Stop This Train

As I watch the draft return, I wonder what it means to young people today. Perhaps defending the "national interest"--a lonely outpost among the oil wells, like something out of a Foreign Legion movie. As I grew up, the draft was one of the facts of life--like the war in Vietnam, which it served. I couldn't remember a time when it hadn't been there. To me it meant that the government had the ultimate claim on how I used my life. And in the end, whether it is called "preparedness" or "standing up to the Russians," that is what the draft will always mean to me, and why I will always oppose it.

And yet, as I grew up, I found it comforting to have something so reliable on the horizon. There it was, waiting for me on my 18th birthday: a fork in the road, a moment of choice, I was convinced, that would make "all the difference." Over the years my grave doubts about Vietnam had caused me to begin questioning all the variously given reasons why people should make war on one another. At some point I decided that human beings were not my enemies and that I would not kill them.

How this would translate into a response to the draft, I wasn't sure. One option was to apply for deferment as a conscientious objector. But although I respected the struggle of other C.O.'s for recognition of the demands of conscience, I thought it a strange commentary on our world that people should have to justify their refusal to kill.

Deferment seemed to represent a kind of private whim which the system could easily afford to indulge as long as it was claimed by only a few. Rather than entitling me to any privileges, I believed my conscience impelled me to challenge the legitimacy of the system itself. I decided that when I turned 18, I would simply refuse to register.

By the time that moment arrived, the situation had clearly changed on me. It was the end of 1973, halfway through my first year of college. The war went on, but had been "Vietnamized." Nixon had ended the draft, and classification was no longer an issue. All that was required was that I register at my local draft board. Nevertheless, I decided that as long as registration remained I might as well proceed with the original plan. Accordingly, and without telling anyone else what I was doing, I mailed a letter to the Selective Service System informing them of my refusal "now or ever" to register for the draft.

"I cannot admit that an immoral and inhumane bureaucracy has any moral authority over my life," I declared. "There comes a time when one must stand somewhere and not be moved."

What I regret most, looking back on this and subsequent correspondence, is the tone of heroic certainty, conscious as I am now of how little I had then struggled with the challenges I was raising. I believed it was necessary to confront the system in the Ghandhian spirit of openness--though this was undermined, from the start, by my simultaneous efforts to keep the whole business a secret from my family. I was not ready for that much openness!

Nevertheless, I felt very pleased with myself. I had written a bold letter, and for several days I strutted about in the warm glow of my newfound existential freedom. In time that wore off, and I returned to the everyday business of life.

After two months I had almost managed to forget the whole thing when I received a polite, officious letter from the Selective Service System acknowledging my declaration and describing the bleak process I had set in motion. From the SSS my case would pass to the FBI; then to the U.S. Attorney's office and the federal courts. And then? The penalty for violation of the law in this case was five years' imprisonment and/or $10,000.

For the first time it all hit me. The pebble I had thrown was producing ripples. My oceanic feelings of solidarity with the world melted away, and I found myself, quite suddenly, alone.

Over the next few months this issue--"The Problem," as I dubbed it--became my constant companion. This was, of course, quite boring to my friends, but to me life suddenly had all the excitement of a chase. Suddenly the world had become a regular treasure hunt of clues, meanings, and fortuitous signs. I apprenticed myself to The Problem, and almost every day it brought me some new lesson (more often than not, some bit of common sense): Beware of doing the right thing for the wrong reason; the way we arrive at a decision may be as important as the decision itself, etc. (Each of my "discoveries" appeared as some kind of categorical formulation.) This latter inspiration seemed especially important to me. It may or may not be wrong to register for the draft, I thought, but what is certainly wrong is to fail to acknowledge a dilemma--the fact that a choice is present--and to fail to suffer the anguish of it.

The question was this: Is registering for the draft in itself so terribly wrong that one should risk everything to avoid it? Certainly, for most people there was no dilemma at all. No one was being drafted, no one was asking me to carry a weapon or make any commitment about the future. Nothing was asked of me but that I sign my name.

But what did that mean? The government didn't need my name. They knew who I was. Surely what was at issue was an act of obedience, a gesture of consent. I must personally write my name in their book. If that was really such a little thing, why was I threatened with prison?

It occurred to me that the draft was part of the quiet militarization of society--an effort to make war seem a harmless bit of bureaucracy, a natural part of the landscape. There were surely other people who took this seriously, but I didn't know them.

At last I informed my family of the situation. And in their anguish, my own doubts and uncertainties took on flesh and blood. They respected my conscience, but naturally enough prayed and argued that this cup might be induced to pass from me. What did I hope to accomplish by going to prison? There would always be time enough to protest. Why must it be now? Registration, I was told again and again, is "not the same thing as the draft," and the draft was over.

I couldn't very well explain to my family what I only vaguely realized myself: The choice I faced was only nominally concerned with the draft. It was the larger question of what my life was about that really had me troubled. On the deepest level a voice told me that the purpose of my life and the purpose of the draft did not coincide, and the less we had to do with one another, the better.

Sometime during this period I read In Solitary Witness, Gordon Zahn's classic account of the life and death of Franz Jagerstatter. This Austrian peasant, a devout Catholic, acted against the advice of his community, the "responsible" public authorities, the Church-- indeed, acted alone--in refusing to serve in Hitler's army. For this he was beheaded.

I have always carried in my mind an image of Jagerstatter on the day he was called to active duty, walking alone to the next village to turn himself in at the police station. He put his affairs in order, said goodbye to his family, served at Mass at the village church where he was a sexton. Some of the farmers of his village still remember that morning: how he stopped on the hill above his village to wave goodbye to his neighbors before disappearing forever on the other side. At the request of the prison chaplain, he put into writing an account of his actions in the form of an extraordinary series of meditations.

He described a dream he had had sometime in the early years of the Nazi regime. He had found himself on a train and heard screaming voices. When he asked where the screams were coming from, another voice told him, "Don't you know where this train is going? We are bound for hell." When he woke he realized that the train had been National Socialism, carrying its passengers to destruction. Surely one must jump off such a train when one discovers its destination, no matter what the risks or consequences.

The draft is such a train. Its destination is nothing other than war and misery. Should one sign aboard now simply because the train has not yet left" the station, comforting one's conscience with the thought that there will always be another chance to jump? Even if that were so, how would we explain to ourselves that we did nothing to warn the other passengers?

Then, as now, it struck me that when disaster falls--the disaster that we can foresee only too clearly--it is already too late to prevent it. The time to change direction is always now; the time to stop the next war is before it starts. I could only get around this logic by forgetting it. And that is what I did.

After five months, I was exhausted with The Problem. I no longer cared to remember what the fuss was all about. I was tired of the blank expressions around me, the isolation, the doubts, the anguish of my family--and, yes, the real threat of prison. When at the end of May I received a letter from the Justice Department informing me that my case was under review for "prosecutive determination," I got on a bus to my local draft board and signed my name on their papers.

I brought another letter that reiterated my feelings, even as they were being contradicted by my actions. I stated that I was now registering under explicit threat, but that I wished at the same time to reaffirm my basic opposition to war and preparation for war.

In July I received a letter acknowledging that I was no longer in violation of the law. And yet The Problem refused to go away. The draft card weighed heavy in my pocket. I carried it everywhere, like a token of shame. It followed me in my dreams. I would take out my card and look at it. Perhaps I could throw it away.

But in the end I always kept it. Not out of fear of legal consequences; I didn't honestly suppose there would be any. What restrained me was the fear that even then the weight would not disappear from my chest--like Judas' ridiculous gesture, returning his silver to the elders. As if that could make any difference. "What is that to us?"

And that fear led to a deeper mystery, one that didn't bear too much thinking about. It was not enough to say no to the draft. That was only to beg the question of what one's life was for. The truth demands more from us than recognition. It calls us to be obedient, to follow, to change our lives. It was that larger affirmation and the responsibility it would demand that really frightened me.

The fact is, we must do more than resist the draft. We have to find a way of translating our values and beliefs into a way of living, as Bonhoeffer put it, "for the others."

By the next year I had reached a crisis in my search. So many people had urged me, in avoiding prison, to preserve my "freedom"--my freedom to act in the future. And yet I didn't feel free. I remembered with longing those earlier days, how fresh the air had seemed! To be free is to be committed. To be otherwise is to be adrift.

Another "categorical formulation" occurred to me: There is a hazard in postponing critical moral issues in our lives. The choices we make now have their consequences. The world may be different because of the choice we now make--or refuse to make. And what is more, we may be different too.

I decided to leave school for awhile, and found my way in September, 1975, to the Catholic Worker in New York City. I won't try to describe all I have learned in the nearly five years of my association with this community, except to say that I experienced here a quiet conversion of sorts. I came to understand that the question that had perplexed me, that yes or no--ultimately a response to God--is not a choice we make once and for all on our 18th birthday, but is the basis of a lifelong journey in which we progress, if we do at all, only by stumbling. I had looked for the answer in a tempest of conflicting arguments and rationalizations. It finally came to me in a form I had not expected: a still, small voice.

That fall the government announced plans for a National Registration Day. All 18-year-olds would be required to register for the draft on a single day. In October I tore my draft card in half and mailed part of it to the Selective Service System. I declared myself "unregistered" and promised to destroy the other half on National Registration Day. Inevitably, I supplied another letter:

"Now, as if it were my own choice to make, I wish to say no to the process by which war claims dominion over our lives, by which it becomes indistinguishable as a machine from the thoughtless gestures of countless individuals. I disarm, I declare myself a demilitarized zone...."

In the end, there was no National Registration Day. Congress chose instead to discontinue registration and consign the draft to "deep standby." Until now.

At 24 I still fall within legal range of the draft. Until President Carter's announcement that registration would only apply to 18-to-20-year-olds I assumed I would have to face the issue once again. I may have to yet.

The draft has been my nemesis and my ally. It pops up at critical points in my life, like a star by which I calculate the course my life has taken. So I look at the world and I look at myself and I state (with all the caution I have learned to attach to such resolutions) that I will not register again for the draft. And I seriously propose to young men and women reading this that they consider doing the same--also considering, of course, the possible risks involved. Those risks, at the present time, may be less than the risks of not acting at all.

Those who are not able to consider such a step at this time should at least consider that a choice is involved. It is not a free choice nor an easy one, but a choice nonetheless, and one which the government can't make for us, no matter what law is passed.

There are significant differences between the current situation and the one I faced six years ago. All of them argue in favor of resistance. In 1973 registration was the residue of a draft which had already ended. Today it is unquestionably a first step toward the draft's return. It comes in the midst of rumors of war, at a time when more people than ever since Vietnam are ready to believe that the problems facing our nation can be solved through military action. The president says that registration for the draft is a demonstration of unity and the willingness of the American people to sacrifice. We have to ask ourselves, while there's still time, where this train is headed.

I have recounted my own story in some detail, not because it is exemplary, nor because it corresponds exactly with the questions young people must struggle with today. I hope it serves as an example of the way our lives are formed in the choices we make. I know how hard it is to face this issue at 18, 19...or 24. I know how important it is to feel that we are not alone--to feel that someone, somewhere has asked the same questions and suffered the same doubts.

If my story has anything else to share I hope it is a bit of encouragement: Just because we cannot now hear our inner voice above the noise that is all around us does not mean it has gone silent, or that we shall not hear it tomorrow.

Robert Ellsberg was an orderly at a cancer hospital in New York City when this article, a version of which was first printed in The Catholic Worker, appeared.