CHAPTER 4. SOCIAL WORK 54
Bill was now an anarchist and also an atheist, although he felt that the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount were a true moral guide. We visited each other nearly every day and on countless evenings met with young socialists seeking to bolster up their weak-kneed pacifism. Bill, of course, would refuse to register when his time came. When he did refuse I went to local pacifists to get bail for him but they all had some excuse. It was Jerry who went his bail. Four local Communists who had fought in Spain wrote a letter to the Milwaukee JOURNAL in which they said that Bill had never been a Communist, nor had he ever been in Spain. The Party Line had changed and now they were patriotic.
Meanwhile my turn had come. I was supposed to register on April 27th, and prepared a statement of my reasons for refusing. I would also resign my job with the county. On the Friday before, Bill and I rode to Chicago with a Quaker friend and attended a meeting of CO's at a Brethren church, Evan Thomas was there and he was going to refuse also. Of us old timers who were in jail in World War I and who would again endanger our families and jobs and property, there were Harold Gray of Saline, Mich., Max Sandin of Cleveland, Howard Moore of Cherry Valley, N.Y., and Julius Eichel and Evan Thomas of New York City, and myself. Also, of course, the Marquardt family, being the old patriarch and his sons and sons-in-law of Grasston, Minnesota. A. J. Muste, head of the FOR would also refuse. We all felt that we would get five years and were prepared to take it.
I spoke at the meeting, visited with friends, and started hiking home in the late afternoon. I walked about ten miles, and got a ride with an ex-army captain of the last war. He was against this one. Then I walked awhile and got a ride with a young fellow from Zion City. I gave them both CWs containing my statement. I did not have a cent on me and it was dark. I thought of the Chinese who lived on a mouthful of rice a day. Just then I saw an ear of corn on the road. I shelled it and for the next three hours chewed it grain by grain and was not hungry when I finished. Finally after 10 p.m. when it commenced to drizzle a man picked me up and took me to Milwaukee. He admired Lew Ayres who was a CO and was glad to read my statement. Arriving home I received a telegram of congratulation as to my refusal to register from Dorothy who was speaking in Albuquerque. On my last day at the office my Legion friends were very kind to me. The papers had a fair summary and picture on the front page. My argument with the timid souls who felt I would hurt the cause by being radical was that they sneaked off to a CO camp and no one knew they had gone, while if you refused to register it was the man biting the dog and was news. Therefore your ideas went before the world.
- The following is my statement of refusal to register as printed in the May, 1942 CW , and addressed to the U.S. District attorney.
- Dear Sir: As a Tolstoian—a Christian Anarchist-I choose to follow the example of the early Christians who refused to place a pinch of incense upon the altar of Caesar. I consider that registration for the purpose of helping this or any other war is the first step
