CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Rare collection of pamphlets and ephemera relating to Conscientious Objectors and Pacifism during World War One.18 pamphlets and ephemera, various dates 1914-1918, various sizes (most approx. 205 x 138 mm., some larger and smaller), together with an autograph letter signed by the architect and conscientious objector Sydney Turner (1881-1972) to his parents, Wandsworth Prison, 24 October 1917, reporting on political interest in the conscientious objectors movement (‘the Cabinet have at last awakened to the fact of the existence [
sic] of COs really they can no longer ignore us’), noting that after 14 months imprisonment he is now in the longest-serving category, and reiterating his convictions, including an adherence to vegetarianism, and a determination to accept nothing less than ‘absolute exemption and release’. 3 pages, quarto, on paper with a printed text of prison regulations (‘Any [letters] of an objectionable tendency … or containing slang, or improper expressions, will be suppressed’); envelope. An architect, Sydney Turner was an ‘absolutist’, who refused any alternative form of war service: by the time of his release in 1919 he had served sentences in at least four different prisons, with a number of periods of hard labour.
The collection also includes the following printed material: EMERSON, E.W.
War. London: Pelican Press for League of Peace & Freedom, [n.d. but c. 1918]; NATIONAL COUNCIL AGAINST CONSCRIPTION.
Notes for Claimaints. London: 29 February and 1 March 1916, 2 leaflets sold with another leaflet by the same with ‘Instructions to Advisors’; MALLESON, Miles.
The Out-and-Outer. London: Pelican Press for No-Conscription Fellowship, September 1916; CARPENTER, Edward.
Never Again! Manchester: The National Labour Press Ltd, August 1916; MOREL, E.D.
Tsardom’s Part in the War. London: The National Labour Press Ltd, [n.d. but c. 1916];
Scraps of Paper. London: No-Conscription Fellowship, [n.d. but 1916]; WELLOCK, Wilfred.
The Victory of Peace. Three Poems of the Times. London: C.W. Daniel, 1916; BRYAN, John.
Essays in Socialism and War. Reprinted from ‘The Call.’ London: British Socialist Party, February 1917; COLVILLE, W.R.
The Sanctity of Conscientious Conviction. Enfield: May 1916; RUSSELL, Bertrand.
War. The offspring of fear. London: The National Labour Press for the Union of Democratic Control, [n.d. but 7 November 1914]; BARR, James.
The Conscientious Objector. London: Headley Brothers, [n.d. but 1916]; KNEESHAW, J.W.
Conscription Enters the Workshops. Manchester: The National Labour Press Ltd, [n.d. but 1916]; ALLEN, Clifford.
Conscription and Conscience. London: The National Labour Press Ltd for the No-Conscription Fellowship, [November 1915]; and three others similar.
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