Dear Anthony

You will probably want to tear this letter up but I beg you to read it. If you do, whilst I cannot hope that you will fully understand why I refuse to participate in what I consider an insane war, and  whilst I know I cannot compare my courage to yours in going back to the hell of the trenches, perhaps you may come to realise I am less of a coward than you  think me. You are not alone in that belief. On my few ventures into the village I have collected enough white feathers to stuff an eiderdown.  Poor Mother has, on instructions from father, who will not speak to me himself, told me to leave the house. I somehow doubt if she will send me off, as she did you, with a beautifully knitted scarf.

When I worked with the Friends Ambulance Corps I lived in dread of coming across you amongst the shattered bodies writhing in the mud, or enmeshed screaming in the barbed wire. But it was not, as you believe, squeamishness that made me move from Non Combatant to being an Absolutist. The reason I changed was because I realised that by choosing to do a job that absolved me from any killing on the front line, I was depriving a conscripted soldier from that possibility.

You told me that many of your colleagues have avoided killing anyone. Even that on occasion, when your trenches were close to the enemy’s, you made a pact to shoot above each other's heads.  I fervently believe war, which people do not seek, will only be made impossible when men who so believe remain steadfast in their convictions. I want working men to unite en masse and refuse to obey orders to kill each other. And that has to start with myself.

I would not presume to compare my suffering with yours, dear brother, but it has not been negligible. When I refused to wear a uniform a charming NCO threw one at me and made me strip off to my singlet and underpants and take a bare tent to the top of the cliff and stay there, in the snow, until I agreed to put it on. I was there for 4 days and nights until a doctor ordered me into hospital. Then I was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs, where I was in solitary confinement for six months, on a diet of little more than bread and water, as this hostelry does not accommodate the needs of vegetarians. We Conchies were regarded by the guards and other prisoners at best as cranks but mostly, in the shouts that went on all night, as “rotten shirkers” and worse. Now I am to be sent to a labour camp where my dainty hands , that look so like yours, which are more used to wielding a violin bow, will be engaged in hacking stones in a quarry.

We are told this is the War to end all Wars. You and I are trying to make this come true in different ways. Please God we survive to see the blessed peace for which we both are striving.

May the Lord bless and protect you, my beloved brother.

Hugh

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