The Cambridge Daily News suggested that in addition to questioning whether the beliefs were genuine, they should also question whether the beliefs were valid (that is, could pacifism really be part of Christianity?). As a result, the hearings were often more like interrogations. Applicants had their beliefs aggressively attacked: “What would you do if a German attacked your mother?” If the applicant responded that he would defend her, he should be sent to the front. If he responded that he would not, he was clearly lying, and labeled “not genuine.” Insults and slurs were frequent. One applicant was told, “You are exploiting God to save your own skin. You are nothing but a shivering mass of unwholesome fat.”
This treatment was not restricted to the hearing chambers. COs were despised across the nation—they were seen as “unpatriotic, a slacker, a weakling.” Eddington’s local newspaper printed a letter reporting what those in the trenches thought of COs:
You have presumably heard of the proposal that conscientious objectors should be made to wear white armlets with a large red “C” on them. They themselves can take “C” to stand for “conscience”; decent folk will consider it to stand for something else. There is a rumour that they are to be collected in a corps which will put up barbed wire between our trenches and those of the Huns. I have done that job myself, and they may have joy of it. They will not have much joy if they meet any of this battalion in days of peace.
The Earl of Malmesbury commented that COs were “sailing dangerously near the very ugly word traitor.” This mind-set drove verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse directed at Quakers and other pacifists. Local Anglican clergy were unsparing in their attacks on those who would not fight. One declared, “Liberals, Socialists and Pacifists [are] worse than Jews.”
Even if a CO was accepted as “genuine,” they would only be exempted from combat duties. They were often given the opportunity to join the Non Combatant Corps, in which they would find themselves digging ditches and leveling roads in Flanders, or working in a munitions factory. Some refused even these assignments—they were still helping the British Army kill people—and were then arrested, fined £2, and given over to the military authorities.
From there they could be sent to a military prison or even the front. The COs were technically conscripted members of the army and therefore could be treated as soldiers refusing to follow orders. Military discipline could vary from solitary confinement to beatings. One Quaker prisoner wrote home:
Things are coming near the end this morning. I was taken up to a quiet place and simply “pasted” until I couldn’t stand and then they took me to the hospital and forcibly fed me. . . . The colonel was standing near me and thundered up and shouted “What! You won’t obey me?” I quietly answered “I must obey the commands of my God, Sir.” “Damn your God!”
Field punishments included “Crucifixion,” in which the prisoner was tied, standing, to some object or structure and left exposed to the elements. On one occasion thirty-four COs were taken to the front and given an order. When they refused, a court-martial was immediately set up and they were sentenced to be shot—permissible for refusing an order in a combat situation. They were told they would be shot at dawn. Come morning, a rifle was loaded in their presence and a soldier ordered to fire. Only then were they told that the sentences had been commuted to ten years’ hard labor. Prime Minister Lloyd George, when asked about the treatment of COs, promised only to make “the lot of that class a very hard one.”
These were not abstract fears for Eddington. He had watched closely as members of his Quaker Meeting went through exactly these rituals. Ernest Ludlam was a chemist at the Cavendish Laboratory for whom the university had secured an exemption for work of national importance. He had hoped that his work would be applied to agricultural problems but quickly became convinced that it would be used for military purposes. He quit the Cavendish to join the Quaker Emergency Committee doing relief work for refugees. No longer protected by his scientific labors, he was arrested. Then, refusing to fight, he was sentenced to hard labor and sent to the infamous Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Once he finished his sentence he was arrested again—these were the “cat and mouse” tactics the authorities had developed to keep suffragettes behind bars. After his second sentence to hard labor, his wife, Olive, wrote a letter to Eddington’s Quaker Meeting thanking them for their support: “Ernest went to prison with a light heart feeling it a privilege to suffer in such a righteous cause.” Eddington personally transcribed that letter into the Meeting’s records.
Eddington was sure he could no longer count on support from the university. He had a letter from Dyson, which was a powerful asset. More would be better, though, and Eddington tried to find other allies within the scientific community. Thinking through his options, he made an interesting choice: Sir Oliver Lodge. Would Lodge, the great champion of Newton and British science, help defend a shirker so he could test a German theory? Their correspondence had always been collegial, though, and Eddington had helped him develop his alternative to relativity. It was an audacious strategy. He asked Lodge to write a letter of support for the tribunal:
I should explain first that I am a conscientious objector. (No doubt you will deplore that, but I can only say that it is a matter of lifelong conviction as a member of the Society of Friends from birth, and I have always taken a fairly active part in the affairs of the Society.) . . .
My position is that I should be willing to do work of that kind (not war-work) if ordered; but I find it difficult to believe that that would really be for the benefit of the world even from the most narrow point of view. . . .
One feels reluctant to make much fuss about a particular case like this, when so many obviously far harder cases are being ruthlessly dismissed every day in order to supply the army. Still I think I ought to make the attempt to continue my work, provided that it is in the national interest.
I shall quite understand if you think it best in your position not to appear to be mixed up with a conscientious objector’s case; and you may be sure that I should not take a refusal amiss.
In the letter we can hear some fatalism—Eddington seemed to expect being forced into some kind of alternative work, and certainly did not seem optimistic about Lodge helping him. We do not have a reply from Lodge, nor did a letter from him appear at the tribunal. There are several possible explanations—Lodge supported the war, not objectors to it; he had no love for an Einsteinian; he did not feel scientists should become involved in political matters; or perhaps he did write a letter that is lost to history. We will never know, but we can see the challenges Eddington faced in gathering support.
Eddington appeared in front of the Appeal Tribunal, chaired by Maj. S. G. Howard, on June 14. We have little information about who else was present (wounded soldiers were sometimes present to shame applicants). Because this was an appeal, Major Howard first focused on the original reason for the exemption—whether Eddington’s scientific work was of national importance. He suggested that the government could certainly find more important work for him than relativity. It was unlikely, he said, that Eddington would be taken as an ordinary soldier.
But Eddington had made up his mind to publicly declare his faith. He stood, rejecting Howard’s line of thinking, to declare, “I am a conscientious objector.” Howard shut this down immediately: “That question is not before us.” The topic at hand was Eddington’s science, not his religion. The astronomer himself refused to accept that distinction: he was a pacifist Quaker, and he thought his science was of national (if not global) importance. He reminded the board that he had filed an application for CO status years before but it had never been considered because of his occupational exemption. Puzzled, the tribunal retired from the room to consider the case behind closed doors. They returned and announced that Professor Eddington’s skills would be better used by the government than the observatory. He now had no protection against conscription. The chairman briefly menti
oned that they had not considered the issue of conscientious objection because the appeal was based on the question of the value of his science. To the authorities, it made no sense for a scientist to claim religious belief. Surely those were opposites? To Eddington, they were anything but—he had placed himself in peril by demanding to be heard on the grounds of both science and religion.
If he wanted to pursue a case based on his Quakerism he now needed to return to the Cambridge Tribunal and start anew. Despite the university’s effort to keep events quiet, his case came to the attention of the media. The Cambridge Daily News blared the headline PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY AS CO. The story played up the contrast of the shameful status of a pacifist against all of Eddington’s honors: “the Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the University, Director of the Observatory, and hon. Secretary of the Royal Society.” At this June 27 hearing, finally, Eddington was able to make a statement of his pacifism:
My objection to war is based on religious grounds. I cannot believe that God is calling me to go out and slaughter men, many of whom are animated by the same values of patriotism and supposed religious duty that have sent my countrymen into the field. To assert that it is our religious duty to cast off the moral progress of centuries and take part in the passions and barbarity of war is to contradict my whole conception of what the Christian religion means. Even if the abstention of conscientious objectors were to make the difference between victory and defeat, we cannot truly benefit the nation by willful disobedience to the divine will.
Representative Miller, speaking for the government, denied that Eddington could hold this position. He had earlier accepted a national-importance claim for his science. This meant he had by default given up his right to claim religious objection. Eddington maintained that his science was of great importance, and that he had a religious objection to the war—he was both an astronomer and a Quaker. Miller, in a tone like an exasperated adult explaining to a child, asked Eddington to withdraw his religious claim, because it was clearly not consistent with his earlier claim of being a scientist. Eddington refused. The tribunal threw out his religious claim “until required.” They then deliberated behind closed doors, and apparently decided against him based on his national-importance claim instead of his conscientious one. The Cambridge Daily News reported that the tribunal “considered the case a very hard one—hard on Prof. Eddington.” Unusually, they gave him until July 11 to get a cabinet-level intervention, perhaps an indication of the maneuvering being conducted by Dyson and the university behind the scenes.
One of the challenges Eddington faced was his claiming he should be exempt for two reasons. This caused trouble for many Quakers: a schoolteacher asked for exemption on grounds of both importance and conscience; the tribunal ruled these claims canceled each other out. Even John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, found himself trapped by this paradox. As a Treasury employee he was exempt for work of national importance. Nonetheless, he wanted to be recognized as a conscientious objector as well (he was not a Quaker). The conscription apparatus was simply not set up for people with depth of character: citizens were supposed to fit neatly into bureaucratic categories. Those who did not, suffered for it.
Exactly how to think about conscientious objection was complicated. Ebenezer Cunningham, the other relativist in Cambridge, had been given CO status while teaching. The National Service representative objected that, as a CO, he was not a fit person to be around children. The tribunal agreed and he was sent to work in agriculture or minesweeping. This strange pair of possibilities both tells us something about the hazards of farming at the time and reveals a new government policy. Work given to COs was now officially supposed to be of “deterrent character.” Menial, degrading, and often of no value. Sometimes COs simply stacked rocks from dawn to dusk. Some COs asked to be returned to prison.
The University of Cambridge, specifically Professors Joseph Larmor and H. F. Newall, were working furiously behind the scenes to secure Eddington an exemption free of the embarrassing letters “CO.” Through unknown means, they were able to do so. It must have been a national-importance exemption, though the details are lost. Eddington received a letter containing the exemption; he needed only to sign and return it. He signed it—adding a postscript that while he accepted that his work was of national importance, he would pursue conscientious objector status regardless. He refused to let them split his religious identity from his scientific work. This invalidated the exemption. Larmor and Newall must have been furious. But Eddington could see no reason for them to be. He had been nothing but honest and transparent in his loyalty to the Society of Friends. He would not abandon them now in their moment of greatest crisis.
Eddington was called before the tribunal again in July. In a notable departure from procedure, the Ministry of National Service had allowed his case to be heard again. This time the hearing had the feel of a well-oiled machine designed for a particular purpose. The proceedings began with Eddington presenting a letter from Dyson. One does not become Astronomer Royal without some political acumen, and his letter amply demonstrated this. It was keenly designed to appeal to the patriotism of the tribunal members. Dyson underlined the importance of keeping prestigious British scientists working to counter the dominance of enemy science:
I should like to bring to the notice of the Tribunal the great value of Prof. Eddington’s researches in astronomy, which are, in my opinion, to be ranked as highly as the work of his predecessors at Cambridge—Darwin, Ball, and Adams. They maintain the high position and traditions of British science at a time when it is very desirable that they be upheld, particularly in view of a widely spread but erroneous notion that the most important scientific researches are carried out in Germany. . . . I hope very strongly that the decision of the Tribunal will permit that important work to be continued.
After establishing Eddington’s importance for British intellectual life, Dyson invoked a spectacular opportunity for astronomy that only Eddington could carry out:
There is another point to which I would like to draw attention. The Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee, of which I am Chairman, has received a grant of £1000 for the observation of a total eclipse of the sun in May of next year, on account of exceptional importance. Under present conditions the eclipse will be observed by very few people. Prof. Eddington is peculiarly qualified to make these observations, and I hope the Tribunal will give him permission to undertake this task.
After this argument for the importance of his scientific work, Eddington again described his conscientious objection to the war. He said he had been a member of the Society of Friends since birth (often the key criterion for being seen as a genuine objector). When asked whether he would accept alternative service, Eddington took the most common position of COs. He refused to accept service under military auspices (“he did not think the War Office could guarantee that he be employed solely in saving life”), but expressed willingness to work in other contexts: service in the Friends Ambulance Unit, the Red Cross, or helping with the harvest, “if it was thought he could be of more use to the nation in that way.” The tribunal was not particularly interested in the details of his conscience, however, and wanted to know more about the eclipse. They interrogated him about whether this eclipse was of particular importance and Eddington assured them that it would allow observations that could not be made again for centuries. Without retiring to discuss his case, the tribunal announced that his work was of national importance, and “therefore gave Prof. Eddington, in order to cover [the period of the eclipse], 12 months’ exemption, on condition that he continued in his present work.” They also, startlingly, said they were convinced he was a genuine CO. This was immediately forgotten, however, and the actual exemption was solely for his science and made no mention of his conscientious objection. Eddington then left the hall, free to pursue his work.
The ease of Eddington’s final hearing was clearly d
ue to Dyson’s intervention through his contacts in the Admiralty. The exemption for national importance was no different than if Eddington had accepted the deal arranged by the university. Why, then, did he accept the one arranged by Dyson and not the other? The difference was that the exemption received with Dyson’s and his Admiralty contacts’ help allowed Eddington to maintain a protest against the war. He was unwilling to accept the exemption for his scientific work without also announcing his religious identity. So there must have been some element in the final exemption that fulfilled his need to work for peace. This was the 1919 eclipse to test relativity.
Eddington saw the eclipse expedition as a kind of pacifist statement—it was a way to demonstrate to the world of science that pacifism and internationalism was superior to patriotism and war. It was therefore in some sense equivalent to conscientious objection for him. What was important for him was to express his pacifism along with his work on relativity. It was a matter of conscience, and of Eddington holding true to his own connection to his God.
* * *
THE QUESTION OF conscription was, in the language of the time, one of compulsion. The British state had traditionally worked hard to avoid any kind of compulsion. Even compulsory vaccination for conscripted soldiers was seen as worrisome. Nonetheless, British parents listened to their doctors and the army achieved an over 90 percent vaccination rate. The rate of typhoid dropped to one-fifteenth that of previous wars.
Even with the era’s enormous advances in medicine, disease remained a constant companion of war, as it has throughout history. About 2 in 3 British soldiers were sick at some point in the war. Half of the medical treatments given were for disease (of the wounds representing the other half, 80 percent were caused by artillery). There were new kinds of wounds too—those of the mind. In February 1915 the physician Charles Samuel Myers published in The Lancet about “shell shock,” what we today call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Whether it should be considered an injury or a sickness would be debated, even as psychology and psychiatry mobilized to meet this new threat.
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