Biography
Maurice Hess, a young Dunkard (Old Order German Baptist Brethren) schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, refused military service in the First World War on religious grounds. His statement to his 1918 court-martial — "I do not believe that I am seeking martyrdom... but I cannot forsake my Lord" — became one of the most quoted testimonies of the WWI objectors. Sentenced to 25 years, he was imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth and released after the war. He later taught classics for decades at McPherson College in Kansas.
Maurice A. Hess was a World War I conscientious objector who refused military service and was court-martialed and confined at the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas. He was among the objectors who had not been examined by the U.S. Army's Board of Inquiry before their court-martials.
Maurice Abram Hess was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed for refusing military service, he was held at Fort Leavenworth. Sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Documented in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection's World War I Conscientious Objectors database.) Archival note: arrived at Camp Meade on Nov. 5, 1917 & assigned to Co. B, 316 Infantry; declared a CO on Nov. 6, 1917; transferred to Ft. Riley, where he was put in guard house; sentenced to 25 years in prison; imprisoned at Ft. Leavenworth on November 15, 1918 (& put in solitary confinement there); …
