Mr. FELLOWS. We do not pay much attention to that now, I guess, because you cannot follow the Supreme Court in two weeks' time. I cannot.

Take the case of Jehovah's witnesses.

Mr. CORNELL. Yes.

Mr. FELLOWS. How many times did it reverse itself there?

Mr. CORNELL. That was a very technical thing involving procedure, the jurisdiction of courts over the question of exemptions from the draft, in which the Supreme Court itself was much confused. And it was not really a series of reversals in those cases as much as a clarification of the issues.

There were some of those cases that were unintelligible to the lower courts.

It is true that there were reversals and changes there, but they did not have to do with the Supreme Court's philosophy or policy toward conscientious objectors. They had to do with jurisdictional

matters.

Mr. FELLOWs. I see.

There was some fellow in my home town who claimed to be a conscientious objector. And I am not saying that he was not honest. Mr. CORNELL. The Jehovah's Witnesses are a different sort. They claim not exactly to be conscientious objectors. They say, "We would fight at Armageddon. At the end of the world we are all going to rise up and fight.'

Mr. FELLOWs. The trouble with this fellow that I mentioned is that he just refused to register, and he said he was not going to register even for Armageddon.

The court thought differently, and gave him, I think, 3 years, or something like that.

Mr. CORNELL. Their position is that they claim the right to preach as ministers, and since the draft law interferes with their right to preach, they would not be drafted. Most of them went to prison, because there was no room in the law for such mental reservations.

Mr. FELLOWS. Now, he was in jail for 3 years, and his next-door neighbor lost two sons who fought to preserve the liberty of that gentleman. His next-door neighbor had two sons and lost both of them.

They were fighting to preserve the objector for the Battle of Armageddon.

Mr. CORNELL. Now, Quakers do not prefer to go to jail or concentration camps. You may be aware that all during the war they were valiantly trying to get permission to go to China and carry relief back in the mountains.

They served in the most disagreeable ways possible. They would like nothing better than to be able to get under fire in some humanitarian capacity.

These

Mr. FELLOWS. I would like to ask something about this. objectors will do anything else except shoot. They will nurse the sick; they will nurse the wounded; they will get a man back on his feet so that he can shoot again. They will do the very necessary things without which a man would not be able to fire a gun.

But they just will not lift a gun. They will do everything else. Isn't that true?

Mr. CORNELL. No; that is not true.

Mr. FELLOws. Then I need to be corrected..

Mr. CORNELL. There are two classes of conscientious objectors, and there are two classes provided for in the Selective Service Act:

One is a man who will not take human life but who will serve in the Army in some noncombatant capacity. Administratively those men all went into the medical corps.

The other type is the man who says, "I will not take human life, and I cannot help in the medical corps to help other men to take human life. The military machine cannot be separated that way. It is all devoted to killing, and I can have no part in it."

Those men were sent to camps and then later some of them served in civilian hospitals, some of them as firefighters by parachute, and

so on.

Mr. FELLOWS. You say they divided this into those who had similar ideas, but to a different degree; is that right?

Mr. CORNELL. It is largely a matter of degree. They all agree that they cannot take human life.

Some of them think that they can be part of the military machine in a noncombatant capacity; some say that that is indirectly killing and will not take part in that.

Mr. FELLOWS. Very well. Proceed, sir.

Mr. CORNELL. There is one final point that I want to make, and I cannot urge this too strongly as a danger flag that I think the committee should heed.

This is an entering wedge into the edifice of human liberty, and it weakens the entire structure. The restrictions on Jews imposed by the Nazis and the restrictions on various people who did not go along with the Communist regime in Russia and the same in other countries having totalitarian governments are, of course, in the beginning, small. But those things tend to grow.

There are signs in this country that the restrictions upon Quakers and others who have these religious views are growing. As I mentioned a moment ago, a client of mine did not succeed in being admitted to the bar in Illinois.

No Quaker can be a lawyer in Illinois today. He probably cannot be a doctor or join any other profession, either, because they have to get licenses from the State. For all I know, he could not even peddle newspapers, because he would have to have a license.

The State of Florida excluded a man from teaching school, although he had never taught pacifism. No one even knew he was a pacifist, because he kept that to himself as a private matter. He is respected and liked. His school superintendant stood up for him. But the school board ousted him, and the highest court of the State upheld them, solely because he could not take human life as a member of the armed forces.

The State of California has taken similar action, and other States are following suit.

If this bill should express a congressional policy that conscientious objectors, including these religious organizations, Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and others, are not patriotic citizens, that they should be excluded from naturalization if they attempt to become citizens, that "we do not want them here," it will, in my judgment, open the floodgates to States to follow this as a national policy.

Mr. FELLOWS. This would not say that they are not patriotic citizens. It would not say that they could not become any kind of citizens.

Mr. CORNELL. It would say that they could not become any kind of citizens, because they would not be patriotic if they were allowed to become citizens.

As was pointed out by the dissenting justices in the Summers case, this is a very dangerous precedent. The next thing you know, I am going to be disbarred, and so will other lawyers and judges. Doctors will be driven from their profession. We will become outcasts.

The reason we have so many Mennonites on farms in this country is that they were driven out of Russia for this very reason. They are pretty solid citizens, in my judgment.

And, as I indicated before, the Quakers made rather a success of Pennsylvania.

Now, do you want to drive these people to Australia or some other more hospitable place, this being a continuation of policies which are already cropping up in the States, which the Supreme Court so far has not called a halt to?

It seems to me that such interference with the liberty of the individual, especially in a religious matter, is an extremely dangerous precedent, which some day may cause the United States Government to copy the Nazis and other totalitarian regimes by suppressing human thought and human freedom.

I might say that I appeared in most of the cases in recent years which had to do with this question. I have consulted with John W. Davis who represented the Civil Liberties Union in the Macintosh and Schwimmer cases. I have written a book on the treatment of conscientious objectors in war time, and I am thoroughly familiar with the entire problem, I believe.

I would be glad to answer any questions.

Mr. FELLOWS. Have you any questions?

Mr. GOSSETT. I think I understand the gentleman's viewpoint. Mr. CHELF. I have no questions.

Mr. FELLOws. That is all.

Thank you very much.

Mr. CORNELL. Thank you for your courtesy in hearing me, gentle

men.

Mr. FELLOWS. Mr. Zigler.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT ZIGLER, BRETHREN SERVICE

COMMITTEE

Mr. FELLOWs. You are with the Brethren Service Committee?
Mr. ZIGLER. That is right, sir.

I represent the Church of Brethren, through its service committee. We have approximately, in three branches, about 200,000 people in our membership.

Mr. GOSSETT. Your organization is not included in the group for which the gentleman who just preceded you spoke?

Mr. ZIGLER. We are Mennonites, Friends, and Brethren. We are three churches.

Mr. GOSSETT. You are Mennonites, Friends, and Brethren?
The Friends are the Quakers, are they not?

Mr. ZIGLER. That is right.

Mr. GOSSETT. What are the Brethren?
Mr. ZIGLER. They call us "Dunkers.'

Mr. GossETT. Yes.

West, in Kansas.

Mr. ZIGLER. Yes.

That is the nickname.

There is some of that sect out in the Middle

One-half of our membership is east of the Ohio River; another fourth is in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and the rest is scattered throughout the country.

Mr. GOSSETT. There are some in Kansas?

Mr. ZIGLER. That is right. We have churches scattered in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, California, and so on.

I think Mr. Cornell has picked out the technical statements that I would like to refer to. And I do not think that I need to restate those problems as we see them.

I think I would like to urge the committee that we maintain religious liberty. It is somewhat hard to watch these bills to see that that thing is maintained in the interpretation of the Constitution and the enactment of laws.

One could wish that the time would come when Congress would guard those things that are held sacred by these people.

Mr. FELLOWS. Yes. And sometimes we vote against a lot of these laws. I have. And they have called me names and say that I am a reactionary.

Mr. ZIGLER. Yes.

Mr. FELLOWS. And my purpose of voting that way is that I can see in them the things that you are seeing in a lot of these laws. Mr. ZIGLER. Yes.

Mr. FELLOWS. Now, you see what we are charged with. No matter how conscientious our objections might be, they call us names.

Mr. ZIGLER. We understand what those things are, and we get a little hotter than you do.

Mr. FELLOWS. Some of the things that are said about us it would not be proper to put into the record.

Mr. ZIGLER. Yes. I understand. We hear them.

I suppose it is not reactionary to be a proponent of religious liberty. Mr. FELLOWS. I would not want to say that these days.

Mr. GossETT. I might say, sir, that I am sure all of us recognize the groups that you testify for, and among them are many fine citizens. We may disagree on what this bill does, and that is what we are interested in, your viewpoint of the bill.

Mr. ZIGLER. That is right. And all I am saying here is that I hope the viewpoint of the committee will preserve this tradition of long standing. I think one of the great objections to it is in American common law.

It is that point that I would like to testify to, concerning a vast number of people, not only these three churches, but in many churches, because as you discovered in the last world war, there were many different denominations represented in that list of conscientious objectors. I think over 200 different religions and bodies were represented, which was a surprise to us, when selective service was really tested.

I do not think that I want to raise any specific issue in behalf of Mr. Cornell's presentation. But I do plead that this trend, with

practically every law that comes into existence, has to be tested at this point. It seems to me that the time should come when laws would be written in harmony with the Constitution, and we would not even need to testify.

It would seem to me that men who wrote laws would not need to be criticized, because they can immediately say that the Constitution provides for this, and pass over it.

Mr. FELLOWS. Yes. But if you will notice this and I have been around only a few years-that if I am interested in some bill and my heart tells me that it is humane, I do not have any trouble with the constitutional provisions on that.

That is my experience with the men in these so-called groups. You can argue until doomsday, but the constitutional provision, of which this is one, just do not seem to make any impression. They will say to us that we lack humanity, or something of that sort.

Now, it is very difficult to stand up and meet many of these appeals that are emotional appeals. It is very hard to meet an emotional appeal with any logic.

Mr. ZIGLER. I understand that.

Mr. FELLOWS. And I am speaking also of the Constitution as something that we should preserve. I think it is logical. But you know, it does not seem to make any difference about those things, if we have a cause that we embrace or if we think we have a mission. The world is full of it, and this country is full of it. Why, if you could be down here, you would know that I have gotten 10,000 letters on one bill.

For instance, and I am talking right now about this Stratton bill, H. R. 2910, The Federation of Women's Clubs voted in favor of it and reversed themselves in 3 days. And I wonder how many of them have ever read the bill.

The Federation of Women's Clubs came out against it, two to one almost, and in a few days they reversed that position. And I wonder how many understand what is in that bill.

Mr. ZIGLER. The viewpoint that I am representing here today I think has been pretty consistent since the 1700's.

Mr. FELLOWS. I understand your position.

Mr. GOSSETT. You have no objections to that part of the bill as to speaking and reading English?

Mr. ZIGLER. I would like to amend that so that it would set some age limit.

Mr. GOSSETT. You think that 50 would be the age limit?

Mr. ZIGLER. I am no expert on that. But I say, you should not, I think, require them to read it beyond a certain age. I think it is too tough for anyone, not conscientious objectors, but anyone.

Mr. Chairman, I think that is about all I would like to say, and I think you understand my motive.

Mr. FELLOWS. You are opposed to this bearing-arms clause?

Mr. ZIGLER. That is right. And I think the law, the Constitution, and everything provides for it.

We just want to call that to your attention, which I think you must know, anyhow. But I would like to go on record as bringing that to your attention.

Mr. FELLOWS. We will hear the representative of the Mennonite Central Committee, Mr. Don Smucker.