Religion: Benediction

One afternoon last week, Seattle's new Field Artillery Armory had its first public function. For the Citizens' Military Observance Patriotic Mass Meeting, 3,000 patriotic citizens appeared. Field guns lined the big hall. On the platform sat the great & good of Seattle's churches. Unconsidered among these bigwigs sat an uninvited guest —an obscure, churchless Congregational minister, Rev. Louis E. Scholl, 62. As he listened to the invocation by a Roman Catholic priest and a speech on peace and democracy by Major General John F. O'Ryan (retired), Mr. Scholl was outwardly calm. Inwardly, however, he seethed with secret resolution. When at last the dean of Seattle's Episcopal Cathedral announced that a benediction would be pronounced by the President of the Seattle Council of Churches, up jumped Mr. Scholl.

Before anybody could stop him he strode to the platform microphone, cried: "I'll pronounce the benediction!" He pronounced:

"Lord, we thank Thee for the battleships and bombs, the airplanes and the poison gas. We thank Thee that Thou didst say: Suffer little children to come unto me that I might drop bombs upon them and blow them into Kingdom Come. We thank Thee that Thou didst die upon the Cross, not with a crown of thorns on Thy head, but with a gas mask on Thy face and a soldier's boots upon Thy feet!"

There was a horrified silence. Then hisses followed Mr. Scholl, walking rapidly out of Seattle's new armory.