CONSCIENCE, THE SUPREME COURT

Two aliens, Dr. Douglas Clyde MacIntosh, Dwight Professor of Theology at the Yale Divinity School and a former chaplain in the Canadian Army, and Miss Marie Averill Bland, who was a nurse in the American Army in France, have been denied citizenship because they made reservations in their promise to bear arms for the United States Dr. MacIntosh "would not promise in advance to bear arms in defense of the United States unless he believed the war to be morally justified", while Miss Bland was willing to swear the oath of allegiance provided it carried the added interpolation "as far as my conscience as a Christian will allow."

By a verdict of five to four, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the decision which refused the rights of American citizens to these two Canadians. As in the chain store decision several days ago, Chief Justice Hughes, it is interesting to note, again joined those able dissenters, Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and Stone, in offering a dissenting opinion.

Miss Bland and Dr. MacIntosh made only those reservations which any citizen feels he has a right to make, and which he believes he does make, in time of war. With the present highly organized facilities for propaganda, everyone may rest assured that his cause will be the moral, the just, and the Christian one. It is curious that in applying for citizenship rights, one does not have to offer oath that one will make no act which may lead the country into war, that one will make every effort to contribute to peace in the society of nations. There are laws which provide for the prosecution of pacifists who talk of peace during war-time, but there is no law to take care of those who make belligerent gestures during peacetime. There is still a tremendous distance to be covered, before the world can arrive at the goal of permanent peace.