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We Will Not Cease

“This book contains the record of my fight to the utmost against the power of the military machine during the First World War. At that time to be a pacifist was to be in a distinct minority. But today—as war, which was always atrocious, becomes more obviously atrocious and anti-human—to be a pacifist is to be spokesman even of a confused majority who have begun to see that, whatever the national issue may be, all wars are deeply atrocious and no war can be called just. Though methods of warfare have changed, the military machine remains essentially the same; and the record of my battle against that machine, on behalf of my fellow-humans, is therefore relevant to this time also.”

“A greater barbarism than any the human race has known in the past has risen among the nations…. Reports from the present Vietnam War indicate that eighty per cent of the casualties are occurring among civilians. War has at last become wholly indiscriminate. The military machine is turned against that communal life which is the seed-bed of future generations of mankind. The only apparent justification that war ever had was that by destroying some lives it might clumsily preserve others. But now even that apparent justification is being stripped away. We make war chiefly on civilians and respect for human life seems to have become a thing of the past.”