millions and billions were lost. Many thousands lost their all, homes, savings and business. Of necessity greater unemployment followed. The army of misery and want swelled to over five millions, probably some fifteen million people were affected by it. When in that memorable year Mr. Henry Ford advertised for a certain number of men to work in his shops, not less than 30,000 appeared. As he needed only 600 men, some 24,000 were disappointed. The same thing happened in other large manufacturing concerns. From 1929 on, many factories in every state were closed year after year. Every industry suffered. Mining schemes were abandoned, railroads and shipping industries went down and thousands of bankruptcies followed. The great distress had started. From millions of lips came the frantic plea for help and relief. The wails, accompanying the tolling of the funeral bells of a fast dying age became louder and louder.

Yet the false prophets of the evolutionary progress were not discouraged. We heard them say—"Panics are nothing new. They come in cycles, they last just a few months. They are stepping stones for something higher, for something better. This depression will soon be over. We may expect an upswing within a year." It would take pages to record the utterances of these modern "Job's comforters." When depression and panic started in 1929, it was only the beginning. The years which followed became worse and worse and alas! in 1935 the United States and the rest of the world do not know what will happen next. Some say the worst is over—others tell us, the worst is yet to come. In a short time the whole world became involved. It was, and still is, a literal fulfillment of the words of our great Teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ, that the dying age would bring "upon earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth" (Luke xxi:25). Other nations registered increasing numbers of unemployed. Germany, a very much smaller country than the United States, had four and a half million without work; Great Britain almost three million. It continued till, according to reliable statistics, almost twenty million people were without work and struggling for mere existence. In 1930 a number of economic and financial experts gathered in Paris under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce, twenty-eight nations were represented. They gave as their opinion that the world was heading for one great, colossal bankruptcy.

But they were unable to suggest a single remedy. As the tide of distress rose higher and higher in 1930-1931-1932 and 1933 the bankruptcy of the world became increasingly apparent. The President of Columbia University said in 1933:

"At the moment the world is bankrupt, and it appears to lack both the intelligence and the courage to face that fact and to put itself in the hand of a policy of receivership. The world has, through its governments, national, state, and local, through its banks and business enterprises through its corporations and through individual citizens, borrowed some 800,000,000,000 dollars, by far the greater part of it is payable in gold. Just now there exists in the world something less than 12,000,000,000 dollars in monetary gold. Therefore, the world as a whole is in the position of a bank in a small country town which has deposits of $30,000 payable on demand and $1,150 available cash in its vaults."

Month after month, and year after year, and the promised recovery did not take place. Everything went down. Building activities in all the big cities dropped and thousands of office buildings were only partially rented, while the palatial hotels, built during the years of prosperity, went into the hands of receivers and billions invested were lost. And what was not done to end it and bring back better days! Conferences, Chamber of Commerce meetings, a great economic parley with representatives of over forty nations held in London, schemes upon schemes to save the world —but all unavailing. Instead of better days the opposite came. In the United States heroic measures were adopted to end unemployment and to force the return of prosperity. We show later that the so-called "New Deal" did not bring recovery and seems to be scheduled for a gigantic failure and collapse. No evolutionist, or boaster in our great American civilization, ever dreamt that a country of wealth and wonderful resources could ever be plunged into such distress and suffering and that economic, financial and political efforts could not effect a change. The hopelessness of it all is apparent. Western civilization is on its death bed.

Before we examine these economic, political, religious and moral conditions in the United States, and before we turn our attention to the threatening collapse, we must make a survey of European affairs covering the years of world crisis from 1929 to 1934.

The center of the stage in Europe during these years belongs to the Soviets. Many predictions were made from time to time that the collapse of the Reds would soon come. All these predictions miscarried. The red autocrats feared a coming war and became possessed by a great fear, from which they still suffer, that a reckoning day might come soon and that their vicious regime would then be ended. Feverishly they started a big war machine. By 1933 they had sixteen million engaged in some form of military and aviation activity. Besides having a five year economic plan, they also arranged for a five year plan of aerial and chemical defense. Over two million young men were drilled with rifles. Altogether six million persons were available for immediate military purposes. Over five million women received instructions in elementary military tactics, gas warfare and Red Cross nursing. While their lying emissaries, at work in our colleges and other institutions, sow into the hearts of the young the seed of pacificism, stirring them up to resist military training in the different countries, they themselves prepare for the execution of the long planned world-revolution. Commissar Tuckhahvesky claimed but recently that the Soviet Republic is menaced by the danger of an attack from the capitalist world. He also stated that they had now the largest standing army in Europe, 940,000 well trained soldiers. He assured Stalin that the red army has been working day and night, to increase its strength and to be fit for any emergency. The defense budget had been fixed in 1984 at 1,665,000,000 rubles, but they had been forced to make it 5,000,000,000 rubles. The military budget for 1935 was fixed at 6,500,000,000 rubles. They also have one of the largest air-fleets in the world, over 3,000 planes, among them many powerful bombing planes. So while they decry the militarism of capitalistic nations, they are foremost in military training and military expenditures.

One phase of their propaganda is the circulation of false reports that Soviet Russia is the workers paradise, a veritable Utopia. From time to time preachers of the type of Sherwood Eddy and others, who call themselves "the friends of the Soviets," also educators, college and university professors were urged to see the wonderful achievements. The Soviets took them in charge up' n arrival, feasted them and took them sight seeing. But the real conditions prevailing in Southern Russia, the Ukraine and other portions where not thousands, but millions starve to death they did not see. On January 12, 1931 was held in the McAlpin Hotel a dinner of the Congregational Club of New York. We let the New York Herald Tribune of January the 18th speak:

"Speaking last night at the dinner of the Congregational Club of New York, held in the McAlpin Hotel, the Rev. Joseph Beach, for five years managing director of the Near East Relief in the Caucasus area, and the Rev. Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, professor of applied Christianity at the Union Theological Seminary, praised the high ideals of the Soviet state in Russia."

"'It seems,' said Mr. Beach, 'that the Soviet Government which denies the existence of God, is doing more to promote the principles of Christ, and to establish his kingdom on earth than the Christian nations, with all their churches and their talk about him.' Dr. Niebuhr spoke of the fanatic devotion with which the Russians are giving themselves to the cause of building a new world."

Blind leaders of the blind! The very opposite is the case. There is not a "Red Paradise" over there, but it is a "Red Hell." We do not go back to the horrors of the years of revolution. Nor do we repeat the tragedy of several million thrifty farmers, called the Kulaks, who were banished and starved. (1) We come to the prevailing conditions in more recent years. We give the report of a reliable citizen of the United States as given over the radio in the first part of 1935. We quote the Herald-Tribune.

"Robert L. Ripley, creator of the 'Believe It or Not* cartoons, speaking last night over station WABC of the Columbia Broadcasting System on his trip to Russia a year ago, charged the Soviet Government with causing the death of 4,000,000 peasants by starvation in the Ukraine and North Caucasus in 1932 'by robbing the farmers of their grain in order to sell it in foreign countries and acquire foreign currency.'

"No worse punishment could be inflicted on many Communist crackpots shouting throughout this country of ours than to exile them to Russia—the 'Communist Paradise'—and make them live under the system they preach.

"The average salary of a working man in Russia, he said, was about 150 paper rubles a month, from which the following deductions were compulsory: Twenty-two rubles to the government, 15 rubles for assessments and taxes, 2 rubles for union dues and 25 rubles for rent.

"From the balance of 86 rubles, Mr. Ripley said, the Russian must buy food and clothing at the following prices, as reported, he said, in a recent edition of the Moscow Evening Gazette. Thirty rubles for a shirt, 175 rubles for a suit, 15 rubles for women's cotton stockings, 20 rubles for a pound of butter, 2½ rubles for a quart of milk, 1½ rubles for a loaf of bread, 10 rubles for a dozen eggs and 5 rubles for a pound of rice.

"The Communists delight in appealing to the unemployed of America by telling them there are no unemployed in Russia.

"Everybody in Russia is a prisoner of the government. The workingman has no choice about his work, or where he lives, or how much he is paid. He has no religion, no home life and no privacy.

"He has utterly no freedom of speech. You might remember this next time you hear one of our many soap-box orators spouting forth, and bear in mind that if he attempted to open his mouth in Communist Russia he would wake up to find himself either dead or on his way to Siberia.

"His freedom of movement is denied him. He can't go from one village to another. He can't quit his job. He can't even take a day off. Without warning he is liable to be arrested, torn from his family, herded into a freight car and sent thousands of miles away, where he is forced to labor under inhuman conditions in some concentration camp of Northern Russia.

"Even death does not set him free. In case of death the clothing and shoes are removed from the body. Even the teeth are extracted, and any gold or silver fillings are melted down and confiscated by the government.

"Mr. Ripley related that a dissatisfied worker may try to leave the country, but is shot if he is caught. Even if the worker escapes, he said, and crosses the border successfully, his family is exiled to Siberia, "Never under the old Czarist regime were they as miserable and oppressed as they are now. A thousand times more people are being exiled to the frozen wastes of Siberia today than at any time under the rule of the Czars.

"In 1932, for example, the Red Army moved into the Ukraine and loaded 80,000 families into freight cars and sent them to far-off Yakutsk in eastern Siberia, where they were literally dumped out on the ice in a country where the thermometer seldom rises above zero. Out of the 80,000 families (a total of about 300,000) people it is estimated today that not more than 5,000 remain alive."

When, in the fall of 1934, a Soviet official by name of Kirov was killed, the red murderers began to act in vengeance. The whole family of the assassin, absolutely guiltless, was wiped out. They cruelly shot his 85 year old mother, his wife, his daughters and his sons. But that was not all. The bloody deeds continued and hundreds, suspected of revolutionary activities, were murdered. Says Time (December 17, 1934): "Since President Roosevelt cast the cloak of his popularity over Dictator Stalin by recognizing the Soviet Union, the United States press breathed no such denunciation as at the Hitler blood purge! In Moscow the U. S. Embassy (the ambassador is a Communist) sent expressions of sorrow at the assassination of Comrade Kirov." In Washington, however, Senator William E. Borah, long time champion of the Soviet Union, said: "As far as I can determine, from the few facts I have been able to get, these executions were wholly unjustifiable and indefensible." Is the Senator waking up? And more than that. In the Spring of 1935 there came direct from Moscow the information that at least 25,000 persons have been exiled from Leningrad alone and sent to Siberia or other remote regions. It means for thousands of women and children a slow death by starvation. What crimes did these people commit? None whatever! The charge against them was that they belong to the former ruling classes. The reason for this cruel wholesale deportation is the cowardly fear of the red autocrats that in case of an internal uprising, which they fear, this element might be troublesome. Tourists arriving from the Orient via the Trans-Siberian Railway report having passed trainloads of these exiles, herded like cattle, moving eastward under armed guards. The other nations stand by without a word of "protest. Such are the crimes and outrages of Sovietism and the end is not yet.

In the Spring of 1933 the well known author Dr. William Durant returned from Russia. After a visit of a number of weeks and close observation Dr. Durant declared that the Russian people are suffering from terrorism and tyranny that is more widespread than at any time since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Dr. Durant returned with his wife earlier than they intended to and Mrs. Durant said "I would go mad if I had to witness the suffering any longer." In a public lecture Dr. Durant said: "I have never seen people so ragged, miserable, ridden with disease, and starving." The method of "guiding" tourists through the country, employed by the government, also was criticized by him. "Visitors" he said "are only permitted to see what the government wants them to see," and the guides furnished by the Intourist Bureau Dr. Durant described as "trained spies, who deliberately misinterpret and misconstrue conditions." The Russian marriage and divorce system Dr. Durant said, "is biologically unsound and will not last ten years." The Government's attack on the family, as the basis of capitalism, by the industrialization of women was also discussed by the philosopher. We looked in vain for an answer to Dr. Durant's words of condemnation, from the American sickly looking "Pinks," the "friends of the Soviets," from the Modernist Bishop of the Methodist Church McConnell, Sherwood Eddy and others.

At the same time the attempt to destroy every form of religion continued. In one year nearly six hundred churches were closed. Some were completely demolished and others changed into club houses, public schools, reading rooms, boarding houses and museums. The Commissariat of Public Instruction in Moscow published over a year ago the following appeal:

"The task of the godless is to fight energetically for the protection of the ignorant masses against their enemy-religion, which enemy threatens a serious undermining of all our work. In our job of coordinating atheism and communism, we have every incentive to conduct the people toward a demand for the final payment of religion's debt. The anti-religious factor is the most important part of our revolution." This spirit of anti-religious agitation and persecution of Christians remains unchanged as we write. The Batchinsky News Agency announced recently that the official newspapers of the Ukraine, where most of the churches have been forcibly closed, published an order issued by the Ukraine Tcheka (the secret police which murdered many thousands) commanding its provincial officers immediately to draw up complete fists of all Orthodox and Catholic Priests and Protestant ministers, within their several districts who are without churches. The dispossessed clergymen will then be compelled to choose between exile and the signing of declarations renouncing their ministry.

In a meeting of the "Society of the Godless" which enlisted as "groups of young atheists" boys and girls between eight and fourteen years, Yaroslavsky said: "The central problem of our society is to mobilize as many millions as possible against religion." It is estimated that at the present time there are over a million Christians exiled by the Soviets. Their hardships and sufferings are simply indescribable. In 1933 a small volume was published in Great Britain. "Out of the Deep" contains a number of letters which were written in that year by these new martyrs. The genuineness of these letters is vouched for by Sir Bernard Pares. We quote just two of them.

"That dark cloud of terror, starvation, is gathering closer above our heads from day to day. Masses of people are dying. The instinct to live forces us to beg for what you sent us last year of your own free will. Please help us if you can; in our terrible plight of starvation every help is a double help."

Here is another: "We have already eaten all the old horses. Thousands have died of hunger. Typhus rages terribly here. Many are brought out of the forest (in Northern Siberia) with frozen hands and feet."

In 1933 Dr. Leodygensky visited the United States. He is a noted surgeon, served with distinction during the war in connection with the Red Cross, and as a member of the Russian Red Cross Commission saw both inside and outside of Russia the fruits of Communism in all its horrors. He came to our shores with a solemn warning, a warning unheeded, He uncovered the viciousness of the red godless Government. We quote his final word:

"Let me leave with you one last word! The rulers of Soviet Russia have dedicated themselves and the lives of 160,000,000 people to the destruction of freedom, the home, the family and all religious belief. They have bankrupted a country endowed with boundless natural resources, reduced its inhabitants to misery, and they have well-nigh ruined the economic and political structure of nations in the East and in the West through the promotion of their philosophy. I have seen with my own eyes the things of which I write. For the sake of the world, for the sake of the great heritage which is yours, think well before you admit the disseminators of hate, atheism and sedition under the cloak of diplomatic immunity, through an accord of recognition to the communist dictatorship in Moscow."

And all through these years—"World Revolution" remained the great objective of the Soviets. There is a reason for it. These murderers of millions, though they boast of being atheists, fear nevertheless a coming judgment, hence they aim at the destruction of every well ordered government. At the last Congress of the Third International Commissar Voroshiloff said: "We should never cease to increase our preparedness for war so that we may be in the position immediately to intervene in Europe on behalf of our fellow-communists at any given moment and on any given spot where the revolution breaks out." In all European countries, in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Austria, Germany and others, these termites of hell do their vicious work of undermining. In the capital of Czechoslovakia, in Prague, a large Jewish-Bolshevist espionage system was discovered. Similar plots were unearthed in Poland, Galicia, Roumania and Hungary. They are at work everywhere. Though England severed connections with the Soviets, their agitations to destroy England continue. A reliable European Weekly contained in its issue of September 22, 1934 the following item: "Major General Sir Alfred Knox, a conservative member of Parliament, has publicly asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether he is aware that at the present moment a seditious propaganda of unprecedented dimensions is being carried on among the members of His Majesty's forces? The propaganda material which is constantly circulating in the army emanates demonstrably from Moscow."

Nygren, the chief of the Swedish General Staff revealed a similar propaganda in the army of Sweden. Similar attempts to influence the army and navy of other nations, including the United States, have been uncovered.

It was in May, 1934 when a leading official of the Soviets, Krylenko, made the following declaration: "The class-war is not only to continue but must be carried out with considerably increased intensity. The classes inimical to the workers are, it is true, beaten, but the individuals continue to exist. They have not all of them been shot as yet, not all of them been caught, not all of them physically annihilated. The carrying out of the task lies before us." He spoke of their bloody work in Russia, but the same work is to be done in every other country. And a few months after these horrible words were spoken, the slowly dying, insipid League of Nations welcomed as a member Soviet Russia and thereby endorsed all its viciousness and bloody deeds. Stalin is now an ally of the much boasted "Christian nations" trying to produce a warless world! Yet a few months before Stalin said: "By the first of May, 1937, there should not be a single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes." Well should that modern savior of the world, the League of Nations, acclaimed as such by the religious traitors of an apostate Christendom, hide its head in shame. With Sovietism as an ally it may look for an ignominious end. But we must curb ourselves and refrain from giving additional facts concerning the program of lawlessness as advocated and practised by the Soviets throughout Europe and the World.

We turn next to Germany. After the War, defeated Germany suffered greatly, yet struggled heroically to regain her lost position. It is out of our reach to describe the ups-and-downs, the struggles and gains, and the different attempts to extricate itself. Sometimes rays of hope appeared but soon there was a plunge back into hopelessness. One thing we wish to point out. The Soviets had their eyes upon Germany. One of their leaders said, and said it truly, "Germany is the heart of Europe; if we can produce a revolution in Germany the rest of Europe will be ours and the capitalistic countries will all be overthrown." After ten years of tolerance toward Russia and years of financing the Soviet Government by extensive trade credits, Germany awakened to find that the Soviets had expended within Germany's borders many millions to build up Communism and to overthrow and destroy the German Government. Right after the war there were only a few thousand communist voters in Germany. Before the memorable day came of the German revolution, five million votes were cast for communistic candidates. Litvinoff was very active in planning the overthrow of the country. A nation-wide plot was discovered. Then Adolf Hitler came to the front and acted under President Hindenburg, who placed Germany under martial law. Raids were made on all communistic headquarters. Forged police documents were confiscated, documents having been issued demanding fraudulently to disorganize the defense forces when the outbreak came. Over five hundred red leaders and two leaders of the League of Human Rights were arrested. Long lists of hundreds of prominent Germans were found who were to be killed. The numerous Communist members of the Reichstag were placed under arrest charged with other Communists with setting fire to the great Assembly Hall of the six million dollar Reichstag Building. A number of large subterranean vaults, filled with an enormous number of subversive communist handbills, and a labyrinth of conduits were discovered by the police. The headquarters of the Communists was the "Karl Liebknecht Haus." The investigation revealed that the entire building was equipped with an alarm system as a protection against raids. From a central point, iron gates could be shut and locked, and bells were provided to warn the occupants of the different offices. Trapdoors and other contrivances were discovered. Immense stocks of arms and ammunition were found later. The seized handbills incited to armed resistance and a bloody revolution. They demanded the blowing-up of railroads, bridges and gas tanks. There were suggestions of poisoning the drinking water and infect it with deadly disease germs. There can be no question but the energetic action of Hitler saved Germany from a revolution of perhaps the same dimensions as the Russian revolution. Unfortunately the great majority of the German Communist agitators were Jews, and as is always the case, the innocent had to suffer with the guilty. Hitler's dictatorship became atrocious.

The vicious literature which had been disseminated among the German people, books of infidelity, obscence books, books advocating the bloody revolution, and others as well, were publicly burned. What followed in Germany, the Aryan delusion, the fostering of Anti-Semitism, no sane person, not to speak of a Christian, can have any sympathy with. No political leader who is an Anti-Semite will succeed. He may prosper for a time but his ultimate defeat will surely come. In what is now called "the New Germany" there is being fostered a "New Paganism." While the churches are not destroyed in Germany, an attempt is made to destroy true Christianity. A certain clique of Aryomaniacs scattered all over Germany, have invented a theory by which they try to prove that our Lord was not a Jew at all, that He came from Aryan stock, "Salvation is of the Jews" is the sentence which these antichrists hate. They have turned back to mythology and try to put into the Christian Calendar forgotten pagan names. Here are a few of their attempts. The so-called "holy night" in which traditionally our Lord was born in Bethlehem, they have changed to "Baldur's Birth of Light." The ritualistic "Ash-Wednesday" has been made "Wotan-Day." Easter with them is no longer the day of resurrection but is now named after the Teuton goddess of Spring-Ostara. These are but a few examples of the hatred this German antisemitic clique has for everything Jewish. They hate the Old Testament, these indisputable oracles of God committed to Israel, God's chosen people.

While these unbalanced Nazis hate Christ, the Son of God, and according to the flesh the son of David and the son of Abraham, their American "brethren", though they are linked with modern Judaism, are not far behind. One of them preached a few years ago a sermon in New York, in which he warned of the "danger of worshipping Jesus." Yet there is another side. These Aryan fanatics are in the minority. There is a strong evangelical-conservative movement in Ger- v many, stronger than the conservatism in the United States. They have no sympathy with the attempt to dethrone supernatural Christianity. They have fought it vigorously and successfully. They have suffered for it also. If there is anything hopeful in Germany it is this strong evangelical current producing new and noble witnesses for the Christ of God, and holding high the Cross of Christ.

Economically, politically and financially all seems dark in Germany. Of the military situation and Hitler's peace declarations we shall speak later. How long will Nazism last? Will Hitler succeed as Mussolini succeeded in Italy? If Nazism collapses what will become of the Reich? Will the resumed secret agitations of the Communists in Germany lead to success? We do not venture a forecast.

If we were to follow the conditions and the trend of other European nations, England, France, Spain, Italy and the newly founded republics as well as the Balkan States, we would have to record the same distress, the same chaos, next to hopeless. There is strife and struggle everywhere. All kinds of remedies were suggested to bring about a better understanding among the nations of Europe and also to remove the increasing distress and unemployment. One of the leading remedies suggested was the idea of forming "The United States of Europe." In the Spring of 1930 the President of Columbia University, Dr. Butler, delivered an address before the Reichstag in Berlin. He made this suggestion.

"What of Europe? Has not the time come when the next long step forward in promoting national satisfaction and international comfort is the building of an economic United States of Europe, which shall do for those teeming and highly civilized populations what has already been done on the other side of the Atlantic? There are national differences, distinctions and opportunities to be protected, and there are international opportunities to be seized and developed."

Politicians, economists, laborites in Europe advocated such a European combination. About that time Monsieur Louis Loucheur, French Minister of Labor, speaking in Geneva at a committee session of the League of Nations, pleaded for an organization in chaotic Europe of such a nature. Then Premier Aristide Briand of France had for his guests the representatives of twenty-six nations. These representatives authorized Monsieur Briand to prepare an outline of his plan to weld Europe into an economic unit to be known by the name of "The United States of Europe." The plan was enthusiastically received, but other leading statesmen expressed the opinion that jealousy, racial and religious prejudices make such a union impossible at the present time. The main aim was to preserve peace in Europe and to stimulate trade. The union was to be affiliated with the League of Nations. Unified control of the air, rail and sea communications was envisaged, and also a uniform system of currency, weights and measures. It looked good on paper. But Briand's plan evaporated and the documents drawn up were but a few more scraps of paper. Nothing whatever became of this hopeful move; it proved hopeless.

In looking over world conditions in the beginning of 1931, we gave the following resume:

"Looking to old Europe first of all we find there a greater unrest than ever before. Germany has burst forth in a dangerous Fascist Nationalism, which seems to endanger the Republic. Surprising it was that Communism should manifest such a strength in seating seventy-five Reds in the 'Reichstag.' England is held in the coils of unemployment and economic depression. There is France with her Parliament hopelessly divided and the Tardieu government riding a dangerous rail. Twenty thousand voices cried recently at one time in Spain, 'Down with the King.' The whole country with the Berenguer dictatorship is struggling along in a very uncertain existence. Italy with its Fascist regime, with an iron hand to perpetuate control, has her serious problems, and some day may have another upset. Austria is isolated and is grasping economically for existence, as well as relief. Hungary is in a similar condition with a decided leaning towards a recall of the Hapsburgs. What else do we find over there? To the South Alexander's dictatorship with the question whether Jugoslavia as a nation is to remain or go to pieces. Then there is Rumania with her recalled king and disrupted household. Poland with the Pilsudski regime, but discontented and restless may burst into flames at any time. And there is the horrible world-nightmare, the Soviet Republic in the grasp of certain vicious, atheistic leaders, and a half starved populace, yet clinging to her satanic plans of world revolution.

"A glance at Asia reveals even worse things. There is China. Who can number the thousands which were murdered in that unhappy Empire during 1930? The revolution has been called a 'Red revolution' and that is what it is. It is all under the control of the group of murderers in Moscow. We have shown before that the Russian Reds have been the instigators and supporters of this Chinese revolution.

"India is in greater unrest than ever before. All Asia is rushing towards a great catastrophe. Tribes in Afghanistan, while we write this, are massing for war. The conditions in Palestine have quieted down, but are not settled. Ere long Zionism will find out the truth of the Word of God, for Palestine will become the storm center of the great tribulation.

"Egypt is like a smoldering volcano, and even in the interior of Africa and along the coasts the Red agitation to foment a revolution is very pronounced. In South America the Argentine Republic, Peru and Brazil have become affected by the leaven of revolution, and Cuba has had her upset.

"The leading statesmen are pessimistic. They confess that the outlook is serious. They tremble for the future."2

Is it any better in 1935? Are the leading statesmen less pessimistic? Is the world outlook more assuring? The future appeared dark in the beginning of 1931, is it brighter today?

And all through these years of depression and want, war preparations continued. We cannot follow the increasing armament year after year. We give the military status of Europe, Japan and the United States in the beginning of 1935. Here are the figures showing the active and reserved forces available: The British Empire including dominions and India, 1,141,000; France, 6,900,000; Germany, 1,100,000; Italy, 6,495,000; Japan, 2,177,000; Russia, 16,000,000; Poland, 2,000,000; Czechoslovokia 1,600,000; The United States, 444,000. Since Germany stepped outside of the Versailles Treaty, claimed to be justified by the violation of the treaty by the other nations, thousands of men have been called to arms in Germany, France, Italy and Russia and larger naval and air defenses have been mapped out. Last year Japan increased its naval personnel by 5,400; England by 1,350; The United States by 1,257, Japan headed England and the United States with the greatest number of new warships, with 155 to England's 132 and 85 for the United States. Germany is at it expending millions for new warships, and besides building new warships in the year 1935, England, France, Germany and

Japan contemplate expansion of naval shore stations and defenses. Japan has adopted a great program. By 1936 every capital ship and cruiser is to be in perfect shape for battle.

The United States has planned to increase its standing army from 118,000 to 165,000; England to 152,000; Japan's active troops number 225,000; Russia, 850,000; France's, 540,000; Italy's, 437,000 and Germany's, 300,000.

The United States is leading the other nations with a military budget of $800,000,000 for the fiscal year beginning with July, including provisions for the army increase, an addition of 12,000 officers and men to the navy and around $100,000,000 for naval construction. England's military budget for 1935 is $558,000,000. Japan's, $296,000,000; France, $742,000,000; Germany's, $450,000,000; Italy's, $383,000,000; Russia's is also enormous.

Training for war in all these nations continues on a large scale. Boys of eight are now trained in Italy. Russia's vast military preparations have been mentioned before. Germany is keeping step with both Italy and Russia.

And now we consult the Aircraft Yearbook for 1935, the seventeenth edition. It gives the aircraft strength of the different nations in 1934 as follows: France, 3,600; Russia, over 3,000; Great Britain, 2,800; Italy, 2,300; United States, 2,060; Japan, 1,850; Germany, 600. What an increase if we compare it with the available aircrafts in the year before the world-war! The French Government, according to the yearbook, is planning this year to junk hundreds of planes for faster models because of the implied threat in the rearmament of Germany under Reichsfuehrer Hitler. Germany, the yearbook says, has the nucleus now of an air force and contemplates an expenditure of $83,000,000 in 1935 for air defense, nearly four times the budget of 1934. And Italy outdoes Germany by spending $100,000,000 on air defense. The yearbook claims that the greatest development is going on in Russia. Such war preparations outdo everything in human history of the past. The year 1914 in such preparations was nothing but child's play. What shall be the end of these things?

Mr. Philip Noel Baker, former member of Parliament and Parliamentary Secretary of Foreign Affairs in 1931 answers this question in the Yale Review, summer 1934. "In short, in the last three years every policy has been threatened, and every safeguard weakened, by which Europe and the world had hoped that peace might be maintained. Europe, in consequence, finds herself back in the midst of dangers similar to the dangers of the pre-war era. It is, indeed, a commonplace in some political circles of Europe to say we stand about where we stood in 1912. It would be foolish to deny that the situation is serious, and serious in the extreme."

Warnings were sounded all along, especially when the Kellogg Peace Treaty was lauded as the greatest step towards universal peace. II Duce Benito Mussolini gave the first warning. Here are his words: "In spite of talk of peace the whole world is arming as never before. Newspapers daily are recording the launchings of submarines and other devices which certainly are not peaceful. The number of cannons and bayonets is increasing." This fact remains—the whole world is arming. Lloyd George, when the Briand-Kellogg treaty was signed, said: "What more is now needed but to sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' and go on building our New Jerusalem in England free and unfettered? That is how it is intended to be, but that is not how it is. Since we signed the peace treaty armaments are steadily increasing. All things show now that the world is heading for war." The confidence of the United States in the Briand-Kellogg treaty was expressed by the building of fifteen new cruisers and the expenditure of seven hundred million dollars for defense in 1930. Said Mr. Albert Lapoule in The Living Age in 1930: "If war broke out tomorrow it would be as different from the war of 1914 as that war was different from the Napoleonic wars. Not battle fines, but entire nations would be the front and there would be no distinction between the civilian and military population." The gasses and poisons now available, when carried over a country by huge aerial fleets, are capable of devastating cities and great sections of a nation almost overnight. The newly developed magnesium bombs are capable of penetrating the most substantial buildings, and because it is almost impossible to extinguish their flames, a whole city can be destroyed in a single attack. Phosgene bombs are more highly effective than in the world war. They are capable of destroying all life within half of a mile from the place where they are dropped. As military experts say, statesmen and others, when that war comes it will mean the end of all civilization. Progress? Yes, progress in destruction. How hopeless all appears in the face of these startling facts.
 

1 See "Conflict of the Ages," pages 123-124.

2 "Our Hope," December, 1930.