A. J. Muste

“ But what cannot, it seems to me, be successfully denied is that today totalitarianism, depersonalization, conscription, war, and the conscripting, war-making power-state are inextricably linked together. They constitute a whole, a “system.” It is a disease, a creeping paralysis, which affects all nations, on both sides of the global conflict. ”

“ The Gospel of reconciliation will be preached with a new freedom and power when the preachers have broken decisively with American militarism. It can surely not be preached at all in Communist lands by those who have not made that break. It will be when we have gotten off the back of what someone has called the wild elephant of militarism and conscription on to the solid ground of freedom, and only then, that we shall be able to live and work constructively. ”

“ We put aside for the time being certain questions to which we shall return as to what the act of registration itself implies in the context of conscription for atomic and biological war. Here we emphasize that once a man has appealed to the State to permit him to remain in his job and has been granted such permission, it is not exactly the same job as it was before. Others will not be given the same permission, and he should not evade the question whether he can acquiesce in and to a degree benefit from such discrimination. ”

“ Thus the fathers immolate the sons, the older generation immolates the younger, on the altar of Moloch. What God centuries ago forbade Abraham to do even to his own son—“Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him”—this we do by decree to the entire youth of a nation. ”

“ Our generation will not return to a condition under which every man may sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid, unless there are those who are willing to pay the high cost of redemption and deliverance from a regime of regimentation, terror and war.
Finally, it is of crucial importance that we should understand that for the individual to pit himself in Holy Disobedience against the war-making and conscripting State, wherever it or he be located, is not an act of despair or defeatism. ”

“ Thus to embrace Holy Disobedience is not to substitute Resistance for Reconciliation. It is to practice both Reconciliation and Resistance. In so far as we help to build up or smooth the way for American militarism and the regimentation which accompanies it, we are certainly not practising [31] reconciliation toward the millions of people in the Communist bloc countries against whom American war preparations, including conscription, are directed. ”

“ Precisely in a day when the individual appears to be utterly helpless, to “have no choice,” when the aim of the “system” is to convince him that he is helpless as an individual and that the only way to meet regimentation is by regimentation, there is absolutely no hope save in going back to the beginning. The human being, the child of God, must assert his humanity and his sonship again. ”

“ Our sole safeguard against the very real danger of a reversion to barbarism is the kind of morality which compels the individual conscience, be the group right or wrong. The individual conscience against the atomic bomb? ”

“ In the first place, non-resistance to an evil should not mean cooperation with it. “Depart from evil and do good,” is the law. Pacifists in general, and Christian pacifists in particular, have to ask whether in conforming with any of the provisions of a draft law and especially in rendering conscript service regarded as of “national importance” by a war-making state, they are not helping conscription to run smoothly, helping thus to force conscription on millions of youth and thus in turn promoting war, since conscription is an integral part of an armaments race. ”

“ In other words, while we spend a good deal of time arguing that COs should have some choice other than the army or jail, we are probably moving into a time when that will essentially be the only choice that members of minorities, including pacifists, have. It would seem then that our thought and energy should be devoted to two issues: whether and how this trend toward totalitarianism can be halted and how we may prepare and discipline ourselves to meet the tests which our fellow-pacifists in some other lands have already had to meet? ”

“ Any one in the position of a counselor to an individual will want to avoid “psychological pressuring” to induce him to take this or that course, and will strive to help the young man to make his own decision, in accord with his own inner need and conviction, rather than to impose a decision upon him. But I conceive that it would be my duty as a Christian minister to have this same attitude in talking and praying with a young man who was going into the Army. ”

“ To sum up this first part of our analysis, it is my conclusion that the one consistent attitude toward conscript alternative service from the standpoint of Christian vocation—if one accepts such work at all—is that which regards submission or non-resistance to the evil which the State imposes upon him when it interferes with his normal occupation, as the vocation or duty of the Christian man. Any other attitude seems to me to involve a considerable measure of rationalization. ”

“ It is certainly incumbent on us to search our hearts as to whether this rush to get into other jobs and to go to distant places may be motivated by fear of men and of the authorities, by a desire to be thought well of, by a dread of the social displeasure or actual legal punishment which might fall upon us if we were to continue quietly at the work which we had been doing, living in the home town when war fever, if not outright hysteria, seizes the people. ”

“ He must understand that this naked human being is the one real thing in the face of the mechanics and the mechanized institutions of our age. He, by the grace of God, is the seed of all the human life there will be on earth in the future, though he may have to die to make that harvest possible. ”

“ As pacifists we are opposed to all war. Even if recruitment were entirely on a voluntary basis, we would be opposed. It seems to me we might infer from this that we should be a fortiori opposed to military conscription, for here in addition to the factor of war itself, the element of coercion by government enters in, coercion which places young boys in a military regime where they are deprived of freedom of choice in virtually all essential matters. They may not have the slightest interest in the war, yet they are made to kill by order. ”

“ Non-conformity, Holy Disobedience, becomes a virtue and indeed a necessary and indispensable measure of spiritual self-preservation, in a day when the impulse to conform, to acquiesce, to go along, is the instrument which is used to subject men to totalitarian rule and involve them in permanent war. ”

“ To resist this breaking up of orderly family and community life—not to yield to the subtle and insistent pressure to do something different under the tacit assumption that the normal cannot be meaningful—is one of the great services the people who believe in non-violence and reconciliation may render. ”

“ Here I wish to suggest that even if the question is the conscription of non-pacifist youth, it is a fundamental mistake for pacifists ever to relent in their opposition to this evil, ever to devote their energies primarily to securing provisions for COs in a draft law or to [26] lapse into a feeling that conscription has somehow become more palatable if such provisions are made by the State. It is not our own children if we are pacifist parents, our fellow-pacifist Christians if we are churchmen, about whom we should be most deeply concerned. ”

“ Some one may at this point reflect that earlier in this paper I counseled against people too readily leaving the normal path of life and that I am now counseling a policy which is certain to create disturbance in individual lives, families and communities. That is so. But to depart from the common way in response or reaction to a conscription law, in the attempt to adapt oneself to an abnormal state of society, is one thing. To leave father, mother, wife, child, yea and one’s own life also, at the behest of Christ or conscience is quite another. ”

“ For it becomes daily clearer that political and military leaders pay virtually no attention to protests against current foreign [33] policy and pleas for peace when they know perfectly well that when it comes to a showdown, all but a handful of the millions of protesters will “go along” with the war to which the policy leads. All but a handful will submit to conscription. Few of the protesters will so much as risk their jobs in the cause of “peace.” The failure of the policymakers to change their course does not, save perhaps in very rare instances, mean that they are evil men who want war. ”

“ A number of 18-year-olds, it is pointed out, have a [18] strong aversion to war and a leaning toward pacifism. They are, however, emotionally immature. If they have no choice but the army or jail all but a few will choose the army and are likely to be lost to the pacifist cause. They could be held and possibly even developed into a radical pacifist position, if they had a third choice, namely, civilian service. On the other hand, the youth who in the absence of such a third possibility, chooses prison rather than the army may suffer grave psychological injury. ”

“ They feel, as indeed they so often declare in crucial moments, that the issues are so complicated, the forces arrayed against them so strong, that they “have no choice” but to add another score of billions to the military budget, and so on and on. ”

“ God calls us to love and serve our fellowmen. This is for Christians and other pacifists a matter of vocation. If, then, the government in war time, or under peace time conscription, requires some service of mercy or construction from us, which is not obviously and directly a part of war-making, we will raise no [7] objection to undertaking such work. We may even seek, and shall certainly be grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate our desire to be good citizens and helpful members of society, and to show a reconciling spirit. ”

“ The white man or the Gentile might actually believe in discrimination or not regard it too seriously when the discrimination is in his favor. But for the religious man it should surely be a central and indispensable part of his faith that discrimination, most of all where two men acting in obedience to conscience are involved, is unthinkable and that if there is discrimination, he cannot be the beneficiary of it. ”

“ I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency of the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself ... ”

“ If non-resistant pacifists get off the high ground of patiently bowing the neck to Caesar’s yoke, letting Caesar inflict the scourge of civilian conscript service upon them, they are immediately on the low ground of bargaining for indulgence for a small and, in that view, not too principled or brave a minority. ”

“ It may be, therefore, that there are some ministers and other older people who should examine themselves as to whether their feelings in the matter under discussion are due to the fact that they themselves might find life in the community or in the church very uncomfortable if they were suspected of having influenced a youth to take a radical anti-draft stand, whereas all men will speak well of them—or at least not too ill—if they have helped, or at least not hindered, young Christians in adjusting themselves to the idea of going into the army. ”

“ For as soon as you have, by simple decree, created millions of French soldiers, it will be held as proven that you have sovereign rights over the persons and the goods of every Frenchman, that there are no rights higher than yours and where, then, will your usurpations stop? ”

“ Service of men, fellowship with them, on the one hand, and non-cooperation with evil, witness against injustice, non-violent resistance, on the other hand, are both essential in the pacifist way of life. ”

“ Nor are we practising love toward our own fellow-citizens, including also the multitude of youths in the armed services, if, against our deepest insight, we help to fasten the chains of conscription and war upon them. ”

“ Advocacy of alternative service for the teen-age CO is based on considerations relating to the future of the pacifist movement, as well as on the effect on the COs themselves. It is argued that if the only choice young pacifists have is the army or jail, there will be very few pacifists. This argument was not, however, first advanced when the draft age was lowered. It was often heard during World War II when most COs were older and more seasoned. It has always impressed [23] me as a dubious argument and I wonder where it leads us. ”

“ He must exercise the choice which he no longer has as something accorded him by society, which he “naked, weaponless, armourless, without shield or spear, but only with naked hands and open eyes” must create again. ”

“ Certainly the fact that a young man of draft age has not been following a meaningful or Christian vocation does not automatically or by itself constitute a warrant for submitting to conscription for so-called civilian service. ”

“ In conferences with Selective Service officials efforts are being made to avoid some of the features of the war-time Civilian Public Service set-up which deeply troubled a good many Friends—such as the close supervision by military men allegedly functioning as civilians and the undesirable and frustrating character of much of the work to which IV-E men were assigned. Even if substantial concessions are obtained, it will be well for us to be on guard against idealizing the situation. ”

“ A Christian farmer, factory worker, miner, teacher, raising a family and giving an example of unselfishness to his neighbors; his wife maintaining an unobtrusively wholesome Christian home; the children walking in the footsteps of such parents—all these may be following a true Christian vocation.
Then war or peace time conscription comes along. If these people are pacifists, they hold that direct participation in war or in combat training is inconsistent with a Christian profession and calling. They must, therefore, refuse such participation. ”