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. 

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.