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WWI Resource Pack No.1 21 August 1914 one halfpenny representative committee of WORLD WAR I: CONFLICT 14 Friends was appointed to consider the right course to AND CONSCIENCE pursue, and was asked to report as soon as possible. A suggestion was made that This newspaper, featuring articles by present-day the Meeting for Sufferings Q uakers and original 1914 contributions to The should be consulted, as the Friend, gives a taste of Q uaker lives, both then question was a national one. and now. We hope this juxtaposition will draw ’ parallels and invite reflection. SOLDIERS families Events viewed through to fighting joined the time can take on a texture Friends’ Ambulance Unit From The Friend, that distances us from (FAU). Nearly a quarter of 23 October 1914 them. We tend to think a million sick and wounded Liverpool meeting-house, that certain events couldn’t soldiers were carried by the use of which, on the happen now, that things FAU ambulance convoys, outbreak of war, was have changed. Research in and 21 FAU members died offered to the Lord Mayor, the Q uaker archives shows whilst on service. Other preferably for relief work, that sometimes the everyday Q uakers wanted nothing to has been in daily use reality and common reactions do with the war. Known ever since, by the Town about World War I had as absolutists, they risked An ambulance of the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee and its proud driver in London before setting off for Belgium or Hall Soldiers’ and Sailors’ been written out of the imprisonment and hard France in the early months of the war. Families’ Relief Association. national memory. labour. For the first month 200 or In late 1914 British Many Q uakers were active EarlY DAYS those who wanted to 300 women applied every Q uakers faced national on the home front, providing offer non-military service. day for relief, this involving propaganda to enlist in a shelter for refugees and “Men have gone on in some cases the women ‘just war’. Some Q uaker ‘enemy aliens’ through their repeating and believing waiting an hour or more men decided to join the local meetings or collecting in the foolish old heathen YOUNG FRIENDS before they would receive army or navy. Others felt clothing and supplies for the maxim ‘If you want peace, CONSIDERING attention, and the chairs in their conscience prevented Friends’ War Victims’ Relief prepare for war’. They the lobby were soon found them from taking part in Committee (FWVRC). First have prepared for war, ENLISTMENT to be more comfortable than the war effort. The Q uaker set up in 1870, the FWVRC and war has come.” From The Friend, standing about in the street. movement was split in its was revived in 1914 and The Friend, editorial, 20 November 1914 The Small meeting-house response to the war and did attracted nearly 500 members is used for taking down August 1914 At Warwickshire North not achieve unity of purpose during the war. Of these, details, and an upstairs room Monthly Meeting held on until 1915. The dilemmas 156 were women working Just three days after war as an office for the visitors the 10th inst. a letter was faced by individuals as doctors, teachers, drivers broke out, Meeting for in that District, which is one read from a Friend resigning surrounded by strident and administrators. Their Sufferings met to discern of the poorest in the city. his membership on account militarism and public opinion work included setting up and its position. The Society Over 10,000 women have of having enlisted. The exist today, just as they did running maternity hospitals issued a statement, To Men applied, and every case has Meeting was in much diffi- a century ago. and schools across Europe. and Women of Goodwill in had to be visited. Being a Q uaker in wartime the British Empire, which culty as to whether to accept was not a simple story of 1914 articles from The Friend appeared in a number of the it or not, and eventually, a ‘cranks’ or ‘shirkers’, as (a Q uaker magazine still big dailies: portrayed by newspapers published today) are denoted “While, as a Society, we of the time. Some opposed by stand firmly to the belief that the method of force is no solution of any question, we hold that the present moment is not one for criticism, but for devoted service to our nation.” But the picture was not a clear one. The Society was divided and many Friends considered their stance. The peace testimony suddenly came under severe challenge. More than 200 young Q uakers had joined the army and 15 had been involved in recruiting activ- ities. Some wanted to assist the war effort but did not want to fight or kill, leading to the estab- lishment of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee and the Emergency Committee. Others, known as absolutists, adopted a more pacifist attitude and refused to have anything to do with the war. 1914 was a time of deep discussion and spiritual In 1914 the Peace Committee of the Society of Friends produced questioning. In May 1915 this poster asking all men (and women) to stay calm and carry on Yearly Meeting confirmed its and to remember that restraint and discipline in all things would commitment to pacifism but make the coming conflict easier to bear. was careful not to alienate page 2 No.1, 21 August 1914 No.1 21 August 1914 one halfpenny THE ORIGINS OF however, that the French fleet was concentrated in the WORLD WAR I Mediterranean, leaving North German unification in 1871, Sea coasts exposed. The following the Franco- Cabinet eventually accepted a Prussian War, and its 1879 moral obligation to intervene alliance with the Austro- if Belgium or France were Hungarian Empire created a invaded – the instigator new industrial and military therefore being Germany. power in the heart of Wider implications for Europe. This ushered in a British colonial interests in period of growing militari- remaining neutral were also sation and shifting alliances, present. Declaration of war culminating in the outbreak against Germany followed of World War I. on 4 August, after German Russia had maintained troops entered Belgium. good relations with Germany but also sought Black Sea access to the Mediterranean CONSCRIPTION and backed the Slav nations AND CONSCIENCE of the Balkans in their At the outbreak of war struggle for independence Britain was the only fighting from Ottoman (Turkish) nation without an army rule. The northern Balkans raised by conscription. It had bordered on Austria- only a small standing army Hungary, which had acquired of volunteers, albeit one Bosnia-Herzegovina at the large enough to control a 1878 Congress of Berlin. vast colonial empire in Africa Knockaloe Internment Camp on the Isle of Man held many ‘enemy aliens’ from November 1914. But over 40 per cent of and Asia. Indeed, it was Volunteers of the Friends’ Emergency Committee visited to hold meetings for worship and give the Bosnian population widely considered un-British classes until they were requested to stop. were Serbs, whose natural to force men to enlist: affinity lay with Russia, and providing for exemption on Zealand. Mindful that many She blamed the generation tensions duly arose. By the “Compulsory service is, I conscientious grounds. There men on the home front were that sent him to war. But 1890s Russian relations with believe, as distasteful to had been debate on whether either engaged in essential most of all, she blamed Germany had cooled, and the nation as it is incom- or not it should be limited war work or permanently that unknown woman who in 1907 Britain, France and patible with the condi- to Q uakers – who in 1757 invalided out of the army, gave him a white feather.” tions of an army like ours, had been exempted from the the government issued the Russia formed the Triple Francis Beckett, The which has always such militia – or defined in some Silver War Badge or lapel Entente, encircling Germany. Guardian, 11 November 2008 The calm exploded a large proportion of its other way. In the event, badges to distinguish them units on foreign service. conscientious objection was from ‘shirkers’. on 28 June 1914 when AN ambulance Archduke Ferdinand, heir I hold, moreover, that not defined, and those who But how did white to the Austro-Hungarian the man who voluntarily implemented it had to deal feathers come to signify corps throne, was assassinated in serves his country is more with each case on its own cowardice? The story origi- to be relied upon as a merits. nates in England at the From The Friend, Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, 21 August 1914 by Bosnian-Serb nation- good fighting soldier than Those who refused to turn of the 18th century, alists. Accusing the Serb is he who is compelled to serve on religious, moral when cockfighting was a To the editor of The Friend, government of being behind bear arms.” or political grounds faced popular sport. Some of the great hardship. The birds tossed into the ring Dear Friend, – Some the assassination, Austria- Lord Roberts, British No-Conscription Fellowship, had white tail feathers. In members of the Society Hungary submitted a condi- Commander-in-Chief during an organisation founded in no hurry to fight, they with whom I have been in tional ultimatum, which the first two years of the November 1914 by pacifists would turn away from their correspondence feel strongly Serbia rejected. On 28 July Boer War in South Africa and members of the socialist opponents, displaying these that in this crisis in public Austria-Hungary declared affairs they want to render war on Serbia, having Now faced with a large Independent Labour Party, feathers – hence their associ- conscripted German army, it provided support for consci- ation with cowardice.
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