Dec 3 1969

To: Col Eugene Holmes
    Director ROTC
    University of Arkansas

        I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to
let you  hear from me at least once a month, and from now on I you
will, but I  have had to have some time to think about this first
letter. Almost daily  since my return to England I have thought
about writing, about what I want and ought to say.         

First I want to thank you not just for saving me from the draft,
but for being so kind and decent to me last  summer, when I was as
low as I have ever been. One thing which made  the bond we struck
in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my  high regard for you
personally. In retrospect, It seems that the  admiration might not
have been mutual had you known a little bit more  about me. At
least you might have thought me more fit for the draft  than the
ROTC.         

Let me try to explain. As you know I worked for 2 years in a minor 
position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for
the  experience and the salary but also did it for the opportunity,
however  small, of working every day against a war which I opposed
and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for
racism in America before Viet Nam. I did not take the matter
lightly but studied it carefully, and there  was a time when not
many people had more information about Viet- Nam at hand than I
did.         

I have written and spoken and marched against the war.  One of the
national organizers of the Viet Nam moratorium is a close friend of
mine.  After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to
work in the national headquarters of the moratorium, then returned
to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations
October 15 and November 16.

         Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did
not begin to  consider separately until early 1968. For a law
seminar at Georgetown I  wrote a paper on the legal arguments for
and against allowing, within  the Selective Service System, the
classification of selective  conscientious objection for those who
opposed to participation in a  particular war, not simply to
"participation in war in any form."         

From my work I came to believe that the draft system in itself is 
illegitimate. No government rooted in limited, parliamentry
democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill
and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be 
wrong, a war which in any case does not involve immediately the
peace and freedom of the nation.

         The draft was justified in World War II because the life
of the  people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight,
if the nation  was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen
and there way of life.  Viet-Nam is no such case. Nor was Korea an
example where, in my  opinion, certain military action was
justified but the draft was not., for  the reasons stated above.  

      Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in
great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight,  kill, and
maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a
particular government) right or wrong.  Two of my friends at Oxford 
are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for
one  of them at his Mississippi draft board, a letter which I am
more proud of  than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One
of my roommates is  a draft resister who is possibly under
indictment and may never be able  to go home again. He is one of
the bravest, best men I know. His  country needs more men like him
more than they know. That he is  considered a criminal is an
obscenity.

         The decision not to be a resister and the related
subsequent  decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided
to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to 
maintain my political viability within the system.  For years I
have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by
both practical and political ability and concern for rapid social 
progress.  It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead.  I
do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt,
however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years (the
society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that
is true, we are all finished anyway.)

         When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was
having a  hard time facing a prospect of fighting a war which I had
been fighting  against, that is why I contacted you.  ROTC was the
one way left in which Icould possibly but not positively, avoid
both Viet Nam and resistance.  Going on with my  education, even
coming back to England, played no part in my decision  to join
ROTC. I am back here and would have been at Arkansas Law  School
because there is nothing else I can do. In fact, I would have been 
able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work
on  some community action project and in the process to decide
whether to  attend law school or graduate school and how to begin
putting what I  have learned to use.

         But the particulars of my personal life are not as
important to me  as the principles involved. After I signed the
ROTC letter of intent, I  began to wonder whether the compromise I
had made with myself was  not more objectionable than the draft
would have been, because I had no interwst in the ROTC program in
itself and all I seemed to have done was protect myself from 
physical harm.  Also, I began to think I had deceived you, not by 
lies -there were none-but by failing to tell you all the things
that I am  writing now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to
articulate them then.

         At the time, after we had made our agreement and you sent
my ID  deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my
self-regard and  self-confidence really set in. I hardly slept for
weeks and kept going by  eating compulsively and reading until
exhaustion brought sleep.  Finally  on September 12 I stayed up all
night writing a letter to the chairman of  my draft board, saying
basically what is in my preceding paragraph,  thanking him for
trying to help in a case where he really couldn't and  stating that
I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft  me as
soon as possible.

         I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every 
day until I got to England. I didn't mail the letter because I
didn't see in  the end, how my going to Viet Nam would achieve
anything except a  feeling which I punished myself and gotten what
I deserved.  So I came  back to England to try to make something
out of this second year of my  Rhodes Scholarship.

         And that is where I am now, Writing to you because you
have  been good to me and have a right to know what I think and
feel. I am writing too in the hope that me telling you this one 
story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people
have come to find themselves still loving thier country but
loathing the military, to which you and other good men have 
devoted their liftimes, of the best service you could give.  To
many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is
disservice or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be
illegal.

         Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say.
There is  still a lot to be said, but it will have to wait. Please
say hello to Col.  Jones for me.  Merry Christmas.

      Sincerely,

     Bill Clinton