A. Reason with them. Many honest conscientious objectors can be converted by the right kind of reasoning, and the more honest they are the easier it is to straighten out their misunderstandings. If this fails then they ought to be given work to do at some enterprise of national interest, and be compelled to do it, as the government is now doing in its camps for conscientious objectors. If they refuse to register, they go to jail, as no government could afford to tolerate deliberate defiance of its laws. We as a democracy must observe the rights even of a minority which would bring ruin upon the country if its policies were to rule. This is something we can be proud of, something that marks us more than any other one thing as different from the tyrannous Nazi state where conscientious objectors and every variety of pacifist or obstructionist is put to death. We can afford to treat our objectors as we would defectives. Hitler has to kill his. He held from the beginning that pacifists were the greatest danger to the state, and from the moment he came to power he has sought out and executed every German pacifist who has revealed himself. Hitler thus proves he feels that pacifist doctrine would be dangerous to his regime, as it would. The German nation is being led by Hitler in _aggressive_ war. Opposition to aggressive war is a form of pacifism which makes sound sense. The war we and the British are called upon to fight, a war we did not want but are compelled to carry on in order to save our national lives, is a war that even a pacifist ought to support. In this war the man who refuses to fight for his country is like a person in a lifeboat who refuses to pull an oar. In England a conscientious objector was asked at his examination whether he would do non-combatant war work. He answered, “No.” The Judge asked “Would you not help build an air-raid shelter?” The man answered, “No.” The Judge then asked, “But if there were an air raid on would you go into a shelter someone else had built?” The man answered, “Yes.” I wonder how many of the 1,800 young Americans who have been classified as conscientious objectors would contend that this is honest, and yet it is fundamentally the attitude of all conscientious objectors. The nation shelters the lives, liberty, and property of all its citizens. Everyone living in the nation is enjoying this protection. Everyone has a primary obligation to help maintain it. In England today, however, the government permits more than 40,000 registered conscientious objectors to enjoy the protection of the air-raid shelters, and of the Royal Air Force, Army, and Navy, without contributing to it. Is this not a tribute to the invincible liberalism of Anglo-Saxon democracy?