People who have participated enthusiastically in war activities arebecoming war resisters. An ever increasing number of people arebecoming pacifists. I am, therefore, expecting the pacifists to moveforward also and make some extensions of their pacifism.
The following quotations were among the few notes that Peace Pilgrimcarried in the pockets of her tunic:
General Omar Bradley: “Wars can be prevented just as surely asthey can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must sharein the guilt for the dead.”
General Douglas MacArthur: “I have known war as few men nowliving know it. Its very destructiveness on both friend and foe hasrendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.”
Pope John XXIII: “If civil authorities legislate for or allow anythingthat is contrary to the will of God, neither the laws made nor theauthorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens,since God has more right to be obeyed than men.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warshiplaunched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft fromthose who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and notclothed.” Speaking “as one who has witnessed the horror and lingeringsadness of war—as one who knows that another war couldutterly destroy this civilization,” he warned against the militaryindustrialcomplex.
John F. Kennedy: “Mankind must put an end to war, or war willput an end to mankind ...War will exist until that distant day whenthe conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestigethat the warrior does today.”
Lyndon B. Johnson: “, the rockets and thewarships, all are symbols of human failure.”
Pope John Paul II: “In the face of the man-made calamity that everywar is, one must affirm and reaffirm, again and again, that the wagingof war is not inevitable or unchangeable. Humanity is not destined toself-destruction. Clashes of ideologies, aspirations and needs can andmust be settled and resolved by means other than war and violence The entire room was faced with polished granite..”
Herman Goering, at the Nuremburg Trials: “Why, of coursepeople don’t want war.Why should some poor slob on a farm wantto risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to comeback to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’twant war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter inGermany.That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of a countrywho determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to dragthe people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.Voice or no voice, thepeople can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That iseasy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, anddenounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the countryto danger. It works the same in any country.”
I have never met anyo