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to have open counsel with those who might be able to redirect
lies to honesty, and egoism to selflessness, then soldiers (and
their commanders) are placed in a terrible situation. Under these
circumstances, the force administered at their hands, and the
risks to their own lives, are destined from the outset for misuse
and waste.
“Reverence...is the virtue that separates leaders from
tyrants, as the old Greek poets knew well...Reverence is the
capacity to feel respect in the right way toward the right people,
and to feel awe towards an object that transcends particular
human interests.' (p.175).
When leaders cannot be found who embrace such a
capacity, or who lose reverence once they are in power, we
are caught in a world of pain. We Find the rage and cycles of
retribution which Homer expressed in the Iliad enacted before
our eyes. Objectification and dehumanization become the
accepted way of both civilian life (which takes on more and
more of the characteristics of war), and the battleground itself.
As the 20th century French philosopher Simone Weil says in an
essay titled “The Iliad or the Poem of Force":
“To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is
subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man
into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of
him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody
here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing
us...No comforting fiction intervenes, no consoling prospect of
immortality; and on the hero's head no washed-out halo of
patriotism descends."
(pp 4-5 in The Proper Study, Anderson
& Mazzeo, eds, St Martins, 1962).
Yet it is this harsh force, and the transformation it
demands from human being to thing, which we ask of our war
riors. If legitimate, we ask forthat brutal personal transformation
of human to thing in the name of higher goals and for purposes
determined by the nation's leadership that should inspire humil
ity. But if a war is based on a long series of deceptions, for what
then does a soldier face his or her own possible death? For what
purpose does that soldier learn to kill another human being? The
warrior in such a cheapened situation is left without any dignity
whatsoever.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld dashed off this answer to
the chaos unleashed in Iraq after we decided that the bulk of our
devastation was over: ‘I think we're unlikely to be successful in
changing the nature of human beings. That's for others. What
we need to do is recognize that we live in a world that's a
dangerous world, it’s an untidy world." (The Nation, Jonathan
Miller posted online 4/25/03)
It is a relief to know that there have been in the past, as
there are now, “others." The rejection of war has a long history.
As long as humanity has been using force to gain its wants there
have been objectors to that means. The poet Zbigniew Herbert
reminds us in one of his essays how long that has been:
“The Cro-Magnon probably originated in Asia; his
progression toward Europe started after the last glaciation
some thirty or forty thousand years before Christ. He pitilessly
exterminated the less advanced Neanderthal, usurping his
caves and hunting grounds. Man was born under the star of
Cain."
(from The Barbarian in the Garden,
Harcourt Brace, 1986, pp.8-9)
But we know that that was not the only star under which
we were bom. The third and last book for our consideration is
Down In My Heart by poet William Stafford, written in his late
20's about his conscientious objector internship during World
War II. He spent most of his time doing forest fire control and
trail repair in Civilian Public Service camps. He was not alone.
I have read at least two Oregonian obituaries in the past year
which indicated the World War II conscientious objector status
of the men written about. They lived into their late 80’s the kind
of lives any of us would have been proud to claim.
III. Down In My Heart: Peace Witness in War Time
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ, "NEVER AGAIN WAR" (1924)
There are people in every country who never
turn into killers, saints have built
sanctuaries on islands and in valleys,
conquerors have quit and gone home, for thousands
of years farmers have worked their fields.
My feet begin the uphill curve
where a thicket spills with birds every spring.
The air doesn't stir. Rain touches my face.
(from the poem, 'Five A M ',
in ‘Learning to Live in the World", 1994)
Perhaps you tell yourself sometimes, as I do, that you
would not have the courage to hold onto nonviolent beliefs or
actions if your life or the lives of those closest to you were in
danger. But William Stafford’s accounts and stories in this
remarkable testament leave one with a sense of hope and
even excitement — it tells us we can have that kind of courage
It seems to require two important things which must already be
in place, internally, at times of challenge: a clear sense of what
your values and beliefs are, and a steady, problem-solving
head. It helps, too, if you have or can acquire even a small
group of sympathetic friends with whom you can talk over
“nothing we say has the quickness, the sureness
the deep intelligence living at peace would have."
-DENISE LEVERTOV (from the poem Life At War)
What glued me to the pages of William Stafford's
account in Down In My Heart of his years in conscientious
objector camps in Arkansas and California was the way in which
he and his fellow CO's dealt with a pressing problem inherent
in their situation. As pacifists they believed in dealing with all
events, whether between nations or between individual people,
without physical violence. Yet during World War II, in the camps
and in the towns they visited on their short leaves, they met with
the potential for physical violence toward them almost every
where. Certainly they were ostracized, and they were prepared
for that, given the often negative feelings they received in their
hometowns before reporting for duty at the camps. But to come
up against the fact that their country’s citizens had cast them out
to the extent of physical violence toward them was a new, and I
think surprising, reality.
Conversations among the CO's after such encounters
centered on maintaining their pacifist beliefs and practices, and
strategies for staying physically safe or even alive. When even
camp managers (Forest Service men, mostly) are described as
not knowing whether they should view themselves as foremen or
“wardens," it was clear to Stafford and his campmates from the
start that they had some serious opposition to face, and peace
work to accomplish. Kim Stafford has written about the physical
danger his father faced, in his book Early Morning (Graywolf
Press, 2002):
"...the glance of a nation at war aimed at the puny life
of a pacifist, a conscientious objector,' a CO — in 1942 was
severe. Yet despite his vulnerability, my father's ambition was
boundless. A target of his own country's disdain, even hatred,
he had begun his mission of universal reconciliation." (p.41).
The chapter called "The Mob Scene at McNeil" is a
model for how CO’s must come to terms with the fact that not
only does society just barely tolerate its dissenters — in this
case pacifists in a time of war — but in addition can barely
contain its desire to physically harm them. It tells of a Sunday
afternoon outing in a small Arkansas town of McNeil — reading,
writing and painting with two of his friends from camp — which
almost turned into a lynching. His narrative of this incident
shows us the thoughts and adaptions required to be a peaceful
person in a life-threatening confrontation. William Stafford later
wrote encouragingly of others who do not use violence, the
nonviolence he believed in and lived himself, both then and for
the rest of his life. The final three lines speak both directly and
metaphorically of what life at peace is:
GO CLOSE
Slip into the fighting
Into a low-sky site crammed with huge men,
Attractive men, brave, loyal, fit, slab-sided men,
Men who came face to face with gods, who spoke with gods,
Leaping onto each other like wolves,
Screaming, kicking, slicing, hacking, ripping,
Thumping their chests:
“I am full of the god!"
Blubbering with terror as they beg for their lives:
“Laid his trunk open from shoulder to hip —
Like a beauty queen's sash."
Falling, falling.
Top-slung steel chain gates slumped onto concrete,
Pipko, Bluefisher, Chuckerbutty, Lox:
“Left all he had to follow Greece.”
“Left all he had to follow Troy."
Clawing the ground, calling out fortheir sons, for revenge
Sparks from the bronze, lit splinters from the poles:
“I am hit."
“Take my arm."
“I am dying.”
“Shake my hand."
“Don't leave me Don’t let me go."
“Goodbye little fellow with the gloomy face.”
As Greece, as Troy, fought on and on.
Or are they only asleep?
They are too tired to sleep.
The tears are falling from their eyes
The noise they make while fighting is so loud
That what you see is like a silent film.
And as the dust converges over them
The ridge is as it is when darkness falls
Silence and light.
-CHRISTOPHER LOGUE
Christopher Logue published All Day Permanent Red,
the fourth volume in his version of the Iliad in April.
events, and strategies for physical and spiritual survival. It is
obvious that William Stafford possessed these things. And
though he does not say so, it is also clear that he possessed
the ability to lead others in this ongoing effort, quietly and by
example. Kim Stafford confirms this by relating an incident in
William’s childhood which points to both his early pacifism and
to his innate leadership:
“Somehow our father had become a pacifist in the
cradle of his own family from very early on. There is a story
that when he was first in school, he came home to report that
two black children on the playground had been taunted by the
others.
‘And what did you do, Billy?’ his mother asked.
‘I went and stood by them’
He didn't taunt, he didn’t turn away, but also he didn’t
fight He stood by them.”
(Early Morning, p.39).
In a 1955 Quaker statement of nonviolent values and
strategies which came into my hands as I did research for this
essay, many expected points were offered: nonviolence is
desperately needed, war has not worked, it's not easy but it
can be done, it’s part of Christian ethics, etc. But the thing that
surprised me was their statement that it wasn’t important that
everyone become a pacifist:
“In thus insisting on the rejection of violence as a
method, we do not imply that all men must become pacifist...
(however) without the unconditional acceptance of an ideal by
a minority, the vision and perseverance required to move the
world in the direction of that ideal will be lacking."
(Speak Truth to Power, AFSC, p.53)
A minority believing in nonviolence insures, they
believe, that a constant pressure will be applied to the eventual
reforming of national policy and the making of new laws which
will support the goal of ending wars. And this is also an encour
agement to those of us like myself who have felt it needs to be
an “all-or-nothing" kind of project. The Friends rightly remind us
that it is a process. As the pacifist A. J. Musti is often quoted:
“There is no path to peace; peace is the way." There is a very
human anecdote in Down In My Heart about one of "our most
forthright" members of a CO camp that speaks to the condition
of how against the grain pacifism is in much of society, and how
tiring it can be (especially if one is already worn out with a day's
work on the firelines) to explain one’s position: ‘When a ranger
asked him why he wasn't in the army, he said: 'Do you have two
hours to give to that question? Well, then, forget it — I'm tired of
trying to set right in two minutes what the radio and the papers
and the movies have been setting wrong for years.” Peace is a
way of life And we are allowed to be human while we’re at it.
It is hard to act on new conceptions of how to live
together The Japanese film critic Donald Richie wrote this about
the great Japanese director, Ozu: "...one never finds 'represent
ative types' in his films Just as there is no such thing as Nature,
only individual trees, rocks, streams, etc., so there is no such
thing as Human Nature, only individual men and women." (New
York Times Book Review, 5/15/03, p.15, by Ian Buruma). It is
one by one that we embrace the new It is one person by one
person that we find our reconciliation of body and spirit, of power
wedded to the spirit of love William Blake, as always, knew how
to say it:
For mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress
-from ‘The Divine Image"
Carolyn Dunn is an Astoria poet and writer.