CIVIL LIBERTIES: 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...

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