Mr. SANDMAN. The conditions set forth by Lincoln as well as Johnson required two things: one, that they go back to their troops within 60 days and second, that they pledge allegiance to the Government of the United States.

Now, would you buy those conditions today?

Mr. RAUH. I think they would be a mistake today when we are trying to bind up all the wounds. It may have worked then, I can't say but

Mr. SANDMAN. Did you say that would be a mistake?

Mr. RAUH. Yes; I did, sir.

Mr. SANDMAN. Let me say as a hypothetical, let's assume that we pass a law that only required a public pledge of allegiance to the Government of the United States. Would you buy that as a condition? Mr. RAUH. I think that would be a mistake although I can under

stand it.

Mr. SANDMAN. Do you think it is a mistake to pledge allegiance to the Government of the United States? Is that what you said?

Mr. RAUH. You are using your words. You can use them all you want, sir, but you can't put words in my mouth. I have been a lawyer longer than you have.

Mr. SANDMAN. But did you say that or didn't you? Yes or no?

Mr. RAUH. Don't act like you are Clarence Darrow. You are not. I will tell you exactly what my position is.

I think it is a mistake to single out anybody in America for a pledge of allegiance. I would give a pledge of allegiance anywhere where a general pledge from everybody was required. Right now if you want to have a pledge of allegiance in this room, I will be the first to stand up and give it. But when you talk about a particular group and single them out, you are doing something that really hurts the unity of this country. And the point is, you are singling people out as though they are not faithful to their country. And I say don't single out any group as being less faithful to their country than anybody else.

Mr. SANDMAN. Let's explore that. Of these thousands that are today in Canada and Sweden, there happens to be several millions of us here in this country that have some question about their responsibility to this Government. Do we not have a right to ask them, if we pass an act of amnesty, will you publicly pledge allegiance to the Government of the United States? Would that be a fair law?

Mr. RAUH. Absolutely not because you are singling them out and

Mr. SANDMAN. I have no further questions.

Mr. RAUH. Well, let me finish, you know, you don't like the answer so you want to cut it off.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. You may finish, of course.

Mr. RAUH. Thank you, sir.

It is because you are singling out a particular group that I would oppose it. I am for a pledge of allegiance. I would be happy to give it, as I said, right now. But you can't single someone out and say that because you did something wrong, you must give a pledge of allegiance when, in fact, they have nothing to be penitent for.

Mr. SANDMAN. Well, when they did not respect the law of the country, they did something against their allegiance to the country, did they not?

Mr. RAUH. I don't think they did anything more than-
Mr. SANDMAN. Well, you are entitled to your opinion.

Mr. RAUH [continuing]. Against the Constitution than you did, sir, when you as a hawk supported this war.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. If there are no other questions of the witness, I would like to express the gratitude of the committee for your appearance today. But I would like to, notwithstanding your offer of generosity of other prospective witnesses, respectively decline to grant that wish. We have a number of witnesses who must be heard from, and it must be in regular order.

Nonetheless, we are grateful to you for your appearance here today. Our next witness is law professor Harrop A. Freeman, representing the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and Raoul Kulberg, Peace Committee of the Friends Meeting of Washington.

Gentlemen, we are under time pressure today so we are going to ask you to be as brief as possible. If you can summarize your statements for us, we would appreciate it.

I believe, Mr. Kulberg, your statement is relatively brief. You may proceed if you wish.

TESTIMONY OF HARROP A. FREEMAN, FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION; ACCOMPANIED BY RAOUL KULBERG

Professor FREEMAN. I am Harrop Freeman, professor of law at Cornell and a member of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. I would like to have the statement and the attached statements of the various meetings of the Religious Society of Friends throughout the country, which are attached to the statement, placed in the record.

Mr. KASTEN MEIER. Without objection they will be so received. [The statement of Harrop A. Freeman with attachments follows:]

TESTIMONY OF HARROP A. FREEMAN ON BEHALF OF THE FRIENDS COMMITTTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION IN SUPPORT OF UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY

I am Harrop A. Freeman, Professor of Law at Cornell University and a member of the Policy Committee of the Friends Committee on National Legislation of Washington, D.C., on whose behalf this testimony is being presented. The Friends Committee on National Legislation does not purport to speak for all Friends since the democratic organization and ideals of the Society of Friends make this impossible. But even on tihs controversial and emotion-charged issue we have found considerable unity. A copy of a statement approved by our General Committee on February 21, 1972, is attached at the end of my testimony, along with statements from a number of other Friends' bodies.

We commend the chairman and members of this subcommittee for calling this series of public hearings on this issue. This is a matter of importance not only to the young men involved but also to their families and friends and the general public.

We support the intent and purposes of those House bills now under discussion such as H.R. 236, H.R. 3100, and H.R. 5195, which provide for general and unconditional amnesty for all who may be deemed to have violated United States laws with regard to the war in Indochina. For their 300-year history Quakers have been known for their opposition to war, their services for harmony and reconciliation for all people. These services have consistently been furnished without asking who is right and who is wrong in a conflict, as a means of binding up the wounds of conflict, furthering reconciliation between opposing parties and permitting men to assume tasks for the future as one family of humanity. It is this same moral imperative of reconciliation that demands the enactment now of full and unconditional amnesty.

Perhaps at no time in its history has this nation been so divided and in need of reconciliation. Not only are we divided party-to-party, age group-to-age group, and class-to-class by the most unpopular war and the most pervasive government scandals in our history. But we are divided within groups, unable to attract good candidates, unclear in the laws needed, unable to inspire voluntary efforts to solve our energy, inflation, food, and other crises. If there is one single thing we need for America it is a central and reconciled people.

I hesitate to pose as an authority on the legal question of amnesty, but I am the first person in over fifty years to research the issue and publish the definitive law review article, "Amnesty Today," in 1971 Law and the Social Order 515 (incidentally alongside an article by Sen. Barry Goldwater on "The President's Warmaking Power"). As that article points out, the ancients well understood the desirability and function of amnesty. Because of the bitterness and legal penalties attached to political opposition or revolt a large segment of the public (often the most politically knowledgeable) would be barred from public office and service. Because such division deprived society of some of its best minds it was desirable that society grant amnesty to all previous political offenders. This was done by the law declaring (as it often does by statutes of limitations) oblivion or forgetting of these offenses. What was intended was not "forgiveness" which would recognize that the person had in fact violated law but was in mercy rehabilitated. Rather, the Greek attached their word amnesty (same stem as amnesia)-that the law no longer looked upon the act as a wrong or violation. The Hebrews likewise had shorter periods and the sabbatic once every seven years when all wrongs were forgotten.

Gradually, through Roman jurisprudence and into Anglo-American law two concepts took shape "pardon," lodged in the executive and given on a case-bycase basis by the one charged with law enforcement and representing a continued recognition that a crime had been committed but that the person was "forgiven" so that he did not have to pay the full penalty, and "amnesty," lodged in the legislature by which a new law wiped out the old crimes as to all persons in certain classes, thereby "forgetting" or "obliterating" the crime and fully reconciling the persons to society.

Amnesty is as American as apple pie. It, or a "general" executive pardon which approximates an amnesty, has been given over forty times in the United States for nearly every political offense in our history-for deserters, insurrectionists, rebellion, the Civil War, draft evasion, military court martials, etc. So deeply ingrained in our system is the concept of amnesty that in 1946 we proclaimed amnesty for over two million Japanese and German political offenders. Nor are we alone in this. Nations as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Bulgaria, Greece, India, Yugoslavia, the U.S.S.R. likewise gave post World War II amnesties. Wouldn't it be a travesty of American democracy if we could amnesty all these German and Japanese war "criminals" and not amnesty our own sons and daughters, whose only offense in most instances was to see the Vietnam War as constitutionally illegal, morally wrong, and politically unwise far in advance of the general opinion of Congress and the people?

I do not care to here play the numbers game which has become so prevalent on this issue. It would seem enough that we recognize that the number affected is very large. If those receiving less than honorable discharges from the armed services, and if those from former wars unamnestied are included, we are talking about from one to two million persons. Too much attention may have been focused on the men who avoided the draft or left the service and are living abroad. This number is estimated at not over 30,000. On the other hand, those who have less than honorable discharges or who have been arrested in anti-war protests number well over 500,000. Their records currently prevent their employment and often their participation in the governmental process. They are mostly the young, the black, the economically deprived, whose burdens should not be added to. The means they took to protest may well have been the only means available to them. We must not forget the real service they did to America in making us face the reality of Vietnam.

Furthermore, there has been no general amnesty in America since 1933. Thus nearly all political offenses surrounding World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Peacetime Draft, and the status of American troops abroad, have gone unamnestied. While this is not a matter directly before your Subcommittee in the pending legislation, I believe it is time we declare oblivion to all these offenses.

A word needs to be said about the Truman "amnesty" of 1947. Today we hear demands for "case-by-case" treatment of offenders or an amnesty conditioned on alternative service for some period of time. These proposals are embodied in some of the bills currently before this Subcommittee. In 1946 Congress authorized and allowed President Truman to set up an "amnesty board" specifically to consider the cases of 15,000 men convicted of draft evasion in World War II. In over a year's time this committee could process and allow less than ten percent of the cases. Truman had to and did allow general pardons to a vastly greater number of convicted deserters and army men in 1952. It is probably proper for a President in granting pardons to make this on a case-by-case basis and even to attach conditions (as is often done by probation). But the scope and purpose of amnesty is different.

Congress grants amnesty by a broad general law; it is intended to forget the crime, not continue to judge it and exact alternative punishment. One does not forget an offense and further reconciliation by continued requirements of alternate service or penalties. Because amnesty has been so long delayed and such a wide variety of offenses are involved, it becomes impossible as a practical matter either to treat the problem on a case-to-case basis or to devise an alternative service for all instances. Nothing less than a full, unconditional and, complete amnesty will suffice.

Henry Steele Commager and Ramsey Clark have pointed out that the argument for amnesty is historical, practical, and ethical. In my law review article to which I have already alluded is the most complete history of amnesty and, as I have stated here, the current situation is a most pressing demand that this history continue, that Congress not forego its rightful powers and defer to the President's views on pardon (or, as he calls it, "amnesty"). Congress has the power of amnesty and Congress should exercise it by enacting legislation which hopefully the President would support by signing.

On the illuminating question of expediency it has many times been pointed out that those who knew the ropes and consulted draft counselors or had the money to hire a lawyer escaped Vietnam service by deferment as students, by enrollment in the Reserve or National Guard, by medical discharge, or various technicalities. These were the service avoiders. But the young man who was poor and black and who knew of none of these "outlets" often found himself trapped in military service with few if any legal courses of action open to express his opposition. There are many practical reasons for amnesty: the numbers involved, the continuing blot on records preventing full participation in the community, the need for the best brain-power and the most socially alive citizens, the impossibility of case-by-case or alternative-service treatment, and the cost to America of carrying so many second-class citizens.

There is also a strong moral imperative for the grant of amnesty. During the Civil War it was the hawks in Congress who demanded the punishment of all southerners and it was a compassionate president who spoke "with malice toward none, with charity for all" and declared, "No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. . . Enough lives have been sacrificed." There are particularly strong moral reasons for amnesty now. First, we may note that a large portion of those involved were just prematurely right. Some were opposed to the war on moral-ethical grounds but did not sincerely believe they could meet the then court requirement for conscientious objection of belief in a Divine Being (during the war the Supreme Court reversed this law). Another group argued that Congress had been defrauded into adopting the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, that the bombing of Cambodia and the war itself were illegal (Americans generally have come to accept much of this argument). Many within the services found them racist and stacked against the black and poor, and they rebelled (the services belatedly acknowledged and tried to right some of these wrongs). Many prematurely took the position now accepted by Congress and the public-that the war was a mistake and that we should extricate ourselves as completely as possible. For still others the Nuremberg principles declaring the citizen's obligation to refuse to be involved in war crimes and to violate local law if necessary was a real obligation. For any religious persons (and the Supreme Court has declared we are a religious country) the conflict between his obligation to the state and to his God is central to his life.

He cannot be a fascist and give complete obedience to the state. Whether he be Jewish ("You shall have no other gods before Me") or Catholic ("I am, sire, the king's good servant, but I am God's good servant first") or Protestant (“God alone is lord of conscience"), the religious person must place his religious con

science first. And this is of the most importance ultimately to the state. As I have pointed out in "A Remonstrance for Conscience," 1958 U. of Penna. L. Rev., the whole legal structure of the state is based upon a general moral conscience built by the individual consciences. Ultimately on moral conscience rests law, order, justice, and the abandonment of violence.

It is sometimes argued that we dishonor those who served in the war by granting amnesty. Louise Ransom, President of Americans for Amnesty, who lost a son in Vietnam, has replied adequately (as have also many veterans): "The only way we can dishonor those who died is to learn nothing from them."

America needs to rediscover its own soul. Not to go on with some post-Vietnam coverup that pretends we have done no wrong and continues to punish those who earliest called us to a moral position. Enough of Watergate-like coverups. Only by a complete, unconditional, and universal amnesty can we regain our legal integrity, our intellectual sanity, our political reality, and our national soul.

STATEMENTS OF SOME QUAKER BODIES ON AMNESTY

Friends Committee on National Legislation, Washington, D.C.

Friends have long realized the wounds of war are sustained by both combatants and non-combatants. A nation suffers because of the moral burden warfare thrusts on the individual and his conscience. The moral and religious dilemmas posed by war and conscription result in an additional casualty list. The war in Indochina is increasingly recognized by Americans as immoral, illegal, and unjust, carried on in violation of the United Nations Charter and the United States Constitution. Our first priority remains to stop the killing in Indochina.

The Nuremberg principles, supported by the United States, the U.S.S.R., France, and Great Britain, and subsequently approved by the United Nations, emphasize that final responsibility for participation in morally reprehensivle acts against humanity rests with the individual.

We believe most persons who have refused to participate in military service or have opposed conscription during the course of the war in Indochina have done so on the ground that they were conscientiously opposed to the war or wartime military service. However, proof of conscience is inherently difficult, and experience has proved that efforts to judge conscientiousness have been marked all too often by refusals to recognize sincere beliefs. We therefore urge that all persons who have refused military service or conscription should not be punished for such refusal, whether it took place before, during, or after military service.

We urge the President and Congress, in a spirit of reconciliation, to join in a full and unconditional amnesty for all those who are deemed to have violated U.S. laws in this regard. Thus, the government should: (1) permit the return of those now outside the United States, either to stay or to visit; (2) provide for prompt release of all currently held in civilian or military prisons; (3) drop pending and potential prosecutions; and (4) restore civil rights to all who have completed prison terms or otherwise lost such rights due to their opposition to the war.

(Approved by the General Committee, February 21, 1972)

AFSC POLICY STATEMENT ON AMNESTY

The people of the United States have before them the question of amnesty for those who violated civil or military law in the course of active opposition to the war in Indochina, or in the course of removing themselves from participation in or support of that war.

The American Friends Service Committee urges the United States Government to declare an amnesty for all these persons.

The American Friends Service Committee is opposed to all war and all conscription because of our religious faith. We are opposed to participation in war, preparation for war and civilian support of war. We are opposed to civil war, international war, foreign wars, wars in this country, wars of defense, wars of aggression, popular wars and unpopular wars.

Starting from that position, we identify with those for whom we are asking amnesty. We do this even while rejecting methods, such as evasion and violence, used by some. We believe in confrontation with evil, not evasion, and in nonviolent direct action against evil, not violence. These moral judgments we make for ourselves, not for others.