p. 1 - As if it were not enough that Greeks are divided politically on account of the unpatriotic attitude of the deposed king, fate has decreed that they shall also be divided ecclesiastically. One calamity upon another! It is fated that the Greek shall not live without dissension. Yesterday it was dissension about the State; to-day it is dissension about the Church.

The Greek community of the South Side is in the throes of dissolution. For a long time the Satanic propaganda of the deposed King ate through the vitals of this populous and progressive body of Greeks. And the result is the present humiliation which afflicts the church and the threatened corruption of the community if the causes are not removed very soon.

The Rasputinian Synod of the Church of Greece in Athens, dominated by the puppet King, who serves the interest of his master, the Kaiser, has issued encyclicals to the Greek clergy in America exhorting them to be faithful to the 2King and to his Church, the Church of Greece. And those priests who dare to disobey the orders of Theocretos, president of the Rasputinian Synod, are either unfrocked or transferred to another church where no vacancy exists for the purpose of humiliating the disobedient clergymen.

And one of these victims is the pious and very much esteemed Reverend Father Prousianos of the South Side church, who was ordered to go to Boston, where there is no vacancy. The Reverend Father Prousianos, complying with the request of the community council, refused to go. Of course disobedience of a priest to the ecclesiastical authority is rebellion against the Church, and consequently the rebellious clergyman must be punished.

All this is very well, and evevybody acknowledges the seriousness of the situation. But the ecclesiastical authority of Greece was under the domination of the King and his Germanic propaganda. Theocretos' Synod under Constantine's pressure excommunicated and anathematized Eleutherios Venizelos as a traitor to the State. Greek communities in America, on the other hand, denounced King Constantine as a traitor to Greece and resolved to endorse Venizelos's policies, proclaiming him the savior of Greece.

Greek communities in America pay their priests out of their own pockets, and consequently they become employers, and the priests are employees. In this way a priest, who supposedly must be free of political partisanship, is involuntarily thrown into the arena of politics. When people are divided, the poor priests, of necessity, must side one way or the other. Thus priests who are directed by their communities to follow Venizelos are classified as uncanonical because they disobey the order of the dominated Church, and on the other hand those who obey the order of the Church, dominated by the King, are classfied as traitors to Greece, cowards, servitors, Germanophiles, and unpatriotic Greeks and many other epithets are applied to them by the opposition.

The poor priests are between two fires. Whichever way they go, they are bound to be wrong and to become the victims of an appalling storm of vituperation and invective flung at them by either the Venizelists or the Royalists.

In the present anomalous situation neither the clergy nor the laymen are to blame. The Synod of the Church of Greece, which became Rasputinian, is alone 4to blame. The Greek Church never before in its history, in spite of outside influence or pressure brought to bear, swerved from its course as it has done now in the dark days of the Crown. The Greek Church in the past, remaining true and not deviating from its principles, maintained its dignity, integrity, and solemnity even under the bestiality and atrocious tyranny of the unspeakable Turk. The pillar of Christendom lost oceans of blood but never before surrendered its Christian scepter to a reeling monarch, tyrant, or despot.

Of course here in the present case I must make a distinction. When we refer to the Greek Church the reference includes all the Greek churches in the world and their Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which is the head and sovereign authority of all the Greek Orthodox churches the world over, including many nations besides Greece. The jurisdiction of the Greek churches in North and South America was given, not long ago, by the Ecumenical Patriarch to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. This present Synod, presided over by Theocletos, is the cause of the prevalent dissension among the Greeks in America because it chose to serve the interests of the King and his German propaganda instead of serving the interests of the nation as a whole. So our 5reference to the Greek Church is, in this case, directed at the Rasputinian Synod of Greece and not at the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which for centuries has stood out as the labarum of true Christianity.

The division of the people and of their churches will remain and will become disastrous unless the present Synod of the Church of Greece is replaced by another, and the dignity, integrity, and sovereign power of the Church are restored.

The royal propaganda in the Greek community of the South Side left nothing undone to divide the community into two fanatical camps. Some of the leaders of the Royalists are very well known to the publisher of this paper, and for the interest of the Greek name in general he advises them for the last time to be ashamed to permit themselves and their blind followers to act contrary to reason, decency, and honor, and deliberately or otherwise to conspire against the Government of the United States. Shame on you, fellow-Greeks! Do you not know, or do you pretend not to know, that the United States of America, our country and our life, is at war with the Central Powers? Do you 6not know that your Royalist propaganda is German propaganda, that thus you are conspiring against the United States, in the interest of its enemies? Shame on you again! For the last time we send out this counsel, and if it is not heeded, it will be the sacred duty of this paper to inform the Government of the United States of your satanic activities and of your anti-Americanism. You are able to deceive your uninformed and innocent followers, but, we inform you, you cannot deceive the Government.

This Greek propaganda in Chicago must cease at once; clergy and laymen must be united as one body in support of our adopted country. And undoubtedly the Venizelos Government in Greece will replace the president of the Synod, Theocletos, and his kind, and harmony and unity will reign again.