Evil can only be fought and conquered by self-giving friendship. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Quaker peace testimonies resounded throughout Britain in reaction to the devastating violence and atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, in contrast to those who wanted to take up arms against the fascists responsible for those atrocities. Though the date of printing of this poster is unknown, its messages can be read in conversation with the Quaker peace propaganda distributed during the Spanish Civil War. The Quakers argue for what is now called a “positive peace,” cultivated through social justice and universal love for all of humankind. According to Quaker belief, each person’s Inner Light can be reached through love and friendship, and thus evil can be overcome through these connections. This poster underscores the religious nature of the Quaker’s argument by including the imagery of the Christian cross. The message also suggests that participating in violence, as many International Brigaders did, would result in being overcome by evil. Altogether, the peace testimony argues that nonviolent action against evil and violence is an act of resistance to war as well as an active promotion of “positive peace.”
Northern Friends Peace Board and the Friends Peace Committee
Robert Capa. Spanish Civil War, near Cerro Muriano, Córdoba front
While its authenticity has been debated since it was shot in September 1936, Robert Capa’s photograph, famously known as “Falling Soldier,” among other titles, is nonetheless an iconic pacifist image. Allegations that this photograph was staged far away from the real Spanish Civil War battle lines do not take away from its pacifist message. Another of the piece’s alternate titles, “Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936,” suggests that it was taken in the midst of the violent struggle for power in Spain. This war, more than any other that had come before, was an astonishingly savage one. Capa’s photograph represents a new genre of photojournalism that captured these horrors and made them widely available outside of Spain. “Falling Soldier” evokes an ethical call for peace by creating a sense of intimacy between the observer and subject during a dying man’s last moments. The world was able to bear witness to the brutality of the war and feel affected by a far away conflict. Humanitarian responses to this ethical call sowed the seeds of pacifism during the Spanish Civil War.
Friendship Project and “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” The American Friend
Both the Friendship Project pamphlet and The American Friend article, “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” explore the role of children as peacebuilders during the Spanish Civil War. In these two artifacts, young people are recognized as uniquely powerful forces of change who can further the pacifist cause through their compassion and spirit. The documents illuminate the importance of children’s insights and contributions in times of crisis. They present the hopeful idea that society can capitalize on the incredible strength of childhood values—their instinctual equality-seeking and unquestioning acceptance of others. In the Friendship Project materials, these ideas coalesce in the effort to forge an international support community built on relationships between children. This is such a potent example of the role that young people play in responding to societal challenges; they offer comfort and confidence in the midst of instability and serve as ambassadors of peace in an unjust world.
The Nationalist aerial bombings during the Spanish Civil War displaced thousands of innocent civilians, creating a massive influx of refugees into the cities, resulting in severe food shortages for residents and refugees. This pamphlet, Winter in Spain, created by the Friends Service Council in England to raise funds for Spain, illustrates the Quakers’ attempt to neutrally alleviate Spanish suffering. They did so by providing essential goods and organizing food distribution canteens for both Republican and Nationalist areas. However, their mission was severely limited by funds. This pamphlet uses the pathos of innocent children to make readers empathize with Spain’s suffering, making them more likely to donate. The pamphlet illustrates their success, “More than 4,000 children are given a hot breakfast,” in order to assure the reader that their money makes a difference and is not wasted. These success claims are juxtaposed with the point that despite the success, there is still “no fuel in Madrid” and more relief could be provided, prompting the reader to donate.
Quakers from the United States and Britain assisted the relief work for children during the Spanish Civil War. This pamphlet, published in London in 1938 by the Friends Service Council, is one of the fund-raising propaganda leaflets sent to British populations. In order to provoke sympathy and a sense of responsibility from the British people, who were physically outside of the war and whose country had declared a “non-intervention” policy, this pamphlet includes statistics of how a small amount of donations could have a major impact, as well as photos of happy children benefiting from relief work. While the statistics reminded people of the value of their help and thus their responsibility to help, the hopeful eyes of the children in the photos leads both British audiences and contemporary readers in the United States alike to appreciate the real meanings of Quaker relief work: besides the material benefits, it is the invaluable warmth and love that brought hope to the war-ravaged nation.
Robert Capa. Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Golfe-Juan, France
This photograph, taken by the Spanish Civil War photographer, Robert Capa, in August 1948, shows the artist Pablo Picasso at the beach with Françoise Gilot, one woman in a long series of lovers. Picasso looked to the women in his life for artistic inspiration, developing a series of intense affairs and marriages that arguably shaped the trajectory of his career. This photograph, showing Picasso on a beautiful sunny day following behind Françoise Gilot as she strides ahead, captures an essential element of Picasso’s love of women. Drawing on the stereotype of women as peaceful and separate from the war effort, he used images of women in his painting Guernica to represent the civilian casualties of aerial bombardment during the Spanish Civil War.
S. Emily Parker. From The Devotional Diary of a Relief Worker in Spain.
According to Religious Society of Friends literature, we should live in a way that reflects the conviction that “love is at the heart of existence and all human beings are equal in the eyes of God.” The challenge arises in the process of transforming this belief into real, tangible action. The “Thoughts for Meditation” printed on page five of Emily Parker’s Devotional Diary addresses this challenge, which she encountered during her time as a Quaker relief worker in Spain. Parker’s three questions outline the thoughts of many others, who struggled to use religion as a catalyst for peace and action for those in need. If we replace the word “religion” with the more secularly used term “mission” in order to apply it to our present historical moment, it becomes clear that questions like these continue to echo through the minds of peace activists, religious and secular alike.
Letter from Herman Reissing to Elizabeth Jensen.
This letter is a part of series between Herman F. Ressig, the executive secretary of the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign, and Daniel & Elizabeth Jensen, American Friends who worked to assist Spanish Civil War refugees in Mexico. These letters are written at the end of and after the Spanish Civil War and they focus on activism surrounding refugees in Mexico and France and how the refugees might be evacuated from France to Mexico. Note how the letterhead features a mother and child. Children were used in fundraising as they were seen as non-partisan and indisputably worthy of protection. This letter, written in 1940, highlights the importance of fundraising for activism and finding resources to support relocation of the Spanish refugees. It also shows the amount of organizational cooperation that went into assisting Spanish exiles, and the difficulty of finding suitable situations for the thousands from Spain living in refugee camps in France.
Spanish Relief Campaign. Elizabeth Marsh Jensen Papers
Can peace ever be stable when injustice exists, and is just violence even possible? This poster, created by the London Quaker Friends in 1938, propels us to the heart of such questions by instantly equating peace and justice. Yet the Quakers were not alone in making this association. Virginia Woolf connects these ideas by setting women’s rights (justice) as a precondition for preventing war (peace). Langston Hughes argues the inextricability of communism (which he views as the path to peace) and racial equality (justice). Muriel Rukeyser shows that giving war victims a voice (justice) is an ethical undertaking in her quest for peace in Spain. Like the Quakers, these authors all worked within a field now called “positive peace”: exploring how to construct a world not only free of war, but where societies and institutions actively promote justice for all, thus generating a lasting peace.
Dan West. Needy Spain: Dan West’s Report to The Committee on Spain
During the Spanish Civil War, Quakers from Britain and United States sent reports back to the Friends Service Council and the American Friends Service Committee from Spain exploring the conditions of the people and the gruesome effects of war. This document is an account from Dan West, a member of the Church of the Brethren who worked with the American Friends Service Committee in Nationalist Spain, as he explores Spain in the midst of the Spanish Civil War and sees how the war has transformed it. Of particular interest is the section in which he compares eastern and western Spain, the conditions in which people in either area are living during the war, and how the war has affected both sides differently. West reports that the Nationalists (the Francoists) were greatly in need of clothes and something warm to wear, whereas the Loyalists (the Republicans) were in desperate need of food.
American Friends Service Committee; Committee on Spain
On this pamphlet the suffering of the Spanish population is reflected in the expressions of their children. As propaganda both directly, for monetary support of Quaker relief work in Spain, and indirectly, against the war which necessitates such relief, the relief pamphlets of this era exemplify the greater Quaker pacifist position. “Spain’s Children are Hungry” typifies relief pamphlets through its depiction of civilian suffering and clear monetary requests from the reader. On the right-most column one can clearly see what relief specific contributions will provide, situating a child’s unavoidable suffering beside a negligible sum. Therein lies one aspect of the Quaker pacifist claim: peace itself is within the reader’s capacities to create, if only they would take action against war, proposed here in the form of donations, and remember the expressions of Spain’s hungry children.
John F. Rich, a Haverford graduate (class of 1924) and a prominent Quaker, was an influential figure during the Quaker relief efforts of the Spanish Civil War. In his capacity as Public Relations Director and Relief Administrator for the American Friends Service Committee, he traveled to Spain to assess the devastation, to formulate a plan to assist the Spanish refugees, and to begin the process of shutting down the relief operations in Spain. He kept a diary during his travels, and on Thursday June 1st 1939 he wrote, “My birthday- 37 years old. I am glad to have been involved in this Spanish War and to have contributed something to its pacification. If I died today I at least could say I’ve done something worthwhile.” These heartfelt words express the Quaker testimony of peace and pacifism by showing his belief that actions to promote peace are of tremendous value, especially in the midst of total war.
Pacifists often find solidarity in helping children. In his remarks, William Allen White addresses a tea of presumably wealthy New Yorkers to convince them to provide some form of contribution to his relief organization, The Spanish Child Welfare Association. The rhetoric of his message focuses upon delivering an emotional account of the destitute conditions of Spanish children and the similarities between the Spanish and American children. The nature of this appeal, and its racialized rhetoric, provides insight to the problematic race discourses of the early twentieth century. The pathos contained in this address frames Spain itself as a wounded, infantile, and helpless body of souls tormented by unparalleled suffering which may only be amended through the aid of philanthropic volunteers. This does not undermine the heroic efforts of their peace testimonies, although it does reveal something of the complicated nature of the way in which Northern Europe and the United States related to Spain in the 1930s.
Attributed to Agusto. “¿Que Fais-Tu Pour Empȇcher cela?”
The topic of the poster refers to the relentless bombing of Madrid by Franco's forces, which began in November 1936, targeting civilians. The journalist Louis Delaprée writes of the bombardments, “But night falls. The great butchery, the horror, the Apocalypse begin. The murdering planes incessantly perform evolutions in the sky dropping alternatively explosive bombs, incendiary bombs, and torpedos.” This poster also appeared in English and Spanish, a multi-lingual effort which demonstrates that the Republican government appealed to other countries, in addition to their own citizens, for help. The English version reads, “What are you doing to prevent this? Madrid,” which issues a call to the viewer to respond. This poster illustrates one of the many reasons Virginia Woolf was suspicious of propaganda--it acts as an appeal for peace, but also has the potential to drive soldiers to war to protect innocent civilians and stop the slaughter. In an ethically paradoxical bind, many soldiers of the Spanish Civil War fought under the sign of peace.
1. Spain refugees crossing French border at Le Perthus. Image © Reserved, from the collection of Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain 2. Spain Children at Train Station 3. Spain Quaker Relief Work Marseille 4. Spain Quaker Relief Work Toulouse 1945 Images 2 through 4 © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain As the Republic fell, and a fascist victory was imminent, columns of thousands of Republican refugees fled into France for fear of violent reprisals in a Francoist Spain. These photographs capture the mass migration out of Spain and foreshadow the displacements that would continue throughout the twentieth century and into our present moment. We can look at these photographs next to the Syrian refugees of today, or Rwanda in the 1990s, for example, and hear Virginia Woolf’s words echo in the back of our mind, “Things repeat themselves it seems. Pictures and voices are the same today as the were 2,000 years ago.” On the other side of the border, the conditions that greeted the Spanish refugees were nothing short of horrendous. On the beach of France, surrounded by barbed wire, set up in temporary housing, the camps were crowded, dirty, and cold. Stories are told of how the men, who had to burn their clothes upon entry due to lice, would be relegated to lying in bed all day, covered by one rag of a blanket, because they had not a second pair of clothes to change into. The Quakers continued their relief efforts with the Spanish refugees in France, trying to alleviate the conditions and move many to Mexico, until the Second World War demanded more general European relief.
Library of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.
“If we go on turning ploughshares into swords how can we expect a harvest of peace?”
This quote, attributed to T. Edmund Harvey, alludes to the idea that society will reap what it sows, and that violence will never lead to peace, but only to more violence. Read on another register, images of Spanish peasants and workers forming militias with any available instruments as weapons also silhouette these words. T. Edmund Harvey, a Quaker and Minister of Parliament in Great Britain, was an advocate of humanitarian work during the Spanish Civil War and served on the International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees in Spain (IC), which was an international effort that collected funds from twenty-four counties. Friends’ work and organization was central to the IC. In 1938, in a report given to the House of Commons, Harvey spoke about the relief effort to help Spain, arguing that, “It will bring good will into homes where there is darkness at present, and hope into hearts where there is now nothing but hate.”
Northern Friends Peace Board and Friends Peace Committee
Sylvester Jones. Journal of Sylvester Jones
The victims of the Spanish Civil War were mainly civilians, as both sides engaged in total war against one another. Sylvester Jones was a Quaker sent to Spain by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from late 1936 through early 1937. He was to investigate the situation in Spain and garner a sense of whether or not the AFSC should provide relief work, and, if so, how they should administer it. While in Spain he studied the work of the British Friends and other aid organizations who were already helping the Spanish people and discussed their efforts in his diary. His diary, written for distribution and propaganda purposes, also provides an unique insight into the realities of everyday life of the Spanish people during the War. It describes severe food shortages, children’s colonies, the soldiers he came across, and the meetings he had with various aid workers and organizers of relief efforts. In response to the reports of Jones and others, the AFSC sent aid in the form of provisions such as food, clothing, and personnel, allowing the Quakers to peacefully intervene in the face of the destructive power of total war.
Patrick Murphy Malin. Report to the Committee on Spain and to The American Friends Service Committee.
The American Friends Service Committee sent representatives to Civil War-ridden Spain to evaluate the situation. One such representative was Patrick Murphy Malin. His report illustrates Spain, especially rural Spain, as claustrophobic, dirty, and poorly maintained. However, just as important as Malin’s articulated findings is his definition of pacifism. Malin writes, “pacifism does not mean that exact neutrality...an ethic of abstract absolutism...It means simply that...we should be always concerned about the maximum conservation of good...we must be constantly at work by methods we can approve.” Here, Malin breaks down the misconceptions of pacifism as passive, as the sole promotion of the absence of war. This report is one of many documenting the horrible conditions of the war, but also the improving conditions, due to the Friends’ relief efforts, demonstrating the Quaker impact in Spain.
Marcelo Jauregui-Volpe and Benjamin Yellin
v3.14 - A conspiracy of silence (parente)
v2.4 national council of women (parente)
my scrapbook article vol 2 page 12- safter
SCRAPBOOK PAGE ON WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT VS. GOOD OLD DAYS