We turn next to a brief consideration of the arguments for the IV-E as
against the non-registrant position which center around the problem of
“the immature 18-year-old youth.” A number of 18-year-olds, it is pointed
out, have a strong aversion to war and a leaning toward pacifism. They
are, however, emotionally immature. If they have no choice but the army
or jail all but a few will choose the army and are likely to be lost
to the pacifist cause. They could be held and possibly even developed
into a radical pacifist position, if they had a third choice, namely,
civilian service. On the other hand, the youth who in the absence of such
a third possibility, chooses prison rather than the army may suffer grave
psychological injury.
I am sure no one will be disposed to be callous or “tough” in his
attitude toward any youth faced with a problem such as we are discussing.
Any one in the position of a counselor to an individual will want to
avoid “psychological pressuring” to induce him to take this or that
course, and will strive to help the young man to make his own decision,
in accord with his own inner need and conviction, rather than to impose a
decision upon him. But I conceive that it would be my duty as a Christian
minister to have this same attitude in talking and praying with a young
man who was going into the Army. I would have no right, nor do I think
it would do any good, to “pressure” him against his conviction and
inner need, to refuse service. But this would certainly not mean that I
give up my own pacifist convictions, or refrain from doing all I can in
general to spread them or from making this particular young man aware of
my own thoughts and feelings. This in spite of the fact that if young
men who had planned to submit to the draft are consequently won to the
pacifist position, this may entail considerable suffering on their part,
anguish for parents who disagree with them, and so on. It is fairly
certain, incidentally, that in many typical Southern communities—and by
no means exclusively in the South—a youth who chose the I-A-O (medical
corps) position, not to mention IV-E, would have as tough a time as a
non-registrant in many metropolitan centers. We cannot, then, escape the
conclusion that as we have a responsibility to decide for the pacifist
or non-pacifist position and to bear witness for pacifism, if that is
the stand we take, so as pacifists we have a responsibility to decide
whether complete non-cooperation with military conscription is the more
consistent, committed and effective stand or not, and if we decide for
the former, then to do what we can to make our stand and the reasons for
it known.
I have the impression that even a great many, perhaps the majority, of
pacifist ministers will work harder to keep a young pacifist parishioner
from taking the “absolutist” position and going to jail rather than into
civilian service, than they would work to get the run of the mill young
parishioners to think seriously about not going into the army. They
seem somehow to feel that a more awful thing is happening to the young
CO who goes to jail than to the 18-year-old who goes into the army. It
is my impression that this same feeling is an unconscious factor in the
thinking of many lay pacifists when they react strongly against the idea
of COs going to prison. This puzzles me greatly. Why should they have
this reaction?
Army or Jail?
To my mind—even apart from the sufficiently appalling factor of being
systematically trained for wholesale killing and subjected to the risk of
being killed in brutal war—there are few if any more evil and perilous
situations to put young men into than the armed forces. I should feel
much deeper grief over having possibly had some part in getting some
youth to go into the armed forces than over having some responsibility
for bringing a young man to go to prison for conscience’s sake. Are
the qualms people feel about youthful COs going to prison in certain
instances perhaps due to the fact that taking the non-registrant position
is something very unusual and regarded with social disapproval, whereas
becoming a soldier is extremely common and meets with the highest social
approval? It may be, therefore, that there are some ministers and other
older people who should examine themselves as to whether their feelings
in the matter under discussion are due to the fact that they themselves
might find life in the community or in the church very uncomfortable
if they were suspected of having influenced a youth to take a radical
anti-draft stand, whereas all men will speak well of them—or at least not
too ill—if they have helped, or at least not hindered, young Christians
in adjusting themselves to the idea of going into the army. Is it just
possible that we older people are sometimes concerned with sparing
ourselves when we think we are solely concerned about sparing teen-agers?
To return to the 18-year-old. There are young men who on physical and
psychological grounds are exempted from army service. There may well be
COs who should on similar grounds be exempted from any kind of service.
If such a physically or mentally ill CO is refused exemption, he should
perhaps be discouraged from undergoing the risks of prison experience if
there is an alternative for him. This still leaves us with the problem of
the majority of pacifist and non-pacifist youth who are not ill.
When we find ourselves concerned about what the teen-age religious CO who
goes to prison must undergo and inclined to think that there is here an
absolutely conclusive case for providing alternative service and urging
most such COs to avail themselves of it, we might first take a look at
two other categories of youth who are subject to the draft. One of them
consists of those actually drafted into the armed services; the other of
the so-called non-religious COs.
The great mass of teen-agers are going to be put through rigorous
military training with all the hardships, the toughening and the
temptations which this entails. They have to be ready to undergo actual
battle experience. Many of them will actually experience modern war at
the front. Is what the CO undergoes in prison vastly more terrible than
this? Is it as terrible? It may be said that the soldier has social
approbation whereas the pacifist, especially the “absolutist” meets
social disapprobation and even ostracism. This is indeed a sore trial and
many cannot endure it. Frankly, I am still left with more grief and pity
in my heart for the teen-age soldier than for the teen-age “absolutist”
CO. I am still left with a question whether we have a right to take any
time and energy away from the struggle to lift the curse of conscription
from the mass of youth and put it into an effort to secure alternative
conscript service for COs.
There are, as we know, teen-age “absolutists” who feel the same way and
who have demonstrated that they can endure whatever they may be called
upon to endure. Nor is their lot without its compensations. They, also,
“have their reward.”