“Too Heavy,” chapter 11 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 11: “Too Heavy”
Chapter 11
Too Heavy
On the evening of August 6, 1914, Arthur Horbach, a seventeen-year-old Latter-day Saint in Liège, Belgium, took cover as German artillery rained down on his city.1 Earlier that summer, a Serbian nationalist had assassinated the heir to Europe’s Austro-Hungarian Empire, provoking war between Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia. Soon allies of both nations joined in the fight. By early August, Serbia, Russia, France, Belgium, and Great Britain were at war with Austria-Hungary and Germany.2
Belgium, originally a neutral nation, entered the conflict when German troops launched an invasion of France through Belgium’s eastern border. The city of Liège posed the first significant obstacle for the invading army. Twelve forts surrounded the city, and at first they had kept the Germans at bay. But the assault was unrelenting. Thousands of troops assailed the forts, and the Belgian defenses began to crumble.
German troops soon breached the Belgian line and captured Liège. Attackers swept through the city, looting homes, burning buildings, and shooting civilians.3 Arthur and his mother, Mathilde, somehow evaded the troops. The fifty or so other Saints in Liège were all in danger, just like Arthur, but it was the missionaries serving in the city that kept coming to his mind. He spent much of his time with the missionaries and knew them well. Had they been hurt in the attack?4
Days passed. Arthur and his mother lived in terror of the German troops and the heavy artillery bombarding the uncaptured forts. Latter-day Saints were scattered throughout the city, with several branch members huddled together in a cellar. A group of soldiers had moved into the rented hall where the branch normally met. Fortunately, Tonia Deguée, an elderly member of the Church who spoke fluent German, quickly gained the trust of the invading soldiers and persuaded them not to damage the hall or its furniture.5
Eventually, Arthur learned that the elders were safe. The American consulate in Liège had ordered them to evacuate the city on the first day of the bombing, but road blockades had kept them from getting word of their removal to Arthur or anyone else.6
Missionaries across continental Europe, in fact, were leaving their fields of labor. “Release all German and French missionaries,” President Joseph F. Smith had cabled European mission leaders, “and exercise due discretion about transferring all missionaries from neutral as well as belligerent countries to United States missions.”7
Arthur felt the loss of the missionaries immediately. In the six years since he and Mathilde joined the Church, their branch had depended on missionaries for priesthood leadership. Now the only priesthood holders in the branch were a teacher and two deacons—one of whom was Arthur himself. He had received the Aaronic Priesthood less than a year earlier.8
After Liège fell into German hands, the branch all but stopped meeting together. The soldiers who occupied their meeting hall moved on, but the landlord refused to let the branch meet there. Every day was a struggle for survival. Food and everyday supplies became scarce. Hunger and misery pervaded the city.
Arthur knew that everyone in the branch longed to gather for prayer and comfort. But without a meetinghouse and someone authorized to bless the sacrament, how could they resume functioning as a branch?9
As war spread through Europe, Ida Smith wondered how she could help the British soldiers leaving for the battlefield. She and her husband, apostle Hyrum M. Smith, had moved to Liverpool with their four children about a year earlier. Hyrum, the oldest son of Joseph F. Smith, was serving as president of the European Mission. Ida supported the work, but she had decided not to take an active part in missionary labor—or any service outside their small branch of the Church—while she still had young children at home.10
One afternoon, though, Ida saw a notice written by Liverpool’s lady mayoress, Winifred Rathbone, calling on women’s organizations in the city to join other female volunteers throughout Great Britain in knitting warm clothes for soldiers. Ida knew that hundreds of thousands of British soldiers, including some Latter-day Saints, would desperately need the clothes to survive the coming winter. But she felt useless.
“What can I do to assist this woman?” she asked herself. “I have never knit a stitch in my life.”11
A voice then seemed to speak to her: “Now is the time for the Relief Societies of the European Mission to step to the front and offer their services.” The words impressed Ida deeply. Liverpool’s Relief Society was small—eight active members, at most—but the women could do their part.12
With the help of the mission secretary, Ida arranged to meet with Winifred the next day. Her heart raced prior to the meeting. “Why do you go to the lady mayoress and offer your services with a handful of women?” she scolded herself. “Why don’t you go home and mind your own business?”
But Ida swept the thought away. The Lord was with her. In her hand she carried a tiny card printed with information about the Relief Society and its purpose. “If I can just hand her this card,” she told herself, “I am going.”13
The lady mayoress’s office was in a large building that served as the headquarters for her charity work. Winifred received Ida graciously, and Ida’s nervousness quickly subsided as she told the lady mayoress about the Relief Society, the Church, and the small Liverpool Branch. “I have come to offer our services in helping to sew or knit for the soldiers,” she explained.14
Having delivered her message, Ida was about to leave, but Winifred stopped her. “I would like you to go through our building,” she said, “and see how our work is carried on.” She led Ida through seventeen large rooms, each filled with a dozen or so women hard at work. She then brought Ida into her private office. “This is the way we keep our records,” she said, showing her a ledger. “Everything you do for us will be recorded in this book as work being done by the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Ida thanked her. “We will do the best that we can,” she said.15
That fall, the Relief Society in Liverpool knitted. They also recruited their friends and neighbors to help. After a week, they numbered around forty knitters. Ida herself learned to knit and began work on several large mufflers. At the request of the Relief Society general presidency in Salt Lake City, Ida’s husband set her apart as the president of the Relief Societies in the European Mission. With continental Europe unsafe for travel, she began traveling throughout Britain to organize new Relief Societies, train their members, and recruit them to knit for the soldiers. Ultimately, the women created and distributed some twenty-three hundred handmade articles of clothing.16
Ida and other Relief Society members received letters and commendations from important officials all over Great Britain. “If all the women’s organizations in Great Britain would work like the Latter-day Saint women are doing,” one woman wrote, “our soldiers would want for nothing.”17
“The reports of the carnage and destruction going on in Europe are sickening and deplorable,” President Joseph F. Smith wrote Hyrum M. Smith on November 7, 1914. Two months earlier, French and British troops had stopped the advance of German forces in a bloody battle at the Marne River in northeastern France. More battles had followed, but neither side had succeeded in striking a decisive blow. Now the armies were hunkered down in a spider’s web of defensive trenches across the French countryside.18
The war was spreading throughout eastern Europe, into Africa and the Middle East, and as far away as the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Newspaper accounts of the conflict brought to President Smith’s mind the Lord’s 1832 revelation on war. “Then war shall be poured out upon all nations,” it foretold. “And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn.”19
On Sunday, January 24, 1915, the prophet called on Church members in the United States and Canada to contribute to a relief fund for needy European Saints. “This is the most direct manner of reaching those members of the Church who are in need of help,” he declared.20 In response, more than seven hundred wards and branches collected money and sent donations to the office of the Presiding Bishopric of the Church. The money was then sent to the mission office in Liverpool for Hyrum to distribute among the European Saints, regardless of which side they supported in the war.21
A few months later, President Smith traveled with presiding bishop Charles W. Nibley to inspect a more peaceful corner of the world: the Church’s six-thousand-acre farm in Laie, Hawaii.22 In Honolulu, the two men met up with apostle and United States senator Reed Smoot, who had come to the islands with his wife, Allie, to improve her health and visit the Hawaiian legislature. Along with Abraham and Minerva Fernandez, who had hosted George Q. Cannon during his final visit to the islands, they traveled to Laie and enjoyed a celebratory feast with four hundred Saints.23
Over the next few days, as President Smith visited with Church members and toured the farm, he was pleased to see the Hawaiian Saints thriving spiritually and temporally. Nearly ten thousand Saints now lived on the islands. The Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price had recently been published in Hawaiian. More than fifty Latter-day Saint meetinghouses dotted the islands, and Laie itself had a Church-owned school. The Saints in Laie had also beautified their yards and streets with flowers and sturdy trees.24
The Church was expanding in other parts of Oceania as well. The Book of Mormon and other Church materials were now available in Māori, Samoan, and Tahitian. The Tahiti Mission had a printing press and published its own Church periodical in Tahitian, Te Heheuraa Api.25 In Tonga, the Church was once again taking root after being closed to missionary work for more than ten years. Saints in Australia, Samoa, and New Zealand worshipped in strong branches with Relief Societies, Sunday Schools, and choirs. In 1913, the Church also opened the Māori Agricultural College in Hastings, New Zealand. The school trained young men in farming and other vocations.26
On June 1, their last evening in Laie, President Smith walked with Bishop Nibley and Elder Smoot to a meetinghouse at the top of a low hill overlooking the town. The meetinghouse had stood there since 1883. Its name, I Hemolele, meant “Holiness to the Lord,” the same biblical phrase that appeared on the exterior of the Salt Lake Temple.27
Just outside the building, President Smith mentioned to Elder Smoot that he and Bishop Nibley had been discussing the possibility of building an endowment house or a small temple in Laie, since the Church in Hawaii was on strong footing. He suggested moving I Hemolele to another location so a temple could be built on the site.28
Elder Smoot favored the idea. Earlier that week, after attending the funeral of an elderly Saint who had received his endowment years ago in Utah, he’d had a similar thought. For most of its history, the Church had built temples near large populations of Saints. But in 1913, President Smith had dedicated a site for a temple in Cardston, Alberta, Canada, where there were now two stakes. It was the first time plans had been laid to build a temple for Saints who lived far from the main body of the Church.29
“Brethren,” President Smith said to his companions, “I feel impressed to dedicate this ground for the erection of a temple to God, for a place where the peoples of the Pacific Isles can come and do their temple work.” He acknowledged that he had not consulted the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles or the other members of the First Presidency on the matter. “But if you think there would be no objection to it,” he said, “I think now is the time to dedicate the ground.”
Elder Smoot and Bishop Nibley were enthusiastic about the idea, so the prophet offered the dedicatory prayer on the spot.30
By the summer of 1915, the Mexican Revolution no longer posed much of a threat to the Church’s colonies in northern Mexico. Many families had returned to their homes in the colonies and were living in relative peace. Meanwhile, some of the colonists, including Camilla Eyring and her family, chose to remain in the United States.31
But conditions were different in San Marcos, where Rafael Monroy now served as the president of a branch of around forty Saints. On July 17, a group of rebel troops overran the village, set up headquarters in a large house at the center of town, and demanded that Rafael, a prosperous rancher, provide them with beef.32
Hoping to appease the troops, Rafael gave them a cow to slaughter. The rebels were Zapatistas, or followers of Emiliano Zapata, one of several rebel leaders vying for control of Mexico’s government. For months, the Zapatistas had been battling the forces of Venustiano Carranza, or the Carrancistas, in the area around San Marcos. Following the counsel of mission president Rey L. Pratt, Rafael and his fellow Saints had tried to stay out of the fight, hopeful the armies would leave them in peace. Until the rebels arrived, San Marcos had been a haven for Saints displaced by the violence in central Mexico.33
Among the Saints in San Marcos were Rafael’s mother, Jesusita, and wife, Guadalupe, who had both been baptized in July 1913. President Pratt, who had left for the United States, continued to assist the branch from afar.34
After Rafael delivered the cow, some of his neighbors began talking to the rebels. One neighbor, Andres Reyes, was unhappy about the growing number of Saints in the area. Many Mexicans opposed foreign influences in their country, and Andres and others in town resented the Monroys for leaving their Catholic faith to join a church widely associated with the United States. The fact that the oldest Monroy sister, Natalia, had married an American only made the town more suspicious of the family.35
Hearing this, the soldiers followed Rafael back to his house and arrested him just as he was sitting down for breakfast. They ordered him to open the family store, claiming that he and his American brother-in-law were colonels in the Carrancista army who were hiding weapons to use against the Zapatistas.
At the store, Rafael and the troops found Vicente Morales, another Church member, doing odd jobs. Believing he was also a Carrancista soldier, the troops arrested him and began ransacking the store as they searched for weapons. Rafael and Vicente pleaded their innocence, assuring the troops that they were not the enemy.
The soldiers did not believe them. “If you do not give us your weapons,” they said, “we will hang you from the highest tree.”36
When the Zapatistas forced Rafael out of the house, his sisters Jovita and Lupe ran after them. Jovita reached the soldiers first, but they ignored her entreaties. Lupe arrived just in time to see the rebels seize her sister. “Lupe,” Jovita cried, “they are arresting me!”
By now, a crowd had formed around Rafael and Vicente. Some people were holding ropes in their hands and shouting, “Hang them!”
“What are you going to do? My brother is innocent,” Lupe said. “Tear down the house if you need to, and you won’t find any weapons.”
Someone in the crowd called out to arrest her too. Lupe dashed to a nearby tree and clung to it as tightly as she could, but the rebel soldiers grabbed her and easily tore her away.37 They then returned to the Monroy house and arrested Natalia.
The rebels took all three sisters to their headquarters and held them in separate rooms. Outside, some people told the soldiers that Rafael and Vicente were “Mormons” who were corrupting the town with their strange religion. The soldiers had never heard the word before, but they took it to mean something bad. They brought the two men to a tall tree and slung ropes over its strong limbs. Then they placed nooses around their necks. If Rafael and Vicente would abandon their religion and join the Zapatistas, the soldiers said, they would be freed.
“My religion is dearer to me than my life,” Rafael said, “and I cannot forsake it.”
The soldiers pulled the ropes until Rafael and Vicente dangled from their necks and passed out. The rebels then released the ropes, revived the men, and continued to torture them.38
Back at the store, the rebels kept up their search for weapons. Jesusita and Guadalupe insisted there were no weapons. “My son is a peaceful man!” Jesusita said. “If it weren’t so, do you think that you would have found him in his home?” When the soldiers again demanded to see the family’s weapons, the Monroys held out copies of the Book of Mormon and Bible.
“Those aren’t weapons,” the rebels said.
In the afternoon, at the Zapatista headquarters, the rebels put the Monroy siblings together in the same room. Lupe was shocked at Rafael’s appearance. “Rafa, you have blood on your neck,” she told him. Rafael walked to a sink in the room and washed his face. He looked calm and did not seem angry, despite everything that had happened.
Later, Jesusita brought her children food. Before she left, Rafael handed her a letter he had written to a Zapatista captain he knew, seeking his help to prove his innocence. Jesusita took the letter and went looking for the captain. The Monroys and Vicente then blessed their meal, but before they could eat, they heard the clatter of footsteps and weapons outside the door. The soldiers called for Rafael and Vicente, and the two men exited the room. At the door, Rafael asked Natalia to come out with him, but the guards pushed her back inside.
The sisters looked at one another, their hearts pounding. Silence settled over them. Then gunshots split the night.39
Hyrum M. Smith felt an incredible weight on his shoulders as he contemplated the situation in Europe. As European Mission president, he had promptly followed the First Presidency’s directive and pulled missionaries out of Germany and France soon after the war began. But he had been unsure what to do with missionaries in neutral countries or areas without fierce fighting, like Great Britain. The First Presidency had given him few instructions on how to proceed. “We leave the question for you to decide,” they had written.40
Hyrum had met twice with the elders in the mission office to discuss the right course of action. After some discussion, they had agreed to release only missionaries in continental Europe, leaving the missionaries in Great Britain to finish their missions as planned. Hyrum had then written to mission presidents on the continent, instructing them and their assistants to remain at their posts to maintain the Church in their areas. The rest of the missionaries were to evacuate.41
Now, one year later, newspapers were filled with stories about the Germans attacking British naval and passenger ships. In May 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the Lusitania, a British ocean liner, killing nearly twelve hundred civilians and crew. Three months later, the Germans sank another British ocean liner, the Arabic, off the coast of Ireland. On board the ship was a returning missionary who nearly died in the attack.
As the man responsible for arranging passage for missionaries and emigrating Saints crossing the Atlantic, Hyrum struggled to know how best to respond to the crisis.42 Many of the American missionaries in Britain were so eager to return home that they were willing to take any risk to get there. Emigrating Saints, likewise, often put their desire to gather to Utah ahead of their personal safety.
To complicate matters, the Church had contracted with a British shipping company to handle all Church-related travel across the Atlantic. Unable to see an honest way out of the contract, Hyrum believed the mission office could not legally book passage for Saints on American ships, even though they were deemed safer because the United States was not at war with Germany.
On August 20, 1915, he wrote to the First Presidency about the dilemma. He had already booked passage for several missionaries and emigrating Saints on the Scandinavian, a British-Canadian ship departing Liverpool on September 17. But now he questioned if he should let them go.
“To bear the responsibility alone is almost too heavy for my shoulders,” he wrote. “I most humbly plead that you will counsel me upon this matter, so that I may feel that I am acting entirely in harmony with your wishes.”43
A week before the Scandinavian was scheduled to leave, Hyrum received a cable from the First Presidency: “Emigrants coming in belligerent ships must assume personal responsibility.” If Saints chose to travel under a British flag, then they did so at their own risk.44
Hyrum weighed his options carefully. The First Presidency clearly did not want to encourage Saints to travel on ships that could be attacked. Yet the safer American ships were not available to Saints unless they chose to travel independently of the Church. And even if they did so, the high price of passage on an American ship might prohibit them from making the voyage.
“I feel loath to risk our Saints on the ocean,” he wrote in his journal. But he knew he had to do something. “Inasmuch as we are not instructed not to proceed,” he wrote, “we will go on with it and trust in the Lord.”45
On September 17, 1915, Hyrum said farewell to four missionaries and thirty-seven emigrants on the Scandinavian.46 Then all he could do was wait for word of its safe arrival at its destination.