The American Civil War - A Personal Reflection

I find  the American Civil war  fascinating for many, many reasons.

It was a Civil War.  This meant that brother was truly set against brother.  Men on the eastern United States had to choose which side to fight on, and many families were divided for any number of reasons.  In the West, as Mark Twain found,  life could go on, pretty much as life went on at home in the First World War, oblivious to the suffering of men engaged in war.

It was a war fought over a relatively small part of the country.  I was surprised looking at a map, how near the war came to Washington, and reading Team of Rivals: Abraham Lincoln’s Political Genius  showed me just how worried they were that Washington would fall to the secessionists.

 Also because in many ways it prefigured many of the horrors of combat from the following  century.  The American Civil war initiated trench warfare; and the sight of some prisoners of war resemble survivors of concentration camps. (http://powcampscivilwar.blogspot.com/) Indeed, the word Deadline comes from the Civil War– soldiers guarding prisoners were ordered to shoot any prisoners crossing an imaginary line.   Although the machine gun was yet to be invented, advances in the technology of weapons production meant that often rifles were used instead of muskets, with greater range, accuracy and force, which in turn meant that sending massed troops against a fixed point was a stupid waste of human life – if First World War generals had studied the lessons of this war, they might not have wasted human life as they did.   At sea, iron clad ships routed wooden warships. Mechanized warfare clearly had not been imagined, but far from being the heavy weapons of medieval warfare, the role of the cavalry had significantly diminished. Sherman’s march into the heartland of the South wreaked a trail of destruction which is apparently is still talked of in southern families – much as the English Highland Clearances in Scotland generations later – and prepares us for the wholesale targeting of civilians which happened during the  bombing campaign of  cities Second World War . The images of destruction are still painful to see – reminiscent of so many images we have seen subsequently, but never before had the horrors of war been laid bare so publicly.

 

 

These  advances in the technology of photography also meant it was typical of soldiers to be photographed in uniform before going off to war,  and also for photographers to visit the battlefield. So we have hundreds and hundreds of images  of  soldiers, the battles they fought, and  the effects of battle.  Photographers learnt to ‘compose’ their image, even if it meant moving bodies to achieve a more poignant image (insert) 

 War promotes rhetoric.  This war prompted one of the most moving speeches ever recorded. I first came across it from the lips of a Ghanaian man, working nights as a security officer in London, who had had to memorise it as a child in school in Ghana.  It says something about the provincialism of an English education that I had not met it up to that point, and yet it has the majesty and strength of Shakespeare and the Bible, and is a touchstone for any true lover of democracy. Abraham Lincoln, at the height of the war, gave a short speech at the graveyard where so many of the Gettysburg dead had been buried.  The previous speaker had spoken for over two hours.

Lincoln stood and said: 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth

For this,ultimately, is what fascinates me about this conflict: it  was a clash of ways of seeing the world embedded in completely different ways of life. The south, with its antebellum, gentlemanly ideal, based around the slave- worked plantation, was faced by on industrial power based on free labour.  It was more than north versus south, industrial versus rural:  it was a true test of slave economy  versus free. Virginia was settled essentially by families from the south of England, wanting to recreate their lives of ease and leisure based upon the efforts of others. For this, they needed slaves.  And thus the notion of slavery entered the American continent – and this was the central issue around which the Civil War was fought.

History, of course, is always re-written by each generation and as a professional historian myself I am fascinated by those issues where scholars disagree and consensus seems impossible to reach. But approaching this subject anew with the producers of this series brought home to me the fact that these areas of disagreement are really about details – on the really big questions, scholars are now in complete agreement. None of the historians we spoke to for these programmes – and no others that we could have found – dispute the fact that the war was caused, fundamentally, by slavery (although they disagree vehemently about precisely how slavery caused the war).

There were other issues, to be sure, that agitated northerners and southerners in the years leading up to the war, but all are related pretty directly to slavery. Slavery was not the prime motivation for most northern soldiers when the war began, but most of them came to the view that in order to end the rebellion and prevent such treason from happening again, slavery had to be uprooted. Most southern soldiers were not slaveholders and they were fighting for hearth and home, yet the society of which they were a part depended on slavery. It was bound up into their way of understanding the world. So there is no getting away from slavery as the core issue – its role in creating the circumstances in which war could happen and the way in which it shaped the way the war unfolded.

(BBC website – my emphasis - and Quakers from the South tell me that this is not the history taught to them; nor is it the story Southerners tell themselves - see :

http://reason.com/archives/2001/08/01/southern-nationalism )

The South echoed the world of the English Cavalier world  which gave rise to it: a world of privilege, class and effortless achievement based on the work of others.   The north was essentially, however imperfectly,  based on the democratic values of free men and women choosing their own government, freely offering their labour.  To this extent, it could be argued that the American Civil War   was a continuation of some the issues and values of the English Civil War, which culminated in the execution of the King for treason in 1649. 

In the  England of the 1650's, for a very brief time, it appeared that ideas could be a valid currency for all men and women, and such remarkable ideas as a more inclusive voting system, regular parliaments and   the distribution of land as the  means of  production were seen as an essential part of the human condition (see The World Turned Upside Down – Radical ideas During the English Revolution – Christopher Hill; The Covenant Crucified – Quakers and the Rise of Capitalism – Douglas  Gwyn).  The Restoration of 1660 suppressed dissent, and the free exchange of ideas; it restored hierarchy, and with it rank and power in the hands of a few, based on the possession of wealth.  Once again the English became subjects, not citizens, and seem remarkably content to remain so. 

But these radical ideas refuse to be subdued, surfacing again and again in English (the Scots and the Welsh generally being more egalitarian than the English) History– the Chartists, and the history of the rise of Trade Union are two examples.  Arguably, Britain after the Second World War instituted many of the reforms which a modern democracy needs to function – I sense that there was a feeling on all sides that we were genuinely all in it together:  evacuees from industrial heartlands to middle-class families demonstrated the vast inequalities which existed in pre-war Britain; politicians of all colours had seen that a people acting together, with clear government direction could achieve huge things.  There was a sense that we could achieve a fairer, more decent society for all, and that government had an important role to play in that.

These assumptions were undermined by Mrs. Thatcher and her government in Britain in 1979 – as we came to the end of the generation of politicians who had served in the war.  Even more consistently, by Ronald Reagan on this side of the Atlantic.   The left of centre has not yet found a compelling counter narrative to market forces, unlimited choice and consumer driven ideology “There is no such thing as society – there are only individual men and women and families”………………. 

America is not a society at ease with itself. Our fellow Friend in Residence, Marianne, speaks movingly of her adolescence growing up in small town Kansas after the Second World War – a time of innocence, plenty, and boundless possibility.  Little of this America survives. America has shipped many jobs abroad – Apple creates the technology in America, but manufactures in China.   That is one reason why America has shrunk, evidence of which is all around us - its cars are smaller, its people struggling to make ends meet: even people on reasonable salaries struggle to meet college fees, health insurance, and save for retirement.  But this hollowing out of the industrial base is a result of policies framed in the Reagan/Thatcher era,  as are the decisions which have made average Americans poorer, to the benefit of the very, very rich.  The Right has successfully framed the discussion so that taxation is a dirty word, symptomatic of governmental failure and intrusion into the rights of the individual (see George Lakoff - http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml )  The Tea Party, with its demands for minimal central government,  is echoing the cry of the American south.  There are those who would argue that what the American Right are trying to achieve is an undermining of all that was achieved in the 20^th century in terms of enabling poor people to have a voice. And in America, poor people are often black people.

There will be another blog at some point in the future about America and race.  For now, it needs to be noted that African Americans had to wait one hundred years for the implications of their emancipation to begin to emerge.  Not until the huge civil rights struggles of the 60’s, did a Democratic President enacted laws which brought home the fruits of the Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

It is one of the great "What ifs...." of history what might have happened had Lincoln not been assassinated, and  his leadership had been allowed to dominate the peace, as it did the war

But......as I indicated in the previous blog, the Civil War defined America, and is arguably still defining America today.

And what has all this to do with us Quakers – pacifists?  What role Quakers and politics?

It seems to me that Quakers are in the world, but not of the world.  We should care passionately about the kind of society in which our fellow citizens are required to live their lives. We should hold our democratically elected politicians to account, and expect of them that they pursue policies which are just and equitable.   However, at root our role in the world is not to be a pressure group, or adjunct to a political party  despite what some well meaning journalists might think:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/28/quakers-religion-dawkins-sign-up?INTCMP=SRCH)   Our role is to model a different way of being, in which conflict is not ignored, but neither is it settled by war; in which difference is not met by exclusion, but by welcome; in which ways of life are sustainable and healthy, not consuming and greedy. Our role is to show what the beatitudes look like in the twentieth century, and offer a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven not as an abstract reality, but as a concrete, material, alert, dynamic living community here on earth.  The Quaker way of defining oneself in history is to create that Kingdom here, now; and history will be complete when   “justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing stream”.

I can write those words, I do not know what role I have to play.  I have not the slightest idea how to begin speaking Truth to those in power I hear every day on radio and TV  speaking  only the language of greed and consumption, and who devise and implement policies which are designed to make the rich richer, and are  literally costing the earth; and who would dismiss the last part of this blog as naïve hogwash, if they even gave it any attention.  

I am slowly unlearning the habits of a lifetime, and learning not to feel deeply angry.  I await further guidance from my Inner Teacher.  

 Tears stream from my eyes
because of the destruction of my people!  My tears flow endlessly;
they will not stop until the LORD looks down
from heaven and sees. My heart is breaking
over the fate of all the women of Jerusalem

Lamentations Ch. 3

The Battle of Gettysburg: A Meditation on the Quaker Peace Testimony

Battles change history. Marathon; 1066; the two Battles of Hakata Bay; Bannockburn and Culloden; the successful siege by the Turks of Constantinople in 1453, and the unsuccessful Siege of Vienna in 1683; Stalingrad: again and again battle defines history. In so doing, it offers an opportunity for men to construct a defining narrative -   for men to impose themselves on events, and in so doing to achieve meaning and purpose.  

Battle also allows men to define themselves.  In his opening to his book Going to the Wars, Max Hastings talks about a crucial  fact for men of my generation who grew up in the years following the Second World War – we always wondered how we might measure up compared to the older generation around us who had fought in that war.  In a group of Quaker men, some years ago now, gathered to discuss men’s issues, the one issue we agreed that defined being male was the need not to be thought a coward.

So the field of battle is also a field of dreams.  And time and time again in history men play out their dreams through battle.  Unless we Quakers comprehend this, truly understand the powerful forces that motivate men to fight, our call for the human race to allow itself to be transformed so as to build the kingdom of heaven, where metaphorically the lion lies down with the lamb, and peace and justice reign supreme, falls on deaf ears. 

Shakespeare understood this.  The speech he places in Henry V’s mouth just before Agincourt perfectly captures the sense of purpose, of subsuming one’s life into a greater struggle, of achieving a brotherhood with one’s neighbour; it   shows deep insight into the  male psyche:

From this day to the ending of the world,

.. we ..shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Indeed, this “band of brotherhood” can extend even to the enemy – John Macmurray  in his Swarthmore Lecture recalls how he felt he had more in common with the enemy in opposing trenches in the First World War,  than the  congregations to whom he preached the futility of war on his periods of leave. There was a clarity, even purity, of purpose, and a refusal to engage in rhetoric and flag waving on both sides, in stark contrast to his own countrymen  who sickened him with their jingoistic slogans encouraging war,  whilst sitting at home.   It was as a result of these experiences that he left all Christian churches , though continuing to practise and attend conferences as a Christian, until he retired from his post as Professor of Philosophy in Edinburgh, at which point he became a Quaker.

So what has this to do with Gettysburg?


Well, we visited Gettysburg on our first two consecutive days off last week.  We had visited before, some years ago, hosted by an American couple who hired a tour guide for the day.  This time we visited a much revamped museum, superbly curated, with a good film narrated by Morgan Freeman, and bought a self-guided audio tour.

It is a pristine battle field.  No building development has taken place, so it is very easy to see the sites  of the three days of fighting, study the points where troops moved, and why, and  to recognise the different phases of the battle and what the generals, especially Robert E. Lee, was trying to achieve  It is a physically very lovely landscape. On a beautiful sunny day to gaze out at this Pennsylvanian landscape, it is a feat of the imagination  to visualise the sights and sounds of battle – to see this serene landscape   transformed by shot and shell into carnage and horror. 

 On this field of battle men were conducting a fight about meaning – the nature and meaning of America as a country.  Soldiers – most of whom were not professional soldiers, but very ordinary young men from quite ordinary occupations- fought fiercely, but above all courageously, with honour and valour.  Men from Alabama fought  with incredible ferocity, after marching twenty five miles overnight, suffering from hunger and raging thirst, attempting to take a small lump of rock, an objective they could have walked up only a few minutes earlier.  Young boys from Maine – Maine! – many of whom I’m sure had never seen a black face, were told to hold a position “With all due hazard” – i.e. to the last man.  They fought fiercely to retain that position, against young boys who fought equally fiercely to take it.    A Union officer asks if an order is meant, and assured that it is says, “Well it is murder, but it is an order” and leads his men to almost annihilation.  Running out of ammunition, a Union Colonel orders his men to bayonet charge the enemy, who surprised and shocked, retreat, enabling the position to be held. Again and again men of both sides show remarkable heroism in the face of overwhelming odds.   

  Little Round Top

(From this point,Union Brigadier General Gouverneur Warren saw this point - vital to the Union line -  was undefended, and asked for reinforcements.  They arrived minutes before a force from Alabama.  What followed was some of the fiercest fighting of this battle, and the war.)

The North Carolina Monument 

It has been ever thus.  The horror and the pity of all battle, at all times, has been captured in Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles'  version of Shakespeare’s Henry 1Vth Pt. 1 and 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngy17MrSrMo), where behind the valour and brutality portrayed on the screen, , the music weeps plangently on our behalf,  and on behalf of all humanity.But despite all the horror and carnage, I believe Shakespeare invites us to despise his creation Falstaff, who says “honour is a mere scutcheon” and in cowardly fashion avoids all engagement with the fight.

In this case, 12,500 Confederate soldiers walked almost a mile across open country into a hailstorm of shot and shell, signalling the High Water Mark of Confederate ambitions – a battle in the heartland of the union enterprise, Pennsylvania, which, if won, would have inflicted a decisive blow against Union confidence and   might have led to a suing for peace, with two nations on the North American sub-continent entering into history. Instead, from this field  Lee has to lead away a defeated force, who never again would have the men or material to fight an offensive war; and  the Union forces took heart from this and the capture of Vicksburg a few days later, and went on to pursue victory.  And thereby created history. And the America we have today.

Quakers traditionally play the role of picking up the pieces of  wars, (see the previous blog and
http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/experiencesinthefau.html ). Although in the American Civil War some Quakers felt led to move away from the witness of their religious community and fight against slavery, corporately Quakers oppose all war.  But it is not enough simply to oppose war.  We must speak from a deeper place.

Advices and Queries  ( http://qfp.quakerweb.org.uk/qfpchapter1.html  )  advises us  to look into our own hearts to understand the causes of war, and eradicate the seeds of war in our own lives:

 Search out whatever in your own way of life may contain the seeds of war.

 Bring into God's light those emotions, attitudes and prejudices in yourself which lie at the root of destructive conflict, acknowledging your need for forgiveness and grace.

In my own life I have struggled with the Peace Testimony when I understood it as an intellectual construct.  It seemed to me that there must be a role for an army to protect the innocent and the weak – those unable to protect themselves.  There is a Paul Lacey’s Swarthmore Lecture is  devoted to this (http://www.quaker.org.uk/qn75-quaker-books ). 

I did not find this Lecture satisfying in the way I had hoped.  I finally realised that,  for me,  it did not seem to build upon our Quaker heritage, which points me in a different direction to working with the world’s ways, offers another model, and another way of looking at reality.  It seems to me that our history is leading me to see that Quakers do not live by the rules of the world:

 I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars... I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.

George Fox, 1651

(my emphasis)

When  I have met Quakers who seem to most fully live in the virtue of that life and power, they show me that experiencing the Light or the Spirit at a deep level within oneself, one cannot destroy that light in another human being. My maleness needs to be about expressing my courage by being faithful to the Light granted me, and following that Light regardless of my own desires – George Fox refusing to fight back when being beaten by sticks by a mob; James Naylor embracing the hangman about to bore his tongue with a hot poker.  But even more deeply still, living in obedience to the alternative reality  I experience running through and behind and beyond the world’s defining, living my life by an inward reality (the depth I find at the very centre of my being),  when I fully live from this place,  I am freed of the need to define myself by those constructs –  honour and shame, cowardice and patriotism, which form the world’s thinking.  The world willingly expends human life in a circus of folly – the Russian Government sends young conscripts into  Afghanistan; American policy arms the Taliban, including Osama Bin Laden , to fight against these young men; twenty years late it is sending its own young men into battle against these people it provided with weapons .  The role of Quakerism is not to reveal the world’s shabby cynicism in the way of secular journalism, but to reveal an absolute truth – “The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous, the just and the wicked”:  we are all bound in the net of being, surrounded by the  abundance of the gift  of life – in this net, there are no enemies, merely people who as yet I have not called Friend.   To put it another way, we are all dearly beloved by God.

I am under no illusions as to the enormity of the task. I have heard from their own lips the stories of Quaker peacemakers who have sat next to those who have inflicted utmost brutality on the human body and psyche; those who have shaken hands with murderers in the pursuit of peace – their stories pierce one to the quick.  I also have to recognise that I have unhealed wounds within my own family.  These wounds represent the extent to which I have not allowed myself to be pierced by the Light, and therefore unable to speak as one gathered in the Light, speaking from the centre.  And therefore it ill behoves me to judge others who also do not speak from the centre, from a gathered place in which we can see, along with Divine Presence, that there are no enemies, just poor suffering humanity.  It helps me enormously that my religious community does not espouse any theory of just war : I have less to shelter behind and hide from the truth –that all war, for any reason, is an offense against that spirit which runs through the teaching of Jesus, the Buddha, and all the great prophets. 

I have always been moved by James Nayler’s final words; they speak to my deep place, even as I fail to comprehend them intellectually:

In 1660, after his release (from prison) , he set out on foot for the north, intending to go home to his wife and children. On the way, he was robbed and bound, and found towards evening in a field. He was taken to a Friend's house near King's Ripton, where he died. These were some of his last words:

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It's conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places in the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

For further information about the Quaker Peace Testimony see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Testimony
http://www.quaker.org.uk/350

We Stand On The Shoulders of Giants

Last Friday a traveller staggered into Pendle Hill hungry, thirsty and exhausted from travelling on a flight from Manchester which had been re-routed from Philadelphia because of a storm, landed in Atlantic City to refuel only (Atlantic City is not an international airport, so no leaving the plane), and then arrived several hours late, along with many other delayed flights, and consequently to huge queues to Immigration.  Poor Beryl! For this was no other than Beryl Milner, who will be known to many Friends as Assistant Clerk to YM Trustees.  She was here for the meeting American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to consider a possible nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.   In 1947, The American Friends Service Committee and the then Friends Service Council in London were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And as recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Quakers are allowed to suggest names for the next award.   And being Quakers, of course there is a committee for this.

Quakers seem pathologically incapable of recognising their glorious heritage.  I can see that they do not want these people to be worshipped as saints, bereft of their humanity which made them uniquely who they are.  I can also see that they do not wish to consider them idols, models to which we strain unhelpfully to aspire instead of living out the call that is ours in this present moment.

However, Quakers possess a noble and glorious history. In Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer says

 “the Quakers extended to others in America precisely the same rights they had demanded for themselves in England.  Many other libertarians have tended to hedge their principles when power passed into their hands.  That sad story has been re-enacted many times in world history…………………………………. (many) have cruelly denied to others the rights they demanded for themselves.  The Quakers behaved differently.  They always remained true to their idea of reciprocal liberty, to the everlasting glory of their denomination.”  

 I find such words a source of inspiration.  I find many other Quaker deeds a source of strength and inspiration – lives of utter faithfulness, even when it demanded a great price.

Following a similar principle, of listening to non-Quakers talking of Quakers, I am going to quote the whole of the Nobel Prize Speech awarding the Peace Prize to the Quakers, in the hope that these words may inspire you to greater faithfulness to your path, to discerning your call  and your commitment to service.

Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by Gunnar Jahn*, Chairman of the Nobel Committee

The Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament has awarded this year's Peace Prize to the Quakers, represented by their two great relief organizations, the Friends Service Council in London and the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.

It is now three hundred years since George Fox¹ established the Society of Friends. It was during the time of civil war in England, a period full of the religious and political strife which led to the Protectorate under Cromwell² - today we would no doubt call it a dictatorship. What then happened was what so often happens when a political or religious movement is successful; it lost sight of its original concern: the right to freedom. For, having achieved power, the movement then refuses to grant to others the things for which it has itself fought. Such was the case with the Presbyterians and after them with the Independents. It was not the spirit of tolerance and humanity that emerged victorious.

George Fox and many of his followers were to experience this during the ensuing years, but they did not take up the fight by arming, as men customarily do. They went their way quietly because they were opposed to all forms of violence. They believed that spiritual weapons would prevail in the long run - a belief born of inward experience. They emphasized life itself rather than its forms because forms, theories, and dogmas have never been of importance to them. They have therefore from the very beginning been a community without fixed organization. This has given them an inner strength and a freer view of mankind, a greater tolerance toward others than is found in most organized religious communities.

The Quaker movement originated in England, but soon afterwards in 1656, the Quakers found their way to America where they were not at first welcomed. In spite of persecution, however, they stood fast and became firmly established during the last quarter of the century. Everyone has heard of the Quaker, William Penn³, who founded Philadelphia and the colony of Pennsylvania. Around 1700 there were already fifty to sixty thousand Quakers in America and about the same number in England.

Since then the Quakers have lived their own lives, many of them having to suffer for their beliefs. Much has changed during these three hundred years. Outward customs, such as the dress adopted by the early Quakers, have been discarded, and the Friends themselves now live in a society which is outwardly quite different from that of the seventeenth century. But the people around them are the same, and what has to be conquered within man himself is no less formidable.

The Society of Friends has never had many members, scarcely more than 200,000 in the entire world, the majority living in the United States and in England. But it is not the number that matters. What counts more is their inner strength and their deeds.

If we study the history of the Quakers, we cannot but admire the strength they have acquired through their faith and through their efforts to live up to that faith in their daily life. They have always been opposed to violence in any form, and many considered their refusal to take part in wars the most important tenet of their religion. But it is not quite so simple. It is certainly true that the Declaration of 1660 states: «We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end and under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.» But that goes much further than a refusal to take part in war. It leads to this: it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice. It is from within man himself that victory must in the end be gained.

It may be said, without doing injustice to anyone, that the Quakers have at times been more interested in themselves and in their inner life than in the community in which they lived. There was, as one of their own historians has said, something passive about their work: they preferred to be counted among the silent in the land. But no one can fulfill his mission in this life by wanting to belong only to the silent ones and to live his own life isolated from others.

Nor was this attitude true of the Quakers. They too went out among men, not to convert them, but to take an active part with them in the life of the community and, even more, to offer their help to those who needed it and to let their good deeds speak for themselves in appealing for mutual understanding.

Here I can only mention some scattered examples which illustrate such activity. The Quakers took part in creating the first peace organization in 1810 and since then have participated in all active peace movements. I would mention Elizabeth Fry ⁴, John Woolman⁵, and other Quakers active in the fight against slavery and in the struggle for social justice. I would mention the liberal idealist John Bright⁶, his forty-year fight against the principles of war and for the principles of peace, his opposition to the Crimean War⁷, and his struggle against Palmerston's⁸ policies. Many other examples could be mentioned to show how their active participation in community work, in politics if you prefer, increased during the nineteenth century.

Yet it is not this side of their activities - the active political side - which places the Quakers in a unique position. It is through silent assistance from the nameless to the nameless that they have worked to promote the fraternity between nations cited in the will of Alfred Nobel. Their work began in the prisons. We heard about them from our seamen who spent long years in prison during the Napoleonic Wars⁹. We met them once again during the Irish famine of 1846-1847. When English naval units bombarded the Finnish coast during the Crimean War¹⁰, the Quakers hurried there to heal the wounds of war, and we found them again in France after the ravages of the 1870-1871 war¹¹.

When the First World War broke out, the Quakers were once more to learn what it was to suffer for their faith. They refused to carry arms, and many of them were thrown into prison, where they were often treated worse than criminals. But it is not this that we shall remember longest. We who have closely observed the events of the First World War and of the inter-war period will probably remember most vividly the accounts of the work they did to relieve the distress caused by the war. As early as 1914, the English Quakers started preparation for relief action. They began their work in the Marne district in France and, whenever they could, they went to the very places where the war had raged. They worked in this way all through the war and when it ended were confronted by still greater tasks. For then, as now, hunger and sickness followed in the wake of the war. Who does not recall the years of famine in Russia in 1920-1921 andNansen's appeal to mankind for help? Who does not recall the misery among the children in Vienna which lasted for years on end? In the midst of the work everywhere were the Quakers. It was the Friends Service Committee which, at Hoover's ¹² request, took on the mighty task of obtaining food for sick and undernourished children in Germany. Their relief corps worked in Poland and Serbia, continued to work in France, and later during the civil war in Spain¹³rendered aid on both sides of the front.

Through their work, the Quakers won the confidence of all, for both governments and people knew that their only purpose was to help. They did not thrust themselves upon people to win them to their faith. They drew no distinction between friend and foe. One expression of this confidence was the donation of considerable funds to the Quakers by others. The funds which the Quakers could have raised among themselves would not have amounted to much since most of them are people of modest means.

During the period between the wars their social work also increased in scope. Although, in one sense, nothing new emerged, the work assumed a form different from that of the wartime activity because of the nature of the problems themselves. Constructive work received more emphasis, education and teaching played a greater part, and there were now more opportunities of making personal contact with people than there had been during a time when the one necessity seemed to be to supply food and clothing. The success achieved among the coal miners in West Virginia provides an impressive example of this work. The Quakers solved the housing problems, provided new work for the unemployed, created a new little community. In the words of one of their members, they succeeded in restoring self-respect and confidence in life to men for whom existence had become devoid of hope. This is but one example among many.

The Second World War did not strike the Quakers personally in the same way as did that of 1914. Both in England and in the U.S.A. the conscription laws allowed the Quakers to undertake relief work instead of performing military service; so they were neither cast into prison nor persecuted because of their unwillingness to go to war. In this war there were, moreover, Quakers who did not refuse to take an active part in the war, although they were few compared with those who chose to help the victims of war. When war came, the first task which confronted them was to help the refugees. But the difficulties were great because the frontiers of many countries were soon closed. The greater part of Europe was rapidly occupied by the Germans, and the United States remained neutral for only a short time. Most of the countries occupied by the Germans were closed to the Quakers. In Poland, it is true, they were given permission to help, but only on condition that the Germans themselves should choose who was to be helped, a condition which the Quakers could not accept. Nevertheless, they worked where they could, first undertaking welfare work in England and after that, behind the front in many countries of Europe and Asia, and even in America. For when America joined the war, the whole Japanese-American population, numbering 112,000 in all, of whom 80,000 were American citizens, was evacuated from the West Coast. The Quakers went to their assistance, as well as opposed the prevailing anti-Japanese feeling from which these people suffered.

Now, with the war over, the need for help is greater than ever. This is true not only in Europe, but also and to the same degree in large areas of Asia. The problems are becoming more and more overwhelming - the prisoners who were released from concentration camps in 1945, all those who had to be repatriated from forced labor or POW camps in enemy countries, all the displaced persons who have no country to which they can return, all the homeless in their own countries, all the orphans, the hungry, the starving! The problem is not merely one of providing food and clothing, it is one of bringing people back to life and work, of restoring their self-respect and their faith and confidence in the future. Once again, the Quakers are active everywhere. As soon as a country has been reopened they have been on the spot, in Europe and in Asia, among countrymen and friends as well as among former enemies, in France and in Germany, in India and in Japan. It is not easy to assess the extent of their contribution. It is not something that can be measured in terms of money alone, but perhaps some indication of it may be given by the fact that the American Committee's budget for last year was forty-six million Norwegian kroner. And this is only the sum which the American Committee has had at its disposal. Quakers in all countries have also taken a personal and active part in the work of other relief organizations. They have, for instance, assisted in the work of UNRRA¹⁴ in a number of places such as Vienna and Greece.

Today the Quakers are engaged in work that will continue for many years to come. But to examine in closer detail the individual relief schemes would not give us any deeper insight into its significance. For it is not in the extent of their work or in its practical form that the Quakers have given most to the people they have met. It is in the spirit in which this work is performed. «We weren't sent out to make converts», a young Quaker says: «we've come out for a definite purpose, to build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred. We're not missionaries. We can't tell if even one person will be converted to Quakerism. Things like that don't happen in a hurry. When our work is finished it doesn't mean that our influence dies with it. We have not come out to show the world how wonderful we are. No, the thing that seems most important is the fact that while the world is waging a war in the name of Christ, we can bind up the wounds of war in the name of Christ. Religion means very little until it is translated into positive action.»¹⁵

This is the message of good deeds, the message that men can find each other in spite of war, in spite of differences in race. Is it not here that we have the hope of laying foundations for peace among nations, of building it up in man himself so that the settling of disputes by force becomes impossible? All of us know that we have not yet traveled far along this road. And yet - when we witness today the great willingness to help those who have suffered, a generosity unknown before the war and often greatest among those who have least, can we not hope that there is something in the heart of man on which we can build, that we can one day reach our goal if only it be possible to make contact with people in all lands?

The Quakers have shown us that it is possible to translate into action what lies deep in the hearts of many: compassion for others and the desire to help them - that rich expression of the sympathy between all men, regardless of nationality or race, which, transformed into deeds, must form the basis for lasting peace. For this reason alone the Quakers deserve to receive the Nobel Peace Prize today.

But they have given us something more: they have shown us the strength to be derived from faith in the victory of the spirit over force. And this brings to mind two verses from one of Arnulf Överland's¹⁶ poems which helped so many of us during the war. I know of no better salute:

The unarmed only
can draw on sources eternal.
The spirit alone gives victory.

PS Beryl later e-mailed me to say that the week-end went much, much better than its otherwise inauspicious start might have indicated,  and that her journey back was quite comfortable and uneventful.  Unfortunately I missed her departure; otherwise I could have taken her photograph to adorn this blog!

Pendle Hill and ‘Radical Hospitality’

radical 

late 14c. (adj.), in a medieval philosophical sense, from L.L. radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix (gen. radicis) "root" (see radish). Meaning "going to the origin, essential" is from 1650s. Political sense of "reformist" (via notion of "change from the roots") is first recorded 1802 (n.), 1820 (adj.), of the extreme section of the British Liberal party (radical reform had been a current phrase since 1786); meaning "unconventional" is from 1921. U.S. youth slang use is from 1983, from 1970s surfer slang meaning "at the limits of control." Radical chic is attested from 1970; popularized, if not coined, by Tom Wolfe.
(Online Etymological Deictionary)

As I indicated last week, Pendle Hill offers a deep rooted hospitality.  Also as I indicated last week, we ourselves are both recipients of, and extenders of, this hospitality. 

This hospitality has been generously extended to the students this week.  Twelve people, of varying ages and backgrounds, arrived this week to start their course of study at Pendle Hill. Two sets of families have been on campus already, so the basic set up was not new to them, but for everyone else, it was a huge learning curve of being initiated and welcomed into the Pendle Hill Community, where they will live, study, and reflect for lengths of time varying from a term to a year.  Part of our work during this term will be to act as support for this fledgling community, and specifically act as ‘Spiritual Nurturers’ (yes, and unsatisfactory term, but as yet no other has been forthcoming) to two specific students who will be assigned to us throughout the term.  We will meet each of our students throughout the term, for an hour each week, and hope we can accompany them on their path.

We have been sampling classes this week, simultaneously accompanying the students and testing them ourselves, for we are encouraged to take up to two classes ourselves for our own nurture and enrichment.  Both of us feel powerfully moved, for different reasons, to take up Spirit taking form, a class in clay work.  I am also drawn to Beyond Diversity 101 – Beyond Justice to Wholensess, which Gwyneth is going to sample at least once more before deciding whether to continue. Doug Gwyn’s course on the History of Quakerism will be, as always, excellent, but I feel I have undertaken as much study in this area as is required of me at this stage.     Since I sense these classes will provide me with much food for quiet reflection and inner change, I will not comment at greater length at this stage.

A significant part of the welcome extended to all students this week has been the Afternoon Tea .

The driving source of inspiration for this has been John, a member of the maintenance staff, who clearly loves Britain and things British, and who has extended the concept of Afternoon Tea to all new students and the FiRs at Pendle Hill at this time of year.  He baked the cakes available, and served tea - the Lapsang Souchong being sent back to us by a sojourner from her home in Woodstock, after a wonderful conversation about the nature of Lapsang. He was superbly assisted by the kitchen staff,


who produced an American version of scones, made with either cranberries, blueberries of chocolate chip.  The tea was completed by the addition of tiny sandwiches (made by Gwyneth, with crusts removed!) and Strawberries and clotted cream.

This week has been rounded off for us by a visit to the Brandywine River Museum at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania:

“Exhibiting American art in a 19th-century grist mill, the Brandywine River Museum is internationally known for its unparalleled collection of works by three generations of Wyeths and its fine collection of American illustration, still life and landscape painting.” http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/.

This transpired to be a fascinating visit at several levels.  It allowed us to get to know Larry and Carol better – Larry being the Librarian and Registrar, and Carol being a sculptor and the teacher of the Spirit Taking Form class;

it allowed us to visit the Brandywine River, which really is not far, and is a lovely landscape; and opened up the possibility of visiting the historic Battle of Brandywine site, the site of a famous battle in the War of Independence; it also opened up a fragment of American art to us.

 NC Wyeth is not a name well known, just at Tunnicliffe is not known outside Anglesey.  However when people of a certain age visit Tunncilffe’s bird paintings, they immediately remember their childhood, and collecting the beautiful birds painted on little cards and given away in Brooke Bond tea.  Similarly, with N C Wyeth – except in his case one is immediately projected back into one’s childhood and the fierce pictures of pirates which accompanied their reading of Treasure Island.   N C Wyeth’s paintings were the ones which illustrated a famous edition of this famous book, allowed him a comfortable income, and the opportunity to buy a mill which became his home and studio, and in turn the home and studio of his son, Andrew Wyeth, who went on to become a significant painter in his own right.

 Few who have read   Treasure Island can forget its fierce , even frightening, energy.  Rather like Grimm's Fairy Stories for younger children,  and the stories of Charles Dickens, Treasure Island  creates a childhood world full of  terror - the fierce Long John Silver is not only attractive, but evil; and once read,  the figures of Blind Pew and Benn Gunn ("Ye wouldn't have a piece of cheese would ye lad - at nights I dreams of cheese") lurk deep in the subconscious. Wyeth's work brings them startlingly alive on the page of a book - I can remember it did as a child,  and and seeing them in in their original size simply reminded me of their strength and power.  Of course, the reason why such books create a terrifying world for children is to enable them to explore strong emotions in a safe context,and it is vital to our imaginations that we can do this.

The musuem is housed in a mill further down the river from the Wyeth's family home.  Once threatened by developers, it  was saved from certain destruction by a community group, who made it into a most delgithful museum and a  host to arts and crafts in what was once the stable.  A short walk along the river took us under Route 1, the huge eastern highway which we had encountgered on holdiays in Florida, and runs north right up to Maine.  It also showed us the still extant destruction of Irene.