From the archive: Oh, when the saints…
Janet Scott continues her series on the Friend and the first world war. In January 1918 the conflict entered its final year.
The Friend published its first issue of 1918 on 4 January. An editorial on ‘Quaker Sainthood’ was inspired by the charm and fascination of Violet Hodgkin’s Book of Quaker Saints. It opened with a reference to the old Quaker records:
…they tell of one of the glorious chapters of human history and human struggle, they have a fragrance and a richness no art of literature and no craft of science can supply, they speak with pentecostal tongues of the deepest hunger of the soul and of the bread of life. For they tell of the earnest seeking and happy finding, of the faithful living and courageous dying, of the saintly forefathers of Quakerism.
The editorial conceded that these records could be sometimes dull, heavy and verbose, but:
…they breathe of life, they witness true, they speak of mighty doing and mightier power; they have their own high and enduring note in the music of the soul.
There were, the Friend on 4 January said:
…saints, as there are to-day, clothed in ordinary apparel and living and labouring amid the common things of every-day life. Those who read the Book of Quaker Saints will discover that there are, in the author’s view, four attributes of saintliness. ‘Saints must be brave, and saints must be faithful’; saints must ‘let the sunlight through’; and to do this they must be near the Source of light or possess the Light in their own hearts – courage, faithfulness, windows of the Light, and the life within hid with Christ in God. There is the image and heart and essence of the saint.
After discussing the foundations of George Fox’s experience and teaching, and retelling the spread of Quakerism in the early years despite imprisonment and persecution, the Friend turned to the present:
We in our time and generation are likewise ‘called to be saints’ – saints of the virile and manly type, not alas, without flaw, immaculate, faultless; but men and women of convincement, catholic and universal in spirit, strong in the faith, courageous and patient seekers, owing a loyal allegiance – beyond authority or church or sect – to the Reality within us and to Christ the unveiler. ‘The ways unto God are as the number of the souls of the children of men’ – therefore, we must cultivate a wide charity; ‘the Kingdom of God is within you’ – therefore we must proclaim to the coming Democracy the evangel of Quakerism. We begin the New Year with the happy assurance that hundreds of Friends, within prison walls and beyond them, are, without perhaps knowing it, marching to-day in the blessed company of the Quaker Saints with their faces to the Light.
…go marching in…
There was famine in Russia. Two poor harvests in a row meant that there was only as much wheat as had been sown as seeds, and that there was no fodder for horses. At Meeting for Sufferings in January a report was received from the War Victims’ Relief Committee asking for £30,000 to supply food to the refugees and peasants in the Buzuluk district. It was possible to obtain grain and cornstuffs from Siberia if the money could be raised. The Meeting endorsed an appeal.
On 18 January the Friend published an account from a worker in Buzuluk as refugees began to move:
I have been seeing things that go to one’s heart. The poor patient refugees… have been packed off from their villages, Preobrajenskana and Lubimoffka. For six days they have been encamped at the station, some of them lying with all their belongings in the waiting room, most of them on the ground around the station… They have not known when trains would be found for them, or where they were to go, the district to which they thought they were going having refused to receive any more refugees at all. Now the idea is that they are to go to Siberia.
On another day the worker brought a load of vegetables:
Half the refugees were in the train waiting to start, and the others were to follow the next day… Each wagon had a stove in the middle, and five or six families had been packed into the truck, as it were lying on shelves. No standing up was possible, except in the middle where the stove was… I gave large cabbages and onions to each wagon, and then finally went round with a bucket of milk for the children.
Others were affected too. The Friend on 22 February said that a letter sent in January from the Norwegian United Mission:
Many kinds of ordinary food are now quite unobtainable and we are strictly rationed, and were it not for the fish and potatoes, the scarcity would be very serious… We are much better off than the poor Finlanders, who are at present in a state of actual famine… yesterday the news came from one of our fishing stations of two hundred fishermen without bread… To be without food or paraffin amid snow and ice, with the thermometer at zero, is a serious predicament.
…you’ll want to be…
Meeting for Sufferings also revisited its decision on censorship, prompted by the Peace Committee, who suggested that since the regulation had been revised there would be no objection in complying. This led to a vigorous debate in which many Friends took part, but eventually the Meeting reaffirmed its decision that it would not send material to the censor.
Inevitably, this was reflected in the letters to the Friend on 11 January. For instance, S Graveson wrote:
As to… arguments in defence of the censorship, it is, I think, sufficient to observe that the same arguments fully support the restrictions imposed on the liberty of the subject in the days of Charles II. Our forefathers then met in their meetings for worship in defiance of the Conventicle Act. In the eyes of the Government of that day the Conventicle Act was a necessary measure for the protection of the Crown and the defence of the Realm… The opposition of the Quakers then was “not tolerated” and in consequence, the gaols were soon full… if Friends are imprisoned for the stand they have now decided to take… they will be in apostolic succession to George Fox, William Penn, Margaret Fell, and other Quaker worthies who founded the Society of Friends, and in so doing won many a victory for religious freedom and liberty of opinion.
…in that number…
In early 1918 the Representation of the People Bill finally passed into law. Gulielma Crosfield wrote in the Friend’s 8 February edition:
…the last fortnight has ushered in a change so momentous in our national and political life as almost to amount to a revolution; for six million women voters are now to be placed on the Parliamentary Register. Many women… who in spite of these arduous times have been steadily working and anxiously watching the progress of events during the last few months, are deeply conscious that the long and weary struggle of years is over, and that the strivings of half a century, sometimes patient and sometimes the reverse, have at last seen fulfilment…
A week later, on 15 February, the Friend expanded on this. As well as the vote for women over thirty, male suffrage was also extended:
With all elections on one day, a drastic reduction of legal election expenses, a broad measure of redistribution, a recognition of the principle of one man one vote [with some exceptions]… the Act is a great democratic measure.
On 18 January the Friend reported that the Friends Emergency Committee for the Help of Aliens had received from a prisoner of war (PoW) the sum of £1 16s, the result of a collection for widows and orphans, made at the little meeting held every evening in his hut. The PoW wrote:
We are still gathering nightly in silence, awaiting the breaking of our daily bread of life, and have thus by the everlasting mercy of the Father, been led to embrace the true faith followed by “Friends”, and pray [to] Him daily for the grace of Jesus to enter the hearts of all men; that the Holy Spirit may renew their minds, and they may see “the Light within” them and listen to the voice Divine that taught them to love one another.
