NEWS NOTES
In his book ‘Rebuilding a Lost
Faith,”” John L. Stoddard, a convert
from agnosticism to Roman Catholi-
cism, tosses a hot potato to Protestants
to handle. He says: ‘‘Protestants often
deride the authority of church tradition,
and claim to be directed by the Bible
only; yet they, too, have been guided by
customs of the ancient church, which
find no warrant in the Bible, but rest on
church tradition only! A striking in-
stance of this is the following:—The
first positive command in the Decalogue
is to ‘Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy,” and this precept was en-
forced by the Jews for thousands of
years. But the Sabbath day, the observ-
ance of which God commanded, was our
Saturday. Yet who among either [Ro-
man] Catholics or Protestants, except a
sect or two, like the ‘Seventh Day
Baptists,’ ever keep that commandment
now? None. Why is this? The Bible,
which Protestants claim to obey exclu-
sively, gives no authorization for the sub-
stitution of the first day of the week for
the seventh. On what authority, there-
fore, have they done so? Plainly on the
authority of that very [Roman] Catholic
Church which they abandoned, and
whose traditions they condemn.’”’—New
edition, p. 80.
© “Deaths from cancer since Pearl
Harbor have exceeded many times the
deaths in combat in the armed forces of
the United States,’’ says “The New York
Times’’ of January 21, 1944.
PAN CAT, tga en
This recent picture of Mount Vesuvius, shows the
famous volcano called “the pride and scourge of
Italy,
> in eruption—the worst in 72 years. A giant
canopy of smoke and ashes hangs over the crater of the
Commenting on the visit of Dr.
Sigurgeir Sigurdsson, Lutheran bishop
of Iceland, to the United States in April,
“Time’’ (May 1, 1944) remarks: “Of Ice-
land’s 130,000 population all but 400 Ro-
man Catholics and 70 Seventh-day Ad-
ventists are included in Dr. Sigurdsson’s
see.”” The Seventh-day Adventist ‘“Year
Book’’ for 1944 says that the Iceland-
Faroes Conference of Seventh-day Ad-
ventists has eight churches with a
membership of 449. These figures do not
include unbaptized members of Sev-
enth-day Adventist schools. Neither
does this church baptize into its mem-
bership infants and tiny children who
have not reached the age of accounta-
bility.
‘““Rome’s critical situation and the
perils menacing the Vatican have caused
Pius XII to permit the Swiss Papal
Guards to be reinforced by Swiss recruits
and rifles substituted for their tradi-
tional weapon, the halberd.”—The New
York Times, April 23, 1944.
“In an event unprecedented in the
South,” reports ‘“Time’’ of January 3,
1944, ‘‘a Negro last month won North
Carolina’s Mayflower Cup, awarded an-
nually by the North Carolina Society of
Mayflower Descendants, for the best
book by a resident of the state. This
year’s winner is 37-year-old J. Saunders
Redding, professor of English literature
and creative writing at Virginia’s Hamp-
ton Institute.”
BE
RENNER,
RE Ed RL
boiling mountain, dominating the countryside for a
radius of many miles. Many hamlets and villages in
the shadow of the volcano have been buried-under a
blanket of lava and ashes.
TA tees mn The
LI a)
A report from Washington states that
‘every passing hour of 1943 saw more
than $10,000,000 pouring out of the
Treasury to meet the costs of global
war.”” A total of $85,135,000,000 was
spent for the war effort during the entire
year. The average daily rate was $272,-
900,000.
© Speaking about the national budget
requested by the President for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1945, ‘“‘Time’’ of
January 24, 1944, remarks: ‘Franklin
Roosevelt was asking for over twice as
much as the United States national in-
come in 1933. World War II’s cumula-
tive cost to the United States by 1945
would be $397,000,000,000—a third of a
trillion.”’
According to ‘““Time’’ (May 22, 1944)
researchers of the University of Denver
recently quizzed citizens about the
United States Bill of Rights, and re-
ported that 23% never heard of it, 39%
could not identify it, 15% gave hazy or
wrong definitions of it, and 23% were
reasonably acquainted with the first
Ten Amendments.
© In “The New York Times Magazine”’
of January 23, 1944, it is stated that the
Office of Scientific Research and De-
velopment has some 6,000 scientists and
their assistants working, and is spend-
ing almost $3,000,000 a week in scientific
research to develop new weapons of war.