WT acknowledges their lack of neutrality during WW1, and previously stated that this was followed by a period of refining. However, they were still the one group that far-and-away were the only ones that were practicing first-century Christianity the most closely, as well as being the only group trying to do so.
Interesting read about the Hutterites ( http://www.ubcpress.ca/books/pdf/chapters/courtsandcolonies/chapterone.pdf )
, especially this quote about WW1:
Discrimination and hostility toward the Hutterites in the United States arose during the First World War. According to John A. Hostetler, conscientious objectors were still required to join the army as non-combatants, and this meant registering for the draft, wearing the army uniform, and performing non-combatant tasks within the army.
Young Hutterite men arriving at induction centres would not wear army uniforms or do army duty. Persecution against them within the army became quite intense:
At Camp Funston some of the men were brutally handled in the guardhouse. They were bayonetted, beaten, and tortured by various forms of water “cure” ... Men were often thrown out of a window and dragged along the ground by their hair and feet by soldiers who were waiting outside. Their beards were disfigured to make them appear ridiculous. One night, eighteen men were aroused from their sleep and held under cold showers until one of them became hysterical. Others were hung by their feet above tanks of water until they almost choked to death. On many days they were made to stand at attention on the cold side of their barracks, in scant clothing, while those who passed by scoffed at them in abusive and foul language.
They were chased across the fields by guards on motorcycles under the guise of taking exercise, until they dropped from sheer exhaustion. In the guardhouse they were usually put on a diet of bread and water.
At other camps, the treatment of the Hutterite men was similar, but the event that persuaded the Hutterites to move to Canada was the death of some of their men in prison camp. Four Hutterites who reported to Fort Lewis, Washington, refused to wear army uniforms or perform non-combatant service for the army. They were sentenced to thirty-seven years in prison and taken to the military prison at Alcatraz:
They were taken to a “dungeon” of darkness, filth, and stench and put in solitary confinement out of earshot of each other. The guard placed a uniform in each cell and said, “There you will stay until you give up the ghost – just like the last four we carried out yesterday” ... For several days the young men slept on the cold, wet concrete floor wearing nothing but their light underwear. They received half a glass of water every twenty-four hours but no food. There were beaten with clubs and, with arms crossed, tied to the ceiling. After five days they were taken from the “hole” for a short time.
Their wrists were so swollen from insect bites and skin eruptions that they could not put on their own jackets ... After four months at Alcatraz the men were transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, by six armed sergeants.
At Fort Leavenworth, further persecution and hardship followed. Two of the Hutterite men collapsed and were taken to hospital. The other two were held in solitary confinement, placed on starvation diet, and “made to stand nine hours each day with hands tied and their feet barely touching the floor.”
The two men in the hospital died. When the wife of one of them came to see his body, she found that the army had put a uniform on the dead corpse, finally accomplishing in death what it could not in life.