17 May 2016
3 hours

Continuation J.B. Th. Hugenholtz Archief

The International Union of Antimilitaristic Clergymen was founded in 1925 in Switzerland. At the start the Union consisted of 115 reformed clergymen, a number that increased to 436 in 1931. The Union was founded at the instigation of Kerk en Vrede, which, in 1931, had 8,000 members, including 350 ministers, and 90 sections all over the country. Its monthly publication Kerk en Vrede had a press run of 10,000 copies. In that same year Kerk en Vrede organized a petition, together with the Dutch labour party, the SDAP, for unilateral disarmament for which they collected over 1,5 million signatures.

Archive Box 16-20. The cover states: International Union of Antimilitaristic Clergymen / 1925-1935.
A huge collection of correspondence, announcements, minutes, plans and miscellaneous material in German, French, English and Dutch.. 

Archive box 22. The cover states: Peace Army / 1932-1937.
The Peace Army was an initiative by three ministers, Sheppard, Gray and Roydon, in response to the failure of the League of Nations to stop or intervene in the Sino-Japanese War. After the publication of their open letter and the positive response to their call to set up a peace army by the Manchester Guardian, some 800 volunteers in Britain alone came forward, willing to travel to China at their own expense and to form a peace barrier between the fighting factions. 
In the articles and the correspondence surrounding them there is not a single reference to Gandhi and the Shanti Sena, but as a precursor of the UN Peace Force (the Peace Army was to be organized and directed by the League of Nations) the proposal does have some historical merit. 
The initial excitement about setting up a peace army soon faded though (too many risks and practical problems), and the idea only reemerged many years later, during the Cold War, when the United Nations set up a peacekeeping force.

- “The Peace Army: A Sermon by A. Maude Roydon”
Pamphlet. Author: A. Maude Roydon. No publisher. Date: 1932. Format: A5. 8 pages.
Ever since the end of WWI Roydon, Sheppard and Grey have pinned their hopes on the League of Nations as the ideal instrument for organizing world peace. Now that two of its member, Japan and China, are at war and the League is helpless to prevent it, it’s time to look for another solution. Technically the League of Nations has the right to intervene by deploying an armed force, “but then what? Are we who love peace and whose hope it has been to see armaments diminish and war finally abolished – are we to stump the country calling for war? Are we driven in so paradoxical a position that we […] who have devoted our lives to peace, must now begin to clamour for war?” The only way to solve the dilemma of not intervening violently and running the risk of starting another world war, is to intervene peacefully. “Let us therefore ask the League to send us, unarmed, to the scene of the conflict. This is not a national thing; it is international. It is not one country against another; it is those who believe in spiritual power against those who believe in material force. […] All the difficulties that are raised by everyone who first hears of this proposal are overcome by the project of offering our lives for the service of the League itself. What it can do for warships and guns and for soldiers, it can do for us. Only, unlike soldiers, we should be unarmed, and we should be pledged neither to attack, to injure, nor to kill. We believe that such a force would not merely be so many men and women standing between two armies; we believe that it would generate a spiritual power which would make us immeasurably greater than we are. By our acts in life, or by our deaths, we should release into the world a new spirit.” 
Finally they propose a strict age limit for their voluntary peace army. No children or young people. “The younger generation should stand back for the older ones”, the elderly, who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the younger generation.

- “The Peace Army”
Reprint from the Manchester Guardian, February 27th, 1932. No Author. Format: A5. 2 pages.
The author points at the myriad of practical problems that setting up a peace army would entail, but he does not object it to in principal: “If on the surface it appears fantastic, is it really any more fantastic than the actual act of war? Is it really any more fantastic for a number of civilized individuals to bear testimony to their belief in peace by risking their lives than for the same individuals to take up arms and devote themselves to slaughtering other individuals for any of the reasons commonly put forward in justification of war? […] It is improbable that the army of peace will ever set forth or campaign; indeed it may never be enrolled, nonetheless the suggestion that such an army might suitably interpose itself between the forces of two peoples at war is both intelligent and apt.” The legal framework that has been set up in 1918 to safeguard peace is not working. And although a peace army may not provide the answer, the spirit in which it has been suggested does, for it “at least presupposes an attitude of mind alive to the realities of the most dangerous situation that has arisen since the Great War.”

- “Constructive Pacifism: Objections Answered”
Pamphlet. No Author. Publisher: The Peace Pledge Union. No date [ca. 1932]. Format: A5. 4 pages.
A clever little pamphlet in which the Peace Pledge Union sets out to answer 12 of the most common objections to pacifism. These range from: war is a law of nature; man is a fighting animal, therefore war is inevitable; war is the method by which natural selection works upon human societies; in international affairs war is often necessary to obtain peace; war may be undesirable, but pacifism doesn’t work; the causes of war are economic and can be eliminated only by changing the economic system; the present situation is so dangerous that we must rearm; to unilateral disarmament is too risky.
The answers are well crafted, practical and effective, drawing from common sense, history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and the natural sciences.

Archive Box 36. The cover states: New History Society / 1932-1936.
Correspondence and announcements regarding the publications of the New History Society. 

Archive box 129. The cover states: International Fellowship of Reconciliation . Bulletin / 1930-1931.
- “Extremist parties: Revolutionary Movements in Germany”
Bulletin Issued By the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, monthly periodical, p. 1-2. No author. Publisher: IFOR. Date: March 1931. Format: B4. 2 pages.
The article reminds us that as of March 1931 38 percent of the German Reichstag consisted of extreme nationalists (the national socialists and the National People’s Party) and communists. A the depth of the economic crisis in Germany and elsewhere, the collapse of mainstream politics does not bode well for world peace, the author warns. 
Hitler’s national socialists have come up with 25 demands (some demanding economic reform, but most deal with measures against foreigners, especially Jews), of which 10 are listed in this article. The author compares the demands with the pledges taken by the members of the Gandhi movement. The Satyagraha pledges include:
“(1) A Satyagrahi will harbor no anger, he will suffer the anger of the opponent; (2) in so doing he will put up with assault from the opponent, never retaliate; (3) but he will not submit out of fear of punishment and the like, to any given order; (4) when any person in authority seeks to arrest a Satyagrahi he will voluntarily submit to the arrest and he will not resist the attachment or the removal of his own property, if any, that is sought to be confiscated by the authorities; (5) if a Satyagrahi has any property in his possession as a trustee, he will refuse to surrender it, even though in defending it he might lose his life; (6) non-retaliation excluded swearing and cursing; (7) therefore a Satyagrahi will never insult his opponent, and therefore also not take part in many of the newly coined curses, which are contrary to the spirit of ahimsa, i.e. non-violence; (9) a Satyagrahi will not salute the Union jack, nor will he insult it or officials, English or Indian.”

- “Why I believe in Pacifism”
Study Materials, Conference on Church and War. Author: Walter George Muelder. Publisher: IFOR. Date: May 1950. Format: A4. 10 pages.
Article by Walter George Muelder, theologian and social ethicist, who, as dean of the Boston University School of Theology, had been of influence on the thinking of Martin Luther King and some of his contemporaries.
Pacifism is a faith, a redemptive faith, to be precise. Its goal is reconciliation, and Jesus, “the non-violent, self-sacrificing motive cleansing peace-maker”, is its most outspoken exponent. Muelder distinguishes between the religious, the philosophical-ethical and the sociological bases of pacifism. As to the latter Muelder states that “society seems to be moving in a non-violent direction. […] Democracy is a non-violent use of power, and Hobbes, as well as Marx, Lenin and Hitler have exaggerated the role of force in the creation of the state”, because force alone never holds a group together and, as Lewis Mumford has once remarked, any fool can solve the problem of political power by martial law, but only a fool would mistake that process for government.
Also, educational theory and practice have been moving steadily in the direction of less external coercion and moral authority. Furthermore, the treatment of patients in psychiatric hospitals, penology and labor management all seem to develop in increasingly nonviolent ways. “War is the last refuge of organized violence. There will of course be violence for a long time to come. There is no inevitable progress towards pacifism. But we do have the honest prospect of the end of organized violence outside the law. Social institutions are learning the principles and the strategies of the alternatives to cruel personality-destroying coercion. […] And since annihilation is the only assured consequence of militarism, and social experimentation at all levels show peaceful realities and possibilities under law, the pacifist has reason and experience to bolster his faith”.