Jehovah's Witnesses in the War

Month ago, an Army court-martial at Monterey, Calif, sentenced slight, bespectacled Herbert Weatherbee, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, to prison for life. His crime: refusal to obey a superior officer who ordered him to salute the flag. Last week the American Civil Liberties Union publicized Weatherbee's story, adding it to the growing list of persecutions suffered by the anticlerical, religious group which refuses to bow before any "image" or to fight in any war save Jehovah's.

The Witnesses take their name from the twelfth chapter of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah. Their leader, the late "Judge" Joseph Rutherford, taught that they "must be witnesses to Jehovah by declaring His name and His kingdom under Jesus Christ." They claim half a million followers in the U.S., several million abroad. In peacetime their nonconformity got them deep in trouble with local and state authorities. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1940 that their children must salute the flag in public schools, in 1942 that they could not distribute literature without peddlers' licenses. Jehovah's Witnesses regard themselves as ministers, but draft boards often refuse to exempt them from Army service. This week more than 450 of the group's men of military age are in prison for refusing to heed induction notices.

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