From the archive: Sufferings - The road to Wormwood Scrubs!
Janet Scott continues her series of selections from the pages of the Friend published during the first world war. The stories of Friends who were conscientious objectors continued to feature strongly in the autumn of 1916.
Stephen Hobhouse had been instrumental in setting up the Emergency Committee for the Relief of Alien Enemies and was its chairman until he resigned on becoming caught up in the military system. The Friend of 1 September 1916 reported his tribunal in August, when he declared:
As a disciple of Jesus Christ and also as an advocate of International Socialism, I must refuse to take any willing part in operations which have as their object or their accompaniment the wholesale slaughter of our fellow-creatures in war… I cannot willingly acquiesce in any change of occupation imposed on me by a body set up under a Military Service Act, the sole object of which is the better prosecution of the war… Germans, like Englishmen, have the Spirit of God within them; and, I believe, that, if we persevered, in spite of everything, in using Christ’s weapons of love and reasoning towards them, we should in the end meet with a response that would make all war unthinkable. I am making this application to the Tribunal, not so much in order to plead for any exemption, as in order to bear my testimony against a compulsion Act, which I regard not only as unChristian but also as a betrayal, in large measure, of the ideals of liberty for which Britain is considered to be fighting.
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