by Manfred Kyber

Cover art for Kyber’s fairy tales; courtesy buchladen-joerg.de

Once upon a time, there was a blacksmith’s workshop and a blacksmith who labored there each day.

This blacksmith was unique, because his daily work was finished before sunrise.

It is a very difficult kind of daily work, which this blacksmith does. A person doing this kind of work becomes weary and sad. And one becomes calm and patient because of it, too. This kind of labor takes a lot of strength. Because someone who does this kind of work lives alone, and hammers in the twilight.

Now it was night, and the blacksmith was not at his forge. The fire-spirit in the chimney slept too. Only the fire-spirit’s breath faintly glowed off and on, glimmering under the ashes, and now and then scattering sparks around in the darkness. But the sparkles soon went out. Only a small gleam of light remained, and when it flickered, it cast glowing light beams that seemed to hurry here and there on the floor and walls, as if wandering and seeking something in the darkness of the smithy.

The relaxed bellows let its great stomach hang in plain glum folds, though when it is folded it becomes slimmer. It reminds us of how a stout master can grow skinny all of a sudden. One could have laughed about this, but in the smithy there was no one who understood how to laugh.

The anvil turned his fat head with its sharp pointed nose slowly in each direction, and looked at the old pieces of iron which would be hammered today. It was not much to look at. Only a few worn pieces huddled together. They lay in a corner, and they were dirty and dusty, like folks who have a long and difficult journey behind them.

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by Reginald Reynolds

Editor’s Preface: Reginald Reynolds (1905-1958) was a British journalist and general secretary of the London based No More War Movement (1933-37). He was a friend and supporter of Gandhi, and a staunch critic of British imperialism in India, which he articulated in his controversial The White Sahibs in India [1937], and also in Why India [1942]. During WWII he was a conscientious objector, and served in a mobile hospital unit. Reynolds was a great admirer of the American Quaker preacher, John Woolman, whose works he edited for a new English edition, and whom he cites below. See the notes at the end for archival references, and further information. This is the unpublished text of a speech delivered by Reynolds at the seventh triennial WRI conference, Braunschweig, Germany, in July of 1951. JG

Reginald Reynolds c. 1930; courtesy swarthmore.edu

“There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” These words, which were first brought to my attention in a letter received recently, and which I have since seen in an article, have been ringing in my mind ever since I arrived at this conference, and frankly what I am going to say to you now is merely the possibly confused reflections which have been going on in my mind since I read these words.

To me they express, in the most terse and epigrammatic manner, a philosophy, which I have been evolving myself over a period of years. “There is no way to peace, peace is the way”, and I believe that pacifism, as I understand the word, is an attempt to realize, in terms of life, the meaning of that simple epigram.

We are asked continually by non-pacifists, whether we hope, by our methods and by our movement, to prevent war. I don’t know what answer you give – I always say “of course we hope, but we do not expect.” And we do not base our belief in nonviolence on any calculation regarding the possibility of stopping war by a method of war resistance.

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by Don Lorenzo Milani

Don Milani with his students; courtesy www.giovaniemissione.it

Editor’s Preface: Don Lorenzo Milani (1923-1967) was born in Florence and became renowned as an educator of children from poor families, and an outspoken and controversial conscientious objector. His mother, Alice Weiss, was Jewish and a cousin of Edouardo Weiss, one of Freud’s earliest disciples. He was raised as an agnostic, but at the age of twenty he converted to Catholicism and was later ordained a priest. Besides his pacifist writing he also published in 1965, Letter to a Teacher (Lettera a una professoressa), which denounced the inequalities of class-based education systems “favouring the rich over the poor”. The book was in fact written cooperatively by Milani and eight student dropouts, and took a year to complete. It is considered one of the great Italian pedagogical works. In this book and in his classes he insisted on teaching conscientious objection, or what he termed “going against the grain” history. A useful article about Milani may be found at this link. JG

Introduction by Devi Prasad [1965]

Don Milani is an outspoken and intellectual person with deep political understanding. He is a parish priest and lives in Barbiana nearly 50 kilometres north of Florence, a place in the hills not easily accessible. When I went to meet him last August I felt it could not have been just chance that a priest like Don Milani is placed in such an isolated village. I later learnt that Church authorities sent him there after the publication of his book Pastoral Experience. He is perhaps too dangerous to be allowed to live in a central place where many more people can come in contact with him.

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by Peace Pledge Union

Editor’s Preface: In October 1934, Canon Dick Sheppard, a former British army chaplain, sent an open letter to the London press warning about an impending war. In it he spoke of the, “almost universally acknowledged lunacy of the manner in which nations are pursuing peace”, and went on to add that “the majority of thoughtful men are now convinced that war of every kind, or for any cause, is not only a denial of Christianity, but a crime against humanity, which is no longer to be permitted by civilised people.” War as a crime against humanity was an echo of sentiments already voiced by War Resisters’ International, Paco, and other groups. In the first 2 days after the editorial appeared Sheppard received over 2500 letters in support of his position. A meeting was called at the Albert Hall in London, which led to the founding of the No More War and Peace Pledge Union (PPU) movements. In a statement drafted by Sheppard they pledged, “We renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will we support or sanction another.” This article continues our ongoing series of statements of principles by various movement colleagues. See the note at the end for further information and links. JG

Logo Peace Pledge Union; courtesy ppu.org.uk

Nonviolence means abstaining from the use of physical force to achieve an aim. It is a philosophy, a principle, and a practice. As an ethical philosophy, it upholds the view that moral behaviour excludes the use of violence; as a political philosophy it maintains that violence is self-perpetuating and can never provide a means to a securely peaceful end. As a principle, it supports the pacifist position that war and killing are never justifiable. As a practice it has been used by pacifists and non-pacifists alike to achieve social change and express resistance to oppression. For pacifists, of course, all demonstrations of their view and protests against violence must by definition be nonviolent.

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by Ken Butigan

Cover art courtesy PMPress.org

Years ago, my friend Anne Symens-Bucher would regularly punctuate our organizing meetings with a wistful cry, “I just want to live an ordinary life!” Anne ate, drank and slept activism over the decade she headed up the Nevada Desert Experience, a long-term campaign to end nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. After a grueling conference call, a mountainous fundraising mailing, or days spent at the edge of the sprawling test site in 100-degree weather, she and I would take a deep breath and wonder aloud how we could live the ordinary, nonviolent life without running ourselves into the ground.

What we didn’t mean was: “How do we hold on to our radical ideals but also retreat into a middle-class cocoon?” No, it was something like: “How can we stay the course but not give up doing all the ordinary things that everyone else usually does in this one-and-only life?” Somewhere in this question was the desire to not let who we are — in our plain old, down-to-earth ordinariness — get swallowed up by the blurring glare of the 24/7 activist fast lane.

These ruminations came back to me as I plunged into the pages of David Hartsough’s new memoir, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist. David has been a friend for 30 years, and over that time I’ve rarely seen him pass up a chance to jump into the latest fray with both feet — something he’d been doing long before we met, as his book attests. For nearly six decades he’s been organizing for nonviolent change — with virtually every campaign, eventually getting tangled up with one risky nonviolent action after another.

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by André Trocmé

André Trocmé; courtesy yadvashem.org

Editor’s Preface: In 1952, at the WRI meeting of the International Council, the idea originated to publish a book of accounts on nonviolent resistance to the WWII German occupation. In January 1953 Grace Beaton, WRI’s General Secretary, sent a series of letters to the WRI chapters in twenty countries, asking them for personal accounts or knowledge of instances of nonviolent resistance during the war. Thirteen of these chapters replied, but only a handful of the accounts were about nonviolent resistance. The book was never published. As a consequence this article has remained unpublished until now. The most successful examples of nonviolent resistance were the reports sent from France about Le Chambon by André Trocmé, and Violette Mouchon’s account of the French youth organization La Cimade. Both paint a vivid picture of Christian pacifists who, amid horrendous violence and with great personal courage, remained loyal to their nonviolent principles. Pastor André Trocmé (1901-1971) was the spiritual leader of the Protestant Huguenot congregation in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire region of Southeastern France not far from the Swiss border. In the early thirties he and his wife Magda (1901-1996) had been “banished” to this remote village because of their pacifist convictions. When in June 1940 France was occupied, Trocmé urged his congregation to shelter persecuted fugitives. Le Chambon and the surrounding villages became a unique refuge place in France, where many Jews, children and entire families, survived the war. In 1971 Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Center in Israel, recognized André as Righteous among the Nations. In 1986 Magda Trocmé was also recognized. Several years later Yad Vashem honored Le Chambon and the neighboring villages and towns with an engraved stele in Le Chambon’s memorial park. Le Chambon’s and the Trocmés’ nonviolent resistance does not lessen the efforts of La Cimade. In October 1939, the YMCA, the Protestant scouting movement and the Federation of Christian Student Associations founded La Cimade (Comité Inter-Mouvements auprès des Évacués–the Joint Committee for Refugees), an organization originally dedicated to helping people who had been evacuated from the bordering provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. The goal of La Cimade, as it still is today, was to show solidarity with refugees and oppressed people by being “present” with them. During the war they did a good bit more than that, as they set up safe houses for persecuted refugees and managed to smuggle hundreds of Jews across the Swiss border. The original was written in English. Please consult the notes at the end for archival references. Gertjan Cobelens

Jewish children hidden in Le Chambon, 1942; courtesy jewishvirtuallibrary.org

The WRI Report

Spontaneously, as soon as German Military Police, Vichy Government police and the Gestapo started to arrest political refugees (singly at first, then in groups), the Jews and the young men who were hiding to avoid working for the Germans, the resistance of the population all over France manifested itself. Its very spontaneity made it invulnerable, but that is all the more reason why it is practically impossible to tell its story; for it consists of a multitude of courageous acts by individuals.

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by Magda Trocmé

Editor’s Preface: Magda Grilli (1901-1996) was born in Italy of an Italian mother and a Russian father. She married André Trocmé in 1926. They had 4 children. She has been much honored from her nonviolent resistance to the German occupation during WWII, and especially for her role in saving an estimated 3500 Jews, mostly children, by both housing them in her home and helping to smuggle them over the border into Switzerland.  The two were named Righteous Among the Nations, an honorific granted by Israel for those non-Jews who played a role in saving Jews from the Holocaust. Lesser known is her work in Morocco during the Algerian War for independence against France, during which she helped start, with the Mennonites, Eirene, a counseling center for conscientious objectors. JG

Trocmé family, c. 1939; courtesy womenheroesofwwii.blogspot.nl

Moral responsibility during the war was a terrible thing for the state officials. My youngest son came back from Italy August 27, 1951, many years after the war, and still a gendarme looking at his passport at the border said, “Trocmé? Are you the son of Pasteur Trocmé?”

“Yes,” said Daniel, very surprised.

“I was told during the war when I was at Le Chambon to go and arrest your father, but I managed not to do it because it was a dirty job.”

Yes, it was a dirty job, and that man managed not to do it; but how many others had to do dirty jobs because they were officials? Some of them believed that the government was right and that they had to obey even if the government was wrong, as a soldier obeys even when he feels that war is wrong. We had two interesting experiences of this kind with M. Bach, Prefect of the Haute Loire and with the captain of the gendarmerie in Le Puy. Both of them have been the executors of an unjust law and both of them asked for help later on when the situation had changed, when those who had been arrested had become powerful and free.

It was February 13^th, 1943, around 7 o’clock in the evening when two gendarmes knocked at the door of the old presbytery in Chambon-sur-Lignon. They asked whether Pastor Trocmé were there. I answered that he had a meeting and would be back later, but that I could answer all their questions because I knew all about my husband’s work. They said that it was something very personal and they would prefer waiting. I took them to my husband’s office and forgot all about them; we had so much work to do and so little time to waste!

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by Violette Mouchon

Editor’s Preface: This article is an unpublished English translation of an article Violette Muchon wrote for the French journal Réforme. The French original appeared in early 1945, that is, before the German surrender in April 1945. This translation was sent to WRI/London in 1951 for a proposed book on WWII nonviolent resistance, which was never published. Her translation retains the present tenses of the original French, and is a moving report from the field of extraordinary courage in appalling circumstances. We are honored to be able to post it. Further information about Violette Mouchon can be found in the Editor’s Note at the end. JG

A Cimade internment camp office; courtesy of lacimade.org

Occupied France… The crooked cross on our monuments… the hand of the occupier weighing heavily, invisible, on the Vichy government.

The system of concentration camps extended over the whole of France. The German authorities are interning in the Unoccupied Zone the political refugees from Spain and those who fled from Germany and Central Europe via Holland, Belgium, Northern France, and lastly Southern France. Jewish deportees also started to flow into these camps and by 1940 the camps in the Unoccupied Zone already held more than 70,000 internees.

Now, in October 1939, the Protestant Youth Movements: the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C. A., the Scouts, and the Federation of Christian Student Associations, had founded an organisation of Christian witness and assistance, The Joint Committee for Evacuees, known by the abbreviation CIMADE, which was ready to work in the areas affected by the war.

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by Peace News

André & Magda Trocmé, Chambon, 1941; courtesy plu.edu

André Trocmé was almost a pacifist when he was called up into the French Army in the 1920’s. He was in a geographical survey unit in which he hoped he would not have to bear arms. On landing in Morocco, where a rebellion was in progress, he was issued with a rifle, which he returned, and he proceeded into the desert unarmed. His action was discovered when an inspection took place several hundred miles from the coast.

After listening to Trocmé’s explanation an officer told him that he should have known sooner that he was obliged to carry a rifle. Now he was an integral part of a group of 25 men who might be called upon to defend themselves with arms. If the group were attacked he would be indicted before a military court as a deserter. Happily the group was not attacked. Trocmé had learned his lesson and became a fully convinced conscientious objector.

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by the Non-Resistance Society

Editor’s Preface: In conjunction with the Tolstoy article (just below) and his theory of non-resistance, we are posting today the statement of purpose of the Non-Resistance Society founded in Boston in September 1838 at a special peace convention organized by the abolitionist social reformer, William Lloyd Garrison; the Declaration was indeed primarily written by Garrison. It was agreed upon at the Boston convention and published on September 20, 1838. The society further rejected social distinctions based on race, nationality or gender, refused obedience to “human governments”, and opposed individual acts of self-defense. The declaration is one of the earliest statements of philosophical anarchism, pacifism, and non-resistance in the USA. Please see the Editor’s Note at the end for further information and links. JG

William Lloyd Garrison cigar box cartoon; courtesy cigarboxlabels.com

Assembled in Convention, from various sections of the American Union, for the promotion of peace on earth and good will among men, we, the undersigned, regard it as due to ourselves, to the cause which we love, to the country in which we live, and to the world, to publish a Declaration, expressive of the principles we cherish, the purposes we aim to accomplish, and the measures we shall adopt to carry forward the work of peaceful and universal reformation.

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