What curious information you come across when you trace your ancestry. Dellinger who had no idea that he had brave Revolutionary ancestors in North Carolina, fatuously celebrated his New England Revolutionary ancestry. Can you imagine what knowing he was a cousin would have done to boost my reputation in California in the late 1960s? Paul Tibbets was a Warfield cousin.
Holley informed Dellinger that a local writer had a printing press for sale and helped arrange for him to purchase it.54 With press in hand, Dellinger and his CO comrades Bill Kuenning, Ralph DiGia, and Roy Kepler wrote and printed the first issue of a new militant pacifist journal, Direct Action. The journal’s most powerful and historically significant article was a “Declaration of War” penned by Dellinger in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan:
The “way of life” that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . . is international and dominates every nation of the world . . . With this “way of life” (“death” would be more appropriate) there can be no truce nor quarter. . . . It must be total war against the infamous economic, political and social system which is dominant in this country . . . The enemy is every institution which denies full social and economic equality to anyone. The enemy is personal indifference to the consequences of acts performed by the institutions of which we are a part . . . There is no solution short of all-out war. But there must be one major difference between our war and the war that has just ended . . . The war for total brotherhood must be a nonviolent war carried on by methods worthy of the ideas we seek to serve . . . There must be strikes, sabotage and seizure of public property now being held by private owners. There must be civil disobedience of laws which are contrary to human welfare. But there must be also an uncompromising practice of treating everyone, including the worst of our opponents, with all the respect and decency that he merits as a fellow human being . . . Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of human relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow.55
Holley informed Dellinger that a local writer had a printing press for sale and helped arrange for him to purchase it.54 With press in hand, Dellinger and his CO comrades Bill Kuenning, Ralph DiGia, and Roy Kepler wrote and printed the first issue of a new militant pacifist journal, Direct Action. The journal’s most powerful and historically significant article was a “Declaration of War” penned by Dellinger in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan:
The “way of life” that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki . . . is international and dominates every nation of the world . . . With this “way of life” (“death” would be more appropriate) there can be no truce nor quarter. . . . It must be total war against the infamous economic, political and social system which is dominant in this country . . . The enemy is every institution which denies full social and economic equality to anyone. The enemy is personal indifference to the consequences of acts performed by the institutions of which we are a part . . . There is no solution short of all-out war. But there must be one major difference between our war and the war that has just ended . . . The war for total brotherhood must be a nonviolent war carried on by methods worthy of the ideas we seek to serve . . . There must be strikes, sabotage and seizure of public property now being held by private owners. There must be civil disobedience of laws which are contrary to human welfare. But there must be also an uncompromising practice of treating everyone, including the worst of our opponents, with all the respect and decency that he merits as a fellow human being . . . Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of human relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow.55
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