God and Lend-Lease

Once again President Roosevelt invoked the state of religion under the dictators as an argument in the great debate.

A month ago it was Russia, and the President, urging all aid quickly, painted a none-too-realistic picture of religious, toleration there. Last week it was Germany, and the President, telling why the shooting began, announced that Hitler's Government has a still-secret plan for abolishing all existing religions, substituting the swastika for the cross and Mein Kampf for the Bible.

Nazi persecution of religious opposition has long been an outstanding disgrace of Germany (TIME. Dec. 23), but actually the plan which the President revealed was no great secret and it has yet to receive official Nazi sanction. Religious News Service distributed two long stories on a very similar plan in 1938, and the Christian Science Monitor ran the plan in detail five days before Mr. Roosevelt's Navy Day speech, with an introductory paragraph reading:

"Details of a National Socialist church program in the form of a preliminary party memorandum have become available to neutral sources in Europe. Although there is no evidence of official adoption of the plan, the following cabled summary provides an interesting insight into the more extremist Nazi views toward religion."

The 30-point program quoted by the Monitor follows the line long sponsored by Jewbaiter Rosenberg and others in the back-to-Odin-worship wing of the Nazi Party. Some of its points:

4. No toleration of "other churches or churchlike organizations and clubs, especially those with international connections or government" (i.e., Roman Catholic Church, Salvation Army, etc.).

5. Annihilation of Christianity, which "though foreign to our being and character was imported to Germany in the tragic year 800" (i.e., under Charlemagne).

7. No pastors, chaplains or other clergy. "Only National Reich orators are to have the right to speak."

10. Confiscation of all church property.

13. Banning of the Bible and every other religious publication.

30. Removal of the Cross of Christ from all churches, cathedrals and chapels. It will be replaced by the swastika as the "only unconquerable symbol of Germany."

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