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After Forty Years, Still Something to Do As CPF celebrates forty years of witnessing for peace and justice, I am recalling memories that over the years guided me on the peace-path. In the 1930s my dad would bring home his friend from work, Jim Campbell, whose kindness and quick mind quickly gained our admiration. Jim talked about the Irish struggle for justice against the English oppression, and I can recall his mentioning Victor McLaughlin’s movie role of “The Informer.” We learned that the “Black and Tans” were the feared enemy police and not favored colors among the Ivy or Interac schools. Early on we began to root for life’s underdogs. And one evening Jim Campbell shocked us with his description of Humphrey Cobb’s Paths of Glory, a 1935 novel based on an obscure outrage during WWI. I remembered the basic outline of the story still, but recently, I read Paths of Glory. When a foolish order to attack a German strong point was followed by a disastrous failure, the humiliated and outraged French general ordered a court-martial for four scapegoats as a lesson for the rest of the French troops. Each of the four company commanders was ordered to select one soldier as a cowardly example. Three officers obeyed the order, and three brave soldiers were shot in front of their assembled comrades. But a devout Catholic, Captain Renouart, refused to obey, replying: “There are no cowards in No.1 Company. I can personally take my oath on that, for I was right amongst them and saw their actions with my own eyes.... I consider that it is not within the prerogatives of the military authorities to order me to act in a way which would be a violation of my duties as a citizen and my scruples as a Christian and practicing Catholic....As an officer acting in a judicial capacity, I would be guilty of dereliction of duty by bringing charges which I knew to be false. As a Christian I cannot take a step which would brand me a murderer in my own eyes as well as in those of God and my fellowmen.” Shortly after the end of the war in Vietnam, at the Narberth home of Ailene and Bob McGovern, I congratulated Dan Berrigan on the peace movement’s success. Hadn’t peace come to Vietnam after all the “actions,” and the protest-rallies here, in D.C. and across the country with thousands singing “Give Peace a Chance”? Dan silenced me: “What are you doing these days to end the nuclear arms race?” So, the peace-beat goes on; there is always something that needs doing; the torch must be passed to a new generation of peace and justice-seekers. Frank McGinty |