The Gold Coast Comments

Readers of this journal who recall that the Watch Tower’s president was recently refused permission to enter Africa’s Gold Coast to speak to the approximately 5,000 Jehovah’s witnesses and others in that land (Watchtower, March 15, 1953) will be interested in the following editorial that was published in The Spectator Daily of Accra, Gold Coast, August 22:

“America was staggered, almost stupefied, by the success which attended the assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses held in New York during July. Never in religious history of the country had so many people gathered together from so many countries as happened on this occasion. In fact, as the convention chairman remarked at the opening session, it was ‘the greatest Christian gathering in history.’

“An interesting feature of the assembly was the wide publicity given to it by the American and world press. From the august ‘New York Times’ to the lowly village paper, each had its glowing comment on the assembly. News was presented without bias. The papers were full of pictures of the proceedings, not from the ‘news to sell’ point of view, but from the view that the Witnesses’ gathering was the climax of a religious assembly of Christian nobility.

“This fact should set the Gold Coast people—the Gold Coast government in fact—thinking seriously. It should be crestfallen about its deplorable unfriendly attitude toward Jehovah’s Witnesses. Unless the Americans, to say nothing of the other parts of the world, are sheer hypocrites, and they are not, their enthusiasm over the message and work of Jehovah’s Witnesses should make our leaders here ashamed of their antagonistic policy.

“Let us look at the manner in which the Gold Coast Government treated N. H. Knorr when he wanted to address the public in Accra! . . . For the mean treatment meted out to him, the Gold Coast should pray for forgiveness, and take pains to see that it never again happens.”