Ain’t Gonna Study War No More

When I was in my teens and still living in England, both that country and the U.S. still had what was called a “Draft.” It applied only to men within a certain age range. But there were stiff legal penalties for failing to register. You might be exempted for medical reasons, but for healthy young men, there was only one way to avoid undergoing two years of “National Service” – and that was as a “Conscientious Objector,” (or “C.O.”). If you were not so recognized, you risked imprisonment, or being sentenced to some kind of alternative compulsory labor. In Britain, with whose system I became more familiar, that might include working in a hospital, or on a farm, or even in a mine.

In the U.S., your fate as a C.O. was determined by your local “Draft Board” and, in Britain, by a specially constituted “Tribunal.” In my case, after I appeared before the Tribunal, their decision was delayed until after I had completed my University course, which I was then in the middle of.

But that Tribunal experience was itself an ordeal which began far in advance. I knew that people whose objection was religion-based had a far easier time than those who, like me, simply didn’t want to kill anybody, or to be trained to kill. I wrote a long “statement” about my reasons, including the futility of war, and the fact that settlements of disputes without violence are far more likely to endure. I also read books on what it’s like to live in prison.

My views, however, were never put to the ultimate test, because of several factors. One was that the doctor at my College knew that I had, not long before, had what (at least in those days) was called a “nervous breakdown.” This had resulted in my being a patient in a mental hospital for several months. He therefore assured me that, given that recent history, I would never be subject to conscription. Another factor was that, having lived in America for my entire childhood, I had always wanted to go back. And I had an uncle who had moved to Los Angeles and was willing to sponsor me as an immigrant.

There was no legal barrier to my leaving Britain, so shortly after I graduated I took that momentous trip back across the Ocean. Here in the U.S., I was required to register once a year – but this could be done simply by sending in a short form, available at any post office, mainly reporting my current address. The idea was that all they needed was to be able to find you if you were needed. So I did this faithfully every year until I was past the age which was considered draft-eligible.

I still wanted to become an American Citizen. This was normally a process which required just five years of residence. The story of why, in my case, it took nine years, will have to wait for another article. In this one, I want to say more about War. Having grown up as a child during World War II, I had been bombarded with propaganda assuring my generation and me that the war was being fought for our sakes – so that we would live in a world of Peace, and never again be involved in another war. I swallowed this whole-heartedly, and it was what eventually turned me into a Conscientious Objector.

I was still too young for the war in Korea, and too old for Vietnam. But the “Cold War” between the U.S., its democratic allies, and the Soviet Union as leader of a whole “Communist Bloc,” persisted all through that period. Communism, as President Ronald Reagan characterized it, was an “Evil Empire.” The very idea of being a Communist, or “Red,” or even “Pink” was anathema in the U.S. for decades. And both sides had nuclear weapons in the form of bombs capable of being launched as rocket-propelled missiles.

But I was one of those disparaged as “Peaceniks,” and I actively endeavored to improve relations between the two “superpowers.” This included making difficult trips through the so-called “Iron Curtain” which separated them.

I also incorporated ideas about Peace into my “Pot-Shots” cartoons. E.g., one had the message “Peace is Vital to the Defense of our Nation.” It showed a large cannon with a Dove of Peace, still holding an olive branch, perched at the muzzle trying to look down inside the barrel.