Page:Max Eastman's Address to the Jury in the Second Masses Trial (1918).pdf/34

 whether they have to see through glasses or whether they can see through their own eyes. They are drafted and put to the tasks which are appropriate for them. And under the impression that Merrill Rogers was subject to very immediate call in this draft, I advised him not to be a conscientious objector, because he came to me in doubt. And the fact that he was for a moment in doubt was to me enough basis for advising him not to be a conscientious objector.

On the other hand, I never advised anybody to be a conscientious objector. I could not imagine my giving that advice. It is a far more terrible thing to be a conscientious objector than it is to be a soldier. My feeling when Norman Thomas was put on that stand and the District Attorney asked him whether he was a conscientious objector—I thought he turned a little pale and said, "Yes"—my feeling for him was pity. I think they suffer. I remember a friend who—no, that is a mistake—I have thought about him so much and have read his diary, that I have come to think he is a friend, but I did not know him. I know his brother. He was drafted and he was a conscientious objector, and when he got into camp he told the authorities that he did not believe in military service, that he did not believe in killing, that he could not kill, and that he could not put on his uniform and go ahead and be a soldier. And he was brought up before one commander after another, and before one tribunal after another, and they browbeat him, and called him a coward, and called him "pro-German," and called him a traitor, and beat down his moral courage, and denied that he was acting upon his conscience, and denied that he had any principles at all, except the desire to save his own skin. And finally he got to such a state of desperation, with his assertion that he was an internationalist and a lover of men and for that reason he could