Dr. Johnson was asked his opinion of the feminist movement in religion, and he said that “a woman preaching is like a dog walking on two legs; it is not well done, but we are surprised that it is done at all.” I think that if we examine our judgments carefully, we shall find that our high opinion of ancient writings is on this basis. We do not really judge them by modern standards, any more than we judge a child by adult standards when he tries to wield a pen, or a hoe, or an oar. Our pleasure in reading ancient writings is to note the beginnings of real thinking, of mature attitudes toward life. We say: “By George, those old fellows had a lot of sense after all!” But judging the Old Testament strictly, as literature, not as antiquity, I say that everything which is of serious value to a modern adult person could be gathered into an extremely small volume, certainly not over thirty thousand words, or four per cent of the total. CHAPTER XIII THE COMMUNIST ALMANAC From the “American Times” Sunday Review of Books, A. D. 1944 SATAN SANCTIFIED _A New Religion Enters the Lists_ There come to the desk of a literary editor many volumes which could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered as literature. But they are printed and bound, and those who write them believe them of importance, and others may be of the same opinion. So it becomes the task of a reviewer to give an account of these volumes. The book now before us came through the mails, bearing no indication as to the sender; and examination of the contents quickly reveals the reason. Those who print and circulate the volume know that in so doing they render themselves liable to the lethal gas chamber. Nevertheless, they are impelled by fanaticism to incur the risk, so here is the result on our desk. Technically, we believe the editor incurs penalties by keeping the volume, instead of turning it over to the police authorities. But it seems to us a matter of importance that the public should know what sort of material is now being circulated among the populace, and for that reason we give an account of the contents of the “Communist Almanac for 1944.” It is perhaps a natural tendency of the human mind, an inevitable process of history, that holders of proscribed opinions should see themselves as martyrs, and endeavor to capitalize their sufferings for political advantage. So, ever since the extermination of the Soviet government by the armed forces of the civilized world, the surviving Communists, hiding in forests and holes in the ground, have been seeing themselves as founders of a new religion. In this document which they now put before us, we find the creed and ritual of this monstrous perversion of the so-called proletarian mind, together with the biographies of its founder and the acts of its leading martyrs.