Pacifism
is a belief that violence, even in self-defence, is unjustifiable
under any conditions and that negotiation is preferable to war as
a means of solving disputes. In the First World
War pacifists became known as conscientious
objectors. Some pacifists refused to fight but about 7,000 were
willing to help the country by working in non-combat roles such as
medical orderlies, stretcher-bearers,
ambulance drivers, cooks or labourers. This included Kingsley
Martin, Stanley Spencer, E.
M. Forster, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
and Christopher Nevinson.
Some pacifists, known as absolute conscientious objectors, rejected
any involvement in the war. People who fell into this category included
Clifford Allen, Fenner
Brockway, Bertrand Russell, and E.
D. Morel. Some absolutists such as Allen and Brockway formed the
pressure group, the No-Conscription Fellowship
(NCF).
After the passing of the Military Service
Act in 1916, the No-Conscription Fellowship
mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment and imprisonment
of conscientious objectors. By the end of the war, 8,608 appeared
before Military Tribunals. Over 4,500 went sent to do work of national
importance such as farming. However, 528 were sentenced to severe
penalties. This included 17 who were sentenced to death (afterwards
commuted), 142 to life imprisonment, three to 50 years' imprisonment,
four to 40 years and 57 to 25 years. Conditions were made very hard
for the conscientious objectors and sixty-nine of them died in prison.
In April 1939 Neville Chamberlain
announced a return to conscription. However, lessons had been learned
from the First World War. Tribunals were set
up to deal with claims for exemption on conscience grounds, but this
time there were no military representatives acting as prosecutors.
Most importantly, this time the Tribunals were willing to grant absolute
exemption. Over the next six years a total of 59,192 people in Britain
registered as Conscientious Objectors (COs).
In 1940, with the British government expecting a German invasion at
any time, public opinion turned against Conscientious Objectors. Over
70 city councils dismissed COs who were working for them. In some
places of employment workers refused to work alongside COs. In other
cases, employers sacked all those registered as pacifists.
During the Vietnam War the United States
had to introduce conscription and between 1963 and 1973 over 9,000
men were prosecuted for refusing to be drafted into the US Army. Some
young men burnt their draft cards in public while others left the
country rather than serve in the war.
Kathe
Kollwitz was a pacifist who lost
a son
and grandson in the two European wars.
Kollwitz produced Killed in Action in 1921.
(1)
Jane
Addams, speech at Carnegie Hall (9th July, 1915)
The first thing which was striking is this, that the same causes and
reasons for the war were heard everywhere. Each warring nation solemnly
assured you it is fighting under the impulse of self-defense.
Another thing which we found very striking was that in practically
all of the foreign offices the men said that a nation at war cannot
make negotiations and that a nation at war cannot even express willingness
to receive negotiations, for if it does either, the enemy will at
once construe it as a symptom of weakness.
Generally speaking, we heard everywhere that this war was an old man's
war; that the young men who were dying, the young men who were doing
the fighting, were not the men who wanted the war, and were not the
men who believed in the war; that someone in church and state, somewhere
in the high places of society, the elderly people, the middle-aged
people, had established themselves and had convinced themselves that
this was a righteous war, that this war must be fought out, and the
young men must do the fighting.
(2)
John
Haynes Holmes, A Statement
to my People on the Eve of the War (3rd April, 1917)
When hostilities
begin, it is universally assumed that there is but a single service
which a loyal citizen can render to the state: that of bearing arms
and killing the enemy. Will you understand me if I say, humbly and
regretfully, that this I cannot, and will not, do. When, therefore,
there comes a call for volunteers, I shall have to refuse to heed.
When there is an enrollment of citizens for military purposes, I shall
have to refuse to register. When, or if, the system of conscription
is adopted, I shall have to decline to serve. If this means a fine,
I will pay my fine. If this means imprisonment, I will serve my term.
If this means persecution, I will carry my cross. No order of president
or governor, no law of nation or state, no loss of reputation, freedom
or life, will persuade me or force me to this business of killing.
On this issue, for me at least, there is no compromise. Mistaken,
foolish, fanatical, I may be; I will not deny the charge. But false
to my own soul I will not be. Therefore here I stand. God help me!
I cannot do other!
Therefore
would I make it plain that, so long as I am your minister, this Church
will answer no military summons. Other pulpits may preach recruiting
sermons; mine will not. Other parish houses may be turned into drill
halls and rifle ranges; ours will not. Other clergymen may pray to
God for victory for our arms; I will not. In this church, if nowhere
else in all America, the Germans will still be included in the family
of God's children. No word of hatred shall be spoken against them
and no evil fate shall be desired upon them. War may beat upon our
portals, like storm waves on the granite crags; rumors of war may
thrill the atmosphere of this sanctuary as lightning the still air
of a summer night. But so long as I am priest, this altar shall be
consecrated to human brotherhood, and before it shall be offered worship
only to that one God and Father of us all, 'Who hath made of one blood
all nations of men for to dwell together on the face of the earth.
(3)
Jane
Addams, Patriotism and Pacifist
in War Time (16th June, 1917)
This world crisis should be utilized for the creation of an international
government to secure without war, those high ends which they now gallantly
seek to obtain upon the battlefield. With such a creed can the pacifists
of today be accused of selfishness when they urge upon the United
States no isolation, not indifference to moral issues and to the fate
of liberty and democracy, but a strenuous endeavor to lead all nations
of the earth into an organized international life worthy of civilized
men.
(4)
Fenner Brockway was sent to prison in
1916 for refusing to be conscripted. He was one of the most popular
speakers at public meetings organised by pacifists during the First
World War.
Every individual
gives loyalty to something which counts more than anything else in
life. In most men and women this supreme allegiance is inspired by
national patriotism; if their Government becomes involved in a war
it is a matter of course they will support it. The socialist conscientious
objector has a group loyalty which is as powerful to him as the loyalty
of the patriot for his nation. His group is composed of workers of
all lands, the dispossessed, the victims of the present economic system,
whether in peace or war.
(5)
Jessica Mitford developed
pacifist
views during her youth. She explained why in her autobiography,
Hons and Rebels (1960).
Major storms were brewing beyond the confines of
the fortress. Unemployment was rising alarmingly throughout England.
Hunger marches, at first small demonstrations, later involving populations
of whole areas, were reported in the papers. Police and strikers fought
in the streets from London to Birmingham, from Glasgow to Leeds. Great
population centres were designated "distressed areas" by
the Government - which meant areas where there was no prospect of
improvement in the employment situation. The Family Means Test, under
which the dole could be denied any unemployed worker whose relatives
still held jobs, was the subject of violent protest by the Communists,
who gradually succeeded in swinging most of the labour movement into
the fight.
The younger
generation was highly political. They accused the elder statesmen
of the Allied countries of sowing the seeds of a new and more horrible
world war through the Versailles Treaty, the systematic crushing of
Germany, the demands made on the defeated enemy for impossible war
reparations.
Old concepts
of patriotism, flag-waving, jingoism were under violent attack by
the younger writers. The creed of pacifism, born of a determination
to escape the horrors of a new world war, swept the youth.
I responded,
like many another of my generation, by becoming first a convinced
pacifist, then quickly graduating to socialist ideas. I felt as though
I had suddenly stumbled on the solution to a vast puzzle which I had
been clumsily trying to solve for years. Like many another suddenly
confronted for the first time with a rational explanation of society,
I was bursting with excitement about it. I longed to meet some flesh-and-blood
exponents of this new philosophy.
(6)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, a pacifist, was
active in the campaign in the United States
against the war. She wrote Conscientious Objector in 1931.
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
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