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Chapter Six: Enemy on the Home Front
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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Chapter Six Enemy on the Home Front We know of no place to go. We are surrounded by the king’s lands. In every direction we would walk straight into the jaws of robbers and tyrants, like sheep cast among ravenous wolves. —Jakob Hutter District Attorney Targets Amish and Mennonites The letter that appeared in the Budget, a newspaper that went to Amish homes across the country, began on a religious note and then turned casually to the weather, easing into the grave subject at hand: A greeting in our Saviors name. People are all well excepting some colds. The weather is cool again. We’re having more rain than usual this spring. Oats fields are nice and green much more barley is being put out this spring than usual on account of the wheat failing. A few farmers think they have some wheat that will be harvested, some corn is planted. As we are living in an age of time when the gospel is preached over a wider area than ever before, but in what state of affairs the world is in? A world war, never since the time of Julius Caesar was so large a portion of the civilized nations at war, never were such destructive weapons used to destroy life, never were the nonresistant people put to a more trying test in our country . . . Enemy on the Home Front 139 Now we are asked to buy Liberty Bonds the form in which the government has to carry on the war. Sorry to learn that some Mennonites have yielded and bought bonds. What would become of our nonresistant faith if our young brethren in camp would yield.1 The writer, Mannasses E. Bontrager, an Amish bishop with a 106-acre farm near Dodge City, Kansas, apparently wanted nothing more than to shore up the faith of the 3,600 subscribers to the newspaper. In the letter, which was published on May 15, 1918, a week before the Hutterites left for Camp Lewis, Bontrager expressed both regret that some Mennonites were compromising by buying war bonds and an implicit fear that Amish would follow suit. Representatives of the historic peace churches were, indeed, divided over how to respond to these appeals to finance the war. In the Mennonite Church, for example, one national publication, the Gospel Herald, opposed the bonds on the grounds of military participation, while another publication , the Mennonite, saw the purchase as acceptable, rendering unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s. Those members who bought bonds often gave them to the Red Cross or another relief fund, or even to their own churches, aiding the government but for a worthy cause. The editor of the Budget, Samuel H. Miller, who himself was a Mennonite minister, was away from his Ohio office when the letter from Bishop Bontrager arrived; his printer, A.A. Middaugh, elected to publish it. The American Protective League for Wayne and Holmes counties, a patriotic watchdog group nominally attached to the Justice Department, quickly swung into action. One of the league’s citizen volunteers discerned a threat to the nation lurking in the letter to the Amish community and contacted the U.S. Justice Department, which relayed the information to District Attorney Edwin Slusser Wertz of Cleveland. On July 7, 1918, a grand jury indicted Miller and Bontrager on five counts of violating the one-year-old Espionage Act, which prohibited any interference with the mission of the armed services, including recruitment. F.B. Kavanagh, the assistant U.S. attorney who signed the indictment, characterized the letter as an example of “fanatical anti-war teachings.” [23.20.220.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:55 GMT) 140 Pacifists in Chains The trial began on August 17, with the temperature hovering around 90 degrees. Miller, who was present without a lawyer, had earlier pleaded not guilty. Though he could have fought the charges, especially given that he neither wrote the letter nor signed off on its publication, he agreed to a plea bargain in which the government dropped four charges and he pleaded guilty to one—attempt to cause or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny , and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States. Bishop Bontrager pleaded similarly. They were both fined five hundred dollars , plus court costs. Miller spent several days in jail until he raised the money to pay the fine. Wertz, a former Democratic state lawmaker who had served in the Spanish -American War, was...