Where have all the conscientious objectors in literature gone?

Ford Madox Ford wrote about them. So did Lytton Strachey and Sarah Waters. Help us to celebrate Conscientious Objectors Day by tracking down more literary 'conchies'

Today is International Conscientious Objectors' day, and the pacifist group Peace Pledge Union are holding their annual ceremony in London to mark the event. PPU has a fascinating and affecting archive of testimony from COs, but it occurred to me that conscientious objectors are underrepresented in the literature of war. There are many references to conscience: to soldiers who signed up but later doubted the rightness of the cause and to deserters, to those who were, by our standards, wrongly accused of cowardice. But references to actual conchies, as they were (not always affectionately) known, are thin on the ground.

Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy Parade's End, produced in the 1920s, has some mention of them.

'The son,' Tietjens said, 'is a conscientious objector. He's on a minesweeper. A bluejacket. His idea is that picking up mines is saving life, not taking it.'

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