That concession has frequently been made in the past to people who, calling themselves Christians, have held tenets subversive of State-authority. When religious conformity was considered necessary to the spiritual security of the State, Nonconformists resisted, till the State made allowance for them. When the taking of an oath was considered necessary for the security of truth in the witness-box, Quakers resisted, till the State made allowance for them. When the coercion of Ulster was considered necessary for the well-being of Ireland, men who had taken the oath of military obedience threatened a conscientious strike, and the State made allowance for them. Incidentally they became the heroes of that party which is to-day most strenuous in its detestation of those later conscientious objectors who refuse to take the oath of military obedience; but nobody was sent to prison for uttering propaganda in their praise! Now the reason why the State could tolerate them was not a moral reason; it was simply upon the calculation that, while still pursuing its policy of physical force, it could afford to do without them. It could allow non-conformity based upon Christian teaching, or upon conscientious scruples, to streak the current of its policy, without thereby suffering any deflection of its course. But it is quite different when the State, driven by its belief in the rightness and the remedial value of physical force, comes to commit the whole of its resources to the prosecution of war. The existence of the conscientious objector then becomes a more inconvenient factor in the situation; it may even, from the State’s point of view, become a dangerous one. Then those insidious Christian idiosyncrasies, which have so often been allowed to withstand authority, must have all possible ground cut from under them, lest it should afford standing to a new social ideal. We have it on the authority of the public prosecutor himself that, if all men became conscientious objectors, war would no longer be possible; and from such a catastrophe the State must, of course, be saved by all possible means. It is at this point, therefore, that the latent claim (which in peace-time is often more honoured in the breach than in the observance) becomes insistent and active. The State must have--if it can get it--the personal service of all its able-bodied citizens. And thus, practically for the first time, the rival claims of law and conscience upon a man’s allegiance come to be fought out in public on a large scale; and if the Nation is engaged in a popular war, or in one where the vast majority believes that it has righteousness upon its side, then there will inevitably be much prejudice in the public mind against the conscientious objector; whereas there might be much sympathy for him (though not really on the principle for which he contended) if he were refusing to fight in a war which happened to be unpopular, or which a great number of people regarded as unjust.