Pioneering a new thing can bring many incredible adventures, dark hours, many searchings of the soul. If the attacks were so violent, the things said and done so bitterly done, one began to wonder if perhaps he might not be doing wrongs he knew nothing about. But in the end, having done my own best to be decent and to help, I could ask, "Why feel guilty?"

The very extremity of these attacks upon me eventually started the public to ask, "If he is so bad, where is the evidence of crime?" There was so little evidence that at least two British government leaders were discredited. The tide had finally turned. The opponents had gone too far.

The general public began to ask, "What is this Scientology? Who are these Scientologists?"

They found in general that Scientology organizations and Scientologists run at a level of sincerity and decency considerably above the average. Tried and tempered in the continual fire of reactionary resistance, the Scientologist was forced to develop organizational technology far in excess of ordinary organizations, just to stay alive.

A heavily censured technology, and those who applied it could not afford to fail and the caldron in which Scientologists lived eventually brought technical application to a level of expertness that exceeded normal demands. Scientology beneficial results ran well above 95 percent effective.

Counteracting skilled opposition forces, Scientologists began to learn themselves to stand steady under fire and survive under the most perilous conditions.

Year after year after year they waited for the world to recognize that they could do what they said they could do -- help man to communicate better, to handle his own problems, to be more able at his job and to live a happier life.

They heard themselves accused of breaking up marriages when they were proud of the thousands they had saved for every one lost.

Living on a planet that was already not too noted for justice, they developed their own milder justice.

And under fire and accused of the strangest crimes, they yet themselves lived better lives and reached out to their fellows and went on.

That, above all else, is the greatest testimony there is to Scientology. The Scientologist, in the face of everything, stood firm, handled the day, carried on and grew.

Possibly this itself was something to make the reactionary afraid. These were people, these Scientologists, who did not stop, who didn’t suffer in defeat and who, apparently defeated, just kept on and even laughed and were happy as they fought.

This must have seemed a new way of life, a way outside the control of scowling elders, and the upraised whips of the old school.