THE PACIFISTS FIGHT

...Mutiny At Germfask As I understand it, he got madder and madder in his quiet way, and when, a few days ago, he was told that he was to be allowed to use his talents to analyze water for a Government duck pond, he simply said he wouldn't do it...

...Why, then, are the bleeding hearts, including Mayer's, girding their loins, smacking their lips, and licking their chops in anticipation of a good fight on the DeVault case...

...If it were not for the battle that men like Norman and Evan Thomas put up after the last war, the CO'3 would all be in prison in this war—many of them are, by the way, because their objections do not square with the Selective Service Act—and they would be being beaten and hanged as many of them were in the last war...

...But theirs is not to reason why, and if they start reasoning they are court-martialed...

...So Dr...

...And so, after two or three days of his failure to report for duty, the camp director sent for the bulls, and the non-violently resisting scientist was taken away from the work which occupied him day and night...

...DeVault loves his country, burns to serve it, is capable of serving it with rare and special talents, and is willing to do anything (including die) for it except kill...

...There is no more logic to a CO strike than there would be to a soldiers' strike...

...The behavior of such men is as amazing, in a collapsing civilization, as it is illegal...

...I am sure he is a greater patriot than many a soldier who is bent double with medals...

...A nation with vestiges of conscience permits him to decline one very odious sort of labor-killing...

...It was even less tolerable than picking up rocks and laying them down again because it was a caricature of the scientific work he really wanted to do...

...But the CO is striking not in self-interest but for a greater privilege to be of greater service to his country and mankind...

...But here I am...

...Nobody paid any attention to him, or to the other squawking CO's...

...When he got done with his daily stint of picking up rocks and laying them down again, he hurried back to the dormitory and, instead of falling down like ordinary worn-out men, he proceeded at once to his research, working, under the crudest and most discouraging kind of conditions, until the lights were turned out on him...

...If he denies that prerogative, he is a revolutionary of the most violent sort and has no choice but to shoot his way out of the country...

...DeVault wants harder work, longer hours, and no pay...

...A Stanford University chemist before he became a CO, DeVault (has persisted in doing research all during the three-year period in which he has been confined one place or another...

...Don Charles DeVault has been eeized by the Federal bulls and removed from the conscientious objectors' camp in the wilds of Germfask, Michigan, to the clink at Marquette, where he is charged with refusal to work...

...Political CO's—who are nothing but felons under the law—were being mistreated at the Danbury and Springfield penitentiaries a year or so ago, and Norman, Evan, and their friends started some all-fired hell-raising, which included a strike or two by the CO's, and conditions were remedied a little...

...It was by raising all-fired hell, and not by inexorable logic, that the Thomas brothers got the country to improve its own moral condition by providing for useful work for CO's...

...DeVault should, by this line of argument, have abandoned his work in behalf of humanity and, like any other ward of the Government, should have accepted the silly work that was given him...

...There is no doubt that Dr...

...War is the waste of human substance...

...The answer, I think, is not to be found in the logic with which I destroyed Dr...

...I have always agreed with Mark Twain that the law is an ass...

...DeVault up above there...

...For three years, it appears, he has been squawking because, like most conscientious objectors, he has been made to do routine labor, usually of a silly, or make-work, sort, and has not been allowed to exercise his very great talents for the benefit of humanity...

...And so the crusaders are heartened, and rally to the cause...

...Soldiers sometimes do not like the work assigned to them, whether it be peeling potatoes or peeling Japs...

...It was as if the Government had taken time off to laugh at him...

...If human substance is going to be wasted, why shouldn't De Vault's as well as any infantryman's ? With millions of men and hundreds of billions of dollars being poured pell-mell into the jaws of Moloch, why should great governments discriminate in favor of a man who will not work at anything except the saving of lives...

...Beyond Law And Logic The battle is not yet won, and will never be won until the race smartens up sufficiently to abandon its periodic attempts at suicide...

...After all, picking up rocks and laying them down, silly as it is, is not as silly as throwing them at people...

...It is to be found in the somewhat lawless exigencies of human progress...

...The CO is in a preferred position to the soldier to begin with...

...The result is mutiny at Germfask, and the usual crowd of namby-pamby bleeding hearts, with Mayer a charter member, is ready to fight to the death on the DeVault case in order to get some sort of reform introduced into the CO system...

...But, as I say, DeVault has no clear complaint in logic or law...

...Beyond that point, it is the Government's prerogative to decide what kind of work he will do...

...I never thought, however, that I would see the day when I turned against logic...

...The charge is interesting because De Vault was not only working at the time of his arrest, but he was working on penicillin research in a home-made laboratory beside his bunk in the camp dormitory...

...DeVault is a ward of the Government...

...But our case is, I think, a little shaky...

...But, like the soldier, Dr...