| Show WHAT PRICE PEACE in a recent issue of humanity magazine the editor comments on what he calls the only way to win peace he says the quickest and surest way to end war is to quit fighting does anyone deny that and the ONLY way to win the peace is to make your enemy your friend Is that not a logical statement but men stubbornly refuse to accept these manifest truths they say the only way to stop war and its bloody horrors is to keep on fighting and the only way to make your enemy your friend is to blast him off the earth blow his armies into bloody shreds starve to kath death hi W women ind and children that we are being told is the only way to end the war and win the peace Is it true Is there no other road out except this one of darkness damnation and death which we are now travelling tra velling I 1 refuse to believe it why then was man t given civen the capacity for reason for compassion for sympathy why was he endowed with the powers of forbearance tolerance understanding and love why were these attributes made accessible to the human mind if these faculties had been brought into use before war began if they were put into action NOW in sincerity and good faith does anyone believe that this i ini in ni i sanity of war could not and would not be speedily ended we agree with this formula for the promotion of peace but we also know that until all nations will agree to quit fighting and to make such terms as will include compassion sympathy and understanding wars as they are being fought today must go on we also know that until the people who comprise the nations will come into un under der standing of how to practice these attributes as individuals there can be no hope for the kind of peace which will end warfare for all time we also know that while there is so much bickering and dissension among the warmongers of 1 our own nation and among those who derive great profits out of war there can be no sense of justice por nor any chance for cessation of war therefore must the war go on to the bitter end until god will take a hand to silence the guns and end the atrocities which now prevail on every battle front only then thell shall we who are preparing for the establishment of the new and better way of living have opportunity to put into effect plans in the making and use such power as will I 1 then be ours bourg to promote a peace that will include tolerance understanding I and love 1 it is also a pitiable condition that there are now naw entrenched in prison in the united states young men who have refused to fight on the ground that they are conscientious objectors think what these men could be doing through service on the home front and in agricultural pursuits now there is also another side to the picture as alexander morton points his most recent issue of humanity magazine through the follo following winz statements despite the fact that the conscription act reco recognizes z the rights of and grants immunity to conscientious objectors jec tors there are more than 1000 of these young men now serving prison sentences in the united states it is americas shame and it is a violation of the basic and fundamental law that underlies our republic the right of freedom of conscience american soldiers we are told are fighting for freedom on a dozen faraway battlefields but what of the conscientious ious objector at home in jail what about his freedom f freedom to think and f freedom to OB EYthe voice of his own conscience who is fighting for him the conscientious objector believes that war is wrong he believes it is a violation of the laws of god and man and barren of any results except evil to the human race and he refuses refuges to participate in it he believes in ending war NOW and he ends it so far as he is concerned by refusing to fight he solves the problem of war and the problem of peace in the only possible way in which either problem can ever be solved said the great freethinker wendell phillips no matter whose the lips that would speak they must be free and and remember that in order to get the whole of truth you must allow every man right or wrong to freely utter his conscience and protect him in so doing |
