Religion: Witnesses in Trouble

To outsiders, Jehovah’s Witnesses are without doubt the most irritating of U. S. sects. They clatter about the country in jalopies, often a couple to a car, the man in overalls, the woman in calico. They ring doorbells, ask whoever answers to listen to their phonograph records attacking all “organized religion” (the Roman Catholic church in particular) as a racket. They disregard the law because they owe allegiance to “none but God.” In school their children refuse to salute the flag, believing that it is a graven image. Last week into clink from Maine to Texas as alleged spies, radicals, fifth columnists and non-patriots bounced Bible-dizzy but patently sincere Jehovah’s Witnesses. At Litchfield, 111., townsfolk mobbed a Witness motorcade, wrecked its cars. Police rushed 61 Witnesses to the city jail, then had to call for State policemen and neighboring sheriffs to protect the jail.

Liberals as well as conservatives gave the Witnesses short shrift. Mayor Maury Maverick of San Antonio, Tex., forbade a Witnesses’ convention there, swore their refusal to salute the U. S. flag was an “overt act.” But Republican Maine had the worst riots. At Kennebunk last week. Witness headquarters were sacked, burned by an angry mob. There and in nearby towns private houses were raided, Witnesses dragged out and beaten up.

Trouble at Kennebunk began when patriotic natives concluded that Witnesses were spreading subversive doctrines. When a threatening group marched to “Kingdom Hall,” flimsy frame headquarters of the Witnesses, late one night, two got potted with buckshot. Next morning a mob of 2,000 set fire to Kingdom Hall. Police clapped its six occupants into jail for assault with intent to kill, later jailed two of the 2,000 for arson. Then the riots began. By the second night mobs were hunting victims. At Wells, Me., a crowd went to one man’s house, demanding to know whether he was a Witness and whether he would salute the flag. Reported A. P.: “When the man denied membership and expressed no objection to saluting the flag, the crowd became abusive and threw stones at the house.” Not until calmer heads pointed out that throwing stones would do no good to Maine’s summer tourist season did thrifty Down-Easterners stay their hands.

At week’s end, with little Witness literature left unburned in Maine, three Witness defendants were under protective guard in the jail of another county, three in hiding after giving bail.