thirteen countries in this area. In 1942 there were 3,005 publishers. Now, just thirteen years later, in the 1955 service year, there are 30,363. So in thirteen years those thirteen countries combined have ten times as many publishers, a 900 per cent increase. What an increase! It shows that it pays to send out missionaries, and when these stay in their assignments, working hard and gathering together the “other sheep,” such in turn also will become good ministers and the work will further multiply by leaps and bounds. Jehovah’s spirit is upon his people. Now is the time when this good news of the Kingdom must be preached in all the world for a witness, and Jehovah’s witnesses know that. So with joy, with growing gladness, they courageously press on, not only in this part of the earth but everywhere, happy in these days of the “Triumphant Kingdom.”

Modern History of Jehovah’s Witnesses

Part 18—Second World War’s Christian Neutrals in British Commonwealth

IN THE “Battle of Britain”—including its terrible ordeal of air war—less than a dozen of the more than 12,000 witnesses of Jehovah then residing in the British Isles lost their lives. True, many witnesses suffered injury and lost their homes and Kingdom Halls in the Nazi air “blitz”; nevertheless, they kept right on in their way of worshiping Jehovah, the living God. House-to-house preaching they maintained at a high level. Congregational meetings had to be transferred to Sunday afternoons to avoid dangers of night air attacks, but all such were regularly held. The great preaching campaign, which kept on operating and expanding even in those war years, brought much comfort and hope to thousands of honest-hearted ones.

Large zone assemblies were held right on schedule as if no war existed, some sessions even being held during actual bombing raids. In a night raid Manchester’s large Free Trade Hall was demolished just after Jehovah’s witnesses had completed their 1940 national convention in that city. Most amazing was the convention held at Leicester, September 3-7, 1941, where some 12,000 witnesses assembled for a five-day theocratic festival amid war’s intense heat. In the face of unfriendly forces, almost insurmountable obstacles at every turn had to be overcome—as to feeding, accommodation and transportation—to assemble such a vast number. The recordings of Judge Rutherford’s principal lectures at the St. Louis convention the month before in the United States had been sent by air mail to London just in time for the censors to clear for this British convention. What a spiritual lift this assembly proved to be! What a spirit of unity and loving cooperation was manifested! It strengthened all to endure the trials of the war years.a

An embargo was placed on receiving shipments of literature from Brooklyn.