6 September 2016
3 hours

- ‘Pacifism Under Occupation’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Else Zeuthen. Date: January 3, 1947. Format: A2, 6 pages. Page 3, 3 columns.
Short article on the wartime experiences of the Danish section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WIL). In 1940 WIL had 20,000 members, in 1945 they still had 20,000 members. Zeuthen explains the high number of members and the non-violent resistance organized by MIL as a consequence of a pacifist tendency that runs deep in Danish society. After the invasion MIL started to collaborate with other like minded groups (the Quakers, for instance) at a local level, as national meetings had been outlawed. Their wartime activities include caring for the persecuted Jewish minority (when most of them were deported to Therersienstadt they began sending food parcels) and making preparations for postwar Denmark.

- ‘Sabotage and non-violence’  
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Else Zeuthen. Date: March 14, 1947. Format: A2, 6 pages. Page 3, 3 columns.
‘In Denmark pacifists were mostly opposed to sabotage […] because it involved a degree of violence […] indistinguishable from warfare.’
After having read Bart de Ligt, Zeuthen was at first in favor of sabotage, but then she changed her mind, not because sabotage cannot be carried out non-violently, but because it is not done openly and reeks of actual warfare. Yet she describes several acts of successful sabotage by the Danish resistance and continues: ‘Theorists of non-violence never maintained that passive resistance would not involve loss of life, only that one should not take life.’ She concludes that a lot of research still needs to be done. ‘There is in the occupied nations a rich field of experience which should be investigated with a view to revision of the theory.’

- ‘Gandhi and Non-Violence’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: George Davies. Date: October 24, 1947. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 3 columns.
A rather run of the mill article on Indian politics and Gandhi’s role in it as the ‘saint and shrewd politician’ that he was. The key quote, from Gandhi: ‘Our greatest weakness remains our lack of appreciation of non-violence. While we keep to physical non-violence, violence lurks in our bosoms, and so we are betrayed into violence against one another. […] We knew that the policy of “divide and rule” was here in 1920, yet we made Hindu Muslim unity a part of our programme. These  examples of our weakness are deplorable. If my analysis of our failure is correct, it is a great comfort that our remedy rests upon ourselves.

- ‘I Stayed with Gandhi’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Margaret Jones. Date: December 19, 1947. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 4 columns.
An engaging article on Margaret Jones’ stay at Gandhi’s ashram and in his house. The article doesn’t tell exactly when (the subtitle of the article reads: Margaret Jones describes a war-time visit to Gandhi’s Ashram at Sevagram) and how long she stayed at Sevagram. A charming and no doubt somewhat idealized account of daily life in Gandhi’s ashram.

- ‘Will Gandhi’s Methods be Forgotten?’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Samar Ranjan Sen. Date: February 13, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 3 columns.
Despite all the turmoil in India in 1948 the lessons of Gandhi will not be forgotten, for, as the author claims, they are embedded in the hearts of the majority of the Indian people.
Samar Ranjan Sen, economics professor and a former WRI council member, paints a vivid picture of a demoralized India, downtrodden by defeat upon defeat against the British imperialists. Until Gandhi came along and offered a whole new weapon, which turned out to be quite successful. This part of the story ‘is all widely known. What is still unknown for the most part is this: the Gandhi technique was a very strange one for India. Many of the leaders of the Congress Party thought it was extremely ridiculous. The upper and middle classes, especially those who had received a Western education, never took to it kindly. The young university students were often openly contemptuous, placing more faith in bombs and guns. But the rank and file of the nationalist movement took up Gandhi’s method with enthusiasm. With unerring instinct they saw in it a way out of the terrible morass they were in. It heartened them immeasurably to know that their fight against imperialism need not cease merely because they had no howitzers or bombing planes. But as they practiced the new technique, they discovered that in non-violence they had a more powerful weapon than all the military weapons they had ever possessed.’

- ‘My Last Interview with Gandhi’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Samar Ranjan Sen. Date: March 12, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 4, 2 columns.
In Sen’s last conversation with Gandhi, a month before his death, they discussed, among other things, the present state of Europe. Gandhi is very mild in his opinions, even on the Germans, who had become deeply demoralized. ‘What a pity that such a brave people do not realize that it is not arms but that it is the spirit of resistance which is the important thing. They are today so prostrate because they had put all their reliance on arms.’ When the Minister of Education arrives their discussion continues, as they talk about several Hindu students on a hunger strike. ‘“You must never allow your judgment to be influenced by this hunger strike. If they are right they would soon have no case for continuing their fast. If they are wrong let them die if they persist in continuing their fast. […] A fast should never be undertaken to coerce others.” Then he turned to me: “This is the beauty of non-violence. It would not succeed unless it is also associated with truth.”’

- ‘Gandhi and Education I: The Project’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Barbara Heartland. Date: July 2, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 2, 2 columns.
Barbara Heartland has spent a year teaching at the Basic Education School in Sevagram. She offers a very clear picture of basic education and the ideas behind it.
As India couldn’t possibly afford an adequate free education for each and every child, Gandhi came up with an alternative which he termed Nagee Talim or basic education. It consisted of compulsory education for 7 years on a nationwide scale, with the mother tongue as the medium of instruction and manual and productive work, a handicraft, as the central focus to all other areas of education. 
‘Education should be given through the medium of a craft; it should be build up and around the scientific knowledge concerned with the craft and all the activities making for its production. The work should be correlated in such a way that the child will receive a good general education, based on the things with which his hands and mind will come into contact and from which he can gain actual experience at home.’

- ‘Gandhi and Education II: Curriculum’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Barbara Heartland. Date: July 9, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 2, 2 columns.
The first experimental school for basic education was started at Sevagram in the Autumn of 1938 under the direct supervision of Gandhi. The curriculum is arranged so that the knowledge to be imparted is related to the main craft and to the lives of the children. The study of nature, mathematics, science, language are all taught in relation to the craft that is learned. At Sevagram that was spinning and cloth production. History and geography are taught during rambles and visits to local places of interest. Hygiene is another important aspect of the curriculum.

- ‘Gandhi and Education III: Crucible’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Author: Barbara Heartland. Date: July 16, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 2, 3 columns
In the last part Heartland discusses the training of teachers and the development of forms of post basic training. The educational institution at Sevagram is set up as a democratic body with a general assembly and a student government. The village plays an important role in school life (and vice versa), and when the 7 years of basic education have ended, the student is expected to be able to lead in village activities and to be the backbone of a true democracy. ‘All those who have taken into their hands the construction of the means whereby India may come to her full stature again – perhaps to stand as an example to the rest of the world – have taken on themselves a gigantic task, but they work to the plans of a master architect.’

- ‘Tolstoy Showed the Way’
Peace News, weekly periodical. L. Perno. Date: August 6, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 4, 4 columns.
Not much Tolstoy in Perno’s article, and not much ‘way’ either. It’s best not to look for governments to lead the way, Perno states. Instead it’s better to identify with the people. But how that helps to lead the way, and where that way is going, remains a mystery.

- ‘The Non-Violent Society I: Sevagram Laboratory’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Hallam Tennyson. Date: November 5, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 4 columns.
Tennyson departs from the image of Gandhi – a caricature, really – that is often depicted of him in the popular press. ‘All machinery is evil. Let’s put on a loin cloth and meet our needs from a goat and a spinning wheel. […] All very mediaeval and saintly, we think, but definitely not of this world, not anything concerning ourselves.’
That is, until you have actually visited Sevagram. Gandhian economics is based on village life, on the cottage industry, farming and self-sufficiency. Only surplus goods are meant to be exported. ‘This will serve to exercise our moral responsibility as consumers do not support through our purchases the exploitation of others; limit the greed and concentration of power and wealth that is a natural part of large-scale industrialization, resulting in cutthroat competition for the world market; restore work to its true dignity as a means of developing the creative faculties of man and rescue him from the soulless drudgery in which industrialization has imprisoned him.’

- ‘The Non-Violent Society II: The Indian Theory’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Hallam Tennyson. Date: November 12, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 4 columns.
The second installment is based on the works of Gandhian economist and WRI council member J.C. Kumarappa. In Kumarappa’s view Gandhian economics provides a third way (next to capitalism and socialism), that of non-violent economics. A central element is that we should focus on the well-being of the worker rather than the accumulation of wealth. Gandhian economics aims for a wide and even distribution of wealth; provides for the needs of the people before luxuries and comfort are catered for; it should be a means of eliciting all the faculties of the worker and developing his personality; and it should be conductive to peace and harmony of society. 

- ‘The Non-Violent Society III: India and the West’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Hallam Tennyson. Date: November 19, 1948. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 4 columns.
The final part is a plea for a decentralized and self-sustaining economy along the lines of Sevagram. At the very least one should stop consuming anything that has been produced by methods of exploitation and violence. ‘And if sincerely followed through, this may involve a change in our standard of values and a simplification of our lives which would be of inestimable benefit.’

- ‘Pacifism in Occupied Norway’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Diderich Lund. Date: January 14, 1949. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 3, 4 columns.
Diderich Lund, another former WRI council member, departs from the idea that other wars will follow and that it is up to the pacifists to make preparations for effective forms of nonviolent resistance, which, according to Lund, have played such an important role in Norway during WWII. The choice of large parts of the resistance to focus on nonviolent means was a practical one rather than based on ideology. ‘A great many people took the way of non-violent resistance because they felt it was the only effective way for a small nation to fight against overwhelming force.’ They knew they were dependent on outside forces to end the occupation. This choice, as far as Lund is concerned, was also rooted in a unity of means and ends, and, to a lesser extent, in the words of Gandhi: ‘Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advice violence. But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, that forgiveness is more manly than punishment.’ Important elements of a strategy of preparing for non-violent resistance in the next war are leadership (the most outspoken leaders will of course run the risk of being silenced, but even then they serve an important purpose) and an effective underground press.

- ‘Pacifism in Denmark II: Nazism Throve on Violent Resistance’
Peace News, weekly periodical. Hagbard Jonassen. Date: June 17, 1949. Format: A2, 8 pages. Page 2, 3 columns.
Short article on Denmark during the German occupation. It asks why Denmark was treated so much better than most other occupied countries (the standard explanation is that the Germans thought very highly of the Scandinavians, but Jonassen prefers to think it was their lack of resistance to the German occupation forces, hence the title). The non-violent character of their resistance is explained by their dependence for their freedom on the military success of the allied forces. As they realized there was no way for the Danes of defeating the Germans by force, they had to look for other ways.  

- ‘The Farce of Civil Defence: The Most Futile Campaign Ever Launched – Official Preparation For National Suicide’
Peace News, weekly periodical. No author. Date: October28, 1949. Format: A2, 8 pages. Front page, 4 columns.
What a decade or so later would be touted as one of the main solutions to the problem of war in the nuclear age, is completely denounced and derided by the Peace News editorial staff. 
The British Government came up with the idea for a voluntary civil defence force that was to be deployed during and after a nuclear strike in order to cater for the casualties and restore order. Peace News and other regarded this as part of an overall strategy to question and debunk the horrific effects of the nuclear attacks in Japan and to propagate the idea that it would be possible to restore so form of normalcy after an large-scale nuclear attack.