into the special pioneer service, that the work there is moving ahead so rapidly. By January they had reached a new all-time peak of 624 publishers. This is well over their 20 per cent of the previous year’s average.

The missionaries the Society has there now love the people and love the congregations. Those in Barranquilla take out groups of people every day and work with them in the field, training them to be good publishers and pioneers. Then it is not long until they get into the special pioneer service and they are off on their own in some isolated territory.

It would have been good to remain longer, but connections had to be made in Venezuela at Maracaibo, to fly on to Curaçao. So on the afternoon of December 29 good-by was said to a smiling group of witnesses at the airport and away the president went to Maracaibo. In a short while he was met there by more publishers in another land. They had arranged for a public meeting in the patio of a brother’s home. It was the biggest public meeting they had had in this city for Jehovah’s witnesses, 207 coming.

Venezuela is doing very well. In November there were 780 reporting field service, but by February of 1955 the total had moved up to 832. Scattered throughout all Venezuela there are 31 missionaries and they have been taking the lead in preaching the good news of the Kingdom. A most prosperous country, its oil, iron and other commodities are in great demand. Money is plentiful, and often it is hard to turn the minds of people away from material things of this world to spiritual things; but, despite this, publishers in Venezuela have been making good progress in gathering together the “other sheep.”

The president of the Society found it a real pleasure to be able to live in the missionary home and to talk with the missionaries about their problems. The branch servant had come from Caracas to go over some matters, taking advantage of the president’s one-day stopover in Maracaibo. Just a year previous Brother Knorr had visited all the missionary homes in Venezuela and the branch office and they had had a general convention, but just now this was only a jumping point for the islands in the Caribbean and there was little time for discussion. It was good to learn that the new branch home purchased by the Society was in proper order and everybody happy with his new location in Caracas.

Who Leads Whom?

Britain’s archbishop of York recently gave a speech in the House of Lords in which he backed Britain’s decision to make hydrogen bombs. Several shocked churchgoers sent letters to the Manchester Guardian Weekly on the matter. One of these letters to the editor, in the issue of March 24, 1955, said: “Sir,—The Archbishop of York’s speech in the Lords justifying the making of the hydrogen bomb was a very powerful utterance, more convincing than anything our political leaders have said on the subject. Yet in one passage he undermined his position as a Christian leader and his right to speak as such. He conceded virtually that the true Christian position is to be prepared to suffer wrong rather than inflict it. ‘It is an argument that must appeal to every Christian.’ Yet amazingly he proceeded to dissociate himself from that position because it did not express ‘the deliberate convictions of the great majority.’ That means that almost the highest churchman in the land cannot take the full Christian position until he has the consent of the untutored and largely pagan masses.”