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Edward Carpenter >> NEVER AGAIN
Let us further remember how important it is that every man and woman
should insist on the rights of Personality to preserve sacred his
or her most intimate sense of selfness and duty the very,
essence of Freedom.
Though I do not, for instance, think that a refusal to fight
under any condition or circumstance can reasonably be maintained
to its logical conclusion, and though I certainly would not engage
myself to refuse to fight in any and every case. Still, I do
honour and respect the genuine conscientious objectors (of whom
there are great numbers) very sincerely.
Some of them may, be narrow-minded and faddist (as conscience often is),
but let us remember that the great things of History have been
initiated by such folk.
It was they who barred and broke the gladiatorial games at Rome;
it was they, who, steered the "Mayflower" across the Atlantic,
and started the great Republic of the United States;
And it is they, who are possibly sowing the seed a great Movement
which will spread all over Europe, and ultimately by opposing
compulsory military service inaugurate a world-era of Peace.
(For certainly, without Conscription the Continental Powers would
never have become involved in the present war)
Let us recognize the right and the duty of each man to ponder these
world-problems for himself: to play his part and to make his own
voice heard in the solution of them.
Let us recognize the falsity of Science divorced from the Heart,
and begin to-day to create a political, an economic, and a material
world which shall be the true and satisfying expression of the real
human soul;
Let us acknowledge even at the last that the War may have been
a, necessary evil to show us by contrast the way, of deliverance;
Let us render, homage to those who have given their lives in it;
let us vow that their great sacrifice shall not be in vain, but
shall consecrate for us a new purpose and a new ideal;
Let us believe that Love, not Hatred, is the power by which in the
end the World will be saved;
And let us pray that a Heroism equal to that, shown to-day in the
cause of Destruction may urge us in the future towards a great
and glorious Constructive era in social life -- and inspire us
with a new hope:
Out of purgatory to build a paradise, in which the ugliness,
vulgarity, sordidness and cruelty of the present scheme of things
will be repeated.
August 1916