CITIZENSHIP AND WAR

The denial of citizenship to all conscientious objectors to war was recently confirmed when a congressional committee emphatically rejected the proposed Griffin bill, an attempt to put into law the minority opinions of the Supreme Court in the Bland, Schwimmer, and Macintosh cases. The rejection of this bill is a natural consequence of the revival of nationalism which the country is now experiencing. But it reveals a spirit utterly at variance with the principles of American government, and with the best contemporary thought.

In the cases mentioned, a trained nurse, a Hungarian social worker, and a Yale professor, all applying for citizenship, professed a sincere aversion to warring on their fellow men. On this account, they refused to swear that they would bear arms in defense of the country, although willing in all other respects to serve it to the best of their ability. The liberal minority of the court more wisely considered that the desirability of these three as citizens far offset whatever drawback their pacifistic influence might have.

The majority of the court, and the committee, in denying citizenship to pacifists, have set at nought the principle of freedom of thought, supposedly a foundation stone of the constitution. They have discriminated in favor of illiterate aliens who are rushed through the naturalization process in a steady stream, taking the oath either without realizing its significance or without ever intending to fulfill it. In their zeal against those who are honestly opposed to war, they have deprived the nation of many citizens of a superior type which it most needs. Finally, they have set up a legislative barrier to the peace towards which the government is supposedly working.