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.
