Challenge to Mars: Essays on Pacifism from 1918 to 1945

Grant Dawson is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in military history at
Carleton University.

Edited and compiled by two University of Toronto scholars, Challenge to
Mars is a collection of peace history essays that examine some
underexplored areas of North American and European pacifism. Because of
their length (around 16 pages), some of the contributions do not achieve
a really sustained and detailed argument. That said, they are for the
most part strong introductions to the ways in which individuals or
groups in various countries responded to the threat of war and the
pressure to serve.

Among the interesting papers in the 1918 to ca.1940 section are those
on the anarcho-pacifism of Bart de Ligt, a Dutch anti-militarist;
Canadian J.S. Woodworth; war resisters in Germany; and Christian
pacifists in France. The second section, dealing with the years 1940 to
1945, concentrates on the experience of conscientious objectors to
military service in various countries, including Canada, New Zealand,
and Germany. In both sections, several papers concentrate on women. In
the third section, there are only two papers on Asia (on Japan and on
India’s Mohandas Gandhi), and Africa is completely absent. The editors
acknowledge that for some countries it was “difficult to discover
materials of value available on interwar and Second World War
pacifism.”

Many of the essays focus on the pressure placed on those who espoused
pacifistic beliefs. Rachel Goossen examines the ways in which American
professional women were pressured to conform during the Second World
War. Torleiv Austad discusses the dilemma of Norwegian pacifists, who
were forced to decide whether violent or nonviolent resistance should be
used against the German occupier. Kenneth McNaught contributes a fine
paper on the steadfastness of J.S. Woodsworth, who refused to
countenance the use of force to combat force in a Canadian Parliament
otherwise unanimous in its support of war against Germany.

Although perhaps too ambitious in its breadth, Challenge to Mars is a
useful introduction to peace history.