Three themes emerged from researching Irene Pickard's archive: Quakerism, Jung and peace-work. If it was not for the peace-work the Pickards would not have been in Geneva, and the Irene may never have been exposed to Jung's ideas with such intensity, and certainly would never have met the man himself, nor, one expects, ever been in correspondence with him nor been on friendly terms with his wife, Emma Jung, herself a significant analyst.
Emma Jung's visits to Geneva to talk to the Geneva Quakers was one of the key events deepening Irene's appreciation of Jung's psychology and its importance to her Quakerism. For Irene, it opened up the inner workings of the mind and gave life and validity to her faith. It placed it on a 'scientific' footing as an essential part of being a complete and psychologically healthy individual. Contrary to the Marxists or to the Positivists – both prevalent philosophies at the time – religion was neither the 'opium of the people' nor vacuous nonsense: it was, according to Jung, essential to the process of successful individuation (to becoming an increasingly mature and balanced individual).
However, it was not analytical psychology that had brought Irene to Geneva but peace-work. It was where the League of Nations was which put it at the heart of the efforts to build a new way of working internationally that might prevent another catastrophe like the First World War. It was why the Quakers had decided to open a centre near John Calvin's cathedral in the old town, and why they decided to appoint Bertram Pickard as its first full time secretary, with Irene as the warden of a proposed student hostel for young Quakers studying International Relations at the University – the first university courses of this kind in the world.
What made the Quakers adamant that they needed to have a voice in Geneva was their experience of the war. Many had been so much at odds with mainstream sentiment, so much in conflict with the authorities over such issues as conscription, and had reacted to the war so much at variance with the dominant patriotism – working to alleviate the suffering caused rather than compounding the suffering by participation – that they felt impelled to aid, in any way they could, steps taken to construct a permanent peace.
Living out the Peace Testimony under the duress of a world war had not been a comfortable experience. It had tested many Friends to breaking point and had led some to abandon the Society. Helping to construct a peaceful future would need considerable investment in the opportunities for collaborative working with those outside the Society. That was the model that had allowed the Quakers to have such an impact in the abolitionist movement: it amplified their concern by finding and working with allies.
Once such ally was Helena Swanwick (1864 – 1939). She had been active in the women's suffrage movement, but resigned over the Suffragette's active support for the war effort, and particularly their decision not to take part in the Women's Peace Congress at the Hague in 1915.
In 1916 she published her inflammatory condemnation of men, as makers of the war, for their blindness towards its effects on women, who suffered inordinately but had no voice. War was pre-eminently the doing of men. She also condemned her erstwhile companions in the British suffrage movement for their lack of compassion for the impact of war on women in the conflict zones:
… although [British women] suffer like all the other women by the death and maiming of their men, they are curiously removed from the stunning effects of war on their own soil. Their grown men die, it is true, too young and very dear. But they do not see their babies killed by the thousands; they do not see their daughters outraged; they do not have their homesteads and fields defiled and burned and blown to atoms; they do not have to take part in those hideous retreats of women and children and sick and old, starving and dying on the cruel roads: they do not bear their babies to the sound of cannon … [The War in its Effect upon Women, August 1916]
She shared with the Quaker an understanding of war as tragedy and as a massive failure of human governance. She even suggest that women should ask themselves –
… whether men are so made that periodical wars are necessary for their bodily and spiritual health. Many people tell them so, and sometimes, in bewildered amaze at all the suffering brought about for what seem trumpery reasons, women will feel inclined to think that, after all, men fight because they like fighting; they always will like fighting; they always will do what they like.
However, she thinks it is only a half truth, as:
… the mind of man should be equal to the task of directing and transforming this instinct (to fight) to the common good. By the prodigious development of mechanical and chemical resources, men have perhaps forged the weapons that will teach them that they must kill war. For it seems that unless man will kill war, industrial and military machinery will kill man.
Helena went on in 1919 to be a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom [WILPF]. The league had grown out of Jane Addams's peace movement via the International Congress of Women. It appointed Emily Greene Balch as its first International Secretary-Treasurer, with its headquarters in Geneva.
Emily soon came into contact with the small Quaker community in Geneva, and became a member in 1921, saying:
Religion seems to me one of the most interesting things in life, one of the most puzzling, richest and thrilling fields of human thought and speculation... religious experience and thought need also a light a day and sunshine and a companionable sharing with others of which it seems to me there is generally too little ... The Quaker worship at its best seems to me give opportunities for this sort of sharing without profanation. [Randall, Improper Bostonian, p. 60]
Emily Greene Balch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for her work with the WILPF. One of three Nobel prize winners associated between the wars with that small Quaker Meeting in Geneva.
In 1924 Helena Swanwick severed as substitute delegate to the League of Nations on behalf of Britain, and between 1928 and 1931, during the build up to the disarmament conference, as part of the Labour British Empire delegation.
During both those periods Helena would have connected with Emily Greene Balch and others on the network of peace activists in the city, including many from the Quaker Meeting. During her second spell that network was joined by Bertram and Irene Pickard. Bertram in particular played a very prominent part in the network. In 1929 he was appointed as Honorary Secretary to the newly formed Fédération Internationale des Institutions Internationales Etablies à Genèva [FIIG] an umbrella organisation bringing together all the non-governmental organisations [NGOs] in the city. He also became Chairman of the Disarmament Committee of the Christian International Organisations in Geneva. He made himself very much the hub of the peace activist network.
There was a fascination in researches springing from Irene's archive, to see how apparently diverse people interwove their lives because of the networks they became part of. How they gravitated towards each other because of their commitment to one or other ideal. The network of committed peace activists in Geneva was no exception.
I first came across Helena Swanwick in Katherine Storr's book Exuded from the Record: Women, Refugees and Relief 1914-15 whilst researching outwards from Irene's archive into its historical context. References in Katherine Storr's book led me to finding a copy of Helena's 1916 booklet, which I then used as an example of divergent attitudes to the war. It was only later that I discovered that she was connected to Emily Greene Balch via the WILPF, and had been involved in peace work in Geneva. Writing based on an archive is very much like fitting pieces into a jigsaw, but where so many pieces are hopelessly lost for ever, or others do not turn up until late.
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