The inner Voice

The conscience of red-haired Larry Gara, like that of many another Christian, has led him down a hard & lonely road. When World War II began, it prompted him to refuse to register for the draft. Quaker Gara went to jail, spent three years there.

When he got out, Gara found a job as history teacher and dean of men at Ohio's small, Mennonite Bluffton College. For 26-year-old Larry Gara and his wife, Lanna Mae, a new life opened up. But last fall his conscience dropped him into hot water again. When one of Bluffton's students refused to register for peacetime military training, Gara and his wife hustled to his aid.

Gara scolded the police for arresting the student, wrote a letter of protest to the district attorney, presently found himself on trial for having "counseled, aided and abetted" another person in evading draft regulations. Though Gara claimed that he had merely upheld the student's right to follow his conscience, Toledo's District Court Judge Frank Le Blond Kloeb took an unsentimental view of the matter. Judge Kloeb instructed the jury to find Gara guilty if what he had said to the Bluffton student "had a tendency to encourage or cause [him] to continue his refusal to register." Larry Gara drew another jail sentence of 18 months, which he has appea'ed.

By last week, both the White House and the Department of Justice were becoming uncomfortably aware of Jailbird Gara and his conscience. Some 400 clergymen and laymen had signed petitions on his behalf. Pickets turned up at the White House. Quakers and pacifist-minded churchmen throughout the country were drawing parallels between Gara's crime and their own stand against conscription; many concluded that they were as eligible for the lockup as he was. Said one of President Truman's aides: "These conchies give you nothing but grief and trouble. They won't even apply for parole--they just sit there in jail making martyrs of themselves and stirring up trouble." But there were signs that Larry Gara had also had his fill of martyrdom. Last week a minister friend was trying to find a job for him and a place to live, so that he could put in a formal application for parole. Wrote Gara to the minister: "The days now go rather rapidly, but the weeks creep and the months seem very long . . . But God does grant me the strength sufficient unto each day, and I feel that, so far at least, I've not succumbed to the temptation of bitterness. But, believe me, it is a terrific struggle."

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