Review: We Will Not Cease
Reviewed by David Herkt
Reviewed by: David Herkt
Author:Archibald Baxter
Publisher:Otago University Press
ISBN:9781988592992
Date Published:15 May 2021
Pages:216
Format:Paperback
RRP:$30.00
If there is one book which necessarily modifies some part of the heroic myth of the New Zealand military in World War One, then it is Archibald Baxter’s We Will Not Cease. First published in 1939, it is a searing first-person narrative of conscientious objection and the inhumanity of some New Zealanders towards those who did not share their beliefs about war.
In 1915, Archibald Baxter, the father of the poet James K Baxter, was arrested and sent to a New Zealand prison. He and six of his seven brothers had attempted to register as conscientious objectors. So well-known were Baxter’s pacifist beliefs that he was even arrested before he received his call-up papers.
Baxter sought exemption by arguing that as he had never signed up, he could not be charged. He also cited the teachings of Christ (“Thou shalt not kill”), but as he was not a communicant or a member of any official religious organisation, his plea was refused.
Incarcerated without trial, he was moved from prison to prison. He eventually found himself in Trentham Military Camp before being sent overseas to Europe. “It’s your submission we want,” one officer told him, “not your service.”
In 1936, 20 years after the exact conversations and incidents the book reports so vividly, Baxter dictated We Will Not Cease describing these events to his wife Millicent, the daughter of well-known Canterbury University professor John Macmillan Brown and herself a peace activist.
Written in a distinctly different style from Baxter’s other works, it can only be speculated upon exactly what role Millicent Baxter played in the creation of what has become a classic of New Zealand history and literature.
The book is a cataloguing of horrific abuse at the hands of military authorities and individual commanders. En route to Europe’s frontlines, Baxter and the other conscientious objectors in the troopship Waitemata were stripped of their clothes, hosed down and subjected to violence. Once in Britain, the staging post for France, he was a victim of further systematic bullying and, once he reached France, he faced the notorious Field Punishment No. 1.
This involved being tied to a post that inclined forward, with hands tied behind the wooden stake and feet tightly bound. It was a posture that became intensely painful even after a minute. Baxter would suffer the punishment for four hours daily, frequently in the snow. Once he was forgotten and left strung up for eight hours. It was a punishment known to the troops as “Crucifixion.”
He wasn’t alone; two other New Zealanders endured the same regime. Even though they still refused to wear military uniforms, they were ordered to the Front Lines. Baxter was beaten, humiliated and dragged to the most intensely-shelled section of the Front. It is notable that Baxter, even while cataloguing these abuses, could also describe the ordinary kindness of regular soldiers.
Eventually, physically incapacitated and disorientated, Baxter was returned to Britain where a friendly doctor provided a diagnosis of insanity. He would return, broken, to New Zealand in 1918.
We Will Not Cease was republished by Otago University Press to mark International Conscientious Objector’s Day (May 15). It is a searing account and it reveals just why, on Anzac Days throughout New Zealand, there are frequently wreaths laid in memory of New Zealand’s conscientious objectors and their own horrific abuses at the hands of the country’s military.
Reviewed by David Herkt
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