Irene Pickard on the Place of the Work of Ministry in the Society of Friends

Irene Pickard's journey into Quakerism began almost by accident. She had grown up in the evangelical traditions of the non-conformist churches: one of her grandfathers was a Baptist Minister, and her step-mother was the daughter of a Wesleyan minister. Faith was a given: it was only a matter of what form it would take. As a young woman, she had been inspired by a seaside preacher to envision herself becoming a missionary somewhere in the Empire, taking the faith to the heathen.

In order to support herself, and possibly to free herself from the parental home which was full of children from her father's second marriage, she trained as a secretary. Perhaps she was thinking that such a training was a useful stepping stone on the path to becoming a missionary? There were not many career paths open to women at that time. In 1911 a chance opportunity for some piece work came from Woodbrooke, the Quaker College, which began her association with Rendal Harris, its first Director of Studies. She found herself increasingly travelling to Selly Oak to collect work from him. In 1914 came an offer that would free her from home and make her independent: Rendal Harris needed a full time live in secretary now his wife had died. Irene seized the opportunity.

In August of that year came the shock of the outbreak of the First World War. Like many, Irene had her view of the world shattered and with it her faith: a loving God does not tolerate the sufferings of trench warfare or its pointless carnage. Moreover, she was confused by the enthusiastic support among so many denominations for the war: was that really Christianity in action?

Her confidence in the Christianity of her upbringing was also brought into question by the work she was doing as Rendel Harris's secretary. She had been taught to trust in the literal truth of the Bible. His discoveries of Early Christian documents in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East painted a very different picture, as did the advances in Biblical Scholarship to which he was privy. Discussion of such matters often formed part of his correspondence with other scholars; correspondence which Irene was responsible for typing, as she would have been responsible for typing up his essays, articles, lecture notes and draft copies of his books. As she discovered, his view of Christianity was very different to the one she had inherited. She quotes him as saying:

There is no suggestion nor fragment of evidence that we might, by excavating a thousand years, unearth an ecclesiastical Christ. He, at all events, is the dream and creation of a later age.¹

Her own reaction was that for quite some years to become iconoclastic and deeply sceptical about religion. However, working at close hand with her employer Rendel Harris exposed her to his Quaker ways of not being overmuch concerned with “belief” but being open to the certainties of experience – of being moved. Ways that demonstrated their authenticity through the actions that followed. Quakers did not simply talk peace – they did peace. They served in the Friends Ambulance Unit. They refused War Service. They went to prison as conscientious objectors. They provided relief to those suffering from the effects of war. They worked in regions beset by famine and rife with epidemics, often at considerable risk to themselves. They fed the starving children in the homelands of recent enemies.

In 1923 she married Bertram Pickard, a very down to earth Quaker who lived in that tradition of doing rather than preaching. He was Secretary to the Friends' Peace Committee at Friends' House, London, a position much concerned with the practicalities of peace-work. In 1926 he was offered the post of Secretary to the Friends Centre in Geneva. He and Irene moved there, he to run the centre and to report on the proceedings of the League of Nations for a number of newspapers, she to assist him and to run the planned Quaker Student Hostel that was to provide accommodation for those studying the evolving field of International Relations.

The final element that helped shape Irene's religious development was her discovery of the work of Carl Jung. She was introduced to it by Elined Kotschnig, a fellow Member of the Geneva Meeting of Quakers. Elined's therapist, Tina Keller-Jenny, arranged for them to meet Carl Jung in person, the result of which was a period of intense study of Jung's ideas, supported by visits from Emma Jung, a notable psychoanalysts in her own right, and trips to Zürich by members of the Geneva Meeting to attend meetings of the Psychology Club.

In a brief account of her religious development, presented as part of an exploration into what they actually believed by a study group of the Geneva Meeting, she wrote:

Shock of war; disillusionment in churches during the war period; emotional unreality; gap between belief and action; beginnings of search for intellectual and emotional sincerity and first hand religious experience. Intellectually iconoclastic period lasting many years, but work with and membership of the Society of Friends built up foundations of inward experience. Study and experience of Jung's analytical psychology over a period of years clarified both emotions and emotional blocks and provides a framework within which first hand religious experience can develop.²

The extent to which Jung had influenced Irene's thinking, can be judged by this passage from a paper she wrote called Jung's Conception of the Self and the Quaker Experience of the Inward Light:

Modern man suffers from nervous diseases and hysterical disorders, and civilised society from barbaric upheavals, and for the majority of people today such events are considered beyond their control. Jung's work, both as scientist and doctor has been to lift some of the curtains of ignorance, and reveal causes and effects at work in that most subtle of all realms, the inner life. In doing so he shows how many more evils of living are within our control than we supposed, and how far it is possible to disentangle, label and control forces within us making for disruption, both individually and socially, of which we are scarcely aware.³

The direct relationship between the Geneva Quaker Meeting and Carl Jung led to Bertram writing a paper called A Brief Note on Quaker Doctrine and Practice of Psychological Significance which was read to Jung at the Psychology Club by his wife, Emma. In it Bertram outlined what he saw as the essence of Quakerism:

Quakerism is thus a mystical rather than authoritarian form of Christianity, though Quakers have often been called 'Practical Mystics' on account of their distrust of induced states of exultation, and insistence upon the necessity of right action following inspiration. So called 'creaturely activity' was to be avoided. It was assumed and found, that prayer and service were complementary, each helping the other. 'Religion and life are one' is a usual way of summing up the Quaker faith.⁴

The avoidance of “induced states of exultation” was stressed by Quakers, in contrast to the practice in many evangelical and other churches, for which it is still something of a staple: “Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit” as George Fox counselled. That wonderful phrase “creaturely activity” was used by early Quakers to refer to actions impelled by human desires, including seeking fame, fortune, praise or other earthly reward. The Quaker way was for the deep communion of silent waiting to give birth to the inspirations which would guide action.

Bertram goes on to claim that the Quaker way arose quite naturally as a consequence of the mystical experience encountered during the long hours of silent waiting:

The most striking thing about the central Quaker practice of corporate worship, is that it was not thought out but simply happened as the result of the mystical experience. Instinctively, the Quakers draw together in joint worship upon the basis of silence, but with freedom for vocal prayer, or mutual exhortation, 'as the Spirit led'.⁵

He then detailed what he saw as the traditional understanding of the Quaker practice:

Silence was the basis of the Meeting, but only the basis. The expectation was that in a 'gathered' atmosphere, as it was called, with minds divested of daily pre-occupations, and with spirits open and receptive, the Holy Spirit would use one and another as channels of communication.

The 'promptings', or 'openings', as they were called, which came through 'waiting upon the Lord' were assumed to be serviceable not only to the individual himself but to others in the Meeting whose 'condition' was 'spoken to' through the communicated word or prayer.

To those who have experienced it, nothing is more certain that the urge to 'communicate' is somehow different from the mere impulse to say something. The refusal to respond to a strong prompting produces a sense of failure and depression. The impulse to speak is generally accompanied by a pounding of the heart which is different from ordinary nervousness. The manner and style of speaking is often quite different from the same person's normal manner of address.

In a really good Meeting for Worship the synthetic effect of different contributions of thought and experience is quite remarkable.

Of course the meeting demands the voluntary discipline of external quiet and inner attention; with readiness for the responsibility of communication. The simple and halting utterance has often a remarkable effect upon the atmosphere of the Meeting whilst elaborate (especially if prepared or semi—prepared) sermons are more likely than not to destroy the Meeting.⁶

In a somewhat unexpected way, Irene's wish to become a missionary was fulfilled. In 1940 she and Bertram were forced to flee Geneva by the German invasion of France. They feared that they would be trapped in a Switzerland that might also be invaded, with the real possibility of them both being interned or imprisoned. They were offered refuge in the United States, and Irene was appointed by the Friends World Committee on Consultation to travel in the ministry, tasked, among other things, with informing the disparate branches of American Quakerism about the prevailing tradition in Britain of unprogrammed meetings – meetings without anything prepared or pre-planned having a shared silence as the basis that allows for spontaneous ministry to arise. It was as part of this mission that she wrote her paper The Place of the Work of Ministry in the Society of Friends.

Starting with her understanding of the practices of the first generation of Friends, she wrote:

The central place occupied by the Meeting for Worship in the life of Friends in the 17^th century, arose, of course, from the experience of “Search and Waiting” for a revelation of truth which would meet the spiritual needs of the age, and of individuals; and the hours of silent assemblies, long and patient probation and discipline on the part of hundreds – literally thousands – before the Light was revealed, naturally, both prepared the way for the reception of truth, and laid the emphasis on such a method, i.e. silent waiting – which did lead to individual and group apprehension of truth, and which was completely different to the current religious practice in the formal churches of the day. These latter Fox called “the World's way and worship, praying and singing which stood in forms without power, men's inventions and windy doctrines by which they blowed the people about.” ⁷

She goes on to say of the method that evolved:

There is no doubt the the English tradition, the Meeting of Worship based on Silence and without official pastorate, stands as the distinctive contribution of Friends to Christian experience and organisation. It has existed for three hundred years, and still continues with varying success in its witness to Living, Spiritual grace and truth.⁸

She reminds her audience that the method of silent worship entailed the acceptance of the equal worth of each and every person as potential speakers of the truth:

Now the very heart of this method of worship is the belief in the 'Priesthood of all believers, and the acceptance on the part of individual worshippers of that responsibility; which of course includes (but is no means confined to) the communication of grace through the spoken word.⁹

Quoting George Fox's words that, “The Lord opened to me that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge¹⁰ was not enough to qualify men to be ministers of Christ: and I stranged at it, because it was the common belief of men”, she continued:

For early Friends the emphasis was on the message, its validity and meaning for those to whom it was given, rather than on the manner of its delivery. The discovery of the message of the Word for each occasion, was approached through the method of silence – but nowhere, do we gather, that Silence was an end in itself.¹¹

Returning to her point that early Quakers had laid stress on the need for mental and spiritual preparation before speaking during Meeting – so that being moved to speak should come from deep within – or, as she puts it, following William Penn's¹² guidance:

… the prophetic word which comes from such deep levels of life and being that the message seems to be “given”.¹³

Turning to the eighteenth century Quaker Samuel Bownas¹⁴, whose book A Description to the Qualification Necessary to a Gospel Minister was published in 1750, she reiterates Bownas' stress on the need for preparation and self-examination, and quotes his guidance:

“Examine our won hearts with care … Hereby we shall find a law in our hearts that we have broken, and a Spirit in our inward parts that we have rebelled against and in our ignorance, being hurried in our pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh, and Vanities of this life, have overlooked. We have been followed by it, and it has strove with us; for the Spirit worketh in us secretly”¹⁵.

Perhaps with her own experience in mind, and with the insight gained from her study of Jung, she points out how those inner conflicts and distress caused by personal problems can be the mechanism for opening to the deeper reservoirs within:

That individual travail of Spirit, which almost without exception early Friends expressed, leading to a convincement and conversion within the orbit of their personal problems, was the gateway to a larger life wherein they could receive the gift of messages for others, and in regard to the needs of their time; and could speak with all the power of first hand knowledge which gave vitality to their words.¹⁶

In support of this she also cites both Isaac Penington¹⁷ and James Naylor¹⁸; Penington's instruction to “turn within” and to search for the “least of all seeds” that one might meet with the “pure, living, Eternal Spirit”¹⁹; and Naylor saying:

Whatever is thy condition wait in the Light which lets thee see it – there is thy counsel and thy strength to be received, to stay thee, and to recover thee …

Art thou in darkness, mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more; but stand still, and Act not, and waiting patience until the Light arise out of darkness to lead thee.

Art thou wounded in conscience? Feed not there, but abide in the Light, which lead to Grace and Truth, which teaches to deny and puts off the weight, and remove the cause, and bring saving health to light...²⁰

That is the fountain from which the word should rise – but it is not licence to amplify. That need to limit oneself to speaking only what one was strictly inspired to say became known as the “Doctrine of Measure”. Irene cites here Samuel Fothergill²¹:

This advice again limits human participation and stresses the conception of the Minister being a channel. Samuel Fothergill, a successful preacher about 1756 said “I feel like a tube; some liquid crystal stream runs through me to others, but I doubt little remains”.²²

And she repeats Bownas' advice, quoting from his Qualification:

Now a spiritual minister is and ought every day to be like a blank paper when he comes into the Assembly of the Lord's people, not depending on any other former opening or experience either of his own or others, that he had heard or read; but his only and sole dependence must be on the gift of the Spirit, to give to his understanding matter suitable to the present state of the Assembly before him.²³

Continuing with Bownas' advice:

… if we keep to our openings, we shall be furnished with suitable doctrines … but when we raise our voices or hurry on above or beyond that inward strength we feel in our minds, we are apt to cloud our own minds, lose sight of or outrun our guide, and then run into a wilderness of words, which I have often done, and found the consequences of such imprudence, poverty and death.²⁴

Perhaps because of the awareness of the role of the ego in inflating the individual that she had gained from her study of Jung, she turned to Penn's statement that good ministry speaks to the condition of the hearers, because it comes from the principle (A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers, p.39):

They reach to this inward state and condition of people, which is an evidence of the virtue of the principle, and of their ministering from it, not from their own imagination, glosses or comments, or Scripture.²⁵

or, as Irene says:

Then again, a warning to preachers not to direct attention to themselves in the proclamation of truth, but always to the Light within the hearer.²⁶

And likewise, the listeners should themselves weigh what they heard. For this advice, she once more referred to Samuel Bownas:

He warns against too quick judgement, on part of both preacher and hearer … Hearers must be careful about judging … Let time elapse to show whether those who minister be of God or of themselves.²⁷

Irene then suggests that by shutting off the opportunity for prophetic ministry by not preparing people to watch deeply inwards, and to be prepared to wait, perhaps for considerable time, whilst the silence quietens their more outward life, is to lose that well-spring that the early Quakers had discovered. The practice must also be prepared for and accompanied by deep and reflective reading and the cultivation of an understanding of life. Then, as she says:

The Prophetic Ministry does speak through the deeper life of men to the deeps in others, and opens up new avenues of life and thought and interpretation and vision. It often happens that the interpretation relates the past and future in a new way. And the revelation brings with it, not only new knowledge, but renewal of life and power and direction for action. In the Prophetic type of Ministry, the speaker is more than an individual, he is the mouthpiece of common life flowing through all.

To achieve this there is a need for:

… a great development of sensitivity to the common life, and a very deep discipline in the discernment of spirits.

Again, Irene stresses the need for both preparation and training for prophetic ministry to occur:

A prophetic ministry also means a message in terms of our own day, and in relation to the forces that are at work in the hearts of men. We Friends need to be closer to the movement of the spirit in our own age. We do speak of the secularisation and materialism of the present time, and the 'spiritual vacuum' of the masses.

In fact, the materialism is the outcome of a great preoccupation with the outward events and happenings of life, the cares of bread-winning, the preoccupations of immediate pleasure or comfort, or adaptation to a changing society. It is the energies of an over extroverted society run to seed. But there is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum, as again the terrible disasters are rapidly revealing.²⁸

In the light of her Jungian understanding, Irene did not confuse the lack of overt religious observance with the disappearance of spirit. She was very clear that the spirit had found expression through other channels, that it had attached itself to other archetypes, those that led to the holocaust and to the dropping of the atomic bomb. She goes on to say:

Along with the revelation of terrible spiritual forces abroad, there is also evidence of God at work – can one find Him in the present confusion, and proclaim again his reality, His Word for today? Will we recognise him in unexpected places? “That of God” is not confined in its expression to the accustomed, the conventional, the formula; and the life of God today may be manifest in may ways not expected, - new expressions of community, more profound ways of learning to respect the individual, newer forms of love and sacrifice. Can we go deep enough in ourselves to find God at work there, and through that experience be able to recognise Him outside, and share with others the reality of His Challenge?

Informed by Jung's notions of the psycho-dramas that take place in the unconscious, the consequence of which intrude into our conscious life, Irene suggests the need to be sensitive to the presence of what Jung termed the “God-archetype” deep within. A factor which he saw as generating the “God-images” of our conscious experience. How that “God-archetype” might manifest, and project into our conscious would have very real consequences depending on the image it attached itself to. The fundamental experience had through the practice of silent waiting was to be alert and sensitive to the workings of that archetype – to be aware of its seeking. It is “That of God” within being active in peoples lives, and being witnessed in the world. The dangers were, that if not nurtured, or worse if repressed, the archetype will lead the spirit to find other, perhaps more destructive images to attach to, as had been all too clearly seen in the intense devotion shown towards Hitler – devotion even to the point of destruction.

Acknowledging the need to learn from what modern psychology had to say, particularly in reference to the training and preparation of people for ministry, she noted:

But we have not yet brought to bear the wealth of new comprehension which modern psychology unfolds, either on interpretation of the Bible, or of understanding how and why our lives may be enriched through its teaching.

A shaping of the god-image by exposure to what speaks most deeply to one's condition. In the case of our Western culture, that is most likely to be the teachings of the Christian tradition, because it is the most easily available and the most readily accessible.

As Quaker faith & practice reminds us (27.34):

We understand the Bible as a record arising from … struggles to comprehend God’s ways with people. The same Spirit which inspired the writers of the Bible is the Spirit which gives us understanding of it: it is this which is important to us rather than the literal words of scripture. Hence, while quotations from the Bible may illuminate a truth for us, we would not use them to prove a truth. We welcome the work of scholars in deepening our understanding of the Bible.

London Yearly Meeting, 1986

And as George Fox originally expressed it (Qf&p 26.42):

Now the Lord God has opened to me by his invisible power how that every man was enlightened by the divine Light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all, and that they that believed in it came out of condemnation and came to the Light of Life, and became the children of it, but they that hated it and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the Light, without the help of any man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it. For I saw in that Light and Spirit, which was before Scripture was given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit, if they would know God or Christ or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by.

George Fox, 1648

1p.70: Memories of J. Rendel Harris: Pickard, Irene; privately printed, Sutton Surrey, no date.

2“Proceedings of the discussions on belief, Geneva Study Group, Winter 1937/8” in Irene Pickard's archive

3Jung's Conception of the Self and the Quaker Experience of the Inward Light: Irene Pickard's archive item # 7

4p.1: A Brief Note on Quaker Doctrine and Practice of Psychological Significance: Irene Pickard's archive item # 76

5p.3: ibid

6p.3: ibid

7p.1: The Place of the Work of Ministry in the Society of Friends

8p.2: ibid

9ibid

10To be ordained as a minister in the established Church in England it was expected that the candidate should have studied theology at one of the only two universities in England.

11ibid

12William Penn: 1644 – 1718

13p.6: ibid

14Samual Bownas: 1676 – 1753

15p.7: ibid

16ibid

17Isaac Penington: 1616 – 1979

18James Naylor: 1616 – 1660

19p.7a: ibid

20ibid

21Samuel Forthergill: 1715 – 1772

22p.9a: ibid

23ibid

24p.9a: ibid (The imprudence, poverty and death of which Bownas writes are spiritual not literal. It is the outrunning of inspiration so that the speaker ends in a forest of words that are not lit by the spiritual insight.)

25p.10: ibid

26ibid

27p.11: ibid

28ibid

Curating Irene Pickard's archive

When, in 2012, I was invited to look at Irene Pickard's archive of Jungian related material, I realised that it provided a very different window onto one of the most dramatic periods of European history than the ones usually presented: a community of pacifists transversing two world wars and the rise of totalitarian regimes, and doing so whilst trying to preserve their integrity. It also provided a window into the evolution of Quaker thought in the context of the modern sciences, especially that of psychology: although psychoanalysis – or analytic psychology as Jung preferred his version to be called – may not now be credited with as much status as a sciences as it was during Irene's lifetime – then it was seen as cutting edge.

The times certainly presented great challenges to any religious community to come to terms with, challenges about what religion was in the context of human life and the evolving body of the sciences – especially the science of the mind – and the emergence of atheistic totalitarian regimes that, using appeals to sciences as justification, were coercively anti-religious. Was religion something to be grown out of and abandoned, or did it contain something of fundamental and essential value? Was there a way of doing religion that fitted into the emerging picture of what it was to be human? The challenge was an existential one for religions as such, and a specific one for Quakerism as to how it might evolve in if it was to survive.

Irene and her circle had embarked on their study of Jung, at least in part, because they suspected its utility in explaining and challenging the hold that totalitarian regimes seemed to have over the minds of their subjects; a hold that not only applied to their own peoples, but one that attracted many admirers and would be imitators amongst the citizens of the world's pluralistic democracies. There was, and still remains, an allure to the apparent unity achieved by those regimes and the strength of collective purpose they appeared to have: something of an antidote to the economic and social malaise portrayed as afflicting the 'free' world at that time.

Those twin themes of peace work and the complementary the study of Jung run through the documents in the archive and clearly were going to provide the spine of any work based on it.

When first confronted with the archive I was simply asked to assess its potential value as a resource worth preserving. A short while diving into it left no doubt as to that. But then came the question of what to about it? It was clear that it should be preserved, but I also felt that it should be explored and the story behind it told.

That decision begot the next question – how to proceed. Alison Bush, the Pickard's middle daughter, had promised her mother that she would write a biography of her father's life, but beyond a short booklet outlining both her mother and father's lives, she had not felt able to do justice to what there was to tell – his remarkable career as a peace maker, and her remarkable intellectual voyages into the twin worlds of religion and psychology; nor of Irene's co-conspirators in that endeavour and their contributions, let alone the consequence for their Quaker world that would result.

There was a big story to be told. One that would require setting the archive's contents into its historical context, and one that would involve tracing the affects of that encounter with Jung on Quakerism.

Any attempt to write a book based on an archive is an act of curation. The mass of documents have to be chronologically organised, understood as to where they stand in the evolution of ideas, then selections made to present to the public that both tell and support the narrative.

Finding that narrative line was a fundamental step in processing the documents. It is what make writing a book using an archive as a source and basis different to simply cataloguing and publishing a selection, or even replicating the whole. It places the documents in their historical context, both as to how and why they were created; and in their intellectual context as to how they related to their contemporary debates, and how they contributed to subsequent evolutions.

Allowing the narrative to emerge from the documents is a bit like stringing a necklace. Gems have to be selected and placed in relation to each other, and a setting for them created. Creating that setting does mean going outside the archive into the history of the times and place in which it was created. Into why a group of Quakers were in Geneva between the two World Wars, which itself requires some explanation of what Quakerism was, how it had evolved, and what part it played in placing them there.

So the book sets the scene, introduces the main historical protagonists – Irene and Bertram Pickard, Elined Knotschnig, PW & Marjory Martin – and accounts for how they came to encounter Carl Gustav Jung and his ideas.

It then traces the absorption of those ideas as the protagonists go through five stages of learning; discovery, exploration, assimilation, accommodation and finally dissemination. The archive shows those stages quite clearly. Discovery in 1934 leading to an intense period of exploration and assimilation between then and 1936; a period in which they had direct contact with Jung himself and with his circle in Zurich; then a period of accommodation during the late 1930s, leading to a period of dissemination stretching from 1940, when their direct contact with Jung was severed by war, to the end of their lives in the early 1980s. The consequences of that dissemination being still traceable in Quakerism today.

A little like a chain reaction, that initial intellectual explosion in Geneva in the 1930s set up ripples of reaction spreading outwards, before fading away. Reactions that can be traced in further documents that lie outside the archive, especially those to be found in the Inward Light – the journal of the Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology – and in The Seeker – the journal of the Seekers Movement. There are also documents in other Quaker periodicals which relate to the narrative. The book, in order to be complete, attempts to embrace these – to trace the ripples.

Just as a museum will present an exhibition by displaying object surrounded by information providing both context and interpretation, so a book based on an archive does much the same. It could not possibly display all of the archive – that filled a substantial part of a filing cabinet – but attempts to do justice by selecting such parts as serve to represent a good picture of the whole, and which fit together advancing the narrative of the spread of the ideas which they contain through the wider Quaker community and, in the process, chronicling the lives of the protagonists.

Likewise a good museum display tries to relate the exhibits to the visitor's life, so the book attempts to show the relevance of the ideas entombed in the archive to the reader's lives; it is worth exploring what is in the archive because what is there is still relevant to us today. It maps out the protagonists intellectual journeys and struggles, ones which are in many ways our common lot. It helps suggest answers to those question as to what value religions might have to our lives, and specifically what might be found within the Quaker tradition and practices which can serve as a path of spiritual development and growth. To that extent it humanises religions: it touches on the overarching questions of the utility and veracity of religions and their relevance to our lives.

It is suggested by some theologians, such as Stephen Prothero, that Eastern religions are human centred as they are concerned with the liberation of the individual's spirit whilst, historically, Western religions are God centred as they are concerned with obedience to the divine will and ordinance. What the archive reveals is a humanisation of that western tradition by re-centring away from a supposed divine authority to inward psycho-spiritual processes. Jung's insights into the psychology of religion providing for the protagonists the mechanisms for that re-centring. The result is an understanding of Quakerism as a path more like that of Eastern religions and less like the more static obedience – or even abeyance – required by Western religions.

The book charts in some ways a modern Pilgrim's Progress as it chronicles the progress for some of the protagonists from the anomie of modernity with its vogue for a supposedly science induced scepticism, through a deepening of the richness of life due to the discovery and exploration of its inner, spiritual side, to a place of relative equanimity and spiritual openness.

Opening an archive, such as Irene's, allows the story of the lives and spiritual-intellectual quests of its creators to be told substantially through their own words. The archive is the primary evidence of their discovery and exploration of the psycho-spiritual side of their lives. The author's job is to act as curator displaying their words as exhibits and surrounding them with such interpretive materials and comment as might provide context or illuminate their significance. This, I hope, has to some limited extent been achieved.

Bertram Pickard on Nationalism

As a result of the First World War the empires that had dominated the heart of Europe for the last three hundred years – Imperial Russia, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Imperial Germany (formally Prussia), The Ottoman Empire – collapsed.  This led to a reconfiguration of Europe as a land of nation states. No amount of sticking plaster would re-create those empires, they were gone in a fest of little wars which rumbled on to about 1923. Some of the emerging nation states fought their way into existence and then fought each other over their boundaries, others faltered and were snuffed out, such as the briefly lived Ukrainian Republic. 

It fell to the League of Nations to legitimise the new status quo, finding ways to encourage the new pack of nations to co-exist. This they did with some success during the 1920s, resolving a number of disputes, such as the one between Sweden and Finland (a newly emerged state) over some of the Swedish speaking island in the Baltic which had formerly been part of Imperial Russia, as had Finland itself.  

Bertram, in his role as reporter of the proceedings of the League of Nations and of the other international organisations in Geneva, attempted to describe and analyse the issues for his readers. In his article on The Characteristics of Nationalism Today, that appeared in the Friend of 22^nd July 1932, he identified several different types of nationalism.

1. The isolationist form of nationalism of the British and Americans, of which in 1932

   . . . in England it assumes the characteristically shop-keeping attitude of a “Buy British” campaign.

2. The cultural form of nationalism of the French, expressing itself in pride in

   A great cultural tradition

3. The nationalism of minorities and conquered peoples where it

   … is to be found amongst countries where the desire for escape from foreign yoke has become an obsession

   and often expresses itself through fixation on grievances.

4. And Fascism:

   ... and lastly, there is the newest and perhaps the most significant of all the forms of nationalism, namely Fascism, which having emerged a decade ago in in Italy, has now spread under various guises, to fit different history and circumstances, to Germany, Japan, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere

These four forms of nationalism were slowly but remorselessly pulling against the ethos of the League of Nations: that of maintaining peace through collaboration. 

American exceptionalism had led to the USA withdrawing from anything to do with the League. 

British isolationism led to Britain focussing its efforts on preserving its Empire: a massive task given that it was at its maximum extent, comprising one fifth of the world's surface and one quarter of its population. A task too great for a war drained country that itself had been split open by Irish independence and the creation of the Irish Free State. Britain was a broken and impoverished county. 

A even more exhausted France was struggling to re-absorb Alsace and Lorraine with its considerable German speaking population – hence the stress on French as a culture – as well as holding onto it also considerable and expanded empire. Lebanon, Syria, Cameroon and Togoland had been mandated to France by the League in addition to its already extensive empire.

The newly created nation states of Europe each had grievances to settle with their former colonial masters, and with each other, especially over where boundaries should be. They had been created out of chunks of Russia, Austro-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire.

But the form of nationalism that worried Bertram the most was Fascism. It was both militaristic and expansionist. It rested on assumptions of racial superiority and the right to dominate. It was the survival of the fittest applied to politics and international affairs.

Bertram then sketched out three current solutions to the increasing grip of nationalism in an article called The Challenge of Nationalism the following week in the Friend of the 29th July of 1932:

 

1. That of what he terms the “cosmopolitanism” of thinkers such as H G Wells, who invites us to join him in

   an “open conspiracy” against obstructive local sovereignty and patriotism

2. That proposed by Professor Zimmern, who sees that:

   “we have an internationalism of things,” but lack “a generation of men and women accustomed to live, in the fullest sense of the word, in the larger world thus opened out to us.

   Or, as Zimmern suggests:

   “. . . Internationalism,” he says “is not an ideal; it is an adjustment to the real. It is not a new religion or a new patriotism, but a new reflex and a new habituation.”

3. Carl Barth's notion of unity in attachment to Christ: that when Christianity becomes the universal religion we will all achieve unity under the umbrella of “Divine Love”.

Ninety years on we are still struggling with upsurges in nationalism, even some of the more belligerent type. The world may have shrunk due to developments in transport and technology, but people do not seem ready to live in the larger space proposed by Zimmern, even though it a much more of a fact. Almost all mayor cities in the world lie within 24 hour travelling of each other; we communicate almost instantly across the word, due to the internet and telecommunications. A personal phone in your pocket can connect with one in someone else's pocket on the other side of the world: time has shrunk into being now. When Bertram wrote these two articles it took more than 40 days to travel to New Zealand from Britain. Now it can be done in little over a day, and real time meetings can be held via Zoom with participants in London and Wellington talking as if they were in the same room. It seems that it is cultures that divide, not time and space.

 

 

One small Quaker meeting, four Nobel prizes!

When I began researching Irene's Pickard's archive in 2012, her daughter, Alison Bush, agreed that I could come each Wednesday at 10.00 in the morning and read and study the archive, making notes as I went, until five in the afternoon. Each time we shared a pleasant lunch together, and Alison would tell me snippets of her memories of their life in Geneva, the city that had been her home for the first fourteen years of her life.

She remembered Carl Jung visiting their home in Geneva, and her sitting on his knees. She would have been about eight years old at the time, far too young to realise the importance of the visitor, or to have any comprehension of her mother's fascination with Jung's theories. Beside, she was used to visitors to their home. It was a sort of open house for so many diplomats, academics, theologians, representatives of NGOs, delegates to conferences connected to the League of Nations, journalists, as well as for students attending the Post Graduate Institute of International Studies at the University, or the summer schools in international affairs run by Alfred Zimmern. It was a rare day in which there was just their family in their home. Her father, Bertram, was master at what we now call networking: anybody and everybody concerned with peace-work in Geneva was known to him. 

To cope with these incessant waves of visitors, Irene taught herself to always be ready to feed an unknown number of people, and to cook to cordon bleu standards for special occasions. Although started before the Pickards arrived in Geneva, Irene and Bertram perfected the informal meals used to bring diplomats together for off the record discussion about the issues of the day. A tradition still continued by the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva. The seeds of mutual understanding sown at such events sometimes grow and bear fruit.

Geneva at the time of the League of Nations was a place of experiment in international relations. Nothing like it had existed anywhere before. Countries had to work out how to use the channels of communication opened up between them; how to relate to the newly created and emerging international institutions; how to train staff to work in such institutions – hence the Post Graduate Institute; how to relate to the emerging plethora of international non-governmental organisations; how to be part of the self-styled capital of peace. So much that we take for granted about how the world is integrated was first hammered out in Geneva between the wars, from communications to passports. 

Hawks in each country tell a story of peace being maintained by mutual fear. A narrative promoted, at considerable expense, by what has been termed the military-industrial complex: they have very deep pockets and the need for every increasing investment. The truth is that peace is much more effectively constructed by international co-operations and collaboration, and at much lower cost. It is that co-operation and collaborations that the Geneva experiment sought to encourage and expand. It was an attempt to build on the truth that human being collaborate at their core, but compete at their margins. Count the number of collaborative interactions between the peoples of countries compared to the number of military conflicts: peoples trade, communicate, exchange and intermarry – it is their governments and political leaders that tend to impose boarders and make wars. Much that was achieved by the League was about enabling peoples to interact; its efforts with governments was less successful – they were too invested in power and sovereignty. 

The small Geneva Meeting of the Quakers was at best about thirty people, including both residents and visitors, but among them many were engaged in the prevalent peace-work of the city. The result was a harvest of Nobel Prizes! This completely floored me when I began my researches into Irene's archive. Two Nobel Peace Prizes – Emily Green Balch and Philip  Noel-Baker – one Nobel Prize for Economic – James Edward Meade – which was for work on international trade, something he felt to be crucial in peace-building – and the 1947 Peace Prize for the peace-work and relief work undertaken more generally by the British and American Quakers, of which the peace-work in Geneva was a part. Strictly that is a ratio of one Nobel Prize to every ten Friends at the Meeting, if the 1947 prize is discounted (that was only very loosely connected). An extraordinarily high ratio. It would be hard to find a similar concentration anywhere else.

Militaristic interpretations of history often dismiss the League of Nations and other peace work in Geneva between the wars as being idealistic but misguided: time and energy that would have been far better spent making military preparation. The surprising but little told truth is that much of the post 1945 era draws on the work done by the League and others in Geneva, often the more prosaic and not so noticed stuff that enables interconnection between peoples, but which are essential parts of the framework of modern life.

Universal Basic Income – a Quaker idea!

Sifting through Irene's archive revealed a number of pamphlets and other publications by her husband, Bertram Pickard. Whilst most concerned themselves with his dedication to peace-work, and a few with the spread of Quakerism across Europe, one stands apart. It was a radical foray into political economy: A Reasonable Revolution: being a discussion of the State Bonus Scheme – a proposal for a national minimum income. 

Bertram had been at Bootham School, one of the Quaker boarding schools, along with Denis Milner, whose brain child the 'state bonus' was. Denis and his wife, Mabel, wrote a small pamphlet about the idea in 1918. It seemed such an obvious and revolutionary step: pay every single adult a fixed sum of money sufficient to provide for their most basic needs. At a stroke, the demon of absolute poverty, whether caused by sickness, unemployment or incapacity, would be done away with. And it would be simply funded by each person in work, or earning money from investments, being taxed at 20%. 

It was an obvious solution for all to common destitution that followed in the wake of the First World War: the millions of permanently incapacitated x-servicemen; the legions of widows; the masses of unemployed discharged troops; these in addition to the usual burden of the sick, workless and unfortunate. 

Bertram expanded the pamphlet, with its limited circulation largely in Quaker circles, to a small book, published by George and Allan Unwin in 1919. The following year a fuller book by Milner explaining the scheme was also published by George and Allan Unwin under the title Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output. A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with National Productivity. 

Thus the idea of what we now call Universal Basic Income (UBI) was born. It was discussed at the Brighton Conference of the British Labour Party in 2021, and then seems to have been largely forgotten.  

However, elements of UBI have been introduced by different governments over time and applied to sections of their population as a universal benefit: old age pensions and child benefit being the most common; but to date nowhere has tried to apply it across the whole population, as was mooted by Milner and Pickard.

Applying it to the whole populations seems to have been reborn as an idea in the 1980s, often without people realising its earlier iteration. It was Walter Van Trier who in 1995 published his PhD thesis, entitled, Every one a King which put Milner and Pickard back on the map as its originators.

Now UBI is increasingly being discussed and even experimented with. It would seem worthy of consideration in an age of increasingly precarious employment and gross income disparity, with threats of automation, especially with the advent of AI, and globalisation, further disrupting lives.  Is it time for yet another great Quaker idea?

Why did Britain starve to death one million German civilians in 1919?

But the war ended at eleven o'clock on the eleventh of November 1918! We know this because we celebrate it every Remembrance Day. Not that celebrate is the right word, more like commemorate, with the added wash of mournfulness for those who 'gave their lives' – those recruited or conscripted victims of war who are increasingly portrayed as heroes. Why do I say a "wash of mournfulness"? – because those who actually remember the dead of the First World War, who had real memories about those who lost their lives, are themselves all gone. You cannot remember those you never knew, nor mourn their loss. What is carried out is little better than a collective pageant, a pantomime of mourning, an indulgence in nationalistic and militaristic sentiments.  

But the war did not end at 11.00 on 11/11/18. The fighting on the Western Front Ended. The fighting in Italy ended. The war against the Ottoman Empire had already ended. But Britain's navel campaign against Germany continued until to June 28 1919. 

This came as a surprise to me whist researching for the book. The history I had been taught, and, indeed, the history that is taught in our schools even now, focusses on the end of the war being on 11/11/18. It has become the standard version of our history, repeated in film, television and book after book. There is, however, a darker truth, one which we would prefer not to remember because what happened would now count as a war crime, as a crime against humanity: the deliberate starving to death of upwards to a million German civilians.

It pays to remember that not a single allied soldier's boot had landed on German soil. The German Army, for all the push back it had suffered in the autumn of 1918, still held its ground. It was still a cohesive and effective force. It still occupied much of France and Belgium. It was not defeated. A truth that Hitler was to capitalise on later during his rise to power.

The war on the Western Front was a stalemate. For all of the sacrifices made – there was hardly a street, town or village that had not lost someone in those killing fields – there was no clear victory. It fell to the politicians to deliver to a deeply wounded public the victory the fighting failed to provide. 

In the British Cabinet, the hawks, led by Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for Munitions, argued for the absolute necessity of continuing the navel blockade: Germany needed to be forced to capitulate to every demand the allies might make at the Peace Conference. There was to be no negotiating with them. They were simply to be presented with the terms to agree to.  Churchill continued to hold this position when he became Secretary of State for War in Lloyd George's cabinet following the December 1918 election. The blockade was to ensure that no food supplies reached Germany until after they had signed the Versailles Treaty on 28th June 1919. He was of the opinion that Germany should be crushed to such an extent, if necessary by reducing its population numbers, that it would never again pose a threat. Starvation contributed to doing this. Georges Clemenceau, the French President at the time, even expressed the opinion that there were twenty million Germans to many (Patrick J Buchanan, 2008) 

There is another matter which calls for very prompt settlement. It is the last to which I shall refer before I sit down. I mean the speedy enforcing of the Peace Terms upon Germany. At the present moment we are bringing everything to a head with Germany. We are holding all our means of coercion in full operation, or in immediate readiness for use. We are enforcing the blockade with rigour. We have strong Armies ready to advance at the shortest notice. Germany is very near starvation. The evidence I have received from officers sent by the War Office all over Germany shows, first of all, the great privations which the German people are suffering, and secondly, the danger of collapse of the entire structure of German social and national life under the pressure of hunger and malnutrition.      (Winston Churchill addressing Parliament in March 1919)

This is part of British history that is usually omitted. Far better to end the account of the war with the armistice of 11/11/18 than to face the truth of how Britain reduced the population of Germany to mass starvation in order to ensure acceptance of the peace terms. 

Churchill's role in this as its main instigator does not sit comfortably with the usual laudations he receives as Britain's greatest Prime-Minister. It does not fit well with that narrative – but then a lot that he did and stood for sits less comfortably in modern eyes. He was an imperialist at the height of empire and did not shy away from using force in order to preserve or further British interests, whether by sending the Black and Tans into Ireland, or equipping the air-force with mustard gas bombs to use on Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

The Quaker imperative to 'answer that of God in everyone' led to their perceiving the people of Germany in a very different way. They were not an enemy to be defeated, but men, women and children suffering the consequences of continued hostility. The Friends War Victim Relief Committee in London had been revived in 1914, and, under the secretaryship of Ruth Fry concerned itself with all who were harmed by the war, regardless of the lines of division imposed by Governments. Someone in urgent need of relief is someone in urgent need of relief no matter what their nationality. As soon as it was possible to bring relief to the suffering peoples of Germany, the committee did so. Ruth Fry wrote in her memoir of the period:

Figures given at a meeting of German scientists show 763,000 deaths of civilians during the war due to underfeeding, and in 1918 the deaths from this cause rose to 37 per cent of the total. They estimated further, that one million children died as a result of hunger and its attendant illnesses through the blockade. Deaths were so frequent in Frankfurt-am-Main (March 1920) that there were funerals all day long, and a lady told our workers that she had to wait a whole week for the chance of burying her brother-in-law. On the other hand, the birth-rate fell to about 50 per cent of the normal, so that the deaths exceeded the births, and Dr. Meyer, of the Berlin City Health Department, stated in 1920 that the average size of babies at birth was only one-half of the normal, and that there were no children who were not undernourished. Of the children in the elementary schools 80 per cent were estimated to be unable to follow the lessons because of their enfeebled condition.  (Ruth Fry: A Quaker Adventure. The story of nine years' relief and reconstruction: Nisbet, London, 1926)

Exluded from the Record: Katherine Storr

 Women, Refugees and Relief, 1914–1929

Go into any main stream bookshop, or library for that matter, and look at the amount of shelf space given to detailed accounts of the doings of men during World War I. Then look to see if you can find a book about the other half of the population. You would be hard pressed to find any. Bless them, women were clearly either not involved or not effected by the war, just staying at home knitting socks for their war hero menfolk, or bravely stepping up to take on men's work whilst they were away. 

It comes as a shock to discover that the number of women, children, the elderly, and other civilians who died as a result of the war was greater than the number of men. It runs counter to the dominant narrative.

Each year at eleven o'clock on the eleventh of the eleventh month, we stop to share a minutes silence to remember the dead from that terrible conflict, and wreaths are laid – most symbolically on the tomb of the unknown soldier – but also at thousands of war memorials up and down the length and breadth of the county, where the names of the 'fallen' men are inscribed.

Where is the memorial for the women who died? Or for the children? Or for the other civilians: they were more numerous than the battle field heroes. Hardly a whisper is said about them. 

There is a problem with history: it can all to easily become his-story. In microscopic detail, the doings of men on the battle fields are recorded, in book after book. But of what women may have done, there is next to nothing. Yet women did make a incredible and lasting contribution, not by adding to the death and destruction, but by ameliorating war's ills. 

Classically, stress is explained as the 'fear, flight, fight' reaction. True, but not the whole truth. They are the typical responses in men. Responses that the armed forces galvanise to their advantage. Some researchers claim, with good evidence, that the female reaction to stress is better described as 'fear, tend and befriend'. 

The lasting reaction of women to the horrors, stresses and destructions of the 'Great War' fits well with the 'tend and befriend' model; but their work with refugees, with relief work and with reconciliation is Excluded from the Record – hence Katherine Storr's title for her book.

The whirlpool of war sucked in so many able bodied men – serving in the armed force or retained in a reserved occupation – but women were free from such demands. Some chose voluntarily to serve, many in medical or in arms manufacturing roles. There was a general feeling that by stepping up to the plate and showing their worth they would be rewarded by winning the right to vote: service was seen by as a way of advancing female suffrage. But there were others who used the female freedom not to participate in wars in a more compassionate way. Katherine Storr's book focuses on them and what they achieved. 

With the men's hands tied by conscription, reserve occupation, or, for the brave few, conscientious objection – with its risks of being sentenced to terms of imprisonment with hard labour – it was the Quaker women, in particular, who led the way in providing relief work, services for refugees, and, where possible, reconciliation work. 

More has been written about the humanitarian service rendered by the men of the Friends Ambulance Unit (an allowed military style service for conscientious objectors) than about the work carried on by those women, yet the work they did touched the lives of millions. 

The counter cultural nature of Quakerism to some extent insulated its members from the pressures to conform to the prevailing zeitgeist: an overwhelming sense of patriotism and anxiety to 'do your duty' and serve as part of the war machine. It was the age of the white feather. A fact discovered by Carl Heath, the then Secretary of the National Peace Council, when in 1914 support for the council vanished almost over night when war was declared, leaving few but the Quakers among its members. 

Looking back on his life, Carl Heath saw that a main event was the discovery he had made early on in the First World War that the international peace movement, was built on sand. When the flood of an actual big war at home swept over Europe, it fell. Carl was increasingly drawn to the Society of Fiends, feeling a kinship with its fundamental teachings, to which he had very largely come through his own independent thinking. But this was a group, a fellowship of like minded people, seeking together to follow the Light, not a collection of individuals.     (Fredrick J Tritton: Carl Heath Apostle of Peace: Friends Home Service Committee, London, 1951)

Katherine Storr's Excluded from the Record was an important source book for me, helping address the imbalance in history publishing. It is one of the few modern book on the subject of women's peace work during and in the aftermath of the First World War. As Storr says in her introduction:

Military history feeds nostalgia by claiming that war is exclusively a male matter, that war time deaths and suffering are gender-specific and quantifiable according to the wearing of uniform, and that courage is an exclusively male attribute called on in combat. Most importantly, the history of civilians appears to detract from the bravery of soldiers. 

There has been very little chronicling of the extraordinary efforts spearheaded by Quaker women to ameliorate to the suffering of the civilian populations caused by the war; a willingness to reach out over national boundaries to all who suffered. Quaker pacifism expressed itself internationally, extensively and actively: they lived out the peace testimony. 

In order to set the scene for the arrival of the Pickards in Geneva in 1926 as peace-workers at the Quaker Centre, a brain child of Carl Heath – it was one of his proposed Quaker 'embassies' – I wrote a chapter on the Quaker Reactions to the 'Great War' and its Aftermath which touched on some of the extraordinary relief work spearheaded by such Quaker women as Ruth Fry, Hilda Clark and others. The opening paragraph says:

From the moment war was declared in 1914 the predominate response amongst Quakers was humanitarian. They knew this to be above all else a crisis of need on the part of so many innocent victims. It was to tending those needs that they geared themselves up, both individually and collectively.

Such is the dearth of modern material in English about those efforts that I was grateful to find anything on the subject, no matter what the language. I did find one academic work, which happened to be in Italian: Bianchi, Bruna : “grande, pericolosa avventura” Anna Ruth Fry, il relief work e la riconciliazione internazionale (1914-1926). ("A grand and dangerous adventure" Anna Ruth Fry, relief work and international reconciliation, 1914-26 )

It would seem there really is an bias against publishing works on the doings of women – her-story, if you will, as opposed to his-story.