"DISCOVERING THE OBVIOUS"

for

universal civil law

for a world without a military

 

A unique approach to

international conflict

 

by

John Runnings

‘THE WALL WALKER’

1-250-757-9234

 

THIS IS A "HOW-TO"BOOK

FOR A NON-MILITARY

APPROACH TO WAR

 

 

 

 

 

This book defines war as militaries in contest with militaries. Peace is defined as politicians in contest with politicians.

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Anarchists and Quakers and pacifist liberals work, apparently, for the absence of strife and the presence of good will and mutual accommodation as a goal for achieving the absence of military strife. This, I believe, is a carry over from a time when we were less aware of the competition between our genes and civilization.

Implicit in the various presuppositions of the peace communities is that if we can deal successfully with conflict at the domestic level the problems of international peace will take care of themselves. This assumption is expressed in the directive, "Think globally but act locally,"

There is no permanent solution in any imaginable time frame to conflicts of interest between the individual and the group, or between group and group, or between individual and individual. But the solution to war is self-evident wherever civil law can be enforced.

We are born through no will of our own. We are born a lonely "me" in a world inhabited entirely by "they","those", and "them",. We are born to parents we didn't choose, to a place in infinity and a place in eternity we didn't choose, with a body and brain we didn't choose. We are born naked and without perspective. Into this empty mind the local cultural values, both negative and positive will be imposed.

Around these imposed values, which we have not yet the perspective to test, we build our lives. It could be said that there is no justice, human or divine, in this arrangement.

For the purpose of this thesis, justice will be defined as the community concept of justice legislated into law.

The stated purpose of United Nations is, to abolish war between armed states. This will be accomplished as soon as we can bring legislature to the international divisions.

For the last 20 years I have been trying to make credible the proposition that Gandhian type political action, among other things, could be used to bring legislation to the international divisions to make armed forces superfluous.

Since my retirement I have given my full time to refuting, with the other advocators of "non-violence", the universally accepted proposition that if your are confronted with a military and you don't have a military you must necessarily do as you are told. Mahatma Gandhi should have laid this assumption to rest when he tilted with Winston Churchill and the military of the British Empire and took from them the continent of India without firing a shot

But Gandhi was also a captive of his culture which proposed that war was caused by hate and that the alternative was love. So to Gandhi the driving force was "Satyagraha", "The Power of Love", rather than the positions to which I draw your attention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I use a non-gendered pronoun instead of the traditional (and awkward) he/she use.

It is like this: he or she = te,

his or hers = tes, him or her = tem.

 

 

 

PREFACE

TAKING POLITICAL CONTROL OF A MILITARILY IMPOSED BORDER

 

In our retreat on Vancouver Island I depend on The Christian Science Monitor for my perspective of the International condition. In the November 4-10, 1994 issue, the first article is headlined: "Five Years After Fall of the Wall Few East Germans Celebrate--Anniversary Evokes Nostalgia For Less-Tumultuous Times." In an excellent article by Justin Burke, the East Germans are quizzed about their reflections after five years of freedom. And though nobody wanted the Wall back the response was largely negative. And from what small response I have had from West Germans, had they been asked their opinions on the demise of the Wall they might have responded even more negatively. The trauma of this gargantuan change may take generations to work itself out.

There are more dramatic comparisons to be made with respect to joining of the two sovereignties. There was not a paragraph to compare this social disruption for a politically achieved union in the light of militarily achieved unions and disunions that expanded and reduced the size of Germany over the centuries. So we might ask, how does this joining of the two Germanys compare with the combining of other sovereignties into single political entities? has there been a time or times in human history when two or more sovereign states joined without bloodshed? Has there been a time in human history when the weaker of the two states took the initiative for the union against the wishes of its own administration and without asking permission of the sovereign state to which it was to be joined?

In the history that I am familiar with, sovereign states were joined when two or more such states engaged in a contest in slaughter and destruction until a victory and a defeat was achieved.

After years or decades of mutual disparagement and mutual atrocities, "peace" was declared and, under cover of "peace negotiations", victors dealt out retribution on the defeated state.

After 33 years of "non-violent" actions, Gandhi managed to DETACH India from the British Empire. In 1989 East Germany, using Gandhian tactics, took the initiative in the JOINING of two sovereign states. And nobody apparently noticed the absence of blood and gore and broken buildings and firestorms.

In 1986 I went to West Berlin to demonstrate how one might initiate political action to replace military control with political control of an international border. This was to be an example to demonstrate the means toward achieving universal civil law. The desired end result would be to create a political climate the world over that would sustain the replacement of diplomacy with legislation.

I first appeared on the international stage at Potsdammer Platz viewing stand in Berlin when, before an audience of world media and a crowded viewing stand, I climbed a ladder and with a heavy sledgehammer broke the Wall cap in two places. I then walked the Wall's cap the remaining 500 meters to Checkpoint Charlie. Later in the year I did six invasions of the D.D.R.(East Germany) over a six month period to make four international news stories in 1986.

Later I developed a campaign called "Berliner's Walk the Wall With Me".  For this I went to inquire of the Museum artist if he could make a picture for me of Berliners parading on the Wall. But he couldn't be found. So I went to a liberal artist who was copying my pamphlets for me and he said I would have to go to a conservative artist for that. So, having no skills, in this direction myself I got me some news papers. And with these and some pictures of my walk on the Wall I beheaded myself and put Ronald Reagan's head in its place. I had now Ronald Reagan walking by the security tower on the Wall greeting the Berliner Bear. I put myself on a ladder which was steadied by Mr.Gorbechov. On the other side of the Wall I arranged to have the leader of the GDR on a ladder holding a cocktail glass. I then drew the Wall stretching into infinity. The Wall and the foreground I decorated with a plethora of people made up from the newspaper clippings. Three years later the East Germans, having invaded West Berlin, honored me by climbing the Wall to celebrate their victory.

Having set a date, November 1 & 2, when I invited the West Germans to join me on the Wall. I campaigned passing out these pictures with instructions as to the way the invasion could be organized.

The Museum sent out a press release for me and I set up a platform for the Wall walkers.

A very satisfactory press showed up. People climbed all over my staging. But only one person walked the Wall with me.

The G.D.R.police promptly scooped us off the Wall. We were detained until the next day when we were returned to West Germany.

I then did another action, November 18 when I invaded the the Wall again and broke a small hole in the Wall cap before I was pulled to the ground and detained while I recovered from a broken back. I was deported by the D.D.R. to the U.S. in February, 1987. I had been given an 18 month suspended sentence, deportation, and three years probation for my "punishable crimes". When I arrived home in Seattle at Sea-Tac Airport to the best media representation that I had ever had, I promised to return to East Berlin to provoke the threatened sentence.

Before returning to Berlin in 1989 I designed a battering ram to be operated from the top of my vehicle. And then to the media I committed myself to attempt to take West German newspapers into East Berlin to provoke the 18 month suspended sentence. But I anticipated that the East German Wall authority would have by then learned the basics of non-violent action--that to put a politician in jail is to give him a platform, and that violence taken against the politician is always counter productive. To publicly pull an old man off of the Wall to drop 13 feet and break his back, (as described above) is to give him a platform.

So to provide a backup "attention getter" I proposed to build a battering ram in Berlin for West Germans to bash holes in the Wall. It was a pretty dreamy idea, for I didn't know the German language and I hadn't a notion as to how I would find a place to build the ram. Dr. Hildebrandt had made overtures to get me as an artifact for his Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. In 1986 he had put on display a piece of the Wall that I had loaned him. I wanted to distance myself from the good doctor, not out of disrespect, but simply because the perspective that I was advancing was intended to correct the mistakes of his perspective: his, that international peace must be achieved through disarmament, achieved by diplomats: mine, that such peace must be achieved through political action by politicians against militarily imposed borders, to achieve the civil divisions that keep the peace between domestic states the world over. We agreed on the ways to oppose injustice at the domestic level.

I had made arrangements for living accommodations before I had left Seattle. But when I arrived I found I couldn't use them. I could not afford to stay in Berlin without leaning heavily on hospitality. So I went to the Museum for ideas. Dr. Hildebrandt came across handsomely. He not only found me a place to crash at the top of the Museum, but gave me free access to the Museum cafe! But, this was not all!

When I broached the subject of the battering ram, "Why of course! Use the shop!" And what a shop it turned out to be! Excellent tools! And with the shop came an attendant to whom I had but to mention something I needed and he was searching for it. And immediately at the back of the shop was a spacious courtyard virtually empty. It reminded me of my "art of happy accidents" that, in 1986, brought me to the Stuttgarterhof where the manager, in response to my pamphlet, let me have a room at the top of the hotel, bed and breakfast, for 10 marks a night, thus making it possible for me to campaign all summer and to caper about on the world stage for a while.

So the battering ram was built, the car to convey it was bought and Dr. Hildebrandt pronounced it beautiful with an eye to how it would enhance his Museum. And I pronounced it beautiful with an eye to the headlines I could produce with it. And then the police came and put my battering ram in jail. I was delighted. Dr. Hildebrandt was distressed. He came to me to tell me that he had arranged to get my ram back. All I had to do was promise not to use it in any destructive way. I said, "No way!" He was astonished that, after all he had done for me, that I wouldn't accommodate him in this small matter. I told him I wanted to "campaign" to get it back. But he said, "They will destroy it!" I said, "No problem, we will make another." He seemed rather pleased.

The Museum photographer had snapped a picture of me screaming while the police were taking my battering ram away. I used this to good effect on my street display. And I made up a leaflet that vented my outrage that my innocent battering ram could be jailed without the police producing a shred of civil authority for doing so. And I decorated it with a picture of the innocent ram in the dark cell and the barred window in the background. And I cannot remember any campaign material that I have ever produced that gave me such delicious satisfaction.

I declared that I would picket the police department for two weeks and if my ram was not returned to me I would occupy the police department and fast until I was accommodated. Both my wife and Dr. Hildebrandt were shocked that I would fast for the battering ram so I dropped this threat. But I took the street display proclaiming the arrest and detention of my innocent battering ram and my leaflets, and I campaigned at a shopping center nearby and I campaigned at the entryway of the 20 story Axel Springer media complex. And I also campaigned at the main door of the West Berlin police department. A police officer came out and pleasantly said, "You can't pass out leaflets here." And I said, "Oh, yes, I can! Hang around for a bit and you will see." And that was the only challenge from the police department. To transport my street display on the subway I made it into sections to allow its disassembly. In reassembling it the window embrasure by the entryway of the police department was an assistance. And looking through the window I could see six or seven Berlin police doing the things police do in an office. But after two weeks no ram was forthcoming. So I entered the building and I lay down in the doorway to a well worn passage. And the police gently lifted me and placed me on a bench. And the media came in and took pictures. I lay there prone and unresponsive for three hours. Then a policeman came and said, "You can come and get your ram". And I continued prone and unresponsive so he left to return 15 minutes later to ask me what more I needed. I said, "The ram was taken from the Museum and it will be returned to the Museum."

In a moment he was back to say that this, too, was granted and that I could ride with it to the museum. Shortly, several of the staff from the Museum came with a plate of food. They had not heard that I had dropped the fast from my threat. And this was so that I could break my fast.

Several days later the ram disappeared. My first thought was that it was taken by a prankster and that wherever it turned up it would be newsworthy. When I reported the theft to the police he said, "That's nice." And I suspected that it was they that had quietly put it back in jail.

The next action was to take Western newspapers into East Berlin. On August 14, 1989 I bought a bundle of papers and walked into East Germany where I was confronted by a burly uniformed gentleman who was joined by a female captain and between them I was escorted to an office in the D.D.R. Here I was asked by the female captain my purpose. After I had said my piece she explained that my 18 month sentence had been taken care of in a general amnesty in 1987, and that I was free to return to West Berlin absolved from all penalties. I explained that I had committed myself to taking this bundle of newspapers into East Berlin that I had better get on with it. Two white gowned senior boys came in and I, seeing the direction things were taking, went limp.

The boys picked me up as carefully as though I were fine china. I was put in an ambulance and taken to the hospital where I was laid on a bed. A man came and asked me questions to which I didn't respond. And in time someone told me, "You can go." And someone came later and said, "You can go." And someone came still later and said, "You may go now."

Two men came with a wheelchair and I was carefully lifted into it. I was taken to the street and lifted out. I was then instructed how I would find my way back to the Museum. They later took me to a jail where I was installed in the passageway. West German Police came with a van and delivered me to the Museum. I was carried inside and carefully laid on the floor of the cafe. Thus ends the story of my 7th "Political Invasion" of East Germany.

These actions didn't prove nor did they refute my contention that with "Vulnerable Challenge" the penalties decrease as offenses increase. But I propose that it was little indignation I inspired in the minds of the East German body politic as contrasted with military invasions. And that the mutual political invasions of liberals against the conservative establishment's military borders could be thus demilitarized to achieve universal civil law. But enough of that for now. I wanted to start building another battering ram.

The first battering ram was built to hold sandbags. When I got to the lumber yard, the first thing I saw was timber about 4 meters by 16cm by 32cm and I thought, "There's my battering ram."

It was delivered to Check Point Charley Museum. An obliging blacksmith shop made an iron protection for the business-end of it. I hung it on a tripod on my car, and it was ready for action. One of the purposes of the Ram was to get West Germans involved in the overt breaking of the Wall for points of access to East Berlin. My leaflet that I distributed in Berlin explained that the Ram was to be made available to West Germans to this end. And as the Ram sat day after day in a conspicuous spot without response, I worked out another issue I could raise.

The Berlin Wall was set back one meter from the international border and was said to be about 100 miles long by 12 feet wide. This works out to a no-man's-land of about 118 acres of exploitable area, the East Germans having lost it by default. They had failed to challenge invasions that allowed the Wall to be painted, and allowed the three meter access to become a public thoroughfare. It did not belong to the West by international agreement. I would, therefore, become a squatter on this unclaimed land and set up a business near the Potzdammer viewing stand.

I set anchor bolts in the Wall to carry advertising space. I set up my staging for those who might want to get their picture taken sitting or walking on the Wall. I sent out a press release and the first day I attracted Wall guards and a great number of cameras. And persons climbed my staging and sat on the Wall and the Wall guards came and scared them off. I had a focus here for a lot of newsworthy action.

I had a friend who wanted to video my future actions. But I was going home. I had three actions planned for my returning the Spring of 1990:

1) I would continue my commercial exploitation of the Wall in front of the viewing stand.

2) In a surprise move, after I had called some reporters, I would take a ladder, mount the Wall, flip the ladder to the other side, and run with it to the other wall, or until I was stopped.

3) I would call again on Berliners to walk the Wall with me from the Potsdammer viewing stand to Brandenburg Gate. This would make good video and keep the Wall in the news.

In mid-September I left for home.

But things were happening in the world that would render my actions against the Wall an irrelevancy. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans poured into West Germany on November 9, 1989.

And all the months of Gandhian political actions I had demonstrated in the years 1986 and 1989 to show Berliners how they might free themselves from the cage that the Russians had built were now rendered superfluous by Germans coming the other way.

I was then home in Seattle. I still had enough pertinence to the issue to attract the media. And when a reporter asked me if I thought I had made a contribution to what was happening in Berlin, I said, "The rooster crowed and the sun came up." Eight years later a number of things have come to my attention to revise this pessimistic assessment.

In 1994, I accepted an invitation to the annual commemoration at Checkpoint Charlie Museum of the birth of the Wall. There I was told I was known in Berlin as the "Father of the Stone Peckers." In 1986 I had proposed, tongue in cheek, that the Wall should be broken to pieces and sold as souvenirs. I thought it such a hilarious idea that I shared it in a letter home to my wife. When I returned home after my visit to Berlin this year, THE MONITOR showed a picture taken the day the East Germans invaded West Berlin. A long line of Russian guards, behind the Wall apparently on a staging, were looking helplessly down while West Germans were occupying the "no-man's land" and breaking their Wall into little pieces.

Shortly after I was deported to the U.S. from the East German detention in 1987, a woman from West Berlin was taken off the Wall by East German guards to make international news. Later, another woman did the same. In July, 1988, 300 environmentalists went over the Wall. I think I can take credit for being the inspiration for these actions.

A MONITOR article dated August 19-25, 1994 had a story by writer Robert Marquand. I quote in part, "Though rarely noted the movement to topple the Berlin Wall began in East German churches. In the lead was the Nikolai Protestant Church in Leipzig. In the fall of 1989 some 200,000 people came to pray in Monday MEETINGS. (emphasis mine) Despite Stasi secret police threats of Tiananmen Square-like attack, worshipers poured from the church, many with tears in their eyes, and onto the inner-city ring road shouting, "Wir sind das Volk" (We are the people!)

Although I did not imagine that East Germans without some kind of organization would on day, like swarming bees, erupt from what they were doing and go to the Wall, none of my American reading material, except for the above lines, 5 years later, gave me a clue. Due to the MONITOR article I saw that this must have been the result of years of dedicated effort. You don't get 200,000 people to Monday night MEETINGS by a recent spate of mailing flyers or making phone calls.

And then to my vast delight I saw that I had excellent grounds for assuming that I had inadvertently been a part of this grand effort. First,I had drawn world attention to the Wall by political action three years before the East German onslaught. And it is possible that I was an inspiration to those who were in the process of developing the campaign to invade the Wall. I had passed out thousands of leaflets explaining the essence of Gandhian political action which I called "Vulnerable Challenge." And when I demonstrated across the Wall I carried leaflets with me. The basic message, in the leaflets and in my actions, was that violence taken against political action is counter productive. So that when the East German hordes swept up to the Wall, defenseless against the military options of the Wall authority, (Tiananman square like attack) they were met by an educated Wall administration that knew that they had nothing in their arsenals of military might for repelling the invasion that would not be embarrassing to use. So they weren't fired upon. AND IN DUE TIME CONTROL OF THE MILITARILY IMPOSED LINE WAS TAKEN FROM THE MILITARY BY POLITICAL ACTION. And both East and West Germans were then breaking up the Wall into little pieces and selling them to tourists, evidently as a result of my quixotic attempt to be humorous.

But is it not astonishing that questions arising from the joining of the first sovereign states ever to be joined without war, are submerged to the inconveniences of the new relationship?!! Who were the leaders of this novel and astonishingly successful experiment? Successful in the light of the blood that was not shed, the property that was not destroyed, in contrast to a militarily achieved victory and defeat. And have these leaders something to say to a world daily being fragmented into ever smaller and ever more-numerous and ever-more-dangerous armed sovereign states?

(It has been argued that the joining of the two Germanys was done under fortuitous circumstances. But this is like arguing that the first flight made by man was accomplished by fine weather.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

King County Jail

 

 

In the early 60s my wife and I joined the Peace Movement--known by those involved as simply "The Movement".

The issues of the time were the war in Vietnam, Civil Defense, and the control of nuclear weapons and in these years we were actively engaged with anti-warriors in a number of anti-war protests.

The philosophy of anti-war was not new to me since Aunt Jean, who was my foster mother, had been at an impressionable age at the time of the Hague Arms Control Conference in 1898 and throughout my childhood I heard a great deal about broken treaties and the need for making treaties that would put an end to war--treaties with teeth. My aunt was not a pacifist. And I, who accepted her positions with respect to war and peace, had no moral problem in volunteering to serve in World War II.

While I was being shunted about Europe in the closing months of the War, I sometimes dwelt on the proposition that people we were punishing for Hitler's transgressions were relatively innocent of the problems that they were being punished for, that the social pressure that got me involved in this outrage had also gotten these young men across the line involved, and that we were using these young men as surrogate Hitlers. And with my gun I was expected to punish Hitler by killing these men who would much rather be at home digging potatoes, building houses or working in a factory, than squatting in a slit trench waiting for an opportunity to kill me. But like millions of others, I could see nothing one could properly do with a war other than win it. Never-the-less, I promised myself that if I survived the war I would join the anti-warriors.

Sixteen years after joining the anti-war effort, and now at the age of 61, I found myself uncomfortable with the anti-war propositions. But, I couldn't articulate to anyone or even to myself just where the problem lay. My aunt quoted the Stephen Foster line, "the pen shall supercede the sword and right not might shall be the lord in the good time coming."

And the thrust of her solution was to get the people of good will to out-vote the people of bad will and to elect morally-upright people to office, as well as to get morally-responsible people to sign treaties.

And when a national leader broke a treaty their nation would be punished by a trade embargo, presumably to coerce them into finding a more compliant leader. And the militaries of all nations would be negotiated back to those needed for defense only and only defensive weapons would be allowed.

The Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends) had been pacifists for 300 years. They had, when they controlled Pennsylvania, made treaties with the Indians when other states were making war. And for seventy years, while the Quakers had control of Pennsylvania, there was no military defense against the Indians and no need for one.

While Quaker State was motivated in common with other states, for the penetration and development of the new world, the means by which they penetrated the new world was different from other states.

Where the other states used white man diseases, white man's liquor, and white man's superior weapons to exclude the "Native Americans", the Quakers used mutual respect and mutual accommodating agreements to include the Indians. Consequently they had no need for a defense against them.

The "Peace Treaty" of the early Quakers--a mutual accommodation agreement without mutual military threat, is confused by modern Quakers with the international peace treaty wherein a military threat is implicit. So it became rational for Quakers in the interests of peace to work with the agents of the war machines for the abolishment of the war machines,-- manipulating the means of war rather than working on the cause-- the militarily imposed divisions.

Another focus of the Quakers and other anti-warriors is that war could be brought to an end by teaching children to be fair to each other. I had heard this from my aunt Jean as a boy when she quoted the feminist line;"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"

But all the rules of civilization are anti-war.

 

Our first involvement with the peace community was with the American Friends Service Committee, which was the action arm of the Quakers. As we became more involved with the Peace Movement we became aware of the other anti-war organizations; the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Registers League, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Seattle Women Act for Peace (the local group of Women Strike for Peace), the World Without War Council, the Peace and Justice Society. These among many others developed a focus around which the absence of war might be pursued. But none of us were working for the alternative, a universal legislature.

Louise and I, with other Quakers, took a vigorous stand against the draft and we were founding members of "Mothers and Fathers Against The Draft". And we had liens against our house for failure to respond to demands by the Internal Revenue Service that we pay war taxes. And we also responded when like minded groups or organizations called for money and persons to initiate an action.

Most of these groups have in common the "Dove of Peace" that symbolizes the absence of strife, the presence of democracy, the spirit of accommodation, brotherhood, non-violence, friendship, good-will, a personal spiritual sense of inner tranquility and justice. The Dove of Peace became relevant when two or more nations were threatening the departure from the rules of civilization to engage in a contest in slaughter and destruction and its relevance ended when there was a victory and a defeat and peace had been negotiated.

Quakers, with the rest of mankind, settled for peace treaties between victor and the vanquished states that were somewhat less than this ideal and the "Dove of Peace" became irrelevant.

And under the jurisdiction of the dove is any action thought to remove the likelihood of war and to promote any effort that was directed toward goals thought to achieve peace, the absence of war--such as campaigns for disarmament, and negotiations between diplomats (the agents of the military) toward a "Peace Treaty."

After America discontinued the war to subdue the North Vietnamese many of us were concerned about the base that was being built near Bremerton, at Bangor, on Hoods Canal, Washington to accommodate the Trident Submarine. Protesters were being arrested at the Trident site for passing out literature examining the dangers of this newest deterrent to Soviet expansion and the organization "Live Without Trident" came into being.

I had now been with the peace community about 15 years and had taken active part in a number of peace demonstrations. My son had given me a book about Gandhi and I had toyed with the idea of becoming involved in civil disobedience. But, I had the responsibilities of my family so the matter remained dormant until I took part in a War Registers League conference in the Fall of 1977. My daughter, Gwyneth, 20 years old, was there, too, and came to me to say that she was going to take training in non-violence with the object of taking part in a coming demonstration against the Trident Submarine Base.

After I had acquiesced and she had gone, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I should go through the ordeal with her. So, I joined the Live Without Trident group and took the training.

The Trident Submarine is measured in football-field-lengths with the capacity to threaten the major cities of the U.S.S.R. with total destruction thus, challenging the Soviets to develop a response in-kind to demolish American cities.

So Peace Activists were passing out leaflets at the gate of the submarine base. If they stood on the road they were said to be obstructing traffic and if they stood on the parking area this was said to be on government property and, therefore, they were trespassing--so it was a good place to practice being arrested.

After I had taken the training, there was a demonstration in which about 2000 persons responded. Outside the gate of the base the parking area was marked off by a broad white line. To break the law we had only to step across this line. And even though I was with others who were determined to do this thing, I was scared. Years before this I had been with the combat troops in Europe in WW II, but I can't remember any time that I was more frightened than I was about crossing that white line.

We held hands as we crossed into the forbidden area, and when someone offered me leaflets to pass out I was too scared to take them. The guards responded to our 2000 person demonstration by closing the gate and not making arrests. Committed persons returned later and were arrested.

We had another demonstration later in the year with 200 persons, this time we tried to pass out leaflets in the pouring rain and again the gates were closed and no arrests were made.

In the Fall and Winter of 1977-8 we prepared for a major demonstration for the following Spring, in which we planned to invade the base by climbing over the fence.

Sometime in that Fall, I read an article by Gene Sharp, who had spent time in jail for anti-war activities and had written a book called "The Politics of Nonviolent Action". An article he wrote was published in "The Fellowship", the magazine of The Fellowship of Reconciliation. The article, titled, "Disregarded History", subtitled, "The Power of Nonviolent Action", pleased me right down to my toenails, for it articulated so well my own unhappiness with the labyrinthine rationale which justified the actions of the anti-warriors. To my considerable satisfaction, he disparaged the Gandhian proposition that non-violence was a spiritual "all good" and showed it to be a form of political nastiness that children used against their parents and that even the dog used to get attention. He showed that it was a political device used throughout history, whereby the weak could make political gains against the militarily strong. Among many other instances he gave an instance where non-violent action had been used successfully to thwart the Gestapo in the "Final Solution" and the Nazis in Norway in WW II, and that the American Revolution had its beginning in the successful non-violent response to the Stamp Act. He pointed out that in these political actions the historical instances had arisen spontaneously, and as a result, were conducted by amateurs. He proposed that if these techniques developed into a science, they could be used by governments in crisis with other governments as a non-violent alternative to military threat and military contest. And at the domestic level could be used to control or topple authoritarian governments--as well as to dampen the ardor of invading troops.

I asked one of the principals of the Live Without Trident group if it might not be a good idea to invite this author of this important book to speak to us sometime before the demonstration. And, he said, "Go ahead, call him."

So, I called Gene, who was at Harvard University, and he said, in effect, that he would not feel comfortable asking for an honorarium to tell my group that everything they were doing was wrong, but if I could get a more conservative group to sponsor him he would be glad to come and he could meet with our group privately.

Therefore, I called the World Without War Council and the representative there said that they would be glad to assist with such a project. The University Friends Meeting was also prepared to assist in bringing Gene Sharp to Seattle.

The World Without War Council took over the arrangements and arranged a number of audiences for him. On two of those occasions he shared a platform with Jim Douglas, a former Catholic priest, who was a prominent spokesperson for Live Without Trident. He took the religious pacifist point of view, which had also been held by Tolstoy; that to become anti-war required a change of heart, that Christian attributes must be brought to international disputes if the world were to stop relying on the military for defense.

I looked on Gene Sharp as someone who would give a new direction to the Peace Movement. We had him out to our house where he autographed my copy of his book. But, I was unsuccessful in promoting him with the peace community. His criticism was too devastating to make friends with and influence anti-warriors. I include here a page of his critique of the peace movement:

 

"Gene Sharp and the peace movement

 

Now what is the condition of the "peace movement," and how is it all relevant? Let us try to look at the peace movement not simply in the perspective of the period of Vietnam, but in the perspective of "peace movements" since they began to exist as organized entities which, certainly, goes back at least to the 19th century.

The objective of peace organizations, originally at least, was to abolish war. It is doubtful that you will find that objective very clearly stated in the current programs as an achievable objective, within the foreseeable future, of any present American or foreign peace organization.

This is very instructive. Peace groups have been willing to settle for things far short of abolishing war: witnessing to one's piety and purity--and the stupidity of everybody else; witnessing to being a "holy remnant" or the only sane people around; struggling for the rights of conscientious objectors to war. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these things. The point is not that. But they serve as substitutes for serious efforts to abolish war as such. Peace groups oppose a particular war and try to speed up its end with no confidence whatsoever that, even if successful, the military systems will thereby be weaker. Peace groups oppose the development of a particular weapon or a particular piece of technology--without that necessarily being a vehicle for reversing the whole dependence upon military hardware and military weapons. Or advocates of peace support giving all of the world's weapons to one government--a world government--or support the army of the other side--and call that anti-war activity!! Or peace workers support universal negotiated disarmament when there is no historical evidence that that has ever worked or ever will., Or peace workers settle for some measures of arms control and arms regulation which--although they may help and may prevent a particular outbreak, or destruction, or attack under certain circumstances--can easily be broken and leave the military system more or less as it is.

Where is there a peace organization which really expects that, in something less than a few hundred or a few thousand years, war is going to be removed from human society? There is no chance of a major popular uprising against war--as even I (with all my cynicism) thought might be thinkable in the 1950s. At that point there were still people for whom nuclear weapons and intercontinental rocketry were new and therefore shocking. There was still moral indignation about it. But now whole generations have grown up in which nuclear weaponry is just part of the world, like mountains and rivers, cities and poverty. There is no fresh thinking among peace groups. There is no effective challenging of the political assumptions which underline the war system itself. One hears that the war system is all wicked. Peace groups imply that to get rid of war, one has to change whole generations and the way people are brought up. These may be wonderful things to do, but it implies that it is not possible to get rid of war until then. Others argue we must first have social revolution--ignoring the fact that wars existed for centuries before capitalism, and ignoring the fact that so-called socialist countries attack and invade each other, and that following most "revolutions", the military system is often more powerful than under the old regime.

 

 

Human Nature, No Less Than Animal

Yet human nature may provide other clues. You all have done various things in your lives you don't tell everybody about. When you were a little screaming brat, you got mad at mommy and daddy. "I'm not going to eat!" You engaged in a "hunger strike." Or, if mommy or daddy were going to wallop you on the bottom and they hadn't touched you yet and whoever was your defender in the family was in the other room, you started screaming like mad, lying on the floor as if you had been slaughtered. And they hadn't even touched you! You were appealing to "martyrdom" and sympathy against the persecution of a poor, nonviolent, helpless person! Or you wouldn't take out the garbage, at least not on time. This was a refuse worker's strike. Or you wouldn't clean up your room until someone was standing there: "Now take that and put that in that drawer. . ." That is "non-obedience without direct supervision" or "slow and reluctant compliance." Or you wouldn't study when you went to school. You'd look out the window, daydream or even sleep in class.

Many animals and pets do all these things. Haven't you had dogs or cats act this way? They want to go with you in the car somewhere--when they know they are not supposed to--they go and jump right in. It's a "sit-in." Or, they know very well what you're saying to them and pretend they don;t, just like you've done yourself. Or you say "move" and they lie down, whimpering, and look up at you with the saddest possible look--like some demonstrators do to police. Sometimes, they're being ignored, particularly if there's company coming and there's a big fuss in the house and nobody's paying attention to them when they're trying to say, "Come and play with me." The dog then goes into the middle of the living room rug and does a "nonviolent intervention"--not biting anybody, not growling at anybody--but getting attention! So we don't have to change human nature--or even animal nature--in order to be nonviolent. . . . . ."

(comment)

Some years ago, one cold winter morning I was going to work when I was accosted in my driveway by a thin, three month old kitten. And as he circled my person his body language and his voice told me frantically that he was cold and he was hungry and that I must do something!! and his desperate situation triggered an innate response in me called compassion. This made it impossible for me to leave him without discomfiture to myself. So I picked him up took him into the house and left the problem with my wife. My daughter took him to school with her and arranged a mutually accommodating adoption. In this case four persons were moved to action by compassion occasioned by the kitten's helplessness.

Cats in their relationship with man demonstrate the epitome of non-violence. For thousands of years before Gandhi cats have been able to manipulate our innate compassion to get themselves invited over the thresholds by the householder while other species are locked out. And with the thankfulness indicated by the purr and by rubbing themselves against the legs of the proprietor, inveigles tem to share tes larder.

There is a parallel between the antics of this kitten and Gandhi's march to the sea to make salt. Both were parading there helplessness, their vulnerability, to excite compassion, as were the dogs, cats and kiddies that Sharp drew attention to:--the animals by innate programming--Gandhi by political strategy.

For six months we had been preparing for the demonstration that would take place in the Spring. This demonstration was not only against Trident. It was also to support the May 23 United Nations 32nd General Assembly's Special Session on Disarmament. This special session was initiated by 90 non-aligned member states. And it was hoped that since this long-awaited and worked-for special session had, at last, been passed by the General Assembly a breakthrough was imminent. President Carter and Mr. Breshnev might speak, and that the U.N. would now have to agree on a declaration and a program of action toward disarmament.

When our demonstration took place on May 22, 1978, 4,000 persons took part. A farmer close by had offered us space where campers could spread out. The weather was fair and it was a gala occasion. And the flags of the United Nations decorated a stretch of fence and colorful tents dotted the hillside. As we moved off to the Trident base, Live Without Trident persons beat on 45 gallon oil drums as suitable containers for the offerings to support the cause. On our way to the base, other persons used the occasion to clean the roadway of beer cans, Coke bottles, etc. We were organized into affinity groups and in mine was a man who was worried about how we would get over the fence when we got there. He said, "We should have brought a ladder and then there is the barbed wire.....we should have brought a rug to put over that."

I didn't remember just what the fence looked like but there was an elderly Peacenik who wanted to go over the fence and she was quite concerned about the difficulty of going over. When we arrived at the base, the 4,000 of us came to a halt and looked into the forbidden area. And I saw that the fence was just a standard woven wire fence with a strand of barbed wire on top. So, to assure my friend, I pointed out that at the post the fence became a ladder and, to demonstrate, I climbed up the wire and down the other side.

The demonstrators watching this assumed that I was initiating the action and, with a congratulatory shout of approval, selected posts along the fence and climbed over. There were nearly 300 of us, of the 4,000 who took part in the demonstration, who climbed over the fence.

The Base Police intercepted us to guide us to a grassy knoll where they offered to negotiate the conditions of our arrest. I was astonished at the amiability of the police. They said that if we cooperated in our arrest we could be kept in our affinity groups. But, if they had to drag us to the busses, we would be mixed up. And since I found the police obliging, I felt I should be compliant. So, I didn't elect to be dragged to the bus. Perhaps a quarter of the 300 elected to be dragged and put forcibly onto the bus. It was a lot of work for the police and they didn't like it. But the media put them on stage where they were unable to vent the anger which was all too evident on some faces without embarrassment to the police department. After I had been handcuffed and put aboard the bus I reflected that those who were being dragged had given the demonstrators something to bargain with. We were taken to a building where our handcuffs were taken off and we were asked for our names and addresses. I had, without consultation with the group, left my purse at home and I refused to give my name or address. So, I was arrested under the name of John Doe. They had a special bus prepared for the John and Jane Does. It seemed, on reflection, a pretty scary thing to do as one would be lost in the jail system without an identity. And as I made my way to the bus indicated, I began to be apprehensive about having withheld my name. As I climbed into the bus I heard a female shout and giggle, "Dad!" and my daughter flew down the aisle to embrace me.

Some non-cooperators were being brought in and being deliberately or inexpertly handled. One was hurt on the step and a young woman gave the police the rough side of her tongue and demanded to know his name. The protestors in earlier arrests had been schooled to deal respectfully with the police and they had developed in the police a respectful response. But it was said that strange police had been brought in for this occasion and it was said that soldiers were hidden in reserve on the base.

An official entered the bus and said that if we would give our names we would be held in a gymnasium where we would be free to hold strategy meetings and have group interaction while otherwise we would be locked up in jail.

Since it was a rule of the organization that no decision could be made without consensus we could not give an answer until we had thrashed this out between ourselves. And there were those among us who felt that any goodies offered by the Establishment were suspect and there was a very heated discussion. The Establishment wanted to avoid the trouble of finding out who we were and having to arrest and hold us while they did so. At the time I did not realize fully the degree protestors in jail were an embarrassment to the base and to the Establishment.

In the end, we chose to be released into a gym. This was a cop-out on an earlier ambition to "fill the jails" to which I gave my assenting voice. After spending several hours in the gym we were given barring letters and released. The barring letter said, in effect, that if we offended the law again we would be arrested.

The next day the majority of us went over the fence a second time and were again arrested--this time charged with criminal trespass. We were then, with a few exceptions, released without bail and without any promises for good behavior while released. This action at the Trident base is a classical demonstration of the use of the political technique called Non-Violence. This term has many facets which includes the strike, the boycott, etc. Non-Violence, in the sense that it was used at Trident, was the overt breaking of the law for political purposes. Politics is here defined as the affirming or changing of the community concept of justice.

Non-violence, as used by Gandhi provoked community compassion. This was accomplished, in the case of "the march to the sea to make salt", by exposing himself and his followers to all the abuse the British establishment was prepared to inflict. And he not only accepted willingly the penalties of prison but added to them by refusing to eat, thus making himself an object of compassion to all those who had ever experienced an unsatisfied a stomach.

This kind of action is criminal action upside down. Where the criminal breaks the law covertly and tries to avoid the penalties of the law, the non-violent activist breaks the law as publicly as possible and makes temself vulnerable to the penalties of the law for political purposes.

Not all of those who broke the law at Trident base would agree with this interpretation of our action there, nor could I have articulated it this way at that time. Many there saw this action as a Christian response to strife. It was an action to demonstrate the efficiency of love as opposed to hate in conflict situations. But Gene Sharp labeled it "the political equivalent of war". Others saw it as a means of taking the matter to court to have the presuppositions of war and weapons debated publicly between lawyers. While most of the demonstrators saw the martyr effect of activists doing time in jail, it is doubtful if many of us could have articulated the attribute that produced this effect.

After Gene Sharp's appearance and the May 22 demonstration, I was greatly stimulated to find some teacher who would set up a class on non-violence in Seattle. I was informed that there were classrooms available in the Free University (after hours classroom space of the University of Washington) where I could teach non-violence. A small fee would be paid by the students if the program was accepted. So finding no one who wanted to teach such a class, I put in for a class myself and was accepted. But I had had no experience with school since I had left the one room rural school at the age of fourteen. The experience at the Free University was too painful to recount.

In retrospect I see that my own philosophy was in a violent state of flux. I was proposing to teach to a class an unfamiliar proposition that I had not yet developed for myself. I had rejected the Quaker liberal proposition on international conflict that ant-war must be promoted through diplomats. I was having trouble with Gene Sharp's position that non-violence could be used by militarily protected governments against militarily protected governments. I saw that any "peace force" as a tool of the government would still be backed by military threat. But I was not very familiar with my proposed alternative. So I ran a class for three semesters at the Free University and lost all the students that responded.

During the years with the peace community I had occasion to pass out anti-war literature on the streets of Seattle. And it was not uncommon to have someone respond to what I was doing this wise, "It is all right for you to take advantage of the freedom of speech that we enjoy in this country to disparage the United States for their part in the arms race, but the Russians are going all out to match and exceed our arms build up. Who is protesting in Russia? Why aren't you there?

And I had a tendency to read into this protest an implicit expectation that if I were to do such a protest in Russia that I would be sent to Siberia for a long, long time and that my loyalty to the U.S. was questionable, and that I had a partiality for the communist philosophy.

The easy answer was that it was more convenient to protest in Bremerton than in Moscow and that we were responsible for our government and the responsibility for protesting arms in Russia was with the Russians.

But I was not at all satisfied with this answer . I felt that the conservatives had a point here that we were refusing to look at, that we were making a political contest between Americans and Americans on how to reduce the military threat between Americans and Russians.

Suppose we took the conservatives at their word and made the contest between the super powers a political contest. And instead of trying for the absence of conflict as pursued by the anti-warriors, or a mutual military threat as pursued by their opponents, that we went to Russia and assumed the rights we enjoy among the 50 states in the U.S.in the Soviet Union? Would this not provoke the inevitable Russian response that would get the eye of the world press to make the point that militarily imposed borders prevent the political integration between international states that would make an international legislature possible?

During the summer following the May 22 protest at Trident I got a letter published in the Friends Journal (the national publication of the Society of Friends). In it I articulated my departure from the perspective of the peace community. I was very pleased to have this audience.

A pre-med student Jay Mosesson was staying with us at this time. He had been very impressed with the proposition that instead of invading Trident base and making our contest between Americans and Americans, we should be making a political contest between Americans and Russians, demanding the rights between the two states that would make war preparations unnecessary, having developed the political alternative to military strife.

So when I showed my letter to Jay I expected him to applaud my letter and ask me how I wrote so well and how I got such big ideas in so little space. But there was no response. So I asked him, "What do you think of the letter?" He said in effect. "So you got a letter published. What is going to happen?" He had me there for I knew that, in the light of the Quaker mind-set, nothing was going to happen.

Later he enlarged on his thinking. he said, "John, if you want to see action on these ideas of yours you are going to have to promote them yourself. You are going to have to advertise for a boat and set a date and place for the political invasion of the Soviet Union, and you will have to find the crew and the money." I saw the weight of his position. I was astonished at how neatly he had put it all together. I was more than twice his age.

I knew, however, that I had no qualifications for leadership. When I was being questioned by the East German interrogator in 1986 and he asked me why I had not achieved rank in the army, I was nonplused as I reflected that it had never occurred to me to try for rank.

However, I reasoned, if my propositions for a new approach to international relationships attracted a following, there would be plenty of people who would be glad to take over the leadership and I could revert to my role as a philosopher.

I had been contemplating my retirement and the various conventional options did not excite me. I had done all the things a standard life required. I had taken part in war. I had learned a trade. I had married. I had fathered sons and daughters. I had built my own home. And now that I had my offspring off my hands, I knew that promoting this perspective was something that I very much wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I truly believed, in those days, I would have a following. Why one did not even have to be right to have a following as history has shown.

I had supposed that there would be a few like myself who would be unhappy with both left and the right for whom I would have a refreshing message. I fantasized letters from all over the world pro and con on this departure from the cultural presupposition with respect to war and peace. When I went to Louise with this proposition she said that it sounded like the next step. She said later, "If you want to do this, John, just quit working and do it. I will find a job and take care of the house. So with her assent I went to the student and said, "Lets do it!"

So we got a group together and put up money to put ads in the daily papers of the three port cities: Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia, for a boat and crew to go without passports or visas, for the political invasion of the Soviet Union. This to demonstrate the means toward political relationship between the United States that would replace the relationship of military threat that has existed between the two states heretofore.

The Seattle Times at first refused to accept the ad.

So I sent them some literature that I had already developed and the ad was accepted. The rest accepted our money and, presumably, ran our ad.

Ray Rupert, religious editor of the Times, did a sympathetic story for me. Jon Hahn a columnist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer gave me an enthusiastic write up. A fellow anti-warrior, Richard Carbray, introduced me to the editor of the University of Washington Daily. And they gave me the whole front page. And later they gave me a fine article with an amusing cartoon by Jon Price. But there was no immediate offer of a boat.

At the trial of the Trident protesters, December 26,'78 the lawyers for the defense, who challenged the legality of building the Trident submarine base, argued "International Law". They quoted treaties as far back as the mid-19th century that appeared to forbid weapons whose prime targets were civilian centers. Thus balloons were subjects of such a treaty and were forbidden for use by agreements between international states. Our lawyers drew a parallel between law to forbid balloons in warfare and the Trident submarine since both would be used against civilian centers and both would be weapons of offence rather than of defense.

However, the judge's jurisdiction was limited to Washington State. He could not rule on an international matter even were he so inclined. And there was no means by which we could appeal the matter to an international civil court because, as we will see later, no such court exists.

The judge said the matter before the court was: Did we trespass on Trident property, and the jury, predictably, found us guilty of so doing.

Our years effort got us national publicity when we were arrested, national publicity when we were found guilty and again when we were sentenced. Some of the details of the trial I disremember after 10 years. But I remember that at the sentencing that our counsel told the judge that the heavy sentences were stimulating interest in the Trident issue and that it might be discrete to give the activists a light sentence.

The judge, at the mass sentencing, gave us each an opportunity to say whether or not we should be sentenced and if so what the penalties should be. So far as I can remember, none of the Trident protestors asked that they be given a long sentence to stimulate interest in the anti-Trident concerns. In other words,we elected to be less effective than they could be.

I told the judge that I should be like Gandhi and ask for the maximum penalty but "like the rest of us, I was chicken". So, I asked instead that my penalty should be the maximum but to be paid off in public service. The maximum penalty was a year in jail and a $5,000.00 fine. Nearly all of us were let off without penalty but were told that if we offended again we would be fined $25.00. The judge evidently took the advice of our counsel. One could not make a spectacle out of paying a $25.00 fine, and it was effective.

I wanted us all to go over the fence again and refuse to pay the fine. But I didn't have a strong enough voice with the organization. So I went over the fence again on January 2, 1979 with a young woman who was living at our house who wanted to accompany me. The principals of Live Without Trident had spent an evening trying to persuade us not to do so. But in the morning they gave us support. This would be the fifth time that I had done an action against the Trident submarine. We were promptly arrested and charged with criminal trespass. The young woman was released with a warning and I was arraigned to go to trial in March and released without my signature.

In the meantime, the group of us that were planning the political invasion of the Soviet Union had made our proposed destination the Kamchatka Peninsula at the city of Petropavlovsk. And a T.V. station in Vancouver, B.C. called to say they had a program on which they would like to mention my proposed trip to Russia and did I have a picture of myself that they could use? I replied that I could come myself, and it was so arranged.

I had never been in a T.V. studio before and I was rather overwhelmed when I arrived to find the elaborate preparations they had made for me. I was taken to a room where I was prepared cosmetically for the camera. In the studio a large map of Kamchatka decorated the wall. A beautiful woman in lovely attire would introduce me and point out my point of invasion. And for the first time I saw myself on the T.V. monitor. I was introduced as a man who was to take a boat to go to the U.S.S.R. to land on Kamchatka without passport or visa and the opening question was, "Why did I want to do this thing?" I was speechless! I had not prepared myself for this obvious question. Where did I start to explain my unhappiness with the pacifist-liberal approach and my rationale for my departure from that approach? How did I explain the concept of a political relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R? in 25 words or less? After a long pause, the nice young man who had asked the question put it in another way and got me talking. And, I stumbled through the rest of the ten minutes I was given to say my piece. It would be twelve years before I would be invited to make an appearance on T.V. again.

Shortly after this I went on trial before Judge Donald

Voorhees. I had chosen to defend myself. I had a 13 page typewritten statement. I reasoned that by going before a judge, rather than having a jury trial, I had saved the court time and expense and that I should be given time to read my statement.

When I had read the third page of my explanation of why I went over the Trident fence, the judge tried to interrupt. And then he left the court and I continued to read until the court marshals came and dragged me out of court. I was sentenced to 45 days in jail. I was allowed to go home to arrange my affairs and I returned to start my sentence the following day.

At the jail I was questioned about my health. I was fingerprinted and my clothes were exchanged for a prison jumper and I was placed in a holding cell with several other prisoners while the booking process was being completed.

It was now late in the day and the cell door was slid open and trays with our evening meal were passed around. I was prepared for hardship in jail but the food that evening was no hardship. It was absolutely delicious.

After supper a large, heavy-set man entered the cell. He had apparently been drinking and he focused his attention on a slight young man to explain that he had been arrested for stabbing someone. And he was expressing remorse that he had done it. And the young man made the mistake of agreeing with him. The drunk responded indignantly that he didn't know what he was talking about, and related the outrage that had provoked the stabbing. And when the young man tried to accommodate him by recognizing extenuating circumstances, the drunk turned on him again and said indignantly that one should never stab a person no matter what the circumstances. To the young man's great relief, at that point the door was opened and we were taken to our cells.

We were issued soap, toothbrush, blanket, a towel, and a mattress. After that we entered our cells. The cell doors, operated by remote control, closed with a solid clunk of finality. I was alone in a four bunk iron cell, iron beds spot-welded to iron walls. At the end of the passage between them was a seatless toilet and a wash basin. This was jail.

From somewhere came the garbled voice of an unseen radio--the voice of the sports announcer reverberating off the many walls. And then thundering applause when a score was made, so that when the radio was shut down at midnight the silence was like a physical impact. I quickly dropped off to sleep. Sometime later I awoke and the night light was shining through the bars. The gate slid mysteriously open and a figure carrying a mattress slipped into the room. He threw the mattress on the upper bunk. The iron grid slid shut and I was locked in this strange place with this strange man. He quickly arranged his bed and when I went to sleep again it was to the rhythm of his snoring.

The new day opened with the uncompromising clash of iron against iron. The gate slid open and someone was shouting, "Go to the day room!" Men were filing down the hall with tousled hair, towels over the shoulder. I quickly grabbed my toilet equipment and followed suit.

The day room is an oblong enclosure of iron and concrete. Down the center is a continuous iron table lined on either side with continuous iron benches all firmly set in concrete. The length of the room on either side was a gridwork of iron bars. Beyond is a hallway and beyond that an iron wall. Twenty men are with me in this room. Black men outnumber white men, two to one. This was the height of the desegregation struggle and I noted this fact with some concern.

So, here I was on March 6, at the age of 61, in the dayroom of A-1 unit of King County Jail for doing civil disobedience at Bangor base on January 2. I anticipated that the 45 day sentence would be an agonizing experience that I would voluntarily endure only because of my agonizing concern for the runaway nature of arms proliferation and to draw attention to the planet destroying the potential of the Trident system and to mitigate my involuntary complicity in its construction.

The men washed and relieved themselves at the meager toilet facilities at the end of the dayroom until someone shouted, "Chow!" An opening appeared in the gridwork of iron and we all filed through the hall and up the ramp that led to the mess hall. The walls the length of the ramp corridor had murals of stylized mountains and trees of unconventional colors, pastels on one side and loud garish colors on the other. The effect, though amateurish, was startling and refreshing.

We filed into the dining hall where we passed by the kitchen to pick up a large spoon and tray. The help, dressed in white, served us two fried eggs, one beef patty, two pieces of buttered toast, tomato juice, coffee or milk. We sat down to severely stylized round steel tables--arms from the center post supporting rounded steel seats. The hall was large, the ceiling was high and the walls were bare. A raised cubical in one corner housed a guard behind a glass panel.

As the tables filled up the atmosphere became warm and friendly. A quiet buzz of voices filled the hall, men greeted each other across the tables, and gossiped between tables. And those with light appetites shared with those who needed more. Others swapped food.

At a garbled bark from a loudspeaker we rose from our table and picked up our utensils and again filed past the kitchen leaving our things in disciplined racks and returned through the mountains to the day room. Thus began my first day in jail.

All my life I have identified with those who are disparagingly called "do gooders". I was for rehabilitation of criminals rather than retribution. I spoke of social offenders rather than of criminals. I was accused by conservative acquaintances of being for the criminal rather than for the victim. (One apparently had to be on one side or the other, there was no middle ground.) There are many perspectives from which to view the right of some people to put other people in cages. I have toyed with the position that while the establishments of the world struggle to gain and hold a disproportionate share of the heritage, with the collusion of society by legal means, they are not in a real solid position to judge those who are trying to gain a fair or disproportionate share of the heritage by illegal means.

Having said that, I feel that the injustice and pain occasioned by the rules of society are not nearly as great as the injustice and pain that would result in the absence of those rules. And if the rules of civilization presupposes cages, then I am on the side of cages. Having granted the cages, what function should cages serve?

One school of thought would make the cages a means of expressing the wrath of the community against those who fail to abide by the rules, to create a negative experience sufficiently agonizing that the criminal would be deterred from breaking the rules in the future. And the penalties should also be such that would be offenders would be deterred from criminal activity.

Another school of thought says that the deterrent frequently does not have the predicted effect but rather hardens the offender in his anti-social behavior. And that the atmosphere of the cage should reflect as closely as possible the society we want the offenders to accommodate themselves to upon release. My experience in King County jail would seem to show that we have come a long way toward realizing the latter.

The two schools of thought are two horns of a dilemma the species acquired with the development of civil law over natural law (biology) and are not resolvable in any time frame.

We were locked in the day room and the T.V. was turned up loudly. Abrasive music was also apparently coming over the jail sound system and there was a babble of voices as men gossiped with each other after varying lengths of time on the outside.

The collage of sounds bounced, echoed, reverberated about the iron walls, ceilings and concrete floors. Animated figures pursued each other across the electronic device on the shelf at the end of the table. At one end two men are studying a chess board. At the other end men are trying to catch the dialogue on the T.V. set where animated figures were chasing and bashing each other. Close by a very noisy game of cards is in progress. As the players flung down their cards and collected their tricks with cries of victory. In the middle of the table a boisterous group are making a spectator sport of dominoes. With great cries of delight they slam down the winning pieces on the metal table with excessive force and tote up their scores. To this friendly flow of banter I watched enthralled.

None of the thousands of pages I had read on prisons and on prison reform, rehabilitation, restitution had prepared me for this. I tried out the jargon of the culture on them. These were the criminals, convicts, felons, social offenders, the anti-social element. These gregarious young men are the anti-social persons--burglars, rapists, muggers, purse snatchers, pimps, murderers.

There were other men lying on the iron benches along the wall. They lay like cats waiting for mealtime. Maybe these were the anti-social persons. So, figuratively speaking, I stroked one. And, figuratively speaking, he purred.

A young black trustee came over my way. A slim young man of medium height, he had neatly trimmed beard that ran along his chin and up into neatly trimmed sideburns. His hair was elegantly styled, his jumper fit him neatly. He asked me softly, if I had had my turn at the telephone. I said I had put my name on the list and expected to be called. He said he had not been watching the list.

(continued after letter)

 

Fellowship of Reconciliation

947 Broadway East; Seattle, WA 98102

Letter of support

Dear John

Knowing your ebullient spirit prevents the jail experience from weighing too heavily upon you, we nevertheless hope you survive the ordeal without a dampening of that spirit.

 

Please accept this letter as a token of our expression of solidarity with you in your witness. To this we add a recognition of the emotional and spiritual strengths of your wife and other supporters.

 

We feel confident in expressing support for you on behalf of the F.O.R., as many members share your concern over the threat of nuclear annihilation, some even sharing your predicament.

 

Yours in Peace

 

R. Tyree Tinsley

Timothy Mierau

Richard Thompson

 

 

And when we examined the list it showed that I had missed my turn. In view of the disproportionate number of black men in the line and the prevailing sensitivity of race relations, I was prepared to let justice slide in favor of discretion and take my place at the tail of the line. But he led me, briskly, to the head of the line and the big black man there said, "Sure," and moved aside to let me in.

Shortly after this I was sent up to a dormitory tank on the fourth floor where comparatively harmless offenders were kept. Here we read books or watched T.V. or wrote letters or slept in our bunks. These were the standard utilitarian iron double bunks. There were about twenty of them. There was a continual lineup for the telephone. The T.V. programs were democratically chosen by a show of hands. The majority liked sports programs and Westerns (where more lead was spent on one program than was spent in the whole history of the frontier). And they liked animated cartoons where figures pursued and bashed each other. So that was the kind of programs we looked at. The library person told me that if there was a specific book I wanted he would see if he could find it. So I thought it would be a good time to study up on non-violence so I asked for Gene Sharp's "Politics of Non-Violent Action" and in a day or so it came, all shiny and new and showed that it had cost the jail $25.00.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer came and took pictures and got me a story. And a friend in Meeting took it upon himself to get members to send me postcards of support. But I was having problems with my new philosophy. In my new position I no longer wished to promote or support disarmament. My proposition was a departure from the rationale of disarmament.

I had by now gotten a write-up in both the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times. So a number of persons in "the tank" were aware that I was not a conventional prisoner. I had committed myself to going to Kamchatka to do a political invasion of Russia. I intended that this sentence would give me exposure that would help me find the boat and the financing for the trip. I was now trying to rationalize my being jailed for taking part in an anti-weapons campaign to get backing for my departure from the anti-weapons campaign.

I got a letter from another part of the jail from a young inmate who assured me that he could get me two yachts in Florida for my trip.

And I had a supporter who was preparing a celebration on my release. But I was released two days early, and my proposed trip was not met with any great enthusiasm by my pacifist acquaintances. Such a trip to the Soviet Union should be to impart goodwill and understanding. But I was planning to go to the U.S.S.R. uninvited. What hopes for a peaceful world could come of this political invasion? But at the time I had not realized the gulf I was building between myself and my former compatriots. After my release from jail I saw an anti-war film shown by the anti-Trident people which proposed that so long as there were weapons of war they would be used. So we must get rid of these weapons. While I protested this proposition, I did not have the perspective to inquire if one would prevent arson by outlawing matches? I wasn't doing very well.

The proposed approach to the Soviets by the anti-war people was that of conciliation and cultural exchange. We must show goodwill and friendship toward them and hear their side of the argument. And to explain to Americans that the Soviet Union had lost 20 million of its citizens in WW II, therefore, to ask it to reduce military security was unreasonable. And that the U.S., who had never been invaded, should, therefore, take the initiative in reducing tensions by reducing our military.

The proposed trip to Kamchatka was not a goodwill tour. We were to go without permission of any government and were to attempt to take trade goods to provoke and incident at the Soviet customs that would get world wide publicity for a new approach to the unsatisfactory relationship between the two states. I was not able to articulate this goal at that time as well as I can in retrospect so I did not lose immediately what little standing I had in the "Peace" community. A political invasion of Russia would offend the Russians and one did not make peace by offending people. However, when I got out of jail, I got some supporters to help keep an ad for a boat in the papers on the West Coast.The ad ran;

Vessel needed: to carry world citizens to Kamchatka U.S.S.R. Starting June 1st, 1980 to affirm world citizenship by an unauthorized people to people visit, and consequently break the rules that keep Americans and Russians estranged from each other.

The ads in the papers were not producing a boat. We had several inquiries but nothing jelled. As spring progressed into summer of 1979 and there was no serious offer of a vessel, I proposed an international essay contest on how the money invested in Trident submarine might better be spent on changing the relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

 

 

INTERNATIONAL

ESSAY CONTEST

 

Unilateral Initiative is offering $2,000.00 in prizes for essays of 3000 words or less on the following theme: "THE DRIFT TOWARD WAR BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA SEEMS INEXORABLE: WHAT FRESH IDEAS AND PLANS FOR THEIR IMPLEMENTATION COULD YOU OFFER TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIVE NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE U.S. AND U.S.S.R.?" Participation is unrestricted.Essays will be judged for originality rather than literary excellence. Priority will be given to imaginative and heretofore unexplored approaches.

FIRST PRIZE, $1,000; SECOND PRIZE, $500, THIRD PRIZE, $500.00.

Entries must be received by January 1, 1981. Judges' decisions will be final.Prizes will be awarded March 1, 1981.

ENDORSEMENTS JUDGES

W. C. WESTMORELAND FLOYD SCHMOE

General, (U.S. Army ret.), Quaker naturalist and author

Former Chief of Staff RAY RUPERT

EARL REYNOLDS Religious editor, Seattle Times

Quaker Pacifist, skipper of REV. PETER RAIBLE

the "Phoenix" Minister, University Unitarian

REV. DR. WM. B. CATE Church

President Director, Church BARBARA YANICK

Council of Greater Seattle Judge, Seattle Municipal Court

DANIEL J. EVANS

President, Evergreen State College

(Former Washington State Governor)

JACK DOUGHTY

(Ret. Executive Editor), Seattle Post Intelligencer

DR. CHARLES MACONIS

Director, Seattle Religious Peace Action Coalition

MICHAEL BAILEY

Director and International Coordinator of Greenpeace

GEORGE McGOVERN

U.S. Senator from South Dakota

MIKE LOWRY

Washington State Congressman, Seventh District

 

I had never raised a penny before but in three months I had raised

the $2,000.00 for prizes for the essay contest. And I got publicity in the Seattle Times in Ray Rupert's column. He was the religious editor of the Times and I had a small group who met at my house who were interested in putting on the contest and also in the Kamchatka project. And we raised the funds for sending out the flyers. Someone got me a book of 2,800 names and addresses of all four year colleges in America and we got the international mailing list of the Quakers, the Unitarians, and the Lutherans. We had a list of about 75 addresses of persons who were members of the 75 organizations working for some form of world government. I wanted to get flyers into the Communist countries, too, and I tried to get contacts through the U.N. and the cultural exchange program but I was unsuccessful. Eventually, I got a few contacts through the American Soviet Friendship Society.

Eight or ten of us got together to word the flyer for the contest. Here,I had 100% pacifists against me. They wanted the purpose of the endeavor on the flyer worded in pacifist terms, larded with peace, goodwill, fellowship, brotherhood, understanding, and all the words that would turn the militarists off.

I wished to state the purpose of the essay contest in a way that could be responded to by both the liberals and conservatives and so the Trident theme was inappropriate. I had gotten the ear of a former editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And he had gotten me no less than General W.C. Westmoreland as one of the sponsors for the contest. Here the split was becoming evident between my goal to establish a political contest between U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and the goal of the Peace Community to achieve the absence of conflict there. I had wanted to steer the wording into "How to achieve political action between the two states?" And in the end I altered the wording to suit myself. I developed the promotional material and had it printed. I announced the essay contest to the local media. My supporters responded to my call to help with the mailing. And while we were so engaged, in early January, 1980, we got a letter with an offer of a boat. So we had two kites in the air at once.

I had been passing out leaflets at the University Book Store on University Way in Seattle when a young anti-warrior stopped to say that he had a friend in New Paltz, N.Y., who was fixing a boat for a round the world trip--and that he was an adventurous soul and might be interested in my endeavor. So I had written to him and this was the result.

He said that he had a 35 foot Dutch-built, steel-hulled sloop and we would go half and half on the $20,000.00 he estimated the endeavor would cost.

Elated, I called the media. There was still a lot of work to do on the essay contest. Not only was there the mailing to finish, there was free publicity for the contest to be asked for in the liberal and pacifist media. So someone had to be around to respond to the respondents. I saw the trip to Kamchatka as by far the most important effort. And I wanted to turn the contest over to someone else so that I could start working on it immediately. But, I could find no one who wanted the job.

There were strong objections to taking a sailing vessel to Kamchatka since the winds would be blowing the wrong way. And former editor of the P-I, Jack Doughty, called to suggest that since the boat was on the East coast it would make more sense to make the route to the Soviets through the Mediterranean. And it was so arranged with the boat owner. We would make the destination Odessa and it would be called "The Odessa Odyssey".

Jon Hahn of the Post-Intelligencer was after me to get a picture of the boat for another story. I wrote letters and had phone conversations with the boat owner. He said that the boat was in a small shed where a satisfactory picture would be difficult. The boat still needed some work and I, with my boat building background, was eager to get it finished and get it into the water.

I proposed to send a press release to all the major newspapers in the U.S. about the proposed trip to Odessa, most of this work fell to me, and I was getting calls for carpentry work. So with one thing and another I didn't get away 'til mid-July.

I had built a rack on my Vega station wagon for my tools and I would go east through Canada. I would live in my car and visit relatives and supporters along the way.

 

The account of this trip is in a journal I have. I hope to include it in a later book. My first intent was to write a full autobiography, but at the rate I write this might take five years. And, now, I was then 74 and there is a strong possibility that I might not live to see my work printed.

This shortened version I am offering is a critique of the perspective of the 20th Century anti-warriors and an alternative perspective for the 21st.

After I had worked for a summer on the vessel it was the intent to depart for the political invasion of the Soviet Union the following Spring. During the Winter the boat owner wrote to say that he had inquired locally about insurance--and that the local agents tended to view the insuring of a boat under such conditions with amusement.

The agents in a city like Seattle he said, might view the matter differently, and would I inquire around? It had never occurred to me that anyone would offer a boat for such a mission and expect it would be insurable. However, I inquired all the way to Lloyds of London with negative results. I had already contributed $8,600.00 of my own money and donations plus the summer's work on the boat when Mike told reporters that I had promised to supply the insurance. And, as I was unable to do this, the deal was off.

While I was working on the boat the response to the essay contest was coming in. But I did not spend much time reading the essays as the judges would do that. And I, not knowing that my efforts were going to be a fiasco, was exerting all my efforts raising funds and getting press releases out to news media all over the continent for the coming departure of the Odessa Odyssey.

 

LETTERS OF RESPONSE TO MY CALL FOR PERSONS TO CREW THE VESSEL

TO THE U.S.S.R.

Dear John Runnings

Your acknowledgement of receipt of my essay is very much appreciated. I was concerned it may not arrive in time or be acceptable in long hand ( I detest typing ). Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful consideration. Your feedback on the questionnaire was also very well received and I found it most insightful.

Regarding the Odessa Odyssey, I think it's a grave and poignant concept. In fact, if you should be in need of someone to document the voyage in a journal or a strong robust hand on deck--I would like to volunteer. I'm 34 and single and may even be able to get a sponsor to minimize costs. Please let me know about this matter at your earliest convenience, as May is just around the corner.

 

Sincerely,

Jill Duggan

__________________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Runnings,

A 2-sentence item appeared in the Kansas City newspaper a couple months ago, that mentioned the plans of a Seattle man named John Runnings. and a group called Unilateral Initiative. Intrigued by the article, I looked up "John Runnings" in a Seattle telephone directory and called from Kansas City. The person I spoke to gave me this address.

I myself am a 23 year old single male and I believe we have a lot in common. I have been to a couple dozen different countries in the world and have fumed at the authorities and bureaucracies I was forced to deal with. In the summer of 1979 I spent a week at a sailing school in Barrington, Rhode Island chasing a dream of trans-oceanic sailing.

I am writing to you because I want to pursue my vision of what the world can be. Would it be possible to obtain information about yourself, Unilateral Initiatives, similar groups you may know of or anything else you think is worth hearing? I have a passion to hear more about this and would appreciate any and all information. Thank you very much.

Russell Greinke

____________________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Runnings,

I have just finished reading your interview in the Greenpeace Examiner and I am volunteering to serve as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer on your Odessa Odyssey.

The article says that you want to fill out your crew with minority members--well, I am a 5th generation Californian (which might be the smallest minority in all America), and among my mixed blood-lines I can count a 1/16th part which is Cherokee.

As for my cooking experience--I recently (August-September) served as cook on an archaeological dig in Cumbria, England. I managed to serve three meals a day to 15-19 people on a budget of 70 p. (approximately $1.90) per person per day, and we did not loose one digger!

Besides believing in your cause, I have another reason to be part of your crew. By training, I am a journalist. I graduated from San Francisco State in December '79 with a B.A. in journalism. (while attending State I worked in a S.F. based publication, The Redwood Rancher).

After graduation, I headed to London where I worked for 6 months with B.B.C. External Services radio and I loved it! I learned many radio skills such as tape editing, mixing, and producing.

I would like to report on the voyage. I would like to write articles and to produce tapes, which could be used by radio (perhaps National Public Radio?) Along with the international coverage the journey will receive, it might also be nice to get a personal view of the voyage.

I hope you will consider my idea and accept me as a crew member.

 

Sincerely,

Katie Seger

P.S. I am 23 years old and in excellent health!!! And yes, I am a very good cook!

_____________________________________________________________

 

Dear Mr. Runnings,

You've turned on my wanderlust with your plans for the Odessa Odyssey and I'd like to hear more about them if you'd care to write. I'm afraid the only contributions I have to offer your effort are my enthusiasm for your cause and my love of adventure. Maybe you'll find yourself still in need of new members as departure time draws near, and will consider me.

I can't say I relish the prospect of confrontations and foreign jails and the rest that international civil disobedience might bring, but I guess I could sit back and watch 'til I'm 90, and then wish I had done something for my world.

And--Samuel Ullman said: "Youth is not a time of life. It is a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair..."

I'm only 23, but sitting and watching is making me old fast. So let me know if you think you can use me and in any case--good luck, friends. My hopes go with you.

 

Susanne Ziegler

_____________________________________________________________

 

Dear Mr. Runnings,

To almost any boat in need of crew, I would apply for a position. I admit to a very strong and selfish desire to sail, but the publication "Sounder" explained your proposed voyage in a way that appealed to some equally strong, yet less selfish desires. I agree with you fully that guaranteed peace is not likely to be a gift of national governments.

Several months ago, I wrote an article designed to activate an interest in World Citizenship and mailed over seventy copies to newspapers, magazines, peace organizations, the United Nations, and even to the Pope.

The response was rhetorically positive, but not supportive in any real way. I'll enclose that article to convey my paraphrased views.

From my limited exposure to your views, I'm sure that there will be nothing new to you in this article. I send it primarily to impress upon you the similarity of our thoughts. Your method of exhibiting those thoughts is one that I would very much like to partake of. Helping to crew the "Departure" to the Soviet Union is an involvement that promises to pacify my desire to sail while alleviating my frustration of being powerless in a threatened world.

As far as sailing knowledge is concerned, my experience will not allow both impressive and honest claims. Following my interests, I have taken sailing and navigation classes and have read extensively on the subject, but my applied knowledge is the only true teacher, but I am capable and prepared to begin that true education.

Whether or not I will be able to join your crew, it is very comforting to know that such a voyage is planned and I wish you all possible luck for a success that would benefit us all.

 

Sincerely,

Sharon R. Augsburger

_____________________________________________________________

 

Dear John,

I have just today returned from Friday Harbor, where I spent the last six weeks studying fish biology, followed by a week's recuperation in a semi-reclusive state. Your letter was waiting for me in Seattle when I arrived, and I hasten to respond, lest you think the delay was due to lack of interest.

I am sorry to hear that Odessa '81 is not to be, but full of admiration and support for your persistence and determination even in the face of unforeseen setbacks. I would be happy to pledge my commitment to this adventure in 1982. I'll prepare a statement of qualifications and try to round up a picture of myself within the next couple of days, will send this note on ahead to let you know I haven't vanished from the face of the earth entirely.

The more I look around, the more I realize that changes from within the existing power structures are hard to initiate and slow to develop. They lag hopelessly behind the problems they are intended to alleviate, and crises won't wait until we are prepared to cope with them. I am becoming convinced that radical efforts such as yours, that really make people take a good hard look at the trends we are unwittingly following, are much better at getting the job done. I knew even as I wrote my essay that the proposal I, or any other contestant for that matter, suggested would never be taken seriously by the American government. This didn't make it any the less worthwhile endeavor, even a symbolic statement has value. The idea is to make a point. But I confess that I am feeling impatience and restlessness, I want to carry this point further, I want to demand a response through real action in the real world. For these reasons, any misgivings and reservations I may have had about the practicality of your project have been dispelled, I have come around to thinking that your way of improving the international situation is much more to the point, and much more effective, than kid glove diplomacy.

So be looking for my application in the mail, and keep on fighting! Best of luck.

 

Warmly,

Jean Priscilla McCollister

 

PROSPECTIVE CREW MEMBER FOR 1982 ODESSA ODYSSEY

Relevant Qualifications:

*Demonstrated fluency in Russian language and familiarity with Soviet society

*Four years formal coursework at University of Washington, leading to B.A. in Russian

*Four months experience living and studying in the Soviet Union through the Council for Educational Exchange 1979 Fall semester program in Leningrad

*Two months aboard the Soviet R/V Akademik Berg as a National Marine Fisheries Service participant scientist in the US-USSR cooperative fisheries research program

*Active, continuing interest and involvement in US-Soviet relations, with particularly strong concerns about the implications of nuclear weapons

*Finalist in essay contest "Alternatives to the Arms Race", sponsored by Unilateral Initiatives

*Member and volunteer, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility

*and other developments in science and technology that have major impacts on human society and the environment

*Founder and president of student organization to promote responsibility in science

*Competency in research, writing, and speaking

*Physically active, strong, and healthy. Activities include rugby, mountaineering, scuba diving, horseback riding, fishing.

 

PRESENT AND FUTURE ACTIVITIES

I am currently pursuing a second B.A. in zoology at University of Washington, to be awarded in Spring, 1982. I wish to continue to study biology at the graduate level, and have a particular interest in the marine ecosystem of the Antarctic, combined with an interest in the political future of that area. I envision a career of writing and teaching about science for both specialists and lay people.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

My experience with the Soviets has convinced me that the vast majority of them have no vested interest in maintaining a hostile, aggressive posture towards the U.S., whatever may be the impression that their leaders give. As a biologist, I am concerned about the quality and preservation of life in its non-human as well as human forms. I see many of the activities that we humans engage in as thoughtless folly that threatens the welfare of the entire planet. I believe that the Odessa Odyssey is a justified, meaningful, and probably more effective way of expressing my protests than through the existing, conventional, officially sanctioned, and officially ignored channels.

_____________________________________________________________

 

Dear Mr. Runnings,

After meeting you Saturday night, 4/25/81, at Mr. Don Lathrop's house and listening to you speak in class on Monday, I must say I am impressed with your thoughts and goals, and I admire your courage and optimism.

I am 21 years old and will be finishing my second year of college, majoring in liberal studies. I unfortunately have very little experience in sailing, radio-operation, or journalism. With this in mind you can see that the Odessa Odyssey would be for me a viable learning experience and adventure.

I do possess, however, good health, and an open mind and NAUI scuba diving certificate--if this could be of any help to you. I am still contemplating my beliefs in non-violent aggression; and, since last summer, I have been working on my status as a conscientious objector to war.

Most important, I have the willingness to work with, and for you. Please consider me as a possible crew member for the voyage. I would appreciate an acknowledgement of this letter.

Thank you and Best Wishes

Paul J. Manley

 

John Runnings

Unilateral Initiatives

I am potentially interested in your Odessa Odyssey as a crew member. I feel that I have at least several skills and personal qualities which would make me useful on the crew. I do lack significant sailing experience and I have other valuable experience from 3 years in the Navy and a few years

at MIT.

Please contact me so that at least we can at least look into the possibility further. If nothing else I would like to see what you're planning.

 

Thank you,

John B. Eastlake

_____________________________________________________________

 

Dear Mrs. Runnings,

Hello, Mrs. Runnings, my name is Logan J. Murphy.

After trying to reach you at your house a few times, I was unable to do so. Thus, the reason for his letter.

I want very much to get in touch with your husband in New York, or if he plans to come back to Seattle before the end of the year. I read about his sailing adventure in the Seattle Times, and if it is possible, I want to pay my own way over as a passenger.

Russia is a country I want to visit, and I sympathize with your husband's project.

 

Please tell me if I should write to him directly (with you giving me his N.Y. address), or should I have you forward my letter to him? In all possibility, my schedule may not permit me to go, but still the opportunity to sail with your husband is an adventure hard to compare.

As soon as your time permits, would you please let me know if I can get in touch with your husband? Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

Logan J. Murphy

__________________________________________________________________

(The following letter is from Michael Bailey (of Greenpeace) but I was unable to take advantage of his advice. I commend it to anyone who plans to become active in Vulnerable Challenge.)

 

Dear John,

It is good to know that you are still alive and kicking. I had sent you a letter c/o Dorothy Kurtz and it was returned -address unknown.

It appears that you are in a rather tight situation regarding money. This is to be expected in your type of operation. Greenpeace has undergone the same experience in almost all of its expeditions. I regret to say that I cannot find any sources of funding for the Odessa Odyssey, but I will keep my ear to the ground.

It may be possible that Greenpeace would be interested in contributing- I will investigate this further.

I have a few suggestions which may be of use, please feel free to take or leave any or all of them.

1) Get a saleable 'package' together. Something which outlines the actual project, describes the timetable, objectives and how extensive your contacts are. It is much easier to get large donations if you can demonstrate on paper how 'together' and organized your operation is. A few items you should probably include in a packet are:

-photos of ship on the high seas (if not available, have an artist draw a good graphic of the vessel at sea)

-a calendar of events and time-table

-description of U.I.'s policy, objectives and strategy

-brief resumes of the people involved

-list of supporting organizations and influential people

-map showing route and stops

This type of packet is almost essential if you want to go after large donations ($1,000 and up) from environmental organizations, churches, etc. Before someone gives a large donation they like to see how organized an operation is--if it looks together, they give--if it looks flaky, they don't.

2) Get a media packet together. These should be made for people and media outlets which are interested in publishing or broadcasting something about the project. A typical media packet consists of:

-a few photos (or graphic drawings) of the ship, the people involved, and something which demonstrates what the project is all about (i.e. a photo of U.S. and Soviet soldiers at the Berlin Wall, a nuclear bomb, etc.)

-a description of U.I.'s policy and objectives

-list of supporting organizations and people

-a map showing route, etc.

-an article (500-1000 words) describing the world political situation and why U.I.'s strategy is feasible, practical or insanely realistic. It should also describe the risks and dangers- and why the people involved are willing to take the risks.

3) Solicit space for articles in small publications and work your way up the ladder to the large newspapers, magazines, etc. Starting with the small publications gives you the experience and credibility necessary when dealing with the big papers. The best type of publications to initially approach are: Church Newsletters/ College/University Papers/Weekly or Bi-Weekly Shoppers' Publications/Small Town Newspapers. These type of publications are most often in need of articles. In many cases you can use the same article in several publications.

4) Draft a couple of 'camera-ready' ads soliciting donations. If you can get an article published in a newspaper, quite often you can get free ad space too. You might ask for memberships -or something similar- and offer to keep people informed as to the ship's progress on a monthly basis -or something similar.

5) Continue to solicit for crew members, ask for resumes. Also, continue to solicit for other ships which would be interested in making the voyage. Perhaps ask if they want to join a World-Peace Flotilla. You will find that the more 'flashy' a project is, the greater the amount of media coverage. The concept of a vessel with an all-female crew is great, but you might not want to restrict yourself to two vessels. You will probably find that since you have one vessel on hand that getting other boat owners interested in joining will be easier.

By the way, a good friend of mine just finished building a 26 foot boat and seemed interested in the Odessa Odyssey. He intends to launch the boat on the East Coast next January. His name is: Jon White...7127 SW 29th., Portland, OR 97219, (503)245-0686

6) You will probably find that when you get a vessel into the water that your fund raising and media potential will increase greatly. You might find a vessel that would be available for a fund raising tour. Numerous Greenpeace expeditions have been financially salvaged because of a boat's ability to visit numerous small towns. It is considered good practice to make the vessel as visually attractive and unusual as possible (i.e.,with rainbows on the bow, peace-signs on sails, etc.) and then visit tourist meccas (where people have lots of money and like to spend it).

Substantial amounts of money and press coverage have been obtained by ships that have gone from port to port distributing information, selling merchandise and asking for donations or memberships. At this time of year (Winter-Spring) the best place to go is to places like Florida. If you could find a vessel in Florida, you might have it made. Once you have two boats, you have a flotilla- and another step up the media-fundraising ladder will have been achieved.

These are a few suggestions- I am sure that you, more than anyone, has a good feel for where the project should go. I will try to put some feelers out to some potential donors and local media--all the best.

 

Michael Bailey

 

__________________________________________________________________

(Eileen Crimmin was my journalism teacher at North Seattle Community College. She articulates well the 'sensible' opinion of that time.)

 

Dear John:

I sure was tickled to see your picture in the paper and to read Ruppert's version of his interview with you.

Yes, I DID receive the long letter you mailed me with the explanation of your plans, plus the copy of lawyer William L. Hanson's letter.

I think the plan has great publicity value, but is quite hazardous to the individuals involved, only because the Soviet Union does not understand freedom as we understand it. The Soviet brass will believe immediately that your effort is a cover-up for some way for the CIA to smuggle a spy of two into their borders!!!

I know, John, that seems silly, but Russia's present political and military system think that way about just about any activity that does not conform to their ideas. All persons involved in the actual landing could be arrested and imprisoned for many years, maybe even for a lifetime. One cannot predict how government officials of the Soviet Union would react.

I suspect the citizens would first be surprised, then perhaps appalled, and ultimately delighted by the visit. If you get away scot free the citizens would regard it as a huge joke on their bureaucracy. Most Russian citizens have a lovely sense of humor- their officials have NONE!

It's true that the political methods of disarming are glaring failures. It's also true that your thinking goes right along with Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Wendell Wilkie, and others who believe in the One World concept, or a supra-national governing body for the entire planet, and so on, with the two main premises of preventing war and distributing abundance to the less abundant!

I sure believe in what you believe in--that war is the worst way to settle anything, and that simple violence, even the striking of a child's hand as training to get it away from harm, must be educated out of humanity. (We teach children that force is an accepted method by such apparently loving spats to warn them of danger!)

If you follow the Greenpeace activity to reduce or stop the harvesting of whales, then you already know how a few persons armed with guts and inflatable boats can influence international opinion and even prevent immediate slaughter of a few whales. Amazing!

On the basis of Greenpeace's publicity I would say your planned sea jaunt and the resultant publicity would be worth all the effort it takes to organize the flotilla. You might not even have to actually land an actual foot on Russian soil-maybe you could just tie-up at one of their piers.

I would hate to see American citizens of good intent languishing in Soviet Union jails because of some of their paranoid political ideas. Landing is a very dangerous thing to do!! I want to make that very clear.

John, I don't know of any fishermen who would like to skipper boats for such a cause, but now that you got the attention of the SEATTLE TIMES, why not send material to THE FISHERMEN'S NEWS and see if Dick Phillips or Walt Kisner will publish your appeal? Lots of fish boat skippers are adventurous souls with more guts than sense and I suspect a few would go along just for the hell of it!!!! It's also my understanding that among the smaller fish boats of America, Japan and the Soviet Union, the skippers enjoy a reasonable respect of one-another through occupational bond. As you've noted in the news, they go to each other's aid fairly frequently. That even extends to Coast Guard mercy flights. Somehow all the red tape disappears when search, rescue, and medical aid is needed by either country. And surely this is one more example of the commonality of Man, instead of his differences.

If and when you undertake this trip, for heaven's sake take along some photographer to take photos and movies, in b & w and in color. You MUST document your activities to gain maximum attention of the World press and peoples. And I doubt that regular news sources will follow your trip unless you've cranked up a tremendous amount of pre-publicity. Yours will be the kind of 'stunt' story which news scrambles to cover AFTER it happens. So document your activities, and keep an extremely definitive Log of the journey. You know, John, yours might be just the kind of trip that will spearhead citizen-to-citizen exchange necessary to quit the wars-the next one of which will be all over, start to finish, in 30 minutes !!!! Good luck.

Now, my new venture, started because verbal teaching is too hard on my throat and vocal cords-mail order tutoring of non-fiction writing, plus some other services of a literary type. Sure hope I can generate some students-NSCC cancelled all courses I taught previously !!!

Well, gotta get back to work. Good luck and take care.

Eileen Crimmin

 

 

CHAPTER 2

THE ESSAY CONTEST

By Jan. 1, 1981, all the essays were in and I called the judges who would assemble at the Unitarian Church to read the essays and award the winners.

We had gotten coverage in the local press, in peace periodicals, and with world citizen organizations. And we had mailed out 3000 flyers at a cost of about $1,000.00. We asked for fresh ideas and plans for their implementation toward a constructive new relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

We received 189 essays. Considering the international scope of the contest this doesn't seem to be much of a response. This may speak loudly either to the unpopularity of the question, or to the inclusion of General Westmoreland's name among the sponsors of a question that many peace warriors might think was the exclusive department of the anti-warriors. Or it may mean that few people write essays--or none of the above.

I tried to go through the essays once, and now, going through them the second time, I am happy that there were no mail bags of essays. Trying to read and evaluate 189 essays is a real chore.

Of the 189 essays, 60 were from Grayson County State College in Denison, Texas. Essays came in from Guatemala, India, Kenya, Wales, England, West Germany, and Canada and the United States.

The judges are listed on the essay contest flyer above.

$1,000.00 was awarded to Mathew A. Ross, then at Harvard University, for a proposal called PACT, Peaceful Advance through Combined Technology. PACT would combine the research and development programs of the United States and Russia so that both superpowers would be assured that they would possess any technical advance made by the other. The merging was to be achieved by simply requiring that all government-sponsored programs for R & D be staffed by both Russian and American scientists.

$500.00 was awarded to Nicholas Gillett who proposed that since Nixon was able to achieve a new relationship with China by exploiting a strong mutual interest (the containment of Russia) that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. might find a strong mutual interest in resolving the crisis in the Middle Eastern oil fields. If the superpowers could jointly get a genuine agreement concerning the equitable distribution of oil, the relieved and grateful Middle East might be persuaded to use their enormous wealth to provide aid to the developing countries in cooperation with a joint venture involving the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

The third prize, another $500.00 went to Donald N. Lathrop for an essay on how the liberal point of view concerning East-West conflict might be more effectually presented to the American public.

It is important here that we indicate the setting of the contest in the context of world events. Mr. Carter was President of the U.S. Americans were being held hostage in the American Embassy in Iran. Mr. Brezhnev was invading Afghanistan resulting in a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. The S.A.L.T. (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) agreement was falling apart.

The arms race has since been resolved, but not by any of the solutions offered by the contestants. The significance of this will become clear as this book proceeds.

Although I had two editors among the judges, neither of them wanted to do a story about the contest. This left me acutely embarrassed for not only was I not able to honor my promise to get international publicity for the top ten, but there would not even be local publicity. So I sent a letter to all the contestants . In this I enclosed a list of the winners and an apology. I included a pamphlet about the Odessa Odyssey and the essays were put away in a cardboard box where they lay undisturbed until now.

In reviewing the essays I found that they did an excellent job of articulating the cultural perspective with respect to Peace and War. And the opinions did stretch across the political spectrum. On one end there was the opinion that the best relationship with the Soviets was more of the same. And there were those that felt that we needed a little help from God. Most of the entries stressed the dangerousness of the security achieved by nuclear weapons. The general position was that ways and means must be found to show Americans and Russians that Americans and Russians were not nearly as nasty as their weapons would suggest. There were surprisingly few stressing disarmament.

Douglas Mattern (President of the World Citizens) did an excellent essay on disarmament, and deplored the apathy toward this solution. But he was enough dissatisfied himself with this approach that he concluded with Einstein's proposition: "That a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels". Disarmament is hardly a new type of thinking.

Mrs. L. Tattersall at Hambleton, Lancashire, U.K. responded to a notice in the New World, August, 1980, published by the United Nations Association. She quotes the opening lines of the United Nations Declaration and then recommends that a permanent disarmament council be set up--to create an opportunity for the U.N. to have a philosophical impact on guiding all nations to find agreements in shielding the world from a holocaust.

Robert Muller sent in two contributions to the contest. He was then Secretary of the U.N. Economics and Social Council. Dr. Muller has been a prominent figure in the U.N. from its inception. From this essay, written under the United Nations letterhead, I quote, "Security is essentially a matter for the military. WORLD SECURITY SHOULD THEREFORE BE ENTRUSTED TO THEM." This was a fundamental thought in the U.N. Charter. The Chiefs of Staff of the permanent members of the Security Council were entrusted with organizing world security and disarmament in the Military Staff Committee.

This man, Robert Muller, is perhaps as kindly, as compassionate, as intelligent, and as concerned with human welfare as any man on earth. Yet, he accepts, without quibble, the perpetual security of the globe in the hands of military forces with its implicit imperative to settle international disputes with the threat of, or infliction of, a state of siege (sanctions) and the slaughter and destruction that is war.

 

From Donald Keys, President of Planetary Citizens:"The psychological barriers to arms control and disarmament may be the most important of all the factors"--and then he takes us through the psychological labyrinth to this quote, "The situation is not hopeless, however, in the sense that the states' members of the world community have agreed on many aspects of a global value system--particularly as embodied in the various instruments of human rights, in documents on a new international economic order, in funding of food, medical, housing, educational and technical assistance programs on a world scale. These steps are either tacit or overt assent TO AN EMERGING GLOBAL VALUE SYSTEM.(emphasis mine) That system is, however, as yet so weak through non-implementation and scanty funding as to raise serious questions whether the world value base will as yet support such serious and community-wide endeavors as general and complete disarmament".

The thrust of the essay proposed that the alternative to the threat of war was a universal value system that would support, not universal civil law, but general and complete disarmament, culturally blind to the fact that civil control must first replace military control, civil threat must replace military threat, legislature must replace diplomacy.

Value systems are not considered sufficient in themselves at the domestic level to control society, but must be legislated into civil law. How can we settle for less at the international level?

 

Alan F. Kay of Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed a response to Pravda's initiative to have Russian children send a message to President Carter saying the things the Russian establishment would like their children to say to Carter. The message to be clipped from Pravda and pasted on a postcard with name, age and a stamp. Alan proposes an alternative, children to children exchange of albums to the end that the children of both cultures would see each other in the light of their personal interest and problems rather than in the light of our mutual military threat

 

Michael Saucedo, Eastern Washington University, speaks of student exchange. "If student exchange were to exist couldn't both governments help to subsidize costs and open the programs without the inhibitions we think would be imposed? Students would, of course, go through the proficiency exams that would be required to learn the language of the host country if the potentiality of such a program is always to be turned down, what chance do we have for creating a lasting peace?"

 

Sandra Morse of Grayson County College speaks to the issue as follows, "Since World War II the Soviet Union has been viewed by the United States as another big problem in foreign affairs. However, in the past we have been able to turn potential and former enemies into lasting allies. Just look at our relationship with Great Britain despite the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. West Germany and Japan are now our closest friends even though we opposed them in World War II. Perhaps of more significance is China, our newest ally, in spite of conflicting political doctrines and past clashes, China was swung to our side out of fear of the Soviet Union. Fear is an effective tool. But is is certainly not a binding factor if countries use it against each other."

(comment) Armed states become "friends" when they become allied against a common foe. For such a peace on a world scale we will have to wait for an attack from extraterrestrials.

 

Ruth H. Pool of Seattle, was involved in anti-war activity since the Hague Peace Conference at the turn of the century. Hers was a much respected voice for international law. In her essay 'Let Us Begin Anew '. I quote, "With the ratification of the United Nations Charter, Oct. 24, 1945, the United States automatically became a member of the world court. During the 79th session of Congress, Senate resolution 196 was expected to pass, making the court's jurisdiction compulsory to international disputes. It appeared that at long last violence and war was about to be replaced by world law. However, the cheering proved premature. Senator Connally of Texas arose to present his amendment which was destined to limit the effectiveness of the world court.

The Connally Amendment noted that certain types of disputes should be withheld from the court's jurisdiction, namely, disputes with regard to matters which are essentially within the jurisdiction of the United States AS DETERMINED BY THE UNITED STATES.

Those last six words sealed the doom of compulsory jurisdiction and left the United States, and other nations which followed suit, to determine what issues and disputes were of domestic concern only.

As a result, the 15 judges of the International Court of Justice, judges knowledgeable of international procedures, have been limited to lesser concerns, while the most serious issues of mankind are left unresolved."

(comment) Ruth Pool was much appreciated among us anti-warriors who looked to the representatives of 150 armed forces of 150 sovereign states to turn over their sovereignty, and the control of their armed forces to the discretion and disposition of 15 judges. By their signatures they would give the judges the right to compel states to submit international disputes to a world court. In retrospect, it is astonishing that we could entertain the possibility that such a transfer of power achieved on the strength of diplomatic signatures was conceivable. To control sovereign states would require something more substantial than a signature. What was missing?

It is possible for something to be so obvious that it is not seen. When I was a boy on the farm in Ontario I did not notice that cows and chickens and pigs did not have opposable thumbs. But someone noticed this, and proposed that the opposable thumb gave Homo sapiens so many options for the stimulation of intelligence that the head had to enlarge to make room. So it was with the effort to make law at the international level. The absence of politicians, vital to the development of civil law at the domestic level, was not noted. The absence of politically achieved legislature, courts and penal systems was not noted. The absence of any force that would give the judges the power to rule contrary to the wishes of sovereign states was not noted.

SO WE ANTI-WARRIORS FOUND NO FAULT WITH THE UNITED NATIONS. THE FAULT WAS WITH THE PERVERSE DIPLOMATS THAT COMPOSED THE UNITED NATIONS, OR IN THE LEADERS THEY REPRESENTED. So,if there is a lesson to be learned it is this--that if you go to the militaries of the world to give up control of the militaries of the world you are going to get the run-around.

 

Howard E. Kershner who sent in a essay, was then Visiting Professor of Current Economic Problems for the Economic Extension Program at Cedar Hill, Texas. He concluded a terse statement of two and a half pages with, "The cure for war is the free market economy on an international scale, where all forms of tariffs, quotas, monetary restrictions, trade limitations, and movement of people from country to country are removed." Had I been awarding the prizes, with the perspective that I have developed since, the first would have gone to this gentleman. He did not give any plans for the implementation of this end, but of all those that submitted an essay, he was the only one that articulated the ultimate solution. The basic issues of war and peace are not ideologies but space and resources

 

Mildred J. Loomis was Director of Education of the School of Living, Lafayette, Indiana. The advisory board of the School of Living is composed of 31 people, authors or representatives of organizations. Her essay evidently reflected the mix of opinions of her advisors. She opens her essay succinctly; thus, "For Peace Ideas one can move in at least two directions. One is for individual Americans and individual Russians to have more personal, friendly relationships. The other is the humanizing of the institutions that human beings create."

As to the first, she does not see that visiting Americans and Russians in the context of either culture being suspicious or hostile to each other at the individual level. And then she asks, "Where is the danger? Why does the media constantly reflect an overhanging war cloud?" She then looks to our institutions and to our ownership practices at the domestic level to find the cause of the fears. She does not speak to the question of the essay but rather to the broader issue of peace world-wide. She quotes author, Ralph Borsodi, as follows--"at bottom, world peace rests on furnishing equitable access to land and other natural resources to every individual on earth."

I liked the arguments for free trade. But, we need the process by which free trade could be accomplished. That this process has not been found is evident on page 11 of this essay under (Borsodi) A WORLD MILITARY PATROL FORCE. "The immediate universal transfer of all nations' armies, armaments and bases to a World Military Patrol Force...Membership recruited by voluntary enlistment from all people (via civil examinations). The true function would be to patrol all land and sea and air, and to report to the world court any individual or group which was manufacturing armaments, to enter any harbor, enterprise or establishment making preparation for war. By restraint, boycott and seizure, the patrol force would prevent the production of armaments and thereby prevent war." (comment) Borsodi skips the rather important question of what force would force the sovereign states to surrender their sovereignty to a single military force. He, like many other anti-warriors, confuses the cause of war with the means of war. He would outlaw arson by outlawing matches.

There are just two kinds of force by which populations are controlled--these are political force and military force (commercial force is a facet of political force). Military force becomes irrelevant to the degree that political force can be exerted. The evidence of this is exemplified the world over at the domestic level. Where there is civil law the weapons of war can decorate the mantels of every householder without the danger of provoking war. When law breaks down garden tools and kitchen utensils and matches can all be adapted to become instruments of war. Political action makes civil law. Since political action is forbidden between international states by the presence of diplomatic institutions, military threat must protect international property, that is, the threat of contest in slaughter and destruction to see who will rearrange the rules. In this case of the U.S. or the U.S.S.R.,

The bulk of the contestants stressed introducing Americans and Russians to each other by various means of human interactions.

 

Weapons do not fight wars! People must be prepared to make the weapons do the things that will terrify the threatening nations into submission should a war start.

From early childhood we are taught to obey the rules of society, and that thievery, destruction of property and murder are the most reprehensible of crimes. But society expects that we go beyond the mere keeping of the law. We are urged to be kind, generous, cooperative, compassionate, considerate, forgiving, and friendly. War requires that the rules of civilization be turned upside-down with a respect to a given people. To get people to do the heinous things that war requires, they must be taught to see the military opponent in such an odious light that they will destroy their cities. And engage in slaughter and destruction with alacrity to be honored by a rejoicing, supporting community.

All the essays that endeavored to articulate a constructive new relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. overlooked this vital point, as I did when I framed the question.

To this point I'll shoe horn in an essay of my own, from a perspective I have developed since, to the general subject: the problems that result when civil law and morality are confused with the laws of nature that are the principle drive of war.

The Editor

The University Of Washington Daily

Dear Sir,

We need not disagree with Einstein "That to kill in war is not a whit better than murder", (Words to Live By, Daily, May 8) to point out that the statement contributes nothing to the solution of our problem.

So long as international jurisdictional lines are achieved by military force and maintained by military threat, people are going to get killed when the threat is called.

Killing in war may be no better than murder but it is certainly different. Murder is killing against the approval of the community. Killing in war is done with the approval of the community.

The relationship between nations is like the relationship in a community of thieves. Treaties are promises to respect each other's loot. When Argentina tried to snatch England's loot, the Falkland Islands, Einstein's legacy did not include any non-military solutions to the problem. So people got killed.

When murder is done, the community sends the police to apprehend the offender and the community shows its strong disapproval by imposing severe penalties against the murderer.

When international killing is done, the community of thieves show their strong approval by increasing the supply and effectiveness of their own killing machines.

At the domestic level the community's revulsion against killing is made evident through political institutions and is discouraged by police and court action.

There is no political institution at the international level to define murder or police to apprehend the offenders or courts of law representing world opinion to enforce law by non-military means.

We have plenty of opinions about the evils of killing people. What we desperately need are means for bringing to international states the non-military means of conflict resolution which make military force unnecessary between domestic states.

John Runnings

 

Taylor Morris of Franklin Pierce College, New Hampshire, proposed in his essay that 10,000 students be exchanged with the Soviets to act as mutual hostages. He had already done a good deal of work on this proposal. To do this he would have to go to the Soviet establishment, the most conservative of conservatives.

They would see it as an exchange of wooden horses,for diplomats are trained to see initiatives taken toward peace by the enemy as either a weakness or a devious military ploy. Were this proposal accepted, the U.S.diplomats, again the most conservative of conservatives in the U.S. camp, would see it as a device to undermine their military threat. This was of course the intent of Taylor Morris and of all the other proposals for lessening the hostility between the two states. If the situation were such (if the mutual trust that the exchange would not be abused existed) that this solution could be applied, it would be unnecessary.

Elspeth Sage of Vancouver, B.C. seemed to be groping in this direction. She proposed that since it was the politicians that did the drumming for military security, that we must bypass the politicians. But behind the politicians are the diplomats that advise the politician on the international dangers to military security.

Rex Weyler, former editor and publisher of Greenpeace "Chronicles" and later the associate publisher of the "New Age", in his essay said in part, "The Cruise and Pershing missiles went into production, the Russian army went into Afghanistan, the U.S.Navy swarmed into the Persian Gulf, and presto, within two weeks the superpowers turned from a path of peace toward one of aggression. The U.S. opinion polls showed a reemerging hawkishness exemplified by a revitalized Ronald Reagan, the man who suggested 'blacktopping' Vietnam in 1968. Leaders in both the Kremlin and the White House whipped their respective populations into support of the new high military profile."

When my wife and I were arguing our case for conscientious income tax refusal before the Seattle District Court, June, 1977, I argued thus, in part, "No one can say for sure what would be the result if the U.S. were to stop participating in the arms race, but the consequence of continuing can be predicted.

A research project by the Norwegian Academy of Science showed that since the Fifth Century B.C. there have been 1,656 arms races. All but 16 of these ended in war. The 16 ended in the economic collapse of contending countries. In the light of these statistics the best we can hope for, in continuing our present course, is an economic collapse." The court did not remind us, nor did we reflect, that none of those wars were prevented by war tax refusal or disarmament.

Because excellent people like ourselves and Rex Weyler were floundering around in the cul-de-sac of disarmament, trying to get the agents of the military to control the military, it would be the awful people like Mr. Reagan and like-minded persons who would, by challenging the Soviets to "Star Wars", "Stealth Bombers" and other expensive options, force the economic collapse of the Soviet Union, to save us by the only alternative to war, (the economic collapse of one or the other) and to end the arms race between us.

The arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is now history. But the apparent inevitability of future arms races that will be struck with these two options is still before us, in the cases of future arms races around the world. This, together with the strong trend toward multiplication of sovereign states, to participate in arms races, bodes ill for the 21st Century.

So if there are lessons to be learned from this contest they are that the obstacles to the political interaction that would replace military threat are the diplomats. Diplomats are chosen for their dedication to nationalism, and consequently, to the anarchy of sovereignty.

All the solutions for a less hostile and a more cooperative relationship with the U.S.S.R. were contrary to the purposes of diplomats under the circumstances. The essay's solutions posed insurmountable problems in the context of needs of diplomats to show a population as terrifying as the weapons they are prepared to use. Diplomats are advocates of the militaries. They are not likely to cooperate in the weakening or the abolition of the institutions they represent.

There is the story of the family that had put salt in their tea. As they disliked the taste they built a laboratory to develop a means of making the salt taste like sugar. And after innumerable futile efforts they heard of a very wise woman in Philadelphia. So they went to see this woman in her skyscraper apartment on the 50th floor. And she said the thing to do was to make another cup of tea. Now the point of this story may be that great wisdom is often in saying the obvious. Or the point may be that you won't find the right answer while working on the wrong problem.

FOR A CENTURY THE ANTI-WARRIORS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO MAKE DIPLOMATS ACT LIKE POLITICIANS, TREATIES ACT LIKE LEGISLATURE, DIPLOMACY ACT LIKE COURT PROCEDURE AND PENALTIES AGAINST NATIONS ACT LIKE PENALTIES AGAINST PERSONS.

The following propositions are for those people who are dissatisfied with the cultural presuppositions with respect to the way to achieve a permanent reduction of the incidence of war in the world, and would like to be offered a new perspective. But first, we must examine the old perspective.

 

CHAPTER 3

TOWARD A WORLD WITHOUT A MILITARY

 

The epitome of the international peace perspective at the time would be THE PARIS PEACE PROCLAMATION adopted by the WORLD CITIZENS Assembly on July 5, 1977. I quote in full:

"We the World Citizens of 1977 do hereby proclaim as follows: Because governments of numerous nations have blocked repeated efforts at the United Nations to achieve a non-violent world order based on truth, freedom, security, justice and love, it is crucial to the peoples of the world that they take upon themselves to initiate and carry through such action.

We, therefore, demand general, simultaneous and complete world disarmament under supra-national control and a total outlawing of war as an instrument to settle conflict among nations and among people.

We recognize that this goal cannot be reached until the economic gap between the havens and the have-nots--both persons and nations--is reduced to an acceptable level. Present imbalance triggers the fears that underlay the arms race.

The present systems alone are inadequate to create a new

interdependent global economic order. Another alternative is needed to combine the best features of existing systems, fuse them into a new form, and develop global institutions that give the people of the world control over their own destiny.

The present world crisis with the two superpowers endlessly locked in ideological and military confrontations must be terminated or else all life on earth may be destroyed. Only the united people of the world are capable of preventing such a catastrophe--possibly within the next five years--and to transform this turbulent world of international anarchy into a new order of peaceful and creative inter-dependence.

We solemnly appeal to all national governments and all individuals to limit their national sovereignties--but only to the extent to make a citizens world community both feasible and workable.

National sovereignty is the property of the people,not of their representatives, who derive their power solely from the people.

Therefore, if it be the will of the people to build a world community, their representatives have no right to stand in the way of attaining that high purpose.

Such a world community can and shall develop global institutions capable of laying the foundation for a permanent world organizations to achieve these goals:

1. Total world disarmament.

2. An end to hunger

3. protection of life support systems.

4, Guarantees of fundamental human rights, and

5, an organic world community based on truth, freedom, security, justice and love."

 

 

On Oct.5, 1945, the representatives of all the military forces of all the nations in the world were assembled in one building. And thus was formed the United Nations. These nations were not united militarily, commercially, culturally or spiritually. Yet they were called "The United Nations." They were given the job of "saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war"

32 years later "World Citizens" perceive that nation states tend to resist their well intended efforts to help them abolish the scourge of war. So "It is crucial to the peoples of the world that they take it upon themselves to initiate and carry through such actions"

This is a statement I couldn't improve upon myself. But then they "The World Citizens" promptly erect several mountain ranges of obstacles. First we must disarm the militaries of the world, and, as precondition for this, we must solve the economic problems of the world. The nature of global institutions that would replace the military is left to conjecture.

The quest will not be how to achieve the blessings of civil government between international states, but rather how to achieve the amorphous, ephemeral goals of truth, freedom, security, justice and love: all these are attributes of humanity that presupposes civil government is already in place.

These good people were blind to the fact that all the nations of the world are controlled at the domestic level by civil law that does not require either the absence of arms or the presence of economic equality. The answer to the slaughter and destruction that is war is no further away than our local court and police department. When we insist on this means of conflict resolution between international states the scourge of war will be abolished. We can then concentrate on how much law and how much freedom from law we can stand.

 

Years ago, when I was taking a journalism course at the North

Seattle Community College, my instructor asked me, "Who are you?" to put me in my place and to challenge my credentials to take positions contrary to the cultural norms. And, indeed, I had no such credentials then, nor do I have such now.

The great discoveries that shook the world such as the laws of displacement, gravity, flight, etc. once they are entertained, are easily understood by most high school students as obvious. Wherein then is the genius?

I propose that genius is not all pure intellect, although intellect helps, but, rather, a unique experience that casts one out of the cultural mold to look at problems from a perspective that had not been heretofore entertained.

Archimedes sitting in his bathtub trying to determine if the goldsmith cheated in making the king's crown had a problem that may not have been entertained up until that time. I propose, that genius is in the rare opportunity and the rare circumstance to step outside the parameters of cultural presuppositions to develop the ideas for a new perspective.

Man had been doing selective breeding for millennia before Darwin. It would seem like a small intellectual leap to propose that nature also did selective breeding. The real hurdle was the cultural leap from the proposition that man was created complete in six days sixty centuries ago, to the proposal that man is an after thought on a planet that has been evolving for billions of years. "The Origin of Species" published in 1859 by Charles Darwin proposing evolution is still outsold by the Bible that states a created universe. A similar cultural leap will be necessary to move from the goal of a world without war to the goal of a world without a military,....a cultural departure from conventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom supported bloodletting for several centuries. And it is said that George Washington and his doctor contributed to his premature death when, responding to conventional wisdom, blood was taken from the ailing President, an act that could only further his illness. And in my own youth on the farm we ate bread made with white flour from which all the nutrients had been milled out to produce "middlings". These were bought for half price and fed to the pigs. This was not a peculiarity of farmers. It was a cultural proposition that the best flour was that which was pure nutrients. Intellectuals, doctors and philosophers ate white bread three times a day.

So please bear with me. I make no claim to have the Truth but this departure from the centuries-old cultural presuppositions of the anti-warriors seems rational to me and I think you will find it rational, too. I offer it here to be entertained by thoughtful, intelligent, concerned persons who are not happy with the anti-war effort of the past century. And while I think I make here a pretty good argument that security from war cannot be had by military threat, and that it cannot be had through the signatures of diplomats, and that it could be had by known political techniques, a united world may be impossible for other reasons.

And to those who are examining these concepts for the first time, I invite you to this exciting confusion and hope that you will be convinced and will make this old man happy by taking these ideas and running with them. I think they are an escape from the cul-de-sac of cultural thought exemplified by the peace conference at the Hague in 1899. This cultural and, I believe, mistaken proposition as developed in the 20th Century simply stated is this: that diplomats, the agents of all the armed forces of the world, through the United Nations, can accomplish universal arms limitation, and can be the vehicle for the control of the world by non-military means.

This crude, simplistic outline for a change in perspective that I offer here I hope will, like was the horseless carriage, be improved upon when the intelligence of these marvelous persons is applied in the right direction.

In this endeavor I use the term "anti-war" rather than the more nebulous term "Peace Movement" to designate those who are working for non-military means of conflict resolution between international states.

Many excellent books have been written exposing the brutality, the senselessness, the pathos of humanity engaged in the barbarity that is war, such as: "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane about the U.S. Civil War, "All's Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Remarque about WW1, "The Naked and the Dead"...Norman Mailer's excruciating account of WW2 in the Pacific, and "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute. These books exposing the unspeakably perfidious calamity of war do not seem to have had the effect they should have on reducing the incidence of war. Then we have the excellent recent books like: "Manufacturing Consent" by Herman and Chomsky, and "Second Front" by John A. MacArthur, proposing that if the rationale for war were presented to the public more honestly the public wouldn't buy it. All these efforts have undoubtedly a positive effect toward anti-war attitudes. But, to a large extent they have misdirected the questions toward a non-productive effort to improve the rotten apple of the military approach to national security, which they all accept as inevitable, RATHER THAN HOW TO REPLACE THE MILITARY APPROACH TO INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT WITH THE TOOLS OF CIVILIZATION.

The focus of anti-warriors is nearly always implicitly on moral censure, where the true problem is not even entertained. We make Hitler responsible for WW II and Bush responsible for the War in the Gulf, but both were but chips cast up on the ocean of human opinion. Had Hitler inherited his father's ranch in Alberta or his father's bank in Saskatoon rather than the anger of a defeated German people, he would have been no more danger to the world than any other rancher or banker. And had Bush been given a legislated international civil court rather than armed forces of the United States and her allies, for the resolution of international conflict, this War in the Gulf could not have happened.

In the following pages I shall be recommending politics and politicians for the resolution of international strife. That there are many excellent persons who have a negative attitude toward both is understandable. Half the time they are working for something we don't want. And then politicians have access to public funds, and there are sometimes ways that these can be steered to the pockets of the politicians. And sometimes a supporter may offer to pay money, on the side, to assure that the politician will not support a vote that will be detrimental to the business. We who are not politicians do not have these opportunities to be so profitably dishonest. And it isn't fair. The politician talks out of the several sides of his mouth and says nothing. But by this means he does the magic that will bring a community together in legislation where persons more dedicated to strict honesty would leave it floundering. It is my guess (since I cannot prove it) that politicians are as honest as their constituents would be if they were politicians. The absence of war, the presence of civilization, has been achieved throughout the centuries in spite of the limitations of politicians and political institutions. But where we have none of these perverse creatures and institutions we have wars and the threat of wars, as is the case between sovereign states.

I define politics as the changing or the affirming of the community concept of justice. In this sense we are all engaged in politics for we all to some degree have an effect, negatively or positively, on the community concept of justice. Schools, churches, commercial and political organizations and the people of which these institutions are composed, all contribute. It is the elected politician's duty, when appropriate, to articulate the community's concept of justice to be legislated into enforceable law. THUS, POLITICIANS ARE BASIC TO CIVILIZATION.

The cultural conception of a politician is of one running for office. But if we define politicians as those changing or affirming of the community concept of justice, however, then we must include parents, orators, and writers as well as all religious leaders. Charles Dickens, L. M. Montgomery, the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Rev. Billy Graham all contested for the ear of civilization for the improvement of civilization. But for society to insist upon these improvements they must be legislated into civil law.

Politics is the only alternative to military or physical force or the threat thereof to settle matters of authority, to settle who will make the rules. Politics is non-violence and non-violence is politics. The politician thrusts his belly over the footlights and lambastes his opponent in the most disparaging terms to enormous audiences that have never been frisked for guns. Were he assassinated by his opponent his opponent would be subject to penalties and be destroyed as a political leader. The questions between the opponents is the same as in war--who will make the rules? When politics and legislated law cannot resolve conflict, the rules of civilization are set aside, to be replaced by physical conflict. We deplore the politician because he is full of hot air, but this is the civilized alternative to hot lead.

In 1899 a meeting of 25 of the major military powers of the world came together to make international law. There being no international political structure by which to produce politicians, nor a world culture to conceptualize such a structure, diplomats were used in their place. Neither liberals nor conservatives saw any problem in using the agents of the militaries to achieve law to control the military. That legislators and legislature were preconditions for the absence of war and the presence of law between individuals and states was never even entertained.

Leo Tolstoy tried to blow the whistle on the scam of laws to control the military by the agents of the military in a letter to the Hague convention, 1899. But he has not been heard by the anti-warriors unto this day. I quote Tolstoy: (pg. 150, WRITINGS ON CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND NONVIOLENCE, New Society Publishers, Santa Cruz, CA.) "If again the business of the conference will be to equalize the fighting forces of the various states, and to keep them stationary, then, even could such an impossible balance be arrived at, the question involuntarily arises: Why need the governments stop at such armaments as now exist? Why not decrease them? Why need Germany, France and Russia have, say, for instance, 1,000,000 men each, and not 500,000 or why not 10,000 each, or why not 1,000 each? If diminution is possible, why not reduce to a minimum? And, finally, why not, instead of armies, have champions--David and Goliath- settle international questions according to the results of their combats?" (emphasis mine)

"It is said that the conflicts between governments are to be decided by arbitration. But, apart from the fact that the disputes will be settled, not by representatives of the people, but by representatives of the governments, and that there is no guarantee that the decisions will be just ones, who is to carry out the decisions of the court? The Army? Whose army? That of all the Powers? But the strength of those armies is unequal. Who, for instance, on the Continent is to carry out a decision which is disadvantageous, say, for Germany, Russia, and France allied together? Or who, at sea, will carry out a decision contrary to the interest of England, America, and France?

"The arbitrator's sentence against the military violence of states will be carried out by military violence--THAT IS TO SAY, THE THING THAT HAS TO BE CHECKED IS TO BE THE INSTRUMENT BY WHICH IT IS TO BE CHECKED. To catch a bird, put salt on its tail...." (emphasis mine)

"I recollect, during the siege of Sevastopol, sitting one day with the Adjutant of Von Saken, commander of the garrison, when Prince S.S. Urusof, a very brave officer, a very eccentric man, and one of the best chess players of that day in Europe, entered the room. He said he wished to see the general. One of the adjutants took him to the general's cabinet. Ten minutes later Urosof returned, looking discontented. The adjutant who had accompanied him returned to us and recounted, laughing, on what business Urusof had come to Von Saken. He had proposed to challenge the English to play a game of chess for the possession of the advanced trench of the fifth bastion, which had been lost and regained several times, and had already cost some hundreds of lives.

"Undoubtedly it would have been far better to play chess for the trench than to kill people, but Von Saken did not agree to Urusof's proposal, for he knew well that it would be useless to play at chess for the trench unless both sides trusted each other implicitly, and knew that what was agreed upon would be carried out. The presence of the soldiers before the trench, and the cannon pointed at it, were signs that no such mutual confidence existed. (emphasis mine) While there were armies on both sides it was clear that the matter would be decided not by chess, but by charges. The same consideration applies to international questions. For them to be decided by courts of arbitration there must be, among the Powers, full mutual confidence that the decisions of the court will be respected. If there is such confidence, no armies are necessary. But if armies exist, it is obvious that this confidence is lacking, and that international questions can be decided only by the strength of the armies. As long as armies exist they are necessary, not only for acquiring fresh territories, as all the states are now doing, in Asia, in Africa, or in Europe, but also in order to maintain by force what has been obtained by force.

Obtaining or retaining by force can be done only by conquering. And it is always les gros battalions which conquer. And, therefore, if a government has an army, it should have as large a one as possible..." (emphasis mine)

The above quotes from Leo Tolstoy's letter are as pertinent to the world of today as in the world of 1899, and it articulates my position on arms reduction and arms limitations better than I could do myself. Teddy Roosevelt said approximately the same thing when he succinctly summed up the essence of diplomacy as, "to speak softly but carry a big stick".

Tolstoy, having seen the peace conference as a device of the establishments to confuse the issues of war and peace, offers a solution. He proposes that, "We must take the Sermon on the Mount to be as much law as the theorem of Pythagoras."

The theorem of Pythagoras had to do with the measurable world, a world where law is uniform at all times and places, as is, for instance, the law of gravity and the speed of light.

The Sermon on the Mount had largely to do with a spiritual world and Christ's opinion on the spiritual and political relationships between men that would be pleasing to Christ's concept of God. Since the spiritual world is not subject to measurement, God and the whole spiritual world must be forever conceptualized by human minds that are not uniform. Until the spiritual world becomes measurable, what is spirit must reflect human opinion. Cities, for instance, are constructed by applying the laws of nature, (the laws of Pythagoras) they are administered by human opinion.

Every person on earth has had a unique life experience that will reflect a unique perspective of the way things are. The Sermon on the Mount was a unique perspective among the millions of other unarticulated unique perspectives of the time. This sermon is directed toward conflicts of interest between individuals in the context of civil law. It assumes the presence of civil law rather than the absence of civil law as is the case in the natural world. Its purpose was to elevate and enable human relationships OVER AND ABOVE the requirements of civil law.

Tolstoy was captive of a culture that supposed that the solution to military strife must await a solution to domestic strife. Or that the absence of war must await a solution to strife and that to legislate the Sermon on the Mount into law would put an end to strife and subsequently to war.

Tolstoy said that the peace convention was a fraud and it was. He proposed that the Sermon on the Mount held the solution to war and he was wrong. Any solution to war must presuppose that Homo sapiens will continue to act like Homo sapiens. The Sermon on the Mount was directed at showing how to lead a life that would be pleasing to Christ's conception of God the Father and, thereby, to qualify to enter His conception of Heaven.

Tolstoy made himself offensive to his government by advocating that persons should refuse to join the army and that they non-cooperate with the military when drafted. Basic to the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ was that we resist not evil. Yet, later in this book we have this quote: "With respect to all those men enlisted in the army it seems plain and natural that all those should recollect themselves, if not when they enlisted as soldiers, then at the last moment when they are being lead against the enemy should stop, fling away their weapons, and call on their opponents to do the same."

Here, Tolstoy is proposing that the evils of war be resisted in the most dangerous situation that one could imagine. He, like millions of Christians before and after him, "resisted evil" in conflict with Christ's directives. And, he, like many other Christians, would even refuse to go the first mile to accommodate those that would impose upon him, to say nothing of the second. If the Sermon on the Mount were legislated into law, resisting evil would be punishable and it would make us all law breakers for it violates just about every facet of our genetically programmed survival inclinations.

War is Homo sapiens acting like Homo sapiens while involved in a contest where two or more political entities, in the absence of civil law, are arranging the relationship between them by means of military force. War is a desperate means of rearranging property lines and prerogatives when all other means of conflict resolution have failed or are unavailable.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CONFLICT THAT CANNOT BE SETTLED BY CIVIL LAW OR MUTUAL ACCOMMODATION PROMISES YOU GO TO WAR. THIS IS TO DETERMINE WHO WILL DICTATE THE TERMS OF THE PEACE.

In 1861 the United States, having an internal conflict that could not be settled by civil law, went to war and when the North subdued the South they returned to a relationship of civil law. The cannons by which they slaughtered one another in war now decorate the parks and playgrounds across the country. They are not and never were a threat to the peace after the return to civil law. Cannons then became irrelevant and so did not have to be made illegal.

Again, on the frontier, the ranchers carried six guns until the sheriff and the judge brought civil law to settle property disputes. Thereafter, they left their guns at home WITHOUT ANY LAW THAT REQUIRED THEM TO DO SO. Before they brought the sheriff to the frontier the armed rancher looked dangerous. After the law came he looked silly carrying around this death dealing hardware.

Here, the difference between war and peace, between armed threat and civil law, is easily understood but when we talk of war and peace between international states there seems to be a cultural confusion caused by the many ways that the words "war" and "peace" are used.

We have all heard the lament, "How can we expect to have peace between international states when we cannot even keep peace in committee?" Here implied are four different concepts of peace: peace the absence of war, peace the absence of military threat, peace the presence of civil law, peace the absence of strife.

There are those who insist that we cannot have peace, the absence of war, until we achieve inner peace--so that anti-war activity becomes a discipline for inner tranquility.

In any conflict situation it always helps if one can keep his cool and perhaps inner peace would help this. When used in the context of say, "world peace" by the Secretary General of the United Nations. it poses a semantic muddle lending itself, as it does, to translation into the whole array of conflicting concepts of peace. For instance, we have high chairs and we have electric chairs. Nobody would propose that they were the same things, because they are both chairs. Yet, we have a parallel inference from this outstanding, universally respected personage, U. Thant, while Secretary General of the United Nations (from the "View From the U.N." by U. Thant, pg. 22, Doubleday, 1978).

"I heartily agree with Father Dominique Georges Pire, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize when he says: 'I think that to be a peacemaker, that is a man of peace, one must be at peace with oneself and learning to control one's impulses. Only then can a peaceful being approach the immense task of creating harmony between groups and between individuals.

This statement was made by U. Thant with respect to his qualifications to be Secretary General of an association of representatives of the ARMED FORCES OF THE WORLD, the United Nations. Such is the universality of the cultural confusion with respect to the many concepts of war and peace that even such a renowned intellect as that of U. Thant saw peace with oneself and peace between armed states as the same thing.

It has been proposed that diplomacy is war by other means. The purpose of any military war will be to see who will dictate the terms of the peace. Thus, the soldier is an agent of peace in the same context as is the United Nations. Both are working for peace, the absence of war. And NEITHER WILL BE WORKING FOR PEACE, THE ABSENCE OF MILITARY THREAT, BECAUSE MILITARY THREAT IS THE SYMBOL OF SOVEREIGNTY, WHICH IT IS THE DUTY OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE SOLDIER TO UPHOLD.

No doubt the discipline to achieve inner peace contributed to U. Thant's success as a diplomat but here it suggests that his office is to achieve the impossible goal of harmony, in a context where a universal relationship of mutual armed threat is called peace, defined as the absence of military contest in terror.

Peace, the presence of civil law, is not peace, the absence of strife. But it is the precondition for peace, the absence of war and the threat of war.

There seems to be a cultural block against entertaining the absence of civil law as the cause of war, and civil law as the alternative to war. THE REMEDY TO WAR HAS CONSISTENTLY BEEN SOUGHT IN EVERY OTHER DIRECTION.

 

 

 

Then we have those that argue that war is inevitable and right because it is natural.

 

Prominent among these is Robert Ardrey who authored the very engaging book "The Territorial Imperative". Here he entertainingly explored territoriality, especially among primates.

It is important that we have it drawn to our attention as Ardrey does, "that man and monkey have more in common than mere anatomy; that our infant species is not as yet divorced from evolutionary processes; that nations, human as well as animal, obey the laws of the "territorial imperative".

However, it would seem astonishing that with every inch of the land area of the earth, except Antarctica, claimed by either a person, persons, or a political entity, and with the earth itself claimed as a property of the species, that the genetically programmed territorial inclinations of the species has to be proved so elaborately,--except that Ardrey said much, much more than this. The principal chapters, "The Noyau and "The Amity-Enmity complex" opened for me a whole new facet for my speculations on why people behave the way they do.

But civil law, which has as its prime function the control of territory among humans, was only dealt with peripherally in this book. Yet it is civil law that marks the greatest departure from the property forms of the so-called lower animals. The Uganda kob and the male stickleback fish must occupy continually their territories to affirm ownership, while we Homo sapiens can leave our property for months or years at a time to work on an archeological dig in a far country or follow tourist guides around to explore the world, and then return to find our territory still intact. With the community to watch our property we are free to explore every nook and cranny of our planet and then go on to explore space. Unlike the stickleback, we are not genetically programmed to stand on our heads when our territory is invaded. We are culturally programmed to call the police.

This is to say nothing about commerce which was developed in conjunction with civil law where territory can be converted into dollars that can be placed in the bank. The territory thus becomes abstract. This abstract territory is placed behind infinitely complicated and trustworthy locks and protected by the most responsible police, and on top of this these abstract territories propagate like sheep except they are a lot less bother.

Robert Ardrey refers to a "Biological Morality" that comes into play when territory is invaded. It seems to me that the "Biological Morality" that Mr. Ardrey has discovered is a different concept than the morality that one speaks of in the context of civil law. Mr. Ardrey's "Instinctive Morality" is genetically programmed. The wolf is not free to break the law. Man is. Cultural morality is fear of the community. It is to protect the community from the damage the genetically programmed individual would do in the absence of personal and social restraint.

It may be that we are genetically, as well as culturally, programmed to fear the community. In any case, it is the fear of the community that urges us to repress our genetically programmed predatory, acquisitive, and egotistical inclinations that are in conflict with the community concepts of justice. "Biological Morality" is genetically programmed. The parallel between the two is questionable.

Conrad Lorenz in his delightful work, "King Solomon's Ring" observed that a defeated wolf, in an apparently life and death struggle, could turn his throat to his opponent which is apparently a biological signal that inhibits the victor from going in for the kill. Some persons have seized upon this observation to give credibility to Christ's injunction that when we are struck on one cheek we should turn the other. It takes considerable intellect to achieve a logical parallel here. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proposed a moral restraint at the start of a fight to achieve the harmlessness required to be pleasing to His concept of God.

Lorenz's wolf at the end of a fight was, genetically programmed to forego capping his victory with the death of his victim, presumably to protect the species.

Author Joseph Wood Crutch, when commenting on pacifism in his book, "If You Don't Mind My Saying So", expressed surprise that such a discerning person as Justice William O. Douglas saw a parallel here, and spoke of the wolf turning the other cheek in this book "My Wilderness". Krutch quotes Lorenz, "Turning the other cheek, the wolf teaches us, is not abject surrender, but an honorable way to prevent a fight and save the species." Then Krutch asks, "but are all men in every respect as admirable as the wolf?"

Here we have these three marvelous authors--0ne a respected justice--who would all agree that the wolf has no choice in the matter, and yet they all assume that there is something admirable or honorable in a wolf responding to a biological urge. Wouldn't this require that the wolf consciously appreciate the situation and elect to forego victory for the preservation of the species? Even man has not yet reached that level of sophistication.

I protest that honor and morality are both attributes of civil law and civilization and are inappropriate or impossible in the absence of civil law such as in war and in the anarchy of natural law that prevails among the other species. It betrays an anthropomorphism that is unbecoming in the otherwise scholarly material. Even though we find that biology is not all "nature raw in tooth and claw" it is still the law of the jungle.

To make his point, Ardrey shows the parallel between the territoriality of the other species and in our national boundaries. Another parallel that he ignored is that IN BOTH CASES LINES ARE DRAWN IN THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL LAW. This, then, would be the case between nations for the 50 million years Ardrey estimates to be the time that has elapsed since forms of life were organized into nations. Perhaps it is time that we started using our intelligence for the arrangement of property between international states rather than our genes.

We need not answer Ardrey's rationale that war satisfies universal basic human needs, "Identity, stimulation and security", since modern war is spasmodic and rather rare on a world scale. In my 75 years I was only 3 years in the Army and only 6 months in combat. If we were to depend on war to supply these needs our lives would be barren indeed. Most of mankind would be entirely deprived of these basic needs. It is my observation that army life is pretty boring most of the time, and even while on combat duty much of the time is spent waiting for something to happen. My civil life on the other hand has been full of interest because I was culturally and, perhaps, genetically programmed to develop a territory for my family. My security depended on me doing the stimulating things that established my identity.

However,if we appraise war in the light of the vicarious stimulation that war excites, then Ardrey has a strong point. We are genetically programmed to respond to the dramatic. War is the most stimulating of all human collective activities. Some of the most fascinating facets of history are the wars that have been fought.

In civil life we may have many territories. There is my home, there is my place of employment, my shop, my city, my constituency, my state and country. Even my car has all the attributes of territory, and if it is invaded the invader can be dealt with, with small disturbance to the community.

Homo sapiens are in a state of rapid change since the invention of civil law in the last ten to twenty thousand years. Cities, not being biological inventions, needed non-biological rules. These rules were often at war with the genetically programmed inclinations of the species. Morality was developed and the rules of morality varied with each culture, but they assisted the establishments in keeping order.

The moral rules were auxiliary to civil law. They were said to represent the wisdom of the gods with respect to proper human relations. The fear engendered by the response of the community to breaking of these rules was attributed to the wrath of God and was called conscience. Conscience, however, a many-faceted concept, also could mean fear of what the neighbors would think, or the shame of violating our own conceptions of right and wrong. In one culture a person might have a conscience against removing his pants in public while in another culture he may experience inhibition toward wearing pants at all. Yet neither does physical damage to property or persons. And the line between those who are too conscientious to steal and those who are too cowardly to steal is not easily drawn. These were the rules of the city, or the non-biological rules of civil law--Civilization.

Property expresses the "territorial imperative" in the civil context. Mrs. Ardrey's enchanting artwork in Ardrey's book shows the farmer proudly looking over his fields and buildings. He does not have to rush to the fence line each morning to hurl insults at his neighbor as Ardrey shows in the case with some other primates. Nor does he have to threaten with his rifle to keep his neighbor from encroaching on his property as might have been the case on the frontier before the sheriff was installed. He and his neighbor knows that the community is on call at all times to protect his property rights.

We have, apparently, an instinctive attachment to property. The community has a hold on us, at the civil level, through our instinctive love of property. Thus, they that have no property, they that have nothing to lose but their freedom, must be impelled to good behavior by the threat of jail which is maintained at the public expense. From those who have something to lose the community can enrich itself by taking the property, by fines, confiscation, etc. of those that break the law. The "territorial imperative", the genetically programmed partiality to property, is used by the community to control, without the threat of war or of biology, the individuals of which the community is composed.

It is surprising that Ardrey chose to ignore these rules that are man's alternative to the rule of passion that we share with the other species. Every country in the world, with the exception of those engaged in civil war, are models for a world of universal civil law.

If, for example, were all the sovereign states but Australia to sink into the ocean tonight, there would be a world of universal civil law tomorrow morning. And NONE OF THE PROBLEMS THAT AUSTRALIA WOULD THEN HAVE WOULD LEND THEMSELVES TO A MILITARY SOLUTION.

Ardrey's exceptional authorship leads us to a dubious conclusion: I quote, "the principal cause of modern warfare arises from the failure of the intruding power to correctly estimate the defensive resources of the defender. The enhancement of energy invariably engendered in the defending proprietor; the union partners welded by the first sound of gunfire, the biological morality demanding sacrifice, even of life; all of the innate commands of the territorial imperative act to multiply the apparent resources of a defending nation." (pg. 236-7)

We have had a test of this proposition recently in the case of "Desert Storm" where the defending nation was subdued. Before that there was Grenada and before that there was Panama. History is replete with instances where stronger nations in their ignorance of the territorial imperative attacked weaker nations in the heart of their own territory and were successful.

Some have seen Desert Storm as international law working for the first time since Korea, when the U.N. supported the military. In confronting rogue states, the U.N. has two options: the threat of war to prevent war, and the threat of siege (sanctions). While civil law controls the individual with threat of overwhelming political force, treaty law would control the international states with the threat of overwhelming military force.

Sanctions, as with war, punish the most those that are the least guilty for the offenses for which the penalties are imposed. Soldiers in war take the brunt of the catastrophes that nations fling at each other while responding to atrocities with atrocities. They that occupy the lower strata of the punished society must take the brunt of the limited stage of siege called sanctions imposed by righteous, victorious nations.

We punish individuals for crimes required of them, under duress by the laws of our enemy's government. These persons, afflicted by having a tyrant for a leader, are further afflicted by having to suffer the penalties directed at the leader by those who wish them well. The guilty in charge of the rogue state live in palatial elegance while starvation is imposed on those who are the least able to do anything about the situation.

The sanctions imposed by the U.N. require that cooperating states break their commercial promises, their treaties to the rogue nation thus breaking one of the chief threads, "the interdependence" that holds nation states together in non-military relationships. The rogue leader, with a captive audience, can blame all problems on outside intervention. Both the threat of war and the threat of siege unites the rogue nation around their leader in territorial defense the very way Ardrey so eloquently describes.

The main problem with the U. N. is that it represents military forces rather than political constituencies. While the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces the diplomat serves has a constituency, the diplomat's services are restricted and dedicated specifically to his own nation. He can not be more generous than the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces he serves. International politicians, on the other hand, would give a voice to the conscience of mankind as well as tes local constituency and would have to take into consideration the needs and aspirations of nations the world over. This melding of interest would take place in a contest between the conservatives and the liberals of the world rather than the contests in military threat between nationalities that now keep the world in a tenuous state of military equilibrium.

Even putting the U.N. in its most complimentary light, the overwhelming military force must be administered by Homo sapiens acting like Homo sapiens in desperate circumstances. From our experience with the limitations of the species in general, and our experience with the wisdom of diplomatic and political leadership in particular, we should recognize that it would be indiscreet to put them, with their genetically programmed limitations, in charge of an overwhelming military force, whether that force be at the disposal of a super state or the U.N.

If the U.N. were truly united, as the states of the U.S. and the provinces of Canada are, the international administrations of all the countries in the world (except those with internal wars), the "territorial imperative" that we share with other animals would be taken care of in our international courts of civil law. A military could then be used to decorate the administration of any state as monarchies are used now in England and other democracies, their power having been usurped by a higher civil law.

Instead, we have this organization, the U.N., composed of diplomats that are the agents of the militaries of the world that are in charge of achieving something called peace between sovereign states and the methods of achieving such peace have not changed materially in human history.

Diplomats arrange the transition from military strife to a relationship of mutual threat. They have neither the philosophy nor the means for making the transition from control by military threat to control by civil law. The One Worlders look to the U.N. as the vehicle that will negotiate the transition. Civil law is not negotiated--it is legislated. The U.N. dedicated to sovereignty cannot bring the tools of civilization to impinge on international disputes. Without the cooperation of U.N. as a vehicle toward a warless world all the plans of the one worlders become Da Vinci airplanes, lacking the international authority for its accomplishment. World law presupposes a world community concept of justice. To develop a world community concept of justice into law there must be universal politicians to articulate the world community concept of justice and to legislate it into law. Civil courts would develop in the testing of the resulting legislation. The missing factor in all plans for a warless world is the development of international politicians to replace diplomats.

So far as I know, none of the prominent organizations for world federation that have wrestled with the problem of moving the world toward enforceable international law ever seem to have proposed that civil law could be arranged between international states to the exclusion of any relevant military.

All those one world organizations that I know: Planetary Citizens, Umano, Institute for World Order, World Without War Council, The Baha'i Universal House of Justice, World Citizens, New Future(Sweden), World Constitution and Parliament Association, apparently all suppose that enforceable world law will be arranged by diplomats, and that the U.N. and Geneva will assist them through the labyrinth of treaties to world federation.

And that military threat and military force, a "peace force", at least initially, would be necessary during the transition. Here is a quote from Emery Reve's book "A Democratic Manifesto" (Random House, 1942) which was endorsed by Albert Einstein: "Legal wars which we have to institute if we want to abolish illegal wars presuppose the existence of an international legal order. They mean forceful military action with the authority of the community, for the maintenance and safeguard of the established legal order."

I believe the most of those organizations who are working for the absence of war would be comfortable with this position. The armed forces would be called "Global Police" but the object would be the authorized departure from the rules of civilization until the outlaw nation was subdued.

Legal war is a contradiction in terms. The unauthorized departure from rules of civilization by the outlaw state would have to be matched and excelled by the authorized departure from the rules of civilization to engage in a subduing contest on the outlaw's terms--a contest in slaughter and destruction.

Those excellent persons who give their time and substance toward a world without war, apparently TEND TO THINK OF NATIONS AS BIG PERSONS WITH ALL THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONS. Democracy would come to the international level when these Big Persons, rated for their relevance in the light of world events and in the light of their population, economics, and land mass--represented by diplomats--would vote international laws. These laws would be enforced by the threat of the departure from the rules of civilization between states with respect to each other.

Reeves whose historical analysis has my full respect, proposed the existence of an international legal order as precondition to legislating legal wars. The cultural meaning of legal however, is the community concepts of justice legislated into law. It presupposes also, a court, the right to sue, and a penal system to punish CRIMINAL PERSONS not criminal POLITICAL ENTITIES. If we had these between international states why would we need to legalize war? It is for the want of the legislated authority of a community between international states that makes the threat of war necessary. Domestic law could not stand if each individual could appeal to the judge to step outside the law, when the law failed, to resolve the problem by physical means as is now the option of the Big Person, the sovereign state. A community presupposes a political relationship. Such a relationship is now forbidden by the militarily imposed divisions that define international property. Until we can entertain the possibility of a political contest for political control of international state lines there can be no solution to war in any time frame.

The question is: WHAT FORM OF POLITICAL ACTION COULD RAISE THE NECESSARY ISSUES TO A WORLD AUDIENCE AND CARRY THROUGH TO LEGISLATED JURISDICTIONAL LINES BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL STATES FOR A POLITICALLY INTEGRATED WORLD?

We know that for centuries kings had to be toppled by military force. Today we see the spectacle of a chief executive, occupying one of the most prestigious offices in the world, being forced out of office by non-violent means. The chief executives of the United States have been replaced by non-military means for 218 years. ALL THESE, LIKE THE KINGS AND EMPERORS OF HISTORY, WERE THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEFS OF THE ARMED FORCES. But political force forbids them the use of military force to keep their office. So we have these examples of political force giving us a choice of leaders and political protection from military invasion across domestic state lines. In the United States, all there is to protect the citizens from the application of military force to domestic problems is the collective opinion of the people of the United States.

Persons who believe in Democracy but are too realistic to think that they would be secure from invasion by hostile nation states in any union without a military must have been around when the United States was formed. To satisfy the demand for sovereignty, states were given the right to keep a militia. And, except for the years of the Civil War, the National Guard has never been used as it was originally intended, to protect domestic states from each other. Canadian provinces have no military forces to protect them from the government of Canada or from the other provinces nor have they ever needed one. Those good people that are trying to forbid war between armed states can not see political force being successful in any contest with military force. Political force, while adequate to force the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces out of office and keep 50 governments from going to war with each other, could not be expected to work so well, in their view, for international states.

So, we must negotiate legal war where the rules of civilization would periodically be set aside to punish recalcitrant states. The development of a voting structure for "political war" toward legislature and civil law for international states is not even entertained by the anti-warriors or anyone else, so far as I know.

Diplomats throughout history have been in charge of the anarchy (strife in the absence of civil law) that exists between international states. They operate in a lawless context as does the underworld. To expect to achieve civil law by and through diplomats is parallel to expecting to achieve civil law by and through gangsters.

This is not to disparage the very important role that diplomats play in peacekeeping. In the absence of civil law diplomats are vital to keeping rival armies at bay. They are necessary to achieve the absence of war through mutual accommodation promises and military threat, as are soldiers, generals, machine guns, and nuclear weapons. As Tolstoy said it, "If a government has an army it should be as large as possible". The ameliorating quality for this severe directive is diplomacy. Diplomacy determines to what degree great states may impose on lesser states. Emery Reeves said that great states acted like gangsters while small states acted like prostitutes. Such is the inevitable relationship between states where natural law prevails in the absence of civil restraints. Thus we have the underworld and the overworld, both characterized by their absence of civil restraints but where civil law is used selectively when convenient.

At the domestic level a rifle, butcher knife, and a box of matches may all be available to my nasty neighbor to invade my house and drive my family into the street. It gives me little security to know that my nasty neighbor knows that I will fight to the death to defend my property. What security I have rests in the assurance that I know and my neighbor knows that the community would be revolted at such an action against my property and would come to my assistance.

At the civil level it is generally supposed that the purpose of the police is to enforce the law. Even though everyone knows that the law is usually broken before the police are called. I can, for instance, legally buy a gun and legally go to your house and legally knock and when you open the door I can illegally shoot you, even though you are said to be protected by the police. Law does not become involved UNTIL AFTER THE LAW IS BROKEN. The main purpose of the police is to find offenders and to bring them to court AFTER the crime has been committed. Therefore, the potential criminal must be deterred before the police are called.

Now I may have strong motives for killing you, but these are overbalanced by the nasty things society can do to me if I do. I am deterred and you feel security through the mutual knowledge we carry around in our heads. If,however,I am undeterred by the threat of society and I pull the trigger it will be disaster for you--but the community will not be provoked into a slaughtering match. If there were no court system your family would have to impose any penalties, that is, take revenge. Your family, having no facilities for investigating the crime, might get the wrong person. My family, knowing me, might very well have thought that I got what was coming to me if I were killed in revenge, but would be outraged when an innocent member was killed by mistake. The inevitable injustice that takes place in the absence of mutual courts of civil law, together with the natural conflict of interest between families or tribes, made the feud inevitable.

When Hammurabi wrote his code, 1700 B.C., revenge was civilized to the extent that there were regulations to the amount of revenge one could take for a given injury, "an eye for an eye".

A feud is a war in microcosm. Here, the offended person if unrestrained, may feel justified in punishing the offender not only for his own crime but also for the crimes of his family, his tribe or his nation. The feud was made obsolete by the advancement of civil law.

Civil Law, while it may bring order, cannot bring justice since justice can not be defined in any comprehensive way, but can only support the community concept of justice as understood by those administering the law. Nor can civil law prevent crime, but punishes crime after it has been committed.

The crime of war must also be punished after the big person, the criminal nation, has committed the crime and has been subdued. There is a perverse parallel here if we assume that treaty law parallels civil law. Treaty law, however, is made with the signatures of diplomats, while civil law is legislated community opinion. Treaty law reflects the temporary policies of a temporary leader of a temporary sovereign state while civil law is a community concept of justice legislated into rules for the legal conduct for a specific community. If a portion of the community find the rules unjust, a politician, with nothing more violent than his voice, campaigns to change the community concept of justice to be legislated into law and so to a degree, corrects the problem. Civil Law presupposes legislation, while treaty law is never legislated. Diplomats negotiate mutual accommodation promises. Sovereignty makes the keeping of these promises discretionary.

Neither treaties nor civil laws can keep the rules from being broken. The potential outlaw state leader with any knowledge of history knows that if he pulls the trigger to start a war he will be punished if he loses. So he will fight desperately and will inspire his forces to fight desperately so that the calamity of defeat will be averted. Defeat is the penalty for waging and losing war.

The defeat of Germany after WW II was so devastating to many of those implicated in its pursuit that they who were detained by the Nuremberg court had to be watched day and night to prevent them from killing themselves before they could be put on trial. The Goebels are reported to have even killed their own children.

The calamity of defeat was well known to Hitler and company--having experienced WW I. Does anyone suppose that those who were prepared to risk the calamity of defeat would have been deterred from going to war by additional diplomatic ink on parchment to outlaw war or the means of war?

War was outlawed by the 6th Commandment in the Bible..."Thou shalt not kill". War was outlawed again after 1928 when nearly all the nations in the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

In 1945 after the most devastating war in history, we anti-warriors, looked to the Nuremberg Trials as an opportunity to set precedent that would outlaw wars of the future and also to ameliorate the calamity of WW II as an earlier generation looked to the Kellogg-Briand Pact to fulfill the promises of WW I.

The victorious international establishments were not about to prove that anything that they did in the war was illegal. So the German offenders were tried for their part in the newly made crimes of exterminating the Jews and other undesirables, and for starting the war, neither of which could be numbered among the "crimes against humanity" that were necessary in the winning of the war by the Allied Forces.

The Nuremberg Court ignored the earlier international treaties that forbade the bombing of civilians from the air and the Kellogg-Briand Pact that denounced war as an instrument of national policy.

To this point is the quote from the book, "The Nuremberg Trials", by Ann and John Tusa : "They (the court) argued that the (Kellogg Briand) Pact did not have the character of true law. It failed on two counts:

Firstly, like innumerable scholars and politicians from Grotius (Hugo Grotius 1586-1625 LAW OF NATIONS) to the drafters of the Covenant of the League of Nations, it had not succeeded in giving a clear unambiguous definition of aggression.

Next, the critics of the Pact pointed out, it neither specified punishment for those who committed aggression nor proposed courts to try those accused of it.

In this connection Bradley F. Smith, in his book, "Reaching Judgements at Nuremberg" states the case for the reluctance of diplomats to specify penalties:

Throughout the trial, the court was faced with a pair of unpleasant alternatives. It could attempt to define aggressive war, or restrict it to "crimes against the peace" to violations of agreements and treaties. The tribunal generally chose the latter alternative but this did not provide a complete escape from the legal thicket, for there still remained a troublesome question, that is: Did any of the treaties specify penalties or declare who should be held criminally liable in the event of violation? The inevitable answer was that no treaty contained such provisions, not only because such formulations would be complex and questionable in international law, but because it was assumed that it would be they, (the diplomats) that would be the most likely candidates for the breaking of them. There are obvious limits to the innovative self-sacrifice one can expect from statesmen."

Here we have for all to see, this scam that is international law. When the time comes to test the law we find it is incomplete. Vital parts are missing because they that were given the job of making the law have an interest in seeing that the law is unenforceable.

We anti-warriors had little to be happy about so we seized upon what we called the "Nuremberg Principal". This we hailed as the "First Step Toward Peace". Peace is a ladder of only one step.

Throughout my memory each new effort against the war machine was promoted as the first step toward peace. So it was with the Nuremberg Principle. The rationale was that the Nuremberg court ruled that no one henceforth could take refuge in the plea that he, as a defendant was "just obeying orders". This ruling gave the citizen the right and the responsibility to refuse illegal orders. Thus the officer or dictator in imposing penalties would have to defend his action in civil court, where justice would of course, rule on the side of law. This would not only frustrate the designs of the dictator but would also keep one from getting hung by an international court should one's country be defeated in the war.

So if the state asked one to run the train that takes persons to be incinerated one could presumably refuse to take part in the action, and the matter would come to court and this illegal action could be stopped in a court of civil law. (The international court, as we have seen earlier does not exist). In the light of this rationale one so ordered would write a nice letter to the appropriate agency stating legal text and one's scruples. The agency sends around a pleasant person who explains the negative impact to the war effort that Jews and others have who are not committed to victory. You stand firm on your principles. A representative of the S.S. police calls to explain subtly the action that might be taken against your family and your property if you should be found to be an enemy of the state, and you see to your horror that you might end up in the ovens yourself. So if you love your family, your property or your life you will be discreet and quickly agree to run the train, there being no sanctuary from the wrath of government spelled out in the Nuremberg Principle.

But one would think that reasonably intelligent persons would not have to go through all this to see that to face down authority, to put your country on trial, to call attention to legal irregularities with respect to the enemy in wartime will find few supporters. Yet in honesty I must include myself among those that didn't.

It has been pointed out that every German soldier's pay book had instructions called "The Ten Commandments". In this, the soldier was told he did not have to obey illegal orders. This is roughly parallel to having permission to jump off a bridge. The consequences will be painful, as is bucking the military in wartime, no matter how legal one may be. In the desperate circumstances that is war, the individual's moral comfort is little regarded.

So the "Principle" turns out to be of the same chaff that composes the other directives toward diplomatically achieved international law. I hasten to add that although the Nuremberg court did nothing to advance the cause of diplomatically achieved international legislation it was profound success in another way. The Nuremberg trials laid to rest the "monster" Germany that we fought for six years. It provided scapegoats to carry off the sin of those who gladly or reluctantly or inadvertently took part in the prosecution of Hitler's war. By this means we made possible a political climate for the "Marshall Plan" by which, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "We destroyed our enemies by making them our friends".

The above observations must sound flippant to the ears of those who have suffered the full catastrophe, the abomination, the atrocity, the obscenity of the war that Hitler with the help of the German people provoked. I include here an exchange between Farley Mowat (a Canadian), and Russians while he was a guest of the Soviets: From "SIBIR, My Discovery of Siberia" by Farley Mowat. Farley argues:

"But surely, I said, "there is a time to forgive the sins of the past. Even some Jews have forgiven Germany. Look at Israel". A young man who had not said much until then drained his glass and angrily replied, "I am a Jew. I have not forgiven Germany. The Israelites may appear to have done so but only so they can make use of German money and German weapons against the Arabs. Even if the Jew within me could forgive, the Russian in me never could. Do you know the Fascists killed more than 15 million Soviet people? Do you think all the black smoke from the crematoria was only from Jewish bodies? Maybe we will forgive them someday--but trust them? Never!"

"It is true", said the elderly man. "Here in this room I am sure you will not find one person who did not lose a close relative to the Fascists. You will hardly find a family in all the Soviet Union who did not suffer death or destruction at their hands. I can tell you the Fascists destroyed over one thousand of our towns and cities--shelled, bombed, or just burned them to the ground. It will mean little to you. It means much to our people. In 1940 we were just beginning to master our economic problems, and the destruction brought by the German Invasion set everything back a full ten years. For you it was different. The war saved you from your economic problems. North America became rich out of the war. You kiss and forgive, and take them to your bosom, but is out of self-interest you have forgiven them!"

In the light of the above, suppose aggression had been defined and an international court had been established preliminary to the war to "enforce justice" between international states. Would the existence of such a court have deterred aggression better than did the Kellogg-Briand Pact? Is there anything an international court could rule AFTER THE WAR that would ameliorate the atrocity done to these Russians? And is there anything a devastated Germany could do to 'make it right' with Russians? Would such a court have resolved the end of the war better than the trumped up Nuremberg court?

For centuries victor states took revenge on the defeated states and imposed retribution and restitution. After WW II victorious states broke new ground and, after the monsters had been sacrificed on the altar of justice, the victorious states helped the defeated states to recover. This was particularly true of countries like the U.S. and Canada that had not been devastated by the war. While as Mowat's Russian friend pointed out, there was commercial gain in this "loving one's enemies", it was more than that. There would, no doubt, have been the same commercial gains for helping Germany recover from WW I but the clamor for revenge, retribution and restitution got in the way. The Treaty of Versailles was imposed on the German people. HERE FOR ALL WOULD-BE AGGRESSORS IN THE WORLD TO SEE WAS THE PENALTY FOR BREAKING INTERNATIONAL LAW. Here was the first "enforcement" of international law. Here was the test of the ability of cooperating nation states to discipline aggressors and discourage war. So contrary were the results of this repressive treaty to the end intended that the Treaty of Versailles, became an example of WHAT NOT TO DO to a defeated state. And at the cost of WW II the international states LEARNED SOMETHING!! And with the leadership of the United States our former enemies were helped to recover from the devastation to their countries that they themselves initiated. This time revenge, retribution, and restitution were set aside as irrelevant to the task at hand.

But this was not international law. This did not speak to the hurts of a nation that had over a thousand towns and cities devastated in an unprovoked war. It did not speak to moral issues of war. It did not speak for the millions of individuals that suffered and died and to those that mourned them. It did not speak for those who must live out their lives crippled and in pain and with pieces of their bodies missing. Nor for the prisoners of war that spent long years of neglect and abuse in prisons and in prison camps. Nor for the property loss and financial ruin of those whose property was destroyed in the bombing raids, nor for the refugees that lost their freedom, their homes and their homelands.

I feel strongly that there should be an international day of tears, when we would weep real tears reflecting on the savagery that conscientious, intelligent, thoughtful persons accomplished servicing the stupid, bumbling, brutish, monster that is the sovereign state. But granting the anarchy that exists between international states, I think the cost effective Marshall Plan was more effective as a means of preventing future wars with Germany and Japan than all the anti-war proposals since the year one.

The Marshall Plan for Germany and similar help in rebuilding Japan made, not friends, but respected competitors out of vicious enemies by developing a productive commercial relationship. The mutual benefits thereof have been enjoyed ever since, with no fear of war in sight in the foreseeable future.

International law was not advanced by the Nuremberg trials nor by the Nuremberg Principle as is evident by the lack of legal challenge to Pol Pot in Kampuchea, to Idi Amin in Uganda, to Sadam Hussein on Iraq, or to Nixon and Johnson in Vietnam or Reagan in Grenada and Panama, and other wars that have since been waged around the world.

Konrad Lorenz makes the point in his penetrating book "On Aggression" that wolves, tigers and bears have built in inhibitions against killing their own species. This inhibition, developed over millions of years of natural selection, prevents the death dealing teeth and claws of the carnivore from being used in intro specie conflicts to the destruction of the species. Doves and primitive man, on the other hand, being relatively harmless to each other, did not develop these inhibitions against killing their own kind. Lorenz observed doves trapped in a cage where they were strangers to each other, and in the contest for comfortable space between them, one dove killed the other and then continued to attack until it was exhausted. When man developed artificial weapons, Lorenz proposes, it was like suddenly giving the dove the beak of a raven. Lorenz, speaking to this proposition says:

"All his (man's) troubles arise from his being a basically harmless, omnivorous creature, lacking the natural weapons with which to kill big prey, and, therefore, also devoid of the built in safety devices which prevents "professional" carnivores from abusing their killing power....In human evolution no inhibitory mechanisms preventing sudden manslaughter were necessary, because quick killing was impossible anyhow; the potential victim had plenty of opportunity to elicit the pity of the aggressor by submissive gestures and appeasing attitudes...If humanity survived, as, after all, it did, it never achieved security from self destruction.

If moral responsibility and unwillingness to kill have indubitably increased, the ease and the emotional impunity of killing have increased at the same rate. The distance at which all shooting weapons take effect screens the killer against the stimulus situation which would otherwise activate his killing inhibitions. The deep layers of our personalities simply do not register the fact that the crooking of a finger to release a shot tears the entrails of another man."

In the above quotes we have propositions at war with each other. Lorenz first presents man in a life and death struggle appealing to instincts that, being unnecessary in primitive man, had not been developed. He then deplores modern weapons that distance the killer from the death throws of the killed, thus by-passing the biological inhibitions that he posits have not been developed in man because of his absence of quick killing natural weapons. We might wonder how this extremely shrewd observer overlooked the thousands of years of history where wars had been fought with swords and spears and where men in face to face confrontations hacked each other to pieces in full accord with his proposition that man has no biological stops from killing his own kind. These men facing their enemies who are slashing about, dealing out death with every ounce of energy at their disposal (assuming they are kindly disposed toward humanity in general under other circumstances) had more pressing problems than the distress of the opponent's wives and kiddies if they should be successful in killing them. He is responding to the dictates of natural law and he will respond to the requirements of civil law and morality under such circumstances to his peril.

I believe we do have biological inhibitions toward killing our own kind except when engaged in a military contest against an armed enemy. There is a parallel in the school yard when two boys engage in a fight. Here again, where the wolf is genetically programmed to turn his throat, the boys are culturally programmed to cry "uncle" or make the genetically programmed cry of distress that forbids the opponent continuing the punishment.

Lorenz observes a contest over territory between doves in cage to make a vital point with respect to mens' responses while engaged in a desperate battle between sovereign states. He makes no distinction between man controlled by the military and man controlled by the community. Had he done so he might have observed that he is studying two fundamentally different concepts of killing, the desperate killing for survival in a private contest between individuals, and killing with the approval and/or coercion of a sovereign state. In the former we kill under the jurisdiction of civil law, the latter in the absence of civil restraints. In the former killing is regarded as one of the most heinous of crimes, and in the latter we will be honored in proportion to the numbers we kill.

There are many reasons why we kill in war. Undoubtedly Ardrey's "Territorial Imperative" is a factor in this, an innate partiality to territory or property. We are also culturally programmed to take a proprietary interest in the land of our birth. Persons who have never owned a square yard of real estate find that they are enormously wealthy in that they own the whole country. This ownership may trigger an urge to defend it, even to the giving and taking of life, but there are other very pressing reasons for killing in war. We kill in war because we feel a moral responsibility to take part in the defense of our country when its independence is in jeopardy. We kill in war because we joined the army to escape the boredom and the poverty of unemployment and to reap the benefits of room and board and respect that military service confers, and to kill on order is part of the package.

We kill in war because our friends and fellow soldiers and officers approve of our killing and require it of us. We kill in war because we are ordered to do so by officers that are ordered to order us to kill by officers who have been ordered by the community to order us to kill. We kill in war because of the penalties (prison, disgrace) that threaten us if we don't. We kill in war because if we lose the war our property may be given as a reward to those who contributed the most to our defeat. We kill in war because those persons whom we kill are not persons but enemies--these evil creatures are fighting for a bad government that is intent on making us slaves. We kill the enemy because he has an odious religion or lack of religion and if they win the war they will impose their religion or lack of religion on the good people who believe in the good religion and in freedom, in justice, in democracy, in generosity, in compassion and all the attributes that to ascribe them to the enemy would be treasonous.

We kill in war because the enemy's people are presented to us, by turns, as pitiable creatures ground under the heel of oppression, people longing to be freed, and mindless fanatics with a detestable philosophy that is contrary to everything we hold dear. We kill the enemy because he is a killer and because he has committed atrocities that must be avenged. We kill in war because the enemy is advancing to kill us and we don't want to be killed--and are trying to end the war as quickly as possible. Since war is a contest in terror, we must achieve a preponderance of terror, to win. And killing is the most terrifying thing we can do.

While soldiers, like carpenters, Quakers and Dr. Lorenz, may generally find the planned infliction of pain and death revolting, in the face of some of the above considerations they, too, might find the abominable requirements of war satisfying.

Some anti-warriors insist that in war we have options to kill or not to kill. At the domestic level in the desperate situation where judge will rule that the act was justified and the killer is not a murderer. The military engagement between states inevitably puts the soldier is reviled by anti-warriors, overtly or implicitly, as a murderer.

Having made the point that early man had not developed the biological inhibitions toward the killing of his own kind that is evident among the carnivores, Konrad Lorenz joins with Sydney Margolin to point up another of the seeds of war. I quote "On Aggression", p 236,

"Sydney Margolin in Denver, Colorado, made very exact psychoanalytical and psycho-sociological studies on Prairie Indians, particularly the Utes, and showed that these people suffer greatly from an excess of aggressive drive which, under the ordered conditions of present day North American Indian reservations, they are unable to discharge. It is Margolin's opinion that during the comparatively few centuries when the Prairie Indians led a wild life consisting almost entirely of war raids, there must have been an extreme selective pressure at work, breeding extreme aggressiveness....on the other hand, there is, in the modern community, no legitimate outlet for aggressive behavior." (pg. 244)

The above observations may be an important contribution to the study of aggression. However, it is astonishing to have so astute a scholar as Lorenz support the position that the modern community has no legitimate outlet for aggressive behavior. I believe that most people would agree that our whole economic complex is a medium for legitimate aggressive behavior. Our rights and our properties, our many territories (in Ardrey's words) are defended by contesting lawyers. What about the joy of the aggressive lawyer in winning an important case? What about politics? What about Clinton's aggression on Bush's White House? What about sports? The joy of the aggressive hockey player winning the pennant may match or exceed the joy of taking a field in battle.

This has been the theme of those who appraise the anti-war possibilities of the Olympic Games. "Let the nations of the earth work out their aggressions on the field of sports rather than the field of battle, " we cry. On the field of sports, however, if you don't keep the rules any prizes will be forfeit. On the field of battle prizes are won by breaking the rules. Since this is the case the rules will be broken, because it is taken for granted that the enemy will not be keeping the rules. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A CASE WHERE VICTORS IN WAR WERE DENIED VICTORY BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KEEP TO THE RULES. NO MILITARY ENGAGEMENT HAS EVER BEEN WON BY KEEPING THE RULES OF CIVILIZATION.

Businessmen love the aggressive salesmen and constituencies love the aggressive representative. The opportunities for legal aggression are more abundant and superior to the rather rare opportunities to take part as combat troops in a war. Much of the military personnel are employed in services that differ in no substantial way from the office jobs they held in civilian life.

Another area for aggression afforded by civil law is the breaking of the law. This is open to everyone who is prepared to risk the penalties. The underworld is a permanent option for those who need an outlet for their biological aggressive drives. Here they can not only contest with fellow gangsters for recognition in the underworld but with the voice of the establishment and their victims who take them to court.

The Utes have not produced a war since they were subdued by the White Man and compelled by the community to settle their differences by civil means. The message would seem to be that even the biologically programmed aggressiveness of the Utes does not cause them to go to war where there are politicians to articulate the community concept of justice.

In my adopted country, the U.S.A., with the exception of the Civil War, no state has ever aggressed upon the property of another state to cause a war, in contrast with the states of Europe they had left. Why could not such a government be established at the world level? It is here that Joseph Wood Krutch made his most devastating repudiation of the possibilities of universal civil law. I quote, "If you really insist on the historical analogy with the United States then a United States of the World would have to be affirmed on the most terrible battlefield."

Here is a stumper for anyone who has contemplated the problem of bringing domestic law to the international level. The United States was achieved by the destruction of the native populations and the defeat of the British Armies. If world government must be achieved in this way with modern weapons, the achieving of it might leave nothing to govern.

Krutch might have also pointed out that the case of the 13 former colonies is not a very good parallel because the colonies not only had a common cultural background but also had just been welded together by eight years of common struggle in the war with the English in the War of Independence. In addition to this, they were threatened from the East and the North and the South by French, English and Spanish interests. In the West, Native Americans were challenging the White Man's aggression into their territory and were an obstruction to the development of the vast resources of the new land. There was a very great and very obvious advantage in dealing with these problems through a common governing body rather than the piecemeal efforts of states acting independently.

Furthermore, these state had enjoyed a common form of civil law as colonies of the British Empire, and even though they were of diverse nationalities, they had this in common that they were the former colonies of the British Empire. Even before they were joined with a Constitution they conducted their interstate relationships through commerce and civil law rather than commerce, diplomacy, mutual military threat and war.

THE LINES BETWEEN THESE STATES WERE NOT DRAWN BY THE MILITARY. THEY WERE NOT DRAWN WITH AN EYE TO FUTURE DEFENSE OR TO WHAT AREAS HAD BEEN WON OR LOST IN BATTLE. THESE LINES COULD BE DRAWN WITH A RULER BECAUSE THE NEGOTIATORS HAD FREE ACCESS ACROSS THESE LINES SINCE BY AGREEMENT CIVIL RIGHTS WERE UNIVERSAL.

There were no diplomats, no embassies, no consulates, no state departments, no long history of mutual invasions, and none of the mutual outrages that invasions inspire. They had already community leaders to articulate a community concept of justice, which is the basis of civil law. When this basis was affirmed in the Constitution the former British Colonies became the United States of America. There was probably never a time in history when events so conspired for independent states to join voluntarily into one political entity.

Such is not the case between the international states today. A glance at the map of the United States shows the straight lines of political divisions in contrast to those of Europe and Asia which show the snake tracks of frequent military rearrangement. At these borders strewn with blood and hate and dead monsters and dead heroes, modern youths take vengeance for the death of their fathers and grandfathers who lost their lives defending these borders long years ago. The hate engendered by militarily imposed lines drawn by military force, impregnates the culture for future wars.

The colonies, having had no militaries to protect themselves from each other, had no diplomats and, therefore, no treaties to keep colonies from going to war with each other, and consequently no United Nations and no Geneva to obstruct the development of a federal government, had few of the obstacles that confront those of us who would entertain the possibility of universal civil law. Here those of us in quest of an approach to a world without war are baffled by such truths and so, like the stickleback fish, and the roebucks in English forests, that Ardrey drew attention to, we do "displacement activity". We try protesting weapons. We argue for a nuclear freeze. We refuse to pay war taxes. We encourage draft refusal and campaign against war toys. All these actions are taken against civil authority or civil establishments in civil courts THAT HAVE NO JURISDICTION IN INTERNATIONAL MATTERS. We call for general and complete disarmament, which requires that the legislated alternative be in place before the military threat can be withdrawn, WITHOUT A HINT THAT THIS IS NECESSARY. AND WITHOUT A THOUGHT OR THEORY AS TO HOW THIS WILL BE ACHIEVED. We try to mend the consequences of the absence of civil law at the international level by improving civil law and human relationships at the domestic level. And while the improving of domestic relations can only be commended, it impinges not at all or relationships between international states.

While everyone would agree that we do not have world government most people would say we do have international law. At the domestic level law produces government. Why then does not law produce government at the international level? The answer is that treaties cannot substitute for civil law. EVEN WORLD OPINION CANNOT BE EFFECTIVE UNTIL IT IS LEGISLATED, CANNOT BE LEGISLATED UNTIL IT IS ARTICULATED, CANNOT BE ARTICULATED WITHOUT INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS.

In the 15th Century a Dutch lawyer and public servant, wrote extensively on the subject of the "law of nations". This man, Hugo Grotius, was so highly regarded that he became know as the father of "international law." Some of his positions I reproduce here, not to disparage this remarkable person who was a captive of his time and culture, but to show how far we have come from the international thinking of the 15th Century, and to make points about the nature of law and justice.

THE LIFE AND LEGAL WRITINGS OF HUGO GROTIUS, (pg. 43). Very briefly, in ch. V. Grotius asserts that all prize is lawful that is taken in a just war, and all war is just which is waged for just causes. It is, therefore, necessary to determine: (a) who may wage a just war, (b) for what causes and against whom, (c) in what manner and to what extent, and (d) for what purpose. - pg. 46. The state is responsible for the wrongs done by its citizens if it does not do justice. Conversely, citizens are responsible for actions of the state. Hence, belligerent action may rightfully extend as far as the right being enforced and the persons bound thereby. Accordingly the property of subjects may be captured and applied to the captor's use.- "for there is nothing more just than to take by arms what can not be had otherwise."- Subjects who by hostile acts, or even innocently, interfere with the enforcement of the right may be killed or injured. But subjects who do not impede belligerent operations may not be slain or harmed in body, though their property may be taken. However, the property of strangers, not belonging to the enemy, is not subject to capture unless it is contraband useful in war...pg 39 & 40. The primary law of nations (or law of nature, to use the preferable terminology of the book of 1625) is based on reason and is unchanging and immutable, as is the primary law of nature.

Both species of law, Grotius argued, gave the Dutch the right to trade with India and the right to make war on the Portuguese for interfering with that right. All law is divided, according to Grotius into divine and human. Divine law includes the law of nature and of nations.- We see justice in undertaking war, bravery in waging it, and fairness in concluding it. Grotius speaks in stirring language in this chapter and declares they hardly deserve to be called men, let alone Dutchmen, who would suffer their countrymen to lose their lives but hesitate to strip their enemies of property."

It is the essence of civilization that we have escaped, to a degree, from the biological imperatives that govern the behavior of the other species. While we are genetically programmed with the instincts of other animals, when our instincts get in the way of the rules of society, society may intervene. Unlike the honey bee, man does not accommodate well to society. To reap the advantages of civil society, man must be coerced and inveigled to keep rules contrary to his biological inclinations.

For this reason, the kings and emperors declared themselves the Sons of God, to add divine authority to the authority invested in the head of state. In the world Grotius knew, the "Higher Law" was as much a matter of fact in the Christian world as is the law of gravity today. This Higher Law was implanted in each person's conscience and was unchanging and immutable and the basis of justice. YET IS IS THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS THAT CONCEPTS OF JUSTICE ARE IN A PERPETUAL STATE OF FLUX. Grotius assumed a universal concept of justice. The good people knew what justice was and so did the bad people. So the good people at the international level could punish the bad people with a clear conscience. The enemy KNEW they were doing wrong. The Higher Lawgiver tended to punish with calamities. At the international level a nation could assist God by initiating the calamities. But one's conscience, according to Grotius, must be satisfied that the punishment was just.

With the spread of the scientific approach, calamities came to be regarded as having natural causes. We are still not quite sure about the nature of justice. We know that justice is not cause and effect. But what is it? It could be argued that justice is a concept in the mind that can not be defined in any comprehensive way. An argument could be made that justice is whatever we believe it to be. Each of us was born unique in all the world. This unique person impinging upon the world will have a unique experience to every other person on the face of the earth. This person's uniqueness will produce a unique total experience, a unique perspective and consequently, a unique concept of justice. Thus, civilization is composed of several billion unique concepts of justice, several billion opinions about what justice is, but as unique snowflakes find uniformity in the snow drift; likewise, do unique concepts of justice find uniformity in the community concepts of justice. To the degree that the community concept of justice is uniform, to this degree can civil law be imposed. At issue is not, "Is the law just?" since this question has no unqualified answer, (what is just in one context may be unjust in another) but, "Can law be imposed?"

Individuals and minorities may have different opinions as to what is justice. A valid complaint about the community concept of justice is that it is not just. But then the law of nature is not just by human standards either, and does not pretend to be .

The concept of justice is a basic attribute of civilization, the alternative is natural law. The other animals, presumably unable to conceptualize justice, are controlled by biology. Anarchists and some liberals and pacifists propose that civil law obstructs "true justice" and that society based on morality is both desirable and possible. There are many who have dedicated their lives to the proposition that if everyone would turn their lives over to the direction of God both justice and peace would reign among the people of the world. We have no proof to the contrary.

It is not unreasonable that a young person making the transition from the world of cultural theory inculcated in the lofty precepts of church and school to the real world of law and commerce to observe that justice is not just. The law is there to affirm the right of the strong to dominate the weak, and that there must be a better way. This rule was affirmed by the law of nature before civilization was developed. However, by the political action of civil law the weak have been able to take rights from the strong (The Establishment) contrary to the law of nature. It is no fault of civil law that the weak are not as successful at this as we would like. It is by this means that "the common man" has taken all the freedoms that we are so proud of.

Civil law is a departure from the rules of biology. Where with the honey bee the rules of society are genetically imposed, Homo sapiens have developed society contrary to many of our biological inclinations.

The administration of the community concept of justice is to a great extent a bungling process. This is necessarily hidden by the robes of the justices and the pomp affected by the court system.

For instance, let us say that my daughter comes home from a date in hysterics because her boyfriend has raped her. My concept of justice may bid me to confront the boy and rearrange his features with my fists and kick him in the crotch and other places. However, to right this wrong the community will require of me that I call the police. Since sex is a private matter there will be no witnesses. His story will be as good as hers. If I am a person of consequence in the community I can have the boy arrested. In this case, I will have to spend time arranging for a doctor to examine my daughter, arranging for a lawyer to handle the case, time lost while attending trial, plus the attendant details and expenses.

Whatever the outcome of the trial, my suffering may be greater than that of either the raped of the rapist. I, a third party, an innocent bystander who has not offended against the community at all, and wishing only to be a responsible father, may find myself taking the greater beating. But the community concept of justice will be served. The matter has been settled to the satisfaction of the community concept of justice.

The injustices of civil law are legendary, but where there is civil law there can be civilization; where there is only natural law there can be none.

Civil law does not presuppose majority approval of the law. There will be those that keep the law because they approve of the law and those that keep the law because they wish to avoid the penalties the law imposes. So long as law is obeyed, law is affirmed. Where there are no politicians to articulate the community concept of justice an no legislature to affirm the community concept of justice and no courts to rule on the community concept of justice, everyone's concept of justice is equally valid as would be the case with natural law.

Three hundred years after Grotius declared God's law and the law of nations to be one and the same thing, we have as late as 1966 Robert Ardrey promoting the survival value of the "Territorial Imperative." This, as Ardrey has shown, has evidently, been in continuous operation since the event of "the nation", a biological development with a history previous to the time when Madagascar parted from the mainland of Africa. Ardrey's basic argument that war is good because it is natural would seem to be in conflict with civil law. Civilization that puts strictures on natural law would, in this context, seem to have been a mistake. But this is what civilization is all about, strictures of natural law.

As we have seen, Grotius spoke of natural law, and the law of nations, and God's law when he was really talking about strife in the absence of civil law. Natural law is the relationship that prevails in the natural world. Natural law is expressed in the relationship between dogs in contest over a bitch. The bitch is up for grabs to the boss bully.

The international parallel is two nations in contest for control over each other's people and resources. The alternative is "unnatural law" or civil law, where our natural inclinations are repressed in the interests of society. Grotius assumed a universal concept of right and wrong that he premised prevailed the world over;

Quote: (ibid) pg. 73..."in warfare there is in force between enemies those unwritten laws which nature dictates or the consensus of nations has established..."

We need not doubt his sincerity in saying that the Dutch would know what was right and would always do it. He insisted that any action taken against the offending state be just. But his criteria of justice would work equally well for the opponent's response in kind, yet this proposition appears to be as strongly held today as in the days of Grotius.

Donald A. Wells, whom I will quote to this theme, is a respected writer. He is, or was, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Washington State University, and has other imposing credentials. He wrote "The War Myth". This book of 250 pages lists 750 references.

It is by far the most penetrating commentary on the cultural propositions with regard to war and peace that it has been my good fortune to read. Even here a basic proposition is that war has something to do with justice, or that leaders may be censured for using war in an unjust way.

In the preface he says in part, "...ordinarily human life is an inalienable right, and a man about to be slain by an assassin is not required to prove why he ought not to be killed. In fact, it is assumed that any assassin who wishes to be heard on behalf of his killing should be dismissed as a moral charlatan. MODERN WAR HAS REVERSED THIS HUMANITARIANISM. (emphasis mine). The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were expected to prove their right not to be bombed, even though they were not consulted before the fact, they were reminded of this datum after the holocaust... It was the same before and after Dresden in World War II, and it is the same in the pillaging of Vietnamese villages. American bombers may, without justification, napalm the villagers out of existence."

Evidently none of the 750 sources proposed that this is the very essence of the prerogative of any war. Such is the cultural confusion with respect to the difference between natural law and civil law that even this remarkable intellect and scholar saw the bombing of cities with nuclear weapons as a CHANGE IN PRINCIPAL to the destroying of cities and civilizations with bows and arrows, swords and spears, battering rams and fire. The very existence of war is evidence that the concept of inalienable rights is irrelevant, except in the presence of the legal structure. To kill without the restraints of civilization is the very essence of natural law, the right of a fox to kill a rabbit, or the right of robin to take the life of a worm. Villages have been burned together with helpless innocents without justification ever since fire brands were invented.

Man, having escaped to a degree from the imperatives of biology, is confused by the two forms of law that are in conflict with each other. The tomcat takes a mate when he can, unencumbered by civil law, morality and justice. The mother cat will take care of any offspring. Civilized man on the other hand may hesitate to respond to the body language of his neighbor's wife because this would offend both his wife's, his own and the community's concept of justice. Here, biology is in conflict with the needs of the family and the community. For both the wife and the community have an interest in a straying husband, the wife because she may lose support in sheltering and civilizing the offspring, and the community because his responding to this genetically programmed urge may destabilize or destroy two families.

Much of the expenses of rearranging the wreckage may have to be born by the community as well as the expenses for the apprehension, conviction and punishment of those whose civilization had been incomplete because of breakup of the two families. All this calamity and expense can occur when natural law is obeyed rather than civil law, the community concept of right and wrong. This is, no doubt the reason that God wrote on the tablet of stone, "Though shalt not commit adultery!" Ardrey made the point that war was good because it was natural. The same argument could be made for adultery and most of the other rules imposed by civil law.

As Mr. Ardrey has shown, in the world of natural law many of the higher animals have to fight for territory. Mr. Lorenz has shown that biology provides that the contest does not cause death to members of some species. Man, whose biology is weak or non-existent in this area, has developed rules and penalties to be administered by the community against the taking of life and property without community permission. When communities contest with communities for territory, civil law designed for contest between individuals, cannot apply. Having no community above the community to make civil rules, Homo sapiens revert to the anarchy that prevails between the non-human nations that Ardrey drew attention to in the world of natural law. These biological nations had biological stops toward killing invaders of their own species. Man, whose biological repugnance toward killing his own kind was so rudimentary that an outside force (the community) had to deter him from settling conflict in this way, easily adapted to war, the absence of civil law between enemies, and learned to kill with abandon. When these killers return from the imperatives of natural law to the imperatives of civil law, they quickly adapt to writing contracts for the arrangement of property rather than to invade, destroy, slaughter and subdue and to become as good citizens as civilization has to offer.

The development of civil law required two auxiliary concepts, justice and morality. Determining which came first, these two concepts or civil law, is comparable to the quiz, which came first the chicken or the egg. Without a general community agreement on what these concepts mean civil law reverts to natural law. That is to physical contest at the individual level and to the subduing contest called war between communities. War is natural law in action where the rules of civilization are set aside to engage in a contest of terror and deceit. The purpose of war is to achieve peace. The war is fought to find out who will dictate the terms of the peace. This illustrates three concepts of peace: Peace, the absence of military strife, the peace of victory and the peace of defeat.

The transition from contending in the politics and commerce of civil law, to contending in its opposite, war, and to engage in the slaughter, destruction and deceit that is the essence of war, war must be clothed in garments that will not offend those who have been schooled in the precepts of law. SO THIS CONTEST IN DESPERATION, THIS CONTEST IN TERROR, THIS CONTEST IN THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL RESTRAINTS, IS CLOTHED IN SUCH CONCEPTS AS JUSTICE, MORALITY, SACRIFICE, LOYALTY, PEACE, DEDICATION, COURAGE, HUMANITY AND THE LAW OF NATIONS. ALL THE ATTRIBUTES OF CIVIL LAW, FROM WHICH WAR IS A DEPARTURE, ARE HEAPED UPON THIS MUTUAL ATROCITY TO THE CONSUMMATE CONFUSION OF THE WORLD CULTURES.

Something of this is implicit in Jan de Hartog's exceedingly clever book, "The Captain". This book, that certainly lives up to its promotional material, winds up with the issue of whether participation in war is ever justified. The principal character, Captain Harinxma, was in charge of Holland's largest tugboat that was a rescue ship in a British convoy to Murmansk in WW II.

The official purpose was to carry relief supplies to the Soviets, but a secret purpose was to bait a battleship out of a German port so that it could be destroyed. The commanding officer of the convoy, Mashpee, because of an imagined slight, takes an immediate dislike to the Dutch captain and, out of pique, appoints an immature Canadian yachtsman as liaison officer over him. Harinxma, who had just taken command of this huge vessel had looked forward to being relieved of the responsibilities while he adjusted to the ship and the assignment. So when his boy, Tylor, comes aboard in all his youthful innocence to take over control of his, Harinxma's, ship he is properly outraged. The captain, a young man himself, who greatly outranked the boy in maturity and experience, had no trouble putting Tylor in his place.

This tug, that would normally not be a target, had clearly visible munitions and weapons on deck. Harinxma, recognizing this threat to himself, his crew, and the Dutch merchant marine, taxed his brain to disguise these invitations to disaster. Mashpee observing alterations being done without so much as a nod to his authority, confronted the captain and ordered the alterations reversed. In a frigidly polite exchange Harinxma conveyed to the commander that this Dutch ship was sailing under a Dutch flag and a Dutch captain and did not have to say, "Please, may I." to an English officer.

Embarrassed in the facedown, Mashpee called for his officer, Tylor, on whom he discharged in full the vitriol of his pent up frustrations.

Tylor had accepted at face value the culturally decorated face of the war machine and had volunteered in what he understood to be a crusade against racism. He finds himself in this convoy subject to the maelstrom of contending forces of the daily air attacks on a ship where the crew disparages him as an intruder and a spy. The captain regards him as a fink, and his commanding officer abuses him in terms that shows him to have all the revolting qualities attributed to Hitler and his crew that he, Tylor, has joined the war to fight. Harinxma consoles him as follows: "...As for Captain Mashpee, he has been laboring under stress for months, this is his fourth convoy to Murmansk, anything he said wasn't meant for you but, well, to God, you'll soon understand yourself.

But he didn't buy it. He looked at me with that sullen stubbornness and said, "I don't care what stress he may have been under, sir, and I don't care what your troubles may have been, I can't accept fighting a war with the means that betray the cause." It was quite a mouthful, and he looked pleased with himself. He was a nice guy but he had a lot to learn..."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He talked about-well-about Frogs, and niggers that begin at Calais, and Kikes."

"Hell Tylor! What would you say about a bloody foreigner who pissed on your boots, the way I did him, and never mind the justification? He had been sailing three convoys to Murmansk! If I don't mind being considered a frog or a Kike that begins at Calais-"

"Where I come from we don't have any "bloody foreigners" he said self-righteously..." then it penetrated to me that he had mentioned having a son. He seemed to be indecently young to be a father. "How old is he?" I asked.

This time I got through to him. He suddenly whipped out a wallet, and from it he shook out a whole accordion of snapshots. "Here," he said, selecting one and holding it up to me, "here he's three months, two weeks, two and a half rather. And that's Mary holding him..."

I began to forget that I was just allowing him to have a moment of unburdening. His vivid little images or rural life in central Canada seemed to thaw out something buried and forgotten deep inside me, some long-past innocence, some faintly familiar exuberance of schoolboys running, racing one another on bicycles glistening in the sun, with squealing girls in fluttering dresses swaying precariously on their luggage carriers. An old canoe came sliding down the dark tunnel of a narrow river through a summer wood. A farm tractor hummed drowsily in the distance, a rising lark took its jubilant song to a cloud sailing high in the sky....As I listened, with growing nostalgia, I realized that he was describing my own boyhood, a lost paradise, a world of innocence and decency and longing for the future, a world at peace. For a short, poignant moment I seemed to wake up from a bad dream...."

Here De Hartog deftly draws a supremely nostalgic picture of the warmth and cozy security of the years before the war. The mind compares the daily raids from the skies, the machine gun rattle, the depth charges that rock the ship, men flinging themselves from the lethal fire on board into lethal water so cold that in three minutes you're dead; the sunnyness, the security of civilization to the chaos, the gripping fear, the pain, the blood, the mutilated bodies, the devastation and burning and sinking of ships.

De Hartog's description of civil life here is pure poetry. He knows certainly that civilization is an ongoing commercial and political contest for the goodies of civilization, and it's also lawsuits, black eyes, spitballs and cheating. Nor is it an issue of peace and war. If we define war as contest, all life is war. We are at battle from the time the doctor slaps us on the rump to the time we wrestle with the diseases of old age. Peace, the absence of strife, is not an achievable goal. There can never be an end to war defined as strife, until there is an end to breathing. Life, in a sense, is an anti-peace campaign to escape death and boredom. AT ISSUE IS THE KIND OF WAR. We have a form of non-military war that is so much a part of us that we do not recognize it as such, and this, of course, is civil law. In contrast to military war it is called peace.

Tylor responded to the poetry of war, the absence of civil law, a contest in natural law, to find that the essence of war was an unmitigated contest in nastiness. And his solution? Disengagement. Harinxma, the Captain, took longer,but reached the same conclusion. Harinxma continues,

"I was blown clean across the bridge. I managed to scramble to my feet as I heard screams and yells all around me. I thought for a second that I was wounded, but all that had happened to me was that I had been hurled 15 feet by the explosion. The helmsman lay screaming in the windowless wheelhouse, his hands on his face, blood trickling through his fingers. The portside cannon was pointing crazily at the sky, and I saw that the bridge rail behind it was gone; beside it lay two still forms in a spreading pool of blood. Then I heard a shrill voice cry, 'Captain, Captain! Quick Captain! Sparks...' I staggered to the bridge steps to the boat deck on the portside and saw Cook bent over a mangled mess of flesh and bone on a cloth with a boot sticking out of it, back to front.

"I don't know what I felt at that moment, as I remember it, I felt nothing. I was numbed by shock, I was completely alert and objective, but at the sight of those bodies on the bridge and the mangled mess that had been Sparks, I was overwhelmed once more by that disgust. This time, it was so strong that I knew then and there that I had had enough of this massacre. All of me, every fiber of me, the sum total of everything that made up my individuality, now finally rejected the murderous lunacy of it all. I remember standing there looking down on Cook and the remains of old Sparks without sorrow or shock or pity, without even the mere physical reaction of feeling sick. But my mind formulated the clear and articulate decision that if this was what we had all come to, I was no longer interested in being part of the human race. I had reached a borderline that I had not known existed; for the first time in my life, I, in my turn, recoiled from unconditional survival, if this was what it involved. I was through adding my own violence to the slaughter; they could shoot the hell out of me and the ISABEL KWEL, but I was no longer going to shoot back."

Neither Tylor or Harinxma, with the rest of mankind, appreciated the aberration that civilization is in contrast to the natural world. In the natural world there is no such thing as fairness, justice, mercy or murder, or lunacy for that matter. And while some other species may share with us the emotions we call love and hate that may prompt them to violence or accommodation, they are subject only to the rewards and penalties of natural law. So if you disengage when you are being pursued by a bear in the natural world you accommodate to the bear's right to eat you for lunch. The military contest is a contest in natural law and the victorious state is going to eat lunch. And the defeated state, having been forced to disengage from the contest, is going to be the lunch.

We can have an end to military war and natural law as soon as we bring the rules of civilization to the militarily imposed divisions that define international states. War, as I have insisted before, is a contest in the terror of slaughter and destruction to determine, when all other means of conflict resolution have failed, which of the political entities so engaged will write the terms of the peace. If it could be determined at the beginning of the fight who would win, those that were sure to loose could surrender at the beginning of the contest and save the cost of the war and avoid the slaughter and destruction entailed. There is no doubt an untold number of wars that have been avoided when a nation faced with superior strength surrendered before the war started. Any war can be stopped as soon as one side is prepared to take the penalties of disengagement. The penalty is that by so doing one says loudly that one can be pushed around. And there are those among us who would rather die than be pushed around by military threat.

Harinxma and Tylor anticipated they would be punished by their superiors for their disengagement if they survived the war. But if all of the members of the Allied Forces became offended by the slaughter and destruction and disengaged from the war, it would be the German High Command who would levy the penalties. The Allies suffered six years of the carnage because they did not want to take the penalties of disengagement and slaughter and destruction as DeHartog's story suggests. For a while it might be said it was a choice between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as opposed to Oranienburg, Buchenwald, and Dachau, more importantly it was a contest between invading dictators and defending democracies in the context of natural law. We do not need to see peace in terms of DeHartog's poetry to find disengagement to become lunch for the Nazis an intolerable option.

Many years after Harinxma's decision, "not to shoot back" whatever the consequences, he is writing to his son who is now contemplating joining the Air Force. And because Harinxma's author is culturally programmed to see the slaughter and destruction of war as the problem, rather than the absence of civil alternatives to natural law, he steers his son into the labyrinth of moral considerations, detached as they are in war from the supporting institutions of civil law for moral behavior as follows:

"So I cannot sit mutely by while you try on your first Air Force uniform in front of the mirror blissfully unconscious of the fact that to volunteer for the military training is to sign a pact with violence, and hand the ultimate moral decision-to kill or not to kill-over to a faceless committee of men who, by their very training and indoctrination, consider genocide a legitimate means of settling human disputes."

With apologies to Jan DeHartog, I think this is inaccurate and unfair. Hitler was using illegitimate means of conflict resolution. And the "faceless committee" is in charge of the illegitimate response that is the only option, since there is no legislature at the international level by which a legal, or a legitimate, response might have been pursued.

We are not charged with murder if we can show reasonable proof that we had to kill to avoid being killed. The protection of civil law not being available we are allowed to protect ourselves as best we may. The state of war is evidence that protection of civil law is unavailable. And had the Allies disengaged because of their repugnance to the horrors of war it would have been Hitler's concepts of peace and justice that would have prevailed rather than those of Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman and other Allied leaders.

Here the issue that DeHartog raises is not how to change natural law into civil law, but rather on how the individual may avoid getting into a situation where doing violence to another person is required by the situation. It is clearly the fault of our cultural heritage that this marvelous intellect writes a superb portrayal of war, and the horrors of war, to conclude with so paltry a solution. For there are vast quantities of literature, ancient and modern, authored by persons of undeniable intellect and integrity in support of this pathetically inadequate approach to the abolishment of military threat and military strife between peoples.

ALL EFFORT IS MISDIRECTED IF WE ARE WORKING ON THE WRONG PROBLEM. IF WE ARE WORKING TO MAKE WAR MORE HUMANE, LESS DANGEROUS, MORE FAIR, LESS TERRIFYING; IF WE ARE TRYING TO DENY GOVERNMENTS THE MEANS OF WAR; IF WE ARE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO NON-PARTICIPATE IN THE WAR MACHINE; WE ARE WORKING ON THE WRONG PROBLEM. The problem is not that war is evil, since the concept of evil has no place in natural law. The problem is that the relationship between international states is uncivilized. So all of our anti-war efforts must be concentrated on bringing civilization to the international divisions as quickly as possible.

In 1962 a dictator in Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. These were known the world over as belonging to the British Empire. Yet, some 160 nations of the United Nations and the World Court were unable to find a judge that could overrule the military of Argentina and return the stolen property.

The joker is the word "stolen". This leader wished to take by conquest that which had been taken by conquest. It is the nature of sovereign property that it has not been legislated. So that which has not been acquired by the rules of law cannot be challenged by the rules of law. So although Britain had international opinion on her side there was no vehicle to harness world opinion to oust the dictator.

INTERNATIONAL OPINION CANNOT BE LEGISLATED UNTIL IT IS ARTICULATED. IT CANNOT BE ARTICULATED IN THE ABSENCE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS. THEREFORE, THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS TOWARD A WORLD WITHOUT A MILITARY IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS.

It is here that the term "world peace" obfuscates the issue because of the ambiguous nature of the word "peace". World peace could mean: the absence of war, the absence of military threat. the absence of strife, or the presence of the institutions of civil law between international states. This latter proposition has not been articulated to a world audience except by those One Worlders who are waiting for an international political climate that will allow the agents of the military (diplomats) to metamorphose into politicians to campaign for a federal government for international states.

Diplomats are representatives of the chief executives of international states and those executives are the Commanders-in-Chiefs of the armed forces of those states. To put such leaders to campaigning for a world without a military is again what Leo Tolstoy called putting salt on the bird's tail to catch the bird. If one is close enough to the bird to put salt on its tail, the salt is unnecessary. And if you have a political climate and the political structure to transform the world's political climate into votes and put the diplomats to campaigning for a federated world, the end you were approaching would, of necessity have already been accomplished.

In the 16th century Emmanuel Kant wrote his UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND PERPETUAL PEACE. In his Fourth Thesis in this book he seemed to anticipate Robert Ardrey with his "noyau", the society of inward antagonisms. In contrast to the common cultural assumption that antagonisms were detrimental to society and an obstacle to a world without war, Kant saw antagonism as a positive element in our nature toward improvement of the species. Thus peace, the absence of strife, was not a prerequisite for the presence of enforceable law, as is often implied. I quote: "The means that nature uses to bring about the development of all of man's capacities is the ANTAGONISM among them in society, as far as in the end this antagonism is the cause of law-governed order in society....The greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature compels it to seek, is to achieve a UNIVERSAL CIVIL SOCIETY administered in accord with the right....Since it is only in SOCIETY--and, indeed only in one that combines the greatest freedom and thus a THOROUGHGOING ANTAGONISM AMONG ITS MEMBERS with a precise determination and protection of the boundaries of this freedom....-since it is only in such a society that nature's highest objective can be achieved,....Thus must there be a society in which one will find the highest possible degree of freedom under external laws combined with IRRESISTIBLE POWER, i.e., A PERFECTLY RIGHTFUL CIVIL CONSTITUTION..." (pg. 31, emphasis mine)

Where Kant calls for a RIGHTFUL civil constitution and Grotius requires that international laws be JUST. I propose that these two amorphous words be replaced by a "community concept of justice", and that a world without a military must be achieved through a world concept of justice legislated into international law. AND THAT THE REASON THAT WHAT NOW PASSES FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW DOES NOT PRODUCE INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT IS THAT THE MILITARILY IMPOSED DIVISIONS INHIBIT OR FORBID POLITICAL ACTION FROM TAKING PLACE ACROSS INTERNATIONAL BORDERS. THIS MAKES IMPOSSIBLE THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS WHO MIGHT ARTICULATE A LEGISLATEABLE INTERNATIONAL CONCEPT OF JUSTICE FOR UNIVERSAL CIVIL LAW.

In 1987 the WORLD PARLIAMENTARIANS put out a brochure for the 11th Corbishley Memorial lecture delivered by Shredath S. Ramphal in which Kant was quoted thus by Prof. C.F. von Wiezackeer: "Kant says that the civilized state has been achieved within our nations, but that between nations the natural state still prevails. The civilized state means rule of law...Kant continues that there will be no end of suffering and tragedies of history until the civilized state, the rule of law, is also established between nations."

Kant's lines speak of the rule of law rather than of civil law in a context where the distinction between civil law and Grotius' "law of nations" needs to be made.

Kant's statement clearly indicated that to end the calamities of war and the universal threat of war, civil law must be established between nations. But instead of Ramphal carrying through on this clear directive to raise the question of how to achieve the institutions of civil law between international states, i.e., international politicians, legislatures, courts and penal systems, he steers the audience to the consideration of nebulous goals that speak not at all to the issue of the civilized state between nations through the rule of law that was Kant's concern.

The following quotes from Raphael's lecture are emphasized to give direction to the departure from Kant's succinct directives to the amorphous cultural presuppositions of the anti-war mindset.

"In a key passage, the commission (the Willy Brandt Commission, 1981) underlines its essential thinking: ONE AMBITION OF THIS REPORT IS TO PROPOSE STEPS ALONG THE PATH TO WHAT WOULD GENUINELY BE CALLED A SOCIETY OF NATIONS, A NEW WORLD ORDER BASED ON GREATER INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE AND ON RULES WHICH PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES OBSERVE.

"Earlier in the same chapter (which dealt with 'Mutual Interests') we had signaled the attributes of that society of nations:

"WE ARE LOOKING (WE SAID) FOR A WORLD BASED LESS ON POWER AND STATUS, MORE ON JUSTICE AND CONTRACT; LESS DISCRETIONARY, MORE GOVERNED BY FAIR AND OPEN RULES."

"One further statement from the Brandt Report is central to my thesis: a statement which may seem to blur Kant's distinction between law and morals but, in reality, compliments it:

"All the lessons of reform within national societies confirm gains for all," Ramphal quotes, and then he steers Kant's pragmatic propositions toward universal civil law INTO THE QUAGMIRE, THE MAZE, THE MORASS, THE LABYRINTH OF UNIVERSAL MORALITY. The thrust of his statement suggests that the cause of war is the absence of universal morality. He gives examples of reform achieved by civil courts at the domestic level (the abolishment of slavery and feudalism, segregation, etc.) to suggest that improvements in morality, that have been achieved by civil law, will spread to the international level to improve the anarchy between nations leaning on international morality alone. This with 150 some armed forces to guarantee the rights of nations to depart from the moral rules. However morality may fit in the preconditions for civil law, civil law is a precondition for the absence of war. The humanization of the species cannot stand on morality alone, but must be fortified by civil law. The thrust of the Willy Brandt commission, as interpreted by Mr. Ramphal, was to articulate the desired approach to international relations. This is to be accomplished by improved morality and neighborliness between international states. How these would metamorphose into Kant's civil law is not made clear.

I quote again from Ramphal's lecture: "...How content can we be to live by the politics of power if at its apogee it condemns us all to death? How proud can we be of our incredible, but amoral, science if at the pinnacle of achievement it threatens not to save us but to sacrifice us? What value should we place on our genius if, unrestrained by a global morality, it leads the human race to self destruction? W.H. Auden responded to such questions when he wrote, as if on behalf of the entire 1930 generation yearning for survival: "We must love one another or die." Fifty years later the challenge remains valid, only more insistent."

But morality works as vigorously for war as it does against it. The moral soldier gives his life for his buddies and his country! How moral can one get!? And many people, perhaps most people, would consider opposing the government to the extent of breaking the law immoral. Yet there are those who break the law to challenge the morality of the government. Morality, like justice, is whatever we believe it to be. So while at the domestic level society is controlled by legislature, courts, police, and threat of prisons, these excellent, intelligent, scholarly, compassionate persons propose that ARMED STATES be controlled by morality, neighborliness, goodwill, and love.

They infer there is a parallel between individuals and nations. That nations, made up of many millions of people, can be conceptualized as BIG PERSONS. And that love is as relevant between nations as between individuals. And that non-military strife is resolved by love, goodwill, neighborliness, etc.

The reason we have legislatures and law is because morality and all the civilizing virtues are not enough in themselves to enforce justice between persons, let alone between armed states. With all the appeals to morality, goodwill, neighborliness, love, generosity, justice and compassion that we are urged to respond to, and our own inclination to do so, our domestic relations do break down, our house is broken into or our taxes have not been paid. And when this happens we can take the matter to court. Here the issues of neighborliness and love, goodwill, etc. will be peripheral to what is the law, the law defined by the community concept of justice. The outcome of the trial may not be satisfactory to either the defense or the prosecution. It need only be satisfactory to the community concept of justice. AND THIS IS BECAUSE THE COMMUNITY CONCEPT OF JUSTICE CAN BE LEGISLATED, WHILE LOVE, COMPASSION, NEIGHBORLINESS, GOODWILL, ETC. CANNOT.

And there is already much morality and neighborliness and mutual accommodation between international states. However, when these break down, there being no court system backed by a legislated world community opinion to appeal to, they must go to war, the form of strife dictated by Natural Law.

Natural law between nations is achieved by war or the threat thereof. The cultural symbols for the consummation of war are the Peace Pipe, Burying the Hatchet, Beating Swords into Plowshares, and the Peace Treaty symbolized by the snow white bird. All have very positive connotations, contrasted as they are, with the slaughter and destruction that is war. But they make no sense whatsoever in a court of law. Lawyers do not bid their clients to "bury the hatchet" or to turn their fists into hands of friendship. The judge does not rule that the contesting parties smoke a pipe of peace. And what is morality and justice will be defined for the judge in the books of legislated community opinion--civil law.

It is no fault of us anti-warriors that the goals for a better world, morality, justice, and peace, except as defined by civil law, are nebulous objectives impossible of definition in any comprehensive way. But the goal of a warless world is demonstrated daily by our police and local courts and by every political activity. It has worked for centuries the world over. It is a world controlled by civil law. And to what degree civil law accomplishes morality or justice or peace is a matter of opinion but it does accomplish peace, the absence of war, defined as rule by civil law.

Morality and civil law are both inventions of the species. They are necessary to each other and neither can stand alone.

So the first order of business will be to bring to international conflict the political techniques that we use in the domestic community to transform moral presuppositions into law. For centuries there has been a continuous improvement in human civil relationships. Peoples' rights to take the law into their own hands to avenge an injury as was the case with the duel and the feud has been abolished over vast areas of the globe. And the ever-increasing restrictions on the penalties that the establishments can impose on its citizens is startling when compared to the days of Darius the First.

Will Durant points this up in lurid detail in his marvelous book, OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE (pg. 363). It shows how far we have come since 800 B.C. I quote: "Minor punishments took the form of flogging--from five to two hundred blows with a horse whip; the poisoning of a shepherd's dog received two hundred strokes, manslaughter ninety. The administration of the law was partly financed by commuting stripes into fines. More serious crimes were punished by branding, maiming, mutilation, binding, imprisonment or death. The letter of the law forbade even the king to sentence a man to death for a simple crime, but it could be decreed for rape, for treason, sodomy, murder, 'self-pollution', burning or burying the dead, intrusion on the king's privacy, approaching one of his concubines, sitting on the king's throne, or for any displeasure to the ruling house."

This does not exhaust the tools of wrath available in those times to those in charge of civil law. In contrast to this, states today are legislating capital punishment out of existence. It is being popularly challenged as a penalty for the most heinous crimes. So civil law has become progressively more humane. But punishment for the violation of "international law" has not changed since the days of Darius over 2 1/2 thousand years ago.

In the days of Darius the international property lines were insisted upon by a threat of departure from the rules of civilization for a contest in slaughter and destruction, the subduing contest that must determine property rights in the absence of civil law. Today this is still the case between international states when treaties are no longer mutually accommodating. This in spite at least a century of intelligent, dedicated, self-sacrificing efforts on the part of anti-warriors.

In 1899 and 1907 a number of the great powers came together at the Hague in the Netherlands to make world law with pen and ink. And since law was thought of as rules written down on parchment and signed with illustrious signatures many were satisfied that these, together with a world court, were true steps toward the day when, in the lines of Stephen Foster, "The pen shall supercede the sword and right not might shall be the lord, in the good time coming."

With a domestic contract a signature is binding because the seller has the assurance that the power of the court is required to intervene if the buyer reneges on tes payments. The seller knows that if te does not get a signature on the contract the buyer may find te has more pressing demands on tes funds than to honor an unsigned contract. But when the sovereign state, the Big Person, signs a treaty with another Big Person it is not a contract, lacking the civil court to enforce it. The Willy Brandt commission talked of justice and contract. These exceptionally intelligent persons were apparently culturally blind to the fact that neither justice nor contracts have any place in diplomacy.

For many centuries before the Hague Peace Conference in 1899 temporary peace had been achieved between international states by the signatures of diplomats and military threat. After 1907 they had these plus a world court. And it wouldn't be long until it would be seen whether a court, created by military agents, could be depended upon to control the militaries of the world. So in 1914 the Kaiser of Germany violated international law. And since the law involved many nations many nations must be involved in the punishment. And the punishment turned out to be that which had been the rule for millennia, a desperate contest in slaughter and destruction, a contest in mutual arbitrary punishment.

After four years of punishing a nation that was never brought to court, Germany was subdued and the Kaiser became vulnerable to arrest. But the international court had not provided a judge that could issue a warrant for his arrest. So he vacationed in Holland for the rest of his life while the German people, the victims of his reign, continued to be punished.

World Book 1961 (pg. 268) spells out the problem for Grade school scholars. I quote, "When a legislative body decides on a law for a city or state, everyone must accept the law and obey it. Police enforce the law, and persons who break them are tried in courts. But nations may choose whether or not they will accept the rules. There is no international legislature to pass rules for all, and that all nations must observe, and as yet there is no international police force to make countries obey international law. This means it is often difficult to enforce international law. (emphasis mine)

Here we have an example of the concept of the 'Big Persons' being passed on inadvertently to the students. We have an implied proposition that a legislature and a police force for the 'Big Persons' is conceivable. And that there would be a parallel between civil courts designed to try offending individuals and an international court trying offending nations composed of millions of people. If we were to replace the words "often difficult" with "always impossible" the statement would more accurately define the problem.

The cultural proposition that diplomats can pass as judges of nations, and armed forces can pass as police of nations, is here passed on to the children of each generation.

The result of such cultural confusion, both past and present, is that the nations of the world were not learning by their mistakes. So they created the League of Nations where the mutual accommodation promises would again be dignified by the term International Law. AND THUS THE ANARCHY BETWEEN NATIONS WAS DISGUISED AND PRESERVED. And on the strength of the proposition that anarchy can be changed into law by illustrious signatures, war was outlawed again in 1929, when 63 nations took pen in hand and outlawed war as an instrument of national policy. Two years later, Japan, a signator to the pact, invaded Manchuria.

The enforcing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact would reasonably fall to the League of Nations. But for the League to take punitive action against Japan as the Allies had done successfully against Germany, to a country halfway around the world would be inconvenient and expensive. But it was more than this. Here again I lean on Durant to make a point (ibid, pg. 928) "Clearly China was placed at Nippon's door as a providentially designed market for Japanese goods. And Manchuria--rich in coal, rich in wheat the island could not afford to grow, rich in human resources for industry, taxation and war--Manchuria belonged by manifest destiny to Japan. By what right? By the same right that England had taken India and Australia; France, indo-China; Germany, Shantung; Russia, Port Arther; America, the Phillipines--the right of the need of the strong."

Here we have one of the basic problems of the enforcement of international law, nations having gotten their property by military force standing in judgement on a nation achieving property in the same way. So, there being no one to cast the first stone, Japan was let off with a bad press.

To this issue, Durant, page 931 speaks volumes to the basic fault of the international court."Japan withdrew from the league on the same grounds on which America in 1935 withdrew from the World Court-that she did not want to be judged in a court of her enemies" When the anarchy of sovereignty stands in judgement on the anarchy of sovereignty there can be no impartial judges.

In 1935 Mussolini of Italy thumbed his nose at the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand pact to invade Ethiopia. But Great Britain didn't want to engage in a war in the narrow waters of the Mediterranean that might endanger her commercial and military interests in the Orient. Many voices were raised demanding sanctions, but there was no consensus among the 60 some nations that they should gang up in a siege against Italy to stop the invasion. So the League of Nations was saved from cooperating in a punitive action against Italy, thus failing to give credence to the Kellogg-Briand pact and the League of Nations. And a little later the Pact was further discredited when German's Hitler along with Italy's Mussolini practiced for WW II in supporting Franco in the civil war in Spain.

And then in 1938, a man of enormous status, the Prime Minister of an empire on which the sun never set, a champion of the good people, Sir Neville Chamberlain, whose office was approved by millions of intelligent persons, assisted in the rape of Czechoslovakia. And this with the best intention in the world, to bring "peace in our time." Such was his power that with PEN AND INK he was able to assist Hitler in carving up this small independent state. This was in blatant contravention of the basic principals of the League of Nations in which Britain and Czechoslovakia shared membership. Yet with pen and ink he could commit the Empire to stand by while Hitler had his way with this small independency.

I can still hear my Aunt Jean defending this treaty. That, "It has to be alright because Chamberlain is a man of the highest integrity." I can still remember myself parroting my aunt to a neighbor who was outraged by the treaty.

It should be remembered at this point that Chamberlain was a product of the political climate that prevailed in the world between the great wars. Then we spoke of "the peace loving nations", and, "arms manufacturers' greed for profits", and, "the arms race", and the desperate need for disarmament. We lauded the sanctity of treaties, goodwill, mutual trust, justice and universal brotherhood. These were the building blocks toward a world without war.

So Sir Neville Chamberlain, chosen by the most respected leaders of the nation, and one of the chief figures of the League of Nations, and one of the chief promoters of international law, finding himself militarily embarrassed in a facedown with Hitler's growing military might, together with a political climate that could not possibly approve a war, and with the best of intent signed a treaty with Hitler which broke a treaty with a fellow member in the League of Nations and thus lit the match that would set the world afire.

THIS IS THE KIND OF A MISTAKE YOUR ELECTED OR APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVES OR, AN UNAPPOINTED DICTATOR, CAN MAKE TODAY OR TOMORROW IN THE CONTEXT OF THE QUIET DIPLOMACY AND THE MUTUAL ACCOMMODATION SIGNATURES THAT PASS FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Chamberlain was not so much at fault as was the device by which he was expected to resolve conflict in the emergency of not having a credible military threat.

In retrospect it is easy to fault Chamberlain for his colossal naivete. But Chamberlain was allowed, by diplomatic precedent, to go into a chamber with Hitler and sign away the independence of another country in a secret agreement. This agreement, with such potentiality for disasters, committed the empire and, to a degree, her allies without either of the two principal's governments knowing what was being signed until after it was signed. Such a situation could never arise between nations joined in civil law. Had Chamberlain been signing legislation rather than treaties, civil law, rather than international law, the issue would have been threshed out for months or years in bloodless battles before such an agreement could be signed into law. Had this agreement to survive the scrutiny of international opinion, does anyone suppose that it could have been signed? But then, as now, there were no international politicians to articulate international opinion.

Civil law is community opinion legislated into law. The individual, having offended against the legal rules, is brought before a judge or jury and is penalized in the light of the community concept of justice. If the offender admits te did wrong and expresses regret and offers retribution for tes offense te may not be punished. However tes business may suffer while te is confined or te may lose tes job. Or tes family may break up as a result of tes imprisonment so that inadvertent penalties are added to the penalties imposed by the law. And te may be so used by the court that te is of the opinion that there is little that is just about justice.

But te will not be killed, or raped, tes children will not be driven into exile, tes house will not be burned. Yet all these things can happen on a vast scale inadvertently or intentionally when armed states take punitive action against each other. Modern, and ancient for that matter, military techniques punish friend and foe alike, as well as uninvolved babies, puppies, cows, kittens and canaries in the target areas. Nor will the conduct of the war be essentially different when the punitive action is taken by superpowers in charge of "peace forces" as demonstrated in Korea, and in the Persian Gulf, and lately in Somalia.

When a person offends against civil law and is brought before a civil court, a judge or jury acting in the light of legislated law determines the guilt and, this being done, a judge determines the penalties. The penalties are limited by law.

When armed states, conceived as "Big Persons" allegedly offend against rules of nations there is no politically authorized lawyers to state the case nor an authorized judge or jury to hear the case nor an authorized judge to set the penalties. The authority of civil law is the authority of the community concept of justice. The authority of the diplomat is the authority of the military, the threat of unlimited arbitrary punishment. And that is the enormous difference between civil law and international law.

In the light of the efforts of the anti-warriors over the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the light of the above propositions, the anti-war efforts would seem to be not unlike that of the fly that threshes against the window pane. BECAUSE IN THE LIGHT OF THE FLY'S GENETICALLY INHERITED PRESUPPOSITIONS THE WRONG DIRECTION TO ESCAPE IS SO OBVIOUSLY THE RIGHT DIRECTION. To escape the fly must do the opposite to its genetically programmed inclinations. So we anti-warriors, cursed with a cultural inheritance that makes the complete civilization of the globe impossible, must seek a solution opposite to what has been the emphasis heretofore. A WORLD OF UNIVERSAL CIVIL LAW WILL NOT BE ACHIEVED THROUGH DIPLOMATS BUT IN OPPOSITION TO THEM.

It is natural for those persons who have been educated in every school and university and by every newscast on international affairs to look to diplomats to resolve international strife without recourse to arms. But diplomacy is as much a military tool as is a machine gun or a tank. And we will have the military solving our international problems until we develop the political alternative. And this must be done by learning the means for drawing "political" international property lines. Where these lines are now drawn by the military in the light of military considerations such future lines must be drawn by peoples in the light of political and commercial considerations.

Our mail and our other media is replete with problems crying for international solution: the population explosion, the deteriorating environment with the consequent permanent extinction of species of both flora and fauna, the retreating rain forest, the diminishing ozone layer, the multiplicity of armed states together with easy access to the instruments of mass slaughter and destruction. All these are desperate problems crying for immediate action.

Like the freed British American colonies, we have the mutual dangers that should unite us. Instead, all the presuppositions with respect to international relations tend to disintegration, and fragmentation, and consequently to the spread of anarchy through the multiplication small armed sovereign states.

There is no vehicle for the developing of a united response, i.e., a federal government for the world, being considered that doesn't assume the cooperation of diplomats. In place of a world legislature stands the United Nations. All of the principals of the U.N. are diplomats, the agents of the military of their respective countries. Its stated purpose is "to protect succeeding generations from the scourge of war". It is hardly consistent with this end that the United Nations hands out food and medical supplies on the one hand while wielding the scourge of war with the other to defend the anarchy of sovereignty that exists between nations that is the cause of war. By affirming the sovereign anarchy of militarily imposed borders between international states, the U.N. makes the alternative to the scourge of war, i.e., the political union of the world, impossible.

Historically, nations enlarged themselves by destroying the militaries in adjacent areas and forcing the development of civil law between the formerly warring states. The success of the union depended on the degree that a uniform community concept of justice could be developed between the victor and the defeated peoples for a civil relationship between them. This is the calamity of the victory and defeat relationship. This union must be accomplished by peoples that lately were enemies, in a desperate contest in disparagement and in desperate military strife with each other. This desperate contest in derision and mass destruction and bloodshed, this contest in anarchy, must be turned abruptly to the needs of civilization, a mutually acceptable concept of justice legislated into law.

With Gandhian political action, in contrast, as I will point out later, the problem is resolved in the course of the political contest then suitable legislation can be achieved immediately.

The United Nations themselves are not united politically, commercially, or militarily. And one purpose of the organization is to assure they never will be. They are united only in a common interest to protect their sovereignty. THE UNITED NATIONS ASSURES THAT NATION STATES ARE GUARANTEED THE RIGHT TO PROTECT THE MILITARILY DRAWN LINES AFFIRMING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ANARCHY (THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL LAW) WITH THE CONSEQUENT NEED FOR MILITARY THREAT UNTIL THE END OF TIME. This prerogative renders ludicrous the stated purpose of the U.N. to abolish the scourge of war. It is the right that we must challenge with Gandhian action if we are to replace the phony laws of diplomacy with legislation. HERETOFORE ANTI-WAR RATIONALES WERE PURSUED AGAINST WAR AND WEAPONS OBLIVIOUS TO THE FACT THAT THE NEED FOR WAR AND WEAPONS WAS OCCASIONED BY LINES DRAWN BY A MILITARY THREAT AND SECURED BY MILITARY FORCE, AND THAT THE SOLUTION WAS NOT THE ABSENCE OF WAR AND WEAPONS BUT THE PRESENCE OF A LEGISLATURE. AND THE LEGISLATURE MUST BE IN PLACE BEFORE THE THREAT OF WAR AND WEAPONS COULD BE TAKEN AWAY.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 6th Secretary General of the United Nations responds to the question put by a reporter for the Canadian weekly newsmagazine "MACLEAN'S" for the article "Great Expectations". To the question, "What do you see as the greatest challenges going into the next century?" The Secretary General answers, "The biggest challenges are certain new problems that we are still not aware of. The role of the U.N. will be to prepare to be a forum which will tackle those problems. We will also have to overcome the nostalgia of the old powers who will still want to act by themselves. And a new danger is micro-nationalism. You'll have the risk of moving from 180 countries to 500 countries in the next 20 years if each ethnic group decides to have its own sovereign state. This will not solve their problems." Here the U.N. will assume the job of deciding who has the right of sovereignty. Throughout history this has been determined by military force. Boutros-Ghali proposes that it will be henceforth resolved by a forum composed of the representatives of sovereign states. Here we have again Tolstoy's objection: "The thing that is to be checked is to be the instrument by which it is to be checked."

The U.N. cannot assist in the development of civil law between armed states. The U.N. is more like an international philanthropic institution than a court of law. As such THERE ARE MANY THINGS THE U.N. DOES AND DOES WELL. AND IT SHOULD BE PUT TO SPENDING ITS FULL TIME AND RESOURCES TOWARD THESE ENDS, AND TO DISCONTINUE THE FUTILE EFFORT TO PRODUCE A WARLESS WORLD THROUGH THE AGENTS OF THE WAR MACHINES.

Having disposed of the possibility of the representatives of sovereign states ever getting together to replace sovereignty with a federal government for the world, it is time to talk about the alternative, that is, the processes that would develop international politicians for legislating international borders toward legislated civil institutions on a planetary basis.

To a culture conditioned to the premise that international peace is the exclusive territory of diplomats, where there is taught or inferred in every class in international relations, in every class in world history, in every newscast concerning international relations, any alternative will appear absurd. And in the light of the cultural perspective and the size of the problem, the possibility of refuting this cultural fact is unconvincing even to me. HOWEVER THERE IS ONE FACTOR THAT I BELIEVE TO BE FACT THAT KEEPS ME GOING, AND IT IS THIS. WHAT I AM PROPOSING IS CONSISTENT WITH A CRITERIA FOR A WORLD WITHOUT MILITARY THREAT. AND I HAVE TRIED TO SHOW THAT THE METHODS USED TO THIS END HAVE FAILED HERETOFORE BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT CONSISTENT WITH AN END THAT WOULD PRODUCE THE UNIVERSAL CIVIL GOVERNMENT THAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO MILITARY THREAT.

But no proposal can be acted upon until it is tried. It cannot be tried until it is articulated. And since there is nobody, so far as I know, that is presently arguing for an alternative to the propositions of the 200 years of anti-war failures, I have taken it on myself to do so.

UNCONVENTIONAL IDEAS CAN BE EXCITING, BUT THEY CAN NEVER BE POPULAR BECAUSE THEY ARE UNCONVENTIONAL.

There must have been a time when someone looked at the first small reciprocating engine and said to himself, "Wouldn't it be a blast to hook that engine up to the buggy and go tooting around town with no horse in front!?" And then it was tried, it WAS a real blast, and after many, many minds contributed to the idea it resulted in the modern transportation system. So it is not impossible for a small and, perhaps in the context of the cultural norms, a silly idea to become the mainspring for a much more complicated consequence. If, however, this proposition for a horseless carriage was promoted on the grounds that it would make horses unnecessary it would offend all those who saw the ownership of fancy horses as the epitome of class and an indispensable part of any world worth living in.

Such would be the case with any proposal to make war unnecessary. There is a vast cultural romance that revolves around the concepts of war. The species is genetically programmed to love drama. And war is by far the most dramatic spectacle that life has to offer. And while the image of war seems to have depreciated in the last century, the justification for it and the romance of it is still deeply interwoven into most cultures of the world both by history and by current events. And to the degree that there is a world culture, war is an indelible part of it. And if the day ever comes when the only wars that are fought are those on video it will not be without regret.

And then war is not all bad. We have the old homily that "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." And the ill wind of war blows great gobs of good for a great many people. I tell my offspring that it was Hitler's war that arranged the marriage of their parents and made their births possible. But it is little space I will give to the praise of war. Suffice it to say that war has achieved the stability that made possible the Constitution of the United States. It was war that made possible the stability for the political development of the Dominion of Canada and for nearly all the other countries in the world. The ever larger areas of civilization have been accomplished by nations destroying the militaries in adjacent areas to achieve one army and one enlarged politically integrated state under a single administration. Examples of the result of this process are the former Soviet Union and the former British Empire. Could this process have been continued, one world under civil law might one day have been achieved by military acquisitions. The military forces, having then no external enemies to destroy, would become superfluous, as is the national guard for protecting the states from each other in the United States.

At the domestic level property lines are protected by a court system. The legitimacy of international state's lines has always been a problem, having been acquired by the natural law of military force and protected by military threat. There is no court system that can overrule the Big Persons when they decide not to play by the rules. As I have pointed out earlier, the anti-warriors affirm the military when they put diplomats to developing an alternative. They also, while calling themselves "World Citizens", deny the world ownership that the title implies by paying for a passport(or submitting an authorized card) that gives them the right to say, "Please, may I?" at every port of entry, thus affirming the jurisdiction of diplomats and militarily imposed boundaries that forbid the freedom of access across state lines that world federation implies. Any proposed departure from the present pursuit of diplomatic solutions to international strife will be in conflict with the cultural heritage of both the warriors and the anti-warriors. And anyone who proposes a viable alternative to the cultural presuppositions of both the warriors and anti-warriors can expect to be met, not with bouquets, but with rotten eggs and vegetables. As yet I have not been seen as enough of a threat to the world culture to be so honored and, worse still, I have been ignored. And there is, understandably, a dearth of funds for this proposition that nobody wants.

It was May 22, 1978, I, with nearly 300 others, went over the fence to do a non-violent invasion of Federal property at the Trident Submarine Base at Bangor, Washington. The state police did not obstruct us, but indicated a hill where we went and sat on the ground. And the police and representatives of our organization, Live Without Trident, conferred to NEGOTIATE our arrest. This to me was a real blast! Here we were, absolutely defenseless against the state police on a military base of the Federal government of the United States of America, and they were NEGOTIATING our arrest! If we elected to enter the arresting busses on our own power there would be rewards. If we had to be dragged there would be penalties.

The rationale of military threat would set a machine gun and gunner on the hill, and the military officer would say, indicating the gun, "There are some busses at the bottom of this hill and if you are in them in two minutes we won't turn this thing on."

But the establishment was aware of the history of the labor union movement, Gandhian action in India, black political action against segregation, the Kent State Four, and the Boston Massacre. They had learned the principle that I was learning, i.e., WHEN THE MILITARY OR THE POLICE PULLS THE TRIGGER ON POLITICAL ACTION IT IS ALWAYS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE. And that we were protected, to a degree, by the knowledge on the part of the establishment of an innate negative response on the part of members of the community generally when people taking political action are physically abused. Since then there has been another example at Tiananmen Square in China where the government of the largest population on earth was shamed before a world audience when political action was fired upon.

When armed action is taken against political action the community says in effect, "This is dirty pool." Even opponents may be offended and embarrassed when the military takes their side. On the strength of this, Live Without Trident was able to face down the threats of implicit armed forces and the police forces of the United States to invade and use the Trident base AND THE POLICE for their own political purpose. But we would have been much more successful, politically, had the police beat us or turned their guns on us before the cameras to a world audience.

It must have been a real satisfying thing for those Canadians called Greenpeace who in 1970 put their boat between the Soviet factory ship and whale and faced down the Soviet Union to make a political point. Had it been an armed confrontation the Soviet response might have been to arm the factory ships. But it resulted in the Soviet signatures on the whaling agreement that could not then be had by the combined moral pressure of the armed states of the world.

And it was a real satisfaction for me, having learned the technique of the "political face down", to break and walk the Berlin Wall while millions of Europeans, and people all over the world, looked on and wondered how it was done. And I do not apologize for my joy in the accomplishment.

I AM PROPOSING THAT IT WOULD BE VERY SATISFYING, AS WELL AS EFFECTIVE, TO INITIATE THE FACE DOWN BY THIS MEANS, OF THE MILITARILY IMPOSED BORDERS ALL OVER THE WORLD SO THAT THEY WOULD BE CHANGED POLITICALLY TO LEGISLATED BORDERS.

THIS TO THE END THAT DIPLOMATS AND THE U.N. AND THE GENEVA WORLD COURT WOULD BE REPLACED WITH POLITICIANS AND CIVIL COURTS.

AND THEN THE ARMED FORCES WOULD ALL BE SENT HOME TRAILING THEIR GUNS, AS WAS THE CASE WITH THE BERLIN WALL WHEN THE MILITARILY IMPOSED LINE WAS OBLITERATED IN GERMANY BY POLITICAL ACTION, AND WAS OPENED TO FREE MUTUAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE TWO FORMER ENEMY STATES.

It will be remembered that the line that separated these two halves of Germany was drawn after WW II by the negotiation of lines of defense between the military establishments of the East and those of the West. I will take the opportunity, at this point, to shoot down some cultural truths with respect to the causes of war. It is a cultural matter-of-fact that war is caused by contending religions, contending nationalities, contending political systems, language barriers, the disparity between the rich and the poor, etc.

AFTER WW II THE GERMANS WERE UNITED IN ALL THESE THINGS. BUT WHEN THEY WERE DIVIDED BY A MILITARILY IMPOSED LINE THEY PROMPTLY BECAME ENEMIES. And when political action was taken to correct the situation they became united again IN SPITE OF THE MILITARILY IMPOSED LINES RECOGNIZED BY THE UNITED NATIONS AND PROTECTED BY THE EAST AND WEST GERMAN MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS AND N.A.T.O.

So it is evident that it is the existence of militarily imposed lines, and the lack of political alternatives, not social conditions, that was the principal cause of the enemy relationship between those states.

That the resulting union was and is an agonizing process is beside the point. Both military strife and political strife are agonizing for the participants. But what of the alternative?

Down the centuries of history sovereign states have been joined by military force. Contending militaries feed on each other. Atrocities justify atrocities. The early months of World War II were called the "Bore War." The Allies, to show that they were the "good people" bombed military targets in Germany in daylight so that non- military building would not be hit by mistake. This was to show that the war was against the German military and not against the German people.

As atrocities increased on the part of Der Fuhrer, a change in policies became justified. So it was reasoned that since allied planes were few and military targets hard to find that victory could be hurried up by bombing the houses of the workers in the war industries. This understandably got the German back up. And it was no longer a Bore War.

Politics is not only less destructive than war, the end product of political strife is legislation, while the end of war is victory or defeat. The necessary mutual disparagement and hate required to stimulate a war and the requisite mutual atrocities necessary to its prosecution combine to produce the very worst possible conditions for a mutually acceptable peace.

The U.N. having been created and administered by diplomats whose traditional office was to articulate militarily secured and militarily imposed rights of nations, was pressed by human rights advocates to protect the rights of individuals in every country in the world. To do this, the U.N. would have had to accomplish Universal Civil Law. This was inconceivable and impossible because of the nature of diplomats and their function in the U.N. So responding to these demands the Universal Bill of Human Rights evolved. Since these rights were declared by the authority of the United Nations no further action would seem to be indicated.

For why would we need to work for Civil Rights when the prodigious authority of this world institution has declared we have these rights already? The accepted meaning of the word "rights", however, are those things we can demand. My rights to my home allows me to demand that the community expel an intruder. When I can demand of the U.N. that they intervene when a passport is demanded of me, when I can move from one country to another on the strength of Article 13 (2) of the document in question (I quote: "Everyone has a right to leave any country including his own, and return to that country."), when I am protected by the U.N. in this right, only then do I have this right. And while it is good to have a list of the rights it would be nice to have, and to have them recognized by the monumental authority of the U.N., political rights have to be taken before they can be enjoyed. They are unlikely to be conferred. The more honest title would be "A Universal Declaration of Assumed Human Rights". Having had its fraudulent character removed it could become a very useful document indeed.

Therefore, I propose that we rename this U.N. declaration "THE DECLARATION OF ASSUMED UNIVERSAL CIVIL RIGHTS". By publishing this document under this new name we might immediately make ourselves vulnerable to court action except there being no appropriate court to try us in. HOWEVER, TO DRAW INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION TO THE ABSENCE OF CIVIL LAW BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL STATES WE COULD OVERTLY BREAK ANY RESTRICTIONS THAT DENY THESE ASSUMED RIGHTS AND FACE DOWN THE MILITARY OR PROVOKE ARREST.

We would challenge the United Nations to protect us in these rights they declare we already have. We would thus take civil rights by political action across militarily imposed lines and test these rights before an international audience.

THE STAGE IS THUS SET TO CHALLENGE THE RIGHTS OF NATIONS TO FORBID ALL AND SUNDRY TO ENTER OR LEAVE ANY COUNTRY, thus replacing militarily imposed rights with the politically imposed rights for the peoples of the world. THE ISSUE COULD BE RAISED BY DEMANDING THAT THE U.N. PROTECT THE RIGHTS THEY HAVE SO VIRTUOUSLY APPROVED.

As I have indicated before, to get rights accepted by the community they must first be assumed. They are then declared. And if these rights are forbidden they are challenged by the overt breaking of the rules in question to raise the issue by provoking court action.

When Mathias Rust flew his plane into Red Square without acknowledging border regulations he was tried in civil court. When I, after five attempts to tease the G.D.R. in Berlin into deporting me, I was at last put on trial, and I, like Rust, was tried in civil court; there being no international courts to try us in. THEREFORE IT WOULD APPEAR THAT THE COURTS ARE ALREADY SET UP TO ARGUE FOR UNIVERSAL CIVIL LAW AND THE ABOLISHMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY. ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS USE THEM.

These and other such actions could exemplify how political initiatives could breach the militarily imposed lines and argue their case in national courts until international courts could be established.

And then with international courts of civil law we could go after all those lovely rights that the charter declares we already have. AND FURTHER, WE COULD PUT THE MARVELOUS WEAPONS OF WAR IN MUSEUMS AROUND THE GLOBE TO ASTONISH FUTURE GENERATIONS BY THE BARBARITY ONCE CAUSED BY OTHERWISE DECENT PEOPLES WHEN DIVIDED BY LINES DRAWN BY THE MILITARIES OF THE WORLD.

It will be remembered at this point that Gandhi was never elected to represent the Indian people. Nor was he appointed to this position. He assumed the right to advise India in her relationship with England. And when Indians found he was saying what they wanted to hear he became their leader. In like manner would International Politicians achieve recognition, first with like minded people and, eventually, with the world at large.

The first order of business would be to form an "Association of International Politicians". This might be no more than several people. They would not seek recognition by any government. They would then announce a time and place for a political invasion and occupation of the customs or a checkpoint of a media exciting militarily imposed border.

They would thus affirm the rights declared in Article 13 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see above). This would take place after, perhaps, a year's effort to inform the world the time and place that such an invasion would be taken by political means by International Politicians provoking the border guards to enforce the rules forbidding rights upheld by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. INSTEAD OF WAITING, AS IN THE PAST, TO RESPOND TO CRISES THE ESTABLISHMENT PROVOKES, THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS WOULD INITIATE CRISES.

The declared purpose of the United Nations is to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. In the war in Korea and the war in the Gulf it was evident that the U.N. was prepared to wield the scourge of war to affirm the militarily imposed borders that define sovereign property. In these two cases the means of conflict resolution used by the U.N. differed in no important way from the conflict resolution used between sovereign states for thousands of years before it took charge of international peacekeeping. In both cases it affirmed the anarchy (the absence of civil law) between international states. And in both cases it affirmed the militarily established lines that must be held in place by perpetual military threat. This approach to peace presupposes the perpetual search for the most effective means of slaughter and destruction that the mind of man can invent to keep the peace and forestall war.

Article 29 (3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states; "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principals of the United Nations". This is a disclaimer to any rights that would challenge sovereignty and makes the document void of any means to demand the enforcement of these rights.

One obvious purpose of the U.N. is to affirm the rights of nations to have militarily imposed borders. International Politicians in confrontation with the United Nations and armed states will insist that the relations between all states be legislated. In so doing they will raise the issues and challenge the rationale of the need for military threat and develop a constituency across these lines to the end that all such conflict be resolved or left unresolved by a world community concept of justice legislated into law.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

TOWARD UNIVERSAL CIVIL LAW

 

Because the freedom of movement necessary for the development of a legislated relationship between international states is forbidden by the militaries of the world, I have proposed here that a campaign for the political union of the world must be initiated by political action where political action is forbidden.

This form of politics has been called by various names: non-violence, direct action, civil disobedience, etc. It has been used throughout history by the weak against the strong. Non-violence is used to define a technique for taking political action where political action is forbidden. The term "non-violence" is also used to define the pacifist philosophy of non-retaliation, harmlessness, goodwill, mutual accommodation, etc. And, while any of these may be helpful in human relationships, they are not a requirement of conventional politics nor of politics where politics is forbidden.

"Politics where politics is forbidden" is a political tool. And, like any tool, can be used for good or ill depending on your point of view. So to distinguish this tool from pacifism we will call this political device "Vulnerable Challenge" The fulcrum of the political tool is vulnerability.

Newborn babies are genetically programmed to use this means to draw attention to themselves so that they are not forgotten or neglected. A baby is born into a world where everyone is stronger than it is. The motherly love that is every child's birthright may not be there.

Let us say that the baby is born to a 150 pound mother. The mother did not want to become pregnant, she hated every day of her confinement and she hates the squalling little monster to which she has just given birth. Late at night the baby messes its pants and needs to be cleaned up. The problem is to get this 150 pound mother, who hates it, out of bed to attend its needs. So it lets loose with a blast. The mother, finding sleep impossible, gets up and does the obvious, but leaves the child in an uncomfortable position and the baby wanted a cuddle. So it continues to scream. In anger and frustration she slaps the child and it screams the louder waking up the father who in his protesting to his wife wakes up the children who all scold the mother for abusing "the poor helpless little darling". The baby, in the political context, has inadvertently called upon the community to witness this unfair imbalance of power and thus challenges the mother's moral right to abuse it.

Mark Twain in his amusing story, "My First Lie" tells how when he was an infant he found himself impaled on the pin that held his diapers. He let out a howl appropriate for the occasion and was rewarded by his mother and father and two siblings converging at his crib side. Later when he felt neglected and wanted a cuddle he made the same noise. And, although Twain did not intend to make this point, it shows that he was aware of the innate manipulative capacity of an infant.

After a minority has signaled its distress to the establishment through conventional political action with no significant response, there is still a means to bring pressure on that establishment to rectify grievances. This is Vulnerable Challenge or politics where politics is forbidden.

Vulnerable Challenge is civil law upside down. Where the criminal breaks the law covertly and tries to avoid the penalty, those doing Vulnerable Challenge advertise ahead of the event that at such and such a time and on such and such a date they will break the law. And if they wish to be as effective as possible they will insist upon the penalties, while the criminal engages a lawyer to avoid the penalty. When a criminal is sentenced, the community gives tem negative publicity exposing the nature of the crime and the penalties imposed to deter potential criminals from breaking the law. On the other hand the Vulnerable Challenger welcomes the publicity caused by tes arrest and time in court and the penalties.

By imposing the penalties, the community inadvertently makes the Vulnerable Challenger a symbol around which a political campaign can be waged. Now the establishment cannot say "O,K. We're onto you now. We won't respond" For this is the intent of Vulnerable Challenge, to do the forbidden thing without penalty.

Vulnerable Challenge invites the penalties imposed on the breakers of the undesirable laws for the political effect.

With Vulnerable Challenge a single individual can initiate an action to manipulate an institution to create the arena for a political contest, it is political Aikido wherein one uses the weight of tes opponent to tes opponent's embarrassment.

Vulnerable Challenge exploits the moral imbalance between the weak and the strong and between political and military techniques. Vulnerable Challenge places the opponent in a no win position, for the heavier the penalties the greater the drama while lighter penalties invite others to break the odious rules.

Vulnerable Challenge makes publicity agents out of police and soldiers of the opposition to the enhancement of the political effort.

VULNERABLE CHALLENGE ENCOURAGES THE MILITARY TO RESPOND POLITICALLY.

When Gandhi's people could make salt, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s people could ignore segregation laws, subsequent action had to be carried on by conventional politics. Vulnerable Challenge then became irrelevant to the political process. Vulnerable Challenge self distracts when the point has been made.

Vulnerable Challenge is a tool--and, like any tool it can be used for good or ill depending on your point of view. It can be used where it is inappropriate and, again, like any tool, it is not always successful. War for instance, is a tool for the resolution of conflict. It usually results in a victor and a vanquished nation. So even war may be successful for only 50% of those so engaged.

War, like Vulnerable Challenge, is not always an appropriate response to conflict. And the duty of the diplomat is usually to find other responses. The situation may call for compromise and mutual accommodation, or to initiate the contest in mutual disparagement that is a prerequisite for making the demands that will provoke war. A contest in disparagement must precede any military engagement. Gandhi showed the alternative, where he, without armed forces at his disposal and pledged to a life of poverty, was able to challenge the authority of the armed British Empire at the height of its glory in India, while all the wealth of the maharajas were helpless to do so.

Civilization requires that we revere life and respect property lines. War requires the opposite, that we hold life lightly and are prepared for the invasion and destruction of property. To make the transition from the rules of civil life to the rules of natural law the potential soldier and supporting community must be conditioned to see the military opponents in a light so abhorrent as to justify the departure from the rules of civilization to the contest in slaughter and destruction called war.

And as I said earlier, enemy leaders are shown to be cynical, corrupt, greedy, godless gangsters whose people are by turns exploited serfs longing to be freed and desperate fanatics promoting an offensive philosophy and who have a religious dedication to making us slaves and to destroying our property and our culture.

War is the general departure from the rules of civilization with respect to the opponent. Vulnerable Challenge is the specific departure from law in the area of dispute. Gandhi, in his confrontation with the British Empire, used this political device, it was called non-violence.

For the replacement of military threat at the international level with civil law I propose we use the same political device that Gandhi used toward his dream of abolishing violence in human relationships. Gandhi called this device Satyagraha or soul force. By a change of focus we can interpret Gandhi's action in India in the light of the pragmatic politics of Vulnerable Challenge as follows: Gandhi was accused of treason against the British Empire. He admitted that he was, indeed, guilty and asked for the heaviest sentence the law would allow. In the light of Vulnerable Challenge this was an astute move.

Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison. This shocked and offended all those in whose interest Gandhi was working and consequently made a proportionate number of opponents for the Empire. The jail term multiplied Gandhi's voice. All the time he was in jail these opponents were vigorously spawning more opponents so that the jail term was an asset to the end that he was pursuing and a liability to the British Empire. The British got the message and turned Gandhi loose in two years.

He was now free to campaign for a political equality with England, a departure from the relationship of conquest that England then held over India. However, Gandhi did not articulate his aims in this way because, like many people of today, he was confused by the cultural labyrinth contained in the word "peace". He saw no difference between the violence of war and the violence, legal and illegal, that takes place under civil law, or a difference in principal between nations in military contest and a street fight. This may have been because the difference between military police and civil police in India at that time was subtle. Unlike Canada and the United States where the militia or soldiers are almost never used to suppress domestic strife, India was a subject nation, and the long arm of the Empire there, reached into civil matters to the extent that civil law appeared to be, or was, an extension of military force.

Gandhi assumed that peace meant the absence of strife. His peace philosophy was based on the proposition that to achieve peace, the absence of war, we must achieve at the domestic level, the absence of violence, and the mother of violence, strife. War was strife caused by hate. The absence of war must be achieved by universal love. So he called the power that let him out of jail satyagraha, soul force, the power of love.

When Gandhi became an international figure with admirers in every corner of the globe and when to punish him would be so obviously counter productive, he was able to introduce self-punishment to the same effect. He used the political fast, a device used by children of over-protective parents to hold center stage at mealtime. By this means he threatened both his friends and his opponents. The Indians were afraid he might die and they would lose their most effective spokesman, and the British establishment might rather have Gandhi than an unknown alternative leader that might respond to Gandhi's death by setting India afire with unrestrained strife. So both the Indians and the British had a strong mutual motive for accommodating to Gandhi's demands and keeping him alive.

While Gandhi's campaign involved the breaking of specific laws, it didn't require the general departure from the rules of civilization. So Gandhi did not have to provoke the contest in disparagement that is an indispensable requirement of war. Not only that, but he argued the preposterous proposition that this political tool could not be effective unless one loved one's opponent. And it may be that much of Gandhi's success was due to this extreme position. Or he may have been successful in spite of it.

If the opposition is painting your supporters as dissolute deadbeats, it is important to be able to show on examination that they are decent people. And all political action is waged by good people toward a good cause in the light of the partisans. So we endeavor to show our effort in its best light. But to carry this to a call for loving your opponents I think is a bit much. I see no reason why one need have anymore love for a military opponent than for a political one. If, for instance, we were campaigning to oust a president, could we expect to be more successful if we encouraged our followers to love him and those working for him? While I admire Gandhi I also feel that there are times when outrage is an appropriate response and where trying to register love is absurd.

There is a form of non-military strife that can register outrage that is no physical threat to the opponent. This means is overlooked by those who assume that resistance must be passive when applied to resistance to the military. This form of non-military strife was used by Tshombe in 1962 when he was trying to secede Katanga from the Congo, as reported by U. Thant in his book, VIEW FROM THE U.N. (pg. 140). "It was in Finland, where I arrived on the night of July 11, 1962, that I received the most disturbing news from the Congo. The message was to the effect that Mr. Tshombe had changed his tactics.

On that day, a planned and viciously conceived assault by thousands of Katangese women and children was made on Indian troops at a roadblock in Elisabethville. These troops--cursed, abused and spat upon by the Tshombe-organized women and children--displayed a most remarkable restraint and discipline under extreme provocation, and never fired on the mob. I also received report from Robert Gardener, United Nations representative in the Congo, that Mr. Tshombe had informed him that he would employ civilian demonstrations, especially women and children, instead of troops, to provoke the United Nations force, in cynical contempt for the safety and well-being of his own people. This change of tactics posed new problems for the force and put a very great strain on the troops."

I was disappointed in U. Thant that he failed to admire the courage displayed by the women and children that were able to stand up to armed threat of the United Nations of the world and defy them. He later spoke of Tshombe and his colleagues as "a bunch of clowns". (I would propose that some of the attributes of the clown might be encouraged in anti-warriors. The charm of the clown is that te does the unconventional with elan, to make people laugh, in contrast to the military whose efforts are seldom amusing.)

And suppose Saddam Hussein had withdrawn his military, and sent women and children to occupy the Iraq-Kuwait border to get in the way and to spit upon the American tanks and soldiers. Would Clinton have had the political climate to fire on them? What fun the world media could then have had, showing the United States military in confrontation with little boys trying to spit on the tanks, though they had not yet learned to spit over their chin?

THIS IS NOT TO PLAY DOWN THE MANY VIRTUES OF GANDHI'S MORE PACIFIST APPROACH. BUT IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW THAT VULNERABLE CHALLENGE may BE SUCCESSFULLY USED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT SAINTS, AND WHO ARE JUST PLAIN FURIOUS. Having said this, I recognize that furious persons are more likely to get themselves shot than those doing non-violence in the Gandhian or Quaker perspective. Add to this the fact that the only two national political actions against the military in history, those in India and in East Germany, called upon a divine leadership of pure virtue to justify their departure from submission to the military and the police--and the argument for the Gandhian approach becomes overpowering.

The means developed by Gandhi and subsequent political activists if directed against the militarily imposed borders need not be improved upon to achieve a world without a military.

It would seem however, that the important thing is not that we stand with Gandhi in love, or with Tshombe in hate. The important thing is that we stand--and stand Vulnerable--until the military force becomes absurd--and political.

A political contest to challenge the legitimacy of militarily imposed borders, predictably, will be to a degree a contest in disparagement (as is an election) rather than either a contest in terror and deceit or a contest using the disciplines of satyagraha. The end sought, however, will be to rearrange the community concept of justice rather than to subdue a nation and thereby to dictate the terms of the peace as is the end sought in a military victory.

International Politicians might achieve world recognition by taking on the political union of two nations separated by militarily imposed lines. Let us say, for example, that we take on the most noteworthy militarily imposed division in the world, the Arab-Israeli borders. International Politicians would occupy the customs and checkpoints between the nations involved. They would call on people from all over the world to support them in this effort. They would spell each other off. Invaders might opt to carry a passport to arrive legally to the point of invasion, or they might challenge the militarily imposed divisions along the way by failing to carry a passport thus challenging border officials to forbid their taking part in this enterprise and, consequently, excite political attention locally. In any case the emphasis would be on vulnerability. Tshombe used women and children because they were more vulnerable than men, or men with weapons. And we might call on war damaged veterans and refugees and old men and women.

These would spell each other off to form a permanent political force until Israel and Arab countries became a common property.

THE END PRODUCT WOULD NOT IN ANY WAY PREVENT THE ARABS AND THE JEWS ENJOYING THEIR SEPARATE RELIGIONS AS IS THE CASE WITH JEWS AND ARABS IN THE U.S.AND IN CANADA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD.

The invaders having learned to see the paper mache' that military force is when in contest with pure political action, would insist on the free movement of peoples and goods, the free expression of free enterprise that is the norm for all commercial intercourse between domestic states. This would mean that drug pushers, criminals and spies could not be stopped at state lines but would have to be apprehended in other ways as they are now detained by other means as at the domestic level.

It has long been proposed that the human race could be unified were the earth to be invaded by aliens, when all nations would unite against a common foe. And Charles Nobel of the "Nobel Prize" is said to have proposed in the early century that mankind would unite to abolish war when weapons got so dangerous to mankind that they couldn't be used. The fulcrum for either solution is the common threat. Neither of these would appear now to be a viable option for the 21st century.

Gandhi demonstrated how overt political action (non-violence) could render helpless the military forces of the British Empire. And Rosa Parks initiated the means by which the desegregation of the black people in the United States was accomplished. Parks, like Gandhi, refused to obey the odious rules and thus outraged the establishment, thereby provoking the establishment to take action that would set up the issue of segregation for a national and an international audience. Gandhi and Parks by their vulnerable action successfully challenged the right of the establishment to enforce the odious laws.

Gandhi set up the spectacle of the armed force of the British Empire in contest with unarmed Indians and their assumed right to make salt. He showed the Empire using lethal force to deny Indians this basic need. He thus excited international compassion for himself and his people and not only embarrassed the Empire in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of the constituencies of the administration by which the Empire was governed.

Those that responded to Rosa Park's solution to segregation provoked the spectacle of police punishing black Americans with clubs and fire hoses for affirming rights that are basic to American laws and culture, the right to desegregation and the right to vote, and thereby commanded the attention of a national and international audience. One did not have to be a "nigger lover" to be outraged at this brutal denial of standard American rights.

International Politicians by occupying the checkpoints at Israeli-Arab borders would would set themselves up for punishment to obtain an international audience. In the light of the above propositions those nations would see this political attack as a threat to their sovereignty. They would have a common interest in resisting these invasions. But the Gandhian principal would render all their military options for the expulsion of the intruders counterproductive.

TOGETHER WITH THIS, THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS MIGHT DEVELOP A CONSTITUENCY OF ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT ARABS AND ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT JEWS SYMPATHETIC TOWARD POLITICAL INTEGRATION. THUS WE MIGHT HAVE ARABS AND JEWS JOINING ON TWO LEVELS, LIBERAL JEWS AND ARABS IN A CONTEST WITH CONSERVATIVE JEWS AND ARABS OVER THE ISSUE OF THE RECOGNIZING OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICIANS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MUTUAL LEGISLATURE.

THE END PRODUCT OF THIS ENDEAVOR WOULD BE LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES IN CONTEST, AS IS THE CASE EVERYWHERE THERE IS CIVIL LAW, RATHER THAN ARABS AND JEWS IN MILITARY CONTEST OR THE MUTUAL THREAT THEREOF.

Speaking of Israel's immediate neighbors, where the issue is of daily importance, "The Christian Science Monitor" 3-8 Sept., 1994, quotes Egypt's Ambassador Bashir, "Peace so far is government to government not people to people." This is the historic problem between sovereign states. The military threat implicit in the militarily imposed divisions and the diplomatic concept of peace gets in the way to make impossible people to people political action for a mutual legislature.

It is secondary importance that Arabia and Israel be successfully joined in union at this point, but rather the importance is to achieve a stage for the internationally publicized effort to have an international body of non-Arabs and non-Jews impinge politically on this militarily imposed division, and to bring to the world stage the concepts of "International Politicians" and "Vulnerable Challenge" and "The community concept of justice" and thus introduce the process for the changing and affirming of the world community concept of justice to be legislated into civil law between international states.

It is not expected that the invading party or parties will immediately know how to do the job they have elected to do, but will work out a strategy as the situation develops. There is today a plethora of books on the subject of non-violence that were unavailable to Gandhi. Yet without them he was able to detach India from the British Empire.

There may be unique challenges in the putting of nations together.

It need not be expected that the international effort will grow like a puffball to global proportions. It might spread like a contagion, anti-Warriors taking independent action all over the globe against local obstructions to their mutual ownership of the world.

The advantages of "direct action" for introducing planetary change are these:

1) It can provoke immediate international attention. This was demonstrated by Mathias Rust when he invaded Red Square in Moscow, and when I did direct action against the Berlin Wall, and when Rosa Parks did direct action against the segregated bus system.

2) The process for the demilitarization of the globe can be initiated by one or more persons with little money and no political support.

3) In many countries in the world one might get a court hearing where the issue in question could be immediately raised.

4) Independent actions can be initiated anywhere in the world without consulting present political leaders or other global political activists.

5) International Politicians, like politicians and Homo sapiens elsewhere, would compete for donations and political power.

6) There is almost sure to be money in the rearranging of international property as there is in the arranging of other property, but getting it started will be a hazardous effort.

Vulnerable Challenge is symbolic action. Generally, International Politicians would constitute a mobile symbol for a world constituency similar to that now enjoyed by Greenpeace, that would move about the earth to take advantage of any opportunity for symbolic action that would draw attention to the obstructions that treaty borders pose to cooperative and legislated efforts to solutions of universal problems.(So far, Greenpeace and Amnesty International, like the rest of us, must affirm diplomacy by carrying a passport and depending on the treaty to affirm international agreements concerning human rights and the environment.)

I assume that once this change in direction is recognized as a viable alternative to the anti-war efforts of the 20th century a plethora of options will present themselves, not only in the context of Vulnerable Challengers, but also for the One Worlders. So long as One Worlders look to the U.N. to sanction their endeavors, the U.N. has them in their pocket. THE WORLD CONSTITUTION AND PARLIAMENT ASSOCIATION, for instance, claims to have 15 million members that have endorsed their world constitution. TO EXPLOIT THIS SUPPORT TOWARD A WORLD LEGISLATURE THEY MUST WAIT UNTIL THOSE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MILITARIES OF THE WORLD FIND IT CONVENIENT TO GIVE THEM PERMISSION AND ASSISTANCE TO INSTALL A WORLD GOVERNMENT THAT WILL RENDER MILITARY THREAT AND DIPLOMATS UNNECESSARY. And as they grow weary waiting for this to happen some may see International Politicians and Vulnerable Challenge as an option for moving the military out of their way.

As One Worlders start joining the International Politicians the U.N. will find itself making compromises to hold their loyalty. Thus the existence of this political force will weaken the hand of sovereignty between international states in two directions.

Let it be said here that it is not my intent to disparage the United Nations. The U,N.was the product of a universal opinion that the scourge of war could be abolished by putting all the principal agents of the militaries of the world in one building and calling it the United nations. That legislature was a precondition for a united world was evidently not even entertained. The United Nations can do nothing about world opinion. And it is not their part to look for the political alternative.

This perspective I propose as the horseless carriage that will take you to a world without the contest in military threat and the contest in slaughter and destruction that has enlivened the pages of history but that may put an end to history if not replace by civil law.

Like the first horseless carriage it is an awkward, unfamiliar, unaesthetic, unconvincing device. But, hopefully, this will be corrected as the vast intelligence of the anti-warriors is applied in the light of the new perspective.

Here the question might be asked, would a world concept of justice be just? And we can only assume that civil law will be no more just when brought to the international level than it has been at the domestic level. In the United States we have universal civil law and the absence of war between domestic states. In Canada we have universal civil law and the absence of war between provinces.

ONLY WHEN OVERCOME BY NATIONALISTIC EUPHORIA DO WE CLAIM THAT OUR GOVERNMENTS ARE JUST.

 

But the community concept of justice between the provinces and between the states has been uniform enough that neither the provinces nor the states have felt the need to develop a military to protect themselves from each other and/or from the federal military forces. Universal civil law is no utopia. It does not rule out the armed force that community police use to subdue suspected criminals under the direction of civil law. It does not rule out riots and other civil disturbances. The contrast is clearly seen between the Gulf War and the riots in Los Angeles. The Gulf War was a contest in the absence of civil law, a contest in slaughter and destruction to re-establish a former militarily created and militarily imposed line. The riots in L.A. were prompted by the failure of the establishment to impose civil law against members of the establishment. Many opinions said that Desert Storm was just. Many thought the riots in L.A. were just.

WHAT IS A JUST RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL STATES WILL BE HAMMERED OUT ON THE ANVIL OF UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY OPINION AND WILL BE LEGISLATED INTO A CONSTITUTION FOR THE EARTH.

Individuals and minorities will have contrary opinions as they do now. There is no way to achieve universal justice. But a world community concept of justice is conceivable. This would allow us to carry the means of conflict resolution which proscribes war at the domestic level to the international level.

The political tools for the development of universal civil law have all been worked out. We need to learn nothing new. We can start today by insisting on the rights and freedoms declared, but unprotected, by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. BUT WHO CAN WE CALL ON TO HELP US TO INITIATE THIS PROCESS?

The anti-warriors, whose focus would seem to lend itself to this end, work for peace at the international level defined in diplomatic terms, rather than in terms of legislature and civil law. They disparage the military that is the inevitable consequence of the diplomatic relationship. Those involved in military security will be necessary until the legislated alternative is in place. THE PEOPLE THAT WILL CARRY OUT THIS NEW PERSPECTIVE DO NOT NOW EXIST but must be developed from people like yourself who are reading this message and are convinced and have trained themselves to be convincing. "Actions speak louder than words", as my Aunt Jean used to insist, as she rapped me on the head with her thimble. And the most convincing action you can take will be assuming, and acting out, the new perspective. And there will be no point in disparaging the military in the new century since in the process of developing civil law the military will be rendered harmless as a consequence of your action.

What I am proposing here has little or no historical background. But their have been recent instances where treaties were replaced with legislated law at the domestic level as the result of a political campaign.

When the American Indians were at last defeated treaties were drawn up to affirm the new relationship and mutual promises were made. The United States had police and military force to see that the Indians kept their promises, but the Indians had no such forces to see that the Americans kept theirs.

For years, delegations of Indians went to Washington, "hat in hand" to the Department of Indian Affairs to PETITION the United States to honor their agreements. They were warmly welcomed. and were heard with deep concern. And,they were sent home with hearty handshakes and PROMISES.

And then a few years ago the Indians with the help of many a "paleface" campaigned politically for Indian Rights. And these rights were legislated into law. And the Indians took the United States government to court, and not only won cases but learned the means to effectively make DEMANDS upon a government without having recourse to a military. And then in the Preface above you just read an account of the first joining of two sovereign states by non-military means.

This then, is what I propose we entertain if we are looking for a new, refreshing direction to replace the intellectual and cultural cul-de-sac that has frustrated the anti-warriors of the 20th Century and to start fresh in the 21st. So, let's let the 21st Century be the one in which we renounce the proposition of a world populated with good and bad people or good and bad nations for a world of desperate Homo sapiens confused by the conflicting demands of natural law and the departure from natural law, civilization.

There! You made it to the end! Congratulations and appreciative noises! If you like it let me know and if you don't then please tell me why. If I have offended you, I hope I may be forgiven, and that you will tell me and others about the parts of my proposals that you liked.

John Runnings

 

Dear reader,

I have been trying to make this perspective "fly" since I retired 16 years ago. I am now distressed with a terminal illness. It is called "old age."

The development of this point of view has been its own reward. But I would like to be further rewarded by seeing younger minds, out there on internet,pick up this perspective to run with it.

There will be those who have the guts and the money and, who would like to initiate an action such as I have described above, but have obligations that forbid them doing so. And there are those who are free of obligations and have the boldness and expertise to carry out such an action , but lack the funds. We must get these people together.

To show that I am serious about this thing,I have made $5.000.00(Canadian) available to go to any person or persons who will commit themselves to the world media, to politically invade some part the militarily drawn lines that divide the Arabs and the Jews, and who can raise a like sum. This to the end that Jews and Arabs live together without bloodshed as they do elsewhere where there is a civilized relationship between them. For those who are fired up by this concept, but are too modest to do the grandstanding implicit in this action can contribute greatly by keeping this book on an appropriate internet bulletin board

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John Runnings I-604-757-9234

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