“Ain’t No Such Thing as A Just War” – Ben
Salmon, WWI resister
By
Kathy Kelly
July 10, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Several
days a week, Laurie Hasbrook arrives at the
Voices
office here in Chicago. She often takes off
her bicycle helmet, unpins her pant leg,
settles into an office chair and then leans
back to give us an update on family and
neighborhood news. Laurie’s two youngest
sons are teenagers, and because they are
black teenagers in Chicago they are at risk
of being assaulted and killed simply for
being young black men. Laurie has deep
empathy for families trapped in war zones.
She also firmly believes in silencing all
guns.
Lately, we’ve been learning about the
extraordinary determination shown by Ben
Salmon, a conscientious objector during
World War I who went to prison rather than
enlist in the U.S. military. Salmon is
buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Carmel
Cemetery, on the outskirts of Chicago.
In June, 2017,
a small group organized by
“Friends of Franz and Ben”
gathered at Salmon’s gravesite to
commemorate his life.
Mark Scibilla Carver and Jack Gilroy had
driven to Chicago from Upstate NY, carrying
with them a life size icon bearing an image
of Salmon, standing alone in what appeared
to be desert sands, wearing a prison-issue
uniform that bore his official prison
number. Next to the icon was a tall, bare,
wooden cross. Rev. Bernie Survil, who
organized the vigil at Salmon’s grave,
implanted a vigil candle in the ground next
to the icon. Salmon’s grand-niece had come
from Moab, Utah, to represent the Salmon
family. Facing our group, she said that her
family deeply admired Salmon’s refusal to
cooperate with war. She acknowledged that he
had been imprisoned, threatened with
execution, sent for a psychiatric
evaluation, sentenced to 25 years in prison,
a sentence which was eventually commuted,
and unable to return to his home in Denver
for fear of being killed by antagonists.
Charlotte Mates expressed her own
determination to try and follow in his
footsteps, believing we all have a personal
responsibility not to cooperate with wars.
Bernie Survil invited anyone in the circle
to step forward with a reflection. Mike
Bremer, a carpenter who has spent three
months in prison for conscientious objection
to nuclear weapons, pulled a folded piece of
paper out of his pocket and stepped forward
to read from an article by Rev. John Dear,
written several years ago, in which Dear
notes that Ben Salmon made his brave stance
before the world had ever heard of Nelson
Mandela, Martin Luther King, or Mohandas
Gandhi. There was no Catholic Worker, no Pax
Christi, and no War Resisters League to
support him. He acted alone, and yet he
remains connected to a vast network of
people who recognize his courage and will
continue telling his story to future
generations.
Had his wisdom
and that of numerous war resisters in the
U.S. prevailed, the U.S. would not have
entered W.W. I. The author of War Against
War,
Michael Kazin,
conjectures about how W.W. I would have
ended if the U.S. had not intervened. “The
carnage might have continued for another
year or two,” Kazin writes, “until citizens
in the warring nations, who were already
protesting the endless sacrifices required,
forced their leaders to reach a settlement.
If the Allies, led by France and Britain,
had not won a total victory, there would
have been no punitive peace treaty like that
completed at Versailles, no stab-in-the back
allegations by resentful Germans, and thus
no rise, much less triumph, of Hitler and
the Nazis. The next world war, with its 50
million deaths, would probably not have
occurred.”
But
the U.S. did enter WWI, and since that time
each U.S. war has caused a rise in taxpayer
contributions to maintain the MIC, the
Military-Industrial complex, with its
vise-like grip on educating the U.S. public
and marketing U.S. wars. Spending for
militarism trumps social spending. Here in
Chicago, where the number of people killed
by gun violence is the highest in the
nation, the U.S. military runs ROTC classes
enrolling 9,000 youngsters in Chicago public
schools. Imagine if equivalent energies were
devoted to promoting means and methods of
nonviolence, along with ways to end the war
against the environment and creation of
“green” jobs among Chicago’s youngest
generations.
If we
could share Laurie’s revulsion in the face
of weapons and inequality, imagine the
possible results. We would never tolerate
U.S. shipment of weapons to opulent Saudi
royals who use their newly purchased laser
guided munitions and Patriot missiles to
devastate the infrastructure and civilians
of Yemen. On the brink of famine and
afflicted by an alarming spread of cholera,
Yemenis also endure Saudi airstrikes that
have wrecked roadways, hospitals and crucial
sewage and sanitation infrastructure. 20
million people (in regions long plagued by
U.S. gamesmanship), would not be expected to
die this year from conflict-driven famine,
in near-total media silence. Just four
countries, Somaliland, Southern Sudan,
Nigeria and Yemen are set to lose fully one
third as many people as died in the entirety
of the Second World War. None of that would
be a normal occurrence in our world.
Instead, perhaps religious leaders would
vigorously remind us about Ben Salmon’s
sacrifice; rather than attend the annual Air
and Water show, (a theatrical display of
U.S. military might which turns out a
million “fans”), Chicagoans would make
pilgrimages to the cemetery where Ben is
buried.
At
this point, Mount Carmel cemetery is known
for being the burial place of Al Capone.
The
small group at the gravesite included a
woman from Code Pink, a newly ordained
Jesuit priest, several Catholic Workers,
several couples who were formerly Catholic
religious and have never stopped ministering
to others and advocating for social justice,
five people who’ve served many months in
prison for their conscientious objection to
war, and three Chicago area business
professionals. We look forward to
gatherings, in Chicago and elsewhere, of
people who will take up the organizing call
of those who celebrated, on July 7th, when
representatives of 122 countries negotiated
and passed a U.N. ban on nuclear weapons.
This event happened while warlords wielding
hideous weapons dominated the G20 gathering
in Hamburg, Germany.
Laurie envisions building creative, peaceful
connections between Chicago youngsters and
their counterparts in Afghanistan, Yemen,
Gaza, Iraq, and other lands. Ben Salmon
guides our endeavors. We hope to again visit
Salmon’s gravesite on Armistice Day,
November 11, when our friends plan to set up
a small marker bearing this inscription:
“There
is no such thing as a just war.”
Thou
Shalt Not Kill
Kathy
Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org)
co-coordinates Voices for Creative
Nonviolence,
www.vcnv.org
