PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
Chamberlin, William Henry
Prisoners Of Conscience By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN ABOUT one American in 1,000, so far as one can judge from the available figures, is so fundamentally opposed to war that he prefers the...
...A government camp has been established at Mancos, Colo., for CO's who do not wish to go to camps that are under civilian direction...
...Freedom of religion is, of course, one of the announced Four Freedoms of President Roosevelt...
...Instead of the well-paid job, the personal and family security, the undiminished social prestige, he chose the hard, uninteresting, unpaid work of the camp, the prospect of criticism and abuse, the uncertainty of obtaining employment after the war...
...Some of the most difficult problems of adjustment are faced in what might be called maverick camps, with a high proportion of city intellectuals, unused to manual labor, and with men of widely differing views and backgrounds...
...others have developed personalities that bristle like porcupine quills...
...There are two misrepresentations in the statement that the pacifists are "risking for their principles absolutely nothing...
...At the same time he felt that no one, however pure his motives, should be released from the obligation to serve...
...Now, if the right of the "honest conscientious objector" had been fully recognized, 3,000 Americans would not have gone to jail, up to the present time, for taking seriously the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill...
...Unfortunately a reactionary Southern Democrat who cultivated a blood-feud with Mrs...
...Many similar cases could be cited...
...How have they been treated...
...Just a sober, administrative putting of Jesus in his proper place...
...This is a very serious sacrifice for a young man to make...
...Hard, a pro-war liberal, was shocked at the cases of beating, torture, and physical maltreatment that occurred when pacifists were forcibly inducted into the armed forces or sent to military prisons...
...So he took the hard way, not the easy way, out of combatant participation in war...
...Others possess a keen social consciousness and would be willing to accept the principle of national service for what would seem to them constructive ends...
...No one can take the CO position without realizing that he will perhaps be exposed to job discrimination for many years after the end of the war...
...But the law prescribes for the CO of recognized sincerity not tliathe shall be interned, but that he shall be "assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction...
...After all, as a British aviator is supposed to have said, and as someone certainly ought to have said, the right to be a conscientious objector is one of the rights for which we are fighting...
...Someone Should Say It In terms of humanity and common sense the present system is a distinct advance over the practice of World War I, when many CO's were barbarously manhandled in military camps and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, which were shortened and commuted after the end of the war...
...There are about 10 million men in the armed services...
...Some 2,400 are in prison and make up about one-eighth of the number confined in Federal penitentiaries...
...Proof of this statement can be found in the unhappy story of the frustrated attempts to send a CO ambulance unit to China and to train CO's for relief and reconstruction work in Europe and other parts of the world that may well be ravaged by pestilence after the war...
...Many have been sent to the Western states to combat forest fires...
...No prison filth, no brutality...
...Such as are of military age are interned in camps...
...They Don't Want Idleness Moreover, the great majority of the CO's would have been fully prepared to "risk their eyes, their limbs, and their lives" if they had been permitted to do this in some humanitarian work consistent with their principles...
...and the high number of men in prison would be lower if more imagination and flexibility had been shown in administering the present law and regulations...
...The Selective Service Act provides exemption from combatant training and service of "any person . . . who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form...
...There was the keenest competition among the men in the camps to qualify for service in the ambulance unit, which would almost certainly have sustained its full share of casualties...
...This is an important question in determining the validity of our war aims...
...Fortunately the Selective Service authorities, in view of the growing shortage of manpower, have been more accommodating recently in granting transfers from the monotonous routine ^life of the camps to detached service projects...
...This antipathy is likely to increase as casualty lists become heavier...
...Prisoners Of Conscience By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN ABOUT one American in 1,000, so far as one can judge from the available figures, is so fundamentally opposed to war that he prefers the alternative of jail or assignment to compulsory service to accepting conscription...
...About 3,000 jail sentences have been imposed on CO's, as conscientious objectors are called...
...If they are unwilling to accept this, they are supposed to be "assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction...
...but it would be hard to deny that he was displaying a good deal of quiet moral courage...
...basis of the life and teachings of Jesus and the practice of the early Christians...
...There are about 7,000 in civilian public service camps or on so-called detached service projects...
...Where the CO's in a camp are fairly homogeneous as to faith and social background, where many of them are farm boys, accustomed to hard outdoor work, the regime has worked out fairly smoothly...
...Morale is always lowest where the work in the camps is clearly of a boondoggling character, highest when there is opportunity to perform work of clear social benefit...
...I quote from a recent column of Dorothy Thompson a few sentences that are mistaken either in fact or in implication, or in both: "In democratic countries the right of the honest conscientious objector is recognized...
...The War Department had given its sanction...
...THIS time we have come closer to realizing Hard's ideals, with compulsory labor service substituted for confinement...
...Many of the CO's are men of more than average sensitiveness as to social conscience...
...The remaining 3,000 are in so-called special service projects, working as attendants in mental hospitals, serving in general hospitals, on dairy farms, in health projects...
...Far from wishing to avoid hardship and persecution, some of the CO's possess almost a martyr spirit and bring on themselves additional difficulties which a more compromising attitude would have avoided...
...Roosevelt favored it...
...It would be useful to society if more care had been taken in assigning CO's to socially useful work...
...Hard underlined this point of view by stating that Jesus Christ, should he refuse military service, should be confined under circumstances suitable to his character for-a period somewhat longer than the duration of the war...
...It is a complete misapprehension of CO psychology to imagine that the men want to sit out the war doing nothing...
...the withholding of dependency allowances is an inequity that should be rectified...
...No doubt this experience has its broadening aspects...
...Under the present set-up, however, there are some injustices...
...There is no valid reason why a CO who is doing compulsory work should not receive a soldier's pay, along with his maintenance...
...Recently they have demanded an increase in pocket money to a soldier's pay...
...The camps are administered by the historic peace churches, the Friends (Quakers), the Mennonites, who .supply the largest number of CO's, and the Brethren...
...But work of this kind was against his moral convictions...
...The others have served their terms or have been paroled...
...Roosevelt used his influence to block the project primarily because Mrs...
...but harassing situations sometimes arise for the camp directors, who are between the hammer of complaints from the more intransigent CO's and the anvil of the stern Selective Service regulations as to working time, limitation of leaves and furloughs, etc...
...Experience in the camps has been varied...
...It is entirely untrue, from the technical legal standpoint, that the objectors are "interned in camps...
...What are their motives...
...A Quaker camp in New Hampshire preserves as one of its most treasured anecdotes the remark of an earnest and combative Jehovah's Witness, who broke up a grievance session with a gale of laughter when • he said, with the utmost seriousness: "Just wait until Christ comes down and starts mopping up around here...
...A number have volunteered as "human guinea-pigs," to be subjected to medical experiments in the interest of saving lives...
...CO's, like soldiers and civilians,' are of all types...
...They leave out of account that the soldier is risking his eyes, his limbs, and his life for his principles, while they are risking for their principles absolutely nothing...
...It meant participation in what he regarded as massacre by bombing...
...Eastman picked up this idea with a satirical comment, which ran somewhat as follows: Here is your true liberal mentality...
...Some are intense individualists, resentful of government interference in their lives...
...Of 7,000 men in this last category of labor service about 4,000 at last accounts, were in camps, mostly taken over from the CCC, engaged in forestry and soil conservation work...
...Such persons may elect non-combatant medical service in uniform...
...I remember a talk with a mechanically very gifted young man in a work camp in New England...
...Some are highly educated college graduates, some are simple farm boys who stopped at elementary school education...
...He had been offered a well-paid job and an unconditional deferment from military service in one of the big plants which are working on war orders...
...But from my own visits to CO camps and contacts with objectors who have been in camps and in prison, I get the impression that the overwhelming majority of them are entirely sincere in their convictions...
...Internment is a kind of preventive confinement, reserved for suspect enemy aliens and most unjustly, as I think, extended to the great majority of American citizens of Japanese origin...
...Majority Are Sincere So one cannot make too sweeping generalizations about the 10,000 who have gone to prison or to work camps rather than accept the draft...
...And, however impractical absolute pacifism may seem in an age of almost unparalleled violence, one can certainly make out a reasonable case for religious pacifism on the...
...How does our whole handling of this difficult administrative problem presented by the citizen who accepts "Thou Shalt Not Kill" as a binding religious injunction compare with our policy in the last war...
...Some are naturally easy to get along with...
...Two fields where they would be most useful because of their beliefs and psychology would be in social service jobs where race relations are strained (I never knew a CO who did not feel strongly on the issue of race discrimination) and in relief and reconstruction work during and after the war...
...The American Legion and other powerful pi'essure groups make a practice of pumping up antipathy to the CO's...
...It is to procure an "indispensable" job in a government bureau, or in industry, or in some branch of the armed forces which functions far away from the shooting...
...Who are these uncompromising prisoners of conscience...
...They will work enthusiastically when it is a matter of relieving distress, of caring for the sick and the insane, while their morale declines if they are assigned to boondoggling jobs...
...The easy and comfortable way to avoid combat service is not to register as a conscientious objector...
...There was an interchange of views, at once interesting and amusing, between William Hard and Max Eastman about the proper treatment of CO's in the last war...
...The Chinese Government was eager for his" help...
...One might agree or disagree with this man...
...An illiberal rider, attached to an appropriations bill last Summer, ruled out both the China ambulance unit and any possibility of taking some of the CO's out of the camps and putting them in reconstruction courses in various colleges...
...IT is a pity that widely read commentators do not familiarize themselves with the facts of Government policy in relation to the CO's before rushing into print with discussion of the subject...
...Some are reasonable, some are unreasonable...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 27
