Yesterday the papers carried a story about eight young men in New York who, as conscientious objectors to war, received a sentence of a year and a day in federal prison because they refused to register for the draft.
Picture the crowded courtroom scene: eight tense featured theologians and numerous grave-faced spectators watching the show. The judge asks the eight if they would like to reconsider and register “at this last minute.”
Can they do it? Can they abandon their principles? Can they allow themselves to be beaten into submission?
The answer, of course, is no.
The eight young men hold, in principle, that a soldier’s first duty is not to lay down his life for his country, but rather to be prepared to murder other young men. They believe that war and mass slaughter are evil, and that two wrongs can never make a right.
Who is there to say that the young men’s beliefs are wrong? Who is there that would enjoy wantonly annihilating his fellow creature?
And yet in our country we believe that the whole is only as strong as its parts. We also believe that one unit takes its strength from the strength of the whole. Thousands of other young men who registered for the draft felt repulsed at the thought of murder, the soldier’s business. But weak individually, perhaps, they felt that in a united country there is strength.
The significance of this clash of wills and beliefs seems to be a revelation of a degree of tolerance in our national spirit. We are still free people. Eight young men who violently disagree with the mob rule are permitted to defend themselves. Those who disagree with the young men’s action can still sympathize with the young men’s principles.
Consider what would happen to the eight young men in a totalitarian world.