Living dangerously by advocating peace

A wealthy merchant in Lyons in 1170, Pierre Valdes, gave all his material wealth to poor people and persuaded others to do the same. The movement he started, the Waldensians, rejected all killing including capital punishment and refused all military service.

The Anabaptists in Europe had a long history of being persecuted because they refused to bear arms or declare oaths. Today few people swear an oath although young Americans are still required to pledge allegiance to the flag, “one of the first steps in conditioning young Americans for war”.

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, have been pacifists almost since their beginnings in mid-17th century England when they rejected both sides during civil war. They refused to take oaths, tip hats as a sign of respect even in the presence of the king, and to this day many do not use titles, even Mr and Mrs. They were closely linked with the Diggers, a short-lived egalitarian agricultural commune whose founder, Gerrard Winstanley, called war a plague: “Victory that is gotten by the sword is a victory that slaves get one over another.” War was seen to burden the working class, traditionally the source of antiwar sentiment.

Quakerism was exported to America in the shape of William Penn, after whom Pennsylvania was named, a colony that attracted people who denied the state its rights to war, colonial expansion, and slavery. Quakers controlled the Assembly and made rules favourable to non-violent sects. They ran their colony as though it were an independent state, adopted a foreign policy completely out of line with the British Empire, refused to conscript militias to fight the French, and would not fight native Indians, instead negotiating peaceful relations with them.

Kurlansky argues most schoolchildren today are given the impression the American Revolution was a relatively benign war but in truth it was a brutal conflict not only with combat casualties but with bitter feuds between civilians, homes sacked, children viciously targeted, women raped.

The “Founding Fathers” were “far from the most progressive thinkers of the day. Slavery was the most celebrated flaw but they also set the stage for the genocide of some ten million American Indians.”

In the 19th century there were wars between the Maori people of New Zealand and the pakeha, the white race. But a visionary Maori leader, Te Whiti, announced 1869 was to be “the Year of Trampling Underfoot”, meaning the time when those in power were to be humbled without use of force and there was to be a treaty between the pakeha and Maori, between equals. In spite of considerable provocation, Te Whiti insisted “If any man molests me, I will talk with my weapon - the tongue”. When they were attacked, Maoris often responded with song and dance. “Te Whiti and his movement are credited with stopping a war of genocide that would have meant the end of the Maori people … such leaders are rare.”

Denmark managed to stay out of the 1939-1945 European conflict knowing the people could not survive a shooting war, but they opposed German occupiers by other means. “It became a point of national honour to work slowly, delay transportation, destroy equipment, and, above all, to protect anyone the Germans pursued.” They sabotaged trains, went on strike, and when the Germans announced Jews would be deported the Danes hid almost the entire Jewish population of 6,500 and took them by boat to neutral Sweden.

Kurlansky’s section on the Allies’ neglect of Jews in Germany is not pleasant reading. “In recent years, formerly secret documents have been released that make it clear that the Allied governments and military forces were well aware of the genocide in progress and consciously chose not to interfere with it. The claim … that they didn’t know what was happening is simply not true”. Intelligence messages, spies, and escaped prisoners told what was occurring in Auschwitz extermination camp. Jewish organisations asked the Allies to bomb Auschwitz but were told “It is too far away”.

The bombing of civilians in cities in the UK and Germany reads as if the authorities were involved in a football match with the aim to score more civilian deaths than the other side.

Then there was the unleashing of an atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 followed by one on Nagasaki three days later even though “Japan had been ready to surrender before the attacks”. Civilians were the target and in the two cities 100,000 people were killed. The big question is: even if the first bomb was thought necessary to bring an end to the war, why was the second used?

Kurlansky: “atomic energy had been mastered for military purposes and the overwhelming scale of its possibilities had been demonstrated.” Perhaps another way to say it is the Japanese people were used as guinea pigs. “Or perhaps [General, later President] Eisenhower had it right when he observed that once you start the business of killing, you get ‘deeper and deeper’.”