de Kadt Family and Leeuwarden

David Jan’s Conscientious Objector Letter

Transcribed as written. There is no date on it, and the question marks mark words that could not be read.

Question 1

Describe the nature of your belief which is the basis of your claim made, and state whether or not your belief in a Supreme Being involves duties which in you are superior to those arising from any human relations

Love, I believe, is the creative force within man. I see it as the force which unites and creates harmony and wholeness. Be it between man, between man and woman, or man seeking himself, or man working with ideas and materials; everywhere there appears the universal desire to create unity. This I call love. It is in the life of Gandhi, who in so many ways showed the power of love. But it is as much in the life of Bach, seen if one is moved by his music.

It is this creative potential within man—this ability to love, that is to me the most important difference between man and other animals. It is , I believe, what the Friends (Quakers) refer to by “that of God in every man”. It is what God means to me. I do not believe that love is separate from man, but if stilled, man is no longer human. Therefore, I must develop and strengthen this divine force within myself and others.

Love, allowed to grow, can bring man into harmony with the universe. We become a whole complete being. Though love comes from within man, it is also greater than himself. It wells within a person but also transcends him, when it is fostered. It is an immense force, mysterious and in the end unfathomable. As with Gandhi or Bach, man can develop it to great heights, but the force exceeds and lasts far beyond the individual. In this sense, I say as Gandhi did that love is God.

There is much in life that is ugly, where love has been consumed by hate and violence. In it's absence, only faith in love can give life meaning. This is not an intellectual concept as much as it is a religious belief. It is a feeling, an emotion, a faith as the experience of love, too, is in a sense a religious experience. Without this faith life becomes empty and is lived in bitterness. When one denies love or is unable to accept it, one is destroying the uniqueness of man. Life becomes meaningless and therefore worthless. This happens in war. It happens always when hate destroys love. And it is equally destructive of this human spirit whether it occurs in the context of conflict between nations or individuals,.

What I am writing is an explanation of my present personal feelings. I hope never to feel that my way is THE way, for I am painfully aware of the incongruities of my position. Instead, I hope that my thoughts are taken for what they are meant to be: an attempt to deal with my responsibilities as a human being to humbly question and direct my own actions in the way that best nurtures the growth of love. This is my highest responsibility.

To live as a human being is to foster the Love that is within oneself. The basis of inhumanity is an inability to Love. It is the fulfillment of this divine force within man that I wish to be the basis of my life.

/War the force of Love, does not prevail. It destroys the potential to Love. A tragedy is that is so often stems from the desire to preserve something such as an ideal. But war can not do this. Recognizing that war—any act which reduces or destroys the capacity to Love—is destructive of something divine in man, I would, by participating in any manner, be destroying something in others and in myself, which I hold as sacred.

Sometimes we are destructive to the things we value. The faith in love is a difficult faith to maintain in the presence of hate. But war, to me is such a complete denial of all that is beautiful in man, of all that I value, that I feel I must say no to it. And in this realm, at least, attempt to curb my destructive impulses and seek alternatives that are creative.

Question 3

Explain how, when, and from what source you received the training and acquired the belief which is the basis of your claim made

I was born in the Netherlands. I lived through a war there. My parents and family were killed during the war. I do not remember them. I remember little of the war. I did not suffer.

I was young then—younger-- but yet I begin there because I realize more and more how strongly this history does influence my thinking. I do not really know what it is to be in the midst of war. Yet war has always been a close and real thing for me, perhaps more so then if I had spent my first ten years in the United States.

I can distinctly remember a very solemn time around the dining room table listening to a commemorative broadcast for the war dead. My grandfather cried a little.

Of course, many have experienced such things, and incomparably worse things and few have come to take the action I am taking. Nor in my case, are my beliefs a direct result of my childhood.

By heritage, I am Jewish. I put it this way because I am not, or no longer Jewish by religion, nor is there such a thing as a Jewish race, but I do feel ties to my Jewish background. In Holland my grandfather told me biblical stories. For some months, in my last year there, I attended a Wednesday afternoon religious class. But from these years, I retain mainly one thing; that Jews have suffered a great deal through the ages. The war, too, was integrally entwined in my mind with this persecution. This, perhaps more then anything, is the root of a certain sensitivity for human suffering and human responsibility, which I believe I have.

In the United States I went regularly to Sunday school for three years and I studied for my Bar Mitsvah. Both at home, where we regularly celebrated some Jewish holidays, and through Sunday school, I became familiar with “my” religion. I became sentimentally attached to some traditions, gained respect for some aspects, but never became devout.

More important is the development of my belief, in my contact with the American Friends Service Committee (A.F.S.C.) The ideas and people were not totally new. Previously I had gone summers to a camp based on Friends thinking and also Peninsula School, the first school I attended in this country, involved many of the same people and ideas I was to encounter with the A.F.S.C.

At the urging of a cousin and my aunt (with whom I was now living) I went to the first A.F.S.C. Conference on civil liberties for high school students. It was entitled Your American Heritage. “freedom for all”. Dr Ralph Bunche was one of the speakers. Here I began a long close relationship with A.F.S.C. I was excited and moved by this long weekend and by the friends I made. Very soon I applied for the annual week long High School Institute on International Relations. The institute topic this year was on prejudice. It is now many years ago but the human warmth I experienced there is still fresh in my mind. This feeling—experiencing the beauty of man's nature through contact with those whose lives express their ideals and their capacity to love—I was to encounter again and again. During the following years I went to many more such programs. Specifically, there were two more Civil Liberty conferences: “The problems of freedom in a new age”, with William G Douglas, Clark Kerr and Carl Spaeth and “Vision for a World Community” with Harold Stassen and Harry Ashmore and I attended two more week long institutes. In addition there were numerous weekend discussions and other type of programs.

Gradually, I became more active in the high school program. I participated more actively at conferences and at times I helped plan programs. During the last year in high school I worked with the high school committee (the advisory and planning committees for the A.F.S.C. 's regional high school program) and ways on the planning of a Civil Liberties Conference and an initiative.

This was the ways I made contact with the ideas of pacifism and the Friends and Gandhian concepts of Love. A conference or institute, whatever it's subject, was really always a means of working toward peace and human brotherhood. And there was always a spiritual element as well. Not a day passed when there was not one or more opportunities for silent meditation in the manner of Friends. This was always important to me and became increasingly so. At the week long institutes, I rarely missed the half hour meditations. On the occasions that I was able to be open to it, this was a very beautiful experience—being together with so many in such great peace. It is the kind of thing that means little when spoken of in descriptive terms, but that can have a great effect when experienced.

During these activities I learned much in subject matter, which I retained and by which I developed my beliefs and re enforced my feelings but on a less tangible level they were even more influential. Students and adults all around were seeking to find alternatives to the ugliness of injustice and violence. People were there to find meaningful and satisfying ways to be men. To join with this was for me a powerful experience of love and beauty. The specifics of my conscientious objection developed only gradually out of this. The more spiritual basis grew throughout the years of my contact with the Friends. My early sensitivity had led me to seek and here I found beautiful and sometimes satisfying ways in which to grow: the Friends idea that there is something of God in every man, and their faith in the power of love.

Question

Under what circumstances, if any, do you believe in the use of force?

Conflict is a reality of life. As a social being, we exhort ourselves in groups and as individuals on others. We use force; be it mental—spiritual or psychological-- or physical. This is at the basis of interaction.

Force is a two edged sword. It effects those who inflict it as well as those whom submit to it. And there is the continual danger that we will lose control of it. A slave owner is as much committed to his way of alive as he foresees his slaves to be. He can not suddenly become lenient and expect his slaves to remain as before. Force is as much the master of his life as he the master of hes slaves. He is a free man only to the extent his slaves are.

What I am saying is that to be involved with other is to exhort oneself on others, that is to use force. In so doing one loses a certain freedom. That is the basis of all social life. To love someone is to do this but we are free to choose the way we relate with others. What kind of force we use and how we exhort it can be and should be a deliberate choice. There are similarities between slave, owners and lover. Both are involved, both are committed and consequently, both suffer a loss of freedom of action. But of course there is a world of difference in the affect of their two ways. One way can only evoke hate and fear, the other possibly can evoke love. One is destructive, the other may be creative.

This to me is the question that one should always ask before the use of force: what will be the effect? For myself. I measure the effect by the extent to which it creates or destroys my own freedom and that of others. Most men, I think, consider the consequences of their actions in their daily lives, though not so explicitly. It is when men gather in groups or become controlled by hate, that they no longer evaluate their acts this way. Then men lose control and they are carried and masted by force. Force is non discriminate. It is violence. When a child dies in a conflict among nations over which he is powerless and ignorant: this is indiscriminate force. The use of atomic weapons or any weapon whereby the enemy need not be directly confronted is especially conducive to and almost invariably results in violence. This is what I understand modern warfare to be and to this I am deeply opposed to war and to participating in any manner that is necessary for it's continuation.

But there are many areas in which I feel the use of force to be necessary and justified. I would pull, forcibly, a child from the path of a car. Perhaps this is so obvious as to be ridiculous. But it is true that the child may momentarily hate you. And to reiterate, I would only advocate the use of force to coerce men, (mentally or physically) when it appears to strengthen their ability to love. And it is also true that the child may be hurt. I may hit the child’s head on the sidewalk and hurt or even kill him. But the object is to save the child as fully as possible. And the only means may be to use physical force. Thus the means are consistent with the end. Two other alternatives exist: to leave the child alone as a complete refusal to use physical force. This by analogy is the extreme of pacifism that advocates complete non resistance to evil. The other alternative is to shoot the child to be certain to prevent the horror of him being run over. This by analogy, is modern warfare. Both alternatives I reject.

As the child, the criminal must be forcibly restricted. But again, there is the difference that in theory force is used to preserve that which is good in society and to rehabilitate the criminal. There is decidedly a need for a police system in our society and I support such use of force though it be a sad and an imperfect means. But there is a great difference between a police force and an army. The former's effectiveness is measured by it's ability to achieve the end with the least use of force and the latter's by it's ability to inflict violence!

And last, I reluctantly go one step further. The nations of the world use armies and the threat of violence in dealing with each other. This is a reality which can not b e quickly changed. Any significant step way from the present tension and insane balance of terror, is worthy of support. A permanent peace must be based on the acceptance of love into man's lives. It must involve the total rejection of violence. But an international police force, if desirable in a long range disarmament program is something I could accept. I could only accept it, however, if it is a tool for disarmament dedicated to using always a minimum of physical force, depending primarily on moral force, and using no arms of mass destruction.

My belief is essentially a compromise between extremes. It is an attempt to find a balance and therefore can not be a rigid doctrine of action. As a social being, I can not accept total denial of the use of force. But I consider modern warfare an extreme that is madness. It is opposed to all that my faith causes me to value and as such, I must reject it and seek alternatives.

Question

Describe the actions and behavior in your life which in your opinion most conspicuously demonstrate the consistency and depth of your religious convictions.

My interest in social problems and social science may well have sprung from my sensitivity to injustice, hate and fear. My continued and lasting interest is certainly in part activated by the desire to help man live as best possible and to enable them to express in their lives the love which comes forth naturally from healthy people. Recently, I transferred into history from sociology. If I do not eventually return to work in work in the social sciences, it will be because knowing myself better. I feel that I can more effectively lead a creative life in ???????????? Concern with these problems remain great.

As I indicated in section 2, question 3, in regard to the A.F.S.C., I have done much work for organizations which express my conviction. While in Berkeley, I have occasionally done volunteer work for ??? for peace. While working in college ???????????// Antioch college, I did volunteer w work for the A.F.S.C. And participated in a survey project under the auspices of the A.F.S.C. , to aid the work of settlement houses. Also, while in Chicago, I attended Friends meetings a number of times as I have also done in Pal Alto and less frequently in Yellow Springs.

The best measure of the depth of my convictions is my effectiveness as a creative human being and my attempts to achieve this. Over the years I have had a general desire and increasing ability to understand and have growing relations with people. I attempt to have my daily contacts reflect a respect for people as human beings. I can not nor will I ever desire to like or to be close to everyone I have contact with but I do always try not to hurt people. I attempt to know myself. This is the most difficult and necessary aspect of my faith—the effort to develop oneself as a whole, creative loving human being.

Question

Have you ever given public expression, written or oral, to the views herein expressed as the basis for your claim made in series 1 above. If so, specify when and where.

During the summer after graduation from high school in 1959, I walked in a peace walk over a period of four days. In addition to walking in commemoration of Hiroshima, we hoped to increase awareness of the dangers of nuclear war and the futility of defense by present means. In addition to walking and ccarrying signs, I had much contact with individuals by passing out literature to passersby and stores and answering questions and conversing along the way. At the end of the walk, the core group of nine, of which I was a member were received by mayor Christopher of San Francisco. The walk had wide press, radio and TV coverage. I enclose some clippings ??? a literature.

In Chicago, during the winter of 1960, I participated in a walk protesting the imprisonment of Rose Robinson, who had refused to file income tax return on pacifist grounds. During that same winter, I passed out literature as a member of a group protesting the intention of France to test atomic weapons in the Sahara. I enclose a copy of the leaflet. I have circulated and signed and contributed money for numerous petitions concerned with problems of arms control, world peace and civil liberties. I enclose one such petition.