Better Judgment and "Public Conscience";
A Communication
W HEN
1
CONSIDER ldondo of mino going off to tho
w"
ogoirut
their better judgment, I see that with regard to the war, its sanctions
and
our behavior, it is absurd to look for a personal formula for action other
than the next step following from each man's past, just as the society itself
has merely taken its next step into the war.
1
Those who concurred in
the
social ideals, took satisfaction in the social rewards (whether or not they
got them) and willingly cooperated in their production, and who adopted
as their own coloration the general social style, such men are unlikely to
dissent now, unless by a strange ignorance or want of feeling for the hor·
rors long present, they did not realize where they were headed and now
undergo a late revulsion. Others who, dissenting from the society, never·
theless thought the people were persuasible to a more or less imminent
political change, can now hardly begin to see social values where they saw
none before, and where certainly there are fewer to see; in those cases
where they hope to work politically, they commit themselves to running
certain risks; but where they think the odds are at present too great, they
wait-whether inside or outside the army, or whether in an approved
social status, makes no difference in principle. No difference in principle
precisely because such political personalities are accustomed to subordi–
nate the power of merely personal action, which exerts itself only in
the
very short or,
if
inspired, in the very long run; their job thus is rather
to find the next mass step to alleviate the disaster.
But those lastly, like myself-and I hope I speak for many educaton,
artists, and religious persons-who so strongly dissented from the authori–
tative institutions and mores that they despaired even of political
per·
suasion and pitched their work, their hopes, and their reward in a h11111411,
at best future-social rather than present-social, environment,-these,
it
seems to me, can carry on their work and preserve their freedom to work
only in conditions which might involve either (a) civil disobedience
or
(b) seizing various private opportunities. (This is a group which
ba
never been willing to accept a cleavage between private duty or desire
and
the kind of brotherhood possible in the immediate political environmi'Jif,
between the primary and secondary environment; but just for this rea1011
it is emboldened, and obliged, in a social catastrophe of such magnitude
to make much of private values proved by lifelong testing.)
Let me distinguish (a) and (b) in principle: Those whose lives
m
given not so much to concrete works as to the purity of their
principle~
1
By the war I do not mean something subsequent to the attack on Pearl
Harblr,
but the activity of decades which has adapted itself with such astonishing smooth..
to the present world-wide national unities. It is said that in America "everythilll
il
changed," when on the contrary "everything" seems to be coming precisely
into
ill
own. And by "our" war I do not mean America's side in the war, but the fact •
all peoples have long involved themselves or allowed them!elves to become involnd.
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