pacifists

"Even though I said those things to him in regard to carrying a rifle, then he would never be by my damn side at all unless he had a rifle. But then, in the long run, finding out that he was one of the bravest persons alive. And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing."

"The Japanese were out to get the medics. To them, the most hated men in our army were the medics and the BAR men, the Browning Automatic Riflemen. They would let anybody get by just to pick us off. They were taught to kill the medics for the reason it broke down the morale of the men, because if the medic was gone they had no one to take care of them. All the medics were armed, except me. There was no evidence but your aid kit to show that you were a medic. Even though I was unarmed, the men wanted to get close to me. I had to shoo them away. They said they felt safer with me. I made it a practice to go on patrol with the men. The non-com [a noncommissioned officer, such as a sergeant] warned me not to, but I told him, it may not be my duty but it was what I believed in. I knew these men; they were my buddies, some had wives and children. If they were hurt, I wanted to be there to take care of them. And when someone got hit, the others would close in around me while I treated him, then we'd all go out together."

"[About a framed poster depicting scenes for each of the Christian Ten Commandments] My dad bought it at an auction for seventy-five cents when they first started housekeeping, and so the picture's over a hundred years old. And when I looked at that picture, I came to the Sixth Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. I wondered, how in the world could a brother do such a thing? It put a horror in my heart of just killin', and as a result I took it personally: 'Desmond, if you love Me, you won't kill.' And He says every man is your brother."

"There were one hundred and fifty-five went up and fifty-five got themselves down, so they wanted to say I lowered one hundred, but I refused. They wanted to know how many I took care of. I said, 'I don't know.' I don't see how it could possibly be more than fifty. So they're the ones who changed it from one hundred. I wanted fifty, and they made it seventy-five. I don't want to ever say I took care of seventy-five. All I want to say is I was just thankful that the Lord was able to use me, and forget the number. It's not the number: It's doing the best you can."

"Desmond Doss was Sergeant York without the rifle."

"That skinny pharmacist's mate from Georgia who's getting the Medal of Honor is the only CO I consider to be on the level."

"So, I feel like my work has been rewarding work. I have no regrets. I'm just thankful I had the honor and privilege to serve God and country."

"And this is another place where we sort of disagree. To sum up my award now, you say I saved a life because I lowered a man down a cliff? That's like you say the operation was a success but the patient died before we could get him sewed up. That's not saving. Of the men I took care of, a number didn't survive. Did you save any, Doss? You didn't save his life; you did the best you could. And thatis the reason I don't like it said I saved so many lives, because it couldn't be. I just did the best I could."

"How many soldiers had Doss rescued? Division headquarters reported 155 men went up the escarpment, and only 55 returned from the hill on their own. Doss modestly stated that he saved 50 men. .Doss’ exploits were later featured in the 2016 feature film Hacksaw Ridge, directed by Mel Gibson. Doss repeated his heroics over the next two weeks before he was seriously wounded on May 21, 1945. Evacuated to the U.S., newly promoted Cpl. Doss received the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman on Oct. 12, 1945. Doss died on March 23, 2006, and is buried in Chattanooga National Cemetery in Tennessee. Doss remains the first conscientious objector to receive the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. Two decades later, Thomas Bennett and Joseph La Pointe Jr., also combat medics and conscientious objectors, followed in Doss’ footsteps during the Vietnam War."

"And when I was eighteen, in nineteen thirty-seven, I registered, like anyone else, with my draft board in Lynchburg, Virginia. I believed in serving God and country. I took medical training, and I did what I could in preparation for getting into the Medical Corps where I could serve God and country without going against the dictates of my conscience. My pastor, R.F. Woods, went with me. We were Seventh-Day Adventists. I wanted to be known as a noncombatant, but the Army had no such classification. I had to accept Conscientious Objector status or face a court-martial. It meant you were going in with religious scruples. Now, I did not want to be known as a CO because they were refusing to salute the flag or serve the country in any way, shape, or form, and they were having demonstrations. Congress signed into law that COs could not be forced to bear arms. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and George C. Marshall, chief of staff, signed it, showing their approval. Adventists would not volunteer but would wait to be drafted. That's why I didn't go in until April first, nineteen forty-two. In addition to the Sixth Commandment, there was also the Fourth, to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Now, Saturday is the Sabbath to Adventists and they worship on that day and don't work. But, you know, Christ healed on the Sabbath. It's a type of work I could do seven days a week. That's why I wanted to get into the Medical Corps."

"He was a company aidman when the 1st Battalion assaulted a jagged escarpment 400 feet high. As our troops gained the summit, a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar, and machine-gun fire crashed into them, inflicting approximately 75 casualties and driving the others back. Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them one by one to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands. On 2 May, he exposed himself to heavy rifle and mortar fire in rescuing a wounded man 200 yards forward of the lines on the same escarpment; and two days later he treated four men who had been cut down while assaulting a strongly defended cave, advancing through a shower of grenades to within eight yards of enemy forces in a cave's mouth, where he dressed his comrades' wounds before making four separate trips under fire to evacuate them to safety. On 5 May, he unhesitatingly braved enemy shelling and small-arms fire to assist an artillery officer. He applied bandages, moved his patient to a spot that offered protection from small-arms fire, and, while artillery and mortar shells fell close by, painstakingly administered plasma. Later that day, when an American was severely wounded by fire from a cave, Pfc. Doss crawled to him where he had fallen 25 feet from the enemy position, rendered aid, and carried him 100 yards to safety while continually exposed to enemy fire. On 21 May, in a night attack on high ground near Shuri, he remained in exposed territory while the rest of his company took cover, fearlessly risking the chance that he would be mistaken for an infiltrating Japanese and giving aid to the injured until he was himself seriously wounded in the legs by the explosion of a grenade. Rather than call another aidman from cover, he cared for his own injuries and waited five hours before litter bearers reached him and started carrying him to cover. The trio was caught in an enemy tank attack and Pfc. Doss, seeing a more critically wounded man nearby, crawled off the litter and directed the bearers to give their first attention to the other man. Awaiting the litter bearers' return, he was again struck, this time suffering a compound fracture of one arm. With magnificent fortitude he bound a rifle stock to his shattered arm as a splint and then crawled 300 yards over rough terrain to the aid station. Through his outstanding bravery and unflinching determination in the face of desperately dangerous conditions Pfc. Doss saved the lives of many soldiers. His name became a symbol throughout the 77th Infantry Division for outstanding gallantry far above and beyond the call of duty."

"He demonstrated that unconditional love, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness, are possible even in the most adverse circumstances."

"I was working in Newport News, Virginia, in a shipyard in defense work. I could have been deferred. In fact, my boss even offered to defer me, but I was in good health and I felt like it would be an honor to serve God and country. So, I didn't want to be known as a 4-F so I would rather go in."

"Blood had run down into the fella's face and eyes. He was laying there just groaning and calling for a medic. I took water from my canteen, got some bandage, and I washed his face. And when that blood was washed from his eyes, his eyes came open. Man, he just lit up. He says, "I thought I was blind." And if I hadn't got anything more out of the war than that smile he gave me, I'd have been well repaid."

"I was praying the whole time. I just kept praying, "Lord, please help me get one more." When I got this, I said, "Lord, please help me get one more.""

"I was conscientious and I like to call myself a conscientious cooperator instead of objector because we believe in serving our country in every way possible, same as anyone else. Only thing we didn't want to do is take life, like I mentioned before. God gave life, Christ is our example, I want to be him."

"I didn't believe in taking a life. I felt like God gave life, it wasn't for me to take. When I was growing up, I was the [unclear] child. My mother had a picture of the Ten Commandments illustrated and showed a picture of Cain, and Cain killed his brother Abel and I wondered how in the world could a brother do such a thing. That had some impression."

"I felt it an honor to serve my country, God and country, same as the rest of them. The only thing, I just didn't want to take life. I wanted to save life instead of taking life and for them to look at my records, which they did."

"I had a, I prayed and I'm sure my wife, my mother and a lot others were praying for me. I was trying to take the safest precautions I could, but I felt like my life should be no more important than my buddies. My men reminded me of my family. There's something about combat that actually makes you more closely tied to each other. I think you are almost your own blood kin. Those men trusted me."

"The best advice I can give is put your heart and soul into your work. If you like what you're doing, the Lord will bless. I know some thought I was better. Well, I felt like I was. We put our heart and soul into our work. I feel like, especially for the medics, it's the most rewarding work there is. We can't save all but like I told you before about the experience, about the fellow that I took care of that I said I wouldn't give a plug penny for his life."

"I sincerely believe that all my men prayed with me before. At this same time cause there is no such thing as infidel when you're facing death. I know cause I've had some of the men come to me and ask, pray for me, even though they gave me a hard time in times past. When I finished praying, I went up, push up, I pushed over against these Japanese positions. Got pinned down, we couldn't move. While we were pinned down and couldn't move A company was over to our left and they was supposed to come over to help us, meet us to try and knock these Japanese positions."

"Florence Kelley's vibrant personality comes back to me clearly...I had a special interest in Florence Kelley because she had been the first chief factory inspector in Illinois, appointed by Governor Altgeld. With admiration I saw her war on child labor, sweatshops, and laws discriminating against women-often in the face of great obstacles, including whispering campaigns of slander set in motion by her enemies. I can see her now on the platform, answering a reactionary opponent who in a debate on a vital piece of legislation, claimed to be "open-minded." She replied that some people were so open-minded that ideas never stayed in their heads."

"No other portion of the wage earning class increased so rapidly from decade to decade as the young girls from fourteen to twenty years...They are in commerce, in offices, in manufacturing."

"We have, in this country, two million children under the age of sixteen years who are earning their bread. They vary in age from six and seven years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years in more enlightened states."

"irresistible has been the influence exercised by Mrs. Florence Kelley, now and for many years a member of the settlement family. She has long consecrated her energies to securing protective legislation throughout the country for children compelled to labor and, with the late Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Alabama, suggested the creation of the National Child Labor Committee. In its ten years' existence it has affected legislation in forty-seven states, which have enacted new or improved child labor laws. On this and on the New York State Committee Mrs. Kelley and I have served since their creation."

"I want to speak of Florence Kelley, whom I knew in this period and who was one of the first American women Socialists who influenced me greatly. Florence Kelley made an important contribution to the literature of socialism in this country by her translation of Engels' Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844, and her own writings. She was for many years secretary of the National Consumers' League of America and a leading member of the National Child Labor Committee. Her influence was great among working class women and her death in 1932 was a terrible loss. In those days the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was a vigorous organization. I remember one occasion when the I.S.S. was giving a dinner in New Haven at which Florence Kelley was the main speaker. The chairman, Graham Phelps Stokes, was called away at the last moment, and Upton Sinclair, one of the vice-presidents, was called upon to preside. In introducing Mrs. Kelley he explained the purposes of the I.S.S. and how people were drawn into the socialist movement through its activities, attracting even such nationally known persons as Mrs. Kelley. Mrs. Kelley got up and told him that she had been a Socialist before he was dry behind the ears."

"Although many social workers like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, and socialists like Emma Goldman advocated the rights of immigrants and working women, in most instances during the 1890 to 1910 period their advocacy had little or no effect on the suffragist movement's attitude toward minority or working-class women"

"For the sake of the children, for the Republic in which these children will vote after we are dead, and for the sake of our cause, we should enlist the workingmen voters, with us, in this task of freeing the children from toil!"

"Florence Kelley's speech first opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation."

"What can we do to free our consciences? There is one line of action by which we can do much. We can enlist the workingmen on behalf of our enfranchisement just in proportion as we strive with them to free the children. No labor organization in this country ever fails to respond to an appeal for help in the freeing of the children."

"Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through, in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy."

"If the mothers and the teachers in Georgia could vote, would the Georgia Legislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age? Would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised? Until the mothers in the great industrial states are enfranchised, we shall none of us be able to free our consciences from participation in this great evil. No one in this room tonight can feel free from such participation. The children make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton underwear in the cotton mills. Children braid straw for our hats, they spin and weave the silk and velvet wherewith we trim our hats. They stamp buckles and metal ornaments of all kinds, as well as pins and hat-pins. Under the sweating system, tiny children make artificial flowers and neckwear for us to buy. They carry bundles of garments from the factories to the tenements, little beasts of burden, robbed of school life that they may work for us."

"We do not wish this. We prefer to have our work done by men and women. But we are almost powerless. Not wholly powerless, however, are citizens who enjoy the right of petition. For myself, I shall use this power in every possible way until the right to the ballot is granted, and then I shall continue to use both."

"I balk at the notion of contributing so directly to making atomic hash of others and perhaps of my own wonderful self."

"That's the only way you can stop war, stop participating in it, and stop so much consumption that requires war, at least that's the way I look at it."

"For two years they worked on the plantation of a, in quotes, white man, and he had both blacks and whites. They lived separately, but treated them all the same, pitted them one against the other. As Wally would say, he'd ask the poor whites to do something and if they complained he'd say, "That's alright, I'll go and ask the niggers; I'll tell the niggers to do it," and vice–a–versa...Then the next time they did the venture, they worked on a plantation owned by a black man, and he said it was the same thing. He didn't have any whites on his..., except that you could call him by his first name, but he was trying to get everything he could out of everybody. No different, no different. And that's something I believe, and it's discouraging; it really is discouraging, but people are people. Everybody seems to want to just wring everything they can out of people, and all of us do. This is society. [pause] I don't know, I've heard some figures—one percent of the population of the United States makes thirty times as much as a regular worker. And to say a worker is... that's like an epithet. The worker is the ones who keep the world going, so what's [laugh] I don't really quite understand that, but that's the way it seems to be."

"I don't know; I guess maybe I'm atypical, but I know that the groups I work in—for instance, CORE had no color line, and Peacemakers had no color line—didn't have any age line either. For a while I think I was about the youngest person in Peacemakers, and I felt very close to somebody who was in her 80s, and...even now, I don't feel that age difference. I mean, I'm getting older; I know that. But I have friends who are one–third my age, one–fourth my age, and we're just on the same boundary. So I don't really know that—I really couldn't tell you much about that, because, or couldn't speak much to that. I think most of the people who were people who were against the war, or in a very active way, and I don't mean just saying it, but doing something, didn't have those kinds of barriers, weren't divided into that... Now in the general population, I honestly don't know."

"It was in 1970 during the Viet Nam War. We were refusing to pay taxes; we were working in CORE [Congress of Racial Equality]; we were working with the great brokers, Cesar Chavez and those. Wally fasted for twenty–three days once in front of one of the big chain stores to try to get them to stop using, either grapes, or something, whatever it was that they were doing. And yet, we began to feel, and I in particular, that our whole lives were tied up in war stuff, because we live on this war system."

"I have something at my house now—somebody sent it; it says, "Peace would destroy civilization as we know it." And indeed it would, because we could not consume with, 5% of the population that we have, forty, fifty, whatever percent of the world's goods. And we have bases all over the world and so forth."

"we went into the Bar H Truck Stop, and sat at the table, and then were startled when the waitress came and said, "We don't serve colored." And we thought, oh my god, we're fifty miles from home—we wanna go home,; we don't wanna have a big deal. So, we're not gonna fight this thing. We're just gonna sit here for twenty minutes, half hour, just to show that we don't approve of this. Well, we were within no more than five minutes of leaving when two policemen came. They had sent the dishwasher down to the police barracks, that was about a mile down the road, and they came and said, you know...very officious, "Show me your..." I've forgotten; they asked some question, and we looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and answered, and then [they] said, "Show me your driver's license." And reluctantly, the three of them did, and I was going to do it, I'm sure, but I said, "I want to ask you a question." "Ahp...Show me your license." And I said it again. They arrested me. And people always want to know, what were you going to ask, and I really don't know. I think I was really stalling because it hurt me so much to comply with this. Then I didn't cooperate; they carried me out to the police car, and the others followed in our car. This was in Elkton, Maryland; I shall never forget it. They stopped the car in front of the jail and told me to get out. "Am I going home?" "No." "Well then I'm not going to get out." So they put something—I think they call them "twisters"—they're handcuffs, but they have little points in them and they twisted them, and I hollered. It hurt. The others came over to complain and they arrested them. All four of us were arrested in Elkton, Maryland, carried up to the jail; they tried to fingerprint us, we wouldn't—so they would move us from one place to another, and open our fingers and do that sort of thing... It was in all the papers and stuff because Route 40 was quite something; it was notorious."

"Let me first excise the horns from my own head, since it was made, I think, for something besides butting."

"My repudiation of violence is not based on any conventionally or conveniently religious motivation. I cannot say that it is against God's will, since I do not know that there is a god, nor would I be able in any case to assume that I was conversant with his will. But I do not consider, either, that men are gods, that they should determine when another man should die. I do not consider that I am capable of such judgments, either of my own volition or at the command of others. Such behavior in others I abhor, but may not be able to affect. I can control my own behavior. And I do not think that my participation in stupid or immoral acts can add to my stature as an individual-I think, rather, that it might detract, take me even further afield from the discovery of myself."

"Efficiency can in no way supplant morality."

"Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes. Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?"

"I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes. I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes. I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable."

"Here was I, still struggling with the meaning of my own life and standing, it seemed sometimes, on dead center. How, then, did I have the effrontery to question a whole way of life that had been evolved slowly and painfully through the ages by the accumulated wisdom of mankind? How could I presume to have so much of the truth that I would defy constituted authority? What made me so certain of myself in this regard? I was not certain. But it seemed to me that if I could see only one thing clearly, it was not necessary to see all things clearly in order to act on that one thing."

"Is the height of man's being obedience to the common will? I think it a higher purpose to live in a creatively oriented relationship than to adopt a slavish attitude toward rules and regulations. I think it the worst part of folly to be so enamored of acting in unison that I am herded into acting inhumanly."

"I cannot think that the measure of one's belief is the extent to which he tries to coerce others into believing it or acting upon it, but the extent to which he is willing to sacrifice for it himself. If, for instance, I am, because of my well-intentioned but mistaken notions, depriving the Department of Defense of ten dollars per year for making a guided missile, why does not someone convinced of the necessity of the weapon come forward and voluntarily make up that ten dollars? Is it not mere pettiness to insist that I would stand to be "protected" by this sacrifice? (I would also stand to be annihilated by it.) The money spent trying to make me comply could be squandered, instead, on the purposes for which my tax money would be used. But, no, this non-compliance constitutes an affront which cannot be ignored. It is no doubt the fear that even one insignificant defiance will produce a rent in the whole fabric, and that the cloth may some day be beyond repair. Perhaps we do not need the garment at all and should throw it into the rag bag before it is completely in tatters. If the idea I champion is worthless, not many will be impressed to follow suit and intransigence can be regretted, deplored and suffered. If, on the other hand, only the law keeps most people from acting with me, then this must be the worst kind of despotism-it must be the minority who are keeping the majority in line with the whip of the law. Or perhaps everyone is being kept in line with the whip, and no one dares look the thing in the face for what it is."

"One pinpoint of clarity was that it was time for man to grow out of the short pants of barbarism, of settling things by violence, and at least to get into the knee breeches of honestly seeking and trying ways more fitted to his state as a human. To take life, especially in cold-blooded, organized fashion, seems to me to be the province of no man and of no government. In the end, no government can do it-it is only men who fire guns, drop atom bombs, pierce with bayonets. If an entity called government could slay another such entity, no great harm would be done and maybe even good would come of it at least the destruction of files of papers."

"I would not do anything, only suffer what was done to me."