Page:Hubert W. Peet - 112 Days' Hard Labour, Being Some Reflections On the First of My Sentences as a Conscientious Objector - 1917.pdf/16

 for some reforming influences being brought to bear upon the prisoners.

No C.O. Privileges Wanted

Any alleviation, however, must apply to the treatment of all prisoners, whether C.O.’s sentenced for refusal to commit what they believe to be a crime, or poor little sneak thieves convicted of some trespass against the community. I know I am expressing the feeling of most, if not all, of my C.O. prisoner comrades in emphasising the relief with which we heard that a scheme for internment, rumours regarding which had reached us, had been abandoned. This was not because we would not welcome less stringency of treatment, but because we felt and feel that there is great danger that special treatment will be a salve to the conscience of the public which, while tolerating the horrors of war, is uncomfortable regarding the hardships we are undergoing, and that having obtained certain new privileges for us they will be then tempted to think that “persecution in kid gloves” ceases to be persecution, and thus misconceive the real issue. The legal but ignored right of absolute exemption is the only one that should be striven for, either by us or by our non-pacifist sympathisers. We do not invite suffering, but we are only too willing to pay this price rather than that the fundamentals of our stand should be in danger of being obscured.

I write on the closing day of the first year of the operation of conscription in this country. True, my table is the corner of a prisoner’s bed in an Army guardroom. I am separated from all I hold dear from the world outside, and I am awaiting with my companions certain conviction and sentence to a further period of confinement. Yet it is with nothing short of an amazed thankfulness that I can look back upon the progress and effect of our movement in the past year. This is an almost negligible period in a fight for the “New Way of Life” for which we are standing when we look back and consider how long our spiritual forefathers had to struggle and strive in the great conflict between Customs and Ideals which throughout all history has marked the onward movement of mankind.

Comrades, we whom Love is leading, out of shades of darkest night, Hearts aglow and faces sunward, children of the morning light. Dark the way that lies behind us, rough the path our feet have trod, But around us clouds are breaking on the breezy hills of God.”