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1889—15 February 1932

In the Army of Peace

Coloradan Ben Salmon was a martyr for peace if ever there was one, persecuted by both state and religious powers for his refusal to serve in the military when the United States entered World War I. As he wrote his draft board, “Let those who believe in wholesale violation of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ make a profession of faith by joining the army of war. I am in the army of Peace, and in this army I intend to live and die.”

Although Salmon was a deeply faithful Catholic, he rejected the just war doctrine endorsed by the Church since the fifth century. So when President Woodrow Wilson declared war against Germany in April 1917 and Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore shortly thereafter ordered American Catholics to support the war effort, Salmon knew he was in for trouble. He quickly wrote a letter to President Wilson explaining his religious opposition to participating in the war. “Regardless of nationality, all men are my brothers. God is ‘our father who art in heaven.’ The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is unconditional and inexcusable. By both precept and example, the lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of nonresistance.”

If Wilson ever saw Salmon’s letter, he was unimpressed, for no response was forthcoming. In the meantime, Salmon began giving anti-war speeches in Colorado that eventually brought him national attention as a “shirker” and “subversive.” Secular as well as Catholic voices joined together in condemning his position. It was only a matter of time before authorities retaliated by drafting him. Salmon’s induction papers arrived on Christmas Day 1917. He sent them back the next day along with a note saying that he already served in the army of Peace.

Two weeks later Salmon was arrested and charged with sedition and desertion, even though he had never been formally inducted into the army. Condemned to death, his sentence was “mercifully” reduced to twenty-five years of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. Once behind bars, Salmon was regularly beaten by guards, thrown into isolation, and refused the sacraments by the prison priest. In protest, he went on a hunger strike and was forcibly fed for six months before officials declared him mentally unstable and shipped him off to a Washington, DC, hospital for the criminally insane.

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union eventually took up Salmon’s case. He was finally pardoned in 1920 and given a dishonorable discharge from the army—even though, once again, he had never been inducted. He returned to an unforgiving community in Colorado where he died twelve years later, his health prematurely broken by prison hardships and the poverty he endured after his release. But he went to his grave believing that “either Christ is a liar or war is never necessary”—and Christ is no liar.