‘THESE STRANGE CRIMINALS’: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PRISON MEMOIRS BY CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS FROM THE GREAT WAR TO THE COLD WAR In many modern wars, there have been those who have chosen not to fight. Be it for religious or moral reasons, some men and women have found no justification for breaking their conscientious objection to vio- lence. In many cases, this objection has lead to severe punishment at the hands of their own governments, usually lengthy prison terms. Peter Brock brings the voices of imprisoned conscientious objectors to the fore in ‘These Strange Criminals.’ This important and thought-provoking anthology consists of thirty prison memoirs by conscientious objectors to military service, drawn from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and centring on their jail experiences during the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War. Voices from history – like those of Stephen Hobhouse, Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, Ian Hamilton, Alfred Hassler, and Donald Wetzel – come alive, detailing the impact of prison life and offering unique perspectives on wartime government policies of conscription and imprisonment. Sometimes intensely mov- ing, and often inspiring, these memoirs show that in some cases, indi- vidual conscientious objectors – many well-educated and politically aware – sought to reform the penal system from within either by publicizing its dysfunction or through further resistance to authority. The collection is an essential contribution to our understanding of criminology and the history of pacifism, and represents a valuable addition to prison literature. peter brock is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Illustration by Lowell Naeve ‘THESE STRANGE CRIMINALS’ An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War Edited by Peter Brock UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2004 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8707-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-8661-6 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication ‘These strange criminals’ : an anthology of prison memoirs by conscientious objectors from the Great War to the Cold War / edited by Peter Brock. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8020-8707-8 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8661-6 (pbk.) 1. Conscientious objectors – Biography. 2. World War, 1914–1918 – Conscientious objectors. 3. World War, 1939–1945 – Conscientious objectors. 4. World War, 1914–1918 – Prisoners and prisons. 5. World War, 1939–1945 – Prisoners and prisons. 6. World War, 1914–1918 – Personal narratives. 7. World War, 1939–1945 – Personal narratives. I. Brock, Peter, 1920– UB341.T43 2004 355.2’24’0922 C2003-906492-1 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). Contents Foreword by Robert Gaucher ix Preface xiii Document Credits xvii Part One: The Great War Introduction 3 Britain STEPHEN HOBHOUSE 14 E. WILLIAMSON MASON 30 HUBERT W. PEET 38 JOHN HOARE 50 GEORGE EWAN 62 ROBERT PRICE 81 Canada JOHN EVANS 90 New Zealand ARCHIBALD BAXTER 102 United States ARTHUR DUNHAM 128 ALBERT VOTH 149 PHILIP GROSSER 157 vi Contents Part Two: The Good War Introduction 173 Britain ALEXANDER BRYAN 182 PETER BROCK 189 ROBERT L. HOCKLEY 205 ERNEST SPRING 216 KATHLEEN LONSDALE 232 KATHLEEN WIGHAM 243 New Zealand IAN HAMILTON 262 Australia PHIL HANCOX 298 United States ROGER W. AXFORD 316 ALFRED HASSLER 322 MALCOLM PARKER 336 LOWELL NAEVE 355 DONALD BENEDICT 376 DONALD WETZEL 391 Part Three: Cold-War America Introduction 407 BRADFORD LYTTLE 411 JEFFREY PORTEOUS 420 J.K. OSBORNE 430 ‘JOHNSON’ 455 Contents vii DAVID MILLER 464 Appendix 492 Further Reading 501 Foreword This anthology presents the accounts of the prison experiences of con- scientious objectors (COs) during three eras of armed conflict in the twentieth century. The editor, Peter Brock, tells us that his intent is to contribute to the ethnographic study of the prison and prison(er) culture, and to add the distinctive perspective of this category of pris- oners to the literary genre of prison writing. Firmly located within the twentieth-century history of pacifism and antiwar movements, this collection introduces a spirited group of political dissidents, their view of the prison and the societies that created them, and it succeeds bril- liantly. The prison emerges from these narratives, its characteristic fea- tures highlighted by their numbing repetition, and the spirit and resistance of the authors shines through as testimony to their signifi- cance as moral and political commentators of their eras. The historical organization and contextualization of the narratives, and the represen- tative scope of this selection allow Peter Brock to capture the heartbeat of the universal prison experience: the essential loss of freedom and self-determination to the dominating and immutable power of the prison. In recounting their carceral experiences, these writers also succeed in elucidating their age and societies, and the moral philosophies that inform their movements and communities. The editor’s introductions to each historical period, the biographical sketches of the writers, and the footnotes provide the essential context for broadly locating these narratives, and serve to connect them to a multiplicity of academic disciplines and interests. They ground the ideological positions of the writers within their traditions of radical dissent. They also locate the prison, and its changing forms of penal discipline and regime. The editor’s decision to provide long narrative pieces contributes significantly to this accomplishment. The broad range of writers selected and their order of presentation combines to produce a flowing and integrated exploration of political dissent and its penal xForeword suppression in the twentieth century. The majority of the writers are well educated, articulate, and politically conscious. Their accounts pro- vide critical insights into the operation of the prison. Generally progres- sive for their era, often their analysis and understanding predates similar discoveries and conclusions in penology. For example, Hobhouse, Lonsdale, Axford, and Hassler present the essentials of the ‘proven failure of imprisonment’ argument that only becomes established in penology in the 1970s. Indeed, Price provides a distinctly ‘penal aboli- tionist’ argument that is consistent with the contemporary analysis of that social movement. This selection of prison writing also mirrors the range of styles and formats that characterize this genre through the centuries. In memoirs, letters home, political tracts and pamphlets, the reader encounters a plethora of traditional voices. These include the astonishment and hor- ror of the innocent and naive’s first encounter with penal justice (Wigham); the moral denunciation of the reformer (Hobhouse); and the ‘How to Resist’ strategies of the prisoner activist (Miller). While these narratives are generally defiant, the ‘bitter humour’ of Hamilton epito- mizes the defiant contempt of the carnivalesque style of prison writing. These resisters write from the heart and accost the prison, ‘the insolence of its sadistic staff’ (Hamilton), and the ‘endless round of petty routine, overlaying the ever present fear and hostility’ (Hassler) that constitute its regimes. These accounts provide an opportunity to study the ethnography of the prison from a unique set of lenses, that of prisoners of conscience, who successfully overturned the debilitating stigma of criminalization, and were able to resist the consequent transformation of their social identity into that of the socially discredited criminal and convict. Unlike common ‘criminals,’ they are able to take the moral and intellectual high ground, from which they cast moral condemnation upon their captors and the prison institution. The absence of guilt or remorse is obvious: ‘Four years of my life for refusing to kill?’ (Osborne), ‘I was rather proud of my status’ (Brock). Outside community and political support served to further legitimate their stance and strengthen their resolve to resist. Ioan Davies (1990) in Writers in Prison argues that many prisoners of conscience write from the margins of their society and the prison. This is clearly the case for most of these writers, especially those imprisoned in the regime of ‘silence and solitude’ dominant during the first two world wars. Their marginal position provides the distance and relative detachment desired in the participant observer and ethnographer of the prison. Often their accounts evoke the alienated detachment of Foreword xi Mersault in Albert Camus’s L’Etranger or the wonder and incredulity of Kafka’s ‘A Report to the Academy’ and ‘In the Penal Colony.’ Those incarcerated for long periods (Hamilton) and, to a lesser extent, those imprisoned in the congregate labour and reformative regimes of the United States (Osborne, Miller) are drawn into the centre of prison culture and prisoners’ traditional resistance to the domination of the prison. In Hamilton we encounter the perfect synthesis. The radical humanist/political agitator integrated into the collective resistance of the prisoner community for whom ‘resistance is