Religion: The Missionaries Leave

History's chapters are apt to end while nobody is looking, but today in China, everybody can see a page turning. Every afternoon in the week, over the little railroad bridge that spans the river at Lowu, on the border of Hong Kong, the Christian missionaries come plodding out of Communist China. Sometimes only one or two at a time, sometimes in groups as large as 40 or more, fagged and haggard from their long trek out of the interior, women as well as men, Protestants and Catholics, French, Belgians, Germans, Italians and Americans.

For a while, the Christian churches were hopeful that they could carry on in China. The incoming Communists said they were all for freedom of religion. Then the climate of tolerance changed: church property was confiscated, more & more missionaries were "tried" for espionage. Last winter, most Protestant denominations announced that they were recalling their missionaries as fast as possible (TIME, Jan. 15).

But wherever they could, the Roman Catholics hung on. The Reds tried their old trick of setting up a "church" of quisling Catholics "independent" of Rome. When that failed (TIME, July 2), they fell back on franker methods. Last week news reached Hong Kong that in Peking the Communists had jailed at least 14 priests, padlocked twelve of the city's 17 Catholic churches and put all foreign priests still in Peking (about 40) under house arrest.

The Communists had dropped their pretense of tolerance; they were out to shut down every Christian church in China.