Religion: Words & Works

¶The eight-day convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in New York City broke two Witness records for: 1) mass baptism, with 4,640 new members immersed in five hours; 2) assembly attendance, with some 116,802 packed in and around Yankee Stadium, and another 49,027 in a tent-and-trailer camp across the river in New Jersey.

¶U.S. Army chaplains have won 332 decorations for gallantry in the Korean war, announced Major General Ivan L. Bennett, Army chief of chaplains. Their casualty total, as announced by General Bennett: 13 chaplains killed or missing, 21 wounded.

¶At a Baptist laymen's conference at Green Lake, Wis., Medical Missionary William E. Braisted called on fellow Baptists to give up "the luxury of irresponsibility," because "the world is looking through our church windows and our kitchen windows. As a doctor," said Braisted, "I may give a patient strychnine as an emergency measure to keep his weakened heart going, but it is the . . . curative procedure that will keep him alive. In the years to come, we will need the strychnine of military holding actions, but for the underlying cure we must drain the swamps of human misery with worldwide assistance programs that carry the spirit of Christian concern."

¶Robert and Gerald Finaly, accompanied by their aunt and legal guardian, Mme. Hedwige Rosner, left Paris for a new home in Israel, where they will receive a French education and be "informed" of the Jewish religion of their dead parents. Before leaving, Mme. Rosner dropped her charges against the Roman Catholic priests, nuns and laymen accused of spiriting the children to Spain (TIME, March 16 et seq.).