Eighth Commandment
Theft in Law
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness
Lesson: Theft in Law
Genre: Speech
Track: 93
Dictation Name: RR130AZ93
Location/Venue:
Year: 1960’s-1970’s
Our scripture is Exodus 20:1-15. This morning we conclude our study of the eighth commandment, Thou shalt not steal. Next week we begin the ninth commandment, and our text is Exodus 20:16, for next week, Tempting God. For the following week, continuing our studies of the ninth commandment, Leviticus 19:1-2, Sanctification and Law, and then on the following week, Deuteronomy 18-9-22, the False Prophet. The ninth commandment is an exceedingly important one, and very much neglected in our time.
Theft and Law. Exodus 20:1-15. “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal.”
Thou shalt not steal. Very clearly, this commandment, the eighth, forbids theft. If this, there is no question, but to whom does this commandment apply? The usual answer of churchmen is, “Why, to all men, of course,” but this answer is faulty. It is true as far as it goes. This commandment applies, not only to all men, but to their institutions, their corporations, and their forms of government. Failure to extend the scope of this law to its full jurisdiction has been productive of more than a little evil{?}. What is the root of this error? Why has it been restricted to men only?
The error is that, by and large, the church has held that the Ten Commandments give us a moral code, a system of morality. This is a half truth, and half truths are dangerous because an outright lie is usually an obvious thing, but a half truth passes. It is true, the Ten Commandments do give us a moral code, but if we restrict the scope of the Ten Commandments to a moral code, then we have misunderstood them. They are not only morality, but they are inescapably law as well. If we deny, through the Ten Commandments, the status of law, we are surrendering the world to the Devil. We are saying men, in their personal relationships, are under God, but the world is under the Devil. Therefore, what happens in the way of violations of this commandment in church, state, school, institutional and corporate life is not under God. It is not under this commandment, and this is a fearful offense.
One of the most incisive studies of the law in our day, and of course, there’ve been almost no studies of the law apart from that by Hugh Robert Ingram and Fredrick Nymeyer. One of the most incisive studies is Fredrick Nymeyer’s study of about fifteen years ago, entitled “Essays Against Organized Sanctimony and Legalized Coercion.” In the course of dealing with the law, Nymeyer wrote in criticism of the ideas of Dr. Bruins Slot, who poses as a Christian teacher, and he said as follows, “Everything stands or falls on this simple question. Does the government have more authority than its citizens? If so, it must have got that greater authority from some greater source than the citizens. The only greater sources are God or Satan. Satan is never considered by Calvinists to be the source of government. Governments are manifestations of the common grace of God, we are told. Therefore, Hitler had a peculiar inherent authority directly from God. Now we realize how the standard came to follow its course during World War 2. Grant the foregoing, is Abraham Kuyper to these standards to the anti-revolutionary party and to Bruins Slot, and where do you end up?
Here are four propositions that follow naturally from Bruins Slot 1) God has restricted individual men by and to the Ten Commandments; 2) That God has given to governments more authority or rights than individual men have; 3) therefore, governments have direct authority to go beyond the Ten Commandments. That is, they may violate the Ten Commandments; 4) it is exactly that right to violate the Ten Commandments which constitutes the purpose for claiming a peculiar inherent authority for government. Hitler, you see, was operating quite within his rights derived directly from God. Concentration camps, firing squads, lies, violence, wars, oppression. All these are the product of this so-called peculiar inherent authority of government. Men are bound by the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments). Government denied.”
Now, Nymeyer is right. If you restrict the Ten Commandments to the status of morality binding on individuals, then you have to either say governments, and corporations, and institutions have a peculiar right from God to violate the law, or they have it from Satan, and of course, no one would say they have it from Satan, at least not churchmen. So what they do end up saying is precisely what Dr. Bruins Slot has said and Nymeyer criticized him for it, and I’m speaking of this peculiar inherent authority, which is apart from and beyond the Ten Commandments. Then the government has a right to steal from you, which of course, it is doing, and corporations have the right to do things which, as individuals, they would not do. This is what happens when we speak of the Ten Commandments simply as a moral code. It is a law, Gods law. It is God’s moral code for us also. It has a total jurisdiction. If authority is from God, then all authority is under God’s law. All authority is an agency of God’s law, or else it has some special pipeline to God which enables it to sidestep God’s law, and there is no evidence of this in scripture.
Now, in a very delightful footnote, Fredrick Nymeyer added the following: “A person reading this manuscript is someone who worked out the obvious syllogism. 1) The powers that be are ordained of God, 2) Satan’s is one of the powers that be, 3) therefore, Satan is ordained of God.” Then he outlined the succeeding syllogism. “1) All the powers ordained of God must be obeyed, 2) Satan is a power ordained of God, 3) therefore, Satan must be obeyed.”
Now the tragic fact is that this which is an obvious bit of {?}, has since it was written in the early fifties, become progressively a reality. After all, if men are going to exempt institutions and governments from the Ten Commandments, if they say it’s only a moral code, not law, and this is what I am told by clergymen all the time, they’re going to end up by exempting the government not only from law, but saying that we have to obey all authorities, including the government, unconditionally, and Satan, unconditionally.
A few years ago, in 1967, I wrote the text for a filmstrip on the moral foundations of money, and in the course of that filmstrip, I stated that fiat money, an unbacked paper currency, is a form of counterfeiting, and inflation is a form of larceny. Well, it was amazing the reaction I got from the clergy. They were horrified. In fact, one minister, the Rev. Albert G. Edwards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Seattle, thought the charges should be preferred against me for heretical opinion, and he wrote as follows:
“This is accusing the state of robbery, which seems to go quite contrary to what Paul says in the 13th chapter of Romans, where we are told to give what is asked of us is regard to taxation and to recognize the right of the state in this.” I might add that Mr. Edwards spoke of paper money inflation as a hidden tax rather than larceny. “To call taxation larceny seems to be an act of open rebellion against the state, and contrary to scripture, which admonishes us to be subject to the ordinances of man for God’s sake.”
Now, my answer, “You speak of paper money as a form of hidden tax, which is true, but your point with regard to Romans 13 I do not regard as valid. You yourself I have heard criticize certain actions of civil government in various ways wrong. Do you impugn, thereby, scripture? Elijah called the seizure of Nabob’s vineyard theft and murder. Was he impugning God’s law? The state has a legitimate authority, but not everything it does is thereby legitimate. As Hobbs, in another context in Romans 13 says, of all authority, ‘It extends over all departments of its domain, but is limited in all. First by the nature of the relation, and second, by the higher authority of God.’ The work of the ministry must be prophetic. It must speak for God and must, therefore, deny to the state what belongs to God. The state, thus, has no right, for example, to usurp the education of children. This is a responsibility of the covenant, of parents, not of the state. The state has no right to violate God’s law, Thou shalt not steal, and paper money is theft, and what you call a hidden tax is actually hidden theft. I cannot hold to the immunity of the state from moral judgment,” and yet this is precisely what is the most prevalent opinion in most evangelical and orthodox circles today. You mustn’t criticize. The state isn’t under the law, and some go a step further and say we are not under the law, which probably accounts for their lack of morality.
So you see what happens if you deny that the Ten Commandments are not only a moral code but they are law, universal law, binding on all, without exception. The state unfortunately, has been made exempt from law, and from judgment in terms of the law, and this goes back to the pagan divinization of the state, where men exempt the state from the law of God, they in effect, make it an instrument of Satan. The law is the law for everyone. If the citizen has no right to steal, then neither does the state. Thou shalt not steal is the universal command. If a citizen cannot expropriate his neighbor’s property, neither can the state. Thou shalt not steal applies to corporations, to institutions, to government, and to men, equally. It therefore, forbids socialism and communism. It forbids inflation. It forbids writing bad checks. It forbids picking up what belongs to our neighbor. It forbids theft in every form and for everyone. It forbids false advertising, dishonest processing and adulteration of food. It forbids featherbedding. It forbids cheating workers. All, in other words, are equally under God’s law, Thou shalt not steal. Wherever the Ten Commandments are reduced to the status of morality only, the law is destroyed and society is destroyed. It begins to disintegrate.
If all authority is not under God’s law, instead of a universe, we have a multi-verse, and what’s a multi-verse? It means that instead of having one world, one universe, you have many universes, each with their own law-sphere. So that you have one world under one God as it were, and another world under another god. This is poly-theism. Many gods. So, you’re under one god, he’s your Lord. You follow his law, but somebody else is not and they can have their own law system.
Then, instead of a creator and a law-giver for the entire universe, you have many gods who act as creators and law-givers in their realm, but if all authority comes from God, then all authority is plainly under God’s law and entirely subject to it. Because the ancient world believed in evolution, they believe that some people evolved from one set of facts in the universe and therefore, that was their god, the powers that were therein represented. Whereas, in other people might have evolved in another strand, another set of facts, and of course, you have polytheism rising again today because of evolutionary thinking. There are many anthropologists today who hold that different races have a different evolution, and the Negros evolved separately and therefore, represent an entirely separate variety, a separate law-order, and therefore, they can’t be brought under our law. Let the Africans have their own kind of law system, their own moral standard, because they’re not under our particular inheritance. Tolerates every kind of law structure. Cannibalism is alright for them, perhaps, or for the South Sea islanders. After all, they belong to a different world. We live in a multi-verse.
This is why, Carter{?}, when he was president of the University of California at Berkeley, sometimes spoke not of a university, but of a multi-versity as a desirable goal, and of course, you are beginning to get a multi-versity, are you not? Witchcraft is being taught very close to us, at UCLA. After all, if you have a multi-verse, why not teach the facts of a multi-verse, and after all, witchcraft has its validity just as well as astronomy, and astrology therefore, is becoming more and more respectful, and a multi-verse is {?}, and I’m told that in the high schools in one of the major cities in the East, in Washington D.C., palmistry and the {?} are now being taught. The multi-versity is going down to the high school level. Polytheism, many gods, which means, of course, they are opposed, all of them, to one God. They will tolerate anything except the one true God.
Therefore, they will not tolerate the Ten Commandments as law, because to accept it as law, to say Thou shalt not steal, must be applied to every area of life is to say that we have a universe, one God, one law, one order. Thou shalt not steal, for us has a universal application. This means that it applies, not only to the state and to corporations, and to individuals, but to the church as well. Where the church does not faithfully teach the whole counsel of God, the whole law of God, it is plainly guilty of theft. Where the church does not teach that Thou shalt not steal is not only morality but law, universally binding on all men and institutions, it is robbing the people and the social order of its vital nerve. It is undercutting all authority, when it limits the law on which all authority rests.
Earlier, I spoke of Fredrick Nymeyer. Let me quote him once again on the law. “What gold is to money, the law of God is to liberty.” When this is set aside, then every man, every institution, every government is a law unto itself, playing God. The failure to teach the Ten Commandments as law was paved the way for tyranny, for totalitarianism.
By way of conclusion, I’d like to quote a very significant statement from one of our founding fathers, the man who had more influence than any other single man in the Constitutional Convention and in the writing of the Constitution: James Madison, a very zealous Christian. This is a quotation you will not find in any textbook in any school, but this is what James Madison had to say about what they did at the Constitutional Convention, what they did when they established this country. “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” For Madison, that was law. Where the Ten Commandments ceased to be law, you have politism{?}, {?} and tyranny. Let us pray.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for those who of old established this country upon thy law, and we thank thee, our Father, for the foundations we have. We call also, Lord, to the foundation of thy law-word. Teach us to way day by day, mindful that thy word is law unto us and unto all institutions and governments, and make us instrumental in the renewing of this generation, of this world in terms of thy law-word. We appeal to the old laws against the courts of men, against the legislators and Senators, Congressmen who have subverted thy law-word, and who have ushered in tyranny and theft. O Lord, our God, we thank thee that thy vengeance is sure. Thou wilt repay, and we look unto thee, our Father, to so arm us that we may rebuild, that we may reestablish all things in terms of Jesus Christ, the only foundation, and thy law-word, the only law {?}. Bless us to this calling in Jesus name. Amen.
Are there any questions now, with respect to, yes?
[Audience] I recall {?} you had a {?}
[Rushdoony] Right, in This Independent Republic.
[Audience] {?} how does that figure into what you are saying now?
[Rushdoony] Very good question. To repeat the point that I made in This Independent Republic and elsewhere as well, the God idea is inescapable. Man cannot escape the concept of a god. Therefore, he must inevitably replace the true God when he denies him with a false god, and the new god he creates is humanity, mankind. He therefore, must bring all mankind into unity. He cannot tolerate a division between men. He must have a one-world order, because to have mankind disunited is to deny a new god, man, to create a division in the godhead which is a logical impossibility, but at the same time, I’ve also pointed out in Intellectual Schizophrenia and elsewhere, in The Biblical Philosophy of History, and in a forthcoming book, The Politics of Guilt and Pity, when man separates himself from God, he is in contradiction to himself. Everything points to the one true God. He must therefore, at one and the same time, try to deny that which he is seeking to affirm. Therefore, in order to escape the universe of God’s law, that there is a law inherent in the universe, you see, he has to deny that law. Otherwise, he has to stay there as a power greater than man, governing man.
So all law, the universal law, has to be denied. He has to affirm a multi-verse of laws, each in terms of his own culture, his own background, or his own inclination. So, man creates the very counter-movements in his apostasy that destroy his rebellion. He’s trying to create a unity, but he is also compelled at the same time to create that diversity which destroys him. So, fragmentation is built into all apostasy, precisely as it tries to unify itself in terms of a new order, it creates fragmentation at the base. Now, in economics, you see the same thing. To try to create a new monetary standard in terms of money, but it creates fragmentation in the base in that there is a flight away from it, so economic nationalism is the consequence of every attempt to create a one world theo-currency{?}. So, because God’s law-order is the only law-order, every attempt at rebellion, even as it tries to create a one order under man, creates a radical fragmentation. The schizophrenia that comes into man as he rebels against God creates two counter-purposes which ultimately shatter him and destroy him. Does this help explain it?
[Audience] {?} man trying to {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes. Man himself is created in the image of God. Inescapably, he’s going to try to duplicate everything in God’s order, but at the same time, he’s in rebellion against that so there are two counter-movements, and as a result, he’s at war with himself, even in his own philosophy of thinking.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] No, the idea is not basically Dewey{?}. It goes back to scripture, and there are many other expounders of it, Kuyper and others. The idea of sphere law is basically this, that God has created a world of law, and there are many areas of law all under God. Thus, mathematics represents a law sphere, physics represents a law sphere, economics another, and so on. The state is a law sphere. The family is a law sphere. All are under the absolute law of God, and of course, the point here is that none of these law sphere can claim priority over the others. They are coordinate and interdependent, so that the mathematician cannot say mathematics is the number one sphere, and therefore, the mathematician should govern the world. The physicist cannot say this, neither can the state say, “We have jurisdiction over every other law sphere.” Its law sphere is justice and nothing more. The church cannot say, “We must rule every law sphere.” The church did for a time under Innocence III, and others. It again has its law sphere. All of these law spheres, these disciplines, are interdependent and coordinate, but God is over all.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes. This gets into some of the ideas that are peculiar to Dewiaviere{?} and not necessarily my thinking.
[Audience] Well, I agree with him {?}
[Rushdoony] Well, I wouldn’t give anyone any priority over any other. Any other questions? Yes?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes, the isolationism advocated by Washington in his Farewell Address rested precisely on this kind of thinking, biblical thinking, non-interventionist thinking, that in terms of God’s law, each of us has our responsibility in our own area. We don’t have a universal responsibility. In other words, we can’t play God and savior to the whole world, and this is basic to Washington’s thinking. He opposed this kind of thinking to the revolutionary kind of thinking coming out of France which said, “We’re going to save the world. We’re going to export the Revolution into every country and save every country,” and Washington was very, very strongly opposed to that. So, non-interventionism, or isolationism is premised on the fact that you stay within the domain of your responsibility. You don’t play universal Lord and savior. That’s God’s business. Yes?
[Audience] {?} would that {?} also the possibility of {?}
[Rushdoony] No salvation is ever possible without justice. The cross of Christ supremely represents both the justice of God and the grace of God. It represents the justice of God because it witnesses that God’s law must be fulfilled, the death penalty prevail against sin. So, Jesus Christ, as our representative, suffered the death penalty for our sakes to indicate that God’s justice is inflexible, but at the same time, he rose again from the dead to indicate that as our representative, our Lord, he resurrects us from the death of sin into the life of righteousness in him. So that there is no salvation possible without justice.
This is why, wherever antinomianism sets in, and we are told that we’re dead to the law and so on, we are also ultimately dead to God, dead to justice, dead to salvation, and you have love replacing it, and love becomes the savior, and this is why, once the doctrine of the atonement is weakened and the law is weakened, love theology rapidly comes in, and in Reformed circles where they’ve been so strict about the doctrines of salvation, you find now love theology is rapidly taking over precisely because they become antinomian, and you cannot maintain a doctrine of the atonement in isolation from the rest of your theology. So if you become antinomian at any point, ultimately you’ll overturn the doctrine of the atonement. Yes?
[Audience] {?} I wanted to ask you about {?}
[Rushdoony] Oh yes, a bribe.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Right. What I said was that the word translated “bribe” is the same word that we have in Hebrew for redemption, for atonement. What the bribe represents is a false atonement, a false redemption. Whereas, Christ’s work on the cross was true redemption, true atonement, you see. So, when someone accepts a bribe, they do it whereby to give a false salvation to someone, to save to someone who should not be saved.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Then there is no punishment. They are saved, say, if a bribe is given to a judge to acquit someone who is guilty of murder. He is saved from death, but it is a false salvation. It’s the false Christ. It’s a totally counterfeit Christ, you see. So, the word there is the same as the word for atonement, but it’s a false atonement.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Exactly. Yes?
[Audience] {?} even more
[Rushdoony] Yes. The matter of doing away with money entirely, and so on. You know, over the years, I’ve heard people who were deeply in debt and short on money, talking very enthusiastically about plans to do away with money. Nobody who has a lot of cash is every in favor of doing away with money. Well today, when you have governments that are head over heels in debt and short of cash, they also are indulging in that kind of talk, and of course, it is nonsense. I think it goes back to what has been called the first law of economics. Namely, that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and all these attempts to do away with money are attempts to bring about a free lunch, and it won’t work, because if you rule by introducing some kind of currency, and this has been the point of every step towards fiat money, which we’ve taken, if you rule that there will be a free lunch, then everybody’s going to line up ultimate for a free lunch and nobody’s going to work, and everybody’s going to starve, and of course, this is ultimately what happens with runaway inflation. It ends up with no one working because it is going to be a free lunch. It’s going to be a free job for someone, and then the money collapses utterly.
Along those lines, a week ago, Friday, I received four paper bills in the mail from someone up north who had heard me speak and thought that I should have these. He works in the foreign exchange division of one of the major banks in the country, and he paid just a very small amount to pick up these bills, that businessmen were exchanging at the bank. Incidentally, he says it’s impossible to discuss the subject with the liberals who work with him because they’re too ready to get emotionally upset. They can see what’s happening but they don’t want to talk about it. Now, these are Brazilian bills, Brazilian paper money. Brazil has been in process of radical inflation in recent years.
The result of this inflation has been that money has progressively grown cheaper, so not too long ago, what they had to do, because they were printing more and more paper, bigger and bigger denominations, was simply to decree that the last three zeroes off of every bill were to be dropped. And here’s a ten thousand cruzero bill and it’s restamped ten. Even if it weren’t restamped, that’s all you could get for it, ten cruzeros. A five thousand cruzero bill is restamped five. A one thousand cruzero bill is restamped one cruzero, and the smallest legal bill now is the form of five hundred cruzero bill which is fifty centavos. Now, this wiped people out, of course. It didn’t help businessmen from America who were doing business there and weren’t informed about inflation, but of course, this is what happens when they try to get towards precisely what you are speaking about. It’s the progressive destruction of whatever currency they have, and when they work towards the abolition of money, what they are doing is working towards the abolition of all trade, all business. It results ultimately in everything grinding to a halt, because inflation, an unbacked paper currency is a form of theft, and finally people realize it’s total theft and they stop selling. They stop coming through with the free lunches, and then you have chaos.
[Audience] {?} one time {?}
[Rushdoony] Well, I’ve mentioned this before but I think it’s worth mentioning. I recall in the twenties when I was a boy, my father getting from this one company, these advertisements and they were often on the back of some of the prominent magazines of the day, which showed an elderly couple looking over the rail of a ship, on a balmy summer night, enjoying themselves, and underneath the words, “Take out this retirement plan and retire, and see the world on $100 a month.” Now, in those days, to have $100 a month to retire on would make you very, very well-to-do. You could travel around the world. You could like a life of a gentleman of leisure. Well, of course, we know what inflation has done to those who took out plans like that. It destroyed them, and of course, we haven’t seen anything in the way of real inflation yet. Just think what would happen to $100 bills if, in a few years, we went through what the Brazilians have just gone through, they’d be worth .10. Yes?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] He can command any kind of good, and this is exactly what has happened in every situation. When everything breaks down and the paper money breaks down, the hard money is the only thing that will bring goods out of hiding. Every other kind of money is worthless.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] A man who comes to some of our meetings occasions, recently gave me a sheet of bonds from Germany in the early twenties. They’d never even bothered to cut them. They were worthless. At the time, they were paid off, the entire national debt of Germany, was paid off, I think, with what was equivalent to thirteen American cents. The entire public and private indebtedness, the debts of World War 1, everything, the equivalent of thirteen cents. Now, is it any use lining up with say, $100,000, or paper money, to collect a millionth of a penny, or something like that? You couldn’t collect it, and that’s what happens. Yes?
[Audience] What happened to law?
[Rushdoony] Law disintegrated. There was no law. I talked to people who went through it. Law and order collapsed, precisely because there was no money to keep society going. No one worked for nothing, and anarchy took over in the cities. They were paying the price of their paper money, and of course, Brazil today, the only kind of work you can get done, is on a cost plus ten percent basis, because inflation is so bad there is no one who will contract to do anything. When the contract, by the time the terms are over or you’ve put up the house, materials have gone up so radically. Our time is really up, but we’ll take one or two . . . Yes?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] No, when it’s over, it doesn’t come from no where. The new money either has to come from reestablishing on a hard money basis, gold and silver, or some artificial basis which holds for a little while until you have collapse again, and of course, it was the aftermath of the inflation of the early twenties that led to Hitler. One followed the other. Yes?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Oh yes, the same thing happened to the bank accounts. Of course. Yes?
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Well, those individuals who had gold and silver, of course, were the ones who could command anything during the inflation, and I have mentioned in one of my publications, and told a number of you on a number of occasions, of the famous story of the hotel, the best hotel in Berlin that was bought with a $10 gold piece, an American.
[Audience] {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes, nationally, gold was loaned to them afterwards. What happened then, in a sense, was not entirely Germany’s fault, in that reparations were required of Germany after World War 1, and instead of waiting for a reasonable period, they forced payment almost overnight and drained the government of gold, and then of course, the government collapsed radically. So, in that case, it was not entirely of their doing. After it was over, they loaned them back some of their own gold to reestablish a sound currency. But, the damage had been done, the middle classes wiped out, and Nazism became almost inevitable.
Well, our time is up but I’d like to remind you that this Saturday, March 7, we’re having our potluck dinner at the Encino Women’s Club. I believe the notices are in the back on a chair, so if you have not yet notified Edith Stafford or Peggy North, please do so. Edith is here so you can speak to her now. We hope to see you all there. We want to have very congenial evening getting better acquainted.
End of tape