February 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Opening of Quiet Helpers Exhibit--Boston, January 2003

Paul A. Lacey. professor emeritus of literature at Earlham College, is Clerk of the AFSC national Board of Directors. He made these remarks at the opening of an exhibit entitled "Quiet Helpers" which depicts AFSC relief work dating from 1918, at the Boston Public Library.

Jan. 18, Montpelier Vt. More than 3000 people turned out on an 18 degree day, largest peace demonstration in Vermont's history. Photo:Peter Clark

This exhibit opens at a painfully appropriate time. It documents one aspect of the work of two generations of people, Quakers and those of many faiths who shared their witness against war in some of the most terrible circumstances of the twentieth century. That is the aspect which has been most easily admired and honored, the aspect of humanitarian aid to victims across all the battle-lines of war. The exhibit shows the stance of the "quiet helpers" who seek by their actions to give substance to their conviction that all human beings are children of God. It is what Gunnar Jahn celebrated in announcing that The Religious Society of Friends had won the Nobel Peace Prize 1947: "It is the silent help from the nameless to the nameless which is their contribution to the promotion of brotherhood among nations."

"Quiet Helpers," "silent help from the nameless to the nameless"--surely that is the way relief should be given to the victims of war, displaced civilians, women, children, old people, ex- soldiers without food, clothes, and shelter. It should come with no strings attached: the nameless sufferers should not have to attend religious services to qualify, or beg for the help, or renounce who they are. Helpless victims of war should not have to earn their right to live, to regain livelihoods, to rebuild homes and communities, and re-gather their families. After the relief work following First World War, a group of German teachers wrote, "...It will not be easy for you to realise what all this means for us. For years we were cut off from everything; for years we heard nothing but strife and hatred. Now, suddenly, you come to us and show us that behind the world of political strife, the real world still exists, the world of brotherhood and love" (A Quaker Adventure: The Story of Nine Years' Relief and Reconstruction, Ruth Fry, 1927). That is how "quiet helpers" should make their contribution.

Sir Isaac Newton said his scientific work was successful because he had been privileged to "stand on the shoulders of giants." The work we are here to commemorate was not done by giants but by very simple men and women, virtually unknown. I looked through the lists of volunteers in Europe after the First World War--France, Germany, Serbia, Russia, Poland--and found only a handful of names I recognized. Some were already Quaker leaders at the time, some would go on to become prominent within our small circle, but most were unknown to me, as they might well have been to all but their own families and communities for the rest of their lives. One name I recognized was the nearest neighbor of my wife's family, a marginal farmer, a humorous old man when I first met him. People would probably have said that he never amounted to much. Not a giant, just a good, kindly man who, at a defining moment of his life, quietly said NO to military service.

For that is the aspect of the peace witness which is not as readily celebrated, which many who want to praise Quakers for their good works prefer to ignore. These Quiet Helpers came to their work in rehabilitation and feeding because they were, first of all, conscientious objectors to war. They said NO, sometimes at terrible personal cost, because they had said YES to another call, the call to love and reconciliation, the call to treat the enemy as one's beloved brother or sister, a fellow child of God. For obeying that call in both World Wars, they were called cowards, yellow-bellies, enemy sympathizers. They lost jobs, they were brutalized, some were thrown out of the communities they grew up in. Here are a few cases documented by Rufus M. Jones in his book, A Service of Love in War Time: American Friends Relief Work in Europe 1917-1919: "...the various penalties including stoppage of mail, ...deprivation of personal possessions, ridicule, bullying, wearying and unceasing argument, coupled with threats of shooting and imprisonment,...starvation--one man was kept for sixteen consecutive meals on bread and water-- and various ways of wearing a man down by physical weariness.... ( p 96) One conscientious objector was beaten, his eyes gouged, and threatened with 25 years in Leavenworth Prison for not putting on the military uniform.

"I have been stripped and scrubbed with a broom, put under a faucet with my mouth held open, had a rope around my neck and pulled up choking tight for a bit, been fisted, slapped, kicked, carried a bag of sand and dirt until I could hardly hold it and go, have been kept under a shower-bath until pretty chilled." This was "...the military machine trying every means, physical and mental, to bring the objectors to submission. But", says Rufus Jones, "the one impossible course for those of us who held this faith was to refuse the call to fight and at the same time refuse all responsibility for the tragedy..." Their NO had to be followed by the YES of reconciliation, reconstruction, feeding programs, the rehabilitation of shattered lives. Here is the British Friend Joan M. Fry, writing of Friends' War Victims ' Relief Committee work:

"We feel most deeply that to give hope must be our mission above everything else, and when one sits beside these people and looks at their faces, where one sees hunger, physical and spiritual, not advertised, but as far as may be concealed, one feels one must go down with them into these dark places, and one dare not lightly speak words of hope which they are too sore to be able to accept as true."

Clarence Pickett was a Quaker Pastor in Oskaloosa Iowa when America entered that war. He was expelled from the town's ministerial association and had his house defaced with yellow painted crosses for not supporting the war. Henry Cadbury lost his teaching position at Haverford College for his vehement opposition to the war. When Quakers received the Nobel Peace Prize thirty years later, Clarence Pickett was the Executive Secretary and Henry Cadbury was Chair of the AFSC Board of Directors.

Many conscientious objectors in WWII experienced similar ostracism, dismissal from jobs or from school, for saying No to military service. Here is a reflection by Arthur A. Dole, who was in prison as a non-registrant conscientious objector: "During a 'good' war I like to think that COs serve an important function in mitigating the very real risk that our side may become like the enemy. Perhaps we offset somewhat the 'bad' means directed at a noble end. We may remind our side that some of the enemy are innocent." (A Few Small Candles: war resisters of world war ii tell their stories, ed Larry Gara and Leanna Mae Gara)

World War Two conscientious objectors produced the next generation of leaders of Quaker service and Quaker education, of mental health reform, and in the civil rights movement, but again there were many who went back home and lived their witness positively and quietly. The present work of the American Friends Service Committee, for social justice, community- building, empowerment of the oppressed, racial justice, restorative justice, reconciliation of conflict and peace-building, has deep roots in their experience and insight. Most of them were not giants, either, yet we can see farther because we have been privileged to stand on their shoulders, to gain courage through their example. In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for the American Friends Service Committee, Henry Cadbury said:

"If any should question the appropriateness of bestowing a peace prize upon a group rather than upon an outstanding individual we may say this. The common people of all nations want peace. In the presence of great impersonal forces they feel individually helpless to promote it....Common folk, not statesmen, not generals, nor great men of affairs, but just simple plain men and women like the few thousands of Quakers and their friends, if they devote themselves to resolute insistence on good will in place of force, can do something to build a better, peaceful world. The future hope of peace lies with such personal sacrificial service. To this ideal humble people everywhere may contribute."

It is appropriate that we should take this time to recall and bless the work of the quiet helpers, but--at the risk of spoiling a nice party--I feel obliged to ask what lesson they would want us to take from their example. I think the answer is clear. They would hope we would say NO to our government's withdrawal from and abrogation of international treaties, NO to our government's abuse of its military and economic power, and NO to war against Iraq. We are called to speak out against the infringement of civil liberties, the ever-higher wall of secrecy shielding our public servants from accountability to the public they are to serve, the impotence of our courts, the criminalization and the rule by executive order in the name of national security. It is not enough to be quiet, not enough to get ready to help pick up the pieces after the catastrophe of war--though the Service Committee, like many other aid and relief organizations, is stockpiling materials to distribute if the catastrophe occurs. Now is the time to risk being unpopular, to risk being called names--cowards, yellow bellies, enemy sympathizers--and being dismissed as naive and irrelevant. Now is the time to write and speak and act against this coming war, at the risk of getting our names on the suspect-lists of patriotic watchdog organizations. Now is the time to update our dossiers in various government security agencies. That is the kind of work I believe we are called to do now, before this war begins, by those quiet helpers who risked so much to reject war in their time.

Listen to what Rufus Jones said in 1919 to members of the Friends Reconstruction Unit:

"A great thing has come to us. Though I cannot be in a cathedral without having every fiber in me respond to the glory of the place, yet I would rather have part in this work we are doing than share in the building of a cathedral. This translation of Christianity is greater than any cathedral-builders ever made. It has come to you to put your lives in this. Two hundred years from now they will not remember your names, they will not have a roll on which every name is listed. But this thing which you are doing will never cease, for when you translate Love into Life, when you become organs of God for a piece of service, nothing can obliterate it....Thank God we can have our little share in this age in translating the love of God into terms of human service, and that we can fight, not with guns, not with bombs, but with the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God."

It is always the time to say YES to the service of love, but standing on the shoulders of all the witnesses for peace who have gone before us, we know this is not a time to be quiet, but a time to say NO. When war has laid waste to lives and civil order and nations, God calls us to the work of reconciliation, relief, and reconstruction; but God does not call us to stand aside quietly and let that devastation happen without our protest.

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