World War I was more than a year over when M. C. Otto (1876–1968), a German-American philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin, called attention to the wartime ordeal of his former student Carl Haessler, then imprisoned in Alcatraz for his refusal to fight. An “uncompromising” young man, Haessler had neither faith-based nor any other principled opposition to war in general to offer as justification for his unwillingness to cooperate with military authorities. He considered himself a “patriotic political objector”—a radical, willing to face a court-martial to advance the struggle against “the big machine” of American capitalism. Otto both admires and seems slightly daunted by his old pupil’s convictions.
Haessler would be released in August 1920, by presidential pardon. (Eager to “return to normalcy,” Warren G. Harding eventually pardoned or commuted the sentences of many such objectors and dissidents, among them Eugene V. Debs.) After a career in the labor movement, he fought against another war in his mid-seventies, counseling conscientious objectors to Vietnam.
IT was a snatch of an exasperated father’s outburst, overheard by chance, that precipitated the problem in my mind. “Do you hear me?” the irate sire scolded into the back of his disheveled, shuffling offspring, as he pushed him into the house. “How many times have I told you to do what you know to be right, no matter what the other boys do?” And the door which the father slammed behind him seemed symbolic of the finality of his moral creed. A neighbor tells me that I stopped in front of the house and stared at the door. Very likely. But my mind had jumped over miles and years and I was really gazing into the frankest, steadiest, most self-possessed brown eyes I have ever met. And as I walked on I was thinking not of what I had just heard but of the possessor of those eyes, a youth who had tried to apply this father’s philosophy to life—with very unhappy consequences.
How distinctly I recall my first clear awareness of him! It happened in a university class room. He came into my life at the other end of an acute question, leveled at me like a spear. I remember noting his red hair, his intelligent, sensitive face, his cleanliness and health. But what impelled me to go below a ready-to-hand answer was the way he looked at me. It was a man looking at a man, not a pupil looking at a professor. In time I did something to analyze that look; discovered the subdued fire in the calm eyes, the suggestion of irony about the expressive mouth, the strength of the finely formed chin. I discovered, too, that he owed much to those capable looking shoulders. At this first encounter I simply felt instinctively the advisability of caution; that what I said would not be the end but the beginning of discussion. So it proved—then, and many another time. Nor will I say that I always enjoyed it. He was too keenly analytical of one’s theories and one’s facts, too nimble-minded in attack and defense, too persistent in following up logical implications, to be an unfailing comfort in a class room. Besides I suspected him of finding secret delight in professor baiting! Little by little, however, the central impulse of his being penetrated through his gestures—an uncompromising, at times almost quixotic intellectual honesty. He wanted to know the truth about life, and consequently was impatient of shams, of sentimentalism, of mental quackery. And his insistence upon intellectualizing life was not always controlled by a nice sense of proportion nor by a sweet reasonableness toward the cherished beliefs of his opponent. His very objectivity, his natural tendency to treat problems impersonally, resulted in his everlasting stepping on the toes of some prejudice or other. And while I reassured myself—for I came to like the fellow—that he would outgrow his rashness as he would his youth, I could not but wonder, even in those days, what end he would make if he carried this uncompromising allegiance to facts into the world.
His record in college was a brilliant one. He completed the four years’ course in three, with a break of twelve months at the end of his sophomore year, during which he was engaged as an editorial assistant on a well-known philosophical monthly. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and at the conclusion of his course was chosen Rhodes Scholar to represent his Alma Mater, the University of Wisconsin, at Oxford. His undergraduate days had been characterized by alert and ardent leadership in the more serious and progressive student enterprises. He was not the kind that the rah rah boys would slap on the back and ask for the makings, for although totally without moral or religious dogmatism, he was almost austere in his personal habits. Moreover, he was too iconoclastic and outspoken, and too disdainful of popularity to be anything like a general favorite. But he was in no sense friendless or alone.
The three years at Balliol, Oxford, were thriving, formative years. His letters were full of the joy of new friendships, of sunny afternoons on the river, of hospitable weekends at English country houses or by the sea in Ireland, of the beauty of the Scotch Highlands, of the charm of Irish maidens, of intimate gossip about authors and statesmen. It was all very like the testimony of another who was not far from him in time or space: “Exquisite peace and quiet, long days of rich pleasure and sweet nights of rest, kindliness and laughter and the friendly word of casual acquaintances . . . and over all the enduring beauty of the world.” Below it all, the educational methods and customs of Balliol, indeed the very stones themselves, brought him into intimate touch with the rich past of English life. Vacations spent in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy enlarged and clarified his outlook. But the most deep-going effect of these years was naturally one very closely related to the central motive of his life; he got a living appreciation of man’s long struggle for freedom. Nay, more; he became identified with that struggle. The first sign of his dedication was a change in the tone and content of his letters. There was less of laughter and adventure, more of problems and discussions. Gradually, deep mental agitation crept into them, until in time, his letters became little else than records of his religious, moral and social unrest. It was a period of doubt and perplexity common enough to many lives, but one to which he had been a stranger. Could a man believe in any form of vital social idealism and maintain his intellectual integrity? Was not all hope of moral improvement a form of self-deception; in other words, sentimentalism? “I must find an answer to this question,” he wrote. “I must get out of this apologetic attitude in the matter of living a good life, or one of these days some stronger temptation will send me sprawling in filth.”
Then followed, with all the omens of spiritual dawn, the enthusiastic avowal of Fabian socialism. He had been mildly interested in socialistic ideas while still at Wisconsin, but his conversion was now due to some of his Oxford tutors, to his reading of Shaw, the Webbs, and others, and to his residence at a college settlement in the London slums. After that his buoyancy returned with a rush, and to the end of his stay abroad he was full of tales of his experiences as a propagandist of the new faith, and of keen, witty criticisms of emotional schemes of social amelioration. It was no accident that the one memento of his Oxford days that he brought home for himself was a magnificent portrait of George Meredith—arch foe of sentimentalism and friend of a new social order. That was in the autumn of 1914.
Meanwhile the war had broken out. For a brief time he was on the verge of volunteering in the English army. His Balliol classmates were going—comrades of the three biggest years he had known. It was a hard tug, and there was genuine anxiety on this side. He fought it out alone, and on intellectual grounds. In his view the contest did not concern the people of any of the contending nations. He regarded it as a struggle between the Anglo-French-Russian imperialistic orbit and the Austro-German-Turkish orbit, and he condemned both. He came home opposed to the war.
He came home—though he did not then know it—to give his philosophy crucial trial. For a year he was at work preparing for his doctorate and winning his spurs as a teacher at the University of Illinois. Happy, expansive days! It was Balliol adapted to the Middle West. Merry voices on the tennis courts at sunrise; cross-country runs in the mellow afternoons; lively teas with students and younger instructors, at which age-worn perplexities were neatly pigeon-holed.
It was not to be expected that those responsible for the preservation of institutional respectability would look with approval or even complacency upon a group of young men and women who, however artless and high-minded, approached the institutions and customs of society in a spirit of free inquiry rather than of reverence. It must be admitted, moreover, that the leader of the group appeared to take mischievous delight in irritating those in authority. His friends were therefore not surprised to learn that his tenure in the university was uncertain. “The conditions of retaining my instructorship,” he wrote to one of his friends, “have been made clear to me: no stirring up discussions in student publications, softer pedal on my social ideas, less cocky in challenging opinions of reverend signiors.” If he agreed to this he was to have an advance in salary and the privilege of giving a course of his own. “At the same time,” the letter went on, “I am offered the post of western organizer for the Intercollegiate Socialist Society at a better salary. If I had not lost my heart to the comrade with whom I have talked of marriage, and if you were not so certain that much can be accomplished for fundamental social reconstruction by my staying in philosophy, I believe I’d give the Intercollegiate a trial.”
But with 1917 the war moved nearer to America—and nearer to him. Little by little he became the animating spirit of a group of radicals who opposed America’s entrance into the conflict. They engaged anti-war speakers, they circulated anti-war literature, they organized themselves as a speakers’ bureau—nine instructors, representing economics, history, sociology, English, and philosophy, and two ministers, a presbyterian and a unitarian—and answered the calls that came pouring in. No great imagination is required to picture the consternation this aroused. But that is a story in itself—of enthusiastic audiences, of petty persecution, of honest but vain endeavors to win these hot youths from their errors. To this little group those busy and dedicated months will always remain (to adapt one of President Wilson’s noble phrases), among the great memories of their lives. It all slithered out when America joined forces with the Allies.
Not, however, for the youth with the intelligent, sensitive face, and the steady brown eyes with a touch of fire in them like light at the bottom of a pool. Many times he had quoted with full approval words which he had discovered before he was twenty in an essay by William James: “In point of fact the highest ethical life—however few may be called to bear its burdens—consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narrow for the actual case. There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.” Here was the chance to stand by his conception of morality. Here was his chance to support a cause he thought to be right “with good humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry was on the other side,” as Emerson puts it. Most of us do not feel called upon to translate our moral thrills into social fact. He did. He was subject to the first draft, and when the time came he wrote on his registration blank, “If drafted, I can not serve, as I cannot patriotically support this war.”
For some reason the Draft Board, as a rule very jealous of its secrets and very efficient in keeping them, lost this one to the public. And from then on Carl Haessler’s name began to figure in the newspapers as a conscientious or political objector.
Still, the academic year ended quietly enough. He was granted his Ph.D by the university, and left for the summer vacation, with friendly good-byes to his colleagues, quite unaware that his connection with the university had already been terminated. The news reached him, however, by mail almost as soon as he arrived at his home. “I understand,” wrote the head of his department, himself plainly facing a moral issue and attempting to face it squarely, “I understand that you will not accept service if drafted under the registration; that is a question of conscience for you. Now I am firmly convinced that your attitude in this matter puts the question of your appointment in a new light. You have raised a question of conscience for me. I would not say or do anything that would seem to infringe upon your freedom of thought or action. But I do wish to make clear my position and to say that I cannot recommend anyone for a position in the department who holds that view.”
What to do now? He had spent years preparing himself for the academic field, and here at the very beginning the door seemed to have shut. For, of course, his dismissal from Illinois, for the time at least, closed every other university to him. But he wanted still to keep his academic connections, and so carried out his design of applying for membership in the Western Philosophical Association.
The executive committee of this organization refused him admission. His “reported declaration of intention to resist the draft,” which the committee “on the basis of the available information” felt obliged to construe as “rebellion against the government,” constituted “an insuperable obstacle to membership in the organization.”
Meanwhile he had turned, at first with regret, but later with growing satisfaction and zeal, to work on a metropolitan socialist daily. His ability, his devotion, his good will, quickly won him a place in the respect and affections of his new associates. Now, too, his bride, a graduate of Vassar, came to join in his labors. But while there was much in his many activities to give life zest, he lived constantly under an ominous shadow. His brother went to the front in France, his parents were unable to sympathize with what seemed to them his wrongheadedness, and he knew that he would soon have to face the call of the government. The day came. It was a cheery but somewhat leaner young man who responded.
The local press, with which he had had many a bout, was quick to announce the result. Confronted by the reality, ran the report, Carl Haessler had, as predicted, collapsed in his defiance and had entered the service He had, so to speak, decided to “pluck up drowned honor by the locks.” The facts, however, were far different. His status had not been officially determined. And while he was doing the most menial and dirty camp work, his sense of humor triumphed in notes like this:
“Do you remember Samuel Butler’s caution to teachers in ‘The Way of all Flesh,’ to be careful lest their lives be some day written by some pupil of theirs who had not been too high in their grades? What has befallen me would tickle old Butler’s heart into an alarming fit of humorous moralizing. My captain is a man whom I flunked in logic at Illinois, and who had to drop out of the university in consequence. At least that is what he told his brother officers when he asked to have me put in his company. I just faintly remembered him. He issued orders to ‘ride’ me, but a curious undercurrent of rough indignation among the regulars made them take me under their wing instead.”
The issue was put squarely up to him perhaps a month after he had left for camp, and news of it came in a letter to his wife:
M. G. Co., 46 Inf., Camp Sheridan, Ala.
Friday, June 21, 1918, 8 p.m.
Dearest:
After being put in quarters under guard, I was first released from guard and then told that all restrictions were removed but that a uniform would be issued to me and I would be expected to do military service. If I refused that would mean being put into the camp stockade, courtmartialed and sentenced, possibly to 25 years. The uniform is on my cot now and when I get up tomorrow morning I shall have to make my choice.
Darling lover, you know now what my decision will be but I want you to have the reasons as they now appeal to me before you on paper.
(1) I regard this war as tragically unnecessary and motivated originally by commercial and imperialistic considerations. From the patriotic point of view, no citizen looking at this war in this way can do his best by the country unless he refuses to assist in such a war in any way and unless he does what he can to make such wars impossible in the future by moral and intellectual leadership.
(2) From the socialist point of view, this war is largely unjustified and an aspiring socialist leader must stand by his colors and must not hesitate to do himself what he would like the rank and file to do. If radicalism is to crumble at the first bellow of the war drum, radicalism is worthless and a fraud.
(3) From the preaching-teaching point of view, how can I ever talk to my followers again if I now recede from fear of the consequences? I shall have muzzled myself forever and more thoroughly than any prison term could do. I might almost as well die as voluntarily stop myself from teaching and preaching.
(4) There remains a dross of personal feeling, of resentment at being sanctimoniously ordered to help in an unholy war, of pride in keeping to my convictions while they are mine, of hope even perhaps (to tell the whole truth) of capitalizing martyrdom, and a “Siberian record,” of resolve not to disappoint those who have come through me to believe in radicalism, of determination not to give aid and comfort to the capitalist enemy by surrendering, and so on.
But on the other side . . . there is a terrific pull at my heart. What could we not do together after the war! I would be sure to come back since both Lieut. —— and Lieut. —— have already offered me safety-first jobs.
But dearest, how can I commit soul-suicide while in good health and good spirits and with a clear perception of the situation? If my opinion of the war had changed I would have put on the uniform long ago, but I will not do it while I have the strength to resist and still believe the war a crime on the part of our country.
So now, beloved wife, I must close this letter. I hope the courtmartial may come soon and my fate be decided and settled without delay. I have been well treated so far, with courtesy and respect beyond my expectation. . . .
Carl.
The courtmartial took place in August. The following statement, which was Exhibit A in the courtmartial, is copied from the official report of the proceedings:
“I, Carl Haessler, Recruit, Machine Gun Company, 46th Infantry, respectfully submit the following statement in extenuation in connection with my proposed plea of guilty to the charge of violation of the 64th Article of War, the offense having been committed June 22, 1918, in Camp Sheridan, Ala.
The offense was not committed from private, secret, personal, impulsive, religious, pacifist or pro-German grounds. An admixture of quasi personal motives is admitted, but they were in no sense the guiding or controlling factors. I have evidence for each of these assertions, should it be required.
The wilful disobedience of my Captain’s and of my Lieutenant-Colonel’s orders to report in military uniform arose from a conviction which I hesitate to express before my country’s military officers but which I nevertheless am at present unable to shake off, namely, that America’s participation in the World War was unnecessary, of doubtful benefit (if any) to the country and to humanity, and accomplished largely, though not exclusively, through the pressure of the allied and American commercial imperialists.
Holding this conviction, I conceived my part as a citizen to be opposition to the war before it was declared, active efforts for a peace without victory after the declaration, and a determination so far as possible to do nothing in aid of the war while its character seemed to remain what I thought it was. I hoped in this way to help bring the war to an earlier close and to help make similar future wars less probable in this country.
I further believe that I am and shall be rendering the country a service by helping to set an example for other citizens to follow in the matter of fearlessly acting on unpopular convictions instead of forgetting them in time of stress. The crumbling of American radicalism under pressure in 1917 has only been equalled by that of the majority of German Socialist leaders in August, 1914.
Looking at my case from the point of view of the administration and of this court, I readily admit the necessity of exemplary punishment. I regret that I have been forced to make myself a nuisance, and I grant that this war could not be carried on if objections like mine were recognized by those conducting the war. My respect for the administration has been greatly increased by the courteous and forbearing treatment accorded me since having been drafted, but my view of international politics and diplomacy, acquired during my three years of graduate study in England, has not altered since June, 1917, when I formally declared that I could not accept service if drafted. Although officers have on three occasions offered me noncombatant service if I would put on the uniform, I have regretfully refused each time on the ground that “bomb proof” service on my part would give the lie to my sincerity (which was freely granted by Judge Julian Mack when he and his colleagues examined me at Camp Gordon). If I am to render any war services, I shall not ask for special privileges.
I wish to conclude this long statement by reiterating that I am not a pacifist or pro-German, not a religious or private objector, but regard myself as a patriotic political objector, acting largely from public and social grounds.
I regret that, while my present view of this war continues, I cannot freely render any service in aid of the war. I shall not complain about the punishment that this court may see fit to mete out to me.”
Signed: CARL HAESSLER.
A true copy.
Captain, Inf. R. C. 46 Inf. Judge Advocate.
The result of the trial was unknown until late in September, when the prisoner communicated the news to his wife. “Miracle Woman,” he wrote, “I am sure your brave spirit will need all the strength you can summon . . . The prison officers read out to me that I am to be ‘dishonorably discharged, to forfeit all pay and allowances due and to be confined as the reviewing authority may direct for a period of twelve years at hard labor.’ The sentence has been approved in Washington and is to be served in the Disciplinary Barracks Ft. Leavenworth, Kans., where I go within the next month. The sentence began July 18, and with good behavior will expire Oct. 18, 1926. Eight years sacrificed of our common life for the sake of our common ideal. I would not murmur at giving more, but I doubt the wisdom of social arrangements that make such stupid sacrifices inevitable . . . I have no word against the army as such. It is the cause the army is made to fight for that I reject, more emphatically now than in June of last year when I resolved that I would not lend myself to such an undertaking.”
In October, 1918, then, Carl Haessler was imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth. Last June—the reason can only be guessed at—he was transferred to Alcatraz. His spirit, however, was not broken by his imprisonment. It glows with something rich and eloquent in a letter not intended for the public eye. “If you have a philosophy that can sustain you through this ordeal,” he had been asked by one very dear to him, “do pass it on to us.” Let his reply be our parting word:
“You and I are not mere creatures who wish to live at any cost. We would invest our lives for rich social returns. Both of us groped and fumbled about in the world for many years before we came to a realization of the direction in which our enterprise had to be prosecuted. We began to see that the vast capitalist structure of modern civilization, by which the favored rich became still richer by waiting for interest and dividends to come in, had to be sapped and undermined. This we began valiantly and persistently to do until the big machine turned on us and on a million others, and we were separated. But the work goes doggedly on. Even now our great investment looks sound to me, of a long-time soundness.”