[136] Quoted in Ibid., 437.
[137] James Myers, "Informal Conferences" a New Technique In Social Education, Leaflet (New York: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 1943).
[138] See George Lansbury, My Pilgrimage for Peace (New York: Holt, 1938); Bertram Pickard, Pacifist Diplomacy in Conflict Situations: Illustrated by the Quaker International Centers (Philadelphia: Pacifist Research Bureau, 1943).
VIII. CONCLUSIONS
Those who do not share the pacifist philosophy are prone to insist that the pacifists place far too much emphasis upon the refusal to employ physical force. These critics maintain that force is non-moral in character, and that the only moral question involved in its use is whether or not the purposes for which it is employed are "good" or "bad." They fail to realize that these concepts themselves arise from a subjective set of values, different for every social group on the basis of its own tradition and for every individual on the basis of his own experience and training.
The "absolute" pacifist places at the very apex of his scale of values respect for every human personality so great that he cannot inflict injury on any human being regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself. He would rather himself suffer what he considers to be injustice, or even see other innocent people suffer it, than to arrogate to himself the right of sitting in judgment on his fellow men and deciding that they must be destroyed through his action. For him to inflict injury or death upon any human being would be to commit the greatest iniquity of which he can conceive, and would create within his own soul a sense of guilt so great that acceptance of any other evil would be preferable to it.
The person who acts on the basis of such a scale of values is not primarily concerned with the outward expediency of his action in turning the evil-doer into new ways, although he is happy if his action does have incidental desirable results. He acts as he does because of a deep conviction about the nature of the universe in which all men are brothers, and in which every personality is sacred. No logical argument to act otherwise can appeal to him unless it is based upon assumptions arising out of this conviction.
Those who place their primary moral emphasis upon respect for human personality are led to hold many other values as well as their supreme value of refusing to use violence against their fellow men. Except in time of war, when governments insist that their citizens take part in mass violence, the absolute pacifist is apt to serve these other values, which he shares with many non-pacifists, without attracting the attention which distinguishes him from other men of goodwill. He insists only that in serving these subsidiary values he must not act in any way inconsistent with his highest value.
Many pacifists, and all non-pacifists, differ from the absolutists in that they place other values before this supreme respect for every human personality. The pacifists who do so, refuse to inflict injury on their fellows not because this is itself their highest value, but because they believe other less objectionable methods are more effective for achieving their highest purposes, or because they accept the argument that the means they use must be consistent with the ends they seek. They would say that it is impossible to achieve universal human brotherhood by methods which destroy the basis for such brotherhood.