From the archive: A variety of service
Janet Scott continues her selection of extracts from the Friend published during the first world war.
The Battle of the Somme, which began on 1 July and continued until November 1916, was one of the bloodiest battles in human history. More than one million men were wounded or killed. The battle was not reported in the Friend, but its effect on Quakers in Britain and Ireland was profound. Throughout the summer and autumn the Friend published notices of deaths in its pages. The scale of the casualties was also reflected in the report of increased work for the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU).
Killed in action in France:
Archibald Warner, 1st July, aged 32
Geoffrey Philip Tregelles, 1st July, aged nearly 24
H Albert Uprichard, 1st July
Wilfred Troup, 1st July, aged nearly 24
Herbert Graham Barber, 6th July, aged 31
Louis Michael Dell, 14th July, aged 25
Alan S Lloyd, 4th August, aged 27
Arnold C Sandland, 4th August, of wounds
Frank E Sparrow, 13th August, aged 37
Frank Harrison, August
Sydney Clarke, 29th August, aged 19
Kenneth Mallorie Priestman, 31st August, aged 25
Frank Swaffield Atkins, 3rd September, aged 24
Charles Herbert Hills, 5th September, of wounds, aged 21
Robert Ernest Legge, September, aged nearly 24
Lionel Gundry Simmonds, 11th September, aged 23
George Walter Hudson Stead, 17th September, of wounds, aged 19
Hubert Malcomson, 17th September, of wounds, aged 26
Henry Einar Dixon, 19th September, of shell-shock, aged 29
Thomas C Leaver, 25th September, aged 27
John Thomas Knapton, 25th September, aged 29
Llewellyn Malcomson, brother of Hubert, 5th October, aged 24
Robert H Heath, 22nd October, aged 39
Derek St Clair Everett, November, from wounds, aged 20
Robert William Wright, November, aged 27
The Friend, on 21 July, carried information on work being done by the FAU. Those involved in the hospital ship and the ambulance trains reported that they had to deal with ‘an exceptional burden’ of work:
“We have been kept busier this last week than ever before. No sooner have we off-loaded at a hospital base than we go straight back to the front and load up again. Fortunately we have been on the –––– route with long runs, so that we get a certain amount of time for getting the train cleared and rationed and ourselves rested. We have been running nearly continuously since this time last week, and we are now waiting at a loading station at the front entirely new to us. We expect a large load at any time. We have seen both the other trains during the last rush of work.” Our men have had sometimes to load and off-load their train twice in twenty-four hours, which places on them considerable physical strain, but they are only too glad at such a time to prove their usefulness.
Our members on the Hospital Ship Western Australia are also working at high pressure. “The work now is very exciting, and as many trips are being made as is possible.”
The Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee (FWVRC), in addition to its commitments in France and Holland, had expanded to work with Serbs and was now investigating the needs of Russia. The Friend published a report, on 7 July, from Friends who had been sent out to enquire on the situation:
The policy of the local authorities has been one of ridding the towns of as many refugees as possible, partly in case of disease and partly in order to encourage them to take up agricultural work. Most articles of food have been regulated in price by the Government of Russia. The ‘Tatiana Committee’ (which deals with all matters relating to clothing of refugees) has branches in Byzylyk district. This district is divided into departments, each of which in normal times has a medical staff and a hospital. Now, in spite of the enormously increased population, several of these are almost without medical help of any kind. The department under the village of Lubimoffka has absolutely no medical help and its hospital is closed. The district contains 42,000 normal population, to which are now added 3,492 refugees.
The Committee arranged to send out three doctors with nurses and relief workers to reopen the hospital.
Oddities and quirks!
The Friend reported on 9 June that ‘there were few occasions in this most strenuous of Yearly Meetings in which the relief of a laugh was admissible…’ and noted:
William C Braithwaite’s report of the work of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit… includes the management of a considerable lace-making industry for the dispossessed Belgian workers. It is understood that this industry has caused some heart-searching among those who at home are urged to renounce all luxuries and who cannot therefore buy lace without questioning, even when it has been made by a refugee. William C Braithwaite did not attempt a solution of this economic perplexity, but rather intensified it by showing from his antiquarian researches into the minute books of Berks and Oxon and Buckinghamshire that many warnings had been given in the seventeenth century against Friends making bone lace, one such delinquent being urged instead to go into the malting business. Now, said the speaker, the position is reversed, Friends renounce malting but encourage lace-making.
Conscientious objectors’ tribunals
In March Harold M Watkins, a teacher, was refused exemption by a tribunal. The issue of 23 June reported:
The only conscientious objector who received absolute exemption from the Hertfordshire Tribunal (a Mr Davies) was appointed to H M Watkins’ place as senior master at Colwall School, having been dismissed from his position as cashier at the Bank as soon as absolute exemption was given.
The 28 June issue told another Friend’s story:
At Rawdon… Fred Smith (A) said that his views on war and peace had come to him through reading a book on William Penn… Asked why he had not become a member [of the Society] he stated that he considered the ideals of the Society to be so high that he wished to live up to them before applying for membership. He considered his work as a bootmaker to be of national importance.
A magistrate’s refusal
An interesting insight into the tribunal process, and the support that was given to some Friends who were known in their local communities, appeared on 28 July:
At York… Herbert Coupland, clerk in the offices of the York Education Committee… was charged with being an absentee from the army. The presiding magistrate, Mr Robert Kay, said: “Whatever may be the consequences to me, I will not hand over, and I will not be a party to handing over, Herbert Coupland, whom I have known all his life, to be treated as some conscientious objectors have been dealt with… I know the law. The law is that this man, as a genuine conscientious objector, should be exempted from military service… I refuse to hand him over to the military authorities.”
The case, however, was heard again the next day before other magistrates! Other stories from across Britain found their way into the pages of the Friend. One appeared in the edition of 30 June:
Peace Literature continues to be seized… [including] the Epistle of the Adjourned Yearly Meeting… The Manchester Guardian on the 23rd inst. says: “Fortunately, coercion always has its ludicrous side. It appears that the police of Penarth in their wisdom have seized the Bishop of Oxford’s book on the Sermon on the Mount. The Bishop of Oxford, of course, is a suspected character, but the Sermon on the Mount is a doubly suspected document. We gather… that the honest policemen of Penarth are now engaged in diligently perusing the volume. What their emotions will be when they come to ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’ we dimly imagine, but fail to paint in words. We may, however, anticipate an order for the seizure of all Bibles in Penarth, which… may be returned to their owners with the New Testaments blacked out. In the meantime we are in a position to deny that the Government has any present intention of ordering the Clarendon Press to submit all new editions of the Bible to the Censor.”
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