Pacifism and conscientious objection

Pacifism and conscientious objection appear in the novel as both a refusal of war and a challenge to the loyalties that wartime society demands. Through Don Stevens, that stance acquires a revolutionary dimension: opposition to the fighting is tied to hopes for a new social order. Yet the novel also shows how readily pacifists are treated as cowards or disruptive outsiders, and how their convictions become entangled with personal feeling, social rank, and the unpredictable spectacle of armistice celebration.

Don Stevens and Revolutionary Pacifism

When Don returns to Paris on leave in his grey Quaker-outfit uniform, his arrival offers Eveline Hutchins a welcome escape from the tedious company and loneliness of the spring. She has been struggling with Yvonne’s attempts to manage her life and with the dreariness of months in Paris; Don’s presence is a relief, and she tells Yvonne that he is her cousin, brought up with her like a brother. The explanation lets her put him up in Eleanor Stoddard’s room, but the intimacy of his visit soon extends beyond domestic comfort into political conviction.

Don is exhilarated by the Bolsheviks’ success in Russia. He eats enormously, drinks all the wine in the house, and speaks of underground forces he says he knows. His account presents the armies as mutinous and predicts that the pattern of the Battle of Caporetto will spread across the front. He says German soldiers are also ready to revolt, making military rebellion the possible beginning of world revolution. In support of this expectation, he recounts mutinies at Verdun and long trains of soldiers advancing toward an attack while crying out against the war and shooting at gendarmes. His pacifism is therefore not framed simply as private conscientious refusal: he imagines mass resistance by soldiers and workers overturning the structures that sustain the conflict.

Don tells Eveline that the working classes will no longer tolerate the war and argues that its suffering might be made worthwhile if it produces a new socialist civilization. The novel places this expansive political hope at an intimate dinner table, where he kisses Eveline while Yvonne enters with pancakes carrying burning brandy. He teases Yvonne about the war’s eventual end and nearly draws a smile from her. The scene makes the home a small, uneasy meeting place for radical expectation, personal affection, and the routines of service. Don’s politics can inspire Eveline, but his certainty is also bound up with excitement, drinking, and an impulsive disregard for the room’s social boundaries.

Accusations and Social Rank

The hostility directed at pacifism becomes explicit when Don turns up at Eveline’s apartment with Paul Johnson, a private whom he has brought along. Eveline is dining with J.W. Moorehouse, and the unexpected meeting leaves the company awkward and quiet until J.W. departs. Don then denounces him as a Red Cross major; Eveline answers by calling Don a fake Quaker. Her retort does not settle whether Don’s beliefs are sincere. Instead, it shows that pacifist identity itself has become a point of accusation between them: he attacks a position of wartime authority, and she turns the scrutiny back on the consistency of his own affiliation.

Paul’s presence complicates the exchange. He apologizes repeatedly for intruding and explains that he asked Don to bring him because he had heard so much about Eveline and missed seeing an American woman. Eveline initially dislikes his deferential manner and Minnesota accent, but comes to like him before he leaves. Don, by contrast, dismisses Paul as sweet but somehow sapless, and expects to spend the night with Eveline; she refuses, and he leaves sullen. The episode distinguishes political comradeship from personal entitlement. Don’s antiwar position does not make him gentle in private, and his assumption about Eveline’s company sits uneasily beside his broader language of liberation.

Pacifism in Officer Society

The same conflict enters a more formal social setting when Don appears shortly before Eveline is to host Colonel Appleton and Brigadier General Byng. She asks him to stay, making his presence a source of immediate tension: the General regards Quakers as shirkers, while Don argues that a pacifist can be a better patriot than a staff officer in a comfortable job. He goes further, denouncing patriotism as a crime against humanity. His challenge brings the politics of refusal into a dinner organized around rank, hospitality, and the proper mixing of guests.

The argument is not resolved by reasoned agreement. It is interrupted when Colonel Appleton breaks through the small gilt chair on which he is sitting, and the General’s pun redirects the company’s attention. The comic accident releases the room from an increasingly unpleasant confrontation without changing the positions that produced it. Eleanor Stoddard is angry with Don, and afterward she and Eveline have a stand-up quarrel. By the next morning Eleanor will not speak to Eveline, who goes out to look for another apartment. Pacifist speech thus has consequences beyond the speaker and his opponents: it strains the friendships and domestic arrangements of the people who make room for it.

The Armistice and the Limits of Refusal

During the armistice celebration, Don’s antiwar identity returns in a more disorderly, public form. He is behind a small zinc bar at a café entrance, mixing cocktails for a crowd of very drunk Canadian and Anzac officers. Paul tells Eveline that Don has had too much to drink, and they get him out from behind the bar, where apparently no one has been paying for the drinks. In the doorway Don removes his grey cap and raises a Quaker greeting alongside an antiwar cry; the crowd cheers him.

The scene gives pacifism an unexpected audience among reveling military men, but it does not turn that audience into an organized movement. Don and Eveline wander through the celebration, and rings of dancers repeatedly surround her while Don kisses her. Eveline dislikes his drunken assumption that she belongs to him and grows tired as they reach the Place de la Concorde. When she suggests crossing the river to her apartment for cold veal and salad, Don runs after a group of Alsatian girls, leaving Paul embarrassed and anxious to explain his friend’s behavior. The moment resists a neat image of pacifism as either moral purity or political victory: the antiwar cry is cheered amid celebration, drink, and confusion, while Don’s own conduct remains impulsive and possessive. Across these scenes, the novel presents conscientious objection as a real challenge to wartime authority, but not as a guarantee of personal consistency, social acceptance, or a transformed peace.