From the archive: Tribunals
Janet Scott continues her selection of extracts from the archives of the Friend magazine during the first world war and looks at events covered during March 1916
In the edition of the Friend published on 31 March 1916 there was a contribution from the leading American Quaker Rufus Jones. It contained the words:
We must set ourselves to practise the presence of God as the most certain of realities, and we must trust love as the most effective way of life.
They were a reminder of the spiritual foundation that lay behind difficult decisions that many Friends had to make that year. The Military Service Act, passed in late January 1916, had come into force in early March. Tribunals that would decide the fate of thousands of men were beginning.
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