Personal or Civil use of force v military use of force

The classic "what if" thrown at pacifists, anti-militarist, and other assorted peaceniks, is to ask what they would do if someone broke into their home and violently assaulted their family. Would they stand by passively offering no resistance? If they concede that they would feel compelled to use force to resist such invasion and threat, then that is taken that they really accept the use of force and therefore accept the existence of a military establishment, and, in the event of conscription, the requirement for them to take part in military activities.

That is a massive conflation that equates military force with the personal or civil use of force. It is perfectly possible to approve of and support the use of personal or civil force whilst being thoroughly against the use of military force. The three are vastly and distinctly different – but not to the military mind. 

There appears to be a militarist presumption that for a pacifist to be consistent they must never use force in any situation whatsoever, that they must be completely passive at all times. This is an extreme delimitation of what counts as pacifism. A delimitation that favours acceptance of the military use of force as a consequence of the acceptance of the use of force in any situation whatsoever. 

Pacifism is against the use of military force: a very specific and highly organised form of collective and premeditated force. It is not against the personal use of force in extreme circumstances, nor against the use of civil force as required to maintain a well ordered and secure society.

There is a vast leap from accepting that the use of personal or civil force may be necessary on some occasions to accepting the necessity for the maintenance of a permanent military establishment with its vast cost, insatiable demands for ever more sophisticated weaponry, and the resultant political temptation to deploy them for what might be deemed worthy ends by those in power.  

Max Webber distinguished between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility. Responsibility provides the context in which deviation from conviction may be necessary. 

For a Christian pacifist, no matter how ardently they feel compelled by the New Commandment (John 13:34) or Great Commandment (Mark 13:30-31) or by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-47)(Luke 6:27-36), the duty to protect others, especially the defenceless, the vulnerable – those unable to resist violence or coercion – may compel the use of force in their protection. It may even lead to legal jeopardy due to not intervening with reasonable force when your could have done. 

Those whose conviction may arise from non-Christian grounds would face the same dilemma: no matter how fervently held the pacifist conviction will be trumped on occasions by the need to protect those for whom they may be held to be responsible.

In a world where no-one threatened or used coercive force there would be no need to respond with any form of force. It would be possible to be blissfully but pointlessly pacifist. But the benefit of threatening to use violence because of the coercive fear it induces, gives power to those willing us it for their own ends. The hold that street gangs or para-military organisations have over communities makes only too clear the effectiveness of intimidation. Violence only need to be employed occasionally for it to be affective. Knee cappings by the IRA, or occasional stabbings by street gangs, re-enforce the hold such groups have, establishing and policing boundaries over the coerced communities and ensuring compliance out of fear. 

Life is messy. Thugs, bullies and men of violence (it is usually men) have always existed and will always exist. Self defence, the use of counter force if attacked, is usually not only understandable but necessary for survival, or to avoid submitting to coercion.

Historically slaves or sailors who resisted being whipped, or children and teenagers who resisted being caned, were deemed to be rebellious and out of control if they used counter-force: submission to violence was required. Before it was made illegal, caning, especially in boys boarding schools in the UK, was even semi-ritualised, often public, and almost a right of passage.

Submission to the threat of violence is still required in the face of lawful authority. Policing is only benign to a point, then it becomes coercive. In extreme circumstances, lethally so. 

Attempts are made to provide frameworks for the civil use of force because countering intimidation and violence is part of policing society. The United Nations conventions outline the basic principles framing the use of force and firearms in law enforcement.

However, pacifism is not about the use of force in self-defence or about the civil use of force. It is about the collective, military use of force. Force which is used predominantly for political ends. 

Quakers have understood that distinction between the personal use of force or civil use of force on the one hand, and military force on the other; an understanding shaped by having lived through the awfulness of the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century:

I speak not against any magistrates or peoples defending themselves against foreign invasions; or making use of the sword to suppress the violent and evil-doers within their borders – for this the present estate of things may and doth require, and a great blessing will attend the sword where it is borne uprightly to that end and its use will be honourable … but yet there is a better state, which the Lord hath already brought some into, and which nations are to expect and to travel towards. … (Isaac Penington, 1661: Quaker faith & practice 24.21)

But the underlying principle that distinguished such personal or civil use of force from the military use of force was that, as Quakers, we do not take part in wars, but seek to be peace-makers. This was clearly stated in 1660:

Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world. … (Declaration to Charles II, 1660: Quaker faith & practice 24.04)

Quakers are not so much pacifists but peace-makers. Their vision is of a world that becomes more peaceful as more people come to live out the Peace Testimony: they are a vanguard creating an expanding space of peaceful living, leading by example, being an influence on the world by living in that "better state" which others, even nations, are expected to "travel towards". Pacifism tends to be a negative response of non-participation. Peace-making is more positively orientated. That is why Quakers engage across the spectrum of violence through such projects as the Alternatives to Violence Project and the Friends Peace Teams, not simply by non-participation in military activity.

The typology of violence helps distinguish between self-inflicted, interpersonal and collective violence and their sub-divisions. Of these, war is the one which pacifists refuse to take part in or to support. It is where individual conscience conflicts most acutely with collective action. 

War, and the roots of wars are complex. They are almost a uniquely human creation, although they may be an enlargement of a potentials found across nature. The Quaker understanding has always been that we should engage in addressing the roots of war – as various and as specific as they may be – whilst steadfastly refusing to take part. Since the early twentieth century they have also felt compelled to attend to the harms that wars inflict.

The pacifist mindset presumes a default state of peace. By contrast, the militarist mindset presumes a default mindset of potential warfare. For the militarist peace is seen as an interlude between wars which must be used to rebuild capacity, to re-arm, to re-stock. The resultant military-industrial complex drains economies. It is no accident that the economies that grew most post World War Two were the two peace orientated economies of Germany and Japan, or that even now they rate as the world's third and fourth economies. 

Bertram Pickard – one of the core subjects of my studies – was the Secretary to the Quaker Centre in Geneva and effectively the Quaker representative to the League of Nations between 1926 and 1940. He went on to become part of the United Nations secretariat in Geneva (1946–55) after working as part of UNRRA. He struggled with the reality of maintaining a pacifist stance amidst the complexity of international affairs. He wrote about this specifically in his booklet The Peacemaker's Dilemma, which was one of several items by him in Irene's archive. He had been involved in the conscientious objector's movement during the First World War.

History is written into the stuff we are made of

For my birthday my partner bought me a 23andme genetic ancestry testing kit. This is where family oral history and legends meet science. Puzzles, enigmas, and hidden secrets might perhaps be revealed and explained. 

First – it was a factor in my parent's divorce – whose son am I? The man named on my birth certificate whose family name I carry, was my mother's husband, but he had his doubts about being my father, especially when blind drunk. My mother divorced him to protect us from him, and the courts agreed, denying him any access or even communication with either myself or my brother. When my brother reached twenty-one and I thirteen, he stopped paying maintenance. He was prepared to provide support for what he believed to be his child, my brother, until they reached adulthood, but not for the cuckoo.

One May, nine months before my birth, my mother was called away from our family home in Herefordshire, to the island of Jersey to look after her mother, who was recovering from a stroke. She remained on the island for the next three months. There she met and became close friends with a Scotsman, who became my god-father. Hence my nominal father's deep suspicion. How could I be his if I was born in February?

So, am I part Scottish with cousins, distant or otherwise, to be found in and around Aberdeen where my god-father and his ancestors came from, or anywhere else in Scotland for that matter?

The answer was unambiguous. Not a trace of Scottish ancestry, but a pool of paternal third and fourth cousins in the North West England where my nominal father's family came from. And more, confirmation of his family story that his grandmother was German. I have almost exactly 1/8  broadly Franco-German genes inherited from just one individual, according to the results. There is a pool of 3rd and 4th cousins in North West Germany, which does point strongly to the truth of the oral history that my father's grandmother came from Hamburg, although my cousins are mostly to be found in North Rhine-Westphalia. And it confirms absolutely that I am his son. 

It turns out the cuckoo was not a cuckoo.

But there are also a few paternal Irish ancestors, not a hint of which was in the family oral history. Are they related via my paternal grandmother, of whom I know very little beyond her being born about 1876 in Oxfordshire? There are, according to the results, paternal 3rd and 4th Irish cousins with whom I share either a common great-great-grandparent, or a great-great-great-grandparent. (Grandparent x3 or x4)

Now comes the most curious family legend. It is on my mother's side. We are supposed – it was said darkly and secretly and as an explanation for the diminutive appearance of my mother and so many of her mother's relatives – that we are part Japanese. 

This made little historical sense. My grandmother was born in 1880, and Japan was a closed country until 1854. Hardly time for the genes to travel from the islands of the Far East in time to make my great-grandmother part Japanese, especially given that she was an itinerant fieldworker, who gave birth to my grandmother in a workhouse in the Severn Valley in Worcestershire in the English West Midlands. Family appearance apart, it seemed impossible.

Sometimes we should trust oral traditions. The genetic test results show there are distant Japanese cousins! What's more, there are also almost twice as many Filipino cousins. The Filipinos were a complete surprise. 

Most strangely of all, there is a clear genetic marker for Arabian Peninsula heritage! Distant, but unmistakable.

What? How? Where on earth would Japanese, Filipino and Arab genes get mixed up? And how would they end up in my grandmother, my mother and me? What history is buried in this?

And then there is the other surprise. I have a lot – and I do mean a lot – of 3rd and 4th cousins on my mother's side in South West Ireland, in Munster, and especially around Cork. Not a hint of that in our family's oral history. How and when did that come about?

The clue to the Irish side lies in my maternal great-grandmother's occupation: field worker. The second clue lies in the degree of relationship. My Irish relatives share either a great-great-grandparent, or a great-great-great-grandparent (grandparent x3 or x4) with me. That puts the common ancestor as having lived in Ireland in the first half of the nineteen-century. About one-million Irish, especially peasants and farm works, fled the Great Famine between 1845-52, particularly from the South West where the famine was at its worst. The work they would have known, and found most easy to get in Britain, was field work: casual labour picking the crops. The same work as my great-grandmother. 

The Severn Valley, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and up the Avon into Warwickshire, had masses of seasonal field work, as did the neighbouring Wye Valley in Herefordshire. Day work was to be had from the first of the asparagus in April until the last of the potatoes in October, and even a little cabbage, sprouts, leeks, cauliflower, parsnips and broccoli picking through the winter. This in addition to masses of employment fruit and hop picking to be had during the peak season in the summer and autumn. It was a tough and hard life, often sleeping in barns, or sheds, under hedges, or even in the fields, and being paid a pittance for the weight of crops picked. Winters often drove people into the workhouse.

The disparaging term used for such itinerant field workers was diddikai. Not proper gypsies, but living like them. It was a term used of my grandmother's family, usually with the addition of the word "dirty". Being a 'dirty-did' was a school yard insult when I was young, used for the most despised children among us. "They are no more than a bunch of dirty-dids" was an insult thrown at families who lived on the margins of society: untrustworthy, skiving, thieving, drunken, brawling and disreputable. A heritage to be lived down.

But how did a woman, my great-grandmother, whose life was doing such work have Japanese, Filipino and Arab genes?

There is one place in the world where such mixing of genes is not that uncommon: Manila in the Philippines. It is estimated that around 2% of Filipinos have Arabian genes as a result of the 2,000 year old seaborne trade between Arabia and the islands. The Arab dhow was a great trading ship and linked together Arabia, especially Oman, with India, South East Asia, and the islands of the East Indies.

Anyway, Sinbad, let's call him, appears to have left his genetic footprint in Manila sometime in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, to give the degree of genetic presence he has in my genes.That would explain the blend of Arab and Filipino, but what of the Japanese? Now that is a real problem.

During the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the Chinese were not allowed to trade directly with Japan. That could only be done through Manila. As a result, Chinese and Japanese trading communities grew up there. However, in 1639 Japan became a closed country, and the Japanese community in Manila began to shrink as a result. There was only one way any connection with Japan could be maintained. It was via the Dutch East India Company, who were given the right to have a trading post in Nagasaki harbour. That was for the next two hundred years Japan's only connection with the outside world. 

The Dutch were not allowed into Japan, but had to stay in their trading colony on a small artificial island in the harbour. Japanese were allowed to visit for trade, and the local governors made sure that Japanese women were made available for the 'comfort' of the Dutchmen. Some of the women married Dutchmen. As a result they and their children were not allowed off the island. Their only option was to leave with their husbands when his time as a trader ended, making their way to Manila, often via Macau, a Portuguese trading city on the mouth of the Pearl River in China, where a small community of Japanese exiles grew up. The Dutch dominated much of the East Indies trade after 1647 when they won the right to trade directly with Spanish colonies, making direct trade between Nagasaki and Manila possible.

A very few Japanese took passage on Dutch East India Company ships from Nagasaki, knowing it would be extremely unlikely that they would be allowed to re-enter Japan if they returned. There were three types of people who took those risks. The very adventurous, those fleeing Japan, and Japanese hidden or secret Christians. The latter maintained a tenuous and very secret connection with the Catholic Church and community in Manila. Christianity in Japan was banned in 1614 and all known Christians had been exiled or executed by 1650. Thereafter Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”) survived very secretly, some even travelling to Manila to train in Catholic seminaries, risking certain death if they returned and were discovered.

My genetic results suggest that someone Japanese left Japan for Manila sometime in the eighteenth century. Were they the wife of a Dutch trader? Someone looking for adventure? Someone fleeing? Or a Hidden Christian? We shall never know. It is very likely they became part of the Japanese community in Manila. They, or their close descendent, must have had a child with a Filipino-Arab.

Alternatively my ancestor may have come from the residual (pre-1639), and mostly Christian, Japanese community in Manila. However, the presence of distant relatives whose grandparents x3 or x4 were born in Japan suggests a post 1639 and not a pre-1639 Japanese origin of the genes.

That's got the mix of Japanese, Filipino and Arab prepared in Manila. But how did it get from there into Britain? And then on to mix with my great-grandmother's family? 

The Philippines were held by Spain, who governed the country from Mexico City. Their trade routes from Manila led eastwards across the Pacific to Mexico, and then onwards across the Atlantic to Spain. The Spanish did not allow their colonies to trade directly with the British. The Dutch, who could trade with the Spanish colonies, controlled the trade westwards through Malacca or Batavia (Jakarta) and on via Cape Town at the tip of South Africa, however, their ships were not allowed to dock in Britain. The British Navigation Acts reserved trade from producer countries into British ports to the producers own or British ships, effectively shutting the Dutch out of their highly profitable trade as a middleman shipping exotic goods to Britain or its colonies from the both West and East Indies. 

It looks very difficult for someone from Manila in the eighteenth century to have reached Britain. Spain or Portugal, yes. Holland, possibly, but Britain no. However, things were changing. A window of opportunity for such a journey was opening up.

In 1762 the British East India Company ceased control of Manila, and held it until 1764. Thereafter they carried on what became known as the "English Country Trade". The East India Company hired Indian ships to trade between India and Manila, thus getting around the Spanish ban on their colonies trading directly with the British.

Now we have a bridge. Did someone of Japanese-Filipino-Arabian decent work their passage from Manila to India, and then, being a seaman and "knowing the ropes" (quite literally in those days), was taken on as a seaman on an East-Indiaman? The Filipinos are famous as seafarers, and even today crew many of the world's super-tankers and giant cargo carriers. The Navigation Acts allowed up to 25% of the crew of British ships not to be British. Such employment would land our intrepid gene-carrier in England, but in London where the East India Company ships docked.

We now need to get them, or their descendants, to being field workers in Worcestershire. The degree of separation suggests there are at two or three generations between our supposed seaman and his descendants arriving in Worcestershire. 

Looking at the genetic report, we must once more turn to Cork in Ireland. This may seem odd, as the British East India company was a London company with exclusive rights to trade east of Cape Town, South Africa, rights it protected zealously. It ships sailed from London, and returned there, once laden with the exotic goods gathered into its stores in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. So how come Cork? The answer lies in Britain's war time regulations intended to protect its shipping from the predation by privateers, pirates, and enemy fleets. 

The Royal Navy operated a convoy system during the time of the American War of Independence (1775–83) and during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1794-1815). Homeward bound ships gathered at St Helena in the South Atlantic and were escorted to Cork, from where they continued their homeward journey in safer waters. Outward bound ships gathered at Cork, waiting until their numbers were large enough to form a convoy, and the required Royal Navy ships were ready to escort them. Being laid up in Cork harbour provided the ships with opportunity to be provisioned with supplies of fresh water, beers, salt meat and butter, a provisioning trade on which the city thrived. 

It also provided opportunity for crews to enjoy some shore leave, which they did, particularly in an area strangely called the Holy Ground, considering its reputation for dispensing to sailors the entertainments they desired. Many a child resulted. Was this where our Arabian–Filipino–Japanese sailor left his genes? If so, it is easy to understand how such a child born in poverty would be swept by the Great Famine into England and into taking what work they could to survive. That work more often than not was as field hands picking the crops. It is thought that many Irish became travellers at this time, moving as work gangs from farm to farm. Exactly the life to which my grandmother was born.

How much reliability can be given to any of this? A little. 23andme claim that up to six generations of ancestors can be traced with a reasonable degree of reliability. After that it becomes increasingly less so. However, I think Sinbad's genetic footprint, of which they are pretty sure because of its identifiability as trace ancestry, is key, and points to Manila. 

So my genetics seem to have the imprint of the Arabian sea-trade, the Dutch East India Company monopoly of trade with Japan, the genetic melting pot of Manila, the seafaring traditions of the Filipinos, the "English Country Trade" between Manila and India, the ships of British East India Company, the convoy system between St Helena and Cork, and the Great Irish Famine. 

There is one other imprint, and a very ancient one at that. My maternal haplotype carried by my mother's mitochondrial DNA: H1u. A variation that probably evolved in the Iberian peninsula in what are called Ice Age refuges, and then moved north filling the Atlantic seaboard lands as the ice retreated, being found among the first post Ice Age settlers in the Hibero-British Isles. My mother's lineage is extremely ancient in these islands and may indicate a south west Irish heritage, taking us back once more to Cork and Kerry.  

This in addition to my having a German grandmother on my father's side who sought work in England as a governess. She accounts for about 12.5% of my genes, with the remaining 1% of broadly Franco-German genes coming from elsewhere; otherwise, I am, according to the report, horribly British and Irish, some 86.4%, squeezing the Japanese-Filipio-Arabian genes into what is left: just a trace level, but a trace with an interesting history.  

Do monotheists have a monopoly over religion?

I feel the Religious Society of Friends would be misrepresented if the marriage declaration was altered along the lines suggested in the Friend of 10 February in order to accommodate non-theism, unless we wish to abandon our traditional view that marriage is a ‘religious commitment’ as set out in Quaker faith & practice (1.02, 23).

The declaration not only reflects the couple’s view of marriage but also the view of the Religious Society of Friends as a corporate body.

In my opinion the way in which we define commitments such as marriage and membership reflects how we see ourselves as a faith community. If we wish to remain a religious society, why would it be right for us to define either in non-religious terms? Richard Pashley, The Friend, March 2, 2023

Equating being “non-theist” with being “non-religious” is something of an error. Many non-theist have a deeply spiritual and reverential attitudes towards life and towards relationships. That is not lessened for them by the absence of a purported intangible. 

Many modern Pagans regard the earth itself as sacred and the life springing from it as its sacred out-flowing. They reverence the natural world. The sky god, the celestial god, the abstracted omnipresent but intangible god of judgement, trapped in the texts of ancient books, is not their god. Their focus of reverence is tangible: it is the woods and trees, the rivers and streams, and the abundant fecundity of life.

The Taoist reverence the flow of energy through everything. It is not the river that is sacred, but the flowing of the river. It is not the tree that is sacred, but its growing. It is not the leaf that is sacred but the falling of the leaf. It is not the bird that is sacred, but the flying and singing of the bird. It is not the person that is sacred, but the life that flows through them. When we are in accord with the flow, when we are in harmony with it, when we bend ourselves to it, then we are in spiritual alignment. There is no god, no operator behind the scenes pulling the strings, no eternal all seeing judge, just the flow that gives and keeps on giving, without judgement.

The great Tao flows everywhere. All things are born from it, yet it doesn't create them. It pours itself into its work, yet it makes no claim. It nourishes infinite worlds, yet it does not hold on to them. Since it is merged with all things and hidden in their hearts, it can be called humble. Since all things vanish into it and it alone endures, it can be called great. It isn't aware of its greatness; thus it is truly great.  Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Are we to say that the Pagan or the Taoist are not religious because they have no god? Equally, can we say that the non-theist is not religious, because, likewise, they have no god?

Late Roman Empire Christianity – the illegitimate child of Judaism grown into maturity, conformity and authority – inherited from its parent a conception of a celestial god – ineffable, omnipotent, omnipresent, a law giving mega-god – and passed that conception on to its breakaway children, reformed Protestant and non-conformist alike. That was the dominant conception of the god of Christianity in seventeenth century England. We should not be surprised to find that conception embedded in the words of seventeenth century Quakers. 

Their radical re-centring onto unmeditated experience and away from ritual may have returned those first Quakers to what they thought was a form of primitive Christianity, more akin the lived experience of Jesus and his disciples, but it also took them away from reliance on creed or doctrine. They conceived of Jesus as standing in the presence but with the word in his heart. They too wished to stand in such a presence harkening to the word in their heart; and they found that it was in stillness and silence that the seed of that word grew and gave forth. 

But the presence of what? To say that is to leave a vacuum that linguistically begs to be filled. Does it need to be filled? That sense of wonder, awe, reverence, sacredness and transcendence is a vehicle for spirituality, but does it necessarily have to carry you to the response "god"? Is that a convenient word that serves to fill a linguistic vacuum? An obedience to the subject <–> object structure of our language? Is such a response void filling in order to be rid of cognitive and linguistic discomfort? Should we not be examining that discomfort and learning from it? To avoid doing this is, if anything, lazy. 

Our language, it seems, requires an object, but, as the theologian Paul Tillich* points out, if "god' is an object, then he is only one more thing among a universe of things, and, as he is not immediately apparent or tangible, he can cease to have importance or relevance. Rather, Tillich felt that 'god' should stand for the very ground of being itself, or, as he sometimes put it, as being itself: god as sacredness, as reverence, as wonder, as awe, as the totality of being, as our greatest concern, not as one more object among a universe of objects.

In Tibetan Buddhism sometimes pupils are advised to practice 'god' devotion. Only when they have fully realised the practice and come to be devoted to the god, experiencing them as real, does the meditation master burst the bubble so that the pupils are shocked into realising that they have created an idol that is a projection of their own yearnings. Thus deconstructed, 'god' function as a doorway into deeper realisation. This is similar to the Zen advice, that "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him". The devotion and reverence engendered by the practice of god-worship is thus transferred to all life, to being itself. 

Are we to say that such Buddhists are not religious because they have burst the bubble of god? Equally, can we say that the non-theist is not religious, because, likewise, they have no god? Because they are not prepared to worship an idol that is a projection of their own yearnings? That is to deny them devotional and reverential agency. That is to deny them profoundly religious experiences simply because they are not prepared to focus those feelings onto the inherited god of Christianity, a culturally manufactured idol.

I have no doubt that many non-theists are deeply religious, which is exactly why they are non-theist. To worship an mind-made idol – a projection – which they know to be mind-made, would be sacrilegious, blasphemous, and a manifest gross lack of integrity.

Carl Jung in his work as an explorer of the human mind – the psyche – identified what he called the 'god-archetype. A latent cluster of feeling, images, desires, yearnings, in his patients which troubled them unless attended to. It often found form by projection, taking the shape suggested by the patient's culture and history, becoming an object of devotion, of worship, of ritual and of veneration. Alternatively they might suppress it, becoming notably iconoclastic and atheistic; or inflate their experience, becoming identified with the archetype, either embodying it or by becoming its servant. He advised that only integration would aid what he called individuation – which we might think of as maturation – conditioning the psyche (spirit) into wisdom rather than knowledge, thus letting those complex feelings find expression in ways that helped build and enrich life. 

Participation mystique: inherited guilt & reparations

Reparations for slavery

(The Friend) 5 Jan 2023 | by Rebecca Hardy

Decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade taken at Yearly Meeting in May.

Quakers acted on their commitment to anti-racism this year with a historic decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. The agreement, made at Yearly Meeting in May, followed an earlier announcement to rename the William Penn room at Friends House after abolitionist Benjamin Lay. The new name was suggested by staff at the Quiet Company, which manages Friends House. BYM said that Penn ‘made important contributions to religious freedom, democracy and pacifism, and these will be remembered. But we cannot ignore the truth that he was also a slaveholder, profiting from enslaved people, like many other Quakers’.

Meanwhile, Friends across the country committed to work towards improving diversity. In August, Edwina Peart, BYM’s diversity and inclusion coordinator, said that the Quaker community has made ‘good progress’, but ‘we need to be brave and continue to engage with what are often difficult conversations’.

The year ended with December’s Meeting for Sufferings reiterating the Quaker Life request that Friends cease using the term ‘overseer’.

But why do we feel burdened by guilt over practices that ended about two hundred years ago?  Why do we feel this to be a stain on the name "Quaker"? Why we feel associated with the doings of people now long dead?

One personality test I encountered simply ask participants to list twenty things they are:

I am a …

This was suggested as a starting point to understanding the socially constructed side of identity. In addition to the roles you fill, many of the answers would map belonging, the bond you feel with the society that surrounds you, not just with your family or kinship group, but beyond. What is interesting is how many of those bonds which help define your self-identity in our modern context are with 'social objects': organisations, institutions, businesses, clubs, societies, corporations – objects which are even recognised in law as persons, entities, beings in their own right. They are shared fictions which exist in social contexts and have economic, legal and performative aspects which are their manifestations. They do not exist outside human behaviour.

What is even more surprising is how we can form emotional bonds with such social objects; the Society of Friends being one such. Other species do not do this. They may bond into herds, packs or flocks, and even recognises an out group: a pack that is a threat to your pack's hunting grounds, will cause your pack to unite to drive them off; but only humans form bonds with intangible entities, with social objects. There are no nations, sects, cults or clubs amongst other species. 

Nationality is one of the primary identities among modern humans, it even carries great legal weight and consequences. In earlier times who you owed allegiance and service to better defined you. Now patriotism is both expected and demanded towards such nebulous social objects as nations. A patriotism that may even require the sacrifice of your life, or that you kill others in its 'defence'. But what is the psychological mechanism that bonds you with such social objects?

Jung used the term participation mystique to describe those bonds. He adopted the term from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939), but adapted it for his own purposes, because it seemed so well to describe one of the driving forces of the human psyche: passionate involvement with what are abstract entities, social objects, such as "my country", "my faith", or even, "my football team". And, yes, there is passionate involvement: elation, misery, excitement, anticipation, longing, despair, humiliation, comfort, belonging, … all deeply and completely felt depending on the fortunes of the object of participation. Think of the jubilation or despair of a football supporter depending on whether 'their' team wins of looses, even if they have not witnessed the match. That is a relatively trivial example compared to the bonds formed with religions, political parties or nations.

It is no accident that many Catholics are so engaged by 'The Passion' as to offer themselves for crucifixion on Good Friday, or Shia Muslims self-flagellate in mourning for Husayn ibn Ali whilst preparing for Ashura. They are public demonstrations of the power of the participation mystique.

We derive much of our identity from relations with different communities and other social objects. For many modern people that is a patchwork of shifting associations. Historically there was far less fluidity. Your birth determined almost all of your social identities, as it still does to a large extent with people like the Amish and other Plain People. Now, elements of identity are almost a matter of consumer choice. There is a lot of elective identity in terms of association with subcultures (Gamers, Punks, Bikers, Goths, Vegans, … ) which can make association superficial and dispensable, but often leaves a yearning for something more embracing and identity confirming. A yearning that is a vulnerability that can be capitalised on by cults, or by inducing participation in online communities that bond via adherence to particular conspiracies or ideologies such as incel.

Jung noted the power of the participation mystique only too clearly at work in the rise of the Nazi movement with its abundance of conspiracy theories about the Jews. A search for meaning in life is also a search for identity. Identities much of which are necessarily derived from relationship with social objects. The collapse of social objects such as Imperial Germany leading to an identity crisis that was only resolved for many Germans by the rise of the Third Reich.

Such bonding leads not only to moments of pride, elation, excitement, delight and jubilation, but also to despair, shame, and guilt, depending on how the social object fairs.

One way of dealing with collective guilt was the Jewish practice of turning out a goat into the wilderness, burdened with all of the sins of the community – the scapegoat. It was a symbolic enactment ritualising communal guilt: we still prefer to outsource our burden of guilt than address its causes.

The mantel of both collective and inherited guilt appear to be part of the deal as soon as you associate with a social object. You get to share in its triumphs and tragedies, in its accolades and shames. You participate in not only its current doings, but in its past: the shadow of its misdeeds falls over you. Penance and atonement may be required in order to expiate the wrongs buried in its history.

I was informed recently that I should feel shame over the fact that some Quakers were slave owners, and that others even took part in the notorious triangular trade, shipping African slaves to the New World. Apparently, I inherit the guilt about their actions when I became a member of the Society of Friends. In fact I was told told that my guilt should be threefold: first, because I am a Quaker; second because I am white: and thirdly because I am British. It did not help when I mentioned that my family name was Friesian and originated in Lower Saxony in what is now Germany. That at least sowed doubt about my Britishness and its slave-trade guilt, but lay me open to inheriting guilt for the holocaust; and should I only shoulder inherited guilt to the degree that my genetic heritage is White European, and be excused to the extent that it may be East Asian? Or should that part be embroiled in another set of guilts?

I am aware that in the Judaism there is a recognition of the inheritability of guilt, a belief which was passed on into Christianity:

And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Authorised King James Version, Exodus 34, 6-7)

However, with regard to transatlantic slavery we are now well beyond the fourth generation. Is there no statute of limitations for historic wrongs? 

Jung had a lot to say about collective guilt. He noted how much we like projecting it onto others and how much we fear its being projected onto us; but also how much the victim archetype within each of us likes to assume the mantle of guilt, or to slink away in denial. Far more comforting to award yourself virtue points for donning the guilt, at least cosmetically: sackcloth and ashes on the catwalk of human esteem.

But then that also invites another way of processing the guilt: displacement. Carry out a public act of atonement aimed at expunging a past sin, rather than deal with the discomfort caused by current ills which are too overwhelming to be put right by simple and symbolic acts such as changing the name of a room, make a gesture of offering reparations or put up a blue plaque. All outward signs of penitence concerned with both self and public image, and with reputational damage limitation – but what is the real issue? Embedded and entrenched racism, disadvantage and inequality in the here and now! How do such penitential gestures address those?

You only have inherited or collective guilt in so far as you are trapped by the participation mystique: you are a willing participant in the guilt. What are you gaining from such participation? What are you contributing? How does it feed your self-esteem or identity? How does it build the future?

The Eternal Triangle: Rendel Harris, Irene Speller (Pickard) & Helen Sheerlock

When I started investigating Irene Pickard's archive and using it as a lens to see her life and times through, I did not expect to find a story of romance, of emotional entanglement, of trial and tribulation. I had not anticipated that her obvious fascination with Jung as being driven by her own emotional hurts, frustrations, confusions and struggles.

But then I should have guessed. Jung specialised in emotional confusion and distress as a root of mental suffering, but also as the seed bed of maturation, of developing emotional wisdom and integration, of wholeness – the process of individuation as he termed it. It seems that it is only when we are broken open that we are ready to grow. 

I knew that Irene had been Rendel Harris's secretary. What I did not anticipate was that their relationship had developed into something far more than a formal employer-employee relationship. 

Irene had preserved throughout her life what seems to be most of Rendel Harris's letters to her. Quite an achievement through seven moves, including a last minute escape from Geneva to prevent being trapped in Switzerland by the encircling Nazi forces, and a war time crossing of the Atlantic. The letters clearly meant a great deal to her. 

The letters started in 1911 with kindly but business like notes. Irene was regularly travelling out from Birmingham to Woodbrooke to collect work from Rendel Harris to be done at home. The letters got warmer over time, expressing increasing concern for her welfare, convenience and comfort. In 1914, following the death of his wife, Irene moved into Rendel Harris's home as his live-in secretary. By 1917 he was writing to her during his trip to the Middle East in much more affectionate terms:

So many things to talk over with thee. Inshallah, as we say here, which means 'and it please God' we shall be together again soon and walking side by side. I send my love with this.

Rendel Harris

By January 1921 he is opening a letter with:

Chère amie

An expression only normally used between lovers in that period, and continues:

Comme je me trouve desolé, comme un plat sans pain, ou un coupe sans thé, ou un bain sans savon!   (How very sorry I find myself, like a meal without bread, a cup without tea, or a bath without soap!) and ending:

Dear child, I miss thee as the days go by.

Surprisingly, by 1922 Irene was attending Woodbrooke as a full time student, financially supported by Rendel Harris, who writes understanding her need to be away "in the present state of things" and saying "what is broken can not be mended".  A somewhat strange arrangement for an employer who needed the services of a live-in secretary. He had deprive himself of her services, and was supporting her financially during the college terms. The letters from the period read as if there had been a major rupture in their relationship. 

Given the sources I had available whilst writing the book, I was perplexed as to what had caused the rupture – there was little further evidence in the letters beyond a clear change in tone, with Rendel Harris being very solicitous as to her well-being, asserting how much he missed her, and being somewhat placatory. Given the lack of other sources available to me I could only express my confusion as to exactly what had triggered the rupture. That something major had happened to change their relationship could be inferred from the letters, but nothing as to its nature. What I wrote in my text was:

There are question left by reading the letters – questions that can never be answered. One is left reading between the lines, and guessing at the subtext. Had she been Rendel Harris's mistress? Had the relationship been a surrogate father daughter relationship? Had their relationship developed into some kind of bungled love affair, the reaction to which was her needing to spend time away? Has he or she behaved inappropriately towards the other by the strict standards of the day? Was she tormented by a love that she knew could never be consummated? Had she declared herself to the good Doctor only to be rejected? Had he declared himself to her thus confusing their relationship? What is clear is that the relationship was deep and meaningful to them both. Irene's laudation of Rendel Harris in the Memories she wrote about him when she was in her eighties, some 57 years after leaving his household, speaks clearly of the adoration she felt.    (From the chapter Well Met at Woodbrooke)

After I had submitted this text to my publisher, a biography of James Rendel Harris was published that provided a the answer to the causes of the rupture: another young woman! 

Helen Travers Sherlock, two years Irene's junior, and apparently a brilliant scholar of Ancient Green and Latin, had entered Rendel Harris's life. She was very much of the same social standing as Rendel Harris, unlike Irene, who was only an employee. From 1917 she spent increasing amounts of time with Rendel Harris, becoming something of a protegee, and corresponding with him frequently in conjunction with her studies.

Alessandro Falcetta tells in his biography how Rendel Harris did not want his relationship with Helen to go public, even instructing her to destroy his letter to her as he did not want people to read them in the near future. Was Rendel Harris concerned that Irene, who handled his correspondence, might discover the increasingly intimate nature of the relationship? 

In April 1922 Rendel Harris and Helen were spotted walking together in London Zoo, something which was reported to Rendel Harris's brother, who, mistakenly assumed that Harris must have been there with Irene. It was not unusual to see the Irene and Harris together in social contexts, as is indicated by this photography of them side by side whilst on a holiday in Norway. 

 

Now two young women were competing for Rendel Harris's regard and affection. An love triangle had been formed. Did Irene discover the evolving intimacy of the relationship between Rendel Harris and Sheerlock? Did she suffer a crisis? There is evidence of this in the letters. Did she feel betrayed? Was such a discovery the trigger for the apparent alienation and the apologetic tone of Rendel Harris's letters to her, and for his agreeing to her spending a time at Woodbrooke as a student at his expense? 

Rather than return to Rendel Harris home to resume her duties as his live-in secretary, Irene agreed to marry a certain Bertram Pickard, not without a lot of hesitation, and following Rendel Harris's refusal to fund a trip to America for her, which seems to have been the final trigger. 

In May 1923 Irene and Bertram were married. By August that year Rendel Harris had set up home with Helen Sherlock and her mother.

Falcetta points out the Rendel Harris seemed to have preferred asymmetric relationships. His wife had been eleven years older, and both Irene and Helen about forty years younger. 

Although Falcetta does not seemed to have realised the depth of relationship that had grown between Irene and her employer, he does, however, realise the depth of Rendel Harris's relationship with Helen Sheerlock. It is as if our researches have each revealed one side of a love triangle. He does note that some of Helen's letters to Rendel Harris were returned unopened. The thought does occur to me that perhaps Irene intercepted them and returned them? She would have had ample opportunity as Rendel Harris's personal secretary, and the motivation.

In The Way of all Women: Women's Mysteries Ancient and Modern, Esther Harding, one of Carl Jung's early disciples, talks of the hieros gamos (the holy or sacred marriage) which is often a woman's first love, the one which awakens her spiritually and intellectually. A love which is better not fully consummated because the love object should be elevated, idealised, a supreme model of all she values most highly. 

Irene's love for Rendel Harris certainly fitted that pattern, and the breaking of the love spell due to being supplanted in Rendel Harris's affections, with all the attendant pain of being the looser in a love triangle, led her not only into her marriage, but ultimately to the feet of Dr Jung.   

Windy Doctrines

Lately we were visited at our Sunday Meetings by a devout and recently born again "Christian" of a somewhat evangelical bent. During afterthoughts each week she attended, she felt commanded by God to read a passage of the bible "to bring us understanding and to remind us of the Christian roots of Quakerism", as she claimed in her ministry that followed. The passages were all from parts of the Old Testament and told of the wrath of God and certainty of his vengeance. She was very well versed, and claimed to have read Fox and "knew him to be among God's elect".

She has now moved on, God having commanded her to go elsewhere, his words having fallen on barren ground with us. We are clearly among those whose ears and hearts are closed up by our arrogance; yet, in her eyes, Quakers had once been among the truest of Christians. I gather from her homilies that the world is divided into the 'saved' – those that have heard the word – and the 'damned', who are deaf to their saving power.

On one occasion she said in a somewhat vexed way "I thought you were Christians!". Clearly, we are not what she understands by being "Christian". I did say to her that many, even in the early years of Quakerism, also thought we were not Christians.

The experience has left me pondering about the early Quakers. Was she right about the type of Christian she thought they were? I think it is possible to read Fox and the other early Quakers and to find among their words strands of evangelical thought; but then, there is also much that does not fit with that. 

This may be in part why North American Quakers split in two in the nineteenth century: those who followed an evangelical path, finding succour among the early Quaker's words, and those who did not, also finding succour among the early Quaker's words; both finding vindication where they chose. 

George Fox in his wanderings had plenty of opportunity to fall in with communities of an evangelical bent, such as the Baptists, or one or other of the many Anabaptist fellowships, amongst others. He did not. Instead he fell in with communities of Seekers. What he discovered amongst them was not so much evangelical as mystical: experience not to be captured by words.  

The Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages, spoke of 'syndereses' – the essence, ground, or centre of the soul that enters into communion with God; the spark or emanation of divinity in the soul – which seems to be as good a description of Christian mysticism as one is likely to get: the umbilicus within each person that connects us with the divine, which can be discovered during the deepest contemplative silence. 

Interestingly, Carl Jung suggested that there was such a point in the unconscious of all people, that he called the God archetype; a psychic umbilicus with the latent potential of awakening our spirituality. 

Fox told Friends to "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one", pointing to the same nub, which he thought could be found in all: the Quaker omphalos.

In Don Cupitt's words, Fox "sought to bring spiritual power down from heaven and disperse it into human hearts"

Was it the discovery by Fox of mysticism amongst the Seekers that "answered to his condition"? An experience that takes you out of the clouds of words and beliefs – the "windy doctrines" which he had encountered "blowing people up and down" (or, as he wrote in his Journal about the doctrines of the preachers he encountered "by which they blew the people about, this way and the other way, from sect to sect.") Mysticism is about a relationship that is felt, experienced, known, but which is beyond words and beliefs. It is essentially inexpressible, but transformative. 

Now I came up in spirit, through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, innocence, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus; so that I came up to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell. George Fox,1648 (see Qf&p 26.03)

Was this the "Christ Jesus" of the Evangelicals? A transcendent presence, to be magically connected with by fervent belief and devotion? An unseen but ever present and surrounding being who might "save" you? The risen Jesus Christ whose return to sit in judgement is to be anticipated? A magically embracing cloud? Or was this "Christ Jesus" as a template, and exemplar, sent by God to set the pattern for living? I think Fox is ambiguous, and can be read either way. However, mysticism bypasses belief and magical thinking, and suggests a template, a pattern, an example. A figure to be imitated, not worshipped. Was this ambivalence and avoidance of doctrine why the Quakers were so often accused of denying the trinity? Certainly, in The Sandy Foundations Shaken the trinity was explicitly denied by William Penn, whose preference it was to see Jesus Christ as a pattern sent as an exemplar.

The rejection of any form of formal worship, rites or rituals which, according to Fox, "stood in forms without power", so that Quaker "fellowship might be in the holy spirit" was done to enable direct and immediate communion with the divine, accessed from within (syndereses): a communal mystical pathway to be had in the practice of the shared stillness and silence of Meeting. A silence from which rose the words of spontaneous ministry, as well as the inspiration to live rightfully.

According to some, to be Jewish is to obey the laws of Moses; to be diligent and observant. It is about how you live, not so much about what you believe. It is of the here and now in its practices. Was that what the early Quakers were attempting to be like? Living in the truth, observing the new law as taught in the Gospels? 

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.  John 13.34 & 35 (King James version)

Some of the early Quakers seemed to think they could live in the here and now in the same state as Adam before the fall:

So a man or woman may come to Adam's state that he was in before he fell, which was without sin. Against such the judgment of God does not go forth, but they have peace with God, and fellowship in what is pure, before sin and transgression were. (Stephen Crisp (1628–1692), The Missing Cross to Purity.)

In some ways, Quakerism is nearer to Judaism than it is to Evangelicalism: it is about obedient and observant living in the here and now, building the kingdom of God(liness) day by day in how you live, not being caught up in the "windy doctrines" about some second coming and day of judgement, or about being 'saved'. It is more about doing than believing. 

Early Quakers differ so much from so many other Christians by not being obviously lapsarian, that the professor of Theology, Donald Nesti, who researched Quakerism from a Catholic perspective, thinks they are an entirely separate branch of Christianity, neither belonging to the Catholic tradition, nor to the Protestant tradition, both of which rely on lapsarian theologies, or notions of original sin; an alienation from God and the possibility of redemption. Early Quakers did not seem to think they were alienated because there was "that of God" within which could guide their lives in the here and now, so that they might live in the state of Adam before the fall: their God was immanent and his kingdom forged by rightful living. 

Certainly, although a modern not an early Quaker, the Swiss Quaker Pierre Ceresole expressed the practical here and now nature of Quakerism better than many I have read, rejecting the worship of Jesus Christ, seeing that as idolatry: 

The name of Jesus Christ has come to mean more than his work, it has become your idol. You are simply worshipping a name. The best justification for atheism is: to be in rebellion against the worship of words. I suggest that the time has come to give up using his name, which has divided us, and to return to his work, which will untie us. (p.20, For Peace and Truth from the Note-Books of Pierre Ceresole, 1954)

Having cut themselves off from the anchoring provided by the teachings, creeds, beliefs and doctrines of, not only the established Church, but also the other numerous varieties of denominations that had sprouted like fresh grass during the Civil War and the Interregnum, the early Quakers were left beating their own path, often in a zigzag way as they evolved: sometimes lurching towards evangelicalism, sometimes away. They knew truth experimentally. They also knew it to be beyond words. They tried to make their lives a testimony in action by right living, by doing things in Gospel order.

Tumbling into war: 1914 and all that

Remember the butterfly flapping its wings in a jungle clearing? The unpredictability of chaos where overwhelmingly the turbulence caused by the flapping of the wings is damped out and the air settles back into being calm, except when one flap sets up a vortex that grows into a hurricane? That was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife. The political stabilisers of the age – the doves among the diplomats, politicians and civil servants – should have damped out the shock waves. They didn't. They tried to, but they didn't: the hawks within the administrations eventually dominated and millions died. 

Revisiting 1914 for a short chapter needed because of the epoch changing nature of the First World War within the Quaker microverse as much as in broader society, I was struck by how vulnerable societies are to the effects of decisions made by tiny numbers of people in powerful positions. According to William Jannen (1996: The Lions of July. The prelude to War, 1914) fewer than 100 individuals across the entire continent of Europe, all confined within tiny, highly privileged and selective governing elites, were involved in the decision making processes that led to war. Barely anyone outside those circles was referenced at all, let alone consulted. A finding born out by other scholars:

Within the respective state executives, the changeability of power relations also meant that those entrusted with formulating policy did so under considerable domestic pressure, not so much from the press or public opinion or industrial or financial lobbies, as from adversaries within their own elites and governments. And this, too, heightened the sense of urgency besetting decision makes in the summer of 1914.    (Christopher Clark, 2013: The Sleepwalkers. How Europe went to war in 1914)

Perhaps one of the more disturbing things I discovered during my background reading, was the deal done between the British and German High Commands via Swiss intermediaries. As the war progressed Britain became short of optics for range-finding, and Germany became short of rubber for the tyres needed on its troop transports. Both shortages were impeding the 'pursuit' of the war. An exchange via Switzerland was organised so that the shortages were made good and the war could proceed. (See Adam Hochschild, 2011: To End All Wars. How the First World War Divided Britain.) Perhaps I am alone in finding this shocking, but it does speak to me of the detachment of the those who both started and ran the war from those embroiled in its guts.

Such was the enormity of the scale of death and destruction unleashed that attributing responsibility for starting and continuing the war has been an issue ever since. The blame had to be placed somewhere, but it was too toxic to be anywhere near: blame is best projected onto others. In the immediate aftermath it was on Germany and its militarism: the goose-stepping 'Hun'.

This justified the punishment of Germany inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had to be reduced so that it could never again be a threat. There was no point in blaming The Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Ottoman Empire, nor for that matter the Russian Empire – they no longer existed, all destroyed by the war. It would have been far too painful to admit that either the governments of Britain or France had any part to play. Given the enormous sacrifice and suffering admitting such culpability would have made those in power seem perfidious in the extreme. Political donkeys may have been leading the lions, but no-one was about to say so.  

As time and distance from the mutual carnage increased the focus shifted to blaming the miliary, the war plans of Germany especially. The fact that the German secret war plans to attack France via Belgium failed because of the secret Anglo-French war plans for the rapid deployment of British Forces into Northern France was conveniently forgotten. Guilt still had to point firmly at Germany.

Now it is more popular to see it as a massive failure of government, particularly of diplomacy: a war by accident. The perception is that wars are created by governments, but fought and suffered by peoples; wars are indeed that "continuation of policy by other means" which Carl von Clausewitz suggested they were; and in 1914 there was massive amounts of hubris among the governing elites about how easily those policies would be realised.

As unclear as the causes of the war may be, what is clear, however, is that 1914 was the shock that seemed to changed everything:

When we look back on the time before 1914, we seem to be living in a different age. Things are happening today of which we hardly dreamed before the war. We were even beginning to regard war between civilised nations as a fable, for surely such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organised world.      C G Jung, 1936: Wotan

There had been those who had sensed an underlying mood among populations that was receptive to war, no matter how much the state-change from peace may have shocked:

It is difficult for generations that have come to maturity since 1914 to realise fully the impact of horror and betrayal which the war made upon people's minds. A few here and there, it is true, had seen it coming, had realized that, as Rufus Jones wrote "Beneath all overt acts and decisions the immense subconscious forces, charged with emotions, have been slowly pushing towards this event."     Elizabeth Grey Vinning, 1958: Friend of Life, a biography of Rufus M Jones

But there were also Quaker voices that realised what the impact of war was on civilian populations and were not afraid to say so:

What is a truth of war: that the old die before their time; the sick die for lack care and sustenance when there was no need; the vulnerable die for the scantness of resources; children fail to survive and those that do, do not thrive; babies die for the lack of their half starved mother's milk; mothers fail to carry to full term, their babies undersize and struggling if they do not die; miscarriages abound;  women die more often from childbirths because they are not strong enough; populations are half starved and have no resistance to diseases; homes, if not destroyed, lack warmth in winter; clothes become scarce and are often too poor to offer protection against the weather. This is the lot of the civilian population. Whatever horrors the soldier faces, he is often better fed, better clothed and even better sheltered.      (Mea culpa! I have lost where this quote comes from, which is why I did not include it in the book. I would be grateful if anyone could identify what the source is.)

Then there were Quakers who pledged to have nothing to do with it, such as Henry Hodgkin, one of the founders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. A very difficult stance in the face of the first total war where opting out – especially after the introduction of conscription – was simply not tolerated. To refuse to join the military, or to support them, was cast as deeply unpatriotic; and, after 1916, as not only unpatriotic  but unlawful and criminal as well. For some the idea that the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount were suspended for the duration of the war was simply not tenable, no matter what the personal consequences. 

Quakerism, which might have seemed faintly peculiar and eccentric in 1913, was by 1916, with the state-change of war, seen as subversive and dangerous and worthy of attention by Special Branch. 

Quakers were once more showing themselves to be members of a counter culture, resisting the dominant trends of the time, even at the risk of social ostracism or penal sanctions. According to M E Hirst (1923), only one third of the male members of the Society of military age volunteered or were conscripted. 

However, it was the women of the Society who, not being shackled by the expectations of military service in the way men were, led the way in living out the peace testimony by providing relief work, even among those now counted as 'enemies' – a remarkable story in its own right, as I was to discover. That is where my researches took me next.