The Inglory Boys

As the war produces heroes, so the antiwar movement must make martyrs. Last week's leading candidates were Pacifist David J. Miller, 23, a graduate of Jesuit-run Le Moyne College in Syracuse, who claims that "the only thing I'm expert at is refusing to be drafted," and Brown University Dropout David Mitchell, also 23, who founded the Brooklyn-based End the Draft Committee and its monthly publication Downdraft, but maintains that he would fight to defend his country against attack. Both refuse to apply for classification as conscientious objectors-though neither has shown any reticence about offering his conscience as Exhibit A in court-and both face jail terms.

Witness? Miller, who first achieved prominence of sorts in October by publicly burning his draft card, last month became the first American to be convicted of transgressing a 1965 law making that act a felony. Last week he came up for sentencing in New York's Federal District Court, where Judge Harold Tyler Jr. dismissed his argument that igniting a draft card is a form of free speech, but announced dryly that he would not "create a myth of martyr-hood." After handing down a three-year sentence, the judge suspended it on condition that Miller obtain a new draft card, carry it as required by law, and submit to induction if drafted.

Not likely. "I have no intention," said Miller, "of obeying any of the judge's directives, even if I have to go to jail." Imprisonment, as he sees it, "is one of the responsibilities of being a Christian witness." Miller's lawyers then filed a notice of appeal, which had the effect of staying the probation terms and keeping Miller at least temporarily out of convict's garb or G.I.'s fatigues.

Genocide? Mitchell's offense was more prosaic-he had simply refused to report for induction-but his defense was far more grandiose. Contending that the U.S. is committing genocide and other crimes against world law in Viet Nam, he cited the Nurnberg war-trial verdicts as an injunction on all citizens to disobey illegal orders from their governments. Mitchell was convicted and sentenced to five years after his first trial in Federal District Court in New Haven, Conn., but the Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction on procedural grounds.

At his retrial in Hartford, Conn., last week, Mitchell's lawyers wanted to call a variety of witnesses, including a U.S. Navy pilot now a prisoner in North Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh, it was said, would release him to testify. The defense also wanted to call government officials from Hanoi, Ralph Schoenman, a Brooklyn expatriate who is chief lieutenant of Bertrand Russell's "better-Red-than-dead" campaign in London, and Staughton Lynd, the Yale assistant professor of history who, like Schoenman, recently visited North Viet Nam (and last week brought suit in Washington to win back the passport he forfeited thereby). Judge T. Emmet Clarie rejected the whole line of argument, refused to allow Lynd and Schoenman to testify. It took the jury twelve minutes to find Mitchell guilty. He could get a maximum sentence of five years.

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