From the archive: Letters to the editor
Janet Scott continues her series on the Friend and the first world war and tells of Friends’ concerns in the summer of 1917
Some of the matters on the minds of Friends in the summer of 1917 were revealed through letters to the Friend. The following selection was published on 3 August. One Friend was particularly concerned about the Friends Provident Institution and the War Loan:
I was shocked and grieved to learn in the current issue of the Friend that the Directors of The Friends’ Provident Institution had invested £750,000 of its funds in the War Loan. This action I cannot but conceive is most unjust to the large majority of Friends who have insured in this well-known institution, and would, I am sure, have distressed its founders. It places pacifist Friends, who are largely in the majority, in a false position, as their capital is invested in a loan of which they strongly disapprove. How so well-known and respected an institution could have taken such a course of action I fail to understand.
Your friend sincerely, Joseph J. Green, Hastings.
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