Such a State, naturally and logically, claims the assistance of its subjects in pursuing a course for which, in time of peace, and with their apparent consent, it has made great preparation, entailing a vast expenditure of the nation’s wealth and energy.
This claim of the State for the personal service of its citizens is always latent even in peace-time; but in peace-time the great majority of the services it requires are rendered upon a voluntary basis, and generally in exchange for a monetary equivalent.
Only, therefore, when the State is pressed by necessity to make an extreme assertion of its claims for personal service does it find itself actively opposed by citizens who have never in their own lives and consciences accepted the proposition that force is a remedy for evil.
It is true that many of these objectors have paid taxes without resistance for the upkeep of Army and Navy. If they have done so conscientiously and not merely negligently, it has probably been upon the lines of “rendering to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s,” and from a recognition that all the devices of barter and exchange (including a coin-currency) are a material convenience devised by the State, which may legitimately be given to or withdrawn from the control of the individual without affecting his personal integrity. Men so minded may say quite plausibly: “My worldly goods you can take or leave; my pockets you may fill or empty; but my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and if I am called upon to give personal service for the infliction of legal penalties, for the suppression of civil commotion, or for the prosecution of war, then I am asked for service in a form which I can only render if my conscience approves.”
Faced by this contention, the State has often thought wise to admit, or to make allowance for, a claim which nevertheless it will not recognise by law. People who object to jury-service for the enforcement of a penal code which is against their conscience, are frequently excused without fine or penalty. The same allowance would probably be made to excuse any one opposed to capital punishment from assuming the office of hangman. Yet capital punishment only exists because a majority in the State believes it to be essential to public safety; and if there were a dearth of hands ready to undertake the task, it would then become a test of good citizenship for all to offer themselves; and the conscientious objector, whose argument was tolerated and respectfully listened to the day before, would suddenly become a disreputable object to all law-abiding men, unless the State were weak enough, or wise enough, to provide him with the right of exemption. If it did so he would immediately cease to be disreputable in the eyes of the law, his right to a conscience being granted.
That concession has frequently been made in the past to people who, calling themselves Christians, have held tenets subversive of State-authority. When religious conformity was considered necessary to the spiritual security of the State, Nonconformists resisted, till the State made allowance for them. When the taking of an oath was considered necessary for the security of truth in the witness-box, Quakers resisted, till the State made allowance for them. When the coercion of Ulster was considered necessary for the well-being of Ireland, men who had taken the oath of military obedience threatened a conscientious strike, and the State made allowance for them. Incidentally they became the heroes of that party which is to-day most strenuous in its detestation of those later conscientious objectors who refuse to take the oath of military obedience; but nobody was sent to prison for uttering propaganda in their praise!
Now the reason why the State could tolerate them was not a moral reason; it was simply upon the calculation that, while still pursuing its policy of physical force, it could afford to do without them. It could allow non-conformity based upon Christian teaching, or upon conscientious scruples, to streak the current of its policy, without thereby suffering any deflection of its course.
But it is quite different when the State, driven by its belief in the rightness and the remedial value of physical force, comes to commit the whole of its resources to the prosecution of war. The existence of the conscientious objector then becomes a more inconvenient factor in the situation; it may even, from the State’s point of view, become a dangerous one. Then those insidious Christian idiosyncrasies, which have so often been allowed to withstand authority, must have all possible ground cut from under them, lest it should afford standing to a new social ideal. We have it on the authority of the public prosecutor himself that, if all men became conscientious objectors, war would no longer be possible; and from such a catastrophe the State must, of course, be saved by all possible means.
It is at this point, therefore, that the latent claim (which in peace-time is often more honoured in the breach than in the observance) becomes insistent and active. The State must have—if it can get it—the personal service of all its able-bodied citizens. And thus, practically for the first time, the rival claims of law and conscience upon a man’s allegiance come to be fought out in public on a large scale; and if the Nation is engaged in a popular war, or in one where the vast majority believes that it has righteousness upon its side, then there will inevitably be much prejudice in the public mind against the conscientious objector; whereas there might be much sympathy for him (though not really on the principle for which he contended) if he were refusing to fight in a war which happened to be unpopular, or which a great number of people regarded as unjust.
But if we want to get to the true basis of the principle against which the conscientious objector is contending (a principle which cannot logically be separated from any form of government built up on force) we must not colour our view with the rightness or wrongness (in our own estimation) of the war in which we are engaged, since we obscure thereby that quality of allegiance which is claimed by the State.