Schwartzenstruber on Schultzen

Amusement, then approval, was the reaction of smart, cosmopolitan Buenos Aires last week to Amos Schwartzenstruber. A potent member of the Mennonite Mission Board of the U. S. and Canada is Mr. Schwartzenstruber. He reached Buenos Aires after an inspection tour through the Mennonite colony in Gran Chaco ("Great Hunting-Ground"), the remote and disputed region over which Bolivia and Paraguay were recently at war de facto if not de jure (TIME, Dec. 24).

"The trials of our colonists have undoubtedly been great," said grave Amos Schwartzenstruber, "but I have been told by all the Schultzen that conditions are improving."

"And who," asked a reporter, "are the Schultzen?"

"Each village in the colony has its Schultz, or head man," explained Mennonite Schwartzenstruber, "and the colony's affairs as a whole are regulated either by a council of the Schultzen or by a mass meeting of the whole community which now numbers 1,368 adults."

The colony was founded (TIME, Dec. 27, 1926) by 1,743 Mennonites from Canada. Of these, 200 have returned to Canada and 175 have died. Police or civil courts are considered superfluous by the Mennonites who deal with an offender simply by deciding at a religious mass meeting to boycott any brother who has seriously transgressed. Since the colony is 43 miles by ox cart from the nearest town, Puerto Casado, Paraguay, such boycotting is a most effective weapon of Justice.

Laboring in the wilderness on a tract of land eight by 27 miles in dimensions, the doughty Mennonites have already constructed 14 adobe villages. They enjoy local autonomy and cannot be called upon to take up arms. Among themselves they speak German, are rapidly forgetting the English they learned in Canada, and are slowly picking up a little Spanish. At present the Mennonite Colony is almost the only pure Democracy in America.

The original Mennonite was a Dutchman, Menno Simon, born while. Columbus was discovering America. He held that baptism may be performed only on the believer and recognized no authority except the Bible and one's enlightened conscience. During the 16th and 17th centuries, persecution of the Mennonites for such subversion doctrines was carried on in several European countries to the extreme of exterminating every Mennonite man, woman, and child who could be caught. Gradually, however the persistence of the sect triumphed, and in 1792 the won exemption from military service in France, though Napoleon pressed then into hospital service during his campaigns. One branch of the Mennnonites holds that excommunication of husband or wife dissolves a marriage and that it is a grievious sin to use a razor or secure one's clothes by buttons Thus their men are all bearded and adept at doing and undoing hooks and eyes.