THE PACIFIST POSITION ON KOREA

...When a war starts there is always some reassuring bedtime story like that: "The last time we just missed a trick, but we learned our lesson and now we are sure to win...

...In a profound sense all the suffering and the travail of men might be redeemed...

...Moreover, Russia is a much more formidable force than Japan or Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany were, and in no small degree due to American Lend-Lease support during the war, for example...

...This summarizes the position in which The Progressive placed itself in the editorial, "The Consequences of Korea," in the August issue...

...Perhaps someone has to be very deeply and courageously human in order to enable others also to be true to themselves...

...It is time for liberals to come to the defense of their country and of democratic and Judaeo-Christian values but to insist that this be done by non-violent means which would not destroy the very values we seek to conserve...

...The enemy, Russia, is powerful and determined...

...The situation in Korea, where Americans are fighting in a terrain the high command would not have chosen if it had had a device for control of a country which, it appears, the military did not plan to include in the American power sphere, is itself a symbol of the way in which we are trapped...

...If it continues to resist by the means of modern war, this will lead to global war and chaos, or the general triumph of totalitarianism...

...There is always some factor in the situation which enables him to convince himself that this war is different and support of it is somehow inevitable and right...

...It is tremendously important that Americans realize the extent to which they give occasion for such doubts...

...Riding these two horses — war and peace — going in opposite directions does not work...

...If a nation were willing to risk destruction for peace and truth, man as a human being rather than a brute would have reasserted himself...

...This is what the Communists said they would do...

...The point at which the socially-minded and sensitive person does this is the moment when -the government of his country, whose policies he has been vigorously opposing on the ground that they will lead to war, decides actually to go to war...

...II If there is no nation to follow the courses we have suggested, then the pacifist would say that it is all the more important that smaller groups of people—pacifist, Christians, whoever they may be, all over the world—-should follow that course, and keep mankind as a spiritual entity alive in the midst of the catastrophes and the moral disintegration that will sweep over men and .nations...

...It is time for them to come out unequivocally on the side of the social revolution, but to realize that the only revolution which does not end in Stalinism must be a Gand-hian, non-violent one...

...Suppose, as at the moment still seems possible, the U.S.-UN forces are driven out of South Korea...

...Suppose a people like the American people were to decide to draw back from being implicated longer in the atrocity of atomic war which they launched in the first place, adopt a policy of creative use of their resources and skills for the true liberation of mankind, would not the Russians, at least at first, distrust their sincerity...

...The Western nations never gave any indication that they were prepared to remedy the evils that begot and nurtured Hitlerism...

...Just as Hitler always told the world just what he was planning to do, with the paradoxical result that they did not believe him, so Stalin plainly tells the world that he is going to bleed the West and especially the United States white by trapping them into expensive war preparations and a series of wars...

...But is it so...

...Probably no one thinks that would put an end to Communist "ambitions" or "aggression...

...It is suggested, however, that "meeting force with force," especially if it is done "in time," may avert war...

...It is involvement in Korea that makes a war agency out of the UN...

...No amount of UN holy water will make a police action out of the fighting in Korea...

...The make-the-best-of-both-worlds "solution" is that, on the one hand, the United States must now fight, keep up its "security" and so on...

...If during the period when we were not yet organized and trained for non-violent resistance, we did not "keep up our military defenses," would we not be running a fearful risk...

...Thus by the word and by the deed, they would build the International of man, the World Community, which alone will stand in the Atomic Age that will certainly dissolve national powers and all institutions that limit and exclude, and that set man against man anywhere on the earth...

...As for failure to take collective action in time against Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese militarists, it is of course quite possible that a show of force would have halted them temporarily at one point or another...

...He has developed his position on the current conflict in greater detail for an FOR pamphlet, "Koreai Spark to Set the World Afire," which may be obtained from the FOR's New York Gey office, 2929 Broadway...

...And, on a quite simple and elementary level, the ordinary Russian does not want atomic war any more than the ordinary American...

...usually employed in this connection, namely that the democratic nations failed to act in time when the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and so on, and so war broke out eventually, but now large-scale war will be averted because collective action is being taken in time, holds water...

...It is saying that since it is only five minutes before the bell tolls, we should not seek salvation...

...Individuals and groups who reject the way of war should go patiently about weaving strands of human fellowship wherever they may be...

...Rubin generously suggests it is, predisposes him to be skeptical of such an outcome...

...We are now so far down the road to war that going on or turning back are both fearful operations...

...Shall human beings survive as human beings, shall a truly human existence continue on -this planet...

...Admittedly this raises a painful tactical problem...

...The Pacifist Position on Korea By A. J. MUSTE THE person who does not unequivocally reject war and organized violence as a means for resisting aggression and tyranny always ends up by supporting another war...

...When they try or pretend to do both, nations always put their money and moral steam into H-bombs first and never have enough of either left to do anything adequate about economic rehabilitation and social change...

...They should become missionaries, preachers of the Gospel of nonviolence and truth, all over the land and the world—not least to Communists and peoples behind the Iron Curtain...

...It is likely that the pacifist's "dedication to peace," whether or not it be "total and unselfish" as Mr...

...Military "necessity" always leads to alliances in and outside the country with the very elements that oppose progressive measures...

...This is the proposal of all the many varieties of liberals...

...Then when he has us in the trap, we say that we had no choice but to walk in...

...How can anyone suppose that the policy of containment of Russia and Communism by force, which failed to work under the power relationships that existed from 1917 to 1939, is going to work in 1950 and after, when the Russian power position is relatively and absolutely much more favorable...

...And there is a possibility that if the Russians and Communists faced a more profound revolution than their own, espoused by men as ready as they to die for their faith but refusing to kill or to hate, the catastrophe of world war might be averted and the menace of totalitarianism soon dispelled...

...On the other hand, we should improve our political program: stop supporting undemocratic regimes, aid backward peoples, and the rest...

...The Kremlin will take advantage of every "weakness" on the part of the West...

...Shall Communist totalitarianism drag the democratic and Christian peoples down to its level by tempting them to "defend" decency and love against violence by greater violence, by the indecency and utter impersonal lovelessness of atomic war, or shall they refuse thus to bow the knee and assert faith in moral power, soul force...

...The United States has given no indication that it is prepared to deal in a fundamental way with the evils that begot and nurture Stalinism...

...building the community of man in accordance with the purpose of God...

...But if the fundamental evils had not been remedied, the conditions that produced Nazism in Germany, for example, would have broken out in another place and form as surely as an overcharge of steam will blow out a boiler at one spot if not at another...

...He has lectured at Yale, Columbia, and Union Theological Seminary, and has made public appearances throughout the nation...

...We are sunk if we do not change our course radically and promptly...

...The only "meaningful" answer to Stalin is the spirituality and non-violence of Gandhi...

...There is no more reason to suppose that if Russia is compelled to give up and retreat temporarily, that the men in the Kremlin are going to be intimidated into making peace...

...They should train themselves as "soldiers of non-violence," striving to deal with conflict situations...

...But to conclude that since it is so late we must not make the supreme effort is madness...

...Furthermore, Communist totalitarianism is a monstrous evil which humanity should resist...

...Muste is the author of "Non-Violence in an Aggressive World" and "Not by Might," and is associate editor of the Presbyterian Tribune...

...With each succeeding war a larger percentage of liberals line up for war in the final showdown...

...In the present context this factor is the UN...

...I do not believe that the argument A. J. MUSTE, executive secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, is one of the nation's foremost pacifist spokesmen...

...To put the matter another way: if the West fails to resist, Communist totalitarianism may overrun the earth...

...I for one cannot offer myself or others such consolation...

...In saying this I am not proceeding on the assumption that the pacifist has a clear and simple answer and that anyone who does not see and accept it automatically stamps himself as a heel or a fool...

...Everything would be much simpler if we could now add, as a good many well-meaning people did until recently, that a little common sense and good will would get us out of the mess...

...But for a nation to lay down its life for mankind and truth, in an attempt to lead the world to a creative solution of the appeasement versus war--to-end-war impasse, would be an utterly different historical deed from that of a nation which joined other nations in atomic suicide and in greater or less degree goaded them into it...

...But an objective appraisal of the situation supports that skepticism...

...The only honest answer to that question is an unequivocal yes...

...But they are human beings, and sometimes we forget that, as perhaps they often forget that we are human too...

...But we have to try to change under the most difficult conditions...

...Rubin asserts, that "failure on the part of the UN to act decisively would have been the death-blow of the United Nations...

...easing suffering...

...But it is equally true that by acting in the way it did, it de facto took sides in the global conflict between West and East...

...seeking to remove injustice and inequality...

...It may well be the case, as Mr...

...This also may prove "the death-blow to the United Nations...

...In time civilization coulch be rebuilt on firmer and more beautiful lines than ever...

...We have contended for years against political naivete in dealing with the Russian leaders and the Communists...

...If the American people today had the imagination, courage, and faith to launch the true human revolution, placing itself at the service of mankind and practicing non-violent resistance to aggression and dictatorship, the price would be high, and it might be too late to avert vast catastrophes anyway...

...Finally, it is all the more important that one man even if he stood alone, should stand apart, refuse to join the compulsive march of the armies, and continue to be a man rather than a dictator or a conscript in atomic war, or a passive automaton...

...The fact, as I see it, is that our dilemma is a very desperate one...

...For one thing, the policy of armed intervention by a Western power on the side of unpopular regimes like those of Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, and Bao Dai is the surest way to strengthen Stalin's hands and turn over Asia to him...

...Whatever the physical outcome, spiritually the totalitarians would win...

...Neither will the United States, barring a radical change of heart and policy, accept that defeat in a preliminary skirmish as the termination of the war...

...It is what the political and military leaders in their respective countries always counted on the liberals to do...

...The problem is ultimately a spiritual one...

...It is what they have been advocating for four decades...