“Behind the Battle Lines in a Devastated Spain”
New York Times Magazine by Alfred Winslow Jones
This article, published in the weekly New York Times Magazine on April 3rd, 1938, demonstrates how journalism brought the Spanish refugee crisis into the eyes and minds of American society. The focus of this article is the mass migrations of Spaniards within Spain as a result of the devastation of the Civil War. The vivid descriptions in the article, by Alfred Winslow Jones, of his experience in a “tour of inspection with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)” brings his experiences alive to his readers in the US. His detailed portrayal of the terrible plight of the Spaniards and the underfunded work the AFSC is doing in Spain is a humanitarian, emotional appeal. The inclusion of the photograph depicting the huddled masses wandering through the streets is another attempt to bring the horrid conditions refugees must live in to life for average Americans. Juxtaposing the text and photograph allows the story of the refugees to transcend the contemporaneous situation and resonates with readers many decades later.
Chicago Tribune by Diana Forbes Robertson
The bombings during the Spanish Civil War not only destroyed buildings and land, but they destroyed families. Children of all ages were victims of fascist attacks, and because of the numerous children who were left orphaned and who were in harms way of future bombardments and starvation, children’s colonies were created to provide them a place of refuge during the war. In this newspaper clipping Diana Forbes Robertson, the wife of journalist Vincent Sheean, writes of her time in Spain. This clipping was found in a folder titled L. Hollingsworth Woods Papers, in which there were many miscellaneous documents and letters either written by Woods himself or documents that referenced the Spanish Civil War. Woods was a co-founder of the American Friends Service Committee, which was a Quaker organization that worked to help the refugees and victims of the fascist attacks during the civil war. While the exact date of publication and the newspaper from which this article by Diana Robertson came from is unclear, based on evidence found in the article, along with a second newspaper article written by Robertson that can be found in the same folder, it can be inferred that the article was written around April of 1938 and that it was originally published in the Chicago Tribune. This article depicts several colonies in which children are hungry; yet their lives must continue as they “attend school, get their hair cut, and dance ballet.” In this piece Robertson provides an outsider’s perspective of the lives of child refugees during the Spanish Civil War.
“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.
“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
“Mothers! Have you given life to your son that he may kill the sons of other mothers?”
This poster, produced by Great Britain’s Northern Friends Peace Board in 1938, appeals to the ethics of family and maternity. It could be read as a response both to the Spanish Civil War and as a protest of the impending Second World War. In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf addresses similar themes to the image here, as she points to the separation of the spheres of men and women, the public and the domestic. War manifests in the public realm, dominated by men. The domestic sphere of women, while suffocating and repressive, can be the center of care and peace, as exemplified by the way mothers love and care for their children. The message here, posed in the form of the question, puts decision-making power in the hands of women, which at the time was a foreign concept to those trapped in the domestic realm. The mother has a choice in her actions, in how she teaches values to her children, and that choice will greatly affect the development of war and peace. This poster suggests that the role of the mother has a strong capability to create peace.
“Recall to religion: £2,000,000,000 spent on battleships, aeroplanes, tanks, poison gas, submarines, bombs - Can “Thy kingdom come on earth” this way?”
This anti-war poster calls attention to the obscene sums of money spent on war preparations, and simultaneously suggests that military stockpiling inhibits God’s kingdom from flourishing. It calls to mind the Quaker peace testimony, which states that war is an affront to humans living together lovingly, for war destroys the goodness and light within us all. This poster links money to war and argues that money is to blame for war. The taxes paid to a government allow that nation to fund the production of war machines. It also evokes a view on war deeply embedded in a Christian reading of the peace testimony. The Northern Friends Peace Board’s poster, published in England, is addressed to a primarily Christian audience, and incorporates the peace testimony into Christian language by pointedly stating, “Can ‘[God’s] kingdom come to earth’ this way?” In other words, the poster suggests that God’s intended world cannot exist in a world dominated by war.
This journal entry from January 1st, 1937 is found in a Quaker weekly journal from 1937 where it informed other Friends how the Friends Service Council (the British corollary to the American Friends Service Committee), together with the Save the Children Fund, were providing relief for Spain. Along with specifying where concerned Friends can send donations, this journal discusses who the Quakers were helping as well as why they were helping. It explains how the Quakers were giving relief to the children of Spain regardless of which side they were on. To the Friends, it did not matter if the Spanish refugees were on the Nationalist or Republican side; the article emphasizes the need for “impartiality” in the Quakers’ wartime relief work. The article goes on to explain that their “neutrality was a neutrality of active intervention on behalf of those whose chief enemy was war,” underscoring that the primary goal was to aid those who were the victims of the war (i.e. the women and children). By assisting the children of Spain, the Quakers were attempting to raise a new generation devoid of hate, one that could then hopefully bring an end to war once and for all.
“They Still Draw Pictures” is a collection of 60 original drawings created by the children who had first-hand experience with the violence of the Spanish Civil War. Its significance stems from the fact that the drawings allowed a child--whose unmistakable witness to the war was otherwise limited by an underdeveloped syntax--to eloquently illustrate the horror of modern war through creative visual expression. The publication of this book harnessed the international sympathy for the cause of the stricken Spanish children and accompanied a traveling fundraising exhibition of 118 of the children’s pictures. Widespread circulation of the drawings served as a way for the Spanish children to demonstrate how the war not only affected those who were fighting, but the innocent as well. Thus, these drawings stand alongside Picasso’s Guernica, calling for peace.
“War is a wound in the family of God. Help to heal it by thought, word, and deed.”
This poster, printed in 1939, expresses the connection between pacifism and the Quaker religion by stating that war disagrees with God. It can be read both as a Spanish Civil War poster and as a caution against the looming Second World War. It is a call for active pacifism because it asks the viewer to “help heal [the wound in the family of God] by thought, word, and deed.” Active pacifism was important to the Quakers because it meant becoming involved in an active effort to bring about peace while staying neutral to partisan politics. This can be seen in their volunteer work in the relief effort during the Spanish Civil War. The significance of expressing active pacifism is to show that pacifism is more than simply abstaining from violence. It is necessary to take steps to prevent violence as the Quakers were doing through posters, pamphlets, and their volunteer work (“thought, word, and deed”).
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.
American Friends Service Committee Study of Spanish Refugee Colony at Santa Clara
During the Spanish Civil War and well into Francisco Franco’s regime the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) played an active role supporting peace efforts. With the fall of the Republic in 1939, attention turned to refugees leaving Spain. The AFSC helped people emigrate to Mexico, where upon entry Republican refugees could receive citizenship if they were fleeing Franco. Mr. Jenson, researching relief possibilities in Mexico at the request of John Rich of the AFSC, had outlined potential goals that specified that the AFSC was dedicated to helping the exiles fleeing Franco’s regime both before and after the war. These goals included helping the refugees to maintain their morale and incorporating them within Mexican society in order to make a sustainable living community. Interestingly, the report featured here illustrates that in a documented visit to the Santa Clara community, Jenson concluded that the communist sympathisers were of a majority within these created colonies and that they tended to oppress the ideas of less represented political bodies.
Sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helen Keller, and other prominent figures of the time, The American Rescue Ship Mission letter circulated in 1940 makes an appeal for donations to help Spanish Republican Refugees reach Mexico and amnesty. After the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, those who fought Franco’s regime faced violent extrajudicial treatment in post-war Spain, and French refugee camps offered a hardly-better alternative. Mexico, however, as one of the few publicly pro-Republican nations during the Spanish Civil War, became a safe haven for Republican refugees. The American Rescue Ship Mission, a project of the United American Spanish Aid Committee, sought to transport refugees from France to Mexico. Considering its prominent sponsors and the broad target demographic, this document shows how the resettlement of Republican refugees became an issue that transcended Quaker concerns to involve the American public at large.
Around the world the message send - ‘World justice means world peace’
The Society of Friends attempted to remain neutral during the Spanish Civil War, and conducted relief work for both the Republicans and the Nationalists. In Quaker Service in Modern War, Howard Kershner writes, “I maintain that when one undertakes to do relief work on both sides of a civil war he must be prepared to be impartial to his attitude, and even in his thinking, where need is concerned.” This poster created by the Northern Friends Peace Boardembraces the idea of neutrality, and emphasizes the importance of global peace. The words “justice” and “peace” are connected without the promise or even the notion of winning the war in Spain (or any future war) —which is the goal that people on either side of the argument may associate with the word “justice.” In Quaker Relief Work in the Spanish Civil War, Farah Mendlesohn quotes Alfred Jacob as he states, “Our effort is simply to do the works of peace in the midst of war, affirming the right of the human personality which war denies”. By recognizing the “human personality” of either side, one is embracing neutrality and recognizing the similarities of either side. By showing that justice and peace are in fact the same thing, as well as using the image of the entire world, the poster helps depict humankind as a single, unified force. The Quakers recognize human togetherness by not dividing the poster into states or political parties, and depicting instead a unified world, and one common humanity.
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.
This Quaker poster criticizes conscription, the compulsory enrollment of persons for military service, and denounces war altogether. By claiming that, through conscription, the state has control of the collective human consciousness, which is rightfully God’s alone, the poster implies that the learnt practice of humans to destroy other humans is unvirtuous. Furthermore, the poster exposes war’s terrible nature with violent language: the use of “destroy” creates a powerful image of annihilation. Devastated by malnutrition, disease, bombing raids, and combat, the casualties of total war beg the question, “How do we end war?” For the Quaker community, the answer could be found within the creation of peaceful conditions, complete reconciliation, and abstinence from fighting—thus conquering total war with total peace. Ultimately, this poster encourages pacifism by condemning the morality of both conscription and war.
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
During the twentieth century, Quakers were active in publicizing peace-related concepts and striving against remilitarization. This poster, calling for a coordinated international effort in peace-building in place of force to deter war, sheds light on early explorations of what peace studies now call “positive peace.” Positive peace emphasizes the conditions necessary for peace, such as conflict resolution and peace-building. By presenting “new world conference” in red capital letters, the poster highlights the importance of this new mechanism. In accordance with the Quaker effort to foster conditions for peace, contemporaneous pacifist writers such as Virginia Woolf wrote about the role of socio-economic injustices (specifically financial and gender inequality) in the perpetuation of war. These features of pacifism manifest a paradigm shift during the modernist era, transforming pacifist activism from passive resistance of unethical wars to active promotion of peace. Therefore, this poster attests to the Friends’ active pacifism alongside the societal trend towards peace-building based on investigations of social justice issues.
“Cuando el arte se trueca en intérprete de la emoción popular, el arte se sublima… Se hace a un tiempo carne y espíritu.” “When art becomes the interpreter of some great national sentiment, it is sublime… [It is] a mingling of the flesh with the spirit.” —“The Doorway,” Preface to Estampas de la Revolución Española, 19 Julio de 1936 A collection of vignettes from the Spanish Civil War, brought forth within the realms of images with wide brushstrokes and trilingual captions, Estampas de la Revolución Española, 19 Julio de 1936, remains a testament to the many emotions and contradictions of the era. In this image, “El último abrazo,” a man lays down the dying body of his lifelong companion. Humanity’s looming mortality consumes this painting, leaving only a blurry conception of hope lost. While the artist—known solely as “hijo del pueblo” or “son of the people”—was featured in this volume for an anarchist, proletariat pursuit, his work transcends war’s partisan boundaries, serving as a traumatic reminder of war’s true victim: humanity, abandoned for the ether and painfully pieced together through art. Ultimately, El último abrazo confirms that ceaseless, unjustified violence fails to usher in prosperity, and that destruction never yields peace.
Oficinas de Propaganda de la Confederación Nacional del Trabajo y de la Federación Anarquista Ibérica
Evil can only be fought and conquered by self-giving friendship. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
In this compilation of selections from letters, Esther Farquhar Kamp, a social worker and Quaker relief worker with the American Friends Service Committee, discusses the physical, mental, and emotional stresses on the Spanish children and the ways in which the AFSC attempted to combat such issues. Promoting the wellbeing of the young victims of the Spanish Civil War was a matter on which Quaker relief work placed strong emphasis, based on the recognition that children were victims of the combat who were highly susceptible to the violent ideals of war and would act as fodder for further conflict as they transitioned into adulthood. Close to 700,000 children took refuge in the children’s colonies or “colonias infantiles,” including the Bosque in the Woods, to which Esther Farquhar Kamp refers in this letter.
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.
In an effort to provide aid to the war torn countryside of Spain, the Friends Service Council (FSC) made and distributed pamphlets about the war to Friends in England to collect funds and donations to help bring a measure of peace to Spain. To the Friends, their relief efforts, which came in the form of material goods and spiritual relief, were actually combatting violence and spreading peace. The idea is beautifully and powerfully summarized by the opening lines of this pamphlet which reads, “In the face of bombs and slaughter in Spain, to talk of ‘Peace, Peace’ may seem futile. Yet by giving food to a hungry child you are sowing seeds of peace. In contrast to hatred and savagery we are giving unselfish, impartial aid to the people of Spain.” For the Friends, to give for Spain is to give for peace.
This pamphlet, titled Give for Spain’s Refugees, is one of a series that were distributed by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to ask for help for the children refugees who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. This pamphlet shows that one important aspect of pacifism to the Quakers is the action of giving bread and soup to children and refugees. For the Quakers, feeding children is a form of pacifism because these children were the next generation of Spain. Neglecting to care for them would allow children to suffer and reinforce the bitterness of hatred and violence committed against them, giving them the idea that wars should be perpetuated. The Quakers, instead, tried to teach the children growing up in a time of war about peace by alleviating their suffering. This pamphlet has a British counterpart, distributed by the Friends Service Council in England, called Give for Spain, also displayed in this exhibition.
Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee