The Llandudno Conference
Ian Kirk-Smith writes about the historic Quaker event
Six weeks after the start of the first world war, between 25-30 September 1914, a group of men and women, representing different Christian denominations, met in Llandudno in Wales.
They had come to the Welsh town for a conference organised by some leading members of the Religious Society of Friends. The conference had originally been set up as a response to the growing crisis in Europe. The central theme was to consider: ‘Is our Lord able to be Lord of the whole human race, and unify the discords between nations and classes of men?’
However, the outbreak of war at the beginning of August changed everything. Finally, after much deliberation, it was ‘decided to proceed with it, but to shorten its duration and to concentrate on the great challenge to Christianity involved in the outbreak of war between professedly Christian nations, and on the vastest scale the world has ever known’.
The conference proved to be a significant event. It was chaired by Henry T Hodgkin and was attended by about 270 people. The key questions that emerged were prompted by difficulties that had arisen ‘out of the new situation’:
• What ought young men to do, who, convinced that war in general is wrong, yet believe that their country requires them to surrender their lives to its service – particularly when the need appears to be to hold in check an aggressive militarism that threatens to dominate the world, and to defend from wanton outrage a weaker nation?
• In what ways is it possible for persons, who are assured that loyalty to Christ debars them absolutely from taking up arms, to serve their country and humanity in the same spirit of self-sacrifice as that of the soldier, and under the inspiration of the Cross of Christ?
• How is it possible for Friends and others, set in responsible positions in the public life of a country that only partly accepts their principles, to serve their generation without disloyalty to the Prince of Peace? Is there a moral second-best, which alone is fitted for the practical affairs of the world?
• What is the bearing of our peace doctrine on social and industrial life, on the administration of justice, on the use of the police force, and on the competitive methods of business and commerce?
• How is it conceivable that the Spirit of Christ can really govern the international relations of men?
Participants grappled with these questions in talks and formal and informal discussions. Henry T Hodgkin, in his address to the conference, said that Friends had made a protest against war. It was based, firstly, on the fact that ‘our Peace principles are rooted in our whole philosophy of life, and based upon the loyalty which we profess to Jesus Christ’. Secondly, it was based on ‘freedom of conscience’, which was contravened ‘as soon as men, under the military system, are compelled to do things which, as private individuals, they would know to be gross violations of the moral law’. Thirdly, the protest was based upon ‘the belief that the supreme forces that are given to men are mental and spiritual, that the only decision in disputes between men or nations which can be the right, and therefore the permanent one, is a decision which rests on moral grounds. We hold that the instant war is declared there is a surrender of the highest faculties, and that thereby the parties concerned bring into action a means of decision which bears no necessary relation to the rights of the case.’ Above all, he said, ‘we base our protest upon the fundamental truth that love is the supreme force in the universe’ and he added that ‘when nations fight one another the spirit of hatred cannot but be let loose, and the spirit of love suffers defeat’.
Among Friends who addressed the conference were Edward Grubb, Arnold S Rowntree MP, L Violet Hodgkin and Elsie M Cadbury and the editorial in the proceedings included Joan Mary Fry.
For extracts from the Friend’s reports of the conference, please read: From the archive: The highest vision
