From the archive: The ways of love
Janet Scott writes about the resilience and faith of Friends in adversity
As the first world war approached the end of its fourth year, and with the German advance in France reaching its greatest extent, there was a sense of weariness and frustration. The following appeared in the Friend on 5 July 1918:
Though the crown of the year is come and the glory of the world is unfolded before us in flower and fruit, and the time of the reaper is here… still the Angel of Death stands at our side, and our hearts are heavy-laden, and dark shadows lie athwart land and sea. Dear children full of laughter and heavenly music are laid out suddenly, white and cold and silent; two courageous boys of the Ambulance Unit rest in a foreign field, and George Hodgkin in Mesopotamia… and a multitude of mothers’ sons of all races, over there in the Low Countries; and death and desolation, division and perplexity, imprisonment and travail are a common lot here at home; and weariness, and sickness and old age creep over us, and all the unintelligible burden and broken-heartedness of the time, lie heavy upon us.
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