their interests and backgrounds, they found themselves in agreement
on the most fundamental of their values, when all the rest chose to go
another way. By standing together they all gained strength for the
ordeals through which each must go, and they were filled with the spirit
of others before them and far removed from them, who had understood life
in the same way.[1]

The incident may be taken as symbolic of the experience through which
pacifists have gone in this Second World War, too. Men and women of many
creeds, of diverse economic backgrounds, of greatly divergent
philosophies, with wide variations in education, have come together in
the desire to sustain one another and aid one another in making their
protest against war. Each in his own way has refused to participate in
the mass destruction of human life which war involves, and by that
refusal has been united by the strongest bonds of sympathy with those of
his fellows who have done likewise. But it is the storm that has brought
unity. When the skies clear, there will be a memory of fellowship
together, but there will also be a realization that in the half light we
have seen only one aspect of each other's being, and that there are
enormous differences between us. Our future hope of achieving the type
of world we want will demand a continuation of our sense of unity,
despite our diversities.

At present pacifism is no completely integrated philosophy of life. Most
of us would be hard pressed to define the term "pacifist" itself.
Despite the fact that according to the Latin origins of the word it
means "peace maker," it is small wonder that our non-pacifist friends
think of the pacifist as a negative obstructionist, because until the
time came to make a negative protest against the evil of war we
ourselves all too often forgot that we were pacifists. In other times,
if we have been peace-makers at all, we have thought of ourselves
merely as doing the duty of citizens, and, in attempting to overcome
some of the causes of conflict both within our domestic society and in
the relations between nations, we have willingly merged ourselves with
other men of goodwill whose aims and practices were almost identical to
ours.

Since the charge of negativism strikes home, many pacifists defend
themselves by insisting that they stand primarily for a positive
program, of which war-resistance is only a pre-requisite. They oppose
war because it is evil in itself, but they op