AMNESTY: Limited Program, Limited Response

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Contrasting Fates. The first men seeking to turn themselves in to civilian authorities met contrasting fates. Doug Bitle, 28, flew to San Francisco from Vancouver and basked in a well-publicized welcome. But he was unable to get any definitive information on his case by telephone from the U.S. Attorney's office. Unwilling to surrender without legal advice, he contends that every lawyer he contacted wanted between $500 and $2,500 to take his case, so he returned to Vancouver. "If I had had the opportunity to do valid public service four years ago," he says, "I never would have left the country." On the other hand, John Barry, 22, a draft-dodging San Francisco musician, hired a lawyer and gave himself up to the same U.S. Attorney's office. Considered a hardship case because he supports his widowed mother, he was told that he would probably have to work for only six months.

No amnesty plan, of course, could be expected to bridge the gulf between extreme views of the problem. To many, failure to fight when the nation called was a cowardly, treasonable act and an assault upon the values of all those who sacrificed so much. To others, evasion of service in an unprincipled war was a courageous and lonely act of high patriotism, challenging the national conscience and making future such wars less probable. Put more moderately, the problem is how to distinguish between society's need to enforce its laws and the individual's right to follow his conscience.

A balanced assessment of the Ford program was offered by Bill Meis, 29, an aspiring novelist who lives with his wife and two children in Montreal. Denied conscientious-objector status, he fled in 1968. "O.K., I accept the sentiment behind the proposal," he says, "but it's a kind of humiliation, a concept that we were subversive. It's a hardship for our families. Some of them would have to go on welfare for two years while husbands served out their debts. I've had a very good life here, but there's no point in denying it —there'll always be a lot of me that's American. I think that over the next three or four months, as a few test cases go through, the resistance is going to break down a bit. Maybe 15% or 20% will go home if leniency is shown."