LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A QUESTION AND AN ANSWER.
(To THE EDITOR or ras " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—You refer in the Spectator of January 22nd to an inter- jection made by another Member, while I was endeavouring to state in the House of Conunons the Quaker position with regard to war " What if the Germans took your wife ? " It would have been difficult to give a full reply at the moment without turning from the wider issues with which I had to deal, but I recognize the importance of the question, and as you have raised it again, perhaps I may be allowed to reply to it now. If my wife did not share my views, I might not unreasonably be felt to be imposing an unfair risk upon her, or shielding her only through the sacrifice of others. Quaker women as a community share to the full the view of the Society of Friends on war, and have in the past shown their willingness to act upon it. When the other English Colonies lived in constant feud with their Indian neighbours, and protected themselves against them by force of arms, individual families amongst them fell victims to the cruelty and lust of the savage warriors, but for sixty years the Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania lived unarmed and uninjured, trusting to the answering response which their faith evoked in the hearts of . men whom all others treated as cruel barbarians. We believe that the Divine Spirit, which is at work in the hearts of all men and can reach even the worst and most cruel,,
would be as able to touch the conscience of the German soldier as the heart of the savage. If we have to suffer even the worst outrage, it is what the Christians had to face, and did in fact endure, in the first centuries at the hands of the Imperial Roman persecutors :—
rparrov yap dyaBorotoiVras, ei OiXot to OAThaa TO; O,oP, irifaxeiv xcucorotavras.
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