Lest We Forget, a phrase in the poem “Recessional,” by Rudyard Kipling, is the reason we engage in this memory, suggested by Vonnie Boston* following her attendance over last weekend’s (14 – 15 February 2015) conference on, “Bringing-spreading the Light” at a special centre – Tauhara Conference Space and Retreat on the North Island near Lake Taupo – New Zealand’s largest lake,” as Vonnie here reports.

“New Zealand’s largest lake – formed around 300AD in one mighty crack – an earthquake according to the bus driver, who also informed us the shake was felt in China – though he didn’t disclose how he knew this or whether he was driving a different vehicle somewhere there way back! But the information delivered at the conference was even more of a shake-up, epicentered around the eminent medical doctor Bruce Lipton of the USA as he explained how his research in epigenetics and biology proved that not only can we change our genetic blueprint but the way it changes is in response to the environment-fluid that the cell particles swim in… and that fluid takes on the prevailing energy-pollution-character of all around as he demonstrated in his work over the years that the reason prayer or thought and other such influences work is because the factors in our cells have no option. So QED – if you are unhappy/upset/stressed or vice versa this will reflect and literally rewrite the coding that results in your behaviour…

“The Tauhara Centre, established to encourage peace and all the elements of non-violence, has a beautiful energy that emanates the inner values intended to lift Man to that higher consciousness plane and also houses a library of volumes that reflect how we have been striving to this end since the outset – through Tibetan sacred texts, the concepts of the Tao and all other disciplines to the latest interpretations in quantum physics.

“However, there in that sanctuary of wisdom the title that called to me personally was, “We Will Not Cease”, by New Zealand’s Archibald Baxter. One hundred years on since his virtual crucifixion by all those not yet up on Lipton’s luminous work, or even aware of the martyr-like life he exemplified, though we find an orgy of fuss and commemoration ceremonies still upholding war he opposed – and the human is still held up as the most intelligent beast on the planet!

“Well, read the attached and go figure why so few know of Baxter, or are loath to speak of him, or, what will be far more important to him, have read the message he lived and got it!

“Messengers have come to this earth again and again – when will we learn to read what they bring or is it just a case of needing to change the climate-environment via the DNA to a harmonious mix or just sit about and wait for a human explosion to rival Taupo’s mother?

“One can only ask… how long must we live to make any change or notice life is precious and now we have the power to change it for good why are we missing the path…There is no way to peace – peace is the Way” … but why are we still ignoring-persecuting those who like Baxter demonstrated this truth?

“Pressenza might like to use the above as a preface to the attached foreword and description from the book – which I typed out as I felt it so needs an airing again. And, strangely last night on the television there was a re-run of war tales-heroes where 3,000 very young fellows, conscientious objectors – stakes to commemorate them somewhere on allies territory in Europe – only just pardoned in 2006 – all shot point blank by their own for being considered deserters.

What a world – where we still haven’t managed the first rule in all the religions-philosophies etc – unconditional love – once that prevails, of course, no need for rule 2 – thou shall not kill…

Introductory note: as adapted by Matthew Tonks from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB) biography of Archibald Baxter by David Grant.

Archibald McColl Learmond Baxter was born at Saddle Hill, Otago, in 1881. Baxter seriously considered enlisting as a volunteer for the South African War of 1899–1902, but during that war heard a plea for pacifism from a Dunedin lawyer that changed his life.

By the time the national register was taken in 1915 – requiring men to register their preparedness to serve in the First World War – he was committed to rejecting the war both as a pacifist and as a Christian socialist.

Following the introduction of military conscription in November 1916, Baxter was quickly balloted and arrested without even being given notice that he was required to serve in the army. The minister of defence, James Allen, believed that the approximately 100 objectors in prisons and prison camps around the country should be sent to war. In July 1917 Baxter and 13 other recalcitrant objectors were forced aboard the troopship Waitemata, bound for Britain and then the front line.

On the Waitemata, in camps in Britain and on the Western Front, Baxter was subjected to extreme physical and mental abuse that was intended to force him to relinquish his pacifist ideals. By far the harshest method used was Field Punishment No. 1 (called colloquially ‘the Crucifixion’). This consisted of being tied to a post in the open with his hands bound tightly behind his back and his knees and feet bound – for up to four hours a day, in all weathers. On 1 April 1918 he was taken to hospital in Boulogne, where he was diagnosed as having mental weakness and confusional insanity in his determination not to fight.

After being sent back to New Zealand, Baxter married, had two sons (including the poet James K. Baxter), and recorded his wartime experiences in a memoir, We will not cease. First published in 1939, this book is a powerful account of dissent and its consequences, and has become a classic of New Zealand literature.

We will Not Cease

Archibald Baxter – The Autobiography of a Conscientious Objector.

This day by day record of the sufferings, torments, anguishes and privations of a Conscientious Objector in WWI is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1939. It is written “In memory of those days that we can’t yet afford to forget”, and for those who like Archibald Baxter believe that war does not provide an answer to anything this book is a moving reminder of the kind of courage needed to remain true to the dictates of belief and conscience.

Printed by Caxton Press. First published 1939 by Victor Gollancz Ltd., London. Copyright Archibald Baxter 1968.

Foreword to the 1968 edition

When this book was first published at the beginning of the Second WW , I sent a copy to Mark Briggs, who had suffered with me in France, with this inscription: ‘In memory of days that we can’t yet afford to forget.’ Now that the book is being republished, the people who want this to be done will have various reasons for thinking it should be given again to the public. Some may consider its documentary value. In my own view the chief reason is still contained in the message that I sent to Briggs.

Throughout this half century the methods of warfare have steadily become more atrocious. Before the First World War people said to one another: ‘Warfare belongs to the past. Armies will never meet again with frontal attack in battle. We have too much respect now for human life’
But in fact it has happened otherwise. A greater barbarism than any the human race had known in the past has risen among the nations. In the First World War multitudes of conscript soldiers were buried alive in the mud of France. Villages were also annihilated. But the greatest number of casualties were among the conscript soldiers. In the Second World War the wholesale slaughter of civilians, by high explosives, by fire bombing, and finally by atomic weapons, became a matter of course. Reports from the present Vietnam War indicate that 80% of the casualties are occurring among civilians. War has at last become wholly indiscriminate. The military machine is turned against that communal life which is the seed-bed of future generations of mankind. The only apparent justification that war ever had was that by destroying some lives it might clumsily preserve others. But now even that justification is being stripped away. We make war chiefly on civilians and respect for human life seems to have become a thing of the past.

To accept this situation would be to accept the devil’s philosophy. And in fact men are not accepting it easily. This book contains the record of my own fight to the utmost against the power of the military machine during the First World War. At that time to be pacifist was to be in a distinct minority.

But today – as war, which was always atrocious, becomes more obviously atrocious and anti-human – to be pacifist is to be the spokesman even of a confused majority who have begun to see that, whatever the national issues may be, all wars are deeply atrocious and no war can be called just. Though methods of warfare have changed, the military machine remains essentially the same; and the record of my own battle against that machine on behalf of my fellow-humans, is therefore relevant to this time also.

To oppose the military machine means to accept the possibility that one may be physically destroyed by it. In my own experience, the moment when I recognized this clearly was when the military police showed me Briggs with the enormous wound on his back, and said: ‘That’s the way you’ll be tomorrow.’ I did not think that Briggs would survive their deliberate violence, or that I would survive it either. And I was able to accept this with a calm mind. I slept and woke again. Once I had accepted the ultimate fact, the military machine had no power at all over me. In fact the blow did not fall as it had on Briggs, but came more slowly in another way, by starvation. But I had already made my decision at the time when I saw Briggs.

I remember always the gentleness and humanity of the ordinary soldiers who were close to me in those times. Once, when I had been maltreated by an officer while I lay on the ground, being too weak to do otherwise they carried me very gently, and quietly cursed the authorities who were punishing me. Later they were penalized for being too lenient with me. When three of them pulled me out of a shellhole and said: ‘Stick with us,’ I felt that I could not let them risk their own lives for me under a false impression, so I told them I was an objector. They said they knew all about me and understood quite well what I was standing for. The ordinary soldiers were not antagonistic. When I starved at the last, they too were starving, but would certainly have given me some of their meagre rations if I had told them of my situation. If the soldiers had not looked after me I would undoubtedly have died. My feeling towards them resembles a prayer that something good might always follow then, and that the light should shine upon them. Nor, for that matter, do I have any feelings of hostility towards the officers whose duty it was to do me harm. They unlike the soldiers, had become part of the military machine, had submerged themselves in it; and it was the military machine I was opposing, not them as persons.

There were two strange dreams, not mentioned in the book, which I had shortly before the outbreak of the first World War. In the first dream I was travelling on the road near my birthplace, when I heard a noise in the sky, and when I looked up I saw a huge human eye moving over the land followed by a trail of black funeral crepe. The feeling associated with the dream was one of grief and horror. In the second dream I was again in the same place, and saw a vast forest of trees, straight, slim and tall, growing towards the sky. ‘They are more beautiful than any I have ever seen,’ I thought.

Then a man stood by me answered my thought. ‘Yes, they are beautiful,’ he said, ‘but I am full of grief when I look at them. Those are the men of the world, but the lords of the forest have sold it to death.’

Dreams do not prove anything; but I remember that when the troopship, the Waitemata, sailed out of Wellington harbour, the noise of the propeller and the pounding of the sea was exactly the same noise that I had heard in the first dream. The dreams were perhaps premonitory; as if the grief that was to come through war to the people of this country had already touched my mind. The people have never truly welcomed war. If my own experience of that grief has helped in any way towards the abolition of war, it will not have been for nothing. – Archibald Baxter

In 1915 in NZ the National Register was taken. All men of military age were required to state whether they were willing to undertake military service. Of approximately 196,000 in this category 33,700 said they would not undertake service at home or abroad, and 44,300 declared their willingness to undertake home service but refused to go abroad. Yet the following year the New Zealand Government introduced conscription.

The author (Archibald Baxter)made his opposition to the war and his attitude to conscription clear in the first years of the conflict, and after the passing of the Conscription Act, he was arrested without even receiving notice that he was required to serve in the Army. In company with other objectors, he was moved from jail to jail. He was transferred on board a troopship to France, and upon arrival there was officially tortured by means of the field punishment known as crucifixion. He suffered unofficial as well as official punishment, and was, on several occasions, beaten up. He was placed alone in an area which was heavily shelled and before he was through with the various attempts to make him change his mind, he was physically and mentally exhausted: prison, bad food (or no food), punishments, illness and nervous strain were at last too much for him and he collapsed, seriously ill, and had to be transferred to a hospital.
He was taken (quite unnecessarily it appears) to a mental hospital, which fact was subsequently used against him by the authorities.

The author, father of poet James K Baxter, states his story without a trace of the hysteria or invective which would be excusable in one who had suffered so much. His book is a calm, logical indictment of a policy which did nothing to induce the Conscientious Objector to change his mind and did nothing in the long run to assist the authorities. As, “We Will Not Cease” was published in 1939 few copies reached New Zealand before World War II started, and so it is relatively little known in the author’s own country. The Blitz of 1941 destroyed all the unsold copies held by the original publisher, Victor Gollancz Ltd.

Three years after the First World War, Archibald Baxter married Millicent Brown, the daughter of John MacMillan Brown, a well-known pioneering Professor of Classics and English at Canterbury College. He continued farming until 1930. A member of the Labour Party from the time of its foundation, he took an active interest in its growth and attended several Labour Party Conferences in Wellington. Mr Baxter and his family made a trip to England and Europe, where he attended the War Registers’ International Conference in Copenhagen in 1937. “We Will Not Cease” was written in Salisbury in 1937. Part of the source material of the book was available in notes which Mrs Baxter had made at the author’s dictation shortly after World War I.

Mr Baxter’s elder son, Terence John Baxter, appealed on conscientious ground against being conscripted for military service in World War II. His appeal , however, was dismissed, and he was imprisoned in military defaulters’ detention camps until the war ended.

* Vonnie Boston, New Zealander, soul painter and artist-author-publisher of SOULS – The Pike Miners – bosvb@yahoo.com