From the archive: Letters and papers from prison
Janet Scott describes where the conscience of Friends led them
During the autumn of 1918 several subjects were on the minds of Friends and filled the correspondence columns of the Friend. There was the question of the League of Nations, with disagreement about whether it should have armed forces to act as police; there was the revision of the Book of Discipline and issues about the relative authority of scripture and experience of the Spirit; and by December there was much discussion of the habitual speakers in Meeting for Worship.
Some letters, however, were sufficiently important to be news items in their own right. One such was a letter from Edith M Ellis to Meeting for Sufferings, which appeared in the Friend on 11 October. Edith Ellis was one of the three Friends who, on behalf of the Society, were sentenced to imprisonment for publishing a pamphlet without submitting it to the censor. She wrote:
Dear Friends, – Having recently been released from prison, where I was sent on account of your decision not to obey the law of the land when it seemed to conflict with what we believed to be a higher duty, I wish to acknowledge the opportunity which you have given me of undergoing certain experiences which I hope may be of value to myself and the Society.
Many persons regret that religious conviction should be the basis of a prosecution. The main feeling that I have on returning to ordinary life is, that if punishment is desirable at all, it is we who deserve it, not for this particular act but for the indifference which makes it possible for Christian people to acquiesce in the wrongs which society is inflicting on many of its members.
…it is sin which is the most terrible part of the prison experience. Holloway is suffering from the moral effects of the war as is no other prison… The chief causes of imprisonment there are drunkenness and immorality. Both of these are social evils and to a large extent depend on the moral level of the environment of the criminal. To shut up certain individuals for a time who fall below our standard is, of course, only a convenient way of ignoring the real problem. The young girls of 18 are, alas, the greatest cause for anxiety.
Edith Ellis continued that, in her opinion, it was right for her as both a woman and a Friend to have experience of ‘being numbered with these sisters of ours’. She wrote:
We can only learn how to help them if we are willing to put ourselves by their side, for the fault is largely ours.
When one reads the Gospels in prison one is much struck by how much is said to the outcasts of society, those who have fallen and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. As we have suffered together, may we not have a special call to redeem each other? Their sad faces are asking us to leave our comfortable habits of thought and life and to use all our energies, spiritual and mental, for the building of a Christian order. They see no effort on the part of the Churches to make this really practical; is it any wonder that they show very little desire for religion?
She concluded:
The Spirit of the Living God is ever ready to manifest Himself in new and fresh ways, but He needs humble and obedient hearts through which to work.
Meeting for Sufferings, after a deep and serious consideration, decided to send this moving and profound letter out to all Meetings. The 11 October edition of the Friend reported:
The Clerk’s minute expressed thankfulness for the service of our Friend, and consciousness of our failure to show forth the love of God in our lives. Might this call be heard and heeded by us today, and might we attain to a new conception of what Christ calls His followers to be.
The Wakefield scheme
In September the government moved approximately 120 conscientious objectors (COs) to Wakefield prison, which had a more congenial regime. They were offered the chance to work only nine hours a day on industrial work, to have more letters and visitors, and to have free association in the evenings. The Absolutists refused to accept these conditions. The Friend, in its 27 September edition, quoted their manifesto:
It appears that the Government still misunderstand our principles in that they take for granted that any safe or easy conditions can meet the imperative demands of our conscience. No offer of schemes or concessions can do this… We ask for liberty to serve, and if necessary to suffer, for the community and its wellbeing. As long as the Government deny us this right, we can only take with cheerfulness and determination whatever penalties are imposed upon us. We want no concessions. We desire only the liberty to serve.
Defending this, Mary Fox wrote in the Friend on 4 October:
It may be that some Friends have been a little troubled to learn of this refusal. Surely, some may have thought, they might have had the grace to respond to a sign of humanity and consideration…?
Those of us who know these men well know how earnest is their desire to serve… service is for them inseparable from freedom; that is why they could not do ambulance work, [or] work on the land… as alternatives to being conscripted for the army. They were asked at Wakefield to cooperate with the authorities in a new form of imprisonment, with certain privileges and with a measure of freedom within walls. In accepting this, they would be consenting to their own detention, agreeing with the Government’s demand for their compulsory service; they would be willing conscripts. For two years they have stood with steady resolution… for perfect freedom of service; they cannot now accept an invitation to be satisfied with a mere lengthening of the chain.
The Absolutists
Writing from Ipswich prison, Corder Catchpool commented, also in the 4 October edition of the Friend:
Spiritual forces seem to be on trial today as never before. They will prevail, but it would be foolish to expect victory without casualties.
He told of evacuating a Carmelite nun from a shelled village in France:
I had to tease her a little on the misfortune of speaking to a man, – strictly forbidden – which she took in good part, solemnly assuring me she had absolution for the exigencies of the war, though this was the first time she had had to use it… I was putting my ideal, a life of happy usefulness in service for one’s kind. “Yes,” she said, “right and best for all, except the few who are called to serve by a life of prayer for a sinful world.” I can see her now… earnest face lighting up with a beautiful smile as she spoke of eleven happy years of… self-discipline and hardship, incomparably more severe than prison conditions, pleading for my recognition of her call, her wrestling as true service to God… today I can enter into fellowship and understanding that were not possible then.
The inexplicable Absolutist is a man to whom the sinfulness of war seems so appalling that he must struggle against it, wrestle to deliver a world bound by it… He hears a call to it, feels anything less would be drifting with the tide… ceaseless temptation to give up and drift into some quiet backwater of alternative service… And as all effective opposition to war, everything that the authorities do not construe as virtual acquiescence in, or at least passive compliance with, the present war, brings a man today inevitably to prison, he becomes a sort of involuntary – let us hope only temporary – Carmelite. It’s the only way for the moment in which he can struggle.
In summing up, Corder Catchpool offered these thoughts to Friends:
And so I face a long sentence by thinking of that woman, her call to a desperate spiritual adventure, a prayer-life for the whole sinful world, victorious through faith in One whose strength is made perfect in human weakness.
