Resist in Peace

At Christmas 1914, when World War I had already been raging for several months, an odd phenomenon occurred along the Western Front. Men from both sides briefly stopped fighting and fraternized. This “Christmas truce” is remembered as a freak occurrence. Some were punished for having engaged in it. Fighting resumed, and the war went on for another four years.

The entire incident can be taken as symbolic of our longing for peace, which has, since then, spawned many attempts to institutionalize the more rational side of human nature.

Nobody ever persuaded me to become a “Peacenik.” And it wasn’t that I had any great love of peace – but simply an abhorrence of war. That in itself was ironical, because as a child during World War II most of my entertainment – games, toys, movies, comics, radio programs – was war-related. But I swallowed wholeheartedly all the propaganda we were fed – particularly the idea that this war was being fought so that we, the children, could live in a world of peace.

One memorable song of that era promised there’d be “Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover,” with “Love and Laughter, and Peace ever after, tomorrow, when the world is free.”

I bought the whole bill of goods – and, to this day, I still feel somewhat cheated. After the Atomic Bomb and the Nuremburg trials, how could people ever think of fighting again? I did what I could to prevent that from happening.

In 1953, when I was 19, I spent a summer in Israel – a country then only five years old, but, as always, a world flash-point. Soon after returning to London, I went down to the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner, to stand up and share my views about the Middle East Situation. But in my audience, there happened to be both Jews and Arabs – and, before I knew what was happening, they had forgotten about me, and were quarreling among themselves – and, if I hadn’t quickly terminated the “meeting,” they’d probably have come to blows. It was a frightening lesson.

But the main ideological conflict of the time involved the U.S. and the Soviet Union. I joined the British-Soviet Friendship Society. And, with conscription still very much in force, I registered as a Conscientious Objector. This meant that I could be deferred during my years in college, but would then have to face a “Tribunal” which would test my beliefs and determine my fate.

For a time, I was totally involved in preparing for this ordeal. I knew I could possibly be sent to jail, and so read up on prison life. I also wrote a long statement of my reasons for objecting to military service. But since these were not based on any religious belief, I didn’t expect much sympathy from the Tribunal.

In the end, I was given the option of doing “alternative service,” – e.g., in a hospital or a coal-mine. But by then, I had decided to emigrate to the U.S. (Fortunately, no law prevented me from doing so.) Here I took a semester of Russian Studies and actually traveled to the USSR. This, being at the height of the Cold War, did not endear me to the U.S. Immigration authorities, who made me wait nine years instead of the usual five, before I was admitted to citizenship.

But what about peace? What about nonviolence, turning the other cheek, and blessed are the peacemakers? To tell you the truth, I was never that hearty a Peacenik. My general attitude was more a matter of “Go ahead and destroy each other – but leave me out of it.”

Nevertheless, my idealistic efforts weren’t over. In 1986, I was back in Iron Curtain Russia on a “World Peace Tour” with a team of “entertainers,” of whom I was the group poet, reading in carefully rehearsed Russian some of my epigrams (such as “Peace is vital to the defense of our nation.”) In 1988, I was able to travel to East and West Berlin, but, despite my goodwill, the wall still took another year to come down. In 1991, with a group called “EarthStewards,” I visited communities on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict – and you know how successful all such peace-seeking efforts have been there.

It looks as if you’ll have to keep me alive at least a few more years (together with any other Peaceniks who may still be around) before we are able to bring about a truly peaceful world.