VOICES OF CONSCIENCE

...Muste to ask if he had heard of Karl Marx...

...He emphasized in his brief the opinion that the Civil Defense Act had violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S...

...Morality is fine if kept in its "place"— which must be somewhere removed from the real world of events...

...All of us were quiet— some of us prayed," one testified later...

...In a manner that became rather habitual through the trial, he shouted "Sustained" before Greenawalt finished and pointed to the prosecuting attorney, who answered back, "Objection...

...Such distinctions in belief, however, seemed to be of little regard to Magistrate Bushel...

...He had been quite annoyed a month before when seven of the original group in the park refused to join the nineteen others in a "not guilty" plea, and he said he would not make martyrs out of them by sending them to jail...

...Their sentence, along with the sentence of seven members of the group who pleaded guilty, was suspended, with Magistrate Bushel's DAN WAKEFIELD has worked on daily newspapers in Indianapolis and Grand Rapids and served for a time as news editor of a Princeton, N. J., weekly...

...But the 26 Americans who committed the "misdemeanor" at City Hall Park don't think that way...

...II The idea for the June 15 gathering in the park to protest the notion of mass annihilation originated with two of the seven defendants who pled guilty...

...When the pacifists refused to obey their orders to go to a nearby building for "shelter," they were packed off into a waiting police wagon, along with a confused bootblack named Rocco Parilli who had wandered by mistake among these men of heavy conscience while looking for a drink of water...

...Muste speak on opposition to war, Bushel asked him, "Have you ever been to Russia...

...The pacifists who gathered in City Hall Park on a summer day to protest the mock air-raid found themselves together again on a snowy afternoon in late December, standing in the front of a courtroom to learn their fate...

...They were laboring for peace on June 15, 1955, in the course of practicing their religious and conscientious principles...

...Greenawalt said in the conclusion to his brief, "The defendants are laborers for peace...

...He often clipped the testimony short, but what was recorded remains as testimony not only in the case of 26 pacifists, but the case of a world facing the possibility of total destruction...

...I believe there are basically Christian and non-violent ways to deal with this," Muste answered...

...These "murderers"—ministers, social workers, pacifist writers—were later released on $1500 bail, and after several postponements, the trial for the nineteen who pled "not guilty" and challenged the constitutionality of the New York State Emergency Defense Act was held November 16 before Magistrate Hyman Bushel...

...Nineteen of the defendants had pleaded "not guilty" on grounds that the New York State Emergency Defense Act was unconstitutional, and they were convicted of violating that act...

...In a real raid, he testified, pacifists would "do everything in our power to save human life, to rescue the suffering, but we would not do it as part of the military machine or under the military conscription act...

...This tenth anniversary year of Hiroshima seemed an especially appropriate time to object...

...Magistrate Hyman Bushel, sounding quite polite and quite flustered, spoke a few words of praise and apology, telling how so many people had informed him of the good work Dorothy Day (one of the pacifists who pleaded guilty) was doing with the Catholic Worker mission house on New York City's Christie Street...

...opinion that ". . . this conviction will give defendants adequate warning that motives, however sincere or worthy, cannot justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state...

...When Kent Larrabee, a Quaker minister representing the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was testifying, Bushel asked, "Is there a Fellowship of Reconciliation in Russia...

...The sirens wailed at 2:05 p.m...

...His first announced concern was to get the trial over in a day...

...Miss Day, Hennacy, and 24 others they had recruited from The Catholic Worker and several pacifist groups— the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters League—met in the park on the day of the "bombing" with anti-war leaflets and posters...

...Yes," Muste answered, "and long before I heard of Karl Marx I read the Bible and the Hebrew prophets...

...He kept to himself in the wagon, frightened, and the law that night released him with his legal and moral innocence intact...

...And the great mass of men go on to say, as Magistrate Bushel's opinion says, that City Hall Park at the time of a practice air-raid drill is "hardly an appropriate place" for expressing our objections to war...

...When defense counsel Greenawalt tried to introduce into record the fact that some 20,000 baseball fans, watching Detroit play New York at Yankee Stadium, sat undisturbed and unarrested during the imaginary H-bomb drop, Bushel was quick to strike it out...

...He made a "humble apology" to her and proceeded to read his judgment of guilt...

...At one point Bushel interrupted Dr...

...It is doubtful that sentences in cases of future violations will be suspended...

...Dorothy Day wrote in a Catholic Worker editorial before the trial that "There have been too few saying no in the public square and in the market place...

...I would use the resources of this country to relieve the poverty and hunger of millions of people who turn to Communism because of poor living conditions...

...It was a small "no" because there were only 26 voices shouting it, but its chances ought to be greater for being heard because the silence surrounding it is so immense...

...He interrupted the testimony of A. J. Muste, the main defense witness, to wave a pamphlet in the air and say, "This is the New York State Emergency Defense Act...

...Bushel listened to these unusual people through the long afternoon, and, as so often happens, unfamiliar thinking seemed to be equated with subversion...

...The future holds more air-raid drills, and the session in court was hardly over before some of the convicted pacifists were talking of plans to protest the new drills as they protested the one last summer...

...The mass of men in our world today speak in the words of Magistrate Bushel's opinion that ". . . one can readily share the defendants' abhorrence of war...

...He is presently free-lancing in New York City...

...Miss Day, Hennacy, and those who had planned beforehand to plead guilty, believed as "Catholic Anarchists," or "personalists", that in attempting to change the law they would not be going to the heart of the problem...

...That's the Bible we're trying this case by...

...It is an irony peculiar, perhaps, to the morally tangled times in which we live that "the peace or safety of this state" was exactly what the 26 defendants were acting to preserve— and were convicted of obstructing...

...In the meantime, Kenneth W. Greenawalt, chief counsel for defense, has announced he will appeal the case...

...Suspension of sentences in this case rested on the belief that conviction alone would serve as a warning to and restraint on the pacifists...

...and the group of objectors sat down together on the benches, refusing to take shelter...

...Bushel swivelled in his high-backed chair as Muste was talking in words against war and impatiently asked him, "Would you wait until the bomb hits us...

...This case was the first test of the constitutionality of the New York State Emergency Defense Act, passed in 1950, which carries a maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment, a $500 fine, or both...

...Dorothy Day, publisher of the one-cent monthly Catfwlic Worker, and Ammon Hennacy, the paper's associate editor, had read press reports announcing plans for "an imaginary H-bomb drop—equivalent to 5,000,000 tons of TNT"—and decided to make an objection to what they felt was an organized whistling in the dark, in the shadow of a destructive power they believed should not be toyed with by men...

...The religious and philosophical reasoning of the witnesses seemed, for the most part, to annoy Bushel...

...Civilian Defense officers, notified of the group's intentions beforehand, were on the spot in a matter of seconds...

...For waging peace, in a peaceful way, they have been arrested and treated and tried as criminals...

...Hearing Dr...

...The magistrate had seen by the papers that "theoretically three million people have been killed in this air raid," and he announced to the pacifists that "you are the murderers...

...Constitution, and sections of the New York State constitution, by denying the defendants freedom of speech, press, and assembly, equal protection before the laws, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances...

...The testimony and the action of the 26 defendants was a no against war, a no against wholesale death, a no against public indifference...

...He must have been especially thankful to escape his accidental companions, for they were described as "murderers" by Magistrate Louis Kaplan...

...After six months of trial and postponement, the case of the 26 pacifists who refused to take shelter in New York City during the nation-wide civil defense air-raid drill last June ended recently with conviction, suspended sentences, and warning for the future...

...III It must have been a disturbing day for Bushel...