First published in 1966, this classic study of nonviolent social defence is now available in a (close to) verbatim electronic edition. See colophon for publication history, technical, and copyright details.

Just after the ringing of the gong at 8:00, the evening defenders' meeting convened. The Unionist commander and the security officer entered the meeting and read Proclamation #7:

"On the basis of the pacifist decision to ignore the rightful authority of the Unionist government and to usurp power, we have decided to meet the pacifist insurrection by force. From now on, the administration will meet any harassment by shooting to kill."

They left, trailing behind them a number of defenders repeating questions. It was some minutes before the chairman was able to reconvene the meeting. Various suggestions were put forward as the next agenda item. Singing of defiant freedom songs was begun by some. At length the chairman called for committee reports. A sign was agreed upon to mark the new free area of the north end. The defenders agreed to march around the main building singing songs before each meal. Shifts were quickly designated for bell-ringing and sweeping out the security zone. Labor assignments were made for the work projects now disclosed. As in the afternoon meeting, there was no dissent from this method of assigning duties.

The chairman now proposed to show movies, but this was shouted down in favor of more reports. The gas attack delegation told of its "witness," relating how the Unionists had remained silent. After fifteen minutes, they had "left it with a dilemma on their hearts and their consciences." A small child had been involved in the gassing and two participants cautioned the delegation about playing unduly upon this angle.

Finally the group's attention was directed by one member to the implications of Proclamation #7. At once the defenders began to discuss whether it constituted a threat or a bluff, whether one person should make the test by ringing the 9:00 bell or whether there should be a mass confrontation. Here questions were raised about the goal of such a protest. At least one participant saw the impending confrontation in terms of escalation. Another stated that there was no reason, given our goal of leaving, to risk all being shot. Then the discussion shifted back to how many should go out at 9:00. It was agreed that someone must; not to ring the bell would be to give in. The discussion continued over the possible effect and the amount of information to be gained if one, ten or all went out. The last speaker proposed that one should go; then, if he were shot, a small group should go out at 10:00. With no resolution in sight, but with the clock. indicating 9:00, the previously designated bell-ringer went out, followed by one other defender.

The bell-ringer raised his gong and began to beat the strokes. A Unionist security detail emerged from the security zone. Quite calmly the security officer shot the bell-ringer, then tear gas bombs were thrown at the entrances of the meeting room and at the bell-ringer's companion. The defenders apparently remained unaware that the bell-ringer had been killed. No one attempted to call through the gas or find another exit. Some sang "We Shall Overcome." Finally, after the gas had dissipated, the bell-ringer's gassed companion staggered inside and reported what had happened. Two women and a man came out, carried the body into a hall and covered it with a blanket.

One defender came out and remained for some time on the steps, head in hands. The chairman called for a memorial service. Others ignored this and discussion was resumed about what to do at 10:00. This continued without clear direction. The projectionist offered to proceed: "The film that I have on here is a very enjoyable film; it would tend to break the tension." This met with no positive response, but another defender urged that they go on with the planned program. Others talked, without a clear sequence of expression, about the next deadline. One defender again asked for a memorial service and burial, after which, he said, he would go out to ring the bell, urging others to go with him. Another suggested that the Unionists' doors be blocked during this action by six at each door. If the Unionists climbed over the defenders, they should go in and take possession of the security zone.

It was then pointed out that the 9:00 bell-ringer had gone out to find whether the Unionists "meant business " — and had found out. What was now faced was the prospect of mass suicide, itself an act of violence. To this was objected the thought that if the group failed to respond at 10:00, "... then we would have nothing else to lose. They've got us all." This was supported but led to further disjointed comment. It was then asked whether martyrdom in another 35 minutes was the most meaningful act the group could do; this would end all chances to change the world or any part of it away from this beastly fact. At this point one participant quietly prepared a brief account of what had happened, intending to slip it under a rug if a mass confrontation took place at 10:00, so that some record for someone might exist. [See Appendix 7 for text].

Now several older participants spoke openly of a confrontation ending in mass murder, but expressing the hope that the Unionists might not in fact do this. Another noted that the Unionist goal was not this sort of confrontation. Another pleaded for some way to communicate with the Unionists. At this point the 9:00 bell-ringer's widow, who had gone unremarked in the whole discussion, came outside to several umpires in great agitation and tears. At several earlier meetings she had counseled against a collision course over rights, face and territory and had urged a constructive response. Because this would have — or would seem to have — broken the stance of total resistance, she had been ignored. Now she felt she must put her whole being into a last appeal to the defenders, but was afraid that they would discount her tears and her message as merely the outpourings of the widow. The umpires were personally supportive but refused to make her decision. After a time she went in and, under a great weight of emotion, poured forth her message.

A reflective mood settled over the group, the participants variously taken aback, abashed or deeply moved. At length, one participant characterized the tactics used so far as "Young men's tricks" — not helpful and not really nonviolent. Yet no one had disagreed, she said; still there had been no love involved.

As the silence deepened and soft weeping could be heard in several places, another mature participant pleaded, without actually addressing them, for the umpires to terminate the exercise. The lesson had been learned, he said, and for some, great psychological harm might result if it went on.

The umpires convened and agreed not to close the exercise; most differed from the evaluation just expressed and some feared a backfire if it were stopped, or seemed to be, on the plea of a respected but cautious leader. One umpire believed that several of the more emotional persons had already gone through the worst and would soon be able to carry on. She was asked to verify this and, in case of doubt, to remove them from the exercise.

By this time all those in the meeting room appeared to be in the grip of deep emotion. The respected elder, believing correctly that the umpires' lack of immediate intervention meant that the action would not be stopped, had not pressed the matter. At about 9:50, one of the heretofore most vigorous supporters of the "heroic" stance described her own rigidity and lack of nonviolence, her artificiality when confronting the Unionists. She asked that "we dispose with this bell-ringing at 10 o'clock. At least at 10 o'clock. Maybe this isn't the thing we should carry through." No one dissented.

The Unionists had agreed, after the 9:00 shooting, to kill no more than four defenders at a time. Mass confrontations and the possibility of being rushed were to be avoided through the use of gas. Those to be executed would be selected from among the incapacitated, rather than by shooting into crowds. The Unionist log noted at 9:05:

"The pacifists still have not realized the full meaning and challenge contained in their proclamation. Our stand is becoming much easier now that they have presented us with a clear case of insurrection."

But by 9:30, the Unionist commander began, according to the log, to feel that a new element might be entering the situation; it might be possible to sidestep the 10:00 bell, as it was not the chief issue and should not be made one. However, the commander let himself be overborne by his security officer, who felt that "the right climate has been reached for the full intent of our stand to sink in and to continue the shooting at this time." Nonetheless it was agreed not to continue shooting automatically after the 10:00 confrontation, perhaps moving instead to meeting other forms of harassment or insurrection. The commander noted in the log the beginnings of an intimation on his part that now perhaps the defenders could be induced to comply with the proclamations, but he "did not Communicate this possibility to the rest of the forces; it was still too vague and also fantastic." He was also experiencing difficulty controlling his own men.

At 9:50, the tense Unionist security group of four moved out on the veranda around the meeting room. They were called back by the commander, as standing orders were to remain inside the security zone until actual provocation occurred. After five more minutes, he felt obliged to let them go again. They cleared chairs and tables back to the walls of the veranda, leaving a free field of fire. The security officer took up a position near the bell position. These preparations were audible to the defenders.

Shortly before 10:00, one participant rose from the meditation, ripped down the projection screen/sheet nailed over a door and walked out to the bell position. There she stood in the dimness facing the security officer, some fifteen feet away. Looking at him and speaking to him in a low voice with great intensity, she asked several times, "What are you doing? How can you do this?" She was unable to say more. The tableau seemed frozen. After a few moments and after a stir at the door behind him, the security officer raised his pistol and shot her. People began coming out the door between him and the security zone. Gas bombs were thrown. Shots were fired. In the meeting room, one participant said, "Our friends are being shot," and headed out the door, accompanied by others. Shooting continued and more gas was thrown. The Unionists retreated toward the security zone, finding the way blocked by the dead, the gassed, and those still active. Some of these were shot. Others were thrown aside, then shot. One last participant, who had already lost at least one son in the action, burst through into the security zone. The Unionists surrounded him with weapons drawn, then hesitated a long minute as he spoke. Finally he was shot by the commander.

The umpires took a quick survey of the meeting room, in which the survivors, still a majority of the defenders, sat dazed and apparently utterly drained. The umpires agreed quickly and announced at 10:05 that the exercise was ended.

Endnotes for this section

[1] The Grindstone Island institutes in Nonviolence were initiated and sponsored by the Canadian Friends Service Committee with the aid and subsequent co-sponsorship of the American Friends Service Committee's Program on Nonviolence.

[2] Anarchy (anarchist, anarchism, etc.) is used here with a meaning differing in important respects from the classical definition, but corresponding to usage in American social concern movements. Strong emphasis is placed on individual libertarianism, avoidance of physical and gross verbal violence and rejection of any hint of social structuralism or authoritarianism as being reminiscent of, if not representative of, the oppressive system being opposed.

[3] Truth and openness (usually used together) is a technical term of nonviolence expressing the principled rejection of secrecy, subterfuge or duplicity in inter-personal or intergroup relations. Adherence to the principle is justified on pragmatic as well as moral grounds. It is felt that surprise of an antagonist is likely to engender violence in the response.

[4] Participatory democracy (contrast representative democracy) is the decision-making process widely and successfully used in small community civil rights action projects. It has been carried over, but with less success, into deliberative activities of student projects and, with even less success, into mass demonstrations and short term mass projects. The central element is the principled rejection by able participants of any leadership role, the equally principled obstruction of assertion of leadership by anyone else and extreme reluctance to delegate authority; almost as important is the principle of obstruction of structuralism and centralism.

[5] This account focusses on discussion because the defenders' goal, strategy and tactics for the first full day of the exercise were not only reached through discussion, but seemed to comprise the defense.

Immediately after terminating the exercise, the head umpire advised participants there would be no formal session until the next day and that they should not attempt a premature evaluation. Some went off to be alone, but most remained for a period of hours. Despite the emotional jolt they had received, that had left them drained and passive, it required only minutes for most participants to return to a feverish level of talk. The Unionists joined the group at the earliest opportunity, having paused only to change into civilian clothes. The umpires were alert for signs of displacement and recrimination, but found very little. It required only a short time for most participants to include the Unionists in their conversations.

At breakfast the steering committee agreed that no plenary sessions should be held until the evening. Though there was no noticeable development of self-justifying stories, there was a tendency in most participants toward compulsive verbal re-living of the whole experience, centering on what came to be known as "the final hour." The committee believed that a period of physical work, returning the island to pre-exercise order, would aid in quieting people's nerves. No platforms were provided for compulsive recitation of personal experience.

Since there seemed no danger of either side laying blame on the other, it was agreed that each side should work at developing an objective chronology of the exercise. The committee hoped in this way to deflect the defenders from excessive introspection and to encourage the anchoring of interpretation in concrete event. Both sides were to attempt this work in the mid-afternoon session.

Work parties and chronology sessions were successfully carried out. The Unionists, basing their chronology on their own log, accomplished their task quickly and began to assist the steering committee in establishing a comprehensive exercise chronology. The defenders, with few notes from their lengthy meetings, nonetheless produced their version in a single session plus an hour after dinner, all without undue digression.

The steering committee agreed that the Unionist account should be the first presented to the plenary session, as being at once the most compact and the most revealing of the fatal interaction between the two sides. [See also the articles, "Dynamic Between the Unionists and Defenders" and "Misinterpretation of Signals."] Before the Unionists spoke, the steering committee described the documents it hoped would emerge from these sessions and from personal evaluations. It hoped in this way to remind participants that the institute was still in progress and that they were all still engaged in a common search for the truth of what had happened. In particular, those personally involved were asked to prepare studies of "critical incidents" for presentation the next day and for inclusion in the final report.

The Unionist presentation, particularly through the log excerpts read, brought home fully to the defenders the impact of their own behavior. In the grossest sense this had been communicated during the "final hour"; but now it was presented systematically. The subsequent discussion revealed more by far to the defenders than to the Unionists. Despite their chaotic behavior the defenders' actions — until the last hour — had been generally understood and predicted by the Unionists. [But see the article, "Misinterpretation of Signals."] The defenders, on the other hand, had never understood why the Unionists behaved as they did, even when those actions had been directly reactive to defender behavior.

Early discussion centered on the process leading up to the massacre. It was agreed that there had been no communication machinery built up that would have signalled the defender change of front in the final hour. One Unionist pointed out that matters as complex as this latter cannot be communicated except as they are preceded by numerous smaller acts of finding and utilizing common ground. This led to a defender comment that the ground rules artificially restricted defense efforts at self-resource. The commander replied that had the defenders adopted the course recommended early in the exercise of a parallel work program run by the defenders themselves, the Unionists would have fed the group without insisting on the ration card system. The previous speaker retorted that precisely this was included in the "manifesto." The commander replied that this proposal came in a context of aggressive challenge, that this context was fatal to any consideration of the constructive program on its merits.

The initial contacts between the two sides were examined closely, both sides agreeing that the totalistic response had been a disastrous policy. The commander commented upon the defenders' collective decision-making process, used despite the absence of group cohesiveness. [See article, "The Question of Community."] There was no opportunity to resolve themselves into their genuine components and thus to grasp reality-until the last hours. He related this problem to the problem, in pacifist action or in civilian defense, of cracking the soldier's role-identity, soldiering being a highly role-dependent occupation. In the exercise, he said, it was the defenders who assumed a role and it was they who were defeated when this role cracked under strain.

Responding to a defender question about whether a defender delegation at the start would have helped communication, the Unionists noted that they would have received such overtures only through the prescribed bureaucratic machinery. The Unionist clerk added that the defenders would have gained Unionist respect had they complied, for this system was what the Unionists understood as reality. Thus the two sides would have met on common ground — which in fact they never did.

Just as the session closed, with much self-congratulation about the degree of insight achieved, an incident occurred that demonstrated to some the persistence of those procedural flaws that had proved so fatal to the defenders. It was proposed that a communal observance be made, on the next day, of the twentieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, a commemoration common among pacifists. Without providing time or circumstances for a frank discussion of this suggestion, the leadership appointed a committee to bring in a proposal. This group met so late that at least one important member — the initial proposer — had already gone to bed. The committee reported back quite late to an informal session with a plan for holding a silent vigil in place of Friday breakfast. Again no provision was made for a regular program for nonparticipants. Unanimity was assumed.

The day opened with the vigil well attended, but with some institute members pointedly refusing to participate. A late breakfast was eventually served.

The balance of the morning was devoted to preparation of the reports on critical incidents and other relevant papers from participants.

The afternoon was free until after tea, when the group assembled to discuss the "incidents." Of eight or nine presented to the committee in writing, five were selected, of which four were actually dealt with in plenary session: the behavior of one older child at the first meal after imposition of the rationing system, the typewriter incident, the smashing of the antenna, and the breaking into the dining hall during the first rationed meal. The typewriter and antenna incidents, being connected to the larger strategic questions, led to especially fruitful discussion.

This session showed, for the first time, the beginnings of balance on the part of participants. It was no longer necessary for speakers, once embarked, to carry through compulsively with a rehearsal of all that had taken place in the exercise.

Earlier in the day, two participants had asked the steering committee if they might use the evening session to open a discussion of the relation between nonviolence and civilian defense. The committee, still apprehensive about possible emotional explosions, established with them that their presentation should be "constructive," rather than polemical.

In fact the presentation was highly charged with polemic. It was stated that the exercise had demonstrated that nonviolence and civilian defense were incompatible. The defenders, it was said, had accepted the civilian defense premises that a defense was not to cooperate with the machinery and purposes of an invader; that the invaders would be converted that a realistic defense must defend both "good" and "bad" elements in its society; and that, in the process of nonviolent or civilian defense, "bad" social commitments would be transformed into something better.

The presenters argued that the defenders had non-cooperated but in consequence had lost the power to communicate. Conversion had failed because there was no coherent defender point of view to which the Unionists might be converted. The defenders had not defended the good and bad together; instead they had defended first their individuality, then their group as such, and finally had become fixed on a mere symbol, the bell. Instead of bad social commitments being transformed to good ones in the course of the defense, the defenders had lost themselves to a symbol — the bell — which had no power to communicate. They concluded with the aphorism that "anything that prevents communication cannot be called nonviolence." The defenders had practiced civilian defense. Civilian defense had closed communication. Therefore civilian defense was not nonviolent. Hence it was neither viable nor moral defense.

The discussion that followed was quite constructive and non-reactive, showing that even charged ideas could now be dealt with calmly by the participants. It was replied directly that civilian defense had not even been tried, that a total general strike is unanimously recommended against as an initial or basic strategy. Further, conversion of opponents is by no means vital to civilian defense. It is enough that the invader go home. At worst a synthesis of the best elements of both groups is envisioned. The defenders, it was said, had not defended the good and bad aspects of the given reality, but an unreal community solely of the good — imposed by fiat. Thus civilian defense had hardly been tried. For that matter, neither had nonviolence, the prime characteristics of which are supposed to be flexibility and an imaginative putting of oneself in the shoes of one's opponents.

Other participants questioned whether nonviolence was able in fact to form the defense of a modern nation-state. All Western nations, it was asserted, are, by their mere existence, an affront to have-not societies. And even if defense of such societies were to be attempted, it was said, it would prove impossible to defend with nonviolence what was got by violence or fraud. Gradually distinctions were drawn between the juridically-defined nation and the concept of a "people," defined as shared community of experience and values. It was stated that this latter, historically defined or given, really constituted a nation, rather than its juridical or economic structure. And, it was said, to restrict nonviolent defense to societies untainted by force or fraud would be to deny its relevance to all societies of which we know.

The discussion as a whole revealed clearly that the planners had not prepared the participants adequately, before the exercise, in the concepts of civilian defense. [See also the article, "Nonviolence and Civilian Defense."]

Reports from the umpires had been scheduled for the Saturday morning session. In preparation for what was expected to be the most definitive of the evaluation session, the umpires had spent most of Friday night meeting as a group. A good deal of time was spent in rambling conversations and personal interactions among themselves — evidence that even the disciplined, detached observer-umpires were deeply affected by the human drama of the exercise. The group did plan out a comprehensive presentation of the exercise as viewed by the umpires.

When the morning session convened it was immediately set off in an unplanned direction by one participant reading a long, emotion-laden poem which led to comments relative to the poem but got in the way of umpire evaluation. The session proceeded with impressionistic, personalistic reports and comments by several of the umpires. The substance of their comments and the ensuing discussion has been dealt with in the various analytical articles.

After tea, the first hour was devoted to a definitive treatment of the exercise's "final hour." Here for the first time the Unionist "pedagogical motif" (q.v.) was first isolated and discussed.

The balance of the afternoon was given over to personal statements centering on "what I learned from the exercise." Some participants focussed on personal inadequacies. Others indicated that the experience would materially change their own lives in the direction of greater honesty and flexibility. Some were now ready to live with tensions identified as "non-cooperation vs. reconciliation/communication" or "the scientific approach vs. personal values" or those included in "meaningful, truthful and justifiable compromise." Several focussed on the need to risk vulnerability and weakness for the sake of "the other." One said, "You must lay yourself bare in nonviolence. We're afraid." Another commented, "This is the definition of loving and learning to love." One young participant about to head into a term of work in the American South said of the whole institute experience, "I was complacent and I had my chair kicked out from under me. I was afraid to go to Mississippi. Now I'm afraid to open my front door and confront my family." This motif of having been constructively unsettled was common to many.

The evening session consisted of informal music and skits, the latter prepared by the younger participants. Almost all the skits focussed wryly on defender rigidity and dogmatism. Once the skits were completed — too soon, as many said — the subsequent singing lacked spontaneity and zest. It seemed that participants were emotionally and physically finished. For many, the institute had ended.

With this session, the institute closed. A midmorning session, modeled on Quaker practice, centered on participants' responses to the whole experience. No comment was permitted on the statements of others. Once this ground rule was established there had been no disposition to quibble over procedure since the exercise had ended-a reflective spirit settled over the meeting. As is the intention in Quaker practice, those moved to speak seemed willing to open themselves freely, knowing that no comment would be made or verbal judgment passed.

At the conclusion, a number of participants commented that at last the group had established true community .

*See Appendix 1 for text of scenario.

Selected only just before the institute, the Unionists had only two stipulated tasks. One, imposed privately by the planners, was that they include at least some uniformed and armed personnel. The second condition was stated in the scenario: "The Unionists have decided to deal with whatever problems that might be presented by the Grindstone group." [See the article, "Unionist Personnel" and Appendix 1.]

In general, the Unionists adapted quite well to the requirements of the scenario. They defined their task as one of custody. Within the island, the defenders were free to do as they wished, subject only to regulations aimed at their own physical well-being: saving food, keeping warm and developing a degree of self-sufficiency. Had the islanders followed these directives, there might have been no overt clashes between the two sides during the exercise, but only a cautious feeling out of positions, But as has been noted (in "The Pedagogical Motif" and in "Dynamic Between Unionists and Defenders"), a pedagogical motif and other reactions began soon after their arrival to inform Unionist actions. In the end they departed quite widely from the tone, if not from the task, that had characterized the initial approach.

The Unionists also developed a serious contradiction in their political approach to the islanders. They began by assuming no political task; all the islanders were hostile, to be addressed as "pacifists." Yet the fourth proclamation, dealing with leaving the island, revealed Unionist expectations of political responses from the defenders. But by secluding themselves, by making no efforts to allow individuals to express political preferences, the Unionists provided no means of encouraging the political responses they expected.

The basic decision to undertake a prolonged sociodrama experiment was made six months before the institute. Based on evaluations of previous institutes and influenced by the experience of some of the planners with the concept of "social defense," the planners approved in May the scenario actually used.

It was intended to minimize the problem of role-playing, since only the few Unionists would be required to be other than themselves-in-real-life. And their role would be quite tightly defined. The political situation defined was thought to be not at all an impossible projection from known tendencies in both Canada and the United States. It was stated as it was, in part, to maximize existing or latent political differences among the defenders whom the planners expected to be drawn to all three power configurations given in the scenario. While few could be expected to espouse the Unionist cause, it was hoped that the Unionists themselves would make their political appeal consonant with the limited nature of their physical task, so making it difficult on rational grounds for the defenders to deny the reasonableness of Unionist requirements.

Only at isolated moments did the defenders ever consider the scenario in relation to their own tasks. In part this appears to have been due to reliance on habitual patterns of response. Many participants, and the most vocal and determined, were young veterans of pacifist-action demonstrations. The scenario, on the other hand, posed problems of political allegiance and degrees of cooperation. These problems are not easily dealt with from within the pacifist-action framework and so, contrary to the planners' expectations, the scenario was quietly ignored by the defenders during the exercise.

Reference to the scenario appeared only in isolated comments about the scenario-stated ending of the institute within two days of the Unionists' arrival. This stipulation had been made precisely in order to force some sort, of interaction in the event .that the Unionists' demands were reasonable and the defenders cooperated. A "reasonable" defender course might have argued: "Since we cannot go home now within two days, we'll either have to overpower them or to undermine them over a longer period in order to get on about our business." In fact, neither decision was taken. The "two days from now we leave" stipulation was ignored whenever raised.

These rules for the exercise were posted, together with a large "prevailing conditions" map of the island, on blackboards in public view on Monday, August 2:

No water escape. No use of Crow Island. No tamper with boats. Kitchen and food supplies out of bounds. Pump-house, electric supply, radio not to be physically molested or used. Island staff neutral till they initiate and manifest different behavior. Office equipment assumed to be brought by Unionists. 'Wounded,' etc. to be taken care of by own forces. 'Dead' and persons withdrawn from exercise or otherwise incapacitated will serve out the balance of the exercise in the Workman's Cottage, in umpires' off-limits area. 'Canadiana by Gage' notebooks to be used only as diaries; these will be invisible to Unionist eyes. Umpires will wear white arm bands and will normally be invisible until one needs to address an umpire, as in true emergency for a decision. Umpire decisions are law. Exercise will end when umpires so indicate. Other rules will be issued and listed here only if needed.

These rules were devised before the institute began and were designed to prevent the exercise from developing into a physical contest or a cops-and-robbers affair. Since the Unionists had a limited force, it was necessary to set the rules in such a way as to relieve them of the necessity to mount 24-hour guard over the food supplies or to maintain a constant patrol of the shore-line. Therefore it was stipulated verbally (and summarized in GR #1) that it was too far to swim to shore or to nearby Grindstone-owned Crow Island. It was also feared that some more venturesome participants might actually attempt feats of swimming beyond their abilities. Some participants had questioned whether log rafts would be allowed. So the rule was phrased "No water escape" in order to direct the eyes of defenders back onto the island and to force a grappling with the Unionists. Initially during the exercise much resentment was expressed at this rule. As defenders began to experience hunger, this sense of "unfairness" was shifted to the equally-arbitrary rule against attacks on the food supply. GR #2 merely prevented physical tampering with the island's boats.

GR #4 attempted to make clear the difference between objects that could not form part of the field of play at all — the food supplies and materials for raft-building — and objects that were "in play" but not to be physically damaged. The listed objects were so stipulated at the request of the island management because of the danger of permanent damage, difficulty of re-priming pumps, etc. Thus an attack on the power plant or pump house was permitted, and if undertaken, was required to be carried out with all the cunning, equipment and time necessary to do the job stopping short only of actual physical dismantling or destruction-in order to be declared successful by the observing umpire.

GR #5 tried to place the island's kitchen staff in a non-political or purely technical role, since they had been thrust into the exercise context without application on their part. Because of this and because cooks have a well-founded reputation for active resentment of "interference" with the kitchen, it was stipulated that the kitchen staff were there to serve food — they didn't care to whom. Some defenders apparently assumed that this arrangement made the kitchen some sort of tertium quid, autonomous to the entire exercise. They expressed dismay, or betrayal at the hands of the umpires, when the Unionists took over the kitchen by force of arms and the staff acquiesced. At first the junior kitchen staff were reviled by younger defenders for "helping the enemy." Later, after the junior staffers had made plain their sympathies for the defenders, the Unionists developed the security anxieties spoken of in "Dynamic Between Unionists and Defenders."

GR #6 was merely a matter of convenience.

GR #7-8 were aimed at creating realism. Wounded persons would have to behave wounded and be cared for in fact and not by stipulation. Removal of the dead was to serve two purposes. With the dead actually gone, their deadness would have more impact on the survivors. But the permanent removal from the action of the dead also was intended to inhibit a false heroism of the barricades, since the very people most susceptible to this impulse would likely be those most eager to continue participation on some basis, even as passive observers. If the cost of blatant heroism were complete removal from the scene, it was thought that the net effect of this cost would operate analogously to the actual fear of death. When the ground rules were interpreted to the defenders, it was precisely the "young Turks" who sought most strongly to have this rule modified.

GR #8 also served to provide an area of the island to which other persons could be sent if, in the umpires' judgment, they needed for any reason to be removed from the exercise. In fact, the off-limits area was never used.

GR #9 was included in the interest of producing participant observations that would aid the subsequent evaluation process. This rule also indicated that all other personal effects and luggage were subject to play. It was thought useful — especially among participants with the normal middle class attitudes toward "property" — to induce an appropriate insecurity by imperiling that property.

Umpire invisibility is dealt with in the two articles on the role of the umpires.

It was not found necessary to introduce other rules during the exercise, though on Wednesday morning, as noted in "Relations Between Umpires and Defenders," both sides seemed to need re-interpretation of the distinction between "out of bounds to play" and "in play." Subsequent to this explanation came the various radio incidents and the removal of the boats.

During the exercise, certain participants complained often of the rules and the umpires' interpretation of them. However, none of this was brought forward in the evaluation. We attribute this to the fact, clear to all, that the points of contention with the umpires had had little to do with the denouement and on the lessons learned from it.

The scenario had been constructed to minimize the necessity for role-playing. Only the tight little group of Unionists was required to enact a role. It was specifically intended that the defenders should be free to be themselves, to react naturally to the conditions thrust upon them. That this freedom was not utilized was due to several factors.

The institute took place as the third in a series that began in 1963. Previous "invasions," lasting for as many as five hours, had required the defenders to represent the whole apparatus of government and society. Though few 1965 participants had taken part in these earlier efforts, it appears that previous experiments did condition participants' expectations.

The conference leadership failed to communicate the difference between role-playing and the sort of sociodrama envisioned for the 1965 experiment. Early in the institute, role-playing scenes were initiated in which both personal and invasion problems were dealt with. Participants may well have been led to believe — despite the scenario's explicit statement to the contrary — that they were intended to "portray" some situation or some persons other than themselves in the situation stated by the scenario.

For two days prior to the exercise discussion had centered on the theory of civilian or social defense [See article, "Nonviolence and Civilian Defense."] in which the main emphasis falls on the defense in depth not of territory but of the characteristic institutions and values of a society. Some may have been led by this emphasis to act out the defense of a community that in fact did not exist. [See article, "The Question of Community."]

For others — schooled in the traditions of nonviolence, nonviolent direct action and/or personalistic anarchism — it was axiomatic that the defenders would constitute themselves a community of nonviolence, defending in effect their supreme value: nonviolence itself .

All these influences seem to have combined to create a situation in which the assumption of unreal identities and arbitrarily — defined or fuzzily delineated values became inevitable. The nonviolent anarchists insisted successfully upon the consensus mechanism for decision-making. This alone created by procedural decision a certain type of community — as it happens, the only type of community anarchists usually consider worth defending.

It was assumed that of course the community of consensus was a community based on principled nonviolence. The contents of this concept were not well-defined or agreed upon even among pacifists, and there were some participants who would not have described themselves as principled pacifists.

Thus a strong element of role-playing began to inform the actions of the defenders. From the beginning they considered what such people ought to do. This personna clearly inhibited frank discussion of genuine differences among the defenders and contributed to the rigid stance adopted toward the Unionists. The assumption of emotional and ideological solidarity was put under additional strain by a decision-making system that required almost continuous plenary sessions.

It may be conjectured that the adoption of these mechanisms and the easy assumption of these unities were attempts to avoid having to. face divergencies. Nothing in civilian defense theory or nonviolence suggests that notions of monolithic identity or group unity on goals are necessary. Quite the contrary: it is suggested that people defend what is dear or vital to them. not that an artificial unity be imposed. In actual practice, the anarchist element among the defenders sometimes threatened to move unilaterally; it was the others who seemed by their own accounts to have felt most inhibited by the personna. The "participatory democracy" element was composed principally of college-age people. It might be that this group unconsciously but effectively found a method of avoiding or stifling censure from or conflict with their elders, while retaining their own freedom and initiative.

The Unionists, perhaps having appraised all these possibilities, acted to maximize such tendencies, and so always addressed the defenders as "Pacifists."

Illustrative of the tensions in the institute between personal pacifism and the requirements of national defense is a questionnaire filled out by participants on Saturday, July 31, a day after their arrival. It had been prepared prior to the institute as a means of focussing attention of participants upon characteristic situations in which nonviolence might inform action. It was intended, after discussion, to lead into role playing scenes arising out of the questions, scenes that would be relevant to the up-coming exercise, the character of which was still unknown to participants.

The questions were arranged in two parts, one dealing with "nonviolence and interpersonal relations" and the other presenting "anticipated situations in the occupation exercise." In both parts a series of actions was given and respondents were asked to place the actions on two scales. Scale 1 offered a simple violent/nonviolent dichotomy. Scale 2 provided the following gradations: distinctly violent, somewhat violent, neither very violent nor nonviolent, somewhat nonviolent, distinctly nonviolent.

This form focussed the attention of respondents upon the feasibility and, implicitly, the desirability and importance of ranking their possible behavior according to this one criterion of violence/nonviolence, isolated from all others. No subsequent discussion or questionnaire brought forward other criteria or raised the question of context. The questionnaire itself raised implicitly the question of context in that a number of the actions given were impossible to rank until and unless one had supplied a context. Only a minority of participants showed awareness of this problem, either in writing or in oral comment.

The planners and resource leaders did not distinguish, either before or after the questionnaire and role-playing sessions, between this role-playing and the socio-drama of the exercise itself. Thus the rather different requirements of the two distinct modes of action were confused and conflated in the minds of participants. The personalistic bent of the questionnaire and of the role-playing may have furthered the individualism that formed so strong a motif in the defending community.

Presented below are the questionnaire, some tabulated results and some comments on the results which, had they been analyzed before the exercise, might have revealed the characteristic style and problems of the defending group.

Questions and tabulated results

EXERCISE 1: Nonviolence and Interpersonal Relations

Scale 1 Scale 2 Question Violent or Nonviolent Distinctly Violent Somewhat Violent 0 Somewhat Nonviolent Distinctly Nonviolent Listening attentively to another 0

32 0 0 5 3 26 Ridiculing and labelling another's views 31

0 13 17 3 0 0 Suggesting a course of action 1

28 0 0 12 10 11 Encouraging another to take part 0

31 0 0 10 9 14 Dominating a discussion 28

3 3 18 11 0 0 Pointedly ignoring another person 27

3 11 14 6 0 0 Shut up! 33

0 19 13 0 0 0 Accepting the criticism of another 1

30 0 1 0 6 25 raw perception totals; (see comment 7) 46 63 47 28 76

EXERCISE 2: Anticipated Situations in the Occupation Exercise

Scale 1 Scale 2 Question Violent or Nonviolent Distinctly Violent Somewhat Violent 0 Somewhat Nonviolent Distinctly Nonviolent 1. Spitting in another's face 29

0 24 7 0 0 0 2. Wrenching a person's arm to gain information 28

0 29 3 0 0 0 3. Gently but forcibly removing a person from the boat landing 15

11 2 12 10 8 1 4. Lying in order to mislead another 20

3 7 17 7 0 0 5. Lying to protect another 13

9 3 5 13 6 1 6. Preventing use of the boats by sinking them 14

13 2 11 9 7 1 7. Discussing "defense plans" completely openly 0

27 0 1 4 2 25 8. Doping food in order to incapacitate 27

2 22 8 1 1 0 raw perception totals; (see comment 7) 89 64 44 24 28

* Written-in questions and duplicated answers removed from totals. Used both scales on both exercises: 27. Used only second scale in both exercises: 2. Used only first scale in both exercises: 2. Mixed use: 4.

Comment

Few respondents rejected the context-less scale 1 questions. There seems no way to determine whether the unanimity obtained on exercise 1, scale 1 (1/1), was despite this lack of context or because of it. In over half the 1/2 responses there was a marked disinclination to use the "0" category (neither-nor). This also holds true for responses to 2/2. But note that in 1/2, "0" responses always represented the extremity of response. In 2/2, this held true only on question 4. In 1/2, the "0" responses came only on the colorless questions. In 2/2, they came on questions that confuse pacifists, e.g. 3, 4, 5. In 2/1, there was a marked drop in number of responses to the questions about lying. Note here also the influence of a word change. Both questions are about lying; question 5 is merely an instance of question 4; there is no principled difference. But question 5 introduces a note of altruism. Note, in consequence, the rise of "0 to NV" responses and the drop in "V to SV" responses! In the actual exercise, during the antenna incident, participants who had been most vehement on the supreme value of truth and openness proved to be brilliant improvisatory liars when faced by Unionist guns. Some respondents noted that they would have responded more directly on question 6 in exercise 2, had they known whose boats. Exercise 2 was aimed at the occupation situation; its questions dealt with actions, rather than attitudes. Note that of the listed actions, only talk was regarded as unequivocally nonviolent, i.e., licit. Treating each response as a perception unit, one sees, in comparing exercise 1 to exercise 2, less inclination to see violence in speech and personal demeanor and more readiness to see violence in concrete situations. Exercise 2 shows perception totals falling off regularly from "V through to NV."

These tabulated results reveal clearly the personalist-pacifist orientation of respondents. The respondents showed an inability to see violence in speech, so long as it preserved the decencies and avoided gross insult. Of eight suggested courses of action in exercise 2, they were able to see only one as clearly nonviolent: talking. Thus they presaged their own problems during the defense.

The whole questionnaire itself is open to serious question in that it focussed on discrete actions, rather than comprehensive strategies. And in place of contextual criteria it isolated only one means for evaluating these discrete actions: were they more or less nonviolent? The questionnaire thus taught what defenders apparently arrived already believing. These beliefs, consistently acted upon, prevented the emergence of coherent, realistic strategy among the defenders.

The institute group had been recruited without any attempt to secure a broad range of representative community types. There was no intention to force a role on the defenders; they were to be themselves. While it is likely that quite different problems would have arisen with a group more representative of the general populace, it was not thought a liability for this narrower range of people to play themselves. Subtracting from the list of participants [See Appendix 12.] the umpires, the two who volunteered to become Unionists and those who left the island before the exercise began, the defenders, on an age basis at least, were not too far off a standard population profile. They numbered four of an age to have their children grown, ten of an age to have growing children, six young marrieds and young professionals, four college-age people, three high school students and five younger children.

Nearly all the participants came from a general or specifically Quaker orbit or from peace aetion circles. Our long-term observation in other contexts indicates that it is these particular sorts of social-action-oriented people who are most likely to from an ideological understanding of themselves and of their work. There was, for example, little representation from the comparatively pragmatic or ad hoc peace groups like SANE or from civil rights groups.

This background of sensitivity to ideological considerations, coupled with Quaker tendencies to hang back in non-Quaker-style discussions, helps to explain the ease with which the defending group came to adopt its characteristic style. It throws light on the way in which a numerically-dominant group of mature adults allowed the initiative to pass to a smaller group of young people.

From the beginning what we have called, for shorthand purposes, the anarchist element set the tone and style for the defenders. By this we mean that younger people, several with fairly broad experience in peace and civil rights protest actions, demonstrated a suspicion of all traditional forms of group structure and decision-making-by their elders, by committees or by majorities. They dominated initial discussion and without undue difficulty persuaded the group to adopt consensus procedures, thus assuring themselves a determining voice. Some participants, with less background in social action, appeared to look to these young veterans for guidance. Others may have assumed that the group-consensus method would reflect Quaker practice, in which advocates of given viewpoints or proposals do not hold the floor or make repeated rejoinders after advancing an idea, but let the "sense of the meeting" emerge after deliberation and non-repetitive comment by others.

In practice the young veterans and their allies used the floor freely to maintain their own ideas and to block decisions that might have contravened their own principled stand against delegation of authority or responsibility. This insured that the defenders were occupied almost completely from Monday through Wednesday with discussion in plenary session. There were many complaints about the length of meetings. And within meetings there were many wry references to the group's feeling of being bogged down in procedure. Yet there was no coherent protest against the system itself.

Thus a procedure was adopted in a generally well-founded reaction against the often-cumbersome and manipulative-prone method of reports and motions. In practice the alternate style adopted proved to be even more cumbersome. With stronger chairmen the consensus system might have functioned more smoothly. But a tone had been established that made quite difficult any direction of discussion or cutting off repetitive speakers. Few chairmen were able to insist that a given topic be brought to a head and disposed of. As a consequence, many participants found it difficult to follow the main line of reasoning. Their own comments therefore tended to accentuate the discursive quality of discussion. Yet participants throughout displayed a remarkable tolerance for living under this frustration.

This tolerance may be related directly to the content of defender strategy. Since there was little beyond the most general principles to the initial defender strategy, and only a clumsy means of articulating this into tactics, many may have seen no alternative to continuing discussion in the hope that something concrete would emerge. When the defenders, contrary to the scenario's indication that the group had intended to leave within two days, set up a strategy of defending their right to have meetings of their own, the mere continuance of these discussions became akind of victory of its own.

Under "Defender Committees" we have discussed the way in which delegation of tasks was actually attempted and accomplished. The key delegation was the setting up of the strategy committee on Wednesday morning. By this time, frustration over their own procedures was fairly pronounced among the defenders. They had just received a report on the typewriter incident indicating that random forays were unlikely to produce success. Some had questioned the nonviolence of the action. [In subsequent evaluation, one participant wrote: "The episode of the typewriter-the refusal to accept and use it outside the board room was a failure in that we were led into forgetting our aim of sending out the word in favor of a confrontation over our right to use the board room."] The Unionist commander had introduced to the hungry group the unsettling prospect of a free meal. Under a skilled chairman, the defenders agreed to the appointment of a strategy committee, the chairman successfully resisting the attempts of many to volunteer and securing acceptance of his own nominees.

When the Unionists returned existing food supplies to the defenders, a sense of confidence returned to the group, even though no one had an explanation for the Unionist move. At the same time, many noticed wryly that the Unionists still controlled the emotional tone of the defending community: it was no victory, but a unilateral Unionist move that had brought this elation.

The antenna incident contributed further to the sense of new initiative. Thus when the strategy committee was able to bring in a fully -articulated plan and to present it through a highly-respected person not connected to the previous tensions in the group, the plan was immediately adopted. Some observers noticed a certain manic or headlong quality in the defenders' enthusiasm for the plan. Anyone now bringing serious questions might well have seemed to be breaking this precious unity and sense of momentum.

As can be seen from the exercise account and from the text of the Wednesday evening discussion, information conveyed by the Unionists about their own decisions, as in the "shoot to kill" proclamation, was not readily assimilated by the defenders, who spent most of the hour between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. articulating further the decisions contained in their own "manifesto." Only after 9:30 was there manifest deflection from the motifs and decisions reached up to that time.

Early in its preparations for the exercise, the defending group began to describe itself as a "community." From then on the word was used widely; and, though never defined, its meaning seemed clear to the members of the group. This meaning certainly included such concepts as cohesiveness, unity of purpose, sharing, mutual trust, mutual understanding, individual responsibility to the group, group responsibility to the individual, and strength in group action. Various members of the group placed widely different emphases on the various facets of meaning. During the discussions of goals in the early part of the Monday morning session, before the occupation, strong and repeated reference was made to the "Grindstone Island Community" and the need to preserve it; later, in the tension-ridden sessions during the occupation, many references were made to "the community," to threats against it and. to ways of strengthening and preserving it. By the time of the final hour, the concept had become so habitual that there was little explicit reference to "community," even though the basic patterns that had developed through the earlier discussions now dominated the unfolding of events.

The scenario made no suggestion that the Grindstone group was in fact a community nor did it suggest that the establishment or maintenance of a community was in any way relevant to. the exercise. There was no real evidence that the randomly selected group of people who found themselves together in this institute constituted a community in any important sense of the term or that the necessary conditions existed for creating or fostering a community. On the contrary, very early in the conference evidence began to accumulate that pointed in the opposite direction. On many important issues the behavior of individual defenders was warped and unnatural because of a false allegiance to this non-existent "community." [See discussion of "role-playing" in article, "Socio-Drama and Role-Playing."]

Two analytical questions, both with numerous ramifications, are suggested by this group behavior which deviated so sharply from reality. First is the question: Why? Second is the question: What were the effects?

The assembled group was not a community; conditions which might have led to the establishment of a community were not present; conditions which were present operated to prevent formation of a community.

The group was heterogeneous, had sharp ideological and methodological differences and had not been together long enough even to learn each others' names. The differences were sharpened and polarized very early; there was insufficient time and very limited opportunity to work together (in contrast to talking together) at tasks that might tend to knit the group into a true state of community. Yet in spite of these difficulties, the group promptly, without hesitation or question, assumed that it was indeed a community. Almost unanimously the individual members of the group continued to the end not only to pay lip service to the "community," but went so far as to determine their individual actions on the false basis of the existence of community. A few of the defenders on scattered occasions deplored the weakening of the sense of community and warned against forces which were destroying the community, but never was there clear expression or group realization of the true situation: that community did not exist and never had.

Why, then, in the face of such clear evidence and in the absence of any external need or requirement, did the group insist on pursuing the insuperably difficult task of transforming itself into a community? It is possible only to identify some of the factors that contribute to the total answer.

First, there must have been a strongly felt inner need. For some participants this was simply a manifestation of their Quakerism; for all, the Quaker ideology, which naturally pervaded a Quaker-sponsored institute, was a factor. Most participants had at least a degree of sentimental attachment to the idea of "community" as a part of the more general concept of nonviolence. Included in the group were a few dedicated communitarians who sincerely hold that the only proper social structure is the intentional community.

Another part of the answer, "why," is that the group practiced a form of denial behavior. The prospects facing the group were exigent in the extreme and the group was clearly unprepared, either individually or corporately, to face these prospects and deal with them realistically. One of the most serious flaws in the defense posture was the immediately evident structured vs. unstructured division within the group. The virtually unanimous reaction was to deny the existence of the division by falsely asserting the state of community. Continued fascination with the idea of community fit nicely into the Quaker ethos of the institute, even though it totally denied the realities of the situation; it also served as a distraction to help avoid consciousness of the grim realities of the situation.

A number of participants undoubtedly recognized the strong desire of the group to be a community and accepted the group assumption that it was a community. They refrained from any action that might have weakened or dispelled this belief because they were reluctant to appear divisive; out of feelings of loyalty to the group and their fellow members they allowed the group judgment to prevail over their own and worked in a questionable context to achieve doubtful goals. For the older and more experienced members their recognition that this exercise was an important training experience for the younger participants was a strong contributory factor in muffling divergent personal views. They accepted the idea of community with its attendant participatory democracy [See article, "Decision-Making among the Defenders."] because they felt that a clear split of the group into separate factions would destroy the opportunity for leadership training.

The decision to declare a state of community and to function as if it existed certainly operated to the advantage of those who favored the unstructured approach. It is possible that the young anarchistic activists, who were consistently militant in their opposition to all attempts at realistic organization of the group, were quite conscious of the falsity of the community idea and simply used it in a Machiavellian scheme to prevent domination by the older "structurists." It is certainly true that the younger members fostered the idea of community, tended to obscure the divisions within the group, and strongly advocated participatory democracy and consensus as decision-making processes. Whether or not it was consciously directed to that end, it was an effective means of blocking opposing views and disarming in advance any criticism of a structureless approach to the crisis.

The answer to the question: "What was the effect?" is brief and instructive. The first effect was that the anarchic, unstructured approach to the Unionist invasion prevailed almost totally. The advocates of structured organization were defeated, and in large part they cooperated in their own defeat. The second effect was to establish a strong current of falsity and unrealism in the on-going activities of the defenders' group. The third effect was to worsen the schism within the defenders' group by attempting to pretend that no division existed. Finally, the Unionists were presented with a constant image of non-reality which confirmed their conclusions that the defenders were unable to grasp the power realities.

The defenders' discussions of some themes showed a repetitiveness that can be fairly described as obsessive. The transcripts of the discussions during the exercise period [See Appendix 11.] give some indication of this group fascination with certain topics, but the pre-exercise discussions were even more heavily dominated by group fixation on certain themes. One participant commented prior to the invasion that "The group is obsessed with discussion of food because we are greedy, with discussion of truth and openness because we are secretive and untruthful, and with community because we have no community." A fourth obsessive theme, more apparent to observers than defenders, was the continually repeated argument of "combative" vs. "natural" approach by the defenders toward the Unionists. All of these obsessive themes were intermixed in action as well as discussion. For example, three of the four major actions carried out by individuals or small groups without prior approval by the plenum had to do with food and the kitchen/dining room complex. All four incidents included large elements of deception and surprise yet were instigated or carried out by people who had spoken extensively about truth and openness. Also, all four incidents could only be characterized as combative harassment of the invaders; yet again, the participants included people who had spoken at length against an aggressive approach and in favor of naturalism. The three food-related incidents were: (1) the invasion of the dining room through a window during the first rationed meal; (2) the stealing of the coffee maker and supplies; and (3) the clash over dish-washing. The fourth was the antenna sabotage.

The contrast of these incidents with the earlier group discussion provides an instructive commentary on the discrepancy between rhetoric and performance. But the serious relevance of these actions to this exercise-and thereby to the broader study of nonviolent social defense -lies in their effect on the Unionists. In each case the Unionists indicated very clearly that the actions were considered to be hostile harassment and were taken as evidence that the "pacifists" were not to be trusted. [See Appendixes 9 and 11.]

The fixation of defenders' attention on questions related to food was understandable after the first Unionist proclamation in which the ration card system was announced. The pre-invasion focus on this question could also be explained in part by the natural (and as events proved, highly justified) assumption that the food supplies would be used by the invaders as means of controlling and coercing the defenders. But even with these justifying circumstances, it is necessary to observe that the extreme devotion of the defenders to this topic prevented adequate consideration of other topics and that some decisions made with respect to food had long range effects determining the whole course of events. The major such instance was the quick decision that the whole group (some of whom may have been coerced by social pressures) should refuse ration cards. The effect of this decision was to set in motion an irreversible pattern of total and simplistic non-cooperation and to establish the image (to the Unionists) of non-acceptance of the realities of the physical power situation.

The extended discussion of truth and openness revealed a deep strain of ambiguity and uncertainty about this important aspect of nonviolence. It also served as a focus. of anxiety about the possible effectiveness of nonviolence in social defense. This questioning and uncertainty, both in discussion and in action, also tended to obscure from the Unionists the defenders' true intentions and in some instances contributed to serious misunderstandings. [See article, "Misinterpretation of Signals."]

The most probable cause of the deep ambivalence of the defenders' group toward questions of secrecy and deception was the fuzziness of the decision to adopt a pacifist approach to the problems of invasion. There was never any significant discussion of the question, nor was a clear decision ever expressed. The group simply assumed the pacifist stance, largely by inadvertance and failure to consider alternatives. When this stance had become fixed (and had been reinforced by the Unionists' use of the salutation, "PACIFISTS" in their proclamations) some members of the defenders' group began to raise doubts. But these doubts were not expressed in the form of questions concerning the over-all applicability of nonviolent or pacifist strategies and tactics or whether a nonviolent approach were demanded by the situation; nor did the questioning take the form of an attempt to explore alternative defenses which could include elements of nonviolence or in other ways be acceptable to pacifists. Instead, a holistic pacifist approach was assumed to be axiomatic by both pacifist and non-pacifist defenders. Then nagging doubts were expressed (again by both pacifists and non-pacifists) in the form of questioning what seemed to be the most obvious weakness of pacifism in dealing with an imposed tyranny.

Much clearer to the observers than to most defenders was the significance of the clash of defenders' views over the "tone" of the confrontation with the Unionists. One of the two divergent views can be described as combative, in which a vigorous nonviolent approach to the invaders was advocated. One participant repeatedly used the term "aggressive" in describing the type of confrontation he advocated; the same defender (and some others) insisted on using such terms as "intruders, invaders, usurpers, tyrants" in referring to the Unionists. This group constantly urged reassertion of initiative by the defenders, deplored the inaction and interminable discussions, and finally had a dominant influence in determining the tone of the "manifesto" of the strategy committee. The second group, who advocated the natural or non-aggressive approach, consistently referred to the Unionists as "our new friends" or "our guests"; they advocated a tempered, person-to-person approach and tried to block or modify actions that seemed to be deficient in a spirit of love. They influenced actions in such ways as blocking any coherent initial confrontation when the Unionists arrived (the volleyball game continued; no signal of arrival was used; the troops were invited to go to the main lodge and register). The naturalistic, non-aggressive, approach was also represented in the "manifesto" by inclusion of work projects similar to the Unionists' work program but to be administered by the CFSC. During the highly-charged last hour the views of this group had the very positive effect of tempering the fixation on the strategic course previously agreed upon and was very nearly successful in turning the group away from its catastrophic confrontation with Unionist weaponry.

To some observers the advocates of the combative approach seemed to be groping for a stance of invulnerability while the naturalists were attempting to express their dimly-held understanding that nonviolence and love require a deliberate posture of vulnerability. The divergence of opinion arose over differences in emphasis on the two parts of the mutually accepted phrase, "the power of love." The combatives emphasized power while the naturalists emphasized love. As the discussions continued, this divergence progressively developed into an outright clash of views. Each side steadily escalated its statement, first urging its truly felt views on the group, then, as opposing views were expressed, countering with ever more extreme statements until a real and deep schism developed. Again, the disastrously misleading impression gained by the Unionists was that they faced an insurrectionist group attempting to cover its rebellion by deceptive acts of false friendliness.

The fourth obsessive theme is treated more fully in the article, "The Question of Community."

The defenders set up a number of committees before and during the exercise. These included: (1) an agenda committee (which brought in about 25 unranked items); (2) the "ad hoc" committee appointed to take over institute scheduling from the former institute steering committee; (3) a study committee on "law breaking"; (4) an "emergency committee" composed of the current chairman and the stand-by group coordinators; (5) a housekeeping committee; (6) a tactics committee; (7) the bulletin committee; (8) a delegation set up on the chairman's initiative to act as liaison between defenders and Unionists; and (9) one committee setup during the exercise: the strategy committee.

At least one of the bodies never met. Others met only once. Two, the ad hoc and housekeeping groups, functioned fairly well, having been given fairly concrete tasks. The strategy committee was set up when the group had begun to realize its own paralysis in the face of Unionist initiatives.

In general, the movement of the whole group, with respect to its committees, went from a condition of near-complete mistrust to one of complete trust.

From well before the arrival of the Unionists up to Wednesday morning, it was difficult for many to accept any recommendations in whose preparation and discussion they had not participated fully. This meant that even petty decisions had to be made in plenary session or that committee work had to be re-done in plenum for it to be acceptable. After this process had produced near-paralysis, it was possible for a strong chairman on Wednesday morning to secure the appointment of a strategy committee which in that atmosphere took on executive qualities. Its far-reaching recommendations were not questioned by those formerly so insistent on "participatory democracy."

The housekeeping committee functioned quietly and well. But in the absence of clear strategy its preparations went largely unused and un-noticed by the larger group. It was this committee which set up the smaller stand-by units, surveyed the water and electrical systems for both offensive and defensive purposes, dispersed blankets, water jugs and supplies throughout the island, produced applesauce for the children and made plans for fishing.

The ad hoc committee also bridged the two periods. Its institute program recommendations on Tuesday morning were accepted. But when it attempted to set up arrangements for greeting the expected invasion, these were rejected on principle and the committee was charged with authoritarianism and usurpation of function. Later, on Wednesday evening, in the context of the "manifesto," the committee's far-reaching recommendations about an assigned labor program were accepted without discussion.

Despite the assumption of a common front toward the Unionists, thedefenders expressed quite divergent attitudes toward government and law. This was not clearly recognized among the defenders, since in practice a strictly legalistic appeal against Unionist actions sounded to the ear no different from an anarchist repudiation of the same action. The two impulses in this situation prescribed the same response: denunciation and non-cooperation.

The Unionists saw most clearly the law and order motif among the defenders, commenting in the log that legality seems important to them "because they assume that those who have legality have authority." The anarchist strain [See article, "Decision-Making Among the Defenders."] was not perceived by the Unionists as such. It appeared quite strongly in the typewriter incident. The defenders, by asserting the right to do absolutely as they wished, flew completely in the face of power realities. This right was not in fact based on loyalty to another regime but to a theory that apparently denied validity to any coercive regime, legal or otherwise.

Anarchist influences appear to have been most responsible for avoiding the important question, put in the scenario by design, of where defender governmental loyalties actually lay. Facing this question might have exposed divergent loyalties; it might have brought out the anarchists' principled repudiation of loyalty to government. Answers would nonetheless have undergirded and directed more clearly the ineffective and largely pro forma defender protests against Unionist "usurpation." The remarkable ability of the defenders to avoid a rather obvious problem can be traced in large part to their prior success in assuming a group personna that effectively cut off reference to the realities actually present or set out in the scenario.

[See article, "Socio-Drama and Role-Playing."] In discussion-though this was never formulated on paper — it was often assumed that the "legal authority" on the island was the Canadian Friends Service Committee. This unusual notion had at least the short-run merit of avoiding the questions of conflicting loyalties or of loyalty itself.

The two attitudes came together in the "manifesto." In setting up a non-governmental republic of consensus, freed from all governments, the "manifesto" achieved on paper an old anarchist dream. In setting up a counter-polity with its own juridical basis, in appealing to the UN and establishing its own foreign relations, the "manifesto" enlisted the support of the law-and-order pacifists.

So long as no clear relation to some polity had been stated — whether a real polity or one invented on paper by the defenders — they could formulate no concrete plans. To risk division by spelling out a relation to the "real" quadripartite polity — legitimate Canadian, Laurentian, United States, and U.S.-backed Unionist — was a price the defenders were never willing to pay. But once they achieved a group personna they were able to project by fiat an appropriate polity for that personna. Removed from reality — and therefore fatal — as this polity was, it led to the immediate precipitation of problems from the abstract to the highly concrete.

The planners of the institute recognized from the start that effective Unionists were the key to success of the exercise. They had tried first to recruit Unionists from among serving or former military personnel, preferably officers. They sought not only authenticity but an opportunity to observe the effect of the exercise on competent military people who had had little contact with peace action or pacifist ideology.

At a late date they were forced to look nearer at hand. They recruited the Unionist core from peace actionists in the Montreal area, of whom three had military experience, one as an SS officer-trainee. This was to be the Unionist commander. To make up the necessary six, two more were recruited from among the institute participants, one the island's junior warden and the other an army veteran now with a long-term direct action project.

Aside from the stipulation that they include a military component, no limitations were placed on the Unionists. They chose to constitute themselves as a military unit with a semi-civilian or garrison task: temporary confinement of the islanders and preparation of the island for winter occupancy by those unwilling to comply with conditions laid down for leaving. [See Appendix 2, Proclamation #4, for these conditions.] To this end they provided themselves with authentic equipment [See Appendix 3.] and developed clear strategies and tactics, together with the discipline to carry these out.

In both preparation and execution the commander and his security chief were highly effective, in the judgment of all participants and observers. The commander's German military background showed in the understated directness, competence and control exhibited by the Unionists at all times. His personal German-officer mannerisms were played down but provided a subtle counterpoint to his handling of his political task; he was disarming while taking all necessary measures to assure the success of his physical task. His understatement and ability to state reasonable conditions contrasted with the defenders' tendency to arbitrary overstatement and their inability to state clearly the sufficient reasons for non-compliance with Unionist directives. They were never able successfully to picture the commander as a tyrant or to make him an adequate symbol of oppression [See the transcript of the Tuesday evening meeting, Appendix 11, for a vivid example of his ability to keep the defenders off balance in verbal confrontations.]

The security chief was a large, bearded person, exuding competence at military skills. Moving and speaking seldom, he always acted directly, swiftly and with success. His air of ruthlessness and pride in his work was an important part of the Unionists' effect on the defenders.

The Unionist most in contact with the defenders was the clerk, a young man whose patience and non-committal understanding were important in keeping the defenders off balance. Among the other Unionists, the two ex-islanders had a difficult task: to establish themselves quickly as Unionists without over-reacting. Here the ex-soldier was authentic as the average soldier doing his job and finding irrelevant to his task the ideological stance from which most defenders began in their relations with him. The junior warden was effective as the zealous, dedicated soldier.

Since their task was strategically simple and since the defenders did not initiate tactics that divided the Unionists into small groups, the Unionists always formed an homogenous military unit, defined by its discipline and assigned task. There was little to distract them; and they remained in role at all times, thus reinforcing their natural cohesion. For the factors undermining their control of themselves and of the situation, see the article, "The Pedagogical Motif," and Appendix 11 for a transcript of the final hour of the exercise.

The militarily-experienced leadership of the Unionists were in fact radical pacifists. They had, as events showed, a shrewd appreciation of the pacifism they believed would dominate the defenders. This was indicated clearly by their advance determination — without having any knowledge of actual events on the island — to address the islanders as "Pacifists," helping to create or further the identity problem for the defenders.

It is our opinion, based on observation of past contacts in action situations between pacifists and military personnel, that had the Unionists been military personnel in real life they would probably have developed substantially the same pedagogical motif that was displayed by these Unionists. That is, as the defenders began to act and react in terms of unreality, without reference to the empirical situation, any body of captors would probably have experienced a strong desire or need to correct them.

In almost any situation it is deeply disturbing to be placed in proximity to persons whose actions are inexplicable in terms of accepted reality. When vital issues are at stake, this unreal behavior will be experienced as anything from annoyance to serious threat. In the captor-captive situation, the captors must at all times insist that the captives agree that physical control rests in the hands of the captors. Without this agreement, vital interests are unshielded from an all-out confrontation. which it is in the interests of the captors to avoid. This interest is, in this case, defined by the captor-captive situation: when vital interests are at stake, the normal alternative to the prisoner situation is the subjugation and, if need be, the extermination, of the physically-weaker side. Hence it is vital to obtain the agreement of the prisoners as to their prisoner-status if the captor-captive situation isnot to degenerate into war. This agreement, which alone could have normalized relations between the Unionists and defenders, was never obtained by the captors. They were therefore forced to plan consciously on forcing it, to make it a major objective. It became necessary to teach reality to the defenders.

The defenders expressed in many ways their lack of connection with reality as seen by the Unionists, from their diffuse reaction to the Unionist arrival to the interminable discussions, to the rigid stance of noncooperation that could only lead to disaster, to the abrupt alternation of militant confrontation and over-friendly concern, to the culminating absurdity, from the Unionist viewpoint, of the "manifesto" disarming the Unionists by decree. The positive rationale for these actions is examined in "The Dynamic Between Unionists and Defenders." Here our concern is with the effect of these actions on the Unionists.

The soldier situation is even more defined by conventions and stipulations than is the captor-captive situation. When the Unionists were not treated as soldiers and hardly dealt with as living men at all, when their arms — heavily-freighted with symbolic value — were treated as non-existent, then personal pedagogical motives reinforced the impulse outlined above.

As these major and minor lapses from reality converged ultimately into what the Unionists called the "heroic stand" and as this moved toward insurrection, it became psychologically necessary for the Unionists to force the defenders to acknowledge reality and to begin to act in light of it. The actual physical situation was by no means yet lost for the captors. In this sense their reaction to the "manifesto" and to the bell-ringing was a blunder. But, given the psychological situation, it was imperative to force the defenders, by whatever means necessary, to recognize the captor-captive situation as real and to begin to treat the Unionists themselves as real human beings. In this sense the Unionists' inhumanity was the cry of their humanity.

Only such a motive can explain the almost overpowering need of the Unionists to react as they did — to the point where their commander began to fear mutiny among his forces if he did not yield to it.

A common characteristic of inter-group conflict is the failure of communication between the contending groups at critical junctures. Considerable evidence from peace and civil rights direct action projects confirms the generality of this observation and shows that communication failures are more common and tend to have more severe consequences as tension and criticality increase. Because complete records exist of the actions and responses of all elements, the Grindstone Island experiment offers important insights concerning the nature of communication failures in group confrontations.

Examination of the record of inter-group confrontation contained in this report reveals abundant instances — so many as to create the impression of a constant pattern — of actions by one group undertaken with a very clear message in mind yet viewed by the opposing group in a totally different light. The defenders adopted a posture intended to convey to the Unionists an attitude of human warmth, friendship and understanding; the Unionists interpreted this as juvenile denial of reality. The volleyball game was continued as an expression of naturalness and unconcern at the arrival of new people on the island; the Unionists took this as evidence that the defenders must be taught the facts of life in a power situation. Sincere attempts were made to establish person-to-person contact with the Unionists; but these efforts were rebuffed as calculated subversion and deception. The decision by the Unionists to return control of the kitchen and food supplies to the defenders was a tactical response to the feared defection of the kitchen crew; this action was variously interpreted by the defenders as (a) deceptive relaxation of the bureaucratic controls, (b) weakening of the Unionists' resolve, or (c) success of defenders' tactics. The Unionists gassed a group of defenders with the expectation that a lesson of power realities would be taught; the defenders responded only to the wanton brutality of the act. The Unionists attempted to reverse what they interpreted as a rising wave of insurrection by a measured intensification of violence; the defenders responded by intensifying their behaviorwhich they did not view as rebellious.

Of the innumerable instances of serious misinterpretation of actions by the opposing groups, two that took place almost simultaneously are chosen to illustrate the relationships. These are the Unionists' gassing of a defender group and the defenders' issuance of the "manifesto of insurrection." The two incidents took place in the late afternoon of Wednesday, the second day of occupation, at a time when the spirits of the defenders (and, in their own eyes, their fortunes) were on the rise. Some contact had been made in random conversations with the Unionists through the afternoon; the antenna action had released some frustration of inaction; the strategy committee was obviously functioning; the kitchen and food supplies were again controlled by the defenders. All this seemed to the defenders to be evidence of a concerted defense at last taking shape. The mood of the Unionists and their view of the situation were quite different. Sharply insurrectionist statements had been directed at them in the morning meeting; the kitchen helpers were so near to defection that the tactical retreat of abandoning control of the kitchen seemed necessary; the pacifists had engaged in at least one act of intended sabotage in the early afternoon and had spent the remainder of the day in what the Unionists viewed as harassment through pointless, moralistic conversations with the enlisted men; they were persisting in their foolish, childlike rejection of authority and were showing many signs of shifting into open rebellion. The Unionists were in a state of seige mentality and began to make preparations for dealing with the impending insurrection. [See "Narrative of the Exercise."]

Into this context of conflicting misapprehension by both groups, the strategy committee brought its report to the 4:30 plenary session-and to the Unionists who unavoidably observed and overheard the proceedings. The gentle, Quaker-elder, chairman of the strategy committee, chuckled as he read the report; he was reflecting the feeling of the committee — and also of most of the group — that this document which later became known as the "manifesto of insurrection," [See Appendix 6.] was a grand joke. The report had originally included plans for a fraternization picnic centered around the Unionists' own fiction of a birthday celebration for George Washington Carver; it made sly references to the irresistibly disarming behavior of the defenders; the text parodied the stilted humbug of the Unionists' own proclamations; it went so far as to demand rent, payable in hard currency, for quarters occupied by the Unionists; it declared the Unionist troops to be part of the pacifist group; it mocked the Unionists' "Off Limits" signs by fencing off (with an unattended imaginary line to be marked by a single facetious sign) a remote and unused part of the island; it projected a wildly fanciful plan for escape to nowhere; its final frivolous absurdity was a scheme to toll off the hours on a bell.

It was a splendid joke. Unfortunately it was taken seriously. The Unionists wrote in their log about impending insurrection, spoke of shooting to kill and polished up their weapons and their marksmanship. The umpires made notes about escape attempts in defiance of ground rules. The defenders began to set up rosters for sentry duty and bell ringing. Even some members of the strategy committee were later carried away by the swift unfolding of events and became seriously and irrevocably involved in ringing bells.

One adventitious event seriously distorted the tone of the strategy committee's proposal. Unknown to the committee, the decision had been made to cancel the picnic and revert to the usual meal schedule. Thus, the half of the report least likely to be interpreted as threatening to the Unionists became irrelevant and was never made public. The tone of the remainder was undoubtedly more hostile than its authors intended. Certainly the harsh and sudden response of the Unionists was unexpected.

The strategy committee report was one factor in precipitating the Unionist decision to instruct the defender group in the realities of power relations by an object lesson in the use of force. But all the other incidents of the trying afternoon of harassment contributed.

The Unionist log makes it clear that the reason for the gas attack was their sense of confronting open insurrection. It was undertaken "as a show of force" and as a "last warning as to what will happen if they proceed..." The action was sudden, arbitrary, unannounced and totally unexplained. A group of the Unionist troops strode through a sub-group of defenders who were meeting in their accustomed place; the troops seized the bell and returned through the meeting to their restricted area. As they went through the second time, they threw tear gas bombs and departed. The lesson of this pedagogical exercise was lost on the students. The whole incident was completely inexplicable to the defenders and their only response was indignation at the arbitrariness and brutality of the Unionists.

These two striking failures of inter-group communication raise many questions, but the one most relevant to this report is: why were the actions so badly misinterpreted? The first part of the answer to this question is immediately obvious in retrospect: the strategy committee made a joke, but it was a spectacularly bad time to be making jokes. The general principle is that any action takes place in a context; the response to an action will be determined at least as much by the contextual factors as by the nature of the action itself.

In this instance the important contextual factors were the moods of the two contending groups. The defenders had a profound need for a coherent plan of action round which they could rally; they also had great expectations that the strategy committee report would provide this focus for action. The evidence for these assertions is the sudden, unanimous, enthusiastic acceptance of the report without substantive questioning of its contents. In this context the defenders understandably discounted the humorous qualities of the report and chose to make their final heroic stand on the basis of its strategic content. The defenders' inability to break loose from the dynamic set in motion by the "manifesto," even when they began to realize its unreality and to sense its disastrous end, confirms that their misinterpretation was inevitable. The Unionists (and the umpires) also noted the humorous side of the report. Yet their perception of the mood of the defenders, as well as their own assessment of the over-all situation, made it inconceivable that the "manifesto" could be anything but a statement of a strategy of rebellion.

The strategy committee had been meeting through the afternoon and therefore was unaware of three factors that strongly influenced the Unionists' judgment of any defender action. The capricious cancellation of the picnic, with its possibility of fraternization, has been mentioned; the strategy committee was also unaware of the antenna incident and of the almost continuous effort of individual defenders to talk with the Unionists throughout the afternoon. More importantly, none of the defender group was aware of the Unionists' deep fear of a pacifist revolt nor of the whole complex of reasons for this fear. In short, the strategy committee tossed an inflammatory statement into a situation that was explosively charged — and were as surprised as anyone at the resultant explosion.

The defenders' ignorance was only partly justifiable; many of the defenders had ample reason to be aware of the probable state of mind of the Unionists. But there was even less excuse for the Unionists' undertaking their "educational" action at the time — and in the way they did — in the face of many contrary signals receivable from the defenders. Most of the Unionists had heard the reading and discussion of the strategy committee report; some (including the commander) had shared in the joke by engaging in verbal by-play through the screen barrier. Granting the Unionists' concept of the defenders' need for education in power relationships, [See article, "The Pedagogical Motif of the Unionists."] twenty-four hours of experience had demonstrated that these lessons were extremely difficult to learn-and therefore required careful and thoughtful teaching — even under the most favorable circumstances. At least some explanation of the gas attack at the time it was carried out and some effort to relate the punishment to a crime were the minimum essentials for transforming what was viewed as grossly wanton brutality into the intended pedagogical lesson.

Related to the flouting of context is the one-dimensional view that both groups took of the situation and each other. The defenders viewed themselves as nice friendly people with great wisdom about interpersonal relations; they attributed to the Unionists such qualities as supreme confidence in their own physical power, insensitivity to human values, lack of any true understanding of human relations, and readiness to resort to force and violence. The Unionists viewed themselves as representatives of authority and social order in an anarchic situation, in possession of all necessary power and of superior understanding of power relations. They considered the defenders to be extremely naive but crafty and devious. They came to feel it their duty, not only to impose authority on the defenders, but to instruct them in power realities; they became convinced that the defenders were on the verge of open rebellion. If either side could have grasped the other's point of view the actions under inspection would not have been undertaken; if each side had had even partial understanding of the other's motives in the actions, its own response would have been quite different and could well have changed the course of events.

A major reason for the inability of both groups to sense the mood and probable reaction of the opposition was the overpowering tendency to see all events and all actions as confirming one's own expectations. The gas attack was not a lesson and was the basis for an indignant protest because the defenders expected brutal behavior. The strategy committee's report became a "manifesto of insurrection" because the Unionists expected rebellion.

A final factor in the web of misunderstanding is the simple dishonesty of both actions. Despite the rather complete rationale by both sides for their action and also for their response to the action of the opposing group, there was a very substantial element of acting — of responding in ways basically inappropriate to the true situation but appropriate to the role each group had selected for itself.

Three of the six umpires were selected from the planning committee itself, including the island warden, the program executive of the Canadian Friends Service Committee, and the developer of the scenario, who was designated "head" umpire. Three others were chosen from among the participants. Duties were assigned to each, so that the entire exercise would be covered on a 24-hour basis. One was attached to the Unionists before the exercise began. Another was responsible for taping as much of the action as possible, using a sensitive microphone that enabled him to pick up everything while remaining inconspicuous. Two umpires who could blend in well were assigned to rove, coveri