From the 1973 Yearbook:
The British Isles
WHEN two transatlantic voyagers stepped off the ship in Liverpool, England, sometime in September 1881, little did they think that they were being privileged to start something that was to grow tremendously and bring a great deal of joy to God-fearing Britishers. J. C. Sunderlin and J. J. Bender were two associates of the well-known “Pastor” Charles T. Russell of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and they had come to arrange for the distribution of a 162-page publication entitled “Food for Thinking Christians.”
Each had his plan of action mapped out, and soon Sunderlin was on his way to London, while Bender traveled north to Glasgow. The plan was to select sizable cities, employ a suitable man to recruit helpers, including boys, to give the books out free to people as they came out of church. This was to be a fast work, carried to its conclusion on two successive Sundays. Sunderlin recruited nearly five hundred messenger boys to give out the publications in London. In Glasgow, Bender placed a newspaper ad and caught a train to Edinburgh, where he sought a man to handle the work there. As soon as he had accomplished this he traveled farther afield, arranging distribution in towns such as Dundee and Aberdeen. Back in Glasgow he made a contract with one of eighteen who answered his ad, for distributing thirty thousand of the publications.
Then, zigzagging south, Bender arranged for the work in Carlisle, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Leeds and other towns in the industrial cotton belt of Catholic Lancashire and in the woolen towns of Protestant Yorkshire. All together, 300,000 of these fine Bible publications were set aside for distribution in Britain.
Though Britain was at the zenith of its commercial power, yet in London and other large cities hordes of urchins, pale, ragged and without shoes or stockings, roamed the streets searching in gutters and rubbish heaps for scraps of food. Girls slaved in sweltering rooms with sewing machines clattering and pressing irons heating on a smelly stove, working nearly the clock around for a mere pittance. There were multitudes of people badly in need of the Bible’s message of comfort. The publication Food for Thinking Christians was to prove to be a real comfort to many, and especially to the poverty-stricken class of people dwelling, for the most part, in slums and finding great difficulty in getting enough to eat.
Hope came to many of these people, and groups of Bible Students soon began to spring up as a result of this widely extended activity. Tom Hart of Islington, London, wrote for and received three pamphlets. He also received Zion’s Watch Tower regularly for nine months, all without charge—a new experience in the religious field. From then on he became a regular subscriber. He was struck by the theme that ran through each issue, namely, “Get out of her, my people”—a Scriptural call to leave Christendom’s religious groups and follow Bible teaching. He and a fellow railwayman, Johnathan Ling, began studying together. This led to Hart’s formally resigning from the chapel in 1884, soon to be followed by Ling and a dozen others who began to meet together. This appears to be the first record of regular meetings of this sort in Britain. Many who shared in such meetings also showed a willingness to engage in the work of spreading enlightenment to others. A Bristol cabdriver wrote: “I feel a great desire to tell it out.”
On July 1, 1891, Charles T. Russell first arrived in the British Isles, landing at Queenstown, Ireland, and made a two-month missionary tour, embracing Britain, Europe and Russia. He concluded that Britain offered the best potential and decided to concentrate activities there. He visited and talked to small groups of Watch Tower subscribers and addressed public meetings of up to two hundred interested persons specially invited in Liverpool and London. He also arranged with a London firm to supply Millennial Dawn books, Bible study aids, at special rates to colporteurs.
In those early days the work of spreading the good news was carried on in a variety of ways. Some part-time workers chose to offer the books in parks and other places where people were relaxing. A party of three covered the London parks in this way. Long conversations on the Bible were common. Others concentrated on business houses. The more usual way, however, was to make house-to-house visits. One brother working every house in small towns in Scotland averaged placements of thirty volumes a day.
TRACT WORK IN SCOTLAND
The distribution of Food for Thinking Christians was but the beginning. The activity with tracts also prospered. Sarah Ferrie, who had a bedding shop in Glasgow, was a subscriber to Zion’s Watch Tower. She wrote to Pastor Russell saying that she and a few of her friends would like to volunteer to share in the work. Later a huge truck drew up at the door of her business premises. On it were thirty thousand pamphlets. They were well made and all of them were to be distributed free. Aunt Sarah, as she came to be called, and her friends moved into action. Usually three would stand at an unobtrusive distance from a church, each at a different approach to the building, so that churchgoers and others might receive a free publication.
Another active worker, Brother Phillips, was a businessman who visited in rotation a number of towns around Glasgow. He traveled in a different railway compartment each day and distributed tracts to his fellow travelers. Having covered all trains he regularly used, he caught earlier ones each day and repeated the process. At least four persons accepted the truth as a result of this tract distribution on trains. George, son of Brother Phillips, later served in South Africa as branch overseer for many years.
Minnie Greenlees, a relative of Sarah Ferrie, traveled all over the countryside in her “pony and trap” with her son Alfred and his two small brothers. She sent them to isolated farms and cottages with tracts while she herself placed hundreds of copies of the book The Divine Plan of the Ages.
By 1901 the Glasgow group, which first met at Sister Ferrie’s home, had outgrown the accommodations and transferred to the Masonic Halls. In the four years since the congregation was formed, the first one north of the border, it had expanded to some thirty-five persons. There was a great sense of urgency moving the brothers. They distributed hundreds of thousands of tracts throughout Scotland. Many were four-page tracts, rather like small newspapers, containing pointed messages such as, “Many Clergymen Preaching Without Divine Authority Should Stop Preaching,” “The Fall of Babylon,” and others.
In Glasgow alone, a brother reported the distribution of 10,093 copies of the booklet The Bible vs. The Evolution Theory, a booklet that was given away free. This liberal distribution of literature was done, to a considerable extent, outside churches. Seventy-three churches in Glasgow had been visited.
Meantime the rural districts were receiving attention. Alfred Greenlees and Alexander MacGillivray went over much of Scotland on bicycles. They also worked the island of Orkney and the northern part of Britain. MacGillivray later became the branch overseer in Australia.
The spread of Bible knowledge in Scotland may be measured by the fact that in 1903 there were seventy persons present to celebrate the Memorial of Christ’s death. Groups of Bible Students were meeting regularly in no less than six locations in Glasgow. The distribution of tracts, originally done by paid labor, was later organized so that it was done almost exclusively by volunteers. Colporteurs, on the other hand, distributed the bound books published by the Watch Tower Society and maintained themselves on the small margin the Society allowed them on the placement of these publications.
ORGANIZING FOR GREATER ACTIVITY
By December 1898 there were nine established congregations in Britain. Help in organization became the pressing need. C. T. Russell had previously sent “pilgrims” from America to work with colporteurs in the field and to address congregations. Pilgrims were spiritually older men who visited congregations giving Scriptural counsel and encouragement. They were really the forerunners of the traveling ministers now known as circuit overseers. Russell then decided to appoint Jesse Hemery, a railway signalman from Manchester, to pilgrim service. For ten years Hemery had responded actively to the tract work organized by Bender, and now he commenced his new service on January 3, 1899.
The year 1900 was but a few days old when Hemery received from Russell a letter that said, among other things: “I am planning something further in . . . the interest of the cause in Great Britain, and I trust that the year 1900 will see it realized to some extent.” Russell’s plan began to go into effect a month later when E. C. Henninges and his wife stepped onto the quay at Liverpool and made their way to London.
Henninges called on a number of booksellers to assess the situation regarding prices, commissions or discounts for wholesalers and the sort of bindings most likely to appeal. He also appointed additional colporteurs. He prepared a circular to go to all the booksellers and newsagents, offering Zion’s Watch Tower, a sixteen-page magazine, at a commission of 50 percent on a year’s subscription of twenty-four issues. The Society undertook to provide the magazines and to pay the postage, in addition to supplying free as many sample copies as the newsagent would guarantee to put in the hands of people likely to become subscribers. The circular pointed out that these extra inducements would operate until a goodly list was established, when the terms would be brought to a par with that of English magazines.
Soon several tons of books and magazines arrived in England to meet the demands of the expanding work. In order to relieve the pressure on American printers, Henninges made arrangements for magazines to be printed in London.
Henninges also sought and found suitable premises at 131 Gipsy Lane (now known as Green Street), Forest Gate, East London, to accommodate an office for the British branch of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. On Monday, April 23, 1900, E. C. Henninges opened the first branch of the Society outside the United States.
Late in 1901 Henninges was recalled to America for a new assignment. In the meantime, Jesse Hemery had arranged his affairs so that he could devote all his time to the ministry, and he was willing to take up an assignment in London. Hence, on Thursday, November 1, 1901, Hemery was appointed branch overseer of the British Isles branch. One of the first things done was to set new prices on the books written by Russell. The decision meant a loss on some volumes, but in the interest of fast distribution the lower figure was suggested by Russell. About this time the Society also published Hints to Colporteurs, indicative of the fact that the ranks of these full-time ministers were expanding.
In April 1903, Russell landed in England for a convention tour. He addressed a number of meetings, including one at Shoreditch Town Hall, London, with a peak attendance of some eight hundred. Conventions on the Continent were followed by visits to Scotland. The last time that Russell had visited Glasgow, in 1891, he had sought out six subscribers for Zion’s Watch Tower. This time attendances rose to a thousand to hear his address on the subject “Millennial Hopes and Prospects.” Other audiences numbering five to six hundred heard Russell in midland and northern towns before he departed for Dublin, where he had an undemonstrative but attentive audience.
On this trip Brother Russell spent time arranging for larger quarters in London. A likely building was located in north London, and so in the autumn of 1903 the branch office was moved from Forest Gate to 24 Eversholt Street, Euston.
ACTIVITY DRAWS OPPOSITION
Trials were in store for that early organization of Jehovah’s people in the British Isles. Zealous activity on the part of many Bible Students was sure to draw the fire of the enemy. At the same time efforts to bring the organization more into line with Scriptural requirements were due to produce sharp differences within the ranks of the Bible Students themselves. For example, women had played quite a prominent part in the early days in Glasgow and other congregations, conducting Sunday schools for children. This arrangement now came under review and it was soon evident that Brother Russell did not favor it. Some were rather put out by the modified view on woman’s place in the Christian congregation.—1 Tim. 2:11, 12.
On Monday, April 13, 1908, Charles Russell once again visited Britain with a view to making a grand tour with many large public meetings. In Belfast he encountered some opposition from hecklers, which he easily quelled. In Dublin opposition came during a requested question period, the opposition being led by a Y.M.C.A. secretary. Russell showed himself to be equally a master of debate as of exposition, for the encounter left both the secretary and his chief assistant thoroughly discomfited. Throughout Scotland and England halls were crammed, many people not getting in.
The president of the Watch Tower Society made repeated visits to Britain over the years. In May of 1910, he had another three-week itinerary in the British Isles. At Otley, Yorkshire, a town of eight thousand population, six Methodist ministers had caused quite a stir on his previous visit by embracing the truth, for which they were denounced in pulpit and press. On this occasion, one of these six acted as chairman for Brother Russell. This meeting was advertised by the town crier, a burly, pigtailed, costumed man who, ringing a handbell, roared, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” before bawling out his announcement. On this tour the Y.M.C.A. secretary in Dublin prepared reinforcements of preachers to disrupt the meeting, but, according to an eyewitness, Russell ‘virtually plastered the group with scriptures’ and again left the opposers discomfited, to the delight of the audience.
The next year Brother Russell began another British and European tour. He gave an address in a hall packed beyond normal capacity with some two thousand persons in Cardiff, Wales. The Plymouth Brethren had put out a little leaflet that set forth ten points in which it was claimed that quotations from The Divine Plan of the Ages contradicted the Bible. The effect of this was that it helped to advertise the meeting, and at the close of his two-hour talk Russell spent half an hour answering the questions, as well as other questions put orally.
Back in Dublin again for a meeting, Russell was once again confronted by the Y.M.C.A. secretary, who tried to break up the meeting with the help of about a hundred young men of his association. On occasion they yelled and hooted. The questions raised were of the usual order, some being in the form of an attack on Russell. Russell answered them fully and to the apparent satisfaction of all the audience except the rowdies. By the close of this tour Brother Russell had addressed fifty-five meetings in twenty-four cities throughout Europe, with attendances aggregating some forty-four thousand persons. In the same period more than a million pamphlets and papers had been distributed free. Certainly the people of the British Isles, as well as the European continent, were getting to know about Jehovah’s organization.
By the end of 1911 more than three hundred newspapers in Britain were carrying Russell’s sermons. The syndicate handling this work was known as The Pastor Russell Lecture Bureau. It published a descriptive pamphlet about the world tour of which Russell’s visit to Britain in 1912 would form a part. This publication was about the size of Zion’s Watch Tower and outlined the activities of the Society as well as its teachings. It included facsimiles of newspaper cuttings, including many from British papers, giving accounts of Russell’s meetings. It proved to be an effective tool in the spread of Bible truth.
“Class extension” work also began to make good progress. The method was for an appointed elder to select a location and give a series of three “chart talks” on the chronological chart of Biblical dates. These would be followed by three other lectures. After the lecture series those in the audience were invited to meet for regular study. The sense of urgency among the brothers in those days moved them to undertake a distribution of free literature to every farm and isolated homestead in both Scotland and England.
FINANCIAL AND LEGAL MATTERS
The Society’s view of financial matters during these years manifested reliance on the Lord. Brother Russell, commenting on the world financial account of the Society for 1911, declared: “We doubt not that this indebtedness will soon be cancelled; nevertheless the fact that it is nearly double the shortage of last year cautions us that we must to some extent put on the ‘brakes’; for it is our judgment of the Lord’s will that we spend money only as it is supplied under his providence.”
An incident in Oldham, Lancashire, throws a sidelight on the handling of money. It was the year of the great cotton strike. Oldham, being a cotton town, suffered much distress. The Oldham ecclesia (congregation) decided to provide relief measures. This is how they went about it: In a side room they placed a table and on it three pots or basins. One was for gold, one for silver and one for copper. An elder stood outside the door, and only one person was allowed in at a time. Each one who entered ‘stood alone before the Lord.’ No one else knew whether he or she put money in or took money out. Some who gave in the early weeks said that they had to take money out before the strike ended. However, like the widow’s small jar of oil, referred to at 1 Kings 17:14-16, the three basins never ran dry until all had returned to work again.
Notwithstanding the mounting financial burden on the Society, in March 1911 it was deemed necessary to move into larger branch quarters in London, so the Society took over a property at 36 Craven Terrace, Lancaster Gate, London W. This had a meeting hall large enough to accommodate the growing number of believers in the London area. Formerly known as the Craven Hill Congregational Chapel, the premises were renamed London Tabernacle. It had a large gallery seating almost as many as the ground floor—in all, nearly twelve hundred.
In time the growing activity of the Bible Students in Britain called for changes in the legal structure of the group. On June 30, 1914, the International Bible Students Association was registered under the Companies Acts as an unlimited company. The liability for the mortgage on the London Tabernacle was transferred to the new legal corporation, which became the lessee also of 34 Craven Terrace, then occupied by the Hemerys and ten other members of the Bethel family. The parent legal body was the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Thus the Society in this land became geared to meet not only an expanding volume of work but also the pressures of a shattering kind that were now imminent.
PHOTO-DRAMA OF CREATION
As the keenly anticipated year 1914 drew near, the preaching work did not slow down. A tour by Charles T. Russell in the late summer of 1913 embraced conventions in London and Glasgow. Speaking in London on August 4, 1913, he declared: “. . . the Gentile times will close with October, 1914—not a great while in the distance.” He expressed the belief that the ‘burning up’ to which the Bible refers would be “not a literal burning, but a time of trouble—that is the ‘fire’ spoken of by the apostles and prophets as being the feature which will close this present age, and the feature with which the new dispensation will be introduced.”
When the year 1914 broke, it found the Society intensely active and looking far forward. An entirely new project was launched. To drive home in a striking way truths the Bible Students had been proclaiming for forty years, “The Photo-Drama of Creation” entered the field. The first showing in Britain came in July 1914. The Society produced twenty complete outfits, each consisting of projectors, films, slides, screens, gramophones, records and scenarios. The complete program consisted of four two-hour exhibitions followed by a finale consisting of a lecture. Eighty shows could therefore run concurrently. The aim was to show the “Drama” in the best and largest theaters in the leading cities throughout the country. Advance superintendents made contracts with theater managers. A publicity superintendent followed up and made arrangements for an extensive advertising campaign. Then came the opening superintendent. His task was to check arrangements and make sure all operating details were satisfactory. Finally came the operators to carry out the meeting routine, arrange for the distribution of scenarios and free booklets and to plan for follow-up on all turning in their names as being interested.
The usual plan was for Part 1 of the “Drama” to be run for a full week in any given location. Then Part 2 was shown for the second week, and so on for the four. A fifth session was given over to a final lecture. Of course, the time available had much to do with how long each session of the “Photo-Drama” showing would be. Brother Russell was himself present for the start of the showings in London, where packed houses enjoyed the presentation very much. Then Russell and his party traveled to Glasgow and other Scottish cities to start this new work there also.
The London Opera House, Kingsway, was thought to be an ideal place for the series, but it was taken for granted that the cost would place it out of bounds. However, in October 1914 came an offer from the management for a period, October 12-27, for a fee of £100. The Society seized this opportunity. The brothers in London rose to the occasion and, with only a week to go, managed to distribute some four hundred thousand “Drama” tracts before the opening day. These tracts were really small newspapers copiously illustrated with scenes from the particular part of the “Drama” advertised, and they contained a great deal of descriptive and other reading matter. Also used for advertising the occasion were a large number of window cards and circulars. Brothers called on business houses, stores, hotels, hospitals and all places likely to engage a large staff and supplied them with a quantity of show cards and admission tickets.
There were a great number of box seats available at the Opera House. So special invitation cards were sent out to the aristocracy and people of good address in London. As a result, the boxes were nearly always filled by a class of people, including titled people, that the “Drama” had not hitherto reached. Two bishops were known to have attended. Interest continued to mount as the series at the Opera House progressed. The finale came on Tuesday, October 27, when more than one thousand attended in the afternoon. In the evening the Opera House was again packed and hundreds were turned away, unable to gain admission. Later, the Royal Albert Hall in London was also used for “Drama” presentations. The first seven days’ attendance ran up to 24,192. The report of the showing of the “Photo-Drama” in Scotland at this time indicated that forty-five towns were visited, including Glasgow, with an aggregate attendance of three hundred thousand. The number of names of interested persons handed in at final lectures totaled 4,919.
Following tours of England and Scotland, the “Photo-Drama of Creation” was presented to large appreciative audiences in Belfast, Portadown, Ballymena and other centers in Ireland. The Society also provided a shortened version of the “Drama” with no films or moving pictures, but with slides only. That exhibition was known as the Eureka Drama. These showings too drew substantial crowds of interested persons.
By the end of 1914, after six months of showing the “Drama” in the British Isles, 1,226,650 had seen the exhibition in ninety-seven cities besides London. The spread of the Kingdom message by this and by the regular house-to-house visitation by the Bible Students had resulted in a great expansion of the organization in the British Isles. When the first world war broke out, there were 182 congregations, and the attendance at the Memorial that year amounted to 4,100. But drastic developments were imminent, not only in the world situation, but also within the Society.
BIBLE STUDENTS UNDER ATTACK
With the end of “the times of the nations” in 1914, came the beginning of the end of the British Empire, then at the apex of its power. Rapacious traders began to skin the populace. Shops became bare of food. The bank rate shot to a panic 10 percent. During the opening stages of the war that was to become the first world war, the army that supplemented Britain’s regular army was a volunteer one. Notwithstanding the fact that the church lent its vigorous support to the recruiting campaign, there was still a vast shortage of volunteers. Conscription was therefore introduced. This brought a new group into prominence, the much despised conscientious objectors.
Tribunals were set up to consider each case of conscientious objection individually, and it was the duty of the tribunal to assess the sincerity of the one concerned. Before long more than forty Bible Students were imprisoned because their objection to military service was supposed by the tribunals not to be conscientious. The International Bible Students Association therefore circulated a petition that was eventually signed by 5,500 persons. It protested against the imprisonments and was sent with a covering letter to the prime minister of Great Britain.
On Monday, July 17, 1916, proceedings in the nature of a test case came on at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court. James Frederick Scott, in 1971 still in full-time ministerial service in Scotland, was at that time charged with having “been deemed to have enlisted and to have been transferred to the Army Reserve” but having “failed to appear” when called. He was acquitted, and on the basis of this judgment the London office set out to get exemption for regular office workers and elders.
Meantime eight of the conscientious objectors among the Bible Students had been sent to France, and the news came through that they were sentenced to be shot. When they were lined up to face the firing squad, the sentence was commuted by General Sir Douglas Haig to ten years of penal servitude. The eight were returned to England to serve their time in Dartmoor prison. The military powers at that time were very much a law to themselves. By September 1916, 264 of the brothers had applied for exemption. Of these, five were granted their petition, 154 were assigned to work of national importance, 23 to a noncombatant corps and 82 were handed over to the military.
Some of the brothers were subjected to military savagery. For example, Frank Platt was a victim of the sadism of military officers. He was subjected to solitary confinement. He was given “shot drill” that required him, after three months on a diet of bread and water, to carry a thirty-pound weight at arm’s length and repeatedly at the sound of a whistle place it on the ground, lift it again and repeat till he dropped to the ground exhausted. For dropping exhausted and being unable to rise he was sentenced to another eighteen days of shot drill. When this was over, being still alive, he was banged in the face several times and then tied day after day by the shoulders, hands and feet to a beam in a tiny storeroom from eight in the morning until eight at night with an hour’s break at noon when he was given some cold rice and water. The sergeant major came to see him each day and asked: “Had enough yet?” Several times the prison governor called and inquired: “Are you comfortable?” Then Platt was transferred to the “Black Hole of Le Havre,” where prisoners were bound and beaten, sometimes to death. A London newspaper got hold of the “Black Hole” story and, as a result, the governor, the sergeant major and the noncommissioned officers under him were moved from the prison.
Some who were grounded in the truth before the war broke out were “absolutists,” that is, they refused to have any part at all in the war or any work related to it. They were simply jailed. Pryce Hughes, who later became branch overseer in Britain, was among these. In common with other prisoners, he was sent out to work on building a dam in Wales. It was there that he met a fellow prisoner, Edgar Clay. They pioneered together and later worked in Bethel together with Frank Platt, the three still being happily busy there in 1972.
ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS
The need for retrenchment, the worsening conditions in Britain and the effects of conscription combined to restrict the advance of the Kingdom work. Problems at once personal and organizational had their effect too. In the earliest issues of Zion’s Watch Tower Russell had pointed out from the Scriptures that a prime source of trouble would come from those who were anointed, who had embraced and furthered the spread of the truth and who then defected. The congregations were now approaching the time when this dissension would be crystalized and directed with telling but not successful effect.—Acts 20:29, 30; Matt. 13:36-41.
In those days congregations were run by elders assisted by deacons, all of whom were locally nominated and elected annually. It usually took several meetings to complete this election process. Feelings often ran high, and the discord engendered did not end when the election was over. In October 1916, the elders of the London Tabernacle signed and sent to Russell a letter outlining problems affecting the constitution of the congregation and the study methods employed. They invited Russell to express his views on these problems and differences. They undertook to make no changes until Russell’s views were known. At the same time they expressed loyalty to the president and to the Society.
Russell did not, however, have the opportunity to express his views on these problems. On Tuesday, October 31, 1916, Charles Taze Russell died on a train while on a lecture tour in the United States. To a situation already fraught with tensions and difficulties, his death added one more problem for the brothers in the British Isles. Brother Russell’s death cast a gloom over all the brothers. He had been held in the highest esteem by all. Approachable and much loved, he had taken a lively and kindly interest in people. To many his loss also meant the loss of coordinating direction of the organization of God’s people. To others, however, that very loss furnished the opportunity to further their own designs.
On November 7, 1916, a cable from Brooklyn headquarters advised the London office that Brother Paul S. L. Johnson was about to leave for Britain. The purpose of his visit was to look into the difficulties involving the managers of the Society and the London Tabernacle. His real power in Britain would be no greater than that of any of the other pilgrim brothers who had come to these shores, and of this he was made perfectly acquainted before leaving the Brooklyn office. He made a tour of Britain, addressing public meetings on the subject “Britain’s Fallen Heroes—Comfort for Their Bereaved.” He recommended that congregations set up “Schools of the Prophets” to train brothers in public speaking. Backed by papers that appeared to give him plenipotentiary powers, he made a considerable impression in the congregations. With this newly acquired background he returned to London, and there his real aims soon became apparent.
On Sunday, February 4, 1917, the secretary of the London congregation read a letter from Paul Johnson that announced that Brothers Shearn and Crawford were no longer managers of the Society. Johnson as a “Special Representative of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society” took it upon himself to instruct the bank to reject the signatures of Shearn and Crawford and honor checks countersigned by Ebenezer Housden and Alexander Kirkwood. Then Johnson cabled J. F. Rutherford, who had recently become president of the Watch Tower Society: “Situation intolerable. Shearn, Crawford dismissed.”
As soon as President Rutherford heard of Johnson’s dismissal of the two managers, he sent a cable calling for their reinstatement. They, however, refused to be reinstated. At the same time Brother Rutherford appointed a commission to look into the trouble. Unknown to Rutherford, one of the members of that commission, Housden, was involved in the whole situation, being one of the new check signatories. Meantime, Johnson was quite undisturbed about Rutherford’s reaction. He was satisfied that Rutherford was “undoubtedly the victim of a cablegram campaign engineered by Shearn and Crawford.” Johnson therefore began one himself. His first cable ran to eighty-five words, later eclipsed by others, including a one-hundred-and-fifteen-word effort. The first cablegram identified himself and others with characters in Esther, Nehemiah and other Bible books. He himself was likened to Ezra, Nehemiah and Mordecai. He invited the president of the Society to be his “right-hand man.”
In the meantime Johnson instructed Hemery urgently to lay in stocks of food and store them in a place safe from men and from rats. He suggested a false ceiling lined with tin. Wheat and peanuts, he said, were specially needed. He based his demands, he said, on Elisha’s predictions of famine. The six elders who signed the October letter and were later reelected, Johnson said, were in fact “sons of Haman” whom Johnson “slew” the previous Sunday and who would be “hanged up” by him on March 4, 1917, by his dismissing them. About this time Hemery cabled Rutherford: “Johnson claims full control everything.” Next day, Rutherford cabled Johnson: “Your work finished London; return America, important.” And to Hemery, Rutherford cabled: “Johnson demented. Has no powers. Credentials issued to procure passport. Return him America.” On March 7, Johnson, in an eighty-seven-word cable to Vice-President A. I. Ritchie and W. E. Van Amburgh, repudiated Rutherford’s authority to recall him to America, claimed full support of the London congregation as against Shearn and Crawford, and appealed to the Society against Rutherford, who, he said, was not elected to the presidential position.
Johnson launched a campaign against the bank, threatening proceedings if they honored checks legally drawn and demanding recognition of his own nominees. He underlined his own plenipotentiary powers, withdrew authority from Alexander Kirkwood, suspended Hemery in a document formally witnessed by Ebenezer Housden, and made it known generally that he, Johnson, should have been the Society’s president but had declined to accept.
Johnson, resisted by Hemery, the remaining manager in the London office, co-opted Housden as his accomplice, obtained the keys of the London office and forcibly took possession. He confiscated the mail, opened the safe and took money belonging to the Society, and then instituted a lawsuit in the High Court of Chancery in London, in the name of the Society by himself as special representative, against the manager of the London office and against the bank where the Society’s funds were deposited. Acting through solicitors, Johnson obtained an injunction restraining the defendants from drawing on the funds of the Society. At this point Hemery wired Rutherford: “Johnson rampaging. He and Housden seizing mails and cash. Hasten sealed cancellation authority. Solicitor recommends Johnson’s forcible ejection.” In reply Rutherford cabled: “Resist Johnson’s injunction. Does not represent Society. Restrain him.” Written cancellation of Johnson’s appointment came over the signature of the president, the stamp and seal of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and attested by W. E. Van Amburgh. Formal annulment of all Johnson’s acts and deeds accompanied the revocation of his authority.
Johnson’s lawsuit, for which he employed counsel, failed. His rebellion and attempt to seize the funds of the Society failed also. On March 10 Rutherford cabled Hemery to take full control. Hemery went immediately to the bank to safeguard £800 on deposit there. He was none too soon. Johnson arrived immediately after to use his letters from the head office to gain control of the money. A verbal and legal fight ensued. Frustrated, Johnson pursued his legal action. When the case came before the judge, Johnson’s counsel decided, after reading Hemery’s affidavit, not to proceed with his action. These developments, of course, deflated Johnson, and he was quiet for a time, but not for long. His illusions of grandeur revived. It soon became evident that his purpose was more than that of taking control of the office. He aimed to take control of the whole British field and its resources, and of the running of a separate edition of the Watch Tower magazine.
Johnson, balked and furious, conferred long with his fellow conspirator, Housden. On Wednesday, both went early to bed in their separate rooms. Hemery recruited Brother Cronk and four others. Two crept to Johnson’s room and silently but firmly secured the door. Hemery, Cronk and the other two tiptoed to Housden’s room and with some difficulty obtained the keys. Quickly, Hemery and Cronk went to the safe, unlocked it and swung the door. The money was gone. Johnson and Housden had scooped a deposit of £50 in gold, £190 in currency and the receipts from the mail during the days they held it. Besides this sum, a check for £350 was missing.
Hemery and Cronk made another trip to Housden’s room, but this time not on tiptoe. “Where is the money?” demanded Hemery. Housden refused to divulge any information, even under close interrogation. But he did promise he would help Johnson no more. In the course of the questioning Hemery pointed out the possibility of bringing in the police. At 11:30 p.m. the doorbell rang. There on the step was a police officer. He wanted an explanation of a violation of the very stringent London lighting regulations. An upstairs window was brightly lighted and had no blackout. The officer insisted on seeing those responsible and Hemery took him to the offending room and knocked. The door opened and there, framed in the doorway, was a man whose urge to meet policemen had never been at a lower ebb. “This,” said Hemery to the officer, “is Mr. Housden.”
Next morning at six o’clock the Bethel family awoke to sounds of violence. A banging and pounding and a final thud gave evidence that Johnson was not a man to be restricted by a door wedged with a sizable chunk of wood. Cronk warned Johnson that, though he could go to the bathroom if he wanted, he could not have things his own way. Cronk mentioned that a police officer had been up to see Housden the previous night, though no mention was made of the reason for the visit. So Johnson paid a visit to Housden’s room. But Housden, shaken by the events of the night, would not come out or even converse with him through the door. Johnson began then to share the worry that was clearly afflicting Housden. Desirable as he once regarded these premises, it now appeared to him to be time to leave, and that without delay. He returned to his room, one flight up, and dressed. Leaving his baggage open, he went out on the balcony overlooking Craven Terrace, climbed the balustrade and hung suspended for a moment before working his way down the face of the building.
As the front door of the Bethel was open, some might have thought there were easier ways of reaching the street than the way Johnson chose, and they would have been right. But had Johnson chosen the easy way, the milkman that morning would have missed a sight that made his day, that of a silk-hatted, frock-coated city gent, feet shod with rubber overshoes, shinning down a drainpipe.
During that day Housden delivered to Brother Gentle a package containing about £220 in gold, treasury notes and other paper. Gentle phoned Hemery to say that he, Gentle, would have to hold the money until a note from Johnson’s solicitors sanctioned its surrender. Hemery shocked Gentle by pointing out that he was handling stolen property. By evening Hemery received the cash. But the needed statement of finances was still missing.
Though President Rutherford all along took a strong and emphatic line with Johnson, he advocated with equal emphasis the need to deal with him in a kindly way. In seeking to find some reason for the tremendous disruption that had come upon the London branch and on the work generally in Britain, he advanced the view that the years of discord between the three managers was itself an inducing factor, Jehovah having “permitted the adversary to enter.” On March 16, 1917, Rutherford sent copies of new rules for the London branch and invited the three managers to go over them together and then, if agreeable, sign and return a copy to Brooklyn headquarters. The rules vested due authority in Hemery as the president’s representative.
The findings of the commission appointed to look into the troubles in London reached this country together with the president’s conclusions. Rutherford’s covering letter, however, gave the text of a cable from Housden to Brother Van Amburgh, which read: “JOHNSON UNEARTHED COLOSSAL EFFORT BY HEMERY SHEARN CRAWFORD DEFRAUD WATCH TOWER OF FINANCIAL CONTROL. RUTHERFORD’S CABLEGRAMS ENCOURAGING THEM. HAVE BOARD SILENCE HIM. Signed HOUSDEN.” This cable was dated March 18, 1917. As soon as it came to hand Van Amburgh turned it over to Rutherford. When the report of the commission reached Rutherford, he searched it in vain for information about this fresh conspiracy. Housden, a member of the commission and a signatory of the report, for reasons then not clear, had kept silent. Meantime the mystery of Johnson’s whereabouts following his unorthodox exit of the British branch office, was not cleared up until April 1917, by which time he was halfway to America. It is true that following his hasty departure there were one or two strange telephoned messages received at the Bethel home, and it was concluded that Johnson was standing beside the mystery caller on each occasion trying to get some information about his friend Housden.
Later, after two long sessions, Rutherford established that Johnson was perfectly sane on every point save one, namely, himself. Johnson contended strongly that he must return to Great Britain. President Rutherford’s reaction: “We will see to it that he does not return there.” Instead it was recommended that Hemery arrange a tour to explain matters to the congregations. The idea was for Brother Kirkwood to assist with this tour, Hemery himself visiting the larger congregations.
Quite apart from the reports on the recent and current frictions, Rutherford knew from his visits to Britain during the last seven years that, despite the phenomenal expansion of the work in this land, there was a spirit of pride among many whose knowledge of the Scriptures was seriously undermined by a poor condition of heart. It was therefore arranged for the brothers to be built up with the help of the pilgrim service, which had largely been disrupted by the world war. As to the eleven elders who signed the October letter to Russell, Brother Rutherford concluded that they had no ulterior motive; though at fault, their action did not imply any disloyalty to the Society. Indeed, Rutherford found good reasons for nearly everything that gave rise to complaint. In his report as well as in covering letters he made it most easy for everyone concerned to carry on or reassume his duties in the service of God in a happy way. The entire matter was handled through correspondence, since travel between Britain and America was still difficult. It followed that by June, Hemery had the pilgrim service going again, enlisting a number of able men in this activity. He himself made pilgrim visits too, and, on the whole, found the congregations in good shape despite the buffeting they had experienced.
Johnson did not give up his ambitious scheme easily. Back in Brooklyn he launched a campaign to get himself back to Britain. Rutherford reported that Johnson was really working to turn the Society’s directors against its president. He suggested that Hemery find out from the congregations what they would think about Johnson’s coming back and then let them write to Brooklyn setting out their views. In the meantime Housden, pressed by a committee of three for evidence to support his charge of conspiracy and being unable to furnish any, had written a letter of apology to Rutherford withdrawing his unsupported charge.
By this time America’s expeditionary force was already in France and a new military law, the Selective Draft Act, piled extra work on President Rutherford’s desk. In view of these increasing pressures, Rutherford informed the loyal ones in Britain: “I think I had better wait a while before coming to Britain and sit on the safety valve here in case they blow me clear out, which, by the Lord’s grace, I hope they will not be able to do.” This turned out to be exactly what Rutherford’s enemies were marshaling their forces to accomplish.
LIES VERSUS BITING TRUTH
It was easy in those troublous times to detect the enemies of truth no matter whether they had the thin veneer of Christendom’s representatives or the sheeplike clothing of disloyal ones among the Bible Students of those days. A special target that had the effect of drawing the fire of all these enemies and resulting in their exposure as enemies of the truth was the publication The Finished Mystery. Johnson’s faction attacked it in a four-page printed “Letter to International Bible Students.” Other opposition journals began to follow suit. One of them, entitled “The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom,” copied the format of The Watch Tower and some of its recurring features, even to the point of having the same subtitles word for word. Surely only frauds would descend to such deceitful methods.
“The Fall of Babylon” issue of The Bible Students Monthly advertised The Finished Mystery and included biting truths that had the effect of stripping Christendom’s religion of its covering of pretense. Not only did the clergy howl, but they induced the political powers to take action on both warring sides, clergymen in Germany being just as antagonistic to the Bible Students as their counterparts in Britain and America. Britain’s ally, Canada, led by fining and imprisoning people who possessed copies of either The Finished Mystery or “The Fall of Babylon” tract.
Lying, garbled news reports were circulated around this country. For example, the Northern Echo reported: “The Federal authorities today raided Bethel Home, the headquarters of the International Bible Students Association, situated on Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, and there seized a powerful wireless outfit. The premises overlook New York Harbour.” Another report added: “The outfit was presumably to be used for communication with the enemy.” With great glee the enemy saw to it that this misleading report was widely circulated.
But what was the truth of the matter? Here is how it was factually reported in the March 8 issue of the Electrical Review: “ILLICIT WIRELESS.—Reuter reports that the Federal authorities in New York have seized the Tower Office Building on Lower Broadway, where a wireless apparatus was discovered sufficiently powerful to communicate with Germany. This wireless plant was in the possession of a certain Richard Pfund, who was at one time manager of the Telefunken plants at Tuckerton and Sayville. Although the apparatus was disconnected, experts declared that it could be put into operation again within the space of half an hour. Pfund, when questioned on the subject, asserted that he was doing experimental work for the American Navy. This statement was subsequently verified, but the authorities are now making further investigations.”
Tower Office Building on Lower Broadway, Manhattan, was a big step from Bethel, Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, geographically, phonetically and in every other way. Since the report originated in New York and was furnished by an experienced correspondent of the Central News Agency, Rutherford’s reaction described the matter accurately, for he cabled Hemery at London: “RAID WIRELESS REPORTS MALICIOUSLY FALSE.”
Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and this led to investigation by Britain’s director of the Press Bureau. Prior to printing The Finished Mystery in England, Hemery had underlined passages in the book that exposed the hypocritical course of the clergy in encouraging men in all nations to slaughter one another and that, while German soldiers wore belts inscribed ‘God with us,’ British clergymen threw halos of glory upon soldiers the Germans killed. Some of the passages described the clergy as decoys to get others to kill and be killed while themselves avoiding any direct participation. Hemery undertook to delete such passages and was granted permission to go ahead with the printing and distribution. But meantime the congregations were deluging their territories with the pamphlet “The Fall of Babylon,” and had tremendous success in their work. One congregation in Lancashire reported: “We completed the work in four hours.” In Liverpool more than 80,000 copies were distributed. The Press Bureau director immediately wrote and called for an interview with Hemery and told him that The Finished Mystery was an offense against Regulation 18 of the Defence of the Realm Act. Hemery arranged to stop the printing of any further copies.
There is no doubt that the war’s effects were bringing about radical changes and often lack of clear direction, with the result that some compromised, as in the case of deleting material from The Finished Mystery. Meantime officers of the organization and the congregations were being imprisoned on one pretext or another. Despite all, a band of faithful men and women in Britain battled on, not for the defense of Christendom’s preserves nor for those of her political pals, but for the maintenance of pure worship of the great God, Jehovah. The general spiritual condition among the brothers indeed called for encouragement and an awakening to the real meaning of developing world events, as they proved Jehovah’s eye was upon them for their good.
ANNOUNCING HOPE FOR MILLIONS
The Watch Tower magazine published a full report of the convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, in 1919, and this gave a fillip to the activity in Britain. On August 25, 1920, President Rutherford and others from Brooklyn began a lecture tour of Britain. The public address was entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” Up and down the land, packed halls, overflow meetings and thousands not getting in, marked the public response. This lecture was the high point of a four-day convention in London, where the brothers distributed more than 400,000 leaflets for a meeting that overflowed the Royal Albert Hall.
Toward the close of 1920 the Society published Golden Age No. 27, a twenty-page outsize issue of a new magazine. It gave authentic reports on persecutions of God’s people in England, Canada, America, Germany and other lands. It exposed the part Christendom’s religion and its leaders had played. It pointed out the reason for these attacks and declared that Christendom as well as the entire system was doomed. It exposed the League of Nations. It predicted extensive Communism and anarchy. But, above all, it pointed to the remedy for all humankind’s trouble. The campaign with this magazine, planned to start on December 1, 1920, called for a copy to be left at each home. Two weeks later, at a second visit, the caller would invite the householder to contribute for the magazine. Some made a contribution, but some made a fuss because of their distaste for its message.
In 1922 came another tour of Britain by Brother Rutherford again to present the “Millions Now Living Will Never Die” lecture, and again to capacity audiences. In 1925, at conventions during April and May, the same halls were used and again were rapidly packed, and, in many cases, crowds had to be turned away. By the end of that year 1925, there were 355 congregations in Britain and 167 full-time colporteurs besides 96 part-time workers, then known as “auxiliaries.”
Following the lead given by Brother Rutherford, speakers traveled throughout the land giving the same address, “Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” in cinemas, halls, any kind of meeting place that could be rented. Large-scale advertising in newspapers and with tracts and posters drew the attention of the public. The brothers would hire a hall, sometimes in an outlying district, advertise the meeting intensively, give the address, and then cover the territory with the book Millions Now Living Will Never Die. For the first year’s campaign, a quarter of a million books were printed and lectures were given to hundreds of thousands of people. There have been very few statements at any time that have made a greater impact on the public mind than that confident declaration “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.”
GIRDING FOR GREATER RESPONSIBILITIES
Brother Rutherford was well aware that the spiritual battle of the future would be waged with increasing vigor and with weapons on both sides modified to meet the developing situations. It was evident to him that opposition was building up in covert as well as in overt ways. So consideration began to be given to the organization of Jehovah’s people. Up to this time organization had been loose and somewhat complicated. Direction for activities in Britain virtually came from the appointees of the London congregation. They formed an executive committee of seven chosen from seventy annually elected elders, and they were responsible for decisions, meetings and organization of the congregation. Quarterly business meetings and monthly service meetings often overlapped in their different functions. Meetings of elders decided how to give effect to decisions of the executive committee. Again functions overlapped. It was time for a change, and a change was on the way.
Although the form of government in the congregations remained basically democratic, there was a clear pulling away from this form. The appointing of elders by election was being hedged about with qualifications of a Scriptural kind. One resolution contained these provisos: “That this congregation will not appoint anyone who does not accept the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society as the Lord’s channel for the expression of his will at this time; and further, that it will appoint to office only those who declare that they will do all that is reasonably possible to further the interests of the Kingdom according to the lead given from time to time by the Society through its publications, and as expressed by its president.”
Plans for the biggest convention in Britain to date were near completion when the entire nation was brought to a standstill by the general strike in 1926, a strike called by the whole trade union movement. However, the government took strong measures, enlisted volunteer labor with military backing, even to the point of operating the railways; and the strike ended just in time to prevent serious interference with the convention. The seven-day assembly began on Tuesday, May 25, 1926, at the Alexandra Palace, London. In his lecture Rutherford predicted the disintegration of the British Empire, and this produced howls of protest later both from British sources and from some outside. Thirteen thousand people filled the Royal Albert Hall to hear “Why World Powers Are Tottering—the Remedy,” which contained the resolution “A Testimony to the Rulers of the World.” In this public lecture Rutherford denounced the clergy-sponsored League of Nations and predicted its continued impotence and ultimate end. His remarks were widely published in the London Daily News.
This was the first convention in Britain to enjoy a book release. The second bound book from the pen of J. F. Rutherford, Deliverance, was made available to the conventioners. Referring to this new publication at its release, Rutherford said: “Some objections have been raised regarding the Harp of God in that it had not one word of criticism of this present world under Satan’s control. You will find that this book fully atones for any such omission.” And it did. Another publication released at this convention was the booklet Standard for the People. Delegates to the convention took fifty or more of these booklets each, traveled to outlying districts and managed to distribute 120,000 copies besides six million copies of the tract “Testimony to the Rulers.” That week there was a newspaper strike on, and many had nothing to read. One delegate, offering the booklet on a contribution said: “People practically snatched them from us.”
An overseas territory, though never under the British branch, received help from Britain about this time. Edwin Skinner and George Wright, pioneers in Britain, moved out to Bombay in July 1926 and set up a branch there. By 1972 there were well over three thousand publishers in India.
In 1927 preparations for a convention in Glasgow, Scotland, were undertaken. The dates arranged for were September 10 to 14. In preparation therefor the Society arranged to approach wireless license holders for signatures to a petition to broadcast the public lecture “Highway to Life.” This was to be presented in St. Andrews Grand Hall. Twenty-six thousand license holders signed the petition, representing about 100,000 people. Three brothers presented the petition to the British Broadcasting Corporation, which, however, turned it down, and not very graciously at that. Nonetheless, some ten thousand heard the address, about half that number in three halls connected by direct wire and a similar number in the streets who heard through loudspeakers.
For forty-odd years the spiritual war with Satan’s old system of things had been waged very much in the sphere of religious doctrine, but now it became evident that the war was entering a new phase—a phase that would bring the fire of groups other than religionists. It would bring against the proclaimers of Bible truth the fury of Satan’s entire organization, religious and political. It was a time for the issue to be squarely drawn and for supporters of true worship to align themselves firmly with the organization upon which Jehovah’s blessing was so evident.
JEHOVAH’S NAME TO THE FORE
The outstanding event of 1931 was the recognition that true Christians are and should be witnesses of the Almighty God, whose name alone is Jehovah. (Ps. 83:18) From that time forward God’s people throughout the world began to demonstrate that they were Jehovah’s witnesses, and by that name they wished to be known. The Resolution to this effect, adopted at Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday, July 26, of that momentous year, was also adopted at the extensions of that convention, a number of which were located in Britain. For example, the London convention held at the Alexandra Palace produced an overflowing crowd in that ten-thousand-capacity great hall. At this convention too came the explanation of the ninth chapter of Ezekiel, and the release of the first of the three-volume work Vindication.
During this period the Society provided for two-day service assemblies, in every instance featuring service in the field. Congregations that could provide facilities for meeting and catering were free to apply to the Society for such an assembly, the Society supplying the program and speakers. At this time too the witnesses of Jehovah in this land were not to be balked by the dog-in-the-manger tactics of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Arrangements were made by Brother Rutherford in Britain for the regular broadcast of the Kingdom message from Continental stations. The Society supplied leaflets advertising the lectures and encouraging people in Britain to tune in. Fecamp, Radio Normandy and Lyons were among the stations advertised to let people hear Jehovah’s name and purpose.
Enthusiasm engendered by the recognition of their responsibility as witnesses of Jehovah God moved many to enroll in the full-time service as pioneers. Soon there were 212 enrolled in Britain as well as 130 “auxiliaries.” Pioneers were required to put in twenty-five hours a week in house-to-house service; auxiliaries, half that amount. To quote the branch overseer’s report for 1933: “We have more applications for the pioneer service than we can accommodate with territory.” So Britain began to supply pioneers to France, Belgium and other European countries. Pioneers were appropriately named, for they did indeed break new ground, taking the Divine Name into isolated areas. Generally they worked in pairs, the Society issuing to them a territory map with congregation territories clearly marked, but they did not touch congregation territory.
Still more effective means were called into action for the purpose of spreading Jehovah’s name. “Impossible,” said cable engineers when the Society asked them to carry by direct wire a one-hour speech to auditoriums in five continents. On June 2, 1935, the speech “Government” was to be the high point of the five-day convention at Washington, D.C. Post-office engineers were to tie in six cities in Britain. As the hands moved up to eight o’clock, staccato, disjointed words and sounds came from the loudspeakers mounted in front of stage curtains as technicians, separated by ocean and continent, established lines, cemented circuits, checked connections. With ten seconds to go came the measured countdown “. . . two . . . one . . . ZERO.” After the chairman’s introduction came the familiar voice of Brother Rutherford and his talk focusing attention on the government of Jehovah God. The speech “Government” was on the air to run its electrifying sixty minutes, punctuated with applause, carrying its two-hemisphere audience to its climactic resolution, deafeningly supported. Interrupting the applause came the chairman’s voice. Interrupting the chairman’s voice came a cutoff in the circuit after an hour’s perfect reception. The “impossible” had been fully accomplished.
In due course, recordings of the speech arrived in London, and September 29, 1935, was set aside for a special all-day campaign. More than a thousand lectures were given that day. Witnesses used cars and trucks to carry electrical transcription machines for the broadcast of this striking lecture. This was but the start of considerable activity with these transcription machines. In Glasgow personable sisters were chosen to call at clubs and other institutions to offer a free presentation of music, a recorded address, questions and discussion. The morning of the agreed meeting a card arrived at the institution reminding the secretary of the evening’s presentation. It was called “The Watch Tower Programme,” the lecture “World Control” being specially featured. The name Jehovah and his kingdom became well known. Questions asked at these meetings were generally of a high order. One sister fixed up more than a hundred such meetings. The congregation sometimes held fifty to sixty such meetings a month, with individual attendances as high as four hundred. And, of course, the brothers placed thousands of books and booklets in conjunction with this activity.
In 1934 the Society introduced the portable phonograph (gramophone) for use in house-to-house ministry. Within about four years some 5,000 of these were in use in the field. Some Witnesses used a testimony card to introduce the recording. More often, the Witness simply asked the householder to listen to the record. Having prepared the machine in advance, he would then put it on the step or hold it on his arm and play the recording. Some records encouraged the listener to read one of the Society’s publications.
In 1936, when Brother Rutherford addressed overflow audiences in Glasgow and London on the subject “Armageddon,” the Society employed a new advertising device, namely, parades of up to seventy-five Witnesses wearing sandwich boards. This made a striking impact on the public. Many Roman Catholics came to the Glasgow meeting despite having been warned by their priests not to attend.
TIME FOR VIGOROUS ACTION
Toward the end of the year 1937, the president appointed twenty-six-year-old Albert Schroeder to take the oversight of the British field, and on November 23 he commenced service as branch overseer.
“Wake Up Britain!” was the stirring call for 1938. In a letter the Society’s president outlined changes in organization in London, whereby the one large congregation would be divided into nine “units,” meeting in seven Kingdom Halls, each “unit” with its overseer. The same plan was applied all over Britain, the country being divided into thirty zones, each with its “zone servant.” About one thousand publishers were present in the Craven Terrace Hall to receive the news and they showed enthusiastic support for the new arrangement.
Also brothers and sisters were encouraged to enter the pioneer service, and by the year’s end 325 had been enrolled. Pioneers now were to be no longer working apart from congregations. Instead, where they were working in towns or cities having congregations they would collaborate with the congregations and obtain their territory through the congregation arrangement. Pioneer brothers would be called upon to fill positions of responsibility in the congregations. The Society also laid plans for the establishment of pioneer homes in London and other large cities so that anywhere from six to sixteen pioneers could live communally and thus cut down on living costs.
Work in the office was reorganized, with the result that some of the Bethel members could be transferred to the field service. Brothers and sisters were encouraged to spend more time in the field ministry, the work of making return visits was systematically built up, and information marches were used to advertise specific events, such as special lectures. Every means was used to put the Kingdom message to the fore and make the population aware of it.
In April a new booklet made its appearance; printed in red and black, the 32-page publication Cure made a slashing attack on the duplicity of worldly religion and pointed to the sure cure for mankind’s ills. Ten million copies rolled off the presses for its first edition. In a three-month campaign in Britain a peak of 6,021 publishers distributed 2,300,000 copies.
Conventions in Birmingham and Manchester that year were eclipsed by the September convention radiating world wide from the Royal Albert Hall, London. Fifty assemblies, ten of which were in Britain, were tied in by direct wire for the presentation of the lectures “Fill the Earth” and “Face the Facts,” the first being given on Saturday, September 10, and the second on Sunday, September 11. Total attendance topped 150,000. Halls throughout Britain were packed out, thousands not being able to gain entry. A vast advertising campaign employed millions of handbills, thousands of placards carried by information marchers and posters exhibited on trucks, shop windows and private homes, banners on public vehicles, cinema slides and loudspeakers.
Meanwhile, fears of war were rising in Britain. Hitler’s take-over of Czechoslovakia brought Great Britain to the brink of war. Prime Minister Chamberlain, in pursuit of his appeasement policy, visited Hitler in Munich, Germany, and returned with a signed piece of paper. Stepping from the plane, Chamberlain waved the paper exulting, “Peace in our time.” “Armageddon,” reported the press, “has been averted.” Nevertheless, preparations for war increased. Activity in the Kingdom ministry surpassed by far that of any previous year. There was a feeling among the brothers that days of testing lay ahead—a need for the firmest marshaling of resources.
EFFECT OF THE COMING OF THEOCRATIC ORDER
For twenty years a gradual move away from democratic rule and toward theocratic administration had been evident. Even before the ending of the election of elders by the congregations, Scriptural requirements for nomination began to be imposed. The first positive indication of the trend came with the appointment by the Brooklyn Office of a service director in each congregation in connection with the distribution of the new magazine, The Golden Age. This was in 1919. Over the years, directions from Brooklyn tended to be more definitive, and in congregations there was less disposition to decide whether the directions should be applied or not.
By 1938 Britain had the advantage of a branch overseer who was setting a good lead in applying the policy of the Society. The Society, guided by recommendations from individual congregations, had appointed service directors, later to become known as congregation servants. The service committee in each congregation, however, was appointed by the congregation. The stage was now set for the next step in the restoration of theocratic order.
The May 15 and June 1, 1938, issues of The Watchtower, dealing with the subject “Organization,” contained a formal resolution calling on the Society to organize and direct operations and appoint all “servants.” The Watchtower invited each congregation to adopt the resolution, notify the Society and attach a list of names of those whose maturity would qualify them for “servant” positions, with the request that the Society make appointments of those they chose. Practically all congregations readily agreed to do so. The effect was amazing. A general sense of invigoration prevailed. As world tension increased, joy over theocratic rule abounded.
The weeks and months that followed were thrilling ones indeed. While war preparations proceeded apace, air-raid shelters were being set up in gardens, gas masks were supplied free to every man, woman and child, and instructions were issued for rendering a room impervious to poison gas so that each household might be able to survive an intensive gas raid. Meantime, the zeal and activity of the brothers stepped up. The pioneer ranks increased during the year to 429. Those were truly momentous times.
VIOLENT REACTION OF RELIGIOUS OPPOSERS
As might be expected, the upsurge of zealous activity on the part of the brothers and sisters was met by organized and concerted action on the part of Christendom’s religions. There began to be numerous press attacks. Sixty-six cases of violent assault are recorded, and there were a dozen attempts to break up meetings and injure those attempting to assemble for the purpose of hearing the Kingdom message.
The London Catholic Herald published a libelous attack on J. F. Rutherford in reaction to the fearless, forthright message contained in the “Face the Facts” lecture. Under threat of a libel action, the newspaper settled out of court, publishing a retraction. A month later, November 18, 1938, publishers distributed to members of Parliament and to other officials a copy of the booklet Face the Facts with a covering letter. In December a gigantic leaflet campaign commenced, advertising six thousand meetings all over Britain. At these meetings more than a quarter of a million heard recordings of Rutherford’s powerful addresses. Almost three thousand information marches added their impact to the searing attack on false religion.
On January 11, 1939, Witnesses, armed with Face the Facts, Consolation No. 504 and a copy of the leaflet entitled “‘Catholic Herald’ Anxious to Gag Judge Rutherford,” visited all officials, Catholic leaders and press representatives in Britain and served them with copies of each. Fifty thousand Consolation magazines and two million of the leaflets went out. Religionists were goaded into rash reactions. A nationwide campaign of violence against Jehovah’s witnesses began. Press attacks, particularly in the Catholic Herald and the Universe, subtly encouraged further acts of violence. The first assault occurred at Clydebank, Scotland, on February 7, 1939, and other incidents quickly followed in other parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Instigated by local priests and carried out by Catholic Action groups, ten of the cases were prosecuted and the offenders sentenced.
In April 1939, the booklet Fascism or Freedom was released, and the brothers swiftly distributed two million of them. A quarter of a million of the Society’s leaflet “Nazi Tactics in Clydebank” were put out in Scotland alone. When the lecture “Fascism or Freedom” was given in Oldham, England, the Catholic Action group tried to wreck the meeting and demonstrated what was intended by Pope Pius XI when he originally brought this group into existence “for the diffusion and exercise of Catholic principles.”
In Clydebank, Scotland, two priests supported by their congregations ordered Witnesses operating a sound car to get out of town. Departing in the sound car, George Saltmarsh came on a crowd of about a hundred in the main road kicking a ball all over the tramway tracks. As he got nearer, Saltmarsh saw a phonograph lying on the road, and then suddenly realized that the “ball” was the owner of the phonograph. The sound car drove into the mob, scattering them. The brother, bleeding and muddy, was dragged into the car and taken to the police station for attention and to report this lawlessness. The Society laid charges against the mob leader, Patrick McGrory. The priests, for their part, laid charges against four of the sound-car operators. The prosecutor wished to lay off one charge against the other and forget them. If the Society would not press the charge of inciting a mob to near-murder, then the other side would not press the charge of playing a speech record. The bargain was rejected, but the matter dragged.
The Society then printed a leaflet setting out all the facts, and two hundred volunteers offered to distribute them. The operation, led by Saltmarsh, proceeded according to plan. There were ten assaults that morning, but only one was serious enough to call for the doctor’s attention. This action speeded things up and both cases were heard in June 1939. The charge made by the priests, Thomas McEwan and Charles Duffan, came first, but Duffan had disappeared and could not be found. The other priest called witnesses who contradicted themselves and one another, and the four accused, George Saltmarsh, Thomas Brown, Albert Bacon and George Whitford, were discharged. Next came the case against McGrory. The Society had no independent witnesses—a weakness, but when the judge called out, “Are there any witnesses in court?” up jumped two Clydebank women who offered to testify. Their evidence proved sufficient to convict McGrory.
For the weekend of June 23-25, 1939, the Society employed post office engineers to tie in ten British auditoriums with Madison Square Garden, New York city, to relay the speech “Government and Peace” by J. F. Rutherford. On Saturday, June 24, the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army, a Catholic terrorist movement, which had been carrying out a campaign of bombing in Britain for some months) phoned an official threat to the London office saying they would take action if the London-Belfast circuit was not canceled for Rutherford’s overseas lectures. Police and detectives guarded halls in both places. Just after the Saturday evening session of the convention five bombs exploded in the center of London near the Kingsway Hall, where the convention was being held. This was the I.R.A.’s worst bomb outrage, causing property damage and injury to a number of people. It was the third threat from the I.R.A. in four months.
On July 7 the second personal witness to members of Parliament, to the press and to public officials was given. This time each received a copy of the booklet Fascism or Freedom, Consolation No. 516, containing the article “Fascism in Britain,” and a copy of the leaflet entitled “Catholic-Fascist Menace in Britain.” A covering letter accompanied these publications. After the publishers had served the officials, they distributed a hundred thousand copies of this issue of Consolation and two million of the leaflets, all of this amid a rapidly deteriorating world situation.
WITNESSING IN WARTIME
It was on Sunday morning, September 3, 1939, that the solemn radio announcement came—Britain was at war. The population at large accepted the situation resignedly. The book Salvation was the literature being offered that day and for that month, and the comfort offered by this Bible study aid was a balm, the more pronounced because of the melancholy fears that the war declaration imposed. Many people received the message kindly. In fact, soon the supply of the new and comforting book was exhausted. Stocks of the booklet Government and Peace ran out also, and new import restrictions soon virtually cut off additional supplies from Brooklyn headquarters.
Air-raid blackout restrictions hindered evening work, it being impossible to make house-to-house calls after darkness fell. Nevertheless, the volume of work increased, and this despite the fact that in order to obtain any literature from Brooklyn it became a major operation involving interviews, correspondence and filing of many forms. Financial restrictions, too, meant that literature had to be sent as a gift. Another difficulty was lack of shipping space, particularly in the earlier part of the war when shipping losses added to the difficulties.
In spite of the increasing obstacles the Society undertook a nationwide campaign of Bible studies. This work, called “Theocracy Extension Work,” involved the use of the booklet Model Study, containing questions and answers on recorded speeches by Brother Rutherford. A congregation would hire a hall for four consecutive weeks and advertise the series. Then a short section of the selected speech would be run on the transcription machine followed by the chairman’s asking of questions from the appropriate part of the booklet. The audience was free to offer answers and draw attention to Bible proof where needed. Then another section would be run on the transcription machine, and so on for about an hour. The result was that many private Bible studies were arranged for people who showed interest. The campaign proved to be most successful, for the number of publishers rose to 9,860, practically a 50-percent increase.
In the opening stages of the war, Jehovah’s witnesses were advised to register as conscientious objectors. However, this did not prove to be good advice for reasons that later became obvious. The situation, of course, was new, and to appreciate fully all the factors in advance was difficult if not impossible. In October, Jehovah’s witnesses received an aid that was outstanding in its simplicity, logic and weight of Biblical authority. This was the leading article in The Watchtower of November 1, 1939, bearing the title “Neutrality.” With compelling force and reasoning, it set out the Scriptural stand of a Christian among the warring nations. The article soon appeared in a booklet, and the Society had a copy sent to every judge, member of government and other officials. It became a common thing to see a copy of Neutrality on the judge’s table in tribunals and courts. Every member of the British government received as well a copy of the booklet Government and Peace and quotations from the government’s own white paper on “The treatment of German Nationals in Germany.” Thus all were put on notice that Jehovah’s witnesses in Germany also were identified as the group that suffered the severest persecutions because they would not support Hitler.
Up and down the country tribunals and courts made it evident that they had received directions from higher up. Decisions were not being rendered according to the evidence. At the earliest stages, all applicants providing logical evidence of the validity of their conscientious objection were placed on the list whether they were Jehovah’s witnesses or not. Gradually, however, this benefit became limited to those who were not Witnesses. As an indication of the rabid hostility that was being spread against the Witnesses, Judge Frankland, chairman of the Leeds tribunal, made these remarks in his privileged capacity:
“You have fallen for this very obvious money-making concern, Jehovah’s witnesses. You, a schoolmaster. I want you and your friend to leave the room. I don’t want other people to be contaminated by your presence.”—News Chronicle, August 10, 1940.
“America has the biggest gold reserve in the world. I should think quite a lot of that belongs to Jehovah’s witnesses and to poor English dupes they have got hold of like you.”—Manchester Guardian, August 10, 1940.
“I want to say publicly that there is a grave doubt in my mind about the bona fides of this organization and the people it employs.”—Empire News, August 11, 1940.
“I have been trying for a fortnight to draw your headquarters and to get them to send a balance sheet or a solicitor. They prefer to shelter; they prefer to lurk behind the privacy of Craven Terrace, London. It is another dodge for making money, most of which goes to America.”—Daily Despatch, August 16, 1940.
The first counterattack came when Manchester’s Free Trade Hall was engaged and judges, officials and members of the press were specially invited to the Sunday session when Brother Schroeder explained that the Society was not involved in the stand any one of its associates might take in the matter of conscientious objection; its accounts were filed annually at Somerset House as required by law; as for ownership of most of the gold reserves, Schroeder read from the last published accounts and showed that over the year’s activities the Society showed a deficit of $92,671.76. The press published this answer to Frankland’s attacks. Copies of the entire statement were sent to the judges and all concerned. But sufficient lies and deceiving statements had been published so as to influence the narrow-minded, bigoted section of the population, and, as might have been expected, violence was sure to follow.
Two pioneer sisters working a Catholic section in Liverpool were attacked by about thirty women. The mob beat them to the ground and dragged them, bleeding and bruised, by the hair along the road, kicked them and stole their literature and cash. Two policemen came on the scene. They calmed the crowd but made no arrests. Said they: “If we had arrested anyone, we would have been torn to pieces.”
Meantime in view of the very unfair position in which young men of Jehovah’s witnesses were placed, the Society moved to claim exemption from military service for forty brothers in Bethel and in zone service. This was early in 1940. The issue was: (1) Is the International Bible Students Association, or are Jehovah’s witnesses, a religious denomination? (2) Are the accused (the forty) regular ministers thereof? George Saltmarsh was chosen for the test case, which was heard in Glasgow. The court upheld the claim of the Ministry of Labour, namely, that the provisions of the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, 1939, “are not applicable to all or any members of the Society of Jehovah’s witnesses.” This was the first of several cases fought on this and related issues.
The advice originally given by the Ministry and which led to the brothers registering as conscientious objectors brought this opinion from the solicitors: “Instructing solicitors are informed that the reason why Jehovah’s witnesses registered under the Act was that after discussion, in the early days of the war, with the Ministry of Labour as to the whole position, the Ministry promised to give a decision in due course and it was arranged with the Ministry that in the meantime all the Witnesses should register. There is no doubt that the British Branch was badly advised by the Ministry.”
In the summer of 1940, the Empire News entered the lists against Jehovah’s people by publishing a libelous article defaming Judge Rutherford. Rutherford, in turn, filed an affidavit proving all charges and implications to be false. The Empire News published a shortened version of the affidavit, omitting all references in the affidavit to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. They did not publish an apology or their own retraction of their libelous statements. In view of the war conditions, further action was rendered impracticable. Indeed, in the meantime Rutherford had fallen ill. Solicitors claimed that heavy damages, exemplary and punitive, would be certain, and Rutherford could take proceedings anytime within six years. The Society printed a folder entitled “Judge Rutherford & Empire News.” It set out the facts and the affidavit and the copy of the solicitor’s letter. The Witnesses gave the folder a wide distribution throughout Britain. Before the war’s end when legal action would have been possible, Judge Rutherford died. So, also, has the Empire News.
Meantime, in spite of all the enmity and the worsening conditions, were Jehovah’s witnesses discouraged? Not at all. By the end of 1940 the volume of activity had increased by about 50 percent. There were 449 congregations, 29 zones (now known as circuits), one being lost by the invasion of the Channel Islands by the Nazis, and four regions (now known as districts). The pioneer enrollment had exceeded 1,100. Jehovah’s witnesses were busy preaching the Kingdom message amid a war-torn world.
CONCERTED MOVE TO SILENCE TRUTH
The various outlying countries of the British Commonwealth of nations were banning the work of the Watch Tower Society and Jehovah’s witnesses at this time. What was Britain doing? Britain was not imposing a ban. It was strangling the flow of literature supplies with official red tape. All Watch Tower literature was placed under censorship. Notice arrived from the Import Licensing Department that no licenses would be issued after December 31, 1940. With grinding pressures from every angle, the British branch was about to be cut off from headquarters.
Not only from inside the country but from outside came crippling blows. Air attacks became common. Sometimes a city would be subjected to continuous bombardment for twelve to fourteen hours. Some towns were bombed systematically, the raids starting at the same time every evening. As a result, many of the homes of the Witnesses were wrecked. In Manchester the devastation stopped just short of the pioneer home. Three pioneer homes elsewhere, as well as Kingdom Halls and much literature, were destroyed and damaged. A fire bomb penetrated the roof of the Kingdom Hall at Bethel and came through into the balcony, where fire-watching brothers handled it. By the war’s end, twelve Witnesses had lost their lives in bombing raids.
Amid fierce opposition an assembly was held in Leicester on September 3-7, 1940. Despite war conditions, De Montfort Hall, with seating for 3,500, held less than a third of the number who attended. Most of the 12,000 were seated in marquees in the parklike grounds. On Saturday, the last day of the assembly, the battle was at its hottest, for there were 6,177 Witnesses in the field facing attacks on their persons and reputations.
Meantime, subscribers complained they were not receiving Consolation magazine. Eventually the fact emerged that the quaintly named Ministry of Information had “found [it] necessary to retain the issues [of Consolation].” So the same magazine that was banned by Hitler in 1933, a few weeks after Goebbels’ Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda was created, was now disapproved by the British Ministry of Information. It was well known that Consolation attacked totalitarianism long before this war started. An American brother made a gift of 150,000 books to Britain. A letter confirming the gift and attested by an American notary public accompanied the application for the license. Later a trade sample of the new-type phonograph for our engineers to copy actually arrived in this country. The sample was seized and the license for importation of the gift of books was refused.
Even copies of The Watchtower ceased to arrive in the mails from the United States. The problem of keeping the brothers supplied with spiritual food became a pressing one. Since publication of a new magazine would not be permitted, the Society began printing what was known as the Watchtower Bible Study Series. This publication was very much like the Watchtower in appearance and contained at least the main article with questions. Thus not a single issue of Watchtower material was lost to the brothers in Britain.
The brothers in Ireland too were not left wanting for spiritual food. Many of them began receiving newsy letters from overseas. Each letter contained an anonymous Watchtower article easily recognized by the brothers. Stencils were made and each article duplicated for all the 120 Witnesses in Ireland.
Despite renewed efforts by the brothers in Britain to obtain justice from government officials, it became impossible for the Society to import even Bibles and Testaments, while other Bible houses could frequently do so. On November 2, 1942, both The Watchtower and Consolation as well as the Kingdom News were officially banned and all in the mails seized. Eventually the Society published a folder outlining the 1933 Nazi model that was being followed by the British authorities. The folder was entitled “The Facts About Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Censorship Ban.”
Side by side with the attack on the supplies came an attack on personnel. Treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses before tribunals was most unfair. In efforts to justify their attitude, judges and press began to claim that people became Jehovah’s witnesses to avoid joining the armed forces. That this was just false propaganda to justify their rulings against Jehovah’s witnesses may be noted from the fact that these same tribunals were quite sympathetic in their dealings with the nearly 60,000 provisionally registered conscientious objectors who were not Jehovah’s witnesses. The number of conscientious objectors imprisoned for refusing to comply with tribunal direction was 5,800, of whom 4,300 were Jehovah’s witnesses. Indeed, for the first few months of the war, a sure way to jail was to claim exemption on the grounds of being one of Jehovah’s witnesses. It was also a likely way of getting the maximum sentence, twelve months.
Finally, in 1942, the enemies’ attack moved toward the staff at the branch. The “assistant branch servant,” Pryce Hughes, with a prison record from World War I, was imprisoned together with Ewart Chitty, secretary of the International Bible Students Association, and Frank Platt, who had suffered most sadistic prison treatment in the 1914-1918 war. Still not satisfied that Platt was sincere in his Christian course, they sentenced him to another term of imprisonment later on in the war as they did with Hughes. In fact, two hundred keymen up and down the land were gathered into jail.
This left Bert Schroeder, in charge of the British branch, hard pressed with a greatly depleted staff. Then came the government’s coup de grace. The branch overseer himself, an American citizen, was commanded: “Accept direction to work of national importance, in support of the war effort, or be deported.” Both British and American government officials were appealed to, but to no avail. One member of Parliament not only favored the imprisonment of Hughes, Platt and Chitty, but said that as Schroeder “stirs up trouble and being an ally cannot be interned he should be deported.” It seemed that all the influential officials were ganged up on the Society and its representatives, all agreeing that “Schroeder must go.” An official car pulled up at Craven Terrace and the branch overseer was escorted to the deck of an ocean liner and repatriated.
Meanwhile the pressures against the publishers throughout the field continued. The press played its part with numerous inflammatory incitements. One account covered the entire front page of a newspaper besides having a few inside articles and an editorial exulting in the maximum sentence of a pioneer congregation overseer in Middleton, England. The prosecutor, no doubt to remind the bench to fix the maximum sentence, repeatedly stated that the defendant had been sent to organize the work and described him as a member of a “small band of canting, hypocritical humbugs.”
Many men who presided over the courts and tribunals proved themselves unfit to exercise such offices. While one would declare that there was “something sinister behind this movement,” another declared, “You are a lot of cranks.” Courts and tribunals were supposed to work together, but on occasion there would be a distinct cleavage. For example, in Stockport just before a young pioneer, a mother, was sentenced, the chairman of the bench, Alderman Royle, walked out of court. “I will not be a party,” said he, “to sentencing this Christian woman.”
On July 21, 1942, the Society published a folder setting out facts as to the Scriptural stand of Jehovah’s witnesses and documenting examples of ill-treatment of imprisoned Witnesses, such as being knocked unconscious and being manacled to a table leg. Details of tribunal onslaughts and courtroom improprieties pointed conclusively to a directed, coordinated campaign with official backing. Men and women, chiefly full-time workers in the field, were being imprisoned in increasing numbers. The chance of annihilating Jehovah’s witnesses seemed, in the popular and official view, to be good. With the help of the war, the British government accomplished nearly as much as the German government had accomplished in 1933 without the help of the war. But whether in Germany or in Britain or anywhere else, it was quite evident that the moving power behind all this official international conspiracy was that mentioned at Revelation 13:2, namely, “the dragon,” Satan the Devil.
Imagine the situation confronting Pryce Hughes, still in Wormwood Scrubbs Prison with Brothers Platt and Chitty, when he received news of his appointment as branch overseer to replace the deported Schroeder. Shortly after his release he was faced with another difficult situation. The Home Secretary had issued orders banning conventions of Jehovah’s witnesses. This move came suddenly. Many of the conventioners had already arrived at their convention towns, tied in by wire with the New World Theocratic Assembly in Cleveland, Ohio, when they learned about the ban. It turned out that only the assemblies in Nottingham and Manchester were banned. No reason was ever given for the discrimination whereby people in Nottingham and Manchester could not enjoy the conventions while those in eight other cities could. The Home Office was determined to refuse permission for meetings in any other halls in these two towns, neither would they allow private meetings in either town. About one thousand conventioners in Nottingham met and carried through the convention program in a nearby town. In Manchester, some of the thousands gathered on the streets unable to get into the key assembly point were transported to nearby Kingdom Halls. The other conventions sent strong protests to the Home Secretary, and the Society also joined in the protest, besides making appeal to the members of Parliament. The Home Secretary in a written reply to one member said he banned the two meetings because he feared public disorder at those particular places. He also stated that the Witnesses were treated very harshly in Axis countries because of their noncooperation in the war. “They,” he continued, “take no part in worldly conflicts. This . . . is far from being a helpful attitude.”
Jehovah’s witnesses in Britain, of course, knew that their situation was fundamentally no different from that of their brothers in other lands. (2 Tim. 3:12) In Germany, confiscation, suppression, concentration camps and gas chambers; in America, legal battles in highest courts and burnings and mobbings in forty-four of the then forty-eight states; in Australasia, Canada and the African continent, bans and violence; in Communist lands, proscription and labor camps. When World War II broke out, Jehovah’s witnesses were 71,509 strong world wide. Would they be overthrown or would they come out more numerous and effective?
PERSECUTED, BUT NOT LEFT IN THE LURCH
Early in the war when paper allocations were unexpectedly high, the Society placed substantial orders for books and booklets with different printers. When the Society placed a big contract for The New World in paperback edition, the printer refused to print the book unless references to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy were deleted. This the Society refused to do. Prospects of getting the book printed seemed remote.
Then it was that Harry Briggs came into the office. He was a partner in a printing business that had just sold out to another firm. He had capital from the sale. He wanted to know whether the Society could use it and use him. Briggs knew of a printing business that might be for sale. He negotiated and bought it, a going concern with a staff and a manager who knew all about printing. Soon the unexpurgated edition of The New World began rolling off the presses. Though named The Southern Press, this printing plant operated as though it belonged to the Society.
About this time local councils began taking legal issue on the matter of taxing Kingdom Halls. Court cases arose over the issue, and exemption for Kingdom Halls was challenged. Some judgments were favorable, some unfavorable. Those unfavorable were appealed, but even then, though some were upheld, others were not. One of the officials of the Ministry of Information publicly charged that Jehovah’s witnesses had Nazi sympathies and that they had served as agents for Nazi propaganda. Mail within Britain, in the meantime, suffered interference, letters being opened, packages containing small supplies of magazines sent to pioneers mutilated. The time had come really to fight back against all these injustices and call upon honest persons everywhere to support the cause of genuine freedom.
In August 1943, the Society booked the Royal Albert Hall and fourteen other halls throughout Britain for the “Free Nation” Theocratic Assembly. The public address was to be “Freedom in the New World,” and was advertised widely. However, the manuscript for this talk, as well as others for the assemblies, was confiscated by the censor. As it happened, the new booklet, Fighting for Liberty on the Home Front, had not been issued to the British field owing to printing difficulties. This was made available for the conventions and the material read at the time set for the public talk. The title as well as the material was certainly appropriate. The chairman explained to the audience that “Freedom in the New World” could not be given because the censor had withheld the manuscript. At the end of the lecture, the speaker read a statement setting out the facts of the government’s unwarranted ban “which gives neither reason nor cause for its existence.” The audience, the immediate victims, were invited to fight for liberty on the home front and signify their intention to do so by saying “Aye!” In fifteen assemblies 17,500 people responded enthusiastically. Each assembly sent a telegraphic appeal to the king. The Society also furnished a copy of the public lecture to each member of Parliament and to all connected with the government, together with a covering letter giving the facts of the oppressive censorship.
The Society well knew the importance of assembling together so that the brothers might be able to gain strength and courage, not only to meet the pressing difficulties, but to push them back. Thus it was that in the spring of 1944, fifty-five small assemblies were organized for the British Isles. The public talk for all of these was “Freedom in the New World,” the speech the censor did not wish the people in Britain to hear the previous year. It was no light thing to organize these assemblies, for by this time the aerial bombardment of Britain had intensified with the introduction of a new weapon, the flying bomb. Nevertheless, 12,300 attended and each one received a copy of the speech “Freedom in the New World” in booklet form. No public advertising was done for this particular assembly. The idea was to invite personally all who showed signs of desiring the goodwill of Jehovah. It is very notable that many who did accept the invitation began to share in the field ministry, preaching for the first time.
By reason of a well-planned campaign at this time, members of Parliament were interviewed personally, made aware of all the facts about the ban, as well as the evasions and the obstructive techniques that were employed in maintaining it. In the House of Commons members subjected the Ministry of Information to a barrage that put them in a very difficult position. Subscribers to The Watchtower wrote letters of protest to their respective members of Parliament. Eventually the Ministry capitulated and undertook to remove the ban on February 28, 1945. However, not until there was a change in the Ministry were Bibles and other literature released for circulation.
The Ministry of Information had destroyed the vast number of magazines it had confiscated, magazines already paid for by subscribers. Though the Society had already discharged its obligation by dispatching the journals, nonetheless, it now extended by six months the subscription of every subscriber in Britain.
The next step taken by the British branch was to begin making strong representations to the Colonial Office about bans in Nyasaland, Bahamas, Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Appeals and legal proceedings had already brought relief in Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Later the Society published for wide distribution a fact sheet exposing the duplicity and double-dealing employed to maintain those bans throughout the British Commonwealth.
The continuing pressure from the enemy only stirred up the faithful Witnesses to greater efforts in their ministry. By the end of 1942, a hundred new congregations had been organized and a total of 12,318 publishers had now been reached. Special pioneer service was instituted. Under this new arrangement pioneers were called upon to work 175 hours a month in the field and make 50 return calls. These special pioneers were sent into areas needing special attention or where there were insufficient congregation publishers to care for the population.
Still another help toward greater increase in Kingdom activity came with the introduction of “servants to the brethren,” now known as circuit overseers. In January 1943 the British branch appointed seven of these brothers to visit the 586 congregations during the period of six months. They did much to stir up the brothers and bring them fine information as to how to increase and improve their service of Jehovah in the field.
In 1944 the “United Announcers” Theocratic Assembly in August was shared by ten assembly points in Britain. In Stockport the one ideal hall, which had never been available to Jehovah’s witnesses, was the Centenary Hall. That year the one to make the decision in the matter was Alderman Royle, Justice of the Peace, the man who publicly withdrew from the bench rather than share in sentencing a pioneer sister. He immediately agreed to letting Jehovah’s witnesses have the use of the hall and all its facilities. Incidentally, he was astounded at being paid the full rent at the time of booking. “This,” he said, “has never before happened in all my public life.” Before and during the assembly he was under constant fire from other members of his committee for letting the hall to Jehovah’s witnesses. Royle fought back: “Which one of you being officials of the Stockport Sunday School (the body owning the Centenary Hall) could hold a big audience for half an hour or more with an exposition of the Bible?” he demanded. “Well, that’s what Jehovah’s witnesses are doing every day. I’m attending their sessions and I’ve seen it.”
Jehovah’s witnesses in Britain had not been left in the lurch. (2 Cor. 4:8-10) Persecution had failed to force them to break integrity with the Supreme Sovereign, Jehovah. At the war’s end Jehovah’s people in this land were spiritually and numerically stronger. In the course of the war years, the number of publishers had practically doubled, something that was also true of Jehovah’s witnesses world wide. The end of German occupation of the Channel Isles brought freedom to many publishers there, and communication with Ireland’s Witnesses was opened once again. Twelve “servants to the brethren” were now visiting the 610 congregations in Britain. All Britain was girding for expansion.
POSTWAR ACTIVITY
On Sunday, November 4, 1945, Nathan Homer Knorr, for the first time as president of the International Bible Students Association, set foot on English soil. With his secretary, Milton G. Henschel, he made his way from Hurn airport to London Bethel. Brothers on cycles spread word that the president would address a meeting at Craven Terrace. Sixteen hundred jammed the hall, the anterooms and the basement to hear his speech. Then, before leaving for the Continent, he addressed a meeting in Birmingham as well as attending a service meeting at Ilford.
Arriving back in England on the last day of 1945, the two brothers from headquarters began a series of seven one-day assemblies, the largest being in Stockport, where Brother Knorr addressed 2,800 on the subject “Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Crucible.” A two-day assembly in London preceded the president’s return to America at the conclusion of his European tour. Three auditoriums were on this occasion tied together by direct wire. Six-deep queues began forming at six o’clock around the Royal Albert Hall for the Sunday evening talk on “Be Glad, Ye Nations.” For the first time since prewar days, advertising on a big scale had formed part of the preparations for this assembly. At each of the short assemblies Brother Knorr invited applications for Gilead School, the Society’s provision for training missionaries for foreign assignment. Until the end of the war, pioneers outside America could not be enrolled. However, the eighth class, commencing immediately after the Cleveland, Ohio, convention of 1946, included twenty-four pioneers from Britain.
As literature supplies began to flow in from Brooklyn, it became possible to extend the preaching activities into far-flung parts of the British Isles. Pioneers were moved into areas formerly impossible to handle.
The brothers in Britain during the succeeding years enjoyed the same fine blessings resulting from circuit assemblies and district conventions as enjoyed by the brothers in the United States and elsewhere. These thrilling gatherings, obviously directed by Jehovah’s spirit, had a wonderful effect on the brothers, building them up and equipping them for more effective ministry in the field.
THE FIGHT AGAINST DISCRIMINATION
In 1947 the Inspector of Taxes made a move toward imposing a tax on the Watch Tower Society, the parent organization of the International Bible Students Association. This latter Association had been registered as a nonprofit and charitable organization on June 30, 1914. It was consequently free of tax. The chief inspector took the view that in order to be exempt from tax a body had to be established in this land. He held that the Watch Tower Society was not so established.
In due course the Society received a tax assessment. A statement of its charitable work as laid down by its charter was duly prepared by the Brooklyn headquarters—a statement that mentioned the hundreds of tons of clothing and food to the value of £250,000 ($1,031,357.14) already being supplied free to twenty-four needy countries including Britain. The statement also made it clear that none received salaries or dividends from the Society and asked that the assessment be canceled. Copies of accounts were furnished to the Inspector of Taxes.
Commenting on these developments, President Knorr felt too soft a view was being taken of the matter. He wrote: “It is rather difficult to understand why the British government will not recognize the Society as a religious organization, the same as it is recognized in the United States. I am sure the British government is not so narrow-minded as to say that a person who is married in the United States is not married when the man and wife come to Britain. The marriage status remains the same. The same is true regarding the status of the Society.” “We ought to fight for exemption,” he added.
In preparation for the hearing before the tax commissioners, legal counsel for Jehovah’s witnesses knew that the other side would attempt to segregate the Society from Jehovah’s witnesses. However, Jehovah’s witnesses are mentioned in the Society’s charter, and the activity of Jehovah’s witnesses is inseparable from the Society. The two are one. Since Jehovah’s witnesses are admittedly a religious organization and engaged in preaching work that is charitable, then by force of the same reason it should be concluded that the legal corporation is also entitled to classification as a charitable organization. The possibility of having to appeal the commission’s decision in the courts of law recommended the compilation of a very extensive brief. Terence Donovan, King’s Counsel, a leading barrister in tax cases, was duly briefed.
The Society’s solicitors endeavored to point out to the commissioners that the whole matter might be reduced to the civil issue of “establishment,” thus saving time and expense in court. The commissioners agreed and thus the issue to be decided at the hearing could be expressed in the following terms: (1) That the Society is a body of persons; (2) That it was established, and established in the United Kingdom; (3) That it was so established for charitable purposes only. The hearing came up on March 16, 1950, in London. The commissioners ruled that the Society had headquarters established and owned property at Craven Terrace. It had more than 600 congregations, many with their own property in which worship was conducted. So far as its being permanently established, the Society had been here for fifty years. They had property and they had the whole of their organization set up and prepared to be here for another fifty years or possibly longer. “In our view,” concluded Mr. Coke, “on the evidence, this is a clear case, and it is on the evidence that we must come to a conclusion of fact. We find that this corporation, or rather a branch of it, was established here, and it has been admitted that it is a charity. Therefore, the claim must succeed.”
MORE ACTION ON THE LEGAL FRONT
In 1953 it was determined that a test case should be prepared to establish whether the Society was a religious organization and whether it had regular ministers. The purpose was to meet the unfair situation whereby the conscription laws providing exemption for regular ministers of religion were being construed in such a manner as to deny Jehovah’s witnesses the benefit of such laws. The man selected had to meet many different qualifications, personal, ministerial, official, narrow age limit, and, of course, he had to be one who had been called upon to register for national service. Douglas Walsh of Dumbarton, Scotland, was eventually chosen, he being both a pioneer and a congregation overseer. By the close of 1953 plans were completed and strategy laid for the test case in Scotland. The aim was to determine legally whether Jehovah’s witnesses were a religious organization and whether pioneer and congregation overseer Douglas Walsh was a regular minister. In January 1954, a preliminary hearing in Edinburgh determined that Walsh had a relevant case and Lord Strachan ordered it to go to proof. The case was set down for November 23, 1954.
The Watch Tower Society’s vice-president, F. W. Franz, from the Brooklyn headquarters was first to go into the witness box. He outlined from the Bible the beliefs of Jehovah’s witnesses, especially those that differed from orthodox religions. Then Hayden Covington dealt with the organization, ceremonies and practices. Grant Suiter, secretary-treasurer of the Society, covered the finances of the Society and showed that contributions from literature distribution did not meet the cost of the worldwide missionary work and that voluntary contributions of Jehovah’s witnesses themselves made up the difference. Four other British witnesses gave evidence. Pryce Hughes, the branch overseer and presiding minister for the British Isles, explained the structure of the organization in Britain, while Douglas Walsh described his work as a pioneer and congregation overseer. The whole of the evidence took seven days to present and covered 762 pages of manuscript. On January 7, 1955, Lord Strachan gave his judgment. He ruled that a body was a religious denomination if it met the following requirements: (a) if it existed for religious purposes, (b) if it professed religious beliefs that were distinctive in the sense that they distinguish it from other religious bodies, (c) if it was organized as a separate body under its own system of worship, government and discipline, and (d) if its membership was reasonably substantial. Lord Strachan was satisfied that Jehovah’s witnesses met each of these conditions and were therefore a religious denomination.
Sir John Cameron, the Dean of Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, who led the Society’s case, argued strongly that if it were decided that Jehovah’s witnesses were a religious denomination then it was for the denomination to decide who were its regular ministers. No one outside could tell a denomination who its ministers were to be. He maintained that “regular” meant “according to rule,” and, since Walsh was appointed according to the rule of Jehovah’s witnesses, the court must hold that he was a regular minister.
Dealing with the term “minister,” the judge said: “In order to be a minister a person must first be invested with the office of a minister of religion and second be in use to or at least entitled to administer the religious ordinances of his communion. I am also of the opinion that these two essential elements necessarily imply that a minister is in some way set apart in spiritual things from the ordinary members of his communion.” He objected to the form of appointment of Walsh and concluded that “the emphasis is definitely on administration rather than on spiritual leadership.” He found fault with the scholastic requirements of the congregation overseer. Of the Ministry School, he said: “What is taught is such as can be understood by children of . . . tender years.”
The Dean of Faculty’s argument pointed out that the founders of Christianity were not selected because of any scholastic attainments, but in reply the judge declared: “That argument is, in my opinion, beside the point, for it is quite obvious that in exempting a regular minister of a religious denomination from national service in 1948 Parliament was not thinking of a minister such as those who preached in the early church, but of a minister of religion as known in modern times.” The judge, in fact, found that Walsh was not a “regular minister” because of his pioneer status, even though the ministry was his vocation.
The case was appealed therefore to the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, where three judges upheld Lord Strachan’s judgment. The case was then taken to the House of Lords, the court of last appeal. On July 21, 1955, Lord Goddard, Lord Chief Justice of England, rejected the appeal. Jehovah’s witnesses were therefore judged to be a religious denomination that does not have any regular ministers.
PREPARING TO CARE FOR MORE “SHEEP”
In 1955 the influx of greater numbers of sheeplike ones to the organization of Jehovah’s people in Britain continued. Britain’s biggest convention to date came in July of that year, when Witnesses from fifty-six lands gathered at Twickenham for the five-day “Triumphant Kingdom” Assembly. “World Conquest Soon—by God’s Kingdom” was the title of the public address heard by 41,970 persons. In his closing address to the assembly, President Knorr announced the Society’s intention to build a new Bethel home and printing plant for Britain. With land at a premium in the metropolitan area the job of obtaining a suitable site certainly presented great odds. “Go to the councils,” said Knorr, “tell them what we want to do and ask them for sites where we could do it.” Middlesex Council suggested Bittancy House out at Mill Hill. “Speculators are offering big money for the site,” said they, “but we are not having that spot in the green belt covered with rows of houses. You want to put up only one and that’s different. It’s a long way out, though.”
When it came time to take a look at this site just up the hill from Mill Hill East railroad station, it was found to provide a wonderful view of north London. Just along the road the village pond and its few surrounding houses completed the rural setting. Eight miles from the city center, the site seemed to be ideal. Brother Knorr agreed to the purchase, and so negotiations began in 1955. However, the owner died and the Society then had to deal with the executors, from whom they eventually acquired the tract for just about half what land speculators had offered.
When a government department restricts a sale, as the planning officer had done with speculators on this occasion, they do so on the understanding that the vendor will not lose by the restrictions. The government compensates the vendor with the difference between the restricted offer and the lower one the vendor accepted, in this instance $44,000. Then the government recovers the amount from the buyer. Thus the Society was faced with a possible bill for an extra $44,000. Papers were prepared for the hearing in the hope that this amount might be considerably reduced in view of the charitable character of the work of Jehovah’s witnesses. Happily, when the hearing did come up, the decision was that, because of the purpose for which the land had been bought, the cost of compensation made to the estate would not be passed on to the Society.
On February 18, 1957, construction of the new Bethel began. Plans called for a building roughly T-shaped, consisting of a home with facilities for 120 persons, a lounge, a library, an office and a factory of a design appropriate to the attractive surroundings. Work on this new Bethel home and factory went on apace during 1959. Occupation of the premises began gradually, for, at the beginning of 1959, some of the living accommodations were complete and occupied even though most of the building was in an unfinished state. The Witnesses themselves, many of them skilled tradesmen, performed much of the work. One, for example, designed and made much of the furniture.
Dedication day was set for April 26, 1959. By then most of the building stood finished in its wooded, landscaped setting. The ground-floor pressroom in the factory block housed the new M.A.N. rotary press, which would be turning out 12,500 magazines an hour from printing plates for which typesetting would be done in Brooklyn. The Society’s office, literature storage, shipping department and more printing equipment occupied the top floor. There was also a Kingdom Hall for the use of the Mill Hill congregation and the Bethel family. The two-story factory block was connected by the lounge to the residential wing of three stories, including a dining room that looked out through full-length windows on lawn and parkland.
President Knorr had been expected for the dedication, but his 25,000-mile tour of Africa and Europe prevented his arrival in this country until June, when he was able to inspect the finished product of the many, many months of planning. On that occasion he made arrangements for a notable development in the field of schooling, a field in which the Society’s administration had taken a keen interest ever since 1943, when the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead was organized. This new development was the provision of the Kingdom Ministry School for special instruction of appointed men in the theocratic organization at district, circuit and congregation levels. Since there were at the time some 900 congregations in Britain, with occasional changes in presiding overseers, more than three years would elapse before all would have taken the necessary course.
That the brothers viewed attendance at this course as a great privilege may be learned from the fact that they were prepared to jeopardize their secular employment in order to be present at the school at the time they were invited. To obtain four weeks’ leave from secular employment was not an easy thing. Some chose to show the Society’s invitation letter to their employers, and in some cases employers were so impressed with this provision of four weeks’ instruction and board without financial cost that they were quite happy to make their contribution to a religious organization whose aims were so evidently laudable. Some even paid their employees full wages while they were attending the school. Other brothers ran into difficulties. A few lost their jobs because of attending the school against the wishes of their employers. One Sheffield brother ended the course with no assured income for the future. Later, however, he got a job much better than the one from which he was discharged. A number who did not lose their jobs necessarily made material sacrifices to receive the spiritual benefits of this schooling, and many congregations were alive to the need in this respect and were glad to offer material help to families whose breadwinners were away receiving instruction from which all in the congregations would benefit. Later, the situation was eased somewhat when the school course was shortened in a number of ways so that it could be completed in two weeks, and its facilities were extended to provide instruction, not alone for presiding overseers, but also for other older men in the congregations.
Another provision that was made to care for sheeplike people in remoter sections of the country and in other lands was the encouragement given by the Society for families to move to places where the need was great. In one year, 1960, 245 families made such moves, and a dozen families moved to other countries. Meantime the work in Britain itself was still being pushed. During 1963, for example, more than seven million hours were spent in preaching the good news. That year 3,079 were baptized.
It is true that at this time there seemed to be a tendency for the gains made in the preaching ministry to be offset by numbers becoming inactive, so it was certainly high time for shepherds of God’s flock to examine themselves and their ministry. President Knorr suggested that a day be set aside to hear from overseers in the field their opinions on the causes of loss of publishers and what might be done to correct matters. “Call in for a day as many circuit and district servants as you conveniently can,” said he, “and listen to their views.” Such men within reasonable distance of London numbered over thirty. Each one, having been advised of what was required of him, came prepared to give his views. In turn they were called in alphabetical order to the platform in the Kingdom Hall at Mill Hill and invited to give a twelve-minute talk.
The results were very encouraging. Suggestions on the ministry were offered such as on the manner of carrying it out, the kind of attention that could be given to presiding overseers, the desirability or otherwise of stressing goals. The weight of opinion was in favor of more attention being given to the spiritual needs of the brothers. So on the basis of this discussion, the Society worked out a plan whereby older men in the congregation would devote more of their time to shepherding. Publishers who had become inactive in the previous ten years were to be visited, and visits were to be made also on all current publishers, strong as well as weak. The idea was to give all help and encouragement according to the needs of the individual. The arrangement was crowned with success. Many were restored to activity, and many already active were strengthened. Numbers falling into inactivity were greatly reduced. From that time forward shepherding has become an important part of the duties of every older man in the organization.
The branch office in Britain itself was prepared for greater expansion. As the Bethel family had increased in number and was now augmented by two dozen or more Kingdom Ministry School students, supervision of the home, farm, factory and field service became more demanding. In 1963 the Society made changes to meet the situation. Pryce Hughes, then approaching seventy years of age, was placed in charge of the home, including gardens, farm and catering. Philip Rees, when he had finished the ten-month course in Brooklyn, became factory servant. Wilfred Gooch, formerly branch overseer in Nigeria, took up his appointed service as branch overseer for the British Isles on November 27, 1963.
Soon these administrative changes were augmented by other beneficial developments at Mill Hill. More printing equipment was acquired. Also, a new extension was built to increase storage to about four months’ stock of paper, in view of the fact that the magazine presses were consuming two tons of paper an hour. The magazine subscription department too was expanded so as to care for an average of 200,000 subscriptions for the Watchtower and Awake! magazines. A special delivery service began to be operated by the Society whereby most of the 895 congregations were served. For this purpose the Society maintains four trucks and keeps them on the go continually, delivering shipments of literature, magazines and handbills part way to their destinations. Sometimes the shipments are then transferred to some local transport to take them to their final destinations. In many other instances the congregations arrange to collect their supplies at a neighboring Kingdom Hall, thus relieving the Society of the obligation to deliver to every single congregation. Shipments are made every two weeks so as to include one issue of The Watchtower and one issue of Awake!
Though 1965 and 1966 showed a leveling off in the matter of results from the ministry in the field, yet during these years Jehovah’s people were being strengthened and refreshed for more vigorous efforts yet ahead. The round-the-world “Everlasting Good News” Assembly of 1963 had poured out wonderful spiritual blessings in an unusual eight-day convention. In June 1965 came the “Word of Truth” Assembly in the Scottish Rugby Union ground in Edinburgh, the first international assembly in Scotland for thirty years. In this city, one twentieth the size of London, the impact was tremendous. A total of 31,501 attended. This was followed by smaller assemblies at Cardiff, Leicester and Wembley for those unable to attend in Edinburgh. Next came the district assemblies in 1964, “Fruitage of the Spirit” assemblies, and in 1966 “God’s Sons of Liberty” District Assembly. Stirring talks, vital information, exciting releases—all contributed to greater spiritual vigor.
REACHING FORWARD TO THE THINGS AHEAD
Thus, by the fine effects from spirit-filled assemblies and from the shepherding work of conscientious overseers, a great deal of work was accomplished in the way of building up the brothers spiritually. There was a gradual leaning toward more simple presentations in the house-to-house ministry. Then, too, the conditions in the world continued to point to the impending end of a whole, corrupt system of things. These and other factors appeared to contribute to an improved state in the Kingdom work in Great Britain. At any rate, the year 1967 brought an upward trend.
The “Good News for All Nations” District Assemblies of 1968 were specially remarkable because of the release of the book The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life. This small, pocket-sized book turned out to be the most effective home Bible study instrument yet. A folder featuring this publication and containing a series of pointed questions was printed by the Society. That year brought a peak of more than 50,000 studies, an average pioneer enrollment of 3,881 (6 percent of all publishers) and an increase of publishers, the peak being 52,805.
The year 1969 was another record year. At the “Peace on Earth” International Assembly at Wembley the stadium was packed on Sunday with an audience of 82,416 eagerly listening to President Knorr’s public address, “The Approaching Peace of a Thousand Years.” The mass baptism on that occasion added 2,215 to the ranks of the dedicated, the total for that year in Britain being 5,563. The publisher peak rose to 58,096.
True to his promise, Jehovah was indeed pouring out a rich blessing. Jehovah’s witnesses in Britain learned that one of the largest stadiums in the country, Wembley Stadium, was scarcely large enough for their six-day convention. Indeed, the following ‘round figure’ convention attendances over the years give some idea of this trend:
1914 Manchester 200
1941 Leicester 12,000
1947 Earls Court 18,000
1951 Wembley 36,000
1955 Twickenham 42,000
1963 Twickenham 50,000
1969 Wembley 82,000
By 1970, pressures were being felt in the field of production, for the increasing light on the Word of Truth called for more and more Bible study aids for the help of people wanting to know—wanting to find the way to salvation. Facilities at the Mill Hill headquarters were being strained. No further extension of the premises appeared to be possible because of town planning restrictions, and yet nothing less than four months’ paper supply was safe in view of industrial instability and the enormous appetite of the presses, running sometimes day and night. The British suppliers of the Scandinavian newsprint the Society had used for a long time were very helpful and undertook to keep additional supplies in their warehouse as a further precaution.
Early in 1971 a new M.A.N. rotary press was installed in the new branch building in Switzerland. The printing of the Italian and Malagasy issues of the magazines, hitherto handled in London, was transferred to Switzerland, thus reducing the need for night shifts at the British branch. Magazines in Croatian and Swahili, besides the Kingdom Ministry in seven languages, continued to be printed in London. From the subscription department, magazines were going to fifty branches covering more than twice that number of countries and islands of the sea. Bulk supplies of magazines were being shipped out at the rate of 360,000 a week to congregations in Britain and 300,000 to congregations overseas.
The “Divine Rulership” District Assemblies, held at nine locations in July 1972, were attended by 91,226 persons, the highest ever assembly attendance for one year, giving further proof that “the desirable things of all the nations” continue to come in.—Hag. 2:7.
Over the years the Bethel family has grown from five to sixty-nine. Congregations have multiplied ninety times from the small beginning at the turn of the century when there were but ten. The 1972 field service report showed a publisher peak of 65,693. Pioneers numbered 3,870, and 5,228 were baptized during the year. The ratio of publishers to population stood at 1 to 822. In the one remaining overseas territory under the British Isles branch, Malta, the congregation in 1972 was seven times the size that it was when it began, for it reported 54 publishers.
Jehovah’s people in Britain are very joyous because Jehovah has fulfilled so wonderfully his promises toward them. No weapon—whether treachery from within, mischievous laws, national hatred—had prospered. All had been turned back by the strong arm of Jehovah. He is blessing the activity of his people. It is surely a source of great happiness to be identified as Jehovah’s own witnesses.
