the records of the proceedings at Ketchikan when the Bureau of Education caused his arrest on the false criminal accusation concocted by its agents.

The United States Bureau of Education must have known that in civilized countries "insane" persons should not be brought into court on criminal charges.

If there had been a shadow of truth in the charge that Father Duncan was mentally incompetent, on that ground alone the seizure of his property would be void ab initio and the custodians of his property would be chargeable with a conspiracy to violate the laws enacted for the protection of persons mentally incompetent (Criminal Code of the United States, sec. 37).

The fact that there was not so much as a pretense on the part of anyone to comply with the laws relating to persons mentally incompetent, before divesting him of property rights, and the fact that Father Duncan's last will and testament was probated, with no question whatever raised as to his mental competency, show that this vile slander against him was known to be wholly false.

Like Father Duncan, many of those whose names are outstanding in the world's history, have been falsely accused of insanity-such a maliciously invented accusation being the lowest and most cowardly subterfuge employed by intriguers.8

In seeking thus to accomplish the destruction of its victim, the United States Bureau of Education turned the clock back for 20 centuries.

When the Apostle Paul, the great missionary of the first century of the Christian era, was held in bonds by Felix, he was not denied a hearing as was done in the case of Father Duncan. But Paul did not escape the charge of insanity when he was making his defense before King Agrippa:

And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.

For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: For I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner.-Acts 26: 24-26.

Federal Statutes Annotated, 2d ed., p. 285, and Compiled Laws of the Territory of Alaska, 1913, ch. 88. 8 Instances of historical characters who were accused of being insane:

(The Great Abnormals, by Theodore B. Hyslop. Published by Geo. H. Doran Co., 1925) Jesus; Socrates (B. C. 469-399); Paul (died A. D. 67); Constantine the Great (272337); Mohammed (571-632); Peter the Hermit (-----1115); Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226); Joan of Arc (1411-31); Christopher Columbus (1446-1506); Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98); Buonarroti Michelangelo (1474-1564); Martin Luther (14831546); Francis Xavier (1506-52); John Calvin (1509-64); Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603); Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658); George Fox (1624-91), founder of Quakerism; John Bunyan (1628-88); Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727); George Frederick Handel (16851759); Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772); John Wesley (1703-91); Samuel Johnson (1709-84); George Whitefield (1714-70); Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74); Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre (1737-1814); Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91); Robert Burns (1759-96); Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805); Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827); George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831); William Wordsworth (1770-1850); Sir Walter Scott (17711832); Robert Southey (1774-1843); Charles Lamb (1775-1834); Washington Irving (1783-1859); Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm, author of the famous fairy tales (1785-1863); Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881); Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850); Alexandre Dumas (180270); Victor Marie Hugo (1802-85); Mendelssohn (1809-47); Francois Frédéric Chopin (1809-49); Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49); Charles Robert Darwin (1909-82); Robert Schumann (1810-56); Charles John Kean, tragedian (1811-68); Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-83); Tolstoy (1828-1910); Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831-91); and many others.

DR. WELLCOME BEGINS EXHAUSTIVE INVESTIGATION

It was through a chain of interesting circumstances that Dr. Wellcome, with his health impaired from arduous patriotic services incidental to the World War and then only partly recovered from a serious surgical operation in London, was enabled to obtain passage through the War zone and reach Father Duncan in Alaska.

At that time Lord Kitchener-the invincible liberator and benefactor of the peoples of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, after their 16 years of unparalleled suffering and oppression under the bloodthirsty rule of the Mahdi and his Khalifa, who had mercilessly slaughtered millions of these natives-had become head of the British War Ministry which provided Dr. Wellcome with permit and facilities to enable him to leave England with a hospital-orderly medical attendant to accompany him on his long journey.

Lord Kitchener and Dr. Wellcome embarked on different missions at almost the same time. On June 5, 1916, Kitchener sailed from Scapa Flow for Russia on the British warship Hampshire to discuss on the spot war measures of the Allies with the Russian High Command; and, off the Orkney Islands, the Hampshire struck a mine, causing the death of the great War Minister of England, his staff, and all the ship's officers and crew, except 13 seamen who miraculously escaped.

At sea, 2 days after Dr. Wellcome had passed through the mine and submarine fields on his way to Father Duncan, he received the wireless message of Kitchener's death.

Thus, one of the last acts of Kitchener-founder of the Gordon Memorial College at Khartoum which has benefited so much by the adoption of Father Duncan's vocational training and educational methods-was to facilitate Dr. Wellcome's voluntary mission for the relief and aid of the venerable Apostle of Alaska, then besieged and oppressed in the campaign of frightfulness conducted by the Bureau of Education and its confederates.

Arriving at Metlakahtla, in July 1916, Dr. Wellcome remained. with Father Duncan for several months, conducting a personal investigation which laid the foundation for the years of research work under his direction that followed, the results of which are presented in this report.

On his way to Metlakahtla, Dr. Wellcome secured the services of a highly qualified court stenographer with expert knowledge of accountancy, who recorded the history of the famous Metlakahtla Christian Mission as it fell from the lips of Father Duncan. At the same time Father Duncan furnished to Dr. Wellcome information and records which will insure for future generations a complete chronicle of his life work.

Because of the close study and indefatigable researches of Dr. Wellcome, the history of the world-famous Metlakahtla Christian Mission and the policies and methods of Father Duncan will be preserved for all time. Furthermore, Dr. Wellcome has developed the facts which will enable the American Government to right the wrongs that were done to Father Duncan.

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION THWARTS EFFORT TO OBTAIN A HEARING

In the preceding section of this chapter, among the many messages of congratulation sent to Father Duncan on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of his mission work was one from President Wilson. This message was very heartening to Father Duncan, and to it he sent the following reply:

HIS EXCELLENCY WOODROW WILSON,

METLAKAHTLA, ALASKA,

October 24, 1917.

President of the United States, Washington, D. C. DEAR SIR: I desire very gratefully to acknowledge the receipt of your kind telegram. It was indeed an unexpected honor, and came to hand by our weekly mail (16th inst) which also brought to me many letters from kind friends, conveying, as did your telegram, their congratulation on my reaching the sixtieth anniversary of the Metlakahtla Mission. These kind greetings I regard as special tokens of God's goodness to me at this critical period of severe trial. Our settlement, so graciously prospered during many years, is now being ruined; but in our distress, God has raised up for us a true friend to plead for us. Mr. Henry S. Wellcome from London, at great cost to himself of time and labor, espoused our cause over a year ago and is now presenting it to the Government in Washington, D. C.

Though, as everyone knows, you are in these days heavily burdened with State affairs, still may I hope you will kindly appoint some one to hear the facts which Mr. Wellcome can present, and that this Christian mission may yet be rescued from utter ruin and God's gracious work honored.

Your very gratefully,

WILLIAM DUNCAN.

Upon receipt of this letter from Father Duncan it was formally referred by the White House to the Department of the Interior, where it was handled by Joseph J. Cotter, secretary to Mr. Lane, who forwarded it to P. P. Claxton, the same Commissioner of Education who had assured Gen. John W. Foster, the former Secretary of State, that Father Duncan was insane.

The following letter from P. P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, to Joseph J. Cotter, dated November 13, 1917, is self-explanatory:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, November 13, 1917.

DEAR MR. COTTER: I wish to thank you for sending me Mr. William Duncan's letter of October 24.

I do not think that it is at all necessary to take action regarding the last paragraph of Mr. Duncan's letter.

Cordially yours,

Mr. JOSEPH J. COTTER,

P. P. CLAXTON, Commissioner of Education.

Office of the Secretary,

Department of the Interior.

Thus it was that after Father Duncan's appeal to the President of the United States that someone be appointed to hear the facts of the case had made its perfunctory round, it was suppressed and pigeonholed by the Bureau of Education, and the seal of bureaucracy was placed on the Metlakahtla case.

SECTION 56. WANTON NEGLECT, DAMAGE, AND DESTRUCTION OF MISSION BUILDINGS AND PROPERTY BY REPRESENTATIVES OF BUREAU OF EDUCATION

Invasions unjustifiable. Bureau agents sought removal of reminders of Father Duncan. Faked so-called native petition requests destruction of buildings. Neglect and vandalism. Natives of Metlakahtla petition Secretary of Interior for preservation of buildings. Despoilers rush work of destruction. Destruction accomplished by stealth. Bureau agents permitted deterioration of buildings. Other property injured and destroyed through neglect. Water power pipe line damaged and cannery destroyed. Mission buildings robbed of equipment.

INVASIONS UNJUSTIFIABLE

The invasions of Father Duncan's Christian church and mission should have been stopped even if it had required the Army and Navy of the American Government, because these invaders were striking a blow not only at Christian civilization, but also at the foundation on which this Government was built-freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press. When one of these rights is invaded they are all assailed; for, as Thomas Jefferson said, "whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others."

The humiliating details we are discussing do not concern what happened to a Christian mission in China or Turkey; they concern a Christian church and mission on American soil, illegally seized, wantonly despoiled, and unlawfully retained in custody by an agency of the United States Government charged with the duty of advancing education, which Thomas Jefferson declared to be "the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

Not only did these invaders violate the American Constitution, but their acts of lawlessness were committed by that same Bureau of our Government, which Congress specially directed to promulgate the story of the Declaration of Independence by distributing copies to every public and private school, college, and university in the United States and its Territories and Possessions (Public Act No. 309, 69th Cong., approved May 28, 1926).

In an opinion on the Metlakahtla case, the Honorable James M. Beck, an authority on constitutional law and a former Solicitor General of the United States, declared:

It would be difficult for any fair-minded man to justify in the forum of conscience the act of the Interior Department in forcibly depriving a missionary and his converts of valuable property, to the construction of which the Government had not contributed a penny and which was, in all respects, the lawful property of those who had expended their money and labor upon it. The great commandment, "Thou shalt not steal", the most famous moral statement of property rights, fairly implies that that which a man has constructed with his own money and labor is his property and remains his property until he in some way voluntarily divests himself of it.

How can we transmit to posterity the blessings of liberty and the great fundamentals of a free Government when those entrusted with the education of our children distribute with the one hand the story of the Declaration of Independence-and with the other seize and hold possession of property contrary to all principles of right and justice?

BUREAU AGENTS SOUGHT REMOVAL OF REMINDERS OF FATHER DUNCAN

On various dates from 1914 to the present time, under the custodianship of the Department of the Interior, various portions of the mission property have been illegally, wickedly, and ruthlessly destroyed, or wantonly and negligently permitted to go to waste until the famous Metlakahtla Christian mission has been systematically despoiled and almost destroyed.

The records in the Metlakahtla case show further that these unlawful and dastardly outrages were the result of a settled policy on the part of the Bureau of Education to remove and destroy every trace of the Metlakahtla Christian mission. In their endeavor to weaken Father Duncan's influence and to belittle him, the Bureau agents, in putting into effect their program of vandalism, sought the removal of all reminders of Father Duncan's success.

On December 7, 1920, Hawkesworth wrote a letter to Lopp, in which, after voicing some criticism of the repairs that the Duncan trustees were making on the church building, he suggested that it be taken out of the hands of the Metlakahtla Christian Church and given into the hands of trustees politically elected, to be rented as they saw fit "until such time as it goes to pieces through natural decay."

FAKED SO-CALLED NATIVE PETITION REQUESTS DESTRUCTION OF BUILDINGS

The self-serving agents of the Bureau of Education and the constantly plotting and covetous Edward Marsden, fearful lest they be censured for suggesting the destruction of the mission buildings, which were still in sound structural condition, early sought to screen themselves from blame by shifting the responsibility for this vandalism to the shoulders of some of Father Duncan's former followers who had been alienated from him through the machinations of these schemers.

To accomplish this a faked so-called native petition, dated July 2, 1914, misdescribing these buildings and addressed to the Secretary of the Interior, was drafted by Marsden, requesting—

The demolition of one or two of the old, odd-shaped buildings

NEGLECT AND VANDALISM

*

town

The desire of the Government's agents to secure the removal of these appealing reminders of Father Duncan was revealed by the fact that William G. Beattie, its industrial director at Metlakahtla, forwarded the petition just mentioned to the Secretary of the Interior on July 6, 1914, with his "most" hearty endorsement; and that they were at that time otherwise threateningly manifesting their intention to destroy the mission buildings is shown by the further fact that the Commissioner of Education thought it necessary to restrain them when he said in his letter of September 17, 1914, to Beattie:

I suggest that we should, if possible, avoid tearing down the school building which now stands on the lot which has been set aside in Metlakahtla for educational purposes under the Bureau of Education;