Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR Defends Pacifists Against Charges in Hook Article In his useful and generally fair article, "The Techniques of Controversy" [The New Leader, March 8], Sidney Hook fails to some...
...Dismemberment, with all its tragic consequences, economic as well as political, would have made the realization of this very difficult, if not impossible...
...This is possible, though unlikely, for why should the Soviet Government subject the Russian cities to destruction when it is doing so well by infiltration and subversion...
...But when my non-pacifist friends decide to support a "defense" which involves--however noble the motives--participation in a race in atomic and even biological armaments, are they not in the same position of being able to foresee only in limited measure the consequences of their decision...
...When for this and other reasons I refuse to support my country's "defense" measures, I am aware that, in taking a stand upon such a vast and complex socio-political issue, I cannot foresee all the future consequences of my decision and that some of these consequences may be such as I would fain avert...
...Perhaps I have stumbled upon a new variety, but the ones I mean are very strong for the foreign-policy line of the Quakers, are impatient of criticisms of the Soviet Union, and take a long, historical view toward evils everywhere except in the U.S.A...
...Furthermore, on October 27 he adopted a new attitude, saying that he would no longer be willing to nominate Buganda members to the Legislative Council, which had been reformed to allow increased African representation...
...The great majority of the pacifists whom I encounter do not impute low motives to their non-pacifist brethren and raise no protest when I say, as I often have, that a conscientious combatant is on a higher moral plane than a self-righteous and complacent pacifist...
...It seems to me that, in an age when the means of warfare are hardly subject to rational control and their use is likely to be suicidal, far too little real study has been given to the possibilities of what I prefer to call "nonviolent resistance...
...New York City Sidney Hook Notes U.S...
...I would like to defend a world which would be safe for pacifists...
...One more remark: Sidney Hook appears to assume that a nation or values can be "strongly defended" only by armed might...
...My personal experience in discussion with some pacifist--not, I hasten to add, with my friend A. J.--Led to the surprising discovery that they were confusing motives and consequences...
...If I believed this, I would have to believe that we should always be at war, which is absurb...
...And I have often heard many of them lament some of the consequences...
...I was referring to a tendency...
...Not only would he not nominate these members, but he refused to allow the Governor to nominate them in his place...
...This was an error...
...I might add that my mistake is a common one here in Japan, where the Cultural Exchange Committee is popularly regarded as being under official American sponsorship...
...Is Not Sponsoring Trip by Japanese Neutralist The American Embassy here has asked me to correct a statement in my article, "Japan's Rosenberg Case" [The New Leader, February 1...
...An atomic armaments race may result in a stalemate and not war...
...It is also incorrect to say that it was not until after the Kabaka's deportation that Mr...
...and he made it clear that, contrary to the terms of the 1900 agreement governing relations between Buganda and Her Majesty's Government, he intended publicly (in his own Buganda Council) to oppose the decisions of the British Government...
...No one regrets this more than the British Government and the Government of Uganda...
...Had my friend said that pacifists sometimes, or that some pacifists, erred in the way indicated, I would have agreed...
...Eleanor Roosevelt and Ralph Bunche, who visited this country under its auspices, were deservedly looked upon as unofficial ambassadors of the United States...
...The other three provinces of Uganda, whose progress would be thus so gravely handicapped, were to remain under the Colonial Office...
...All of us finite beings have to act as we are led by conscientious conviction and by the best calculation we can make of the foreseeable results of our actions...
...He rubs it in, as it were, by concluding that "a crass refusal to apply to oneself the same principles of logic and ethics by which one judges one's opponents is almost always found among fanatics and extremists...
...It was, however, only after the Kabaka had had six long interviews with the Governor, during which the grave consequences of his conduct were made quite clear to him, and after a personal appeal had been made to him by the Colonial Secretary, that he was eventually told that recognition of him as the ruler of Buganda would be withdrawn...
...New York City Alfred Kohlberc Giving Up 'New Leader' Too Great a Sacrifice Last year, I wrote you that I would discontinue my subscription in April 1954 for financial reasons...
...This is a very sweeping charge, suggesting that pacifists generally are short on logic and also on morals, being addicted to name-calling...
...But the rejection of the Kabaka s demands was inevitable if the policy of leading the whole of Uganda forward to self-government was to be successfully carried out...
...However, I find it too hard not to read your magazine...
...Tokyo Takeo Naoi Disputes Facts on Ouster Of African Native Leader Because John Hatch deals with an important subject in his article in the March 1 New Leader, "Mr...
...That this was so was made quits clear in an interview between the Governor and the Kabaka which took place on August 10...
...It is quite untrue to say that, after the Colonial Secretary's speech at the East African dinner on June 30, the Baganda decided to press for a federal structure within Uganda...
...It seems to me that the active resistance of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was morally more inspiring than the passive resistance of millions of their kinsmen who were exterminated in the camps...
...Recognition as a ruler was not withdrawn from him until November 30...
...Until this impracticable independence was to be achieved, the Kabaka asked that Buganda be placed under the control of the Foreign Office...
...But by the time the Kabaka had accepted the British Government's assurance on federation, he had raised the other demands for the independence of Buganda and the transfer of Buganda affairs to the Foreign Office...
...Their justification...
...I do not assume that a nation or values can be defended "only by armed might...
...But, precisely because of the values which A. J. and I hold in common, I refuse to make a fetish of passive or non-violent resistance to evil...
...I say "surprising" because most of those I have known seemed, until recently, to be full of the milk of human kindness despite their political naivete...
...I am all in favor of "non-violent resistance" to totalitarian oppression if it is more effective and less costly in human life, suffering and degradation than more active forms of resistance...
...if you cut the heart out of Uganda, the rest of the Protectorate could not live...
...However, he reveals how confused he is when he says: "Of course, the attack may come from the air--sudden, catastrophic...
...Non-violent resistance to the Kremlin, whose techniques of torture and brain-washing were devised especially to break non-violent resistance, guarantees a totalitarian Communist world...
...and, finally, on October 27, when a further explicit assurance was given to the Kabaka and his ministers with which he stated (on November 3) that he was satisfied...
...on August 11, when the Governor stated in the Legislative Council that Her Majesty's Government had no intention at the present time of raising the question of East African Federation...
...By no stretch of the imagination can this be called "pressing for a federal structure within Uganda...
...Unfortunately, some of the people whom the Committee has sent the other way, notably Professor Tsuru, are far less representative...
...As to whether an atomic, or any other, armaments race leads to war, I am convinced that it does...
...So, here I am again...
...This is a matter to be determined from one historical situation to another...
...the sponsor of the program is the U.S.-Japan Cultural Exchange Committee, which has no connection with the State Department...
...It was on these issues, and on the issue of independence for Buganda alone, that a complete failure to agree with the British Government became evident...
...Gandhi's methods could succeed only because he was using them against the British...
...Lyttelton published his assurance that federation would not be imposed...
...I wrote that Professor Shigeto Tsuru, a Harvard graduate and prominent anti-American neutralist, "is going to the United States this year under the Cultural Exchange Program of the State Department...
...New York City A. J. Muste Secretary Emeritus, Fellowship of Reconciliation The context of my remarks on pacifists shows that, in respect to them and to all other groups mentioned (even the "totalitarian liberals"), I did not intend to make a universal judgment...
...They would not have availed against Hitler, Stalin or Mao...
...is that the consequences of such a policy always lead to war...
...But how many instances can he produce in recent years of "pacifists"--perhaps he and I differ as to who belongs in the category--indulging in the "warmongering" terminology and being guilty of "crass refusal" to judge themselves as they judge others...
...New York City Frieda Wunderlich...
...These, however, do not exhaust the alternatives...
...He writes: "Pacifists will savagely attack as 'warmongers' anyone who advocates a policy of firm defense...
...Lyttelton and the Kabaka," I must correct some of the inaccurate statements which he uses to justify his conclusions...
...DEAR EDITOR Defends Pacifists Against Charges in Hook Article In his useful and generally fair article, "The Techniques of Controversy" [The New Leader, March 8], Sidney Hook fails to some extent, in his reference to pacifists, to apply his own counsels as to how discussion should be conducted...
...But as Elmer Davis once said: ''Better no world than one [Communist] world...
...On the contrary, what the Kabaka claimed was rather the separation of Buganda from the rest of the Protectorate of Uganda and the grant to it, i.e., Buganda only, of independence "within a short space of time...
...There are a considerable number of pacifists in Europe who are not dismissed as "appeasers" by those resistants who observed them through the years of war and occupation...
...Hatch himself shows why this dismemberment was impossible when he says that Buganda holds the key to all economic development in the Protectorate...
...He dismisses "appeasement"--and here I would go along with him--and then couples "passive resistance" with it as having the same "objective" result...
...And it is no contradiction to say that sometimes it is necessary to fight for such a world...
...In it, Senator Flanders argues that our danger is from without, not from within...
...In either case, the dangerous attack is from without, not from within...
...Chronologically, the opposition to the idea of federation in East Africa (and this was merely thrown out as a possibility by the Colonial Secretary, not as a plan) was stated by the Kabaka's ministers on July 6. In view of this opposition, assurances were given to the Kabaka and his ministers on three occasions: on July 27...
...Washington, D. C. A. Campbell Colonial Attache, British Embassy Notes Contradiction in Senator Flanders's Speech The March 22 New Leader carries a speech by Senator Ralph E. Flanders, which you have entitled "What Is McCarthy...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 14
