For conscientious objectors to military service one means whoever rejects the use of weapons in any occasion because of his or her religious or political principles. These people think that in no case one can kill a person and they refuse to take part in military defence programs because they contemplate, in most cases, the physical destruction of their foes.

Now it seems to me that the young Lithuanians do not object to the use of weapons, but merely to the conscription in one specific army, the Soviet army, which, after the declaration of independence of Lithuania, they regard as a foreign army.

A second characteristic feature of the conscientious objection is that, as in all nonviolent forms of fight, the disrespect of the existing law in order to show obedience to a superior sort of legality, requires full acceptance of all subsequent trials and sentences. Public trial, in fact, is essential to demonstrate the inner injustice of the existing law and to force the rulers to reconsider it.

Despite my reservations on the idea of national defence, I greatly admire these young men and the people of Lithuania who are fighting with dignity and detrmination to obtain the redressing of a historical crime.

But I do not think it proper and useful for anyone to mix up what is a gesture of nationalism with the conscientious objection, that is the denial of all armed organisations, the national one first of all.