Leaflet detailing the views of the No-Conscription League founded by anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1917, used as an exhibit for the government when Goldman and Berkman were arrested and charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft, both later being found guilty and sentenced to serve two years in prison and pay a $10,000 fine.
CONSCRIPTION has now become a fact in this country. It took England fully 18 months after she engaged in the war to impose compulsory military service on her people. It was left for “free” America to pass a conscription bill six weeks after she declared war against Germany.
What becomes of the patriotic boast of America to have entered the European war in behalf of the principle of democracy? But that is not all. Every country in Europe has recognized the right of conscientious objectors — of men who refuse to engage in war on the ground that they are opposed to taking life. Yet this democratic country makes no such provision for those who will not commit murder at the behest of the war profiteers. Thus the “land of the free and the home of the brave” is ready to coerce free men into the military yoke.
No one to whom the fundamental principle of liberty and justice is more than an idle phrase, can help but realize that the patriotic clap-trap now shouted by press, pulpit and the authorities, betrays a desperate effort of the ruling class in this country to throw sand in the eyes of the masses and to blind them to the real issue confronting them. That issue is the Prussianizing of America so as to destroy whatever few liberties the people have achieved through an incessant struggle of many years.
Already all labor protective laws have been abrogated, which means that while husbands, fathers and sons are butchered on the battlefield, the women and children will be exploited in our industrial bastilles to the heart’s content of the American patriots for gain and power.
Freedom of speech, of press and assembly is about to be thrown upon the dungheap of political guarantees. But crime of all crimes, the flower of the country is to be forced into murder whether or not they believe in war or in the efficacy of saving democracy in Europe by the destruction of democracy at home.
Liberty of conscience is the most fundamental of all human rights, the pivot of all progress. No man may be deprived of it without losing every vestige of freedom of thought and action. In these days when every principle and conception of democracy and individual liberty is being cast overboard under the pretext of democratizing Germany, it behooves every liberty-loving man and woman to insist on his or her right of individual choice in the ordering of his life and actions.
The NO-CONSCRIPTION LEAGUE has been formed for the purpose of encouraging conscientious objectors to affirm their liberty of conscience and to make their objection to human slaughter effective by refusing to participate in the killing of their fellow men. The NO-CONSCRIPTION LEAGUE is to be the voice of protest against the coercion of conscientious objectors to participate in the war. Our platform may be summarized as follows:
We oppose conscription because we are internationalists, anti-militarists, and opposed to all wars waged by capitalistic governments.
We will fight for what we choose to fight for; we will never fight simply because we are ordered to fight.
We believe that the militarization of America is an evil that far outweighs, in its anti-social and anti-libertarian effects, any good that may come from America’s participation in the war.
We will resist conscription by every means in our power, and we will sustain those who, for similar reasons, refuse to be conscripted.
We are not unmindful of the difficulties in our way. But we have resolved to go ahead and spare no effort to make the voice of protest a moral force in the life of this country. The initial efforts of the conscientious objectors in England were fraught with many hardships and danger, but finally the government of Great Britain was forced to give heed to the steadily increasing volume of public protest against the coercion of conscientious objectors. So we, too, in America, will doubtless meet the full severity of the government and the condemnation of the war-mad jingoes, but we are nevertheless determined to go ahead. We feel confident in arousing thousands of people who are conscientious objectors to the murder of their fellow men and to whom a principle represents the most vital thing in life.
Resist conscription. Organize meetings. Join our League. Send us money. Help us to give assistance to those who come in conflict with the government. Help us to publish literature against militarism and against conscription.
We consider this campaign of the utmost importance at the present time. Amid hateful, cowardly silence, a powerful voice and an all-embracing love are necessary to make the living dead shiver.
Farewell, Friends and Comrades!
From ‘Mother Earth Bulletin’, Vol.1, January, 1918, No.4, New York
The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken. Rest in peace, dear Fatherland! Firm stands the guard at Washington.
The draft law has been declared constitutional. The good citizen need worry no more about the justice of forced military service: it is constitutional. Involuntary servitude should give the free sovereign no more anxiety: it is constitutional and democratic. The humanity of forcing men to bear arms in violation of their conscience may not be questioned any more: it is constitutional, it is democratic, it is final.
The highest judicial tribunal of the United States has sustained the verdicts of the lower courts of the various states, EN MASSE. Without wasting its time on facts or arguments, the United States Supreme Court has decided, virtually, that the government has the right to do anything it pleases, and that there in no more to be said about it.
The decision also upholds the so-called conspiracy cases appealed from New York, Ohio, and other States, and affirms the sentences of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Morris Becker and Louis Kramer, convicted in New York for anti-draft agitation.
The action of the Court does not surprise us. We expected it. But we cannot refrain from expressing the pain we have felt at the limited social vision of the well-meaning friends who were so naively hopeful of legal justice, in spite of the all-too-numerous lessons to the contrary.
Be of good cheer, good friends and comrades. We are going to prison with light hearts. To us it is more satisfactory to stay behind prison bars than to remain MUZZLED in freedom. Our spirit will not be daunted, nor our will broken. We will return to our work in due time.
This is our farewell to you. The light of Liberty burns low just now. But do not despair, friends. Keep the spark alive. The night cannot last forever. Soon there will come a rift in the darkness, and the New Day break even here. May each of us feel that we have contributed our mite toward the great Awakening.
The BULLETIN will continue, with your help, even in our absence. It will have a thorny path, but we know we may depend on your interest and co-operation as generously and faithfully as you have helped in the past. By means of the BULLETIN we shall keep in touch with you, while we are in retirement, and you shall hear the voices that cannot be stifled by stone walls. Au revoir, some day,
EMMA GOLDMAN
ALEXANDER BERKMAN
P. S. Direct word from friends is a great joy to the prisoner. Mail will reach Emma Goldman at State Prison, Jefferson City, Mo. Alexander Berkman, Louis Kramer and Morris Becker are to be addressed at U. S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, Ga. The prison rules require correspondents to sign full name and address.
See also:
As to Militarism, by Emma Goldman (1908)
Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, by Emma Goldman (1910)
If We Must Fight, Let It Be For The Social Revolution, from Mother Earth (1914)
In Reply to Kropotkin, by Alexander Berkman (1914)
Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter, by Emma Goldman (1915)
Anti-War Manifesto, by The Anarchist International (1915)
Why War?, from The Blast (1916)
The Psychology of War, from The Blast (1916)
The Promoters of the War Mania, by Emma Goldman (1917)
Speeches Against Conscription, by Emma Goldman (1917)
Articles in the New York Times on the No Conscription League of New York (1917)
War?, by Alexander Berkman (1929)
To the Conscripts, by l’anarchie (1906)
Anarchist Anti-Militarism (collected articles from various persons and groups)
An Archive 