Hi Dungbeetle: Good points. 
I don't care what story the Watchtower has been spewing out for 100 years; I think the reason they are so anti non-combatant and so on is because they like the 'persecution' <gag, choke, vomit> that they get from being so extreme about it."
I believe that JFR liked the attention, and to some extent, this was implied in the book, 30 years a Watchtower Slave by William Schnell ... a rather poor book, but he leaned in that direction of the JWs feeding on persecution.On the other hand, I think that many of the original Bible Students under Russell tended to be pacifists ... and they avoided military duty ... but it was never a big issue during Russell's presidency. The Society started after the Civil War, and the only other war was the Spanish-American War under Teddy Roosevelt ... but I have yet to read anything on whether the Bible Students avoided military duty during that war ... but the issue emerged after WWI started with Rutherford at the helm ... and he fed on this stuff and spun it into publicity.